The Most Important Function Of The University

The Old View Was That Delicacy Of Language Was Part Of The Nature, The Sacred Nature, Of Eros And That To Speak About It In Any Other Way Would Be To Misunderstand It. What Has Disappeared Is The Risk And The Hope Of Human Connectedness Embedded In Eros. Ours Is A Language That Reduces The Longing For An Other To The Need For Individual, Private Satisfaction And Safety.

Americans ... Do Not Naturally Apply The Term "bourgeois" To Themselves, Or To Anyone Else For That Matter. They Do Like To Call Themselves Middle Class, But That Does Not Carry With It Any Determinate Spiritual Content. ... The Term "middle Class" Does Not Have Any Of The Many Opposites That Bourgeois Has, Such As Aristocrat, Saint, Hero, Or Artist - All Good.

To Recognize That Some Of The Things Our Culture Believes Are Not True Imposes On Us The Duty Of Finding Out Which Are True And Which Are Not.

Historicism And Cultural Relativism Actually Are A Means To Avoid Testing Our Own Prejudices And Asking, For Example, Whether Men Are Really Equal Or Whether That Opinion Is Merely A Democratic Prejudice.

The Distinction Between Private And Public Undermines The Unity Of Spiritual Strength, Draining The Public Of The Transcendent Energies While Trivializing Them Because The Merely Private Life Provides No Proper Stage For Their Action.