higher education in social sciences or such doubtful professional pursuits as computer literacy This argument is summarized by Nussbaum.
[I]n Bloom's book the Socratic conception [of philosophy as
life's highest pursuit] is in conflict with another very
different idea of philosophy: the idea of a study that is
open only to a chosen few specially suited by nature (and to
some extent also by wealth and social position) for its
pursuit; the idea of a philosophy that is concerned more
with revealing fixed eternal truths than with active critical
argument; of a philosophy that not only does not aim at
justice and practical wisdom, individual and/or communal,
but actually despises the search for social justice and
beckons chosen souls away from social pursuits to a
contemplative theoretical life (Nussbaum, 1989, p. 199).
Elsewhere (p. 207), Nussbaum says that she "shares Bloom's opposition to relativism and historicism," even as she criti
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