>>> Who the devil is Allan Bloom?

The Closing of the American Mind 🔍
(Simon Schuster, 1987)
Allan Bloom, (foreward by Saul Bellow)

“A critique of the intellectual and moral confusions of this age argues that the social/political crisis of twentieth-century America is actually an intellectual crisis, and shows how American democracy has hosted ideas of nihilism, despair, and relativism disguised as tolerance”

___________________________________

We (((American intellectuals))) took over the results
without having had any of the intellectual experiences leading to them.

................ This is a real difference between the Continent and us. Here the philosophic language is nothing but jargon.

The evident weakness of the division of literature on the basis of the language in which it was written led, a half-century ago, to the sensible project of trying to reunite it.

Thus comparative literature was founded. But as is the case with all such undertakings in our times, there was considerable perplexity about what the new discipline was trying to do, and it tended to generate systems of comparison that dominated the literary works, tributes to the ingenuity of their founders rather than openings through which the works could reveal themselves freed from arbitrary constraints.

Comparative literature has now fallen largely into the hands of a group of professors who are influenced by the post-Sartrean generation of Parisian Heideggerians, in particular Derrida, Foucault and Barthes.

The school is called Deconstructionism, and it is the
last, predictable, stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy.

The interpreter’s creative activity is more important
than the text; there is no text, only interpretation. Thus the one thing most necessary for us, the knowledge of what these texts have to tell us, is turned over to the subjective, creative selves of these interpreters, who say that there is both no text and no reality to which the texts refer.

A cheapened interpretation of Nietzsche liberates us from the
objective imperatives of the texts that might have liberated us from our increasingly low and narrow horizon. Everything has tended to soften the demands made on us by the tradition; this simply dissolves it.

This fad will pass, as it has already in Paris.

____________________________________

when i read this in the late 1980's ,
Derrida, Foucault, Barthes... were so popular that.... i was so surprised that anyone can talk about them in this way.

i'd say.... generally, his prediction came true.

re : ...... Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Barthes ......

henh...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>>> Who the devil is Allan Bloom?
>
>
> The Closing of the American Mind 🔍
> (Simon Schuster, 1987)
> Allan Bloom, (foreward by Saul Bellow)
>
> “A critique of the intellectual and moral confusions of this age argues that the social/political crisis of twentieth-century America is actually an intellectual crisis, and shows how American democracy has hosted ideas of nihilism, despair, and relativism disguised as tolerance”
>
> ___________________________________
>
>
> We (((American intellectuals))) took over the results
> without having had any of the intellectual experiences leading to them.
>
> ............... This is a real difference between the Continent and us. Here the philosophic language is nothing but jargon.
>
>
>
> The evident weakness of the division of literature on the basis of the language in which it was written led, a half-century ago, to the sensible project of trying to reunite it.
>
> Thus comparative literature was founded. But as is the case with all such undertakings in our times, there was considerable perplexity about what the new discipline was trying to do, and it tended to generate systems of comparison that dominated the literary works, tributes to the ingenuity of their founders rather than openings through which the works could reveal themselves freed from arbitrary constraints.
>
> Comparative literature has now fallen largely into the hands of a group of professors who are influenced by the post-Sartrean generation of Parisian Heideggerians, in particular Derrida, Foucault and Barthes.
>
> The school is called Deconstructionism, and it is the
> last, predictable, stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy.
>
> The interpreter’s creative activity is more important
> than the text; there is no text, only interpretation. Thus the one thing most necessary for us, the knowledge of what these texts have to tell us, is turned over to the subjective, creative selves of these interpreters, who say that there is both no text and no reality to which the texts refer.
>
> A cheapened interpretation of Nietzsche liberates us from the
> objective imperatives of the texts that might have liberated us from our increasingly low and narrow horizon. Everything has tended to soften the demands made on us by the tradition; this simply dissolves it.
>
>
> This fad will pass, as it has already in Paris.
>
> ____________________________________
>
> when i read this in the late 1980's ,
> Derrida, Foucault, Barthes... were so popular that.... i was so surprised that anyone can talk about them in this way.
>
>
> i'd say.... generally, his prediction came true.
>
> re : ...... Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Barthes ......
I weep for the USA. Every time I hear about some new mass shooting or
screams of racial prejudice, my heart constricts.
But I don't think that ideas of intellectuals destroyed American
greatness. Intellectuals are good at giving voice to perceived trends,
but seldom leaders of the people. I think she just ran out of land.
American greatness grew in the 19th c. She became an asylum, a refuge
for the dispossessed; all those people kicked out of home by pogroms and
revolutions; go to America, get in a wagon-train, head west and grab a
plot of land. That's where "self-evident truths" are founded, that's "of
the people, by the people, for the people".
And I can't see how Trumpism with its closing of the borders and playing
the bully in the school-playground will resurrect that greatness. It
might create a new kind of greatness, but not that greatness which
western democracies lauded and followed for ages.
Ed