Souls Without Longing

“Then who, Diotima, are the philosophisers,” [said Socrates], “if they are neither the wise nor those who lack understanding?”

 “By now it is perfectly plain even to a child,” she said, “that they are those between them both, of whom Eros would be one. For wisdom is one of the most beautiful things, and Eros is love in regard to the beautiful; and so Eros is – necessarily – a philosopher.”

~ Plato’s Symposium, 204a-204b

Introduction

When Socrates honoured Eros at Agathon’s banquet, he did so despite the potential for the misrepresentation of his philosophy by fanatics, opponents and those unable to grasp the messages he conveyed. This is a burden all great teachers must bear and – just as Robespierre’s admiration of Rousseau tainted the Genevan’s legacy – the reality of Allan Bloom’s thought has been concealed behind a thick moss of starry-eyed neoconservatism and both liberal and conservative criticism. Bloom attracted admiration and derision from every angle and, even thirty years after his death, we are left with no authoritative commentary on his thought. In this essay, I provide a reappraisal of Bloom’s philosophy, establishing a coherent understanding of his conception of the soul.

I focus on the soul because Bloom’s magnum opus, The Closing of the American Mind, begins with the line, “This essay [is] a meditation on the state of our souls” (Bloom 1987, 19) and yet its reviews centred on Bloom’s criticism of American universities, failing to clarify his philosophy of the soul. I do not critique Bloom’s thought, eschewing normative criticisms or evaluations of his philosophical accuracy. However, I do read Bloom with the aim of overcoming unresolved contradictions in his thought, comparing and contrasting my reading with those of his critics. Bloom had a “cryptic, occasionally indecipherable prose style” (Adler 2016, 154); therefore, to clarify more complex aspects of his philosophy, I sometimes compare his thought with similar ideas expressed more clearly by other authors.

The essay is divided between ‘Why the Modern Soul is Impoverished’ and ‘How to Nourish our Impoverished Souls.’ Part one constitutes the larger section, establishing why Bloom believes American souls are impoverished and clarifying his concept of the soul. Bloom claims to provide an “archaeology of our souls” (Bloom 1987, 239), but this is never clearly defined. Instead, he follows his tutor Leo Strauss’ paradigm of explaining America’s socio-political condition (“the state of our souls”) with reference to a history of political thought (Devigne 1994, 49), only intimating the appearance of impoverished and fulfilled souls throughout.

In ‘Why the Modern Soul is Impoverished,’ I formalise this history and, from it, extract and clarify Bloom’s concept of the soul. First, I establish the Straussian distinction between Ancient and Modern philosophy which buttresses Bloom’s argument. Next, I outline Locke’s discovery that man is a self-interested creature, and his subsequent creation of a rights-based notion of justice. This discovery precipitated the decline of traditions and images of nobility which Bloom maintains are key to the soul’s fulfilment. I progress to outline the emergence of value relativism in the 20th Century, which Bloom portrays as an inevitable descendent of Lockean philosophy. The American students of the 1980s, Bloom observed, rejected the notion of good and evil altogether, impoverishing their souls of the longing to discover absolute truths[1] – a longing which supports a life of philosophic inquiry. The philosophic life, Bloom maintains, fulfils the soul like no other pursuit. Crucially, I reveal Bloom’s more subtle argument, developed throughout his narrative: democratic values are inimical to the fulfilled soul.

In ‘How to Nourish our Impoverished Souls,’ I describe Bloom’s solution to fulfil American souls. He aims to reconstitute the Ancient relationship between the philosopher and society, by recreating the university as a home for an elite, philosophical few to examine the virtue of alternatives to democracy. Bloom proposes an education in “Great Books” to counter relativism and once more convince students of the possibility of discovering moral truths. Furthermore, from Bloom’s remedy, I also discover a curious and Ancient aspect of Bloom’s concept of the soul: a soul is most ripe for fulfilment during adolescence.

I continue this essay with a brief overview of The Closing of the American Mind – its themes, reception and (contested) legacy – and the Straussian teaching which supports Bloom’s philosophy and justifies my hermeneutical approach[2].

The Closing of the American Mind

In 1987, Simon and Schuster published The Closing of the American Mind (hereafter Closing) – a near four-hundred-page book by a little-known political philosopher at the University of Chicago. Until this point, Bloom’s relevance lay primarily with his idiosyncratic translation of The Republic of Plato (1968) and his collection of essays with the historian Harry V. Jaffa on Shakespeare’s Politics (1964). Jaffa would later provide an eviscerating conservative criticism of Closing, accusing Bloom of rejecting America’s traditional morals on egalitarian grounds (Jaffa 1988). Indeed, many of the book’s early opponents were inclined towards the political right (Muir 1996, 198). For conservative theorist Claes G. Ryn, Bloom was a liberal who shared Rousseau’s egalitarian, democratic vision and relished the collapse of myth and religion precipitated by the Enlightenment (Ryn 1988).

However, Bloom was largely read as a stalwart of American conservative values – freedom, Christianity and the family. For Bloom, the American mind had been paradoxically closed and “impoverished” by open-mindedness (Bloom 1987, 43, 156). America had become relativistic: its students held that all cultures and beliefs were of equal value and were thus unable to distinguish between good and evil or affirm the merit of America’s intellectual heritage, rejecting the notion of absolute truths. In such conditions, the serious consideration of moral alternatives (a truly liberating endeavour) is rendered impossible – “what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing” (Bloom 1987, 34). Bloom is now considered an early proponent of modern American conservatism (Hamburger 2015) – a conclusion I challenge in the later half of this essay. Bloom transcended ideology, advocating a theoretical life focused solely on discovering absolute truths.

Leo Strauss and Esoteric Writing

That which makes Bloom so interesting is that which makes Bloom so difficult: he was a Straussian.

An “obscure” thinker (Mansfield 1988, 33), Leo Strauss spent most of his career teaching political philosophy at the University of Chicago, producing disciples (Straussians) loyal to his hermeneutical method, outlined in Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), and his criticism of the fact-value distinction[3], established in Natural Right and History (1965) (Bloom 1990c, 236). “Almost every paragraph [of Closing],” writes Peter Lawler (1992, 273), “is informed by the thought and writing of Leo Strauss.” Put simply, Strauss and Bloom challenge a contemporary approach to philosophy whereby morals are deemed necessarily relative. Instead, they support a classical account of nature from which an eternal standard of justice can emerge. An examination of human nature should determine the structure of social and political relations; philosophy – the use of rational inquiry – must find these ends by examining social relations (Strauss 1965, 7). Political philosophy, understood as the search for moral absolutes, is thus once more convinced of its ability to provide an alternative standard to the nomos[4] (Bloom 1990c, 247).

Since his death, Strauss has faced accusations of harbouring elitist sentiments. In Straussian, Democracy and Allan Bloom, Richard Rorty (1988, 28) describes Strauss’ “coy and guarded” belief that the masses will never desire the sublime images of virtue proposed by philosophers. Likewise, Shadia Drury accuses Strauss of elitism, for providing philosophical interpretations which convince the young philosopher that they are a “philosopher- superman”, superior to the average democratic citizen (Drury 2012, 193). Drury likens Strauss’ elitism to Plato’s description of the philosopher-king: Strauss desires a society where the youth are cultivated into wise statesmen to rule the unphilosophical masses (ibid. 194). Whilst I do not claim that Bloom supports the cultivation of philosopher- kings, I do reveal a definite anti-democratic message within Closing and relate this to Strauss’ alleged distrust of democracy.

To understand Closing, it is equally important to acknowledge Strauss’ discovery of esoteric writing, because it dictates how Bloom himself should be read. Strauss provides the most potent, modern articulation of the Heraclitean principle, oute legei oute kryptei alla semainei: philosophy neither speaks out nor conceals but gives a sign – indicating rather than revealing its truths (Thomas 1986, 22). Through his reading of Maimonides and Spinoza, Strauss claimed that these writers wrote esoterically, hiding their intentions from all but a select, rational few to avoid persecution (Strauss 1952; Bloom 1990c, 243-244). The truth is “presented exclusively between the lines” so that “only a very careful” reading can extract the text’s true meaning (Strauss 1952, 25). From this observation, Strauss developed an intense hermeneutical method (Matthews 1990, 432), seeking to resolve contradictions in texts which have exoteric meanings[5] and a hidden, but more important, esoteric message contriving to relay an absolute truth (Strauss 1952). Whilst neither Strauss nor Bloom provide clear guidance on how to uncover esoteric messages, they argue that authors must be read as if they have contemporary relevance, believing that they really are conveying truths of perennial value[6]. Whilst disputed (Gadamer 1960; Skinner 1969; Rorty 1988; Collingwood 1994), this maxim is not novel and has been expressed in much the same way by the German Romantic philosopher, J. G. Herder. If the interpreter does not judge the author according to the author’s plan, “one writes at best against him; one arouses… contradiction rather than conviction” (Herder in Beiser 2011, 109). I develop this argument when explaining Bloom’s approach to reading Great Books later in this essay.

More novel is the growing belief that Straussians themselves should be read esoterically (Zizek 2004, 171-172; Lampert 2009) as if they are conveying perennial truths, hidden between the lines. Harvey Mansfield, a prominent Straussian, argues that modern philosophers will still write esoterically, deliberately placing contradictions in their own work – not to avoid persecution but to encourage young philosophers to read closely and pursue a life of inquiry (Kristol 2015; Zuckert 2011, 26). As Lampert maintains, it is reasonable to assume that Bloom, “a partisan of esoteric philosophy, would himself write esoterically” (Lampert 2009, 63) – and, indeed, Benjamin Barber (1994) and the Straussian Charles E. Butterworth (1989) suggest that Bloom does so. I therefore read Bloom in this fashion, revealing his perennial criticism of democracy within Closing alongside his contemporary criticism of America in the 1980s.

All Straussians agree that, if an author is to be understood, analysis should focus on their magnum opus and a few smaller texts with a clear connection to the magnum opus (Matthews 1990, 433). Bloom, for example, supports his knowledge of Plato with The Republic, but also dialogues like the Symposium, Phaedrus, Ion and Apology (Bloom 1990d, 308; 1990a&b, 124-138;1987). I therefore read Closing – which unifies and complements Bloom’s previous publications – alongside two essays entitled Rousseau and Ladder of Love, published in Bloom’s final work, Love and Friendship (1993). Both essays concern enriching the soul through achieving sublime notions of the good, the former discussing Rousseau’s Emile (1979), the latter focusing on Socrates’ discussion of Eros in Plato’s Symposium (2001). In Allan Bloom: A Reminiscence, Werner Dannhauser highlights the primary dilemma of his late friend’s philosophy: there was a “tension in his soul between his love of Plato and Rousseau”[7] (Dannhauser 1995, 2). By reading these accompanying essays, I demarcate how each thinker informs Bloom’s concept of the soul, arguing that Rousseau provides the diagnosis of America’s impoverished souls and Plato the remedy.

Why the Modern Soul is Impoverished

One of the great difficulties of the history of political thought within Closing is that Bloom does not discuss philosophers in chronological order. Instead, he jumps back and forth between centuries… from Machiavelli to Nietzsche then back to Rousseau etc. This conceals the true extent of Bloom’s doubts about democracy. When these thinkers are placed in order, I argue that Bloom appears more anti-democratic than even his most liberal critics purport. For Bloom, the democratic belief in the equal worth of all values is inimical to a fulfilled soul.

Ancient versus Modern Philosophy

Before establishing Bloom’s criticism of Lockean philosophy, it is necessary to establish the Straussian criticism of Modern philosophy which supports this critique. Bloom’s criticism of Enlightenment (Modern) thinkers derives from Strauss’ (1965) discussion of the clash between – and ultimate victory of – Modern over Ancient (classical) thought and it buttresses two major conclusions about his conception of the soul: a fulfilled soul is defined by a belief in duty-based notions of virtue and living a philosophic life. Bloom argues that American souls began their descent with the advent of Modern philosophy in the 17th Century – and they have continued to plummet ever since. For Bloom, this victory reflects the most major relegation of the role of the soul in shaping the good political society.

Ancient notions of justice emphasised one’s duty to care for others whilst Modern justice prioritises the individual’s right to self-preservation: “a good man used to be the one who cares for others, as opposed to the man who cares exclusively for himself” (Bloom 1987, 178). The primary dilemma of classical philosophy concerned the opposition between desire and duty, expressed as the conflict between bodily wants and care for the soul. The Ancients asked what a political system based not on self-interest but on an eternal standard of justice, derived from an examination of man’s social relations, would look like. The end of their endeavour, a good society, would represent the perfection of humankind – a society constructed of social humans, defined by man’s overcoming of his private interests in the name of the common good. An image of true nobility[8] would reflect the individual who overcame their self-interest and championed the common good (ibid. 112-174; Strauss 1965).

Bloom, like Strauss, maintains that Machiavelli instituted “a deliberate lowering of the ultimate goal [of philosophy]” (Strauss 1965, 178), sacrificing its classical commitment – to describing a soul fulfilled by a notion of duty – to make philosophy politically effective. Machiavelli observed that philosophers had been concerned with the virtuous soul for centuries and concluded nothing at the expense of the temporal. By focusing on lofty notions of duty, humans were distracted from the advancement of their earthly interests which, for Machiavelli, meant the interests of the state; Machiavelli observed a penumbra of tyrannical regimes, concluding that classical notions of virtue were unattainable. He therefore defined virtue – “virtu” – in political rather than moral terms, urging men to prioritise the salvation of their fatherland over piety and the destination of their souls (Bloom 1987, 173-263; Machiavelli 2010); the Florentine instituted a theoretical change, adopted by Locke, which Bloom portrays as a debasing of philosophy.

John Locke and The State of Nature

John Locke is the key antagonist in Bloom’s history of political thought: his rights-based notion of justice, incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, doomed the souls of Americans from the start, destroying the myths and traditions which constitute part of the soul’s fulfilment. Having outlined Locke’s right-based notion of justice, I progress to establish why Bloom maintains it has precipitated an impoverishment of American souls.

Bloom is not wholly condemnatory of Locke’s philosophical method. Locke, like the Ancients, began his inquiry into the good life with an examination of human nature. However, unlike the Ancients, he did not derive human nature from an examination of civil society. Rather, Locke hypothesised how humans would behave if liberated from the myths and rituals which bind people together like Godly tutelage and the authority of nobles and kings. He attempted to view humans as they are when they are free from the corruptive influences of law and convention in what he called the state of nature. His findings represent a crucial break with Ancient thought. Man is not a social animal and the duties imposed upon us by society – like the religious demand that we love our neighbours – have failed to address our basic, self-interested concerns (Bloom 1987, 162-163).

To understand Bloom, it does not help to focus on whether he agreed or disagreed with any specific discussion of human nature. What really matters for Bloom are not Locke’s theoretical observations but the normative conclusions which Locke draws from these findings. For Bloom, Locke inspired a radical, effective and tragic restructuring of the relationship between the philosopher and society, inheriting Machiavelli’s belief that philosophy can be politically effective (ibid. 164). Before discussing Locke’s right-based notion of justice, it is thus necessary to establish Bloom’s description of the ideal relationship between the philosopher and civil society.

Allan Bloom – The Philosopher out of Society

Bloom supports the Ancient belief that a life of philosophic inquiry is the highest form of life, expressing this via a Socratean claim which he does not challenge: “It is the greatest good for a human being to have discussions everyday about virtue… the unexamined life is not liveable for a human being” (ibid. 276). Indeed, Barber criticises Bloom for believing philosophers to be of an elite, superior cast, supporting his argument with Bloom’s claim that “The philosophical life is alone truly civilised, alone truly human” (Bloom in Barber 1994, 158). Bloom maintains that philosophy’s virtue lies in its process of liberation from convention towards the truth: it is “the movement from darkness to light” (ibid. 264) and is “fulfilment in itself rather than a task required for other fulfilments” (ibid. 251). Again, such phrasing reveals Strauss’ influence on Bloom, who defines philosophy as “to ascend from the cave to the light of the sun, that is, to the truth” (Strauss 1965, 11). This liberating pursuit is good in itself – a pursuit concerning the needs of ‘the many’ but conscious that ‘the many’ will never consent to be governed according to their theories (Bloom 1987, 264-265). With this, comes the belief that philosophy is an endeavour for a rational elite (ibid. 164) – a noble pursuit unworthy to be handled by the emotion-driven, irrational masses. As Barber argues, the shadow of truth-driven and righteous Socrates being executed by an opinion-governed demos is thus cast across Closing’s pages (Barber 1994, 166).

Bloom, like Strauss, therefore describes the philosopher as “detached, theoretical, impartial” (Strauss 1965, 6), at odds with the nomos and thus not integrated within society – one thinks of Rousseau, “the solitary walker”, or Wittgenstein sat alone in rural Norway.

For Rousseau, who gives this Ancient notion clear articulation, philosophers and scientists (those who attempt to make universal claims) are incompatible with civil society through their questioning of the nomos, their theoretical undermining of the manners, myths and institutions which constitute communities (Strauss 1965, 257). In Ladder of Love, Bloom adopts this narrative, explaining that the setting of Plato’s Symposium is a metaphor, representing the philosopher’s necessary separation from civil society. Socrates and various prominent Athenians gather in Agathon’s lounge to discuss the meaning of Eros (defined at length later). The flute-girls are banished from the room and Agathon’s gates are locked: his guests are now free to question society’s conventions without fear of recrimination. We read of married men discussing the virtues of homosexuality in a society where same-sex relations are frowned upon. This, for Bloom, is philosophy “pure, ranging free, without benefit of law or technology. It is for its own sake, not for the city or family” (Bloom 1993, 436). Philosophers are thus an elite demographic, uniquely poised to grasp notions of nobility and virtue. I return to this notion later on in this essay, explaining Bloom’s proposition to fulfil the soul by reconstituting the Ancient relationship between the philosopher and civil society.

John Locke – The Philosopher in Society

When Locke afforded everyone the right to be rational he therefore made a fatal mistake. From his observation that natural man is rational and thus self-interested, Locke devised a system based on how men live, rather than how they should live (Bloom 1987, 286). The notion of rights emerged – a notion foreign to classical thought (ibid. 165) – whereby individuals are free to live their life according to their own reason, liberated from the duties imposed by religion and convention. Bloom presents rights as an egalitarian notion: we are all allowed to pursue our selfish endeavours if we do not infringe other people’s right to pursue their selfish endeavours (ibid. 163-165). Thus, philosophy – the right to use reason to realise a notion of justice – became accessible for everyone. Locke redefined our understanding of morality, making it readily achievable: “our desire becomes a kind of oracle we consult” (ibid. 175).

Locke’s influence on the U.S. Constitution is evidence of philosophy’s new belief that it can be politically effective: Locke was a “great practical success” whose right-based notion of justice is the core principle of liberal democracies (ibid. 162). Freedom (to pursue one’s own desires) and equality (the universally held equal right to pursue these desires) guide the American mind even till the present day:

Our story is the majestic and triumphant march of the principles of freedom and equality… There are almost no accidents; everything that happens among us is a consequence of one or both of our principles (ibid. 97).

Ryn argues that such passages reveal Bloom’s egalitarianism: Bloom praised Locke for encouraging a new age of theory, premised on his discovery that man is constrained by the nomos. Bloom, for Ryn, holds a “deep prejudice against traditional communities and social hierarchies” and thus, Locke should be praised for placing “all humans on a par” (Ryn 1988, 46). Bloom does criticise those who spread false notions of the truth whether they be priests, nobles or sophists (Bloom 1987, 20-175): these myths fool people into living lives based on artificial notions of justice. However, I maintain that Bloom is writing ironically. There is nothing “majestic” about this triumphant march. As I now establish, the people need myth and traditions to fulfil their souls, because they are incapable of fulfilling their souls through rational inquiry.

John Locke and The Destruction of Myth

By arguing that Bloom did not think the Enlightenment project was over-optimistic, Ryn reveals his unfamiliarity with this key Straussian theory that the masses are unequipped to live according to reason. Bloom supports this theory with evidence of America’s mishandling of Lockean philosophy. Locke proposed the state of nature as a hypothesis asking “how, once free from the shackles of convention, would humans live and reconstruct their attachments to their fellow humans?” (ibid. 109). Americans have failed to move beyond Locke’s discovery that all humans have a natural and equal right to self-preservation – they almost live in the state of nature: “A young person today, to exaggerate only a little, actually begins de novo” (ibid.). America was a “great stage” upon which different visions could take root and cultivate a national identity (ibid. 97), a “cast of mind” as Goethe did in Germany, or Shakespeare in England (ibid. 52). But Bloom maintains America has failed to produce an author who informs the national vision because the good resides in oneself rather than an alternative notion of duty (ibid. 52-53). For Bloom, people’s souls are fulfilled by a belief in absolutes: non-philosophers therefore require myths and traditions, however false they may be, because they lack the rational capacity to construct their own notions of the truth, their own “resource against the ephemeral” (ibid. 247). Despite its falsity, Bloom maintains that religion solicits the “warmest and most valiant efforts of persons of peculiar gravity” (ibid. 342). Likewise, he describes his grandparents as “spiritually rich” (ibid. 60), because of their religiosity. Without these naive yet profound beliefs, the soul is left unfulfilled – people become visionless like T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men who have abandoned God following the war:

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

Whilst Bloom focuses on Lockean philosophy, his real target is democracy itself. Through his criticism of rights-based notions of justice, Bloom makes a broader and more perennial criticism of the nature of democracy in general – the esoteric message within Closing. Democracy, he maintains, is the adversary of tradition (which generally imply some degree of duty and a rejection of man’s equal right to pursue their self-interest). Regimes demand that their people agree with the state’s fundamental principles so democracies cannot be a platform for thoughts which challenge their egalitarian principles.

Democracies, if they are to remain democratic, cannot provide a bastion for inegalitarian opinions to flourish and traditions which deny rights-based notions of justice – like religion and aristocracy – will inevitably perish: “the noble and the sacred cannot find serious expression in democracy” (ibid. 161). A similar sentiment is conveyed by the Czech satirical novelist Jaroslav Hasek who, in 1911, cynically formed ‘The Party for Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law’ – a democratic organisation which refused to challenge consensus or raise serious alternatives to the norm (Parrot 1983, Chapter 8). Thus, Bloom maintains, American souls are impoverished because democracy has destroyed the myths, traditions and inegalitarian alternatives so crucial to their fulfilment

Rousseau – The Diagnosis

What is suggested in Closing is confirmed by Love and Friendship: Bloom’s criticism of modern man derives largely from Rousseau’s criticism of the bourgeois – a generation of humans inflicted by amour-propre. It is, for Bloom, the “aptest description… for the state of [modern] souls” (Bloom 1987, 116). Amour-propre has no sound English translation and can only be understood when compared with amour de soi, Rousseau’s description of man in the state of nature. Natural man, Rousseau argues, is concerned exclusively with himself (amour de soi translates into English more easily, roughly meaning ‘self-love’), connected to neither other humans nor notions of nobility which imply anything higher than the self. When humans became socialised, forming communities, their souls become chaotic and split – their imagination now runs wild, they are intent on manipulating others to secure their own, personal good but they become detached and unaware of what this even means anymore. Modern humans – the bourgeois – are unsure of their true desires and yet not motivated by duty to their kinsmen (Bloom 1993, 39-52). This condition is amour-propre. Rousseau criticises Locke for creating a system based on atomised rather than duty-bound individuals. In the absence of a system which reconciles desire and duty, the people require myths and convention to cooperate with each other and nourish their souls (ibid. 48-49; Bloom 1987, 118); I analyse Bloom’s subtle criticism of Rousseau’s remedy to amour-propre later on.

Bloom provides various illustrations of this condition in 1980s America. One example is the rise of divorce, the most obvious indicator that people now struggle to live together. Like the “solitary savage” in the state of nature (Bloom 1987, 118), modern man is primarily concerned for himself – a concern trumping even the notion of common good which binds families together… a supposedly unbreakable bond (ibid. 118-119). This notion is expressed clearly in a passage which explicates Bloom’s discussion of the unfocused souls of modern humans but also reaffirms and relates this to his criticism of democracy. Here, it is worth quoting two passages at length because Bloom’s language tellingly mirrors Plato’s criticism of democratic man in The Republic, cited earlier in Closing:

[When]the traditions that provided a substitute for nature have crumbled…the soul becomes a stage for a repertory company that changes plays regularly – sometimes a tragedy, sometimes a comedy; one day love, another day politics, and finally religion; now cosmopolitanism, and again rooted loyalty; the city or the country; individualism or community… and there is neither principle nor will to impose a rank order on all of these (ibid. 155-156).

Likewise, Plato argues that:

[The democratic youth] lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practising gymnastic, and again idling… and there is neither order nor necessity in his life, but calling it sweet, free and blessed, he follows it throughout (Plato in Bloom 1987, 87-88).

Such similarity in content and sentence structure should not be ignored. Yet again, Bloom is moving beyond his criticism of contemporary America to make a subtle yet perennial criticism of democracy. Locke’s creation has – as it was always going to – deprived American souls of the noble horizons and notions of duty which are so crucial to their fulfilment.

Relativism – The War on Philosophy

In this section, I demonstrate Bloom’s contention that Locke’s rights-based notion of justice prepared America for the next fatal stage in the deterioration of its people’s souls – the rise of relativism and the fact-value distinction (Bloom 1987, 30). First, I outline the practical and theoretical changes which precipitated this change in America’s moral outlook. Next, I describe how this outlook impoverishes souls, destroying the longing crucial for a philosophic life.

For Barber, Bloom believes modern American relativism is the product of Enlightenment philosophy “run amok… Machiavelli’s renaissance gone wild” (Barber 1994, 166). Barber is right to realise the chronology which details the gradual deterioration of American souls, however he interprets this chronology incorrectly. Bloom provides no indication that Locke’s democratic proposals could have precipitated any other condition than the relativism which he saw in the 1980s. It is not a case of democracy run amok: relativism, for Bloom, is an inevitable feature of democracies.

A permanent feature of democracy, always and everywhere, is a tendency to suppress the claims of any kind of superiority, conventional or natural, essentially by denying that there is superiority (emphasis added Bloom 1987, 329).

Bloom echoes the Straussian belief that “liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance” (Strauss 1965, 6): not only do we accept that people have different, self-interested desires but we feel that everyone’s right to pursue their own interest should be respected – a relativistic notion. For Bloom, democracy therefore fosters a belief which, as established, denies notions of nobility and greatness but also denies the possibility of greatness altogether. Lockean philosophy not only destroyed the traditional absolutes which nourished individuals’ souls, but it established the foundations for a democratic climate which destroyed our belief in the possibility of absolutes (Bloom 1987 – see particularly ‘Introduction: Our Virtue’). Thus philosophy, the pursuit of absolutes which fulfils the soul like no other, becomes redundant.

The Plummet Continues

Bloom maintains that Nietzsche inadvertently accelerated the emergence of relativism. Nietzsche, like Rousseau, acknowledged the atomised nature of democratic man and, whilst he was an atheist, attributed this to the decline of religion with his famous dictum, “God is dead” (Nietzsche in Bloom 1987, 195). He argued that stripping away the myths which constituted man’s soul and encouraging humans to live rationally was a foolish mistake: humans are incapable of creating moral visions (to replace the void which God had filled) with reason. Democratic man, for Nietzsche, was “free-falling into the abyss of nihilism[9]” (Nietzsche in Bloom 1987, 143); humans could no longer value although they retained their longing to believe in something noble and sublime. Bloom, however, maintains that Nietzsche “exacerbated” the problem through encouraging philosophers to create values[10] rather than discover the truth (ibid. 198). Nietzsche willed the existence of a value-creating man, not a rational man, but a creative genius who devises a myth to bind people together and encourage humans to once again to believe in the possibility of nobility. This person is a creator, a powerful prophet, who forms a comprehensive system of values to save the souls of rational, democratic man. He is a philosopher but not in the classical sense. This philosopher is not wedded to a belief in truth but one directed towards re-mystifying the world and enchanting its people. By urging people to live not moral lives but lives according to myth, Bloom argues that Nietzsche provided the foundations for Weber’s successful attack on the possibility of philosophy, understood as the search for absolute truths (ibid.195-208).

Weber adopted Nietzsche’s interpretation of value-positing – rather than reason – as the basis of political experience and popularised it in America with “miraculous” success (ibid. 208). Weber’s thought is complex and, to understand Bloom, it is more important to discuss its results than Weber’s premises (indeed, Bloom gives the bulk of Weber’s reasoning short shrift). Weber argues that reason does not create but simply transmits and normalises sentiments. Reality is thus determined by value creation rather than the transmission of reason into the public sphere (ibid.). Social science, Weber maintains, should be amoral because reality lies not in reason but in the individual’s creation of their own values. Because reality is not rational, Weber goes as far as to challenge the possibility of normative statements themselves: there is no “ought”, there is only “is” – and thus the fact-value distinction emerges. It becomes impossible to distinguish between good and evil.

Bloom focuses on the effect of Weber’s thought on American souls rather than challenging its contradictions as Strauss does in Natural Right and History. Weberian philosophy left American souls unprepared for the philosophic life – the soul’s most fulfilling pursuit. Weber, he maintains, was introduced to Americans by academics and students fleeing Hitler’s Germany. His language became rapidly popularised, constituting a change in American morals “as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman paganism” (ibid. 141). Weber’s thought had two results: American students no longer enter the university believing that morals can be discovered by reason and (consequently) they no longer believe their own traditional beliefs, freedom and equality, to be valid moral claims. The grandeur of America’s founding heritage collapsed: the belief even in the superiority of America’s egalitarian principles dissolved into a vague awareness that all that exists is a variety of values – preferences – none better than the next (ibid. 55- 56). All that Americans can say is “Be yourself!” (ibid. 213) – a phrase Bloom also used earlier in Closing to describe the very basic demands of Locke’s rights-based notion of justice, thus reaffirming the causal link between the foundations of modern democratic thought and relativism.

For Bloom, students have no “[faith in] the nation’s meaning or its project, which would provide the basis for adult reflection on regimes and statesmanship” (ibid. 56). This line is crucial to understanding Bloom’s philosophy, because he makes an explicit connection between a necessary belief in absolute truths and the possibility of living a philosophic life. Philosophy is the attempt to move beyond the nomos and discover truth (to escape the cave) but it needs “the cooperation of convention” if it is to be possible (ibid. 51). To escape the cave, there must be a cave in the first place and people must also believe that the cave can be escaped which necessarily entails a belief in the possibility of grasping absolute truths about human nature.

Relativism versus Eros

Mathie (1991, 42) also acknowledges this in his reading of Bloom: the decline of American and biblical tradition in “the souls of students” and the refusal to believe in the possibility of absolutes has rendered them unprepared for philosophy. But Mathie fails to develop Bloom’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and a belief in absolutes – perhaps because Bloom’s understanding of philosophic longing (Eros) is only intimated in Closing.

However, when read alongside Ladder of Love, Bloom’s argument becomes much clearer. Eros is rooted in Platonic philosophy and it plays a subtle but key role in Bloom’s thought. It implies a deep yearning in the soul of a student to grasp absolute truths concerning the good life. Eros is the philosophical reflection on the nomos as part of a longing to grasp absolute truths; “Longing in its most active form is Eros, and Eros is the backbone of the soul” (Bloom 1993, 544). It is an attraction to wisdom – and an awareness that the soul is fulfilled by this wisdom (ibid. 498-506). When discussing Eros, Bloom therefore reaffirms his claim that the truly fulfilled soul is obtained by living a philosophic life, echoing Plato’s belief, established in Ladder of Love, that “The most complete of men is one who truly knows that he is incomplete and can live in light of that fact” – a description of the philosopher (ibid. 539). Bloom discusses the “lame” lack of longing of modern students throughout Closing (ibid. 132) – there is no “awareness of incompleteness” in modern students simply because they do not enter the university accepting the notion of completeness premised on a belief in absolute truths (ibid.): “students now arrive at the university ignorant… about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it” (ibid. 55). Students no longer have a conception of the good to challenge – and they cannot even see the point in doing so. This is what Bloom means by a “closing of the American mind”: students are open to all beliefs and thus are closed to – lacking the longing to analyse – the virtues of not only their own regime but also the alternatives which history provides… the grandeur of monarchy, the piety of theocracy etc. I therefore maintain that Jaffa (1988) is insufficiently nuanced in his criticism of Bloom. Whilst it is true that Bloom does not advocate traditional American values (which Jaffa, the conservative, laments) this does not entail a rejection of the worth of tradition altogether. Indeed, as established, Bloom expresses support for the founding myths and Christian prejudices which united Americans in their country’s early days – not because of their moral claims but because they constitute a belief in absolutes which supported the pursuit of wisdom. As Deenen (2008, 52) argues, Bloom’s argument concerned, not defending traditional morality, but challenging the “indifference that the absence of such commitments engendered”, i.e. the threat to the philosophic life.

Likewise, Bloom departs from philosophy to make a more contemporary criticism: the university itself has become subservient to society, allying with democratic (relativistic) public opinion and thus betraying its original and ideal purpose: not to accommodate contemporary belief, but to question it in the theoretical hunt for moral absolutes (Bloom 1987, 260). Instead, students are offered a “smorgasbord” of topics which do not enable them to distinguish between the base and sublime (ibid. 59). The university fails to encourage the necessary exposure to alternatives which liberate the mind, fulfilling the soul with a belief in the possibility of absolutes

Before beginning a new section, it is worth re-visiting the key themes already discussed. I maintain that, for Bloom, the soul is defined by a belief in moral truths – notions of nobility and the sublime. Whilst Bloom equivocates as to the value of moral outlooks which are not grounded in rationality, he ultimately sides with the belief that a soul furnished by a belief in myth and tradition produces a superior cast of mind to the atomistic, inward- looking kind encouraged by rights-based notions of justice. For Bloom, a life dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom fulfils the soul like no other. He subtly describes the processes which have deteriorated the possibility of living a philosophic life, starting from Locke’s rights- based notion of justice, which destroyed traditional understandings of nobility and duty, and ending with Weber’s value relativism which destroyed the belief in the possibility of goodness itself. Throughout his account, Bloom expresses a deep distrust of democracy, maintaining that, by affording everyone the right to determine the good life for themselves, Locke triggered an impoverishment of American souls.

How to Nourish our Impoverished Souls

A surprising number of scholars express confusion over Bloom’s solution to restore American souls, with John C. Luik arguing that he is “uncertain about how to change both souls and the universities that they inhabit” (Luik 1991, 3; West 1988). Closing is a challenging book, offering ambivalence and hidden meanings where explicit writing would be more helpful to those simply wanting to read and understand Bloom. However, when providing a solution to restore American souls, Bloom writes clearly and unequivocally, arguing that the philosophic life is an end in itself, the way to nourish the soul. Despite his criticism of democracy, Bloom does not propose the dismantling of democratic institutions. Rather, he reaffirms his belief in the university as a safe-haven for philosophy, proposing an education in Great Books to convince students of the possibility of absolutes – a pre- requisite for philosophic inquiry. Within this solution, I unearth an interesting and under-examined dimension of Bloom’s conception of the soul: the Ancient notion that the soul is most ripe for fulfilment during adolescence.

The University

Whilst reviewers of Closing generally realise Bloom’s eagerness to establish the university as an arena for theoretical research rather than technical or vocational education (Adler 2016; Ryn 1988; Cavell 1989; Mathie 1991), they fail to acknowledge the theory underlying this. Bloom aims to re-establish the Ancient relationship, described at the beginning of this essay and so idealised by Straussians, between the philosopher and civil society. Philosophy, as a pursuit, is a good in itself and the (irrational) masses may be hostile to the philosopher’s challenging of the nomos. Thus, the philosopher must remain separate from society, examining the virtues of inegalitarian alternatives which democracy has eroded and cannot offer. The university, Bloom argues, provides the perfect arena for the pursuit of wisdom, adopting the role of Agathon’s lounge (Bloom 1987, 252).

Bloom cares about youth once they are in the universities, hoping to expose them to alternative visions of the good, encouraging them to believe, once more, in the possibility of discovering the appearance of the ideal society. He does not aim to change the souls of American students entering the university which would entail devising a philosophy encroaching into the public sphere. Whilst he laments the fact that they enter without strong “casts of mind” about the way things ought to be, he remains loyal to his belief that the philosopher should not aim to change society. Rather, philosophy should realise its classical aim, not concerned with becoming politically effective and endorsing the immediate self-preservation desires of humans as Locke did but addressing “life’s perennial problems” and telling [students] what their alternatives are” (Bloom 1987, 52). Whilst Bloom does not state it explicitly, he presents these perennial problems as bi-partisan conflicts which reflect the Ancient discussion of the tension between desire and duty, further indicating the classical influence on his thought and his opposition to rights-based notions of justice: “good-evil, body-soul, self-other, city-man, eternity-time” (for example, man, self and body reflect desire whilst soul, other and city imply duty) (ibid. 227). The consequence is a radical re-defining of the role of the modern university. Bloom wipes the smorgasbord clean and devises a university education focused on classical theoretical questions, catering to an elite, philosophical few. Such a proposal has, as expected, been ridiculed as archaic with Jean Bethke Elshtain (1987, 477), in Allan in Wonderland, accusing Bloom of entertaining a deluded notion that he “shares the Symposium with Plato, even as the rest of us go about our grubby, mind-numbing lives.”

Great Books and Straussian Reading

Bloom’s aim is thus to instill in students the longing necessary to philosophise. There is no point diving into the deep-end and searching for the ideal society if students do not believe in the possibility of (and long for the discovery of) the ideal society. Bloom turns to the study of Great Books as devices which are uniquely poised to instill longing and a yearning for completion (Bloom 1987, 61). Whilst the notion of what constitutes a ‘Great’ Book is rather nebulous and obviously contested, Bloom defines it as one which “addresses the permanent problems of man” like the bipartisan debates I have just described (ibid. 108). In Love and Friendship, he offers fourteen examples of these texts, ranging from Madame Bovary to Measure for Measure, demonstrating through literary analysis how they reveal radical alternatives to our contemporary regimes, displaying the great debates which philosophers must grapple with. This prescription is not an unfamiliar maxim in philosophy, having been expressed in similar terms by G.K. Chesterton in On Reading (1950, 22)[11]:

Literature, classic and enduring literature, does its best work in reminding us perpetually of the whole round of truth and balancing other and older ideas against the ideas to which we might for a moment be prone.

Bloom thus aims to construct a cast of mind within the American student like the German who enters university with a soul fulfilled by Goethe. This involves not just the study of philosophical texts, but also theological, literary and scientific classics. He offers the example of Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night (1932). Robinson, the protagonist, is so convinced of the sanctity of honesty that he allows himself to be killed by his girlfriend rather than lie and tell her he loves her. It is this sort of sentiment, the conviction which accompanies a belief in an absolute rather than chaotic amour-propre, which Bloom wants to culture within students’ souls to prepare them for the philosophic life[12] (Bloom 1987, 252-336).

An under-acknowledged aspect of Bloom’s advocacy of a Great Books education is his insistence that these books must be read in a Straussian fashion. At this stage, this does not entail analysing the authors for hidden, esoteric meanings – as established, students must believe in absolutes before they embark on this journey. When trying to convince students of the possibility of absolutes, Bloom’s demand is perhaps more elementary: authors must be read as if they are expressing some perennial truth about human nature. If the authors are understood to be merely creatures of their time, the texts cannot be taken seriously; “[students] must learn to see the world as Homer or Shakespeare did” (ibid. 374). Students are not to treat texts as historical artefacts or force their content into categories which we, the readers, have created. If the Bible is to be read, it must be read as if it really is revelatory, rather than simply a work of literature. Bloom fondly recalls a story about a student once naively referring to Aristotle as “Mr. Aristotle” (ibid. 344), believing him to be a contemporary. This, for Bloom, is how Great Books must be read – as if their authors are expressing real visions which have relevance to our contemporary situations (ibid. 344-379). Indeed, the fact that Bloom draws so heavily on thinkers, like Rousseau and Plato, to diagnose the problems of America in the 1980s, is evidence of his belief that Great Books have permanent relevance and can provide solutions to modern problems. My interpretation is supported by a reminiscence from one of Bloom’s students, Abram Shulsky (1993, 19): “We came to understand what it meant to read a book, not as…a text to be interpreted according to some method, but rather naively and without preconceptions.”

Nussbaum criticises Bloom for bias, arguing that a Great Books education will inevitably entail choosing certain books over others, encouraging “passivity and reverence” rather than a Socratic willingness to constantly question one’s own notion of the good (Nussbaum 1988, 397); “Bloom knows that he knows. Socrates knew that he didn’t” (ibid. 387). This argument is, however, misguided: Bloom acknowledges the “coarse evangelistic tone” of Great Books advocates but insists that literature should not be used as a weapon to moralise (Bloom 1987, 344). Throughout Closing, Bloom castigates educators who “propagandise rather than teach” (ibid. 20). Indeed, as his student, the political theorist Clifford Orwin argues, “Allan turned to these books precisely to escape from ideology” (Orwin 1993, 425). Bloom maintains that texts are simply to introduce students to alternatives to the nomos, encouraging them to believe in the possibility of discovering the good by instilling them with a cast of mind. Nussbaum also questions the Ancient influence on Bloom, arguing that using books to discover alternative visions to the nomos is “a conception of philosophy quite alien to the Socrates of the Apology and the Euthyphro” (Nussbaum 1988, 394). Bloom acknowledges the unclassical nature of a Great Books education but remains loyal to his claim that democracy has impoverished the noble living examples which Socrates examined – the statesmen, generals and poets etc; books are a sound substitute to expose students to visions of greatness, alternatives to the flatness of democracy (Bloom 1987, 21). The search for truth through the analysis of various images of nobility is a truly Socratic image which has a clear influence on Bloom’s thought (Bloom 1993, 429-547).

Once this is recognised, the distinction between Plato and Rousseau’s influence on Bloom’s thought becomes clearer. Unlike Plato, Rousseau does not believe that philosophic inquiry is the highest form of living. Whilst he describes the bourgeois’ chaotic soul, his solution is not to instill them with a longing to search for absolute truths. Indeed, Rousseau rejects Plato’s (and Bloom’s) proposition that man longs to discover the truth (ibid. 42). Rather, Rousseau argues that the individual is his own master – “[Rousseau] is the modern of the Moderns” (ibid. 52). Whereas the Ancients examined civil society in search for absolute truths, Rousseau aims to instill the individual with enthusiasm for an object of perfection which exists “always… in the imagination” (Rousseau in Bloom 1993, 391). He tries to unify self-interested desire with duty to society by urging individuals to imagine an ideal of the good and construct a “rank order of goals” from this vision (ibid. 66) – a self-constructed law. In doing so, humans will no longer live chaotically, swaying and swayed by the opinions of others and detached from their own true desires. Rousseau describes the education of a young boy, Emile, who is raised away from the perversive influences of society. Emile enters society having learned of his desires in isolation. He is taught to love a single figure, Sophie, simply by realising his desires and longing to fulfil them; Emile is not torn by amour-propre, jealous of other people’s spouses or spiteful of his own. His soul is fulfilled by obedience to a law and vision he has created for himself. Whilst Bloom does not deny that Rousseau’s solution may overcome the chaos of bourgeois life, Rousseau does not fulfil us with a belief in absolute truths derived through reason, which Bloom deems necessary for the philosophic life. Rousseau’s method is not one of philosophy, the rational search for absolute truths, but of focusing desire to form an artificial image of perfection concordant with one’s feelings (Bloom 1993, 39-157). For Bloom, this is a “reductionist” teaching of Eros (Bloom 1987, 133), inimical to the philosophic life which fulfils the soul like no other pursuit. Rousseau’s observations support Bloom’s diagnosis, but Plato provides the cure.

The First Flush of Maturity

By advocating the university as an arena to fulfil the soul, Bloom reveals an Ancient dimension of his conception of the soul which Closing’s critics have so far failed to appreciate. Bloom describes his ideal university as one which caters solely to the youth. Adolescence provides the “most productive years of learning, the time when Alcibiades was growing his first beard” (emphasis added ibid. 136). Bloom’s mention of Alcibiades encourages us to realise a curious Platonic dimension to his thought which becomes all the more convincing when Closing is read alongside Bloom’s analysis of Plato’s Symposium in Ladder of Love. There is a positive relationship between adolescence and the potential for the soul’s fulfilment – which is what makes the university so important in fulfilling the soul.

Alcibiades, a young Athenian general, was a student of Socrates; Socrates attempted to fulfil Alcibiades’ soul with an education in philosophy. In Platonic philosophy, the beard represents “the coming to being of mind or intelligence” (Bloom 1993, 461) – Eros, philosophic longing, is at its highest when young men reach this stage. The tutor must then inspire the student to fulfil this longing, leading them to discover notions of sublime truths about nature (ibid. 541). I maintain that Bloom’s mention of Alcibiades is a pointer to clues throughout Closing which imply – but do not state explicitly – that Bloom realises this relationship between teacher and student. For Bloom, “the students are only potential” (Bloom 1987, 20) and during their “charmed” university years (ibid. 336), their professors should lead them to discover notions of the sublime, introducing them to inegalitarian alternatives which democracy cannot offer (ibid. 344). Likewise, he argues that curiosity to discover the good life emerges with “the first flush of maturity” (ibid. 48). This account, whilst complex, supports a line in Peter Ahrensdorf’s obituary of his tutor, Allan Bloom: “His soul was possessed by the noble and generous impulse to help the young to satisfy their natural longing” (emphasis added Ahrensdorf 1993, 11). Thus, whilst Bloom provides a harrowing portrayal of the state of American souls, he offers a cogent solution consistent with two key theories established in this essay: a) the philosopher must be separate from society and b) a belief in absolute truths is crucial to the philosophic life.

Conclusion

Allan Bloom provides a devastating account of the impoverishment of American souls since the 17th Century, but his argument is typically Straussian – subtle and intimating. In this essay, I have formalised Bloom’s history of political thought and, from it, clarified his conception of the soul. Bloom maintains that Locke’s rights-based notion of justice destroyed the noble and sublime visions which traditionally fulfilled the soul. He progresses, presenting relativism as the inevitable consequence of rights-based notions of justice – a state of mind which destroys the longing crucial to philosophy, the soul’s most rewarding enterprise. His solution is to recreate the Ancient relationship between philosophy and society, using the university as a venue for the examination of nature. He proposes an education in Great Books to re-instill the Eros, the longing, within students’ souls to discover moral absolutes. This proposal transcends ideology: it is neither leftist nor conservative but one wedded to a belief in the superiority of the philosophic life.

Crucially, throughout this, Bloom makes a more perennial criticism of the nature of democracy: it is inimical to the philosophic life. This discovery buttresses the claim that Straussians themselves may write esoterically, hiding perennial truths between the lines: Bloom’s criticism of democracy is not simply contingent on its manifestation in America in the 1980s, as is generally believed – it is a subtle criticism of the nature of democracy always and everywhere. This finding should encourage further esoteric readings of Straussian texts to reveal their hidden messages. And, indeed, future studies of Bloom’s thought should analyse his literary analyses in his other major work, Love and Friendship, for hidden meanings. Likewise, as established, Strauss’ influence on Bloom is clear; Bloom’s criticism of democracy may therefore corroborate those accounts which recognise an elitist strain in Strauss’ thought, providing greater insight into the philosophy of one of the previous century’s most interesting thinkers.

A Note on Ravelstein:

In 2000, Saul Bellow published his final work – a roman à clef entitled Ravelstein. The novel describes Bellow’s friendship with a now deceased philosophy professor – the eponymous Abe Ravelstein. Whilst the novel is largely biographical, Bellow offers a vignette of his friend’s conception of the soul: Ravelstein would inform students that their souls were “shrinking fast… a human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed.” (Bellow 2000, 15- 20). The absence of any mention of Ravelstein will have appeared conspicuous to those familiar with Bloom: Abe Ravelstein is Allan Bloom. The novel represents the fulfilment of Bloom’s wish for Bellow to immortalise his legacy in ink. Ravelstein precipitated a mighty literary debate with critics treating the novel as an accurate reflection of Bloom (Hitchens 2001; Moss 2000; Amis 2010, 226) and Bloom’s closest friends castigating Bellow for crafting a false biography of the philosopher (Max 2000). This dissertation may have more than simply philosophical value: the embers of the Ravelstein debate still glow faintly, with Bellow’s widow, Janis Freedman-Bellow, revisiting the novel’s veracity in 2015 and Dissent Magazine discussing the Bloom-Bellow partnership in 2021 (Freedman-Bellow 2015; Sitman and Adler-Bell 2021). A coherent illustration of Bloom’s conception of the soul – the kind I propose here – could at least aid in establishing the accuracy of Bellow’s portrayal of Bloom’s thought, settling this aspect of the debate. This perhaps is a dissertation in itself.

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NOTES:

[1] ‘Absolute truths’ refer to the belief that there are unchanging moral standards which are not the result of human desires or prescriptions (Blackburn 2008)

[2] Whilst its definition is contested (Dilthey 1996; Heidegger 1993, Ricœur 1969; Gadamer 1960), here ‘hermeneutics’ is defined as the branch of philosophy concerned with textual interpretation. Hermeneutics raises several problems concerning how meaning is recovered from texts – “do we unearth the author’s thoughts and intentions, imagining ourselves in his position? Or do we relate it to a wider whole that gives it meaning?“ (Inwood 1998).

[3] The ‘fact-value distinction’ refers to a Weberian argument that challenges a supposition, held by philosophers from Plato to Hegel, that the question of how humans ought to live can be resolved with a final, absolute solution achieved through the rational examination of human nature. For Strauss and Bloom, this solution is the aim of philosophy. Weber represents a turn in social science which denies the possibility of such knowledge. He argues that all values are expressions of time, place and human irrationality therefore no notion of justice can prove its superiority over others through appeals to reason. Thus, values cannot be derived from factual observations (Strauss 1965, 35-36).

[4]‘Nomos’ refers to the law and convention of a state. It is often contrasted with ‘physis’ (nature) from which Socrates believed the good society emerges (Bloom 1993, 436-445); Socrates’ execution was premised on impiety: challenging the nomos with an appeal to physis (Plato 1969).

[5] Exoteric messages represent a popular teaching reflected by a text’s “traditional, superficial and doxographic interpretation” (Strauss 1952, 31). Whilst a philosopher may well agree with their exoteric messages, when certain texts are read between the lines, these exoteric messages are shown to conceal more important, esoteric messages which this essay attempts to uncover.

[6] Strauss and Bloom maintain that philosophers aim to express timeless truths about nature – to be more than children of their time. (Bloom 1990d; Strauss 1965; 1952; See also Nietzsche 1899, 1-2)

[7] These two thinkers are often considered to be at odds: Plato, the advocate of a hierarchical society led by philosophy and Rousseau, the designer of an egalitarian democracy which influenced the French Revolutionaries (Plato 1969; Rousseau 2002).

[8] Nobility emerges as a key theme throughout Bloom’s writing. Democracy, Bloom argues, destroys a) traditional images of nobility and b) our belief in the possibility of nobility, impoverishing our souls.

[9] ‘Nihilism’ describes the state of rejecting allegiance to a particular worldview or rationale, believing in nothing or of having no purpose (Blackburn 2008). Bloom argues it entails a “chaos of the instincts or passions” (1987, 155), suggesting its relatedness to amour-propre.

[10] ’Values’, for Bloom (1987), are illusions about good and evil which are the product of irrational minds. They are not discovered through the rational examination of nature or even derived from faith (which also helps to distinguish between good and evil). Rather, they are less committed, lack-lustre visions about the way things should be – not the profound moral ends the Ancients aimed to realise.

[11] See also R. B. Haldane’s ‘Universities and National Life’ (1911, 12)

[12] This particular example is reminiscent of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka’s belief that the soul is defined by fidelity to that which one would die for like God, the family or, in this case, a commitment to honesty (Scruton 2014, 2).

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