Quote

We witness a strange inversion: on the one hand, the endeavor to turn the social contract into a less calculating and more feeling connection among its members on the other hand, the endeavor to turn the erotic relationship into a contractual one.

Allan Bloom

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Allan Bloom
Age: 62 †
Born: 1930
Born: September 14
Died: 1992
Died: October 7
Classical Scholar
Journalist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Indianapolis
Indiana
Allan David Bloom
Hands
Strange
Contracts
Turn
Endeavor
Hand
Connection
Inversion
Feeling
Witness
Contractual
Turns
Connections
Inversions
Less
Members
Calculating
Social
Among
Erotic
Feelings
Relationship
Contract

More quotes by Allan Bloom

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The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.
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Education is the movement from darkness to light.
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The students [of the 60's] substituted conspicuous compassion for their parents' conspicuous consumption.
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Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does culture become necessary as a veneer to cover over the void. Culture can at best appreciate the monuments of earlier faith it cannot produce them.
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It was not necessarily the best of times in America when Catholics and Protestants were suspicious of and hated one another but at least they were taking their beliefs seriously, and the more or less satisfactory accommodations they worked out were not simply the result of apathy about the state of their souls.
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There is no real education that does not respond to felt need anything else acquired is trifling display.
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Most of all I admire Mozart's capacity to be both deep and rational, a combination often said to be impossible.
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The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.
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University convention submerges nature. It issues licenses, and hunting without one is forbidden.
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Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.
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Self-interest is hostile to the common good, but enlightened self-interest is not. And this is the best key to the meaning of enlightenment.
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Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.
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Authentic values are those by which a life can be lived, which can form a people that produces great deeds and thoughts.
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The first discipline modernity's originators imposed upon themselves was that of self-restraint, learning to live with vulgarity. Their high expectations for effectiveness were made possible by low expectations of what was to be.
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I am not a conservative — neo or paleo. Conservatism is a respectable outlook... I just do not happen to be that animal.
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Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.
Allan Bloom
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The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.
Allan Bloom
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Professors of Greek forget or are unaware that Thomas Aquinas, who did not know Greek, was a better interpreter of Aristotle than any of them have proved to be, not only because he was smarter but because he took Aristotle more seriously.
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Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing in addition to caring for man's well-being they were providing rights for themselves.
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An education, other than purely professional or technical, can even seem to be an impediment.
Allan Bloom