There Is No Real Education That Does

Continental Thinkers Have Been Obsessed With Bourgeois Man As Representing The Worst And Most Contemptible Failure Of Modernity, Which Must At All Costs Be Overcome. Nihilism In Its Most Palpable Sense Means That The Bourgeois Has Won, That The Future, All Foreseeable Futures, Belong To Him, That All Heights Above Him And All Depths Beneath Him Are Illusory And That Life Is Not Worth Living On These Terms.

The Utilitarian Behaves Sensibly In All That Is Required For Preservation But Never Takes Account Of The Fact That He Must Die... His Whole Life Is Absorbed In Avoiding Death, Which Is Inevitable, And Therefore He Might Be Thought To Be The Most Irrational Of Men, If Rationality Has Anything To Do With Understanding Ends Or Comprehending The Human Situation As Such.

Only When The True Ends Of Society Have Nothing To Do With The Sublime Does "culture" Become Necessary As A Veneer To Cover Over The Void. Culture Can At Best Appreciate The Monuments Of Earlier Faith; It Cannot Produce Them.

Sycophancy Toward Those Who Hold Power Is A Fact In Every Regime, And Especially In A Democracy, Where, Unlike Tyranny, There Is An Accepted Principle Of Legitimacy That Breaks The Inner Will To Resist.... Flattery Of The People And Incapacity To Resist Public Opinion Are The Democratic Vices, Particularly Among Writers, Artists, Journalists And Anyone Else Who Is Dependent On An Audience.

It Was Not Necessarily The Best Of Times In America When Catholics And Protestants Were Suspicious Of And Hated One Another; But At Least They Were Taking Their Beliefs Seriously, And The More Or Less Satisfactory Accommodations They Worked Out Were Not Simply The Result Of Apathy About The State Of Their Souls.