Due to an error by the printer, two lines were dropped from last week’s memoir, “My Friend, Allan Bloom,” by Werner J. Dannhauser. The paragraph at the end of page 45 should have read as follows:
“Rousseau also served Allan as a safeguard against an overalliance with conservatism. (Allan had many right-wing views but was not really a conservative and refused to call himself one.) In conservative circles, which run their own risk of becoming politically correct in their own fashion, it is often customary to pit Rousseau against Burke to the detriment of the former. Allan was by no means blind to the merits of Burke, and even appreciated the latter’s characterization of Rousseau as the “insane Socrates of the French National Assembly,” but Burke tends to stand for prudence, and prudence is a close relative of moderation, and neither his close friends nor bitter enemies would ever call Allan Bloom moderate.”
The article’s concluding paragraph on page 47 should have read as follows:
“Shoshana once told me she was reminded of Allan when she read, in Goethe’s $ IElective Affinities, the line that against a genius we have but one defense, to love him. She loved him, and so did many of us, and it wasn’t just defensive, though he was a genius.”
