Xref: utzoo comp.edu:1327 sci.philosophy.tech:738 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!vax5!pywy From: pywy@vax5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Blooms `Closing of the American Mind' Message-ID: <16839@vax5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU> Date: 31 Aug 88 23:12:31 GMT References: <2909@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk> <4101@pdn.UUCP> Sender: news@vax5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU Reply-To: pywy@vax5.ccs.cornell.edu (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) Organization: Cornell Computer Service, Ithaca NY Lines: 69 Bloom. Bah, Humbug! As much as I wish I could approve of a book which insists that everybody ought to read Plato's Republic and other worthy classics, and that Americans NEED to be exposed to MORALLY SERIOUS liberal scholarship, this book is NOT IT. Bloom gets just about everything wrong; he thinks rock music is a more powerful force in American life than TV, that somehow "cultural relativism" has lead to a rejection of ANY strongly held beliefs by ALL Americans (evidently Chicago *is* some distance from the Bible Belt, heh!), blames Nietzsche rather than Existentialism for belief in "commitment" as the primary moral value, etc., etc. His treatment of Nietzsche is, to my mind, a perversion of Nietzsche's line of argument; Nietzsche is pretty heavy going, but I think that to categorize him as a moral relativist is wrong (Nietzsche wants to restore classical, i.e. Roman, virtues, as opposed to Christian virtues, to a position of pre-eminence; you might even say that Nietzsche wants to take the argument of Thrasymachus in _Republic_--"might is right"--make it *intellectually* powerful, and thus posthumously trounce Socrates) Nietzsche's concern about the Last Man is a concern about the human species degenerating without producing anything *superior*, more *noble*; the proposed solution is the transcendence of "the human condition" through heroic thought and action, a scary project, but one which is upon us already. Further, to call Nietzsche an "historicist" without backing up the argument leaves me just plain puzzled. More generally, the guy seems to be utterly ignorant of modern science. He argues that scientists are motivated by a desire for celebrity!??? Not the scientists I know! I find it hard to believe Bloom knows ONE. He clearly has not gotten the message that undecidable propositions exist. Turing? Godel's theorem? Quantum mechanics? Huh? These just don't exist in his world, where certainty reigns. To top all this ignorance off, he cites no references for anything. Bloom explains all! He also has a mulish temper: he carps at people without naming names, leaving you to puzzle out the references, e.g. he seems to be attacking Hans Bethe for statements made during the Cornell strike without actually naming him, except as a "Nobel prize-winning physicist" (could be somebody else, how can I tell?). (Nietzsche would probably mark this book off as a work profoundly influenced by bad digestion.) This book is a bad joke. Especially so because you know that 95% of the people buying this best-seller don't get past the critique of Nietzsche! Badly written, poorly argued, uninsightful, metaphysical . . . junk. For ugly contrast, Russell Kirk (a REAL conservative of the Catholic stripe) wrote a much better (not great, but better) book on higher education a couple years back which chronicled his experiences as a _belles lettres_ in academia, and his suggestions for reform (including high school curricula). Kirk, for example, takes the institutional problems seriously, while Bloom seems to believe that everything is determined by intellectual history since Nietzsche. Bloom, e.g., argues at the end that McCarthyism was "nothing," no professors have ever lost their tenure-- Kirk notes an interesting case in '58 or so where a faculty member was discharged from a state school because he would not attend football games! Not McCarthyism perhaps, but still not a tribute to the "sanctity of tenure." I myself look at the blurbs on the jacket and think, "American culture gets what it deserves--a big hit book, praised by busy fools, opaque, stupid, and profitable." Insult Americans enough, and they'll look up to you. My wife told me I shouldn't oughta spend $11 bucks on it, and I suppose she was right! kevin saunders net hacker, cornell u.