Friday, July 05, 2019

Splendid Sentences, Part 22: Allan Bloom on Freedom of Mind

In his controversial 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed and Impoverished the Soul of Today's Students, Allan Bloom writes this stunning sentence:
Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.
Consider how much is happening in this 22-word sentence. Bloom sets up three contrasting ideas, each laid out in parallel form and each giving us a long pause for deep thought:

  • not only, or not even especially – Although I've been reading for years, I came across this phrase for the first time. So I had to take in the meaning of these transitional phrases: the family not only and the unusually juxtaposed not even especially. Setting off the latter phrase in commas demands at least a slight pause, but making a point of it at all causes the reader to stop and think about a stronger alternative to not only. 
  • the absence of ... the presence of  –  This contrast seems simple enough, but it is not, because what must be absent and what must be present relate to different spheres: legal constraints to law and alternative thoughts to philosophy.
  • legal constraints .. alternative thoughts – Both of these phrases neatly include a well balanced adjective and noun, so they are grammatically parallel. But not conceptually. Legal constraints exist whether or not we participate, whether or not we protest on the streets, whether or not we crawl under a manhole cover to sink undetected in a sewer; alternative thoughts requires our recognizing their truthful, sometimes burdensome reality,  reckoning with their potentially challenging implications, and doing something about them.  

Read previous installments of  "Splendid Sentences" in WORDS ON THE LINE:
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