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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
Bloom’s book has had me thinking a lot about context. Our world in the context of history. Nietzsche pulled out of one context and placed in another becomes something entirely different.
Then Claire’s post yesterday followed by this post.
In a world where everything is out of context, no longer are things simply mundane or innocent. They are data points to be rolled into narratives.
A black man shot by a white cop in a town you never heard of? Evidence of systemic racism. Or evidence of cultural demise.
Racism or demise comes first, data is recontextualized, indignation follows.
So then? I don’t know.
I read the Haidt article and his book. I always find him intriguing. I suppose leftism is what amounts to sacred for some people. At any rate, the premises that motivate left and right are so different that understanding is nearly impossible. I often wonder, however, if there isn’t a chicken/egg problem in his work. He says certain types of people tend to be on the left and other types on the right, and he makes distinctions in what left and right value. But isn’t it their ideas that dictate their values and even helps them develop certain character traits? Also, I believe there is such a thing as truth, which I don’t think he does. Would people here say Bloom is in that camp? Being there probably makes it easier to be a cultural critic, but in the end perhaps not the person you want to follow into battle.
Afternoon Tom,
From Haidt, “We analyzed dozens of surveys ecompleted by 12,000 libertarians and we compared their responses to those of tens of thousands of liberals and conservatives. We found that libertarians look more like liberals than like conservatives on most measures of personality.” From our several SoCons threads I would agree.
Your comment regarding “our world in the context of history” got me thinking about Leo Strauss’s book Natural Right and History which expressly sets the historical contextual world view is at odds with that of Natural Right. When one assumes that things can only be “understood within their time,” one automatically assumes that the pursuit of timeless principles is impossible. Such is the path of modern sentiment.
I would too.
Yes, though the measures where libertarians disagree with liberals — and generally agree with SoCons — are those they generally ascribe great importance to: specifically, those regarding economic liberty and over-developed empathy.
I really don’t want to hijack the thread, but there is no viable political/philosophical alliance between libertarians and the progressive left. Libertarianism and American conservatism are both children of Classical Liberalism; progressivism is something quite different.
Evening Tom,
Perhaps on another thread we could discuss the nature of similarities between libertarians and conservatives. I think we disagree, but it is always good reading your thoughts. You might like Haidt’s book. He tries to examine how a moral psychology might have developed. He thinks that our innate moral matrix may have evolved with religion and agriculture along with those traditions, beliefs (sacred beliefs as well), and behaviors which allowed tribal life to become a survival benefit.
Haidt like Bloom puts a premium on rational examination and reflection as an analytic approach which allows the individual to check the influence of his emotional tendencies. Haidt is not examining the nature or existence of truth. Bloom wants us to follow the model of Socrates and live the self-examined life and attempt to more clearly understand the good or the good life. Bloom rejects that good and evil are mere values and that of the many values none are superior.
I agree that on some levels a philosophical problem is clear. On some levels, there’s a lot of commonality, at least with the hard left of the Progressive movement. Year zero thinking, an atomized society, an objection to both God and bourgeois taste and a tendency to find science fiction a compelling; there’s a fair amount of shared foundation.
On a political level, the tribal problems are strong; it’s hard for Libertarians to work with unions, feminists, and environmentalists on an institutional level, and that translates into an LP that takes mostly GOP votes. On a policy level, though, it’s hard to see what a Progressive would object to in Johnson’s record; plenty of progressives were able to vote for his successor, Bill Richardson, in 2008, and he was arguably to Johnson’s right.
If the LP was running small government libertarians like Barr, Root, Badnarik, Paul, etc., the political problem would be clear, but I get the impression that they’ll be sticking with Johnson for the forseeable future, continuing to make the public financing of political campaigns their chief issue, and continuing to handwave about the small government parts of their platform (promising vaguely to cut wildly, but not getting so specific as to be clear about whether or not Social Security would be cut, for instance).
I think that this is somewhat unfair. Quite a lot of microaggressions are expressions of indignation. The left is often too keen to ascribe racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and objections to unwashed hippies to this stuff, but there’s certainly some truth in there.
It appears to me that both sides of American political discourse tend to view the other as being judgmental and overly prejudiced, and that neither is entirely wrong about that.
I haven’t read the book yet, btw. Hopefully I’ll get round to it this week.
Casey re #31
“Bloom’s book has had me thinking a lot about context. Our world in the context of history. Nietzsche pulled out of one context and placed in another becomes something entirely different.”
We are wrenched out of position because everything that the liberals do invoke emotions which then require reason to supply objections against their opponents and support for the position they are pressing. Note the emotions first, reason second methodology the liberals use. It is a constant for them. Indignant emotions run rampant by people who want to change the universe by making it worse.
Conservatives, and many in the middle of the road will attempt to use reason to understand the issue/s, and to frame them, then – if necessary – use emotion to back the justification. Hence such things as the March for Life held annually. The innocent should not be killed. There is such a thing as human dignity, and human rights which should apply to all people no matter their location, hence abortion is a crime against an innocent human being.
Those are the reasons for the 14th Amendment which was adopted on July 9, 1868. Those reasons should be read into our American understanding of human rights.
Don’t we have to rely on axiom as the ultimate foundation, though? If we’re always saying “prove it” then that’s a never ending project, and it’s a project forever going backward instead of forward, deconstructing instead of building.