When firm misconduct comes to light, CEOs are often faced with difficult decisions regarding whether and how to respond to stakeholder demands as they attempt to restore their firms’ legitimacy. Prior research largely assumes that such decisions are motivated by CEOs’ calculated attempts to manage stakeholder impressions. Yet, there are likely other motives, particularly those of a morally-relevant nature, that might also be influencing CEOs’ decisions. To address this limitation, we advance moral cleansing as an alternative explanation for how and (...) why CEOs lead their firms to respond to stakeholder demands following the firm’s misconduct and, in turn, whether they can successfully restore their firm’s legitimacy. In the context of firm misconduct, moral cleansing motives reflect CEOs’ desire to restore their threatened moral self-image resulting from the misconduct. We theorize that a CEO’s moral cleansing motives increase the likelihood that their firm will engage in a series of reparative responses that can restore the firm’s legitimacy (i.e., discovery, explanation, penance, and rehabilitation). In addition, we explicate the unique implications of CEOs’ moral cleansing in a post-misconduct context by theorizing how such motives may simultaneously improve one form of their firms’ legitimacy while hindering another. Specifically, we theorize that CEOs’ moral cleansing motives increase (decreases) the authenticity (strategic cognition) of their firm responses, which strengthens (weakens) the effectiveness of those responses on the firms’ ability to restore its moral (pragmatic) legitimacy with stakeholders. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work. (shrink)

The lack of consensus in American society regarding the permissibility of assisted suicide and euthanasia is due in large part to a failure to address the nature of the human person involved in the ethical act itself. For Karol Wojtyla, philosopher and Pope, ethical action finds meaning only in an authentic understanding of the person; but it is through acting ( actus humanus ) alone that the human person reveals himself. Knowing what the person ought to be cannot be divorced (...) from what he ought to do; forWojtyla, the structure of the ethical “do” – the act itself – comes first. The current paper will focus on four arguments used to justify assisted suicide and euthanasia: (1) the argument from autonomy, (2) the argument from compassion, (3) the argument from the evil of suffering, and (4) the argument from the loss of dignity. It will seek to answer each claim from the perspective of Karol Wojtyla's philosophical anthropology. Much of this will come from his defining work in pure philosophy, The Acting Person (1969). The final part of the paper will suggest some positive solutions to the stalemate over the euthanasia debate, again drawn from Wojtyla's idea of human fulfillment through participation with the other, and with the community itself. (shrink)

Physicians, nurses, and healthcare professional students openly participated in the medical atrocities of the Shoah. In this paper, a physician-bioethicist and nurse-bioethicist examine the role of hierarchical power imbalances in medical education, which often occur because trainees are instructed ‘to do so’ by their superiors during medical education and clinical care. We will first examine the nature of medical and nursing education under National Socialism: were there cultural, educational, moral and legal pressures which entrenched professional hierarchies and thereby commanded obedience (...) in the face of an ever-diminishing individual and collective conscience? We will then outline relevant parallel features in modern medical education, including the effects of hierarchy in shaping ethical decision making and conscience formation. We then propose several solutions for the prevention of the negative effects of hierarchical power imbalances in medical education: universal Holocaust education in medical and nursing schools; formative and experiential ethics instruction, which teaches students to ‘speak up’ when ethical issues arise; acceptance of, and adherence to, a personalistic philosophical anthropology in healthcare; support for rigorous conscience protection laws for minority ethical views that respect the role of integrity without compromising patient care. (shrink)

Coregulation refers to the process by which relationship partners form a dyadic emotional system involving an oscillating pattern of affective arousal and dampening that dynamically maintains an optimal emotional state. Coregulation may represent an important form of interpersonal emotion regulation, but confusion exists in the literature due to a lack of precision in the usage of the term. We propose an operational definition for coregulation as a bidirectional linkage of oscillating emotional channels between partners, which contributes to emotional stability for (...) both partners. We propose several distinctions and raise unanswered questions that will need to be addressed in order to understand the relevance of coregulation for well-being in adulthood. (shrink)

Forming intimate relationships is a fundamental human motive. Emotions play a critical role in intimate relationships—they are central to the development and maintenance of these bonds, and these very bonds can influence both individual and interpersonal emotional dynamics across time. Investigating emotional dynamics in an interpersonal context provides unique insight into the functioning of intimate relationships and, at the same time, provides a window into the interdependence of partners’ daily experiences. Reviewing a selection of the literature involving emotional dynamics in (...) intimate relationships, we explore how intimate relationships shape partner’s emotional experiences and the implications this may have for their relationship across time. (shrink)

People in an emotional exchange form a temporal interpersonal emotion system (TIES), in which their emotions are interconnected over time (Butler, 2011). These systems can be in various states, defined by the pattern of emotional interconnections. We have defined coregulation as one such state involving coupled dampened oscillations between partners’ emotions that converge on a stable level. Coregulation could be distinguished from other states, such as stress buffering, by comparing statistical models that represent the theoretical distinctions between states. Optimal data (...) for such modeling includes assessments of both partners’ emotions over time and a contrast between securely attached partners, strangers, and being alone. Research of this sort is needed to uncover the mechanisms by which emotional interdependence promotes well-being. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 63-65.

We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

This study investigates the trajectories of intended critical thinking in a social context present in the K-5 social studies content standards of six states. It considers how the nature of context-based critical thinking present in the standards’ benchmarks is represented. The findings reveal a complex dynamic in K-5 social studies content standards, which fundamentally expect young learners to advance their critical thinking in social context. But the content standards promote inconsistent critical thinking in a social context across grade levels. The (...) sophistication of context-based critical thinking decreases within the standards as students advance through the grades. As such, implications for elementary social studies education in terms of how standards reflect official stances from the state on the nature of social studies in elementary education are discussed. (shrink)

Confusion surrounds Catholic teaching on the use of assisted nutrition and hydration, specifically the question of when, if ever, its refusal or removal is ethical. This paper focuses on two often-neglected considerations: the relationship between means and mechanism, and an assessment of proportionality of the mechanism from the patient’s perspective. The authors draw on two critical principles of Catholic moral teaching: only ordinary means are required, and proportionality is subject to the perspective of the patient, not just that of experts (...) or the culture. The mechanisms that provide food and water have distinct benefits and burdens. Their proportionality is properly subject to analysis by the patient or surrogate, who determines which mechanism is acceptable in the patient’s situation. (shrink)

Out of 288 Hong Kong cancer patients, 92.3% include themselves in decision-making, 71% prefer joint decision-making: with family, with doctor, with doctor plus family, with family minus doctor, and with doctor minus family. <5% want decision-making by “doctor-alone” and <1% desire decision-making by “family-alone”. Harmony, communication and responsibility are reasons for family participation. Most patients prefer “specialist” for information, followed by “family”, “friends”, and “GP”. Trust in doctors and prospects for controlling/curing disease are important factors in decision-making. Patients want to (...) participate and be listened to rather than make decisions. Doctors should not disclose information to family without patients’ permission, nor withhold information from patient [End Page 109] on family’s request. Only 25% of patients have discussed post-competent treatment with others and 7% have heard of Advance Directive ; 24% refuse to discuss it. After AD has been explained to them, 66% remain reluctant to sign one, preferring to leave oral instructions or appoint family as proxy decision-makers. The family’s decision-making role increases when patients become incompetent. The top reason for signing AD is to receive preferred post-competent treatments, and for not signing it, difficulty with making a prospective decision. The implications of these findings will be discussed. (shrink)

Emerging adult newlywed couples often experience many demands on their time, and three common problems may surface as couples try to balance these demands—problems related to finances, sleep, and sex. We used two waves of dyadic data from 1,001 emerging adult newlywed couples to identify four dyadic latent profiles from husbands’ and wives’ financial management behaviors, sexual satisfaction, and sleep quality: Flounderers, Financially Challenged Lovers, Drowsy Budgeters, and Flourishers. We then examined how husbands’ and wives’ marital satisfaction, in relation to (...) profile membership, varied at a later wave. We found that Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers had significantly higher marital satisfaction than Drowsy Budgeters and Flounderers. Whereas, Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers did not differ in terms of marital satisfaction, Drowsy Budgeters seemed to have slightly higher marital satisfaction than Flounderers for wives only. However, we did not find evidence that these connections meaningfully differed by sex. Implications for the efforts of clinicians and educators are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CONSTRUCTING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE HUMAN BODY Scriptural Anthropology T:ODAY BIOETHICAL ISSUES are much discussed by heologians. Yet they make little use of the Bible in olving these problems. Why? Is it because these bioethical issues are so new it seems unlikely the Bible has much to say about them? Rather it is because many suppose that scholars have shown the Bible's moral teaching to be so historically conditioned that (...) it cannot be normative for" modern man" but only paranetic, i.e. it exhorts and motivates us to do good and avoid evil but provides no concrete norms of good and evil still valid today. Such norms must be supplied by philosophical ethics and the empirical sciences. Hence, in moral argument we should avoid Biblical" proof-texting." 1 The recent development of " canon criticism " provides, I believe, a way out of this impasse.2 The doctrine of Biblical inspiration means that although the Council of Trent declared the Bible inspired "in all its parts ",3 yet this guarantee of inerrancy applies not to these parts taken in "proof-texting" iso1 For a collection of current essays on this subjects see Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., eds. The Use of Scripture mMoral Theology (Readings in Moral Theology, No. 4) (New York: Paulist Press, 1984) and Robert J. Daly, S.J., et al. Christian Biblical Ethics from Biblical Revelation to Contemporary Christian Praxis, Method and Content (New York: Paulist Press, 1984) for a more systematic argument. For my own position see, "The Development of Doctrine about Sin, Conversion, and the Following of Christ" in Moral Theology Today: Certitudes and Doubts (St. Louis: Pope John Center, 1984) p. 46-64. 2 See Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), pp. 3-47. 3 Council of Trent, Session IV, DS 1504, Vatican II, Dei Verbum, n. 11. 501 502 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, O.P. lation nor merely in their context within a given book of the Bible, but in their ultimate context within the total Canon. Consequently, seriously to view the Bible from the perspective of a " historicist " rather than a " classical world view " (as Bernard Lonergan urged us to do 4) we must not leave the concrete moral teaching of the Scripture on the shelf of the pa.st. Instead let's use a hermeneutic by which God's Word revealed in history truly illuminates today's problems. Scripture and the Construction of the Human Person Today we are concerned about problems of artificial human reproduction and of genetic engineering. Does the Bible cast any light on these puzzles? To ask about reconstructing humans, we must first ask how God constructed them. Through much of its history Catholic theology read the Bible through the eyes of Platonism because this seemed to make the Gospel intelligible and credible to the Greco-Roman world. Perhaps it was this Platonic theology that Lonergan was thinking about when he spoke of " the classical worldview " with its neglect of human historicity. Platonism helped theology defend the "primacy of the spiritual" and especially the dignity and immortality of the human spirit. But it also favored a non-biblical dualism which identified the true human person with the soul and considered the body as its tomb.5 If we shelve this Platonic theology and seek a less dualistic, more historicist anthropology, we discover the first chapters of Genesis wonderfully provide such an anthropology as the basis of a moral Instruction or Torah.6 This Torah forms the cove4 Bernard Lonergan, "The Transition from a Classicist World-View to Historical Mindedness" (1966) in Second Collection, ed. by W. F. K. Ryan and B. J. Tyrrell (London: Darton, Longmans, Todd, 1974), pp. 1-9. 5 For an extensive discussion of this history see my Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian (Braintree, Mass.: Pope John Center, 1985), pp. 101250. 6 Isaac M. Kikawanda and Arthur Quinn, Before Abraham Was (Nashville, Tenn.: Abngidon Press, 1985), discounting the Documentary Hypothesis not from a conservative but from an advanced literary point of view, have pro- CONSTRUCTING/RECONSTRUCTING THE HUMAN BODY 503 nant foundation of both Old and New Testament around which the whole Canon takes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GENDER AND THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST: A THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, 0.P. Aquinas Institute of Theology St. Louis, Missouri I. Does "Patriarchy" Explain the Tradition? HE CONGREGATION for the Doctrine of the Faith, n its 1976 Declaration on the Question of the Admission f Wonien to the Ministerial Priesthood, based its negative response primarily on tradition.1 For many this argument 1 Inter Insigniores (Oct. 15, 1976, AAS (...) 69 [1977]), Origins 6, 33 (Feb. 3, 1977) : 518-531. For a general bibliography on women's studies see Patricia K. Ballou, Women: A Bibliography of Bibliographies, 2nd ed. (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986). For select bibliography pro and con on the present topic see note 92, p. 560 of my Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian (St. Louis: Pope John Center, 1985) and Wendell E. Langley, S.J. and Rosemary J ermann, " Women and the ministerial priesthood: An annotated bibliography," Theology Digest 29 :329-42 (Winter '81). Strong cases against ordination are made by Louis Bouyer, W onzan in the Church, tr. by Marilyn Techert [Epilogue by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Essay by C. S. Lewis, "Priestesses in the Church"] (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1979) ; Manfred Hauke, Women in the Priesthood? A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption, tr. by David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988); L. Ligier, "Women and the ministerial priesthood," Origins, 7:694-702 (April 20, 1978); and Patrick Dunn, Priesthood: A Re-Examination of the Roman Catholz'.c Theology of the Presbyterate (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1990), pp. 173-196. Strong cases for ordination are made by Ida Raming, The Exclusion of Women from Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex Discrimination, tr. by Norman R. Adams (Meutchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976) ; Haye von der Meer, Women Priests in the Catholic Chitrch: A Theological -Historical Investigation, tr. by Arlene and Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1973) ; George Tavard, Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973) ; Karl Raimer, "Priestertum der Frau," Stimmen der Zeit, 195 :291-301 (May 1977) ; Joseph Komonchak, " Theological Questions on the Ordination of Women," Catholic Mind 75 CJan. 1977) : 13-28; Carroll Stuhlmueller, C. P., ed., Women and Priesthood: Future Directions (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1978); and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). 343 344 BENEDICT Mo ASHLEY, OoPo fails to persuade" It seems obvious to them that this " tradition " merely reflects the " patriarchalism " of the Jewish and pagan milieu of the early Church" The Declaration anticipated this objection when it pointed out (a) that Jesus was counter-cultural in many respects, especially in his attitude toward women; (b) a better explanation for the tradition can be found in the reality (res) which the sacrament of ordination symbolizes, namely, that the priest acts ini persona Christi capitis ecclesiae" Thus the essential role of a Christian priest is to represent Christ present and acting in his Church as its male Head" The Congregation formulated its conclusion cautiously: "The Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination." 2 Thus no other opinion may be followed in practice, and if bishops or theologians raise questions about the meaning of the tradition they must not trivialize its importance nor arouse illusory expectations of change. Final judgment on the matter can only pertain to the magisterium. In what follows I will not explore the argument from tradition as such, but only the supporting argument from symbolism, in an attempt to fill in certain steps which it seems to me the Declaration passed over. Nor will I deal here with other secondary arguments against the Declaration's conclusion, particular the pragmatic argument that since Christians have a right to the Eucharist, the decline of male priestly vocations in many secularized countries justifies the ordination of women" H the Church has no power to ordain women validly, obviously that argument, however practically attractive, is beside the point2 2 Inter Insigniores, last paragraph of the Introduction. 3 The members of a local church have a " right " to the Eucharist only if they... (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

According to the powerful qualities view, properties are both powerful and qualitative. Indeed, on this view the powerfulness of a property is identical to its qualitativity. Proponents claim that this view provides an attractive alternative to both the view that properties are pure powers and the view that they are pure qualities. It remains unclear, however, whether the claimed identity between powerfulness and qualitativity can be made coherent in a way that allows the powerful qualities view to constitute this sort (...) of alternative. I argue here that this can be done, given a particular conception of both the qualitativity and powerfulness of properties. On this conception, a property is qualitative just in the sense that its essence is fixed independently of any distinct properties, and it is powerful just if its essence grounds its dispositional role. (shrink)

Recent research indicates that interpersonal communication is noisy, and that people exhibit considerable insensitivity to problems in communication. Using a dyadic referential communication task, the goal of which is accurate information transfer, this study examined the extent to which interlocutors are sensitive to problems in communication and use other‐initiated repairs (OIRs) to address them. Participants were randomly assigned to dyads (N = 88 participants, or 44 dyads) and tried to communicate a series of recurring abstract geometric shapes to a partner (...) across a text–chat interface. Participants alternated between directing (describing shapes) and matching (interpreting shape descriptions) roles across 72 trials of the task. Replicating prior research, over repeated social interactions communication success improved and the shape descriptions became increasingly efficient. In addition, confidence in having successfully communicated the different shapes increased over trials. Importantly, matchers were less confident on trials in which communication was unsuccessful, communication success was lower on trials that contained an OIR compared to those that did not contain an OIR, and OIR trials were associated with lower Director Confidence. This pattern of results demonstrates that (a) interlocutors exhibit (a degree of) sensitivity to problems in communication, (b) they appropriately use OIRs to address problems in communication, and (c) OIRs signal problems in communication. (shrink)

It is often assumed that two linguistic agents can come to understand one another in part because they use the same words. That is, many philosophical theories of communication posit an intersubjective same-word relation. However, giving an account of this relation is complicated by what I call “The Variation Problem”—a problem resulting from the fact that the same word can be pronounced differently. In this paper, I first argue that previous models of the same-word relation, including Kaplanian and Chomskyan models, (...) fail to escape The Variation Problem. I then propose a new model on which the same-word relation is grounded in a particular kind of social relation that holds between the speaker and the audience. On this model, using the same word requires not that agents make the same sounds, but that they coordinate their internal linguistic representations. (shrink)

Medicalization is the process by which conditions, for example, intellectual disability, hyperactivity in children, and posttraumatic stress disorder, become understood as medical disorders. During this process, the medical community often collectively assigns a label to a condition and consequently to those who would be said to have the disorder. We argue that there are at least two previously overlooked ways in which this linguistic practice may be wrongful, and sometimes, unjust: first, when the initial introduction of a medical label is (...) done without the participation of those individuals who are being labelled, and second, when attempts by those individuals to renegotiate the labels are thwarted or otherwise rendered ineffective. In both cases, we argue, individuals are unfairly excluded from a linguistic practice that would be valuable for them to participate in. Furthermore, we argue that their exclusion depends in part on the authority of the medical institution to ignore their demands for participation. In making this case, we will propose the more general claim that participating in the linguistic processes of determining and renegotiating the words that will be used to describe oneself is an exercise of linguistic agency, a capacity that has both instrumental and intrinsic value. (shrink)

Alongside clinical practice, medical schools now confront mounting reasons to examine nontraditional approaches to ethics. Increasing awareness of systems of oppression and their effects on the experiences of trainees, patients, professionals, and generally on medical care, is pushing medical curriculum into an unfamiliar territory. While there is room throughout medical school to take up these concerns, ethics curricula are well-positioned to explore new pedagogical approaches. Feminist ethics has long addressed systems of oppression and broader structures of power. Some of its (...) established concepts can offer distinct value as medical climates change and adapt in response to increased awareness of the experiences of marginalized individuals and populations. In this essay, we offer a set of concepts from feminist ethics that have a fundamental role to play in medical school curriculum: relationality, relational autonomy, and epistemic justice. Though these concepts are not exhaustive, they can be taught in tandem with the concepts that have historically grounded ethics education in medical school, such as autonomy and beneficence. Ultimately, we contend that these concepts hold particular value in ethics curriculum insofar as they diversify mainstream ethical approaches, directly address the pervasiveness of systems of oppression in medicine, and recognize the voices and concerns that may be marginalized in standard approaches. (shrink)

“Doğal din” terimi, bazen doğanın kendisinin ilahi olduğu bir panteistik doktrine atıfta bulunur. “Doğal teoloji” terimi ise aksine, başlangıçta gözlemlenen doğal gerçekler temelinde (ve bazen) Tanrı’nın varlığını savunmaya yönelik projeye atıfta bulunur. Bununla birlikte çağdaş felsefede, hem “doğal din” hem de “doğal teoloji” genel olarak, dinî veya teolojik konuları araştırmak için insana, “doğal” olan bilişsel yetilerini – akıl, algı, içgözlem- kullanma projesini ifade eder. Doğal din veya teoloji, mevcut anlayış üzerine, doğayla ilgili ampirik araştırmalarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte ayrıca panteistik bir (...) sonuçla da bağlantılı değildir. Bununla birlikte o, özel doğal olmayan yetilere (ESP, telepati, mistik deneyim) veya doğaüstü bilgi kaynaklarına (kutsal metinler, vahiy teolojisi, inanç otoriteleri, doğrudan doğaüstü iletişim) hitap etmekten kaçınır. Genel olarak, doğal din veya teoloji (bundan böyle “doğal teoloji” olarak anılacaktır), diğer felsefi ve bilimsel girişimlerle aynı rasyonel inceleme standartlarına uymayı amaçlamaktadır ve aynı değerlendirme ve eleştiri yöntemlerine tabidir. (shrink)

Here, I discuss how natural biological evolution might have selected human origin and the psychology of the better mind-brain. However, all humans are closely related; why do we make crimes, war, hate, and jealousy their primary reasons and overcoming methodologies? How can they gain their best happiness? What kind of philosophy apply to annalize this big question and convince humankind to evolve their mind? How we could achieve our optimum potential happiness by developing hidden intelligence to make the world a (...) happier place to live in. (shrink)

In humanities departments across the country Allan Bloom is condemned and reviled—but for what misconduct? The present investigation into our distorted view of Bloom begins by reframing his transgressions. Bloom has offended eminent philosophy professors by boosting students' desire for a philosophic education. He has emboldened promising young people by teaching them to bear up under the deforming forces of convention and corruption and edge their way towards the question, ‘How should I live my life?’ A philosophic education as Bloom (...) sees it ‘means precisely helping students to pose this question to themselves, to become aware that the answer is neither obvious nor simply unavailable, and that there is no serious life in which this question is not a continuous concern’. The philosopher's interests are not shared by most people. Hostility to philosophy is the natural condition of man. This surprising fact, plainly stated, invites so much anger that Bloom—standing in for the philosopher—is forced to defend himself. The story of Bloom, like Socrates', gives an account of philosophy's emergence, distinctive features and always imaginable suppression. Plato's artful writing captured Socrates' way of life for posterity. This essay explores the nature and function of Bloom's bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), as well as the purpose of Saul Bellow's final novel, Ravelstein (2000), a fictive account of Bloom's life and death. Together these books amount to the true Apology of Allan Bloom. (shrink)