Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.
Allan BloomRead
Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Prejudice can arise from misusing reason, which should instead be a tool for overcoming it.
Allan Bloom's quote highlights the danger of allowing reason to devolve into prejudice. It suggests that while reason is a powerful tool that can help liberate us from biased thinking, when it is corrupted and used to justify prejudice, it results in a harmful form of narrow-mindedness that undermines true understanding and progress.
Themes
ReasonPrejudiceLiberationIgnoranceUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture about the importance of critical thinking and avoiding biases.
More from Allan Bloom
All quotes βThe humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.
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Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient.
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There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.
Allan BloomRead
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.
Allan BloomRead
We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.
Allan BloomRead
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