Without peer? Other geniuses dwarf him, as he well knew.

Gilbert, perhaps Bloom is immortal. I mean, what is immortality? It certainly is not being physically alive forever. Humanity is a herd of individuals and also a collective mind. Bloom has left his imprint on many individuals, effectively altering their thoughts and, thus, their soma, as well. His ideas and teaching have become part of the fabric of humanity. In that sense, a little part of him will be in all of us for many generations.

Hope you like the other 9 classes as well. There are a lot of ideas flowing out of Bloom's head,

You are very welcome. There are 9 other classes that I recorded and posted to KZfaq from that Spring 1983 semester (if you have not already found them).

Your welcome. I hope you have experienced at least one " a ha!" moment

@@damirstrmel9930 Thankfully Bloom gives us nothing but “a ha!” moments. May he rest in peace, and may he live forever in our minds!

Mr. Bloom was a classic. His wisdom and insights will circumscribe our Homo Sapien existence until that being morphs into something. Say, maybe in 10 or 20,000 years from now

There are 9 others. All from the spring 83 on my KZfaq page. Also several speaker fom the 84 conference on myth (including Bloom reading a paper entitled "Freud: Jewish essay against myth").

End of last comment should read "Jewishness Against Myth"

Hope your neurons were moved in new ways. These lecture/class discussions were an extension of his previous writings, particularly the writings about literary agonism. If one listens to a few of these one realizes Bloom is not only searching for the revisionist elements in the writer's text as it pertained to the existent and accepted ideas of the era, but, I believe, he was clearly aware of his own position in the philosophical and literary milieu of his time. Certainly, Bloom was highly intelligent and knew the material well enough to make novel connections and improvise new ideas and infer new meanings.

​@@damirstrmel9930 Thank you for your message Damir. I think the neurons were moved in new ways indeed. Are there other videos in this series of his classes at the New School in NYC? I have found a variety of interviews either on local radio stations, C-SPAN, or with Charlie Rose online (mostly on KZfaq). I have not seen or heard these classes before at the New School. Do you think Freudian psychoanalysis falls into his Anxiety of Influence theories? I have read about the Anxiety of Influence and heard him discuss it in various interviews -- indeed he mentions it here -- but have not yet read the book. I think I can see how he is looking for the revisionist elements (to confirm, you mean the six revisionary ratios from Anxiety?) from these works. What do you mean about how his own position in the philosophical and literary tradition? Do you mean that he is a "misreader" of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb, for example? I think in that sense, it makes sense he would be in the tradition. Out of curiosity, did you attend this class?

I don't know of any other recordings of Bloom's tenure at the New School other than the 9 other classes that I have posted to my KZfaq page. These recordings were made on a Sony Walkman cassette tape recorder that I placed on my desk during the class. Hence the low quality sound. I know that Bloom gave another class in a subsequent or previous (?) semester that was focused on the American literary tradition. I don't know of anyone else taping his classes. Those were the only two semesters that Bloom taught at the New School while I was there. The semester that I recorded was 15 sessions. The first five were about ancient religious texts from the Torah to the gnostic gospels. The next five were about Freud. The last five were on the American transcendental literary tradition in the US from Emerson through Wallace Stevens. I do have several other recordings of events at the New School that I have posted, or will post, including seminars entitled "What is Art For?", "Conference on Myth" with Umberto Ecco and Hide Ishiguro, and Jacques Derrida speaking about the role and future of the university.

What is the type of Freudian theory that is not psychoanalysis?

Sorry I D I am not qualified to suggest secondary texts which could shed light on Bloom's musings. You may wish to read some of the other comments and reply to them with your query. Thanks for listening, I hope that pondering some of Blooms pronouncements will create new pathways in the brain and perhaps, give shape to that which was always in front of you, yet remained hidden.

But Bloom isn't 'explaining' Freud through Epicurean Philosophy. He is claiming there is an ancient source to Freud's materialism. That is much more specific, and doesn't preclude a more general claim that Schopenhauer is an important precursor to Freud. The link to Epicurean ideas has to do with the seeming paradox that 'pleasure is a release from excitation' , which Bloom suggests is fundamental to Freud. That is an idea I don't think you'll find in Schopenhauer.

@@teebeedahbow You're wrong. That release of energy came from Fechner and Freud cited him for that. Only Bloom had that "anxiety of Influence" over Freud's sources.

@@teebeedahbow Besides Freud is not all pleasure. His post-war psychology shifted to trauma. Even you don't know the foundation of Freudianism.

@@czarquetzal8344 You have misunderstood Bloom's point. He is NOT saying that Freud's theory of pleasure/excitement comes in some simple way from Epicurus or anyone else for that matter. He is saying it is an essentially Epicurean theory. That is quite a different point. And, the central idea of the anxiety of influence, is that true precursors are unconscious. You may even resist them consciously, but you can't chose them. It is, in fact, a very Freudian theory. Lists of Freud's conscious forebears - those who he may or may not have cited - is a too simple and rather dull project.

@@czarquetzal8344 Neither Bloom nor I claimed Freud was 'all pleasure', whatever that might mean. I wish people would listen and read carefully before commenting.

Hello celestialroad. Intrigued by your comment I visited your home page. After scrolling through your catalog, I thought you might like Mr. Bubble, the East Village band from the mid 80s. Here's a link to my favorite, "Around the World" kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gN-ieql81ryck30.htmlfeature=shared. You can find this and other obscure East Village videos from the 80s in my playlists under "East Village NYC 1980s"

Elaborate

@@VigiliusHaufniensis Bloom never had a real idea of his own. he made strained attempts eg anxiety of influence etc but this went no where, nor could it since it was just a bunch of his own arbitrary pronouncements -- vacuous. certainly he could never DEVELOP an idea.there are really no arguments. his books are just one little aperçu after another, interspersed with some opinionated "mots". it s all striking poses, dropping names, going off on this tangent or that, displays of his odd personality and affected mode of expression --"alas" "much the this, much the that" "strong" [what does this mean, really? does it mean good? lol] -- and his own personal preferences. why should all this interest anyone.? he likes to provoke, and make rather arbitrary statements that are really neither here no there [further indication of his essential lack of real ideas] eg the waste land is about repressed suppressed whatever homosexuality etc the four 4s are "in the shadow" or some such of Whitman [absurd -- could this nebbish even READ?], and finally he is a complete BIGOT re Blacks [he attempts to hide this by then overpraising Invisible Man -- its good, but lets be realistic] re non-jews in fact for yes he is an entrenched jewish supremacist [I quote from memory approximately "the most profound spirituality of our time which is jewish spirituality" [so much for everybody else all those monastics allover the world etcI think this is from Agon;] he attempts again to disguise this by universalist/humanitarian ink clouds, but dont be fooled. he has no grasp of philosophy whatever, and seemingly no interest in any other arts. Despite his eccentric renown as some sort of speed-reader and memory savant, his range of reference is actually startlingly limited, if you go through the indexes. all of this might be ok, if it were set out in really first rate prose. but it isn't. his prose esp. in the later books is slovenly. it sounds like he just bloviated into a tape recorder. but even the 1970 book on Yeats is already like that. He is all posturing pretense and odd personality. there's nothing there, really. now re Freud: now freud like bloom likes to display his own odd impressions, make big pronouncements re culture etc; some find this interesting and view him as a profound if "stern" or some such wise man. a "moralist" etc. and some might be interested or moved. I'm not among them, but that's irrelevant. supposedly he is thought of as a great prose writer, but I simply don't see it. to me its all quite dull. now turning away from the belles letters stuff-- certainly he made great contributions to the study of trauma. with regard to dreams and the unconscious -- the. main theoretical idea.here the problem is simple: freud like many scientists then -- and now -- and philosphers too -- think of scientific knowl4dge as needing to establish CONTINUITIES however defined; there is a profound bias toward gradualism, incrementalism; nature does not make leaps etc. therefore freud thought that he had to show how supposedly primitive impulses move in a continuous way up into the higher functions. but nature DOES make leaps. a perfect example is human language. as Chomsky points out, it must have started in a very delimited time period indeed a sudden leap. moreover it has the basic form of a "discrete infinity" as opposed to what calls the "continuous infinitiies" of nature itself. it is mathematically impossible to generate a discrete infinity system by gradual tiny adjustments of a continuous infinity [nature per se] there had to be a quite sudden leap [sudden by evolutionary standards] indeed the two most important things that Chomsky ever says are 1] when he says "you shouldn't talk about language learning you should talk about language growth" ir language is the form the brain takes [during that stage of development] and then 2] when he says that language is unique among scientific objects because it is a discrete infinity -- so you can have a 5 word sentence or a 6 word sentence, but not a 5 1/2 word sentence; we could generate a 10,00 word sentence on a computer, but not 10,000.1567... One could do the equivalent of that with any of the functions of the body, but as soon as one is dealing with language that sort of conceptualization is not possible: 5 words, 6 words. there is never 5.93 words. this is the real dualism that must draw attention. our body is part of the realm of the continuous Infinitis; but the higher faculties of our mind --language [and other functions the are included in it -- natural numbers, musical notes etc] are discrete infinity systems at bottom. we live as humans in two realms -- that of the continuous infinites [biology chemistry physics] and that of the discrete infinity systems. there is a funadmental gap between them a difference which is absolute. Freuds bias is to try to understand the second in terms of the first. but this cannot be done. doubtless our mind has different levels as it were, but the understanding of this must be conceptualized in a fundamentally different way, that respects this basic division I think Lacan was trying to do this, but then he runs into other different problems occasioned by his misuse of Sausure and the pseudo-discipline of semiotics. sorry to run on. lol