Allan Bloom
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Allan David Bloom (1930-1992): "At the time of his death he was co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy."
- "Jewish and from a family of teachers, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is for his part a brilliant product of East Coast universities. He has studied with two of the most eminent professors of the 1960s. Allan Bloom, the discipline of the German-Jewish philosopher, Leo Strauss, and Albert Wohlstetter, professor of mathematics and a specialist in military strategy. These two names would end up counting. The neoconservatives have placed themselves under the tutelary shadow of the strategist and the philosopher."
- — Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet, [The Strategist and the Philosopher http://www.counterpunch.org/frachon06022003.html], June 2, 2003.
- "Allan Bloom from the University of Chicago was depicted by his friend Saul Bellow in the novel Ravelstein (Which Books, 2000). In 1987 in The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom assails the university community for having given everything equal merit: 'Everything has become culture', he wrote. 'Drug culture, Rock culture, Street Gang culture and so on without the least discrimination. The failure of culture has become culture.'
- For Bloom, who was an important interpreter of the classic works of literature, very much in the image of his mentor Strauss, a part of the legacy of the 1960s 'ends up as contempt of Western civilization for itself,' explains Jean-François Revel. 'In the name of political correctness, all cultures are of equal merit. Bloom questioned the students and professors who were perfectly disposed to accept non-European cultures that often stood against liberty, while at the same time protesting with extreme harshness against Western culture to such a point as to refuse any acknowledgement of it as superior in any respect.'
- While political correctness gave the impression of holding the high ground, neoconservatives were making headway. Bloom's book was a major best-seller. Within US foreign policy, a true neoconservative school was taking shape. Networks were set up. In the 1970s, the Democratic Senator from Washington State, Henry Jackson (d. 1983) criticized the major treaties on nuclear disarmament. He helped shape a generation of young lions keenly interested in strategy, in which one comes across Richard Perle and William Kristol. The latter had attended Allan Bloom's lectures."
- — Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet, [The Strategist and the Philosopher http://www.counterpunch.org/frachon06022003.html], June 2, 2003.
External links
- Allan David Bloom.
- Nicholas Cassimatis, Obituary
