Allan Bloom quotes to ponder
In light of the brouhaha that arose in response to President Trump’s recent comments lauding nationalism, I think it’s illuminating to revisit two quotes from Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind.
Contrary to much contemporary wisdom, the United States has one of the longest uninterrupted political traditions of any nation in the world. What is more, that tradition is unambiguous; its meaning is articulated in simple, rational speech that is immediately comprehensible and powerfully persuasive to all normal human beings. America tells one story: the unbroken, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political foundings on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus…All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness. Nowhere else is there a tradition or a culture whose message is so distinct and unequivocal—certainly not in France, Italy, Germany, or even England…Belonging to one of these peoples may be expained as a sentiment, an attachment to one’s own, akin to the attachment to father and mother, but Frenchness, Englishness, Germaness remain, nonetheless, ineffable. Everybody can, however, articulate what Americanness is…
But the unity, grandeur and attendant folklore of the founding heritage was attacked from so many directions in the last half-century that it gradually disappeared from daily life and from textbooks. It all began to seem like Washington and the cherry tree—not the sort of thing to teach children seriously. What is influential in the higher intellectual circles always ends up in the schools. The leading ideas of the Declaration began to be understood as eighteenth-century myths or ideologies. Historicism, in Carl Becker’s version (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, 1922) both cast doubt on the truth of the natural rights teaching and optimistically promised that it would provide a substitute. Similarly Dewey’s pragmatism—the method of science as the method of democracy, individual growth without limits, especially natural limits—saw the past as radically imperfect and regarded our history as irrelevant or as a hindrance to rational analysis of our present. Then there was Marxist debunking of the Charles Beard variety, trying to demonstrate that there was no public spirit, only private concern for property, in the Founding Fathers, thus weakening our convictions of the truth or superiority of American principles and our heroes (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913). Then the Southern historians and writers avenged the victory of the antislavery Union by providing low motives for the North (incorporating European critiques of commerce and technology) and idealizing the South’s way of life. Finally, in curious harmony with the Southerners, the radicals in the civil rights movement succeeded in promoting a popular conviction that the Founding was, and the American principles are, racist…
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.
And here’s the second:
Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being…In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious…Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality. Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime. Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime. We began with the model of the rational and industrious man, who was honest, respected the laws, and was dedicated to the family (his own family—what has in its decay been dubbed the nuclear family). Above all he was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”…
But openness…eventually won out over natural rights, partly through a theoretical critique, partly because of a political rebellion against nature’s last constraints. Civic education turned away from concentrating on the Founding to concentrating on openness based on history and social science. There was even a general tendency to debunk the Founding, to prove the beginnings were flawed in order to license a greater openness to the new…
The goal of our current educational system, not simply our institutions of higher education but also K-12, is to produce mindless believers in the currently fashionable post-modernist leftist ideology (sometimes called, somewhat imprecisely, “Cultural Marxism” and perhaps better described as hard-left identity politics). These are the virtue-signalling cadres of young SJWs who, upon leaving college, infest journalism, popular media, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, much of corporate America, various foundations and think-tanks and, of course, academia.
It has been a long time a-coming. Becker and Beard were seen as wise men by my college American history professors, and I graduated from that “top ten” liberal arts college in 1963. They almost bowed as they cited Charles and Mary Beard.
Natural Rights always made intuitive sense to me, and in my later years was one of the many reasons I turned to the Catholic faith and remain there, Francis notwithstanding.
The granting of rights by rulers can always be reversed, can have bizarre motives (e.g. homosexuality, and now transgender, is a ‘right’), but Natural Rights are eternal, derived from a God beyond our understanding.
The new book, “The Coddling of the American Mind” addresses this issue in the current era. I read the Bloom book in 1987 when it appeared.
From a review of the Haidt and Lukianoff book”
Key Coddling conclusion: Parents and educators are unwittingly, and paradoxically, harming today’s students by trying so hard to protect them. This is from perceived physical dangers as well as from ideas that might prove uncomfortable. The net is that “helicopter” parenting and increasingly ideologically uniform college campuses aren’t allowing children to develop natural resilience (identical in concept to children being susceptible to diseases if not properly immunized).
I think this summarizes it well. I am also listening to the audio of “Revolt of the Elites,” which is also excellent even if written 20 years ago.
“… ineluctable progress of freedom and equality.”
“…All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality,”
I’ve never read Bloom. He is speaking very broadly here. It seems to me that so much of the trouble, ignorance, and naivete stems from the conflict between the systems of equality of opportunity and a meritocracy; and one based on near equality of outcomes.
Meritocracy, there’s a trigger word that will send lefties running to a safe zone. Don’t you know that merit can never be perfectly judged? As though there are many alternatives that are so wonderful.
Those obsessed with outcomes inevitably get involved in various types of radical egalitarianism. Example: If one compares race based statistical outcomes in society to racial percentages of that society’s makeup, then discrepancies can only be attributed to racism.
On the one hand we are supposed to embrace dramatically different cultures all living in one nation (not melting in the pot), and on the other we must reject the notion that these differing cultures would willingly express those differences in the choice of professions, financial behavior, or criminal behavior.
Are they trying to say that only relatively benign and trivial cultural differences exist? Or are they just spouting irrational gibberish?
If we take the egalitarians seriously, I think there is the widespread notion of the natural man or woman. If man is left free from pernicious influence, then he will effortlessly have pure and honorable motives and always do the right thing. If people at their core are really all the same, why shouldn’t we expect nearly equal outcomes?
Meritocracy, there’s a trigger word that will send lefties running to a safe zone. Don’t you know that merit can never be perfectly judged? As though there are many alternatives that are so wonderful.
Genetics is going to blow much of identity politics out of the water. It has a right wing bias that is natural. It’s like reality tends to be conservative.
Also, a lot of Bloom’s book is about how college students know no history and are not all that interested in it. It’s been 30 years since I read it. I think I loaned it to one of my kids and forgot who.
I still can’t warm much to Bloom. I see his virtues better today than I did in the 80s. However, there was an opening of the American mind in the 60s, that went too far, true, but I never get the sense reading Bloom, I am reading a genuinely open mind. Bloom seems to prefer the American mind to be closed as he would wish it and resents that the other side got the say.
I’m a boomer and I remember the endless, cloying patriotism shoveled down our throats by basically the same groups — politicians, media, educators, Hollywood, churches — who are shoveling endless, cloying anti-Americanism down our throats today.
I would like a better choice.
huxley:
I don’t get any “cloying” vibe from Bloom ever. Nor do I think he is closed to the marketplace of ideas. His book describes reality, however, in the sense that if you want responsible and informed citizens you can’t distort their history in either direction. What he saw was that the teaching of American history had been taken over by people who were distorting it to teach American children to hate and despise their own country, and he saw the danger there..
It all started with Bill Ayers and his ilk targeting education. He did a helluva lot more damage to the country than any of those bombs, and it turned out to be a much more effective strategy.
neo: I wouldn’t say Bloom was cloying, but there was his savage attack on youth culture which was IMO unnecessary to his thesis and didn’t impress me with his openness to ideas.
I thought the 60s openness to other cultures and ideas was a good thing. Likewise the willingness to criticize Western Civilization. Maybe Bloom upheld those possibilities, though I don’t recall him doing so. No, my impression was the “marketplace of ideas” was OK with Bloom as along as people like himself were the gatekeepers.
Hmm…lost the comment re-edit on this one. Make that “as long as people….”
Bloom mostly opposed the idea that “open-mindedness is the highest intellectual virtue.” Rather, the pursuit of truth is. Relativism is the enemy. In fact the rigid open-mindedness of the left is a form of close-mindedness and leads to totalitarian politics.
huxley:
Some quotes would be helpful.
neo: How about:
Young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is why Ravel’s Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly known and liked by them.
In alliance with some real art and a lot of pseudo-art, an enormous industry cultivates the taste for the orgiastic state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flood of fresh material for voracious appetites. Never was there an art form directed so exclusively to children. p.73-74
Rock music covers a lot of ground and few rock fans knew “Bolero” unless they already knew classical music, as I did.
Here Bloom is another disagreeable martinet lecturing downward, ignorantly and bigotedly.
It all started with Bill Ayers and his ilk targeting education. He did a helluva lot more damage to the country than any of those bombs, and it turned out to be a much more effective strategy.
physicsguy: True. As you probably know, Ayers started with education, the free school movement a la A.S. Neill’s “Summerhill.” That was where he met Diana Oughton. Later they became radicalized and eventually became leaders of the Weather Underground.
(Oughton died in the notorious Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, when the bombs she and other Weathermen were preparing, for an attack on Fort Dix, accidentally ignited.)
So Ayers’ focus on education after his domestic terrorism period was a natural. And it worked.
But it wasn’t all Bill Ayers. Academia and education were ripe targets for the left, going way back as Artfldgr often documents here. It wasn’t an odd coincidence that many sixties radicals found cozy, prestigious posts in academia.
So I do give Bloom credit for being one of the few academics to raise a voice against that leftist, postmodern onslaught on the academy.
As Camille Paglia said, “The silence of the academic establishment about the corruption of Western universities by postmodernism and post-structuralism has been an absolute disgrace.”
“But openness…eventually won out over natural rights, partly through a theoretical [Marxist] critique, partly because of a political [cultural] rebellion against nature’s last constraints.” Allan Bloom
British statesman Edmund Burke argued, “men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.
Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is [must be] without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
Burke also pointed out that, “what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”
When reflecting upon the expression, “high-sounding words in their mouths”… I cannot help thinking of Chuck Schumer.
huxley:
Perhaps I should have been more specific. What I was requesting was a quote indicating Bloom was against the free exchange of ideas, or for censorship of ideas.
So no, the quote you offered isn’t about that. It is a quote that expresses an opinion of Bloom’s, a critique he makes, one with which you disagree. You are certainly not alone in that; to the best of my recollection, Bloom’s critique of popular rock music was probably the single most criticized part of his work.
I wrote about it previously at some length here, with quotes from Bloom.
Nowhere do I see him advocate banning; he is describing, and describing the effects of what he sees. You see him as martinet, lecturing downward. I see him as prescient in terms of where a certain trend in rock music has gone—and I love rock music. But nowhere is he against the market of ideas or even the market of music; he just sees the consequences of certain trends and is pointing out his observations.
Here’s a quote from my previous post on it:
huxley:
Regarding Ravel’s “Bolero,” you write: “Rock music covers a lot of ground and few rock fans knew ‘Bolero’ unless they already knew classical music, as I did.”
At the time Bloom wrote his book, that was not true. The music had been made very popular indeed. In the year 1979, “Bolero” was made wildly popular by the wildly popular film “10.” Here’s a description:
I’m pretty sure that’s why Bloom chose that particular piece as one that was familiar to young people in relation to sex. It was indeed quite familiar.
The question here is: why openness is such a rare thing?
US used to think that it was the ‘American exception’. But perhaps it was no exception at all. It’s just happens that societies that focus in openness shine briefly and then die. They’re easily invaded and easily replaced. And then, US happen to be no exception after all. It follows the standard pattern: if you’re open, you’ll live fast and you’ll die young. US is gonna last less than 4 centuries before vanishing and melting into some generic Latin-American country. And that’s quite a short life for a culture.
Why openness is such a rare thing?. Well, perhaps it’s not that rare. It’s just that openness is the path to extinction. What you see around are the cultures that survived. Almost of them are closed. Probably there’s a connection there.
neo: Ah. “10” and “Bolero.” That hadn’t occurred to me.
So what Bloom really meant to specify was rock music fans, who had seen “10” and remembered it within some time frame after 1979 and before 1987 when “Closing” was published.
Not exactly the grand generalization of rock music fans post-Elvis that Bloom declared on the page.
And probably not even true in 1980, given how many young people had been exposed to classical music, if not in their homes or in the music appreciation classes which were still around in public schools, or, if nothing else from the Huntly-Brinkley News or Bugs Bunny cartoons.
But the claim served Bloom’s low rhetorical purposes.
When a writer announces early enough in a text to my satisfaction that he is ignorant, careless and bigoted, therefore IMO closed-minded, about those he is criticizing for closed-mindedness, he doesn’t need to mention later that he doesn’t believe in the marketplace of ideas or is for banning stuff — who did?, at least back then.
Here’s the beginning of an amusing piece from the conservative “Daily Caller.” The writer, conservative Mark Judge, zeroed in on the same Bloom quote and his response is definitely in my wheelhouse, though not completely
Rock and roll suicide: How Allan Bloom killed conservatism
Almost 25 years ago, a catastrophe befell American conservatism. University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom wrote about rock and roll.
His words came in the book The Closing of the America Mind, which was published in 1987 and became a bestseller and cultural touchstone. Most of The Closing of the American Mind is brilliant, a careful and poetically delightful assessment of the takeover of academia and American culture by Marxism and nihilism. Its upcoming 25th anniversary should get it a new round of attention.
Sadly, Bloom included rock and roll in his critique. In doing so, he 1) embraced Marxism, 2) failed to recognize one of the 20th century s great art forms, 3) banished conservatives to a cultural wilderness from which they have yet to emerge, and 4) made it seem like the right doesn’t care about the soul.
https://dailycaller.com/2011/01/02/rock-and-roll-suicide-how-allan-bloom-killed-conservatism/
huxley, the Daily Caller quote is as ignorant as you think Bloom was.
Here Bloom is another disagreeable martinet lecturing downward, ignorantly and bigotedly.
Again, you disagree but he was pointing out, perhaps inelegantly, that culture was being destroyed by both pop music and the destruction of teaching. Kids that knew no history and did not have any interest in it, were also endorsing a sexual revolution which has provided us with statistics on illegitimate births and the consequent population of feral children that is the evidence that civilization is in danger. When the Civil Rights movement ended with 75% of black pregnancies out of wedlock and 50% of black fetuses being aborted, blacks were worse off then before.
The problem began with Lyndon Johnson and his war in Vietnam plus his determination to rewrite the rules of economics. The Pill and the pop music were contributing factors.
Bloom was hardly the stuffy conservative as he has also been attacked for being homosexual.
“political rebellion against nature’s last constraints.” Such thing can be properly assessed only by stating that Devil became political, and that such politics is a demonic possession. Dostoevsky asserted as much, both in “Crime and Punishment” and in “Demons”.
neo perhaps you should have an allan bloom blog lol.
allan bloom’s claim about rock music is it leads young away from great books, but i’m not so sure great books is all that great
To red pill: Great books are great for those who read them to learn some profound truths about humans, God and history. For those who read them for entertainment or like frivolous purposes, they are very boring.
huxley:
First of all—just as what I consider a rather fascinating aside—are you aware of the identity of the author of that Daily Caller piece (from 2011) on Bloom? Mark Judge?? Do we forget so soon, Brett Kavanaugh’s buddy and rape partner, according to Christine Blasey Ford?
But I digress. The writer makes it clear that he thinks Bloom is wrong about music but nevertheless that Bloom’s book is a masterpiece otherwise. Certainly a different take than yours, indeed.
Judge was obviously being tongue in cheek when he said Bloom’s opinion of rock music killed conservatism. Quite a few people read Bloom, but he was nowhere near that influential. Nor was he a conservative politically, by the way, although the book was widely interpreted as a defense of conservatism. He was, however, an elitist culturally, educated in a classicist background and breathing that rarefied air (that was the origin of his opinion about rock music, not Marxism as Judge seems to think). I don’t think it was idle elitism for the sake of snobbery, though; I think he really was concerned about the coarsening of the sexual impulse and its divorce from love, and he saw rock music as a route to that coarsening and separation, as well as a distraction from the pursuit of truth. Closing of the American Mind was his one foray into popular writing, and boy did he succeed in that regard. It was a bestseller, even though it was a reworking of some lectures he’d been giving.
However, although Bloom’s book was published in 1987, it was based on lectures he’d written and/or given a few years earlier. We don’t know the exact date of the rock music critique part, but it’s highly unlikely it was written that close to 1987. My guess is that it was probably written earlier in the 80s when “Bolero” was exceptionally popular with young people—a huge number of whom had see the movie “10.” At the time, “Bolero” was actually a cliche for music to have sex to. Even back when I was in school, which certainly predated the movie “10,” “Bolero” had that reputation—and believe me, this was among people who knew almost no other piece of classical music. So your contention that only people interested in classical music were aware of “Bolero” isn’t correct even for the decade before the movie “10” came out.
I think Bloom was wrong about rock music and right about rock music all at the same time. Mark Judge is certainly correct that huge swaths of rock music don’t have the qualities Bloom was describing. But some do, and interestingly enough those areas of rock music have grown. I think that all a person has to do is look at so many rock videos these days, in which the dancing is pretty much simulated sex, and the lyrics are about sex (often in graphic and demeaning ways), and you can see that some of popular music has taken the path he seems to have foreseen, although plenty of it has not.
Here is a pretty good summary of Bloom’s attitude towards popular music:
You seem to see Bloom as an ignorant “fuddy-duddy,” but that was not what was going on with his critique of rock music. He had other fish to fry. It is not necessary to agree with him (you don’t, and I do only partially) to see that his impulse was not one of banning or bigotry, or to be able to value all the other brilliant and insightful things he says on other topics. Just to take on example, the portion of the book connected with Cornell—a very long portion—is masterful and deeply distressing, as well as increasingly relevant with every passing year.
You disagree with Bloom on music. Fine. I do, too, although not as globally as you seem to. But the leap you seem to be making, to saying that Bloom’s bad opinion of rock somehow means he’s for banning stuff (that it’s somehow implied, even though he doesn’t say it) seems unsupported and illogical, a leap you’re making because you don’t like Bloom’s elitist tone and don’t think his reasoning is sound, and are imagining you know other things about him based on that, things he has never said.
Bloom made it clear that his big beef was with moral relativism. That was the “openness” he was against, and he felt that, paradoxically, that particular “openness” (moral relativism) had closed American minds to the pursuit of truth or even the belief that there is something called truth.
Good evening. I remember trying to read Bloom’s book when I was a senior in high school or something – it would have been around that time. I can’t remember at all how or why I got hold of it. But I was young at the time, etc., so I spent a good deal of the time rolling my eyes at what he was saying. I think my impression of it now would be much different. Maybe I should pick Closing up again.
I want to circle back to this quote that we’ve been mentioning about the “political rebellion against nature’s last constraints.” I’ve been thinking that there’s a great deal to this; it explains much of progressive social policy, such as it is – obviously the whole gender alphabet soup, but also the Left’s stance on abortion (I almost at one point wrote an article for my alma mater’s campus paper on this subject, but didn’t have the nerve to follow through at the time – so this thought has been in my head for a good while) and maternity leave policy and suchlike. In a nutshell, people in general want to break free of the constraints that nature – especially their own created natures – impose on them.
But what are truly Nature’s “last” constraints? I think Bloom can have had no real idea in the 1980s of just how deep that rabbit hole might go. Here we are today in 2018 talking about individualized gene editing, biomechanical augmentation, etc. As people dig deeper and deeper into the molecular realms of biology, how many more “unfortunate fetters” will they find which “need” to be burst?
I think it possible that this one concept – the “political rebellion against nature’s last constraints” – will end up being much of the explanation when time comes that our society is split into segments, one of which – the supposedly ‘backward’ one – accepts and lives within these constraints, probably along with others of a more moral rather than physical nature; and the other of which does not. Many ramifications and thought experiments and hypotheticals that could be explored here. I suppose I sound like a broken record, but again I am reminded of C. S. Lewis’ extensive treatment of such ideas in That Hideous Strength.
By the way, I find myself agreeing more and more with Bloom on the rock music issue as time goes on. This is partly, I believe, a side effect of my increased personal involvement with Orthodox church music. I actually thought to myself a couple of years ago that Sayyid Qutb was right about popular music in this country when he was writing something similar to what Bloom had to say. Hence, I think very little of rock music will last for anything like what we would really call long-term. Of course, when I think about my worries for the ultimate fate of classical music in this society, I am not particularly consoled on that front, either. (How I would love to be wrong on that.)
Rock music has morphed into rap, which I think has no redeeming quality. I like Country and Western, in addition to opera and some classical pieces. I never liked rock and roll, growing up in the 1950s with Bill Haley. I was a fan of Tony Bennet as an 8th grader and the guy is still alive at 92 ! I was in Vegas about ten years ago and saw his act.
Thinking about Bloom I was reading today about Christopher Tolkien, and his father. The son has published the last of his father’s work and it is still enormously popular but I wonder if the Millennials read them?
I read Tolkien’s books to my kids when they were small in the 1980s.
Indeed, “rage, rage against” the closing of the mind….
(And so, time to do some prying open?….)
Here’s a gem (H/T Instapundit):
https://www.weeklystandard.com/hannah-long/christopher-tolkien-and-the-legacy-of-his-father-j-r-r-tolkien-the-steward-of-middle-earth
Oh, and Philip, this one’s for you:
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/4/23/why-does-classical-music-make-you-smarter/
P.S. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254098840_Why_Chinese_people_play_Western_classical_music_Transcultural_roots_of_music_philosophy
Angelo Codevilla on the Revolutionary Spiral we are in.
Thanks very much for that link.
What a finely-wrought and extraordinarily perceptive analysis.
Alas, it delivers an extremely frightening prognosis, backed up by well-documented historical precedents and presenting formidably-reasoned, if scary, expectations.
Cordevilla’s a genius, even if his message is dire.
The problem, it seems, is that factionalism, which Madison believed to be the greatest potential threat to the life of the republic—but one which he believed would not materialize because of the dampening effect of slow communication combined with the natural multiplicity of opinions and views of a free people—has run rampant due to the then unimaginable power of a purely partisan (and hence perverted, corrupted media) together with the relatively recent phenomenon of “social media”, which serves as a societal force multiplier, fanning the flames extreme opinions.
I’m not sure that short of some catastrophe, that genie (of rampant factionalism) can be put back in its bottle.
Even a giant like Lincoln was not able to prevent civil war.
Amazing article.
Perhaps Bloom’s musical critique can be better apprehended in light of Plato’s critique of poetry and music in the “Republic” (which Bloom translated). It’s a political business, education.
Each in their own ways, both Bloom and Plato are themselves quasi-poetical, nor could either (nor would either) live without poetry and music prominent in their respective lives. However, they both grasp the emotive power of music — of poetry — which stands evidence of potential danger to induce in us an unreflective exaltation of things low, common, universal (albeit vulgar on soberer consideration).
Such, after all, were to be the grounds (and are accomplished) of our modern natural rights schema taken after Machiavelli and his student Hobbes: “build upon the low and solid” Bloom’s teacher L. Strauss would repeat, quoting Churchill if I recollect correctly.
Low and solid. Fear of violent death in Hobbes’ view. Rousseau then, modifing Hobbes, turned toward human erotic life, bequeathing us romance and romanticism.
Barry, both interesting links – thanks! I agree with some of the commenters that Spengler’s essay has some soft spots, such as his assertion that St. Augustine was essentially the first to broach the subject of higher-order metaphysical resonances in music – surely the Pythagorean school had much to say about it, else why the ancient modes (from some of which the music that I chant today is derived in no small part)? But that academic article about piano teaching in China is a rich vein – I’ll have to digest it further. I didn’t know the Chinese had thought at such length about the relationship between music and politics in the broad senses that we’ve been talking about here.
I didn’t know the Chinese had thought at such length about the relationship between music and politics in the broad senses that we’ve been talking about here.
I have wondered if the Chinese and classical music have any connection to the theory that babies are born with perfect pitch and tonal languages, like the Chinese languages, perpetuate that perfect pitch.
But I digress. The writer makes it clear that he thinks Bloom is wrong about music but nevertheless that Bloom’s book is a masterpiece otherwise. Certainly a different take than yours, indeed.
neo: No. I have given Bloom some due and by quoting Judge — I do read what I quote — I gave Bloom additional support and I knew it.
I’m not a philosopher, classicist or academician as Bloom is, so I can’t properly judge a fair amount of what he wrote. But I do know rock music and rock fans. And when an authority speaking from his authority says stupid, bigoted things about what I do know, well, I mark him down.
I don’t consider Bloom a “fuddy-duddy.” I stated he was a “disagreeable martinet, lecturing downward….” (Since you are often absurdly sensitive IMO on paraphrases, I’ll thank you to do me the same courtesy.) I stand by that.
I had plenty of martinets in parochial school. They may have known their stuff, or not, but I did conclude that an equally strong issue with them was the challenge to their authority, not some greater good or truth.
I judge Bloom that way. As I also said earlier, “I see his virtues better today than I did in the 80s.” So I’m prepared to listen more closely to his non-rock arguments, but he did much damage to his credibility with me for reasons I’ve explained and I still consider reasonable.
Rock music has morphed into rap, which I think has no redeeming quality. I like Country and Western, in addition to opera and some classical pieces.
MikeK: For my money, Country & Western has morphed into classic rock minus prog and punk.
More properly, I’d say rock has morphed into hip-hop. I can’t do much with that either.
Each in their own ways, both Bloom and Plato are themselves quasi-poetical, nor could either (nor would either) live without poetry and music prominent in their respective lives. However, they both grasp the emotive power of music — of poetry — which stands evidence of potential danger to induce in us an unreflective exaltation of things low, common, universal (albeit vulgar on soberer consideration).
sdferr: I didn’t know Bloom translated Plato’s “Republic.” It doesn’t make him a Platonist, but it might explain a few things.
Here’s Benjamin Jowett, who was hot stuff once upon a time and also translated Plato in the 19th C:
Poetry, including the narratives of others’ lives, appeals to the emotions; it “feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.” In Book X, Plato concludes that poetry must be banished from the hypothetical, ideal society; however, if poetry makes “a defense for herself in lyrical or some other meter,” she may be allowed to return from exile. Qualities of usefulness and a “well-ordered State” are emphasized; he adds: “we may further grant to those of her defenders who are lovers of poetry . . . the permission to speak in prose on her behalf: let them show not only that she is pleasant but also useful to States and to human life, and we will listen in kindly spirit; for if this can be proved we shall surely be the gainers—I mean, if there is a use in poetry as well as a delight?”
I’m a poet. I haven’t written much in years, but I know what Plato said about poetry and poets. We are enemies of the ideal society, unless properly useful to the state, presumably as judged by the Allan Bloom’s of the world.
F that.
huxley:
I really think you are confusing Bloom with a lot of other people you associate with him. I don’t think that was his attitude towards poetry. At least, I’ve certainly never gotten that impression, and I’ve read the entire book and listened to some recordings of him speaking.
huxley:
I would say that “a disagreeable martinet, lecturing downwards” IS a type of fuddy-duddy.
Maybe we should just do the “agree to disagree” thing on this.
I’m not well acquainted with Jowett, huxley, though I read some of his translations of Plato when I was young. I don’t think Jowett can provide a basis upon which to attempt to understand Bloom or Bloom’s understanding of political philosophy in Plato, to say nothing of Jowett’s poor or deficient understanding of Plato as such.
On the other hand, I will vouch on my own part that I am unaware of any better English translation of the Republic than Bloom’s. Moreover, I can say that Bloom accompanied his translation with a 130 page interpretive essay explaining in great detail his views of this subject (The Republic), how and why he believes this to be closest to Plato’s understanding, and so on. Therefore I commend it to you.
How was it W. B. Yeats put it?:
. . . was ever dog that praised his fleas?
neo: I’m not terribly impressed with your ideas of how I am confused. You haven’t defended Bloom on my arguments, you have attacked me.
For me a martinet is a much more aggressive and nastier person than a fuddy-duddy.
But sure, I’m happy to agree to disagree.
sdferr: So what’s Bloom’s take on Plato’s take on poets and poetry?
I don’t think that was his attitude towards poetry. At least, I’ve certainly never gotten that impression, and I’ve read the entire book and listened to some recordings of him speaking.
neo: That’s nice. But what does Bloom have to say about Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” or some of Philip Larkin’s riper poems or any of a million erotic poems?
Poetry and rock music are dangerous. Plato is right about that. There’s no getting around it.
Perhaps I’ve misjudged Bloom, but he strikes me as the sort of guy who is happy with poetry as long as it keeps to John Donne, Ogden Nash, and, maybe, T.S. Eliot.
Good huxley, good question certainly.
Fraught with terrible complexity too. Only think, for instance: Plato makes Socrates’ defense to the Athenians when accused of the capital crimes of atheism toward the city’s gods, introducing new gods into the city and corrupting the youth of the city thereby, that he, Socrates, has been long prior to this trial the false subject of a grave misimpression foisted on the citizens by a great comic poet Aristophanes in Ar.’s “Clouds”. What’s more, one of the three men accusing Socrates is an aspiring poet!
“The Republic”, says Bloom, is Plato’s mounting of a “true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against him. That theme is the relationship of the philosopher to the political community.”
sdferr: Thanks. But maybe say it slower and more explicitly.
So Bloom says “The Republic” is a “true Apology of Socrates” and Socrates is an aspiring poet, so therefore…?
“Socrates is an aspiring poet . . .”?
In no way. So I’m puzzled how I misspoke.
I meant rather that one of Soc.’s three accusers who brought the indictment before the court was an aspiring poet or friend to poets, generally speaking.
Here’s my fave Philip Larkin poem which is plenty well-known.
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
I think this is a deep and true poem, though I disagree with the conclusion. I rather think Bloom qualifies as one of the poem’s fools “in old-style hats and coats.”
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine Bloom would support this poem.
In no way. So I’m puzzled how I misspoke.
sdferr: My mistake. But I’m still not getting what you’re saying.
There is poetry and there is dreck, much the same for rock music.
“But I’m still not getting what you’re saying.”
Heh, no worries since I probably don’t either.
But let me straight away complicate the matter even more: the story goes that Plato died with a copy of Aristophanes’ works at his bedside. And Homer, king of all the singers known to Plato is a constant presence in Plato’s every dialogue: one cannot contend against what one has not got.
There is poetry and there is dreck, much the same for rock music.
om: True, but Bloom has stated his position clearly:
Young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is why Ravel’s Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly known and liked by them.
In alliance with some real art and a lot of pseudo-art, an enormous industry cultivates the taste for the orgiastic state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flood of fresh material for voracious appetites. Never was there an art form directed so exclusively to children.
Rock is just sex and sexual intercourse and, more than any art before, directed to children.
No qualifications. No acknowledgment of the many, amazing rock songs which aren’t about sexual intercourse or directed to children.
If someone said this to me in a bar, OK. But Bloom was speaking from all of his academic authority in a published book and he made this stupid, bigoted pronouncement.
huxley:
If you consider what I wrote in this thread as an attack on you, that seems like an overly sensitive reaction to me. I disagree with you, and I say why, and I added that I think you are confusing Bloom with others you associate with him. To me, that’s not even remotely an attack on you.
Also, that quote from Bloom about rock music—the one you describe as having no qualifiers and as saying rock is “just sex”—I read it differently. Nowhere in the quote do I see him saying this is true of every single rock song. I see it as him seeing a general danger in the genre’s direction and emphasis as a whole.
As I said before, though, I certainly disagree somewhat with him, but agree somewhat and in particular see his words play out in several more recent genres of popular music. But I think he generalized too much.
As for what Bloom thought of Larkin, I’m going to see if I can find anything on that.
huxley:
By the way, I also don’t mean “overly sensitive” as an attack on you either. I think online it’s very easy for any and all of us to take offense, because it’s so hard to tell tone.
neo: At this point you are not going to explain anything to me about my responses to you. My preference is that you leave me, as in the pronoun “you,” out of your comments.
I will do my best to leave “you” out of my comments.
neo: If Bloom didn’t mean to slag the entire rock genre, he might have mentioned it. He didn’t.
huxley:
Couldn’t find a thing from Bloom about Larkin. I would be curious about it, because I see Larkin’s work (despite his sometime-use of the f-word) as having been mainly traditional. I also see Larkin as having been something of an opinionated curmudgeon himself. I like much of his poetry, though.
huxley:
I agree that Bloom certainly meant to critique the general tendencies of rock music. But I cannot conclude that he meant his critique to apply to every single rock musician.
neo: Sure, Larkin was an opinionated curmudgeon, as well as a poet. But he never presented himself as an objective scholar and critical thinker as Bloom does.
But if “The Closing of the American Mind” is just a poetic cri de coeur, on par with “Howl,” fine.
But I’m not going to respect it as a serious political or philosophic statement.
But I cannot conclude that he meant his critique to apply to every single rock musician.
neo: Good for you. I do. And until Bloom corrects that impression, I’m sticking with it.
Tangentially noted:
“Roy [Orbison] and Joe Melson wrote ‘Running Scared,’ inspired by Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, after a pep talk by Fred Foster [Roy’s producer at Monument Records] . . . .”
Roy Jr., Wesley, and Alex Orbison, with Jeff Slate, The Authorized Roy Orbison, Centre Street (Hachette Book Group), New York – Nashville, 2017, page 82
From TCotAM, chpt Music, p. 70:
“Symptomatic of this change is how seriously students now take the famous passages on musical education in Plato’s Republic. In the past, students, good liberals that they always are, were indignant at the censorship of poetry, as a threat to free inquiry. But they were really thinking of science and politics. They hardly paid attention to the discussion of music itself and, to the extent that they even thought about it, were really puzzled by Plato’s devoting time to rhythm and melody in a serious treatise on political philosophy. Their experience of music was as an entertainment, a matter of indifference to political and moral life. Students today, on the contrary, know exactly why Plato takes music so seriously. They know it affects life very profoundly and are indignant because Plato seems to want to rob them of their most intimate pleasure. They are drawn into argument with Plato about the experience of music, and the day centers on how to evaluate it and deal with it. This encounter not only helps to illuminate the phenomenon of contemporary music, but also provides a model of how contemporary students can profitably engage with a classic text. The very fact of their fury shows how much Plato threatens what is dear and intimate to them. They are little able to defend their experience, which had seemed unquestionable until questioned, and it is most resistant to cool analysis. Yet if a student can — and this is most difficult and unusual — draw back, get a critical distance on what he clings to, come to doubt the ultimate value of what he loves, he has taken the first and most difficult step toward the philosophic conversion. Indignation is the soul’s defense against the wound of doubt about its own; it reorders the cosmos to support the justice of its cause. It justifies putting Socrates to death. Recognizing indignation for what it is constitutes knowledge of the soul, and is thus an experience more philosophic than the study of mathematics. It is Plato’s teaching that music, by its nature, encompasses all that is today most resistant to philosophy. So it may well be that through the thicket of our greatest corruption runs the path to awareness of the oldest truths.”
For the typo “day centers” read “dispute centers”. Apologies for the error.
Pingback:The Man Who Saw Through Time: Pfc. Richard Edward Marks, USMC — May 31, 1946 (New York) – February 14, 1966 (Vietnam) – Excursions in Jewish Military History and Jewish Genealogy