Bloom interviewed 3 - "I am speaking on behalf of a disadvantaged group..."[1987]

[rpsm1d]

A typical example of Bloom. I read Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Nietzsche in a social scinece class (he wasn't a member of the PSci dept) with him in '89. He was the most brilliant man I ever met and indescribably funny. His lectures on Rousseau's Emile were mindshaking. He was kind of an outcast among the departments. Wound up on the Commitee on Social Thought, nobody else wanted to deal with him. He was too independent in thought. No robot of progressive silliness. RIP Allan.

[traccan]

It's interesting that he was attacked mainly from the left, because as I understand what he's saying, TODAY, he would be attacked much more viciously from the right (at least in terms of the 'public', 'popular', right..the news media, religious groups, etc. There would be, of course, 'right-wing' academics who'd support his views.

The call for a 'place' for thinking, relatively undisturbed by the pragmatic necessities of business-think: this is Slavoj Zizek, not Rush Limbaugh.

[rpsm1d]

@traccan I disagree, Allan had a vicious experience once he became "somebody". But many people of the left and right engaged him as someone with a perspective worthy of challenge and reflection (Chris Lehmann-Haupt, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Walker Percy et al). Today, he'd be considered a loon by both sides, unworthy of confrontation. That's good for the new class of technorati too since he was a powerful debater and would eviscerate them without relent or care.

[caramelizeme]

so far ahead of his time- "it stopped being a question"

[vinnynumbnuts]

I feel alone sometimes. Everyone, so far, that I have given, say, Mahler's Symphony no. 6 as a gift, turns out to be deaf. Many of them will send me back something like Iron Maiden or Cobain, telling me, "This is music."

[bimhimbim]

@vinnynumbnuts Lol

[jacksonkerouac]

thank you for posting this. Jesus. Bloom was a strange character, which i love.  and his clarity was frightening.

[nuscholar1979]

I disagree, aes229. I was fortunate enough to have fabulous philosophy professors at college here in Atlanta. They were to the left, but they laid the foundation for my own journey into an academic career. The problem, as I see it, is our loss of tradition. We have grown suspicious of anything old. Our professors are just products of these times, really.

[MarcusCMarcellus]

But politically, the left is characterized by a theoretical, systematic attack and deconstruction of tradition and "anything old." Your professors may have been wonderful, granted, but in everyday life, the effect of leftist thinking is to further remove people from the past; to ghettoize them in the present and to repudiate anything old as folly or superstition. Further, the left's attack on disinterested reason mentioned is more theoretical and principled than simply repudiating the past.

[michelangeli23]

To be more precise, there's nothing wrong with being ghettoized in the present - that present moment, which, at least according to Augustine, is all that ever exists. Our problem is, rather, a ghettoization into the presently common ways of thinking and being. A serious attempt to engage with the ways of being or feeling or thinking of past ages and civilisations enriches the present, by showing alternatives, by opening up the space for new possibilities.

[kyklope]

This seems wrong (as false as some Bloom's declarations in The Closing... p. 224). There's a little essay from Thomas Mann called "Freud's position on History", in where he says: "It must be aknowledged that the revolutionary musn't appear in the world as a cult for reason and intelectualist encyclopaedism..." not only intellectualism is revolutionary, and it must be aknowledged that, contrary to Bloom's intention (ibid. p. 223), not every romanticism is rightist. THANX FOR THE GOOD VIDEO.

[aes229]

Please keep posting videos of him. Especially if they're interviews.

[aes229]

What a delightful person, and what a powerful mind he had. I go to The New School in New York and i think Bloom's case is becoming increasingly more urgent. The idea of "reason", and of philosophical contemplation, has been virtually abolished by professors peddling one political program or another.