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Self and Soul
Prompted by the great Casey, I re-read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. First read it years ago, but I’m older now, and reading it again brings very different reactions.
One argument is that the modern world has done away with the Soul and has replaced it with the Self. That’s a quick way of describing a conviction I’ve held for a long time. A soul is an individual connected to God and the rest of the universe, striving to find harmony with all of it. A self has no such connection; it’s just a command center (with little control) over a sea of conflicting and confusing interior psychic currents. Or, as Bloom suggests, a soul is on the roof pondering the mysteries of the heavens, but a self is in the basement snooping around in the dark for Freudian rats.
Bloom describes the modern self who scorns religion and yet seeks salvation in psychology; but that’s a circle that can’t be squared. You can’t have both. I could understand an atheist who believes that life was a cosmic accident and has no meaning. On the other hand, I could understand a believer who believes that we were created, and therefore we have whatever purpose our creator intended (that’s my view). If you were created, it only seems logical that your purpose is anchored in the creator’s intention. What cannot square is being both an atheist and also seeking meaning to life. And yet, that would be a working description of a mere “self.”
Bloom portrays the American culture as being increasingly driven and shaped by an education system which is nihilist, relativist, functionally atheist, and therefore a disaster for the American soul. A soul, in the Christian understanding, is oriented to God and a higher purpose; if you dismiss that dimension of life, all you have remaining is an unremarkable and uninteresting self. Our educational system, and eventually our culture as a whole, is producing just such uninteresting “selves.”
Lately there has been some concern about what would happen if robots took over. Would soulless machines abandon any concern for humanity and pursue their own interests at the expense of human souls?
Well, hell, isn’t that what’s happening now?
Published in General, Religion & Philosophy
When I say typically easier, I mean typically easier. If you say that sometimes, it isn’t any more difficult for some people to reason from what they regard as absurd premises, that doesn’t change the typical case.
More generally, our reasoning includes not just deductive, but also plausible reasoning, and plausible reasoning includes rejecting that which is implausible. If I give you what you regard as a highly-implausible premise, and ask you to deduce stuff from it, are you wrong to balk at the deduction, saying, “But I reject the premise!”? Not necessarily.
For example, if I told you, “Suppose feminist theory is really true, and microagressions are very harmful,” and asked you to reason from those assumptions, would you want to do it? Probably not. You’d probably consider it a waste of your time, and so not be motivated to try very hard.
Unless, of course, you were attempting to establish a proof by contradiction. Then you’d be motivated. Absurd premises may very well provoke a person to attempt a proof by contradiction. In purely deductive reasoning, a valid proof by contradiction is ironclad. Once plausible reasoning enters our repertoire, though, our proofs by contradiction might not be as ironclad as we suppose they are.
Sorry for my part in diverting the thread.
If it’s true, as someone mentioned (perhaps Paul Rahe?), that Bloom did not believe in a personal God then how did he respond to Nietzsche? Was his strategy for avoiding nihilism and relativism similar to CS Lewis’s “Tao” from The Abolition of Man?
Frankly, I’d rather hear you expound on that than me.
But I suspect you’re on the right track. Natural law is a rich territory for discussion. My own guess is that Bloom had the same view as the Greeks. Man has a unique nature that dictates his harmony. When man “rows with the current” of his nature, harmony follows.
Bloom struck me as channeling his inner Aristotle. His criticisms are what he thinks one of the great Greeks would have said about modern culture. All Bloom needed was a toga and the picture would have been complete.
Ha! You’ve just seen the extent of my expounding; I’m all used up!
I think we get Bloom in a toga in Ravelstein. Or maybe it was a kimono. Either way.
If my reading is correct, I don’t think that is what CS Lewis was getting at. His “Tao” seemed to me to be nothing more than axioms from which to start in order to get anything done. They were likely solid axioms and ones I’d mostly agree with, but that doesn’t strike me as a robust intellectual defense against Nietzsche even if it is a vital and successful practical strategy.
“You can’t question these basic truths”
“Oh yeah? I beg to differ.”
I think natural law has much to offer (practically speaking), but I’m not convinced that it’s sufficient because there is no ultimate reference manual to be the arbiter of disputes, and disputes easily arise early on and often.
I suspect, as you seemed to me to be arguing in the OP, that there can be no meaning outside of God. How do we live life and build communities in the face of competing Gods or even no god at all? I think this is where CS Lewis comes in, and his Tao becomes an imperfect but workable way forward. Now, how do we agree on the axioms given such divergent culture and opinions we’re facing now? The real answer is likely not pretty.
Bloom avoids nihilism by arguing for philosophy, not as doctrine, but as a way of life. Human nature is defined by eros, by longing. Human beings, ultimately, long for eternity, and philosophy is the only way to glimpse it. We are built for knowing, and knowing, in its fullest sense, is knowledge of the eternal. Our nature has a natural perfection, which consists in the perfection of the mind, and that perfection consists in seeing all things under the species of eternity.
[Ed G: #126 “I think this is where CS Lewis comes in, and his Tao becomes an imperfect but workable way forward.”
In The Abolition of Man Lewis posits the moral law as existing in various places, cultures and times which were not connected to each other. Same law, same considerations enjoined on those various peoples.
The common thread was that the moral law was consistent and, being expressed the same way in all those times, places, and cultures had an origin outside of those times, places, and cultures. Having an origin points back to someone or something as the author of that law.
The author of that law is concerned with the moral well-being of the people to whom the law is given. It gives them a frame of reference for right and wrong, a means to recognize good and evil.
[There is a great deal more to what he writes in the book than I am offering, so if you are interested in that, you should be able to find the book easily.]
My view is that it’s a two-step dance, because I believe that (1) God is the creator of all things, and also (2) that God gave all things specific natures. I’d also say that Bloom and the ancient Greeks only agreed with (2), that things have specific natures, but for the sake of Bloom’s argument, that’s all that’s needed. The Tao for CS Lewis is really the unique qualities that make up human nature. They serve as the starting point for all human beings.
Karl Rahner, a Jesuit theologian whom I admire if not always follow, argued that God deals with humanity in a two-fold path (my description). The first is the natural and second is the supernatural. The natural path includes a “receptivity” to knowledge and God, and then the supernatural is grace, which Rahner says is an ongoing “modification” of nature. Rahner got himself in trouble because his writings were interpreted to suggest that the natural path alone could lead to salvation (“anonymous Christianity”).
[By the way … shhhh … I’m supposed to be working on databases right now.]
Oh, I’m familiar with posting on Ricochet when I should be working instead. It really is a weakness.
I’ve always looked at natural law as certainly useful and containing truth. However, the flaw is that there are, in actuality, disputes over the first things and over the specific natures of specific things – and there’s no arbiter. So isn’t that functionally subjective/relative/nihilist? Do any of the natural law proponents offer solutions for what to do in the face of fundamental disputes?
I read the book.
What about those multitudes not suited to philosophy as a way of life. Even Plato said that true philosophers were rare.
Agreed. Yet when I brought this up earlier in the thread, it apparently was not well-received by the pro-Bloomers. I wonder why.
I’m not really either a pro- or anti-Bloom. I just think that longing is very much distinct from seeking.
Regarding a Beleaguered Conservative’s statement that “Human nature is defined by eros, by longing.”, I’m not so sure I agree with that. Longing may be a universal (as near as we can get, anyway) human trait, but I wouldn’t say it defines human nature. I don’t think human nature can be boiled down so easily, but if I were forced to do it then I’d say that sin/imperfection would be a better choice.
So, I didn’t pay enough attention to the qualifier,”typically”. What I still had in mind was opposing your view that ideas, abstractions, concepts, can be real … maybe more real, than the material world. That doesn’t seem correct to me.
(Nor, Mike H, does your notion that mathematical objects exist outside of the minds manipulating them….)
You are exactly right. The tension between philosophy and the multitude is one of the deepest themes of Plato. Think, for example, of the Apology. Also consider the Republic, where Socrates conjures up a city in speech where philosophers will not be in danger. At the end of the Republic, Socrates says that no such city exists. Plato is not particularly kind to non-philosophers. Bloom, following Plato, seems to contend that philosophy is always in danger.
True, it is too simple. Better to have said something like the peak of human nature, or at least one peak, is eros. Bloom would agree that sin/imperfection is a profound way of looking at man. He would contend that the theological-political problem is the deepest issue facing any thoughtful person. Bloom would argue that on one side there is Platonic political philosophy, and on the other there is Revelation.
In my thinking, the ones inside the minds don’t exist just because someone’s thinking about them. But they may exist elsewhere as a result of their self consistency. The material universe is just one example of these things.
The material universe is, or may be, 1) a set of existing mathematical abstractions, or 2) those abstractions “made flesh”?
Yes?
So if such a place (which values the philosophical) doesn’t actually exist and most people are not only unsuited to philosophy but actually hostile to it, then what is the suggestion for avoiding the conclusions of Nietzsche? An aristocracy, itself governed by philosophy or revelation?
But even an aristocracy is only as good as its axioms and then only as effective as far as its power is able to establish those axioms as a general norm.
There is no relationship between the two. Plato does not seek to transform society or politics. All he wants from society is for it to leave him alone, and to allow him to have a few philosophic friends. Nietzsche is a wild, even crazed, dreamer, who hopes for a new aristocracy, centered in Europe, that will rule the planet. It would be an aristocracy that is able to transcend the human and invent new values.
Then what was Bloom arguing?
Not sure what the question on this thread is anymore. But Bloom in a nutshell: Philosophy is the best way of life. We should not expect much from society and we should be grateful that we have a decent, constitutional order.
What a great paragraph!
How many jewels like this are buried at Ricochet waiting for me to find the time to dig them up?
I’ll be lucky if I find .1% of them.