Peter Lawler, one of America’s most insightful critics of popular culture, will treat Part One: Students, which includes some of Bloom’s most controversial arguments on subjects like rock music, the sexual revolution, feminism, and divorce. Michael Platt, author of an influential review of Closing and important essays on both Shakespeare and Nietzsche, will discuss Part Two: Nihilism, American Style. Paul Rahe will analyze Part Three: The University. Rahe, a distinguished intellectual historian, was a student of Bloom’s at Cornell University during the campus protests that Bloom narrates in this section. Those same protests caused Bloom to leave Cornell for the University of Toronto and Rahe to transfer to Yale University. Finally, Jon Fennell, accomplished philosopher of education, the driving force behind the establishment of the Classical Education program at Hillsdale College, and author of another early essay on Bloom and education, will write a summary and critique of the symposium.This was the last piece Peter Lawler wrote before he died. Allan Bloom, contra Lawler, did not think that America had an accidentally Thomistic Founding. Rather after Leo Strauss, Bloom thought America's Founding was Lockean (modern). And there was an accidental or esoteric influence that undergirded Locke; but it was a different Thomas. Hobbes not Aquinas.
In the above linked piece, Nathan Schlueter observes the contentiousness of Bloom's many theses. Another taste:
Like a great book, The Closing of the American Mind sparks intense disagreements. Is Bloom’s description of the principles of the American Founding accurate? Does he caricature the flat souls of his students? Do philosophical ideas really have the power he attributes to them? Is his genealogy of ideas accurate? How does he understand the relationship between philosophy and morality? What does nature teach about the moral life? Can the restoration of a Great Books education in the university really be the remedy for the crisis of the West?
5 comments:
Philosophically speaking, Strauss had no use for Locke or Calvin or Thomas Aquinas [i this context] either. Pace Uncle Leo and Bloom, that natural law is key to the Founding is hardly disputed anywhere. [West Coast Straussian Harry Jaffa of course puts it front and center.]
Strauss claimed that Thomistic natural law could not exist without the Bible and faith in its divine authority, therefore was simply not philosophy.
It is important to remember that the Straussians are not historians, though some historians [Zuckert, Tom West] may be Straussians, which is to say that Allen Bloom is not authoritative here. He is best known for his translations of Plato, even by fierce anti-Straussians.
"Strauss claimed that Thomistic natural law could not exist without the Bible and faith in its divine authority ..."
I was listening to one of Bloom's live lectures on YouTube with Fr. Fortin in the audience and a question came up (may or may not have been asked by Fr. F) about Aquinas/medieval natural law. Bloom's response was not Bible/revelation but rather that Aquinas' natural law was essentially Aristotle's, aka "ancient."
According to Strauss and Bloom Locke was "modern." He broke with the Ancients in a way that Aquinas did not.
For anyone who may be reading, these terms of art can be confusing.
To the East Coast Straussians "modernity" is Locke, aka "liberal democracy." However what Strauss et al. railed against and thought a "crisis" was not "modernity," but rather "post-modernity," everything that followed Nietzsche & Heidegger.
Strauss thought that "modernity" provided a "low but solid ground" on which to rest politics. Post-modernity, on the other hand had ground that was the antithesis of "solid." Like planting your feet straight in the air, as I've heard one public intellectual put it.
I was listening to one of Bloom's live lectures on YouTube with Fr. Fortin in the audience and a question came up (may or may not have been asked by Fr. F) about Aquinas/medieval natural law. Bloom's response was not Bible/revelation but rather that Aquinas' natural law was essentially Aristotle's, aka "ancient."
According to Strauss and Bloom Locke was "modern." He broke with the Ancients in a way that Aquinas did not.
All of this is per Leo Strauss's seminal Natural Right and History. It is true that Staruss put Thomas Aquinas as the last entry in the "Classical Natural Right" section. [The next section is "Modern Natural Right" and begins with Machiavelli.]
However, in his treatment of Thomas, Strauss does reject natural law theory on the grounds I give above; it is not the same thing as "natural right."
However, Tom West think Strauss gets Aquinas wrong:
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/5/3/4/4/p153448_index.html
"I propose to assess Aquinas's understanding of natural law by way of a response to what has become one of the most influential critiques of Aquinas in the past century, that of Leo Strauss in Natural Right and History. Strauss argues that Thomas Aquinas's natural law doctrine is not based on nature and reason, but instead expresses a concealed dogmatism that presents doctrines drawn from revelation as if they were insights of reason. Further, according to Strauss, Aquinas supposedly transformed a moderate and flexible classic natural right teaching into an inflexible doctrine of natural law, a set of dogmatic rules which imposed imprudent constraints on sensible statesmanship. Aquinas made these errors, Strauss implies, because he confused reason with revelation.
Contrary to Strauss, I will argue that Aquinas's doctrine of natural law is in fact a deliberate adaptation of the teaching of classical natural right to fit the circumstances of medieval Christendom, and that Aquinas fully understands the difference between reason and revelation as guides to human conduct. I also argue that Aquinas de-emphasizes or conceals some of the more radical implications of that difference for perfectly good reasons, namely, because of the limits imposed on Aquinas by the bulk of his very dogmatic readership. I will conclude by explaining why the defects of twentieth-century Thomism probably led Strauss quite reasonably to exaggerate his differences with Aquinas by painting a picture of him that was in fact closer to neo-Thomism than to Aquinas himself. If I am right, Strauss would probably have agreed with much of my argument against him.
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Let me add here that Strauss believes wisdom, not "inflexible" law, should rule: The philosopher-king does the right thing at the right time, and that is the Best Regime. But in reply on behalf of Thomas, he would say wisdom dictates that not all laws should be enforced, and the cure is often worse than the disease. [See Aquinas on prostitution.]
1. Is Bloom’s description of the principles of the American Founding accurate? (Cannot recall)
2. Does he caricature the flat souls of his students? (Not a caricature, but contentions and disputable).
3. Do philosophical ideas really have the power he attributes to them? (Of course not).
4. Is his genealogy of ideas accurate? (No clue).
5. How does he understand the relationship between philosophy and morality? (Don't remember)
6. What does nature teach about the moral life? (?)
7. Can the restoration of a Great Books education in the university really be the remedy for the crisis of the West? (Can you even define 'crisis of the west'?)
We have here a collection of intellectual historians very taken with the importance of cogitations (and quite indifferent to the purposes students have in mind when they devote time and treasure to higher education).
Like Strauss, I find Bloom invaluable in his critique of modernity, as do most admirers of classical philosophy. This is why Strauss's classroom was "full of priests," though he offers little for the theist.
As for Strauss' and Bloom's own versions of classical philosophy, comme ci comme ça.
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