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Allan Bloom and the Culture of Indignation
Here is a passage I ran across while reading (I’m ashamed to say for the first time) The Closing of the American Mind:
[I]f 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…
If I’m reading him correctly, Bloom’s point is that the first step toward thinking deeply about an issue is to understand why we instinctively — i.e., before thinking it through — expressed indignation at someone else’s opinion.
We may find that our indignation is justified, but then we will be indignant after giving the matter thought, instead of only before.
We live in a world in which indignation against things mundane, innocent, or small (“micro-aggressions”) have become the be-all and end-all of “civic discourse.” The Left seems to be far more prone to this than those of us on the Right, though we engage in our own share of reflexive indignation.
What do you think?
Published in General
I think there is a lot of truth in this TR. But do you think that there are times when indignation is genuinely warranted? If so, the trick is telling the difference.
I’m about to nod off but this is exactly the sort of Bloom post I’d hoped for.
Interesting too to think about this in tandem with Claire’s context post.
I’ll program myself to dream about your question and get back to you in the morning.
No doubt. I don’t think Bloom was arguing that indignation is always an invalid response. His problem with it is that it too often becomes a default setting that replaces actual thought.
Hey, TR! Howdy…Is Bloom’s book on Kindle? Do he and CSL correlate at all?
Bloom would contend that indignation is incompatible with thought, or at least philosophic thought. Indignation is anger over injustice. When a person is indignant, he will not examine an argument or position on its own terms, with a view only to whether the argument or position is true.
To go deeper, note that in the entire Platonic corpus, Socrates is never shown to be angry. Socrates does not even express anger when he is accused of corrupting the youth and sentenced to death. As Leo Strauss (Bloom’s teacher) says in The City And Man, “Let us never forget that while there is philosophic eros, there is no philosophic indignation, desire for victory, or anger.” Bloom’s book is ultimately about philosophy. The philosopher, from the perspective of the city, is unlovely. The philosopher qua philosopher is not attached to anything particular or contingent, but only to the eternal. Accordingly, there is no “one’s own” for the philosopher, and thus the philosopher will never become indignant. As Strauss writes in his book on Plato’s Symposium: “The Symposium, by transcending the sphere of one’s own, is silent on spiritedness. . . . The simple proof of that is that philosophy can justly be called a form of eros, but there is no ingredient of spiritedness in philosophy as philosophy. Indignation has no place in philosophy proper.”
I have a story about my ancestor’s son who defended his neighbor’s slave girl when he saw she was being abused by the owner on my relation’s property where he had let her use his loom. He seems to have been righteously indignant. A (hypothetical) descendant of that slave girl today (200 years later!) writing a paper about “white privilege” and getting angry because her white professor corrected her grammar? Sheer stupidity. Aside from the obvious absurdities, the former was thinking of another, the latter of themselves.
Nanda, Bloom’s book is indeed in Kindle. Just finished it myself. Won’t you join us?
Voilà.
As far as a correlation between C. S. Lewis and Bloom: not really, but that would be one hell of a dinner party.
Good quote. Jonathan Haidt gets into some similar territory when he encourages people to understand what they — and their ideological opponents — hold sacred.
This quote is from, I believe, a rather lengthy section on “Students.”
Read that section once, and you can understand Hitler Youth.
“If I’m reading him correctly, Bloom’s point is that the first step toward thinking deeply about an issue is to understand why we instinctively — i.e., before thinking it through — expressed indignation at someone else’s opinion.”
Not necessarily the first step, but certainly one way. A liberal education (in the old sense, not politically liberal) used to teach a student to check his premises (not take anything he believed as axiomatic), use his reason and not his emotion. I don’t know if any university or college teaches that anymore. I’m sure Hillsdale does.
Indignation, anger, condemnation, love, admiration, loyalty are all warranted in the right circumstances, but the one doing the feeling ought to be able to explain why they’re warranted. We all ought to strive to understand why we feel what we feel, and judge whether the feelings are consistent with our understanding.
Thanks, Percival! Got it!
In the old days, this was called humility. If one’s goal in debate is truth, rather than competition, then one is willing to bend and adapt to reach the truth.
Sometimes, pursuit of truth requires us to give up more than only our pride. Especially in a culture of political correctness, committing to truth can end friendships (with the sort of people who demand “tolerance”). It can end jobs by undue offense. The pursuit of truth is not only learning but also a commitment to live and share what one learns.
Properly oriented and moderated, emotions provide us with the motivational energy necessary to fulfill our desires and ideas.
Anger is commonly useful for motivating people to confront injustice and to dig deeper. Look at Claire’s reporting. Do you think she is merely curious? Anger can drive one to learning. It can drive one to continue learning and talking about an important topic while others show little interest, because the injustice needs to be discussed whether people want to or not.
But anger must be controlled. A person must be rationally aware of his or her own emotions.
TR,
Where is this passage in the book?
With pleasure, Casey! Percival was kind enough to provide the link – and I’ve bought the book…I’ll bookmark the post and be with you all soon!
Also, I don’t think it is necessary or wise for every person to take an empirical approach to core beliefs and to disbelieve every assumption until it can be proven correct.
One reason is that we need doers as much as we need thinkers. If nobody was willing to take knowledge on faith, then too many people would be reading when they should be out living. We each must balance thinking and doing, but like so many personality traits these differences in people often combine to produce a better whole. As a society, we benefit from a variety of roles, not all of which are scholarly.
A second reason is that obsessing about core premises can distract us from “building on the backs of giants.” Again, there is room for personalities. It’s good to have a handful of people reviewing traditional assumptions in the light of an ever larger history. But most of us should be building on our collective inheritance, or else we dishonor it.
In short, we need to rediscover the value of roles. We don’t need an army of philosophers in our schools. Critical thinking is a useful skill for all. But it is not every student’s responsibility to verify his education with skepticism. If our modern schools require such skepticism, then that is a sign of corruption.
An opinion is expressed passionately when the speaker suspects the evidence for it is not very good: nobody tells one passionately that seven times seven is forty-nine. (Bertrand Russell says something like this in an essay.)
Page 71. In the section on Music.
I’ll expect you to start your own post too!
As one becomes more comfortable with his understanding of a particular issue, indignation tends to rise within less quickly or not at all. I see defensive indignation more in those whose understanding of certain subject matter is what I call “Powerpoint deep,” or alternatively, of a bumper sticker mentality. When such person’s views are challenged, the indignation almost immediately surfaces. We all do it from time to time not just in matters of philosophy, but in personal relationships. My wife sometimes sees it in me and calls me on it.
I’m asking myself where this comes from. Is it rooted in childhood? Is it fundamentally human and therefore something we must consciously counter to fully realize our cognitive capabilities and understanding? My daughter, who is in the 6th grade, was working on a climate change project, and when I challenged her to explain why warming has been largely non-existent over the past 18 years, she became indignant. Not that a sixth grader’s response is the standard for this topic, but I’m thinking she is learning that what the teacher and the textbook say is an absolute, and that anything contrary to that has a very significant burden of proof and, in most cases, is not worth consideration. My goal in this matter is to keep her from starting down that slippery slope.
When I first became aware of a problem, I had no recognition of how to see it. (In my case, this was true about religion, abortion and, later, American politics but I am certain that it must apply to many if not most areas of life.) I thought them important, therefore it was incumbent on me to try to ascertain where I should be in regard to these issues.
So I kind of started from ground zero in all cases, and worked hard to understand the issues and how they were being interpreted.
I have arrived at the point where I must take a position without regard to my personal wellbeing or how I am viewed, and occasionally I do find myself being indignant with people whose views are best expressed by a bumper sticker slogan bereft of any thought.
I am aware that many things are best expressed without some kind of white hot heat or animus involved, but sometimes a bit of heat or animus is the only right answer at that time. Sometimes the only thing that might be said is, “Come out of him!”
Y’all are making me feel like a bum. I’ve had the book for a week or two, but haven’t started reading it.
I thought I could read it and write a reflection at my leisure, weeks from now. But it seems like reading it early would pay off, because then everyone else’s post would have more context.
Great point.
Will be with yunz soon; my heart and spirit have work to do just now, but the mind will re-engage soon; my own post is hinted at in an earlier comment re: Bloom vis-a-vis C. S. Lewis…I ask your patience – and your prayers!
Does this discussion of indignation — and the possibility of “righteous” indignation — relate to ideas of the sacred?
What does it mean for an idea or tradition to be held as sacred? Has the concept been hopelessly muddled? Or has it only shifted to new subjects (tolerance instead of mercy, public schools instead of churches, etc)? Is it a necessary concept?
Should a person be indignant when the sacred, rather than oneself, is attacked? Is it always wrong to rebuke? Must every claim be met with patience and objectivity?
It seems to me that the concepts of the sacred and of honor are somehow bound together. A society benefits from some shared assumptions.
Morning Tom Meyer,
Did you notice in the Haidt article concerning the sacred narratives each tribe has, that Haidt shows how Reagan’s narrative bridged the fault line between social conservatives and libertarians? Concerning this fault line, Haidt, in the “Righteous Mind” says that “libertarians look more like liberals than conservatives on most measures of personality”.
I did and that’s the genius of fusionism, of which I consider myself a strong proponent. Libertarians and Social Conservatives are distinct, but we share a lot of the same DNA. I’m working with a member on doing a larger treatment of that subject. Stay tuned!
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that libertarians and liberals have much else in common. There was an incredibly unsuccessful effort by a few libertarians to try to align themselves with the Left — at least on some issues — and it broke down almost immediately.