“Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.”
Work
"THE BRILLIANT AND CONTROVERSIAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN CULTURE WITH NEARLY A MILLION COPIES IN PRINT"<p> In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published "The Closing of the American Mind," an appraisal of contemporary America that "hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy" ("The New York Times") and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. <p>Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom's argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.
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Allan Bloom
Canonical work source
“Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.”
“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.”
“The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers...of all men to the exten...”