Deneen Comments on Roger Kimball on Allan Bloom
Tocqueville Forum Director Patrick J. Deneen appeared on a panel at a conference on October 3, 2007 devoted to a discussion of Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind. The conference was held at the Princeton Club in New York City and was sponsored by the Center for the American University of the Manhattan Institute. Deneen commented on a paper presented by Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion and author of Tenured Radicals. Deneen's comments focused on Bloom's argument that "openness" constituted a form of "closing" by shutting off the possibility that a University education was most fundamentally aimed at achieving knowledge about "the good life" and hence "the good." The session was filmed by C-Span and can be viewed online here. More information on the event is available at "Minding the Campus.com."
"Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights. Religion is considered as the guardian of mores, and mores are regarded as the guarantee of laws..."