Allan Bloom cytaty

Allan David Bloom – amerykański filozof polityczny.

✵ 14. Wrzesień 1930 – 7. Październik 1992
Allan Bloom: 30   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Allan Bloom cytaty

„Najbardziej udaną tyranią jest nie ta, która w celu zniewolenia używa siły, lecz ta, która odbiera wszelką wiedzę na temat tego jak wygląda wolność, czyniąc ją niepojętą, ta, która odbiera wszelką świadomość tego, że istnieją inne drogi, ta, która odbiera poczucie jakiejkolwiek zewnętrznej rzeczywistości.”

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.
Źródło: The closing of the American mind http://books.google.pl/books?id=cfr2ePZfFC4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, Simon and Schuster, 1988, s. 249.

Allan Bloom: Cytaty po angielsku

“Only the search back to the origins of one’s ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us.”

“Western Civ,” p. 20.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
Kontekst: Only the search back to the origins of one’s ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us. Our study of history has taught us to laugh at the follies of the whole past, the monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, and aristocracies with the fanaticism for empire or salvation, once taken so seriously. But we have very few tools for seeing ourselves in the same way, as others will see us. Each age always conspires to make its own way of thinking appear to be the only possible or just way, and our age has the least resistance to the triumph of its own way. There is less real presence of respectable alternatives and less knowledge of the titanic intellectual figures who founded our way.

“The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times”

“Western Civ,” p. 19.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
Kontekst: I am now even more persuaded of the urgent need to study why Socrates was accused. The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times, not in the bosoms of pleasure-seekers, who don’t give a damn, but in those of high-minded and idealistic persons who do not want to submit their aspirations to examination.

“The new vision of man and politics was never taken by its founders to be splendid. Naked man, gripped by fear or industriously laboring to provide the wherewithal for survival, is not an apt subject for poetry. They self-consciously chose low but solid ground. Civil societies dedicated to the end of self-preservation cannot be expected to provide fertile soil for the heroic and inspired. They do not require or encourage the noble. What rules and sets the standards of respectability and emulation is not virtue or wisdom. The recognition of the humdrum and prosaic character of life was intended to play a central role in the success of real politics. And the understanding of human nature which makes this whole project feasible, if believed in, clearly forms a world in which the higher motives have no place. One who holds the “economic” view of man cannot consistently believe in the dignity of man or in the special status of art and science. The success of the enterprise depends precisely on this simplification of man. And if there is a solution to the human problems, there is no tragedy. There was no expectation that, after the bodily needs are taken care of, man would have a spiritual renaissance—and this for two reasons: (1) men will always be mortal, which means that there can be no end to the desire for immortality and to the quest for means to achieve it; and (2) the premise of the whole undertaking is that man’s natural primary concern is preservation and prosperity; the regimes founded on nature take man as he is naturally and will make him ever more natural. If his motives were to change, the machinery that makes modern government work would collapse.”

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 284.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

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