Saturday, May 16, 2009
Allan Bloom on Nietzsche
I came across these Allan Bloom lectures (presumably recorded during one of his U of Chicago lectures in 1983) after a close friend introduced me to his, The Closing of the American Mind. These interviews, in turn, were located by another friend, a professor of communications and rhetoric who professes his trade on the high Plains, and who originally hails from Pittsburgh.
The Bloom audio interviews are punctuated by a couple segments of silence, but at least you're ready for them now. It's nice to have on when one is, say, framing photos and paintings in New Orleans, or transitioning their offices from Spring to Summer term in Boston, or on the outskirts of Boston, or looking out the window and watching tumbleweeds roll across the southern Plains of Texas.
Lecture segments 2, 3, 4 and 5 are below.
Segment 2 of 5.
Segment 3 of 5.
Segment 4 of 5.
Segment 5 of 5.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Downloaded these for later listening.
I audited a class of Bloom's at Chicago, and can say that these youtube lectures miss something by only capturing audio. The guy was quite the showman, and in particular the "classroom banter" was always fun, even if it comes across [to me] irritating in these lectures.
It was not easy to like Alan Bloom, and I sure didn't. The more you understood what he was like as a man, outside of the class or the intellectual debate, the more difficult it was to reconcile it with the extraordinary wit and thoughtfulness and depth of learning he brought to that classroom and intellectual debate.
There was a cultlike cadre who followed him everywhere, but one quarter of seeing him in person and then reading his books or papers as interest was more than enough for me. Besides, there were always grad students, or enamored undergraduates, who I could argue with and could offer up "the Bloom".
He really did have a first class mind. though.
Post a Comment