Allan Bloom
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Allan Bloom. Copyright Paul Merideth. Reproduction is prohibited. All rights reserved. |
Allan David Bloom (born
September 14,
1930 in
Indianapolis, Indiana, died
October 7,
1992 in
Chicago, Illinois) was a
philosopher and
academic who championed the idea of '
Great Books' education. Bloom became famous for the criticism of contemporary
higher education in his 1987 book,
The Closing of the American Mind.
Bloom's work is not easily definable. Yet there is a thread that links all of his published material. Allan Bloom was a philosopher and he was primarily concerned with preserving that way of life for future philosophers. He accomplished this through
scholarly and popular writing, which required different styles of writing, but his objective was consistent throughout.
Allan Bloom was an only child born to social worker parents. Bloom's mother was particularly well educated and ambitious, earning her degree at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Entering university at the age of fifteen, as part of the
University of Chicago's early admission program for gifted students, Bloom embarked upon his life-long passion for the 'idea' of the university. In the Preface to
Giants and Dwarfs, a collection of his essays published between
1960 and
1990, he states his education "began with Freud and ended with Plato". The theme of that education was self-knowledge, or self-discovery - a subject Bloom later remarked seemed impossible to conceive of as a Midwestern American boy. Bloom credits
Leo Strauss as the teacher who made this endeavour possible for him.
Allan Bloom earned his Ph.D. from the
Committee on Social Thought of the
University of Chicago in
1955.
Bloom studied and taught abroad in Paris (1953-55) and Germany (1957). Upon returning to the United States he taught adult education students at the University of Chicago with his friend
Werner J. Dannhauser, author of
Nietzsche's View of Socrates. Bloom later taught at
Yale,
Cornell,
Tel Aviv University and the
University of Toronto, before returning to the University of Chicago.
In
1963, as a Professor at Cornell, Allan Bloom served as a faculty member of the
Telluride Association. The organization aims to foster an everyday synthesis of self-governance and intellectual inquiry that enables students to develop their potential for leadership and public service. The students receive free room and board in the Telluride House on the
Cornell University campus and learn about democracy through the practice of running the house, hiring staff, supervising maintenance and organizing seminars. Bloom had a major influence on several residents of
Telluride House, including
Paul Wolfowitz, one of the founding members of both the
Project for the New American Century and the
New Citizenship Project.
During 1968, he published his most significant work of philosophical translation, interpretation and contemplation -
The Republic of Plato. According to the assessment of online bookseller Alibris, "it is the first translation of Plato's Republic that attempts to be strictly literal, the volume has been long regarded as the closest and best English translation available." Although the translation is far from universally accepted, Bloom strove to act as a matchmaker between readers and the texts he translated and interpreted. He repeated this effort while a Professor at the University of Toronto in 1978, translating
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. Bloom was an editor for the scholarly journal
Political Theory as well as a contributor to
History of Political Philosophy edited by
Joseph Cropsey and
Leo Strauss among many other publications during his years of academic teaching. Bloom also translated and commented upon Rousseau's "Letter to D'Alembert On the Theater" on which he relied heavily upon Plato's Laws.
After returning to Chicago, he met and taught courses with
Saul Bellow winner of the 1976
Nobel Prize in Literature. Bellow wrote the Preface to
The Closing of the American Mind in 1987, the book that made Bloom famous and wealthy. Bellow immortalized his dead friend in the novel
Ravelstein. In that story, Ravelstein is clearly based on Allan Bloom and it relates Bloom's many interesting personal characteristics, which included his homosexuality. It is important to note that Allan Bloom never told his readers of his own homosexuality. One may gather from his silence that he found it unnecessary to his thought or purpose as a teacher, matchmaker or philosopher. Even while authoring his last work
Love and Friendship, Bloom does not touch upon his own love life. In some sense this silence, or forgetting of the body, is distinctive of Bloom's educational approach.
Allan Bloom's writings can be divided into two basic categories:
scholarly (e.g.
Plato's Republic) and popular political comment (e.g.
Closing of the American Mind). On the surface, this is a valid distinction, yet closer examinations of Bloom's works reveal a direct connection between the two types, which reflect his view of
philosophy and the role of the
philosopher in political life.
Plato's Republic
Bloom's translation and interpretive essay on
Plato's Republic was published in
1968. For Bloom, previous translations were lacking. In particuliar, Bloom was eager to sweep away the
Christian Platonist layers that had coated the translations and scholarly analysis. In 1971, he wrote, "With the
Republic, for example, a long tradition of philosophy tells us what the issues are. [...] This sense of familiarity may be spurious; we may be reading the text as seen by the tradition rather than raising Plato's own questions." ("The Political Philosopher in a Democratic Society",
Giants & Dwarfs, 1990, p.106).
Up until the late 20th century, most English language Platonists were following a tradition that blended Christian
theology with
Plato. This view, named
Christian Platonism, interprets Plato as prophet of the coming Christian age, a
monotheist in a
polytheist world. In this school,
Socrates is considered a pre-Christian saint; the tradition emphasizes
Socrates' 'goodness' and other-worldly attributes, such as accepting his death like a
martyr.
Yet there developed a different type of
Platonism,
Pagan Platonism, a type of which Bloom became aware and most certainly adopted from his teacher
Leo Strauss (1899-1973), the most important representative of this thought in the past century. Adherents have a significantly different view of
Plato's Republic.
Strauss developed this point of view by studying ancient Islamic and Jewish theorists, such as
Al-Farabi (870-950) and
Moses Maimonides (1135-1204). Each philosopher was faithful to his religion but sought to integrate classical political philosophy into
Islam and
Judaism. Islam has a prophet-legislator
Muhammad and similarly, Jewish law is a function of its theology. Thus these philosophers had to write with great skill, incorporating the ideas of
Plato and
Aristotle, many of which contradicted or contravened Islamic or Jewish thought and practice, without being seen to challenge the theology. According to Strauss,
Al-Farabi and
Moses Maimonides were really writing for potential philosophers within the pious faithful. Strauss calls this the discovery of esoteric writing, and he first presents it as a possibility in
Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952). Christianity differed from these faiths in that philosophy was always free to establish a foothold in Christendom, without necessarily being seen as
heretical. All one has to do is think of
Saint Augustine (354-430) and his
City of God and
On Free Will.
Strauss took this insight and applied it eventually to
Plato's writings themselves. Bloom's translation and essay of the
Republic takes this stance; therefore, it is radically different in many important aspects than the previous translations and interpretations of the
Republic. Most notable is Bloom's discussion of
Socratic irony. In fact,
irony is the key to Bloom's take on the
Republic. (See his discussion of Books II-VI of the
Republic.) But what is this irony? Allan Bloom says a philosopher is immune to irony because he can see the
tragic as
comic and comic as tragic. Bloom refers to Socrates, the philosopher
par excellence, in his Interpretative Essay stating, "Socrates can go naked where others go clothed; he is not afraid of ridicule. He can also contemplate sexual intercourse where others are stricken with terror; he is not afraid of moral indignation. In other words he treats the comic seriously and the tragic lightly." (
Plato's Republic, Interpretative Essay, p.387). Thus irony in the
Republic refers to the '
Just City in Speech'. Bloom looks at it not as a model for future
society, nor as a template for the human
soul; rather, it is an ironic city, an example of the distance between philosophy and every potential philosopher. Bloom follows Strauss in suggesting that the '
Just City in Speech' is not
natural; it is man-made, and thus ironic.
Bloom's
Closing of the American Mind is a critique of the contemporary university and how Bloom sees it as failing its students. Also, Bloom criticises
analytic philosophy as a movement, "Professors of these schools simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students". To a great extent, Bloom's criticism revolves around the devaluation of the Great Books of Western Thought as a source of wisdom. However, Bloom's critique extends beyond the university to speak to the general crisis in American society. "Closing of the American Mind" draws analogies between the
United States and the
Weimar Republic. The modern liberal philosophy, he says, enshrined in the
Enlightenment thought of
John Locke - that a Platonically just society could be based upon self-interest alone, coupled by the emergence of relativism in American thought - had led to this crisis.
For Bloom, this created a void in the souls of Americans, into which demagogic radicals as exemplified by 60's student leaders could leap. (In the same fashion, Bloom suggests, that the
Nazi brownshirts once filled the
lacuna created in German society by the
Weimar Republic.) In the second instance, the higher calling of philosophy/reason understood as
freedom of thought, had been eclipsed by a pseudo-philosophy, or an
ideology of thought.
Relativism was one feature of modern liberal philosophy that had subverted the Platonic/Socratic teaching. The Great Books of Western Thought simply became the ramblings of dead white men rather than beacons leading to the highest calling.
The power behind Bloom's critique of contemporary
social movements at play in universities or society at large is derived from his philosophical orientation. The failure of contemporary
liberal education leads to the social and sexual habits of modern students, and their inability to fashion a life for themselves beyond the mundane offerings touted as success. Commercial pursuits had become more highly valued than the philosophic quest for truth or the civilized pursuits of honour and glory.
While Bloom discusses contemporary social movements (particularly those that gained ascendancy in the 1960's), he is virtually silent on the
gay rights movement. This is of some interest, as there has been much public discussion concerning Bloom's own
homosexuality, something that he never wrote about, though it was widely known by his friends and many of his students.
Shakespeare on Love & Friendship. (2000) (reprint of a section of
Love & Friendship).
Love & Friendship. (1993)
Giants and Dwarfs: Essays, 1960-1990. (1990)
Closing of the American Mind. (1987)
Shakespeare's Politics. (1981) (with Harry V. Jaffa).
Plato's Symposium: a translation by Seth Benardete with commentaries by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete. (2001)
Confronting the Constitution. (1990)
* Kojève,
Introduction to the reading of Hegel, ed. by Allan Bloom, tr. by James H. Nichols Jr. (1969)
Republic of Plato. Translated with notes and an interpretive essay. (1968), (1991 2nd ed.)
*
Letter to D'Alembert and writings for the theater. (Edited and translated by Allan Bloom, Charles Butterworth, and Christopher Kelly.) (1968)
Political Philosophy and the Human Soul: essays in memory of Allan Bloom. Edited by Michael Palmer and
Thomas Pangle. (1995)
Ravelstein. (Novel) Saul Bellow (2000)
Please Note: This is piece of fiction which Bellow partially based on Allan Bloom, his former friend and colleague at the University of Chicago; though the personage Bellow describes is likely somewhat exaggerated, various sources corroborate the novel's details.
Platonische Kulturkritik in Amerika. Studien zu Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind (Schriften zur Literaturwissenschaft Band 18). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Till Kinzel (2002)
* "Education is the movement from darkness to light."
* "The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside." (
Closing of the American Mind)
* "[The culmination of our vast technology is] a pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms, whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth by imitating the drag-queen who makes the music." (
ibid.)
* "Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk."
Allan Bloom should not be confused with the American literary critic
Harold Bloom.
