education

Friedrich Nietzsche

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

public opinion

television

occupation / innovator as

classical scholar

philosopher

nationality

American

cause of death

natural causes

journalist

political scientist

is aware that to philosophize is radically problematic in the cultural, historicist dispensation and he tried to apply to his own thought the teachings of cultural relativism.

It is Nietzsche’s merit that he was aware that to philosophize is radically problematic in the cultural, historicist dispensation. He recognized the terrible intellectual and moral risks involved. At the center of his every thought was the question “How is it possible to do what I am doing?” He tried to apply to his own thought the teachings of cultural relativism. This practically nobody else does. For example, Freud says that men are motivated by desire for sex and power, but he did not apply those motives to explain his own science or his own scientific activity. But if he can be a true scientist, i.e., motivated by love of the truth, so can other men, and his description of their motives is thus mortally flawed. Or if he is motivated by sex or power, he is not a scientist, and his science is only one means among many possible to attain those ends. This contradiction runs throughout the natural and social sciences. They give an account of things that cannot possibly explain the conduct of their practitioners.

's novelistic works do for democracy what Socrates did for aristocracy in the Republic; the attempt to establish a democratic art.

Hence Rousseau's novelistic works, Emile, La Nouvelle Heloïse, and Confessions-each of which is much longer than his primary political treatise, the two Discourses and the Social Contract, put together-constitute an attempt to establish what was missing in earlier democratic thinkers, a democratic art. He does for democracy what Socrates did for aristocracy in the Republic.

1s 2ressure is like the pressure of the atmosphere... You can't see it.

The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere... You can't see it

is responsible for having assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society.

First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society.

Allan Bloom

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Allan Bloom