Series
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.
Episode Number
S0777
Episode
Mortimer Adler on the Closing of the American Mind
Producing Organization
Southern Educational Communications Association
South Carolina Educational Television Network
Contributing Organization
Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University (Stanford, California)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/514-639k35n33k
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Description
Episode Description
Mr. Adler had dissented from Allan Bloom's runaway best seller (discussed on Firing Line #S735), and Mr. Buckley here invites him to explain why. As the hour plays out, Mr. Adler spends more time-as engagingly and cogently as always-on education in general and some of his own concerns in particular, though when he turns to his fellow philosopher he is illuminating: "The two great political philosophers that Bloom admires most are Plato and Rousseau, and neither is a democrat in my sense of the term. Neither would take Mill's view that democracy is the ideal form of government with a long future and almost no past." Currently there is only a digitized transcript available for this episode.
Series Description
The television series Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. was a venue for debate and discussion on political, social, and philosophical issues with experts of the day. Firing Line broadcasts from 1966 through March 1971 were produced and syndicated by WOR-TV, a commercial station in New York, but some of them were also broadcast on noncommercial television stations. Starting in April 1971, Firing Line broadcasts were produced by the Southern Educational Communications Association, an arm of South Carolina Educational Television. Hoover Institution Library & Archives' Firing Line collection guide can be found at: https://www.hoover.org/library-archives/collections/firing-line.
Date
1988-05-06
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Public Affairs
Subjects
United States; philosophy; Education; democracy; Education, Higher; Intellectual life; Bloom, Allan David, 1930- , The closing of the American mind
Rights
Copyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.
Media type
Moving Image
Embed Code
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Credits
Guest: Adler, Mortimer Jerome
Host: Buckley, William F., Jr.
Producing Organization: Southern Educational Communications Association
Producing Organization: South Carolina Educational Television Network
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Stanford University
Identifier: 80040.1022 (Hoover Institution)
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 0:30:00
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Citations
Chicago: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0777; Mortimer Adler on the Closing of the American Mind,” 1988-05-06, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 7, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-639k35n33k.
MLA: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0777; Mortimer Adler on the Closing of the American Mind.” 1988-05-06. Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 7, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-639k35n33k>.
APA: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0777; Mortimer Adler on the Closing of the American Mind. Boston, MA: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-639k35n33k