the pinchbeck Nietzscheanism of the major universities, and of some parts of popular culture, deserves to be called an expression of the

ww-American mind. Bloom is not particularly interested, however, in the high-minded point of view of the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, and (in attenuated form) the majority of Americansnot because he dislikes America but because, au fond, he is not interested in politics. He just cannot take it seriously, except as a threat to philosophy. That is why The Closing of the American Mind only resembles a Socratic inquiry. It is not really dialectical, but historical. It traces the philosophical etymology of the words used by today's undergraduates'values," "commitment," and the likebut it does not reproduce much of the conversations in which these words occur. There is little effort to ascend from these notions to something higher; there is plenty of comparison, but little argument and definitely no "moralizing." Bloom objects to American nihilism not because it is immoral, but because it is thoughtless; and he does so without giving any account of whether a thoughtful morality exists or in what it might consist. That this philosophical abdication is not merely temperamental is shown in Bloom's account of Socrates as, in effect, the inventor of the university or of the problem of the university. Prior to what Socrates called his "second sailing," philosophers from Thales to the young Socrates himself had inquired into nature, but had deprecated politics as the realm of convention concerning which genuine knowledge was impossible. But in Bloom's hands, Socrates becomes Thales with legal problems. According to Bloom, political philosophy, of which Socrates was traditionally regarded as the founder, means politic philosophy pure and simple; it is a form of public relations, a set of techniques for shielding atheistic and amoral philosophers from persecution by the many, allowing them to live peacefully among their deluded (i.e., moral) neighbors. By learning to write carefullyesotericallyand so perplexing their meaning that only a few fit souls would penetrate the orthodox surface of their works to discern the subversive teachings and forbidden pleasures underneath, philosophers could avoid Socrates' fate without abandoning his pursuits. The world could, as Bloom puts it, be made safe for philosophy. Of course, this meant that there was not really a Socratic turn in philosophy, that Socratic and (so-called) preSocratic thought were not fundamentally different. Political philosophy was simply the public or pious presentation of impious, hence politically danger16

ous, truths, chief among them being that "Zeus is not," i.e., that the gods of the city, the guarantors of justice, do not exist. Instead of being the first philosopher to take ethics and politics seriouslyto philosophize by questioning men's opinions about "What is justice?" "What is courage?" and so forth, because he saw that man is the microcosm, and that philosophy without political philosophy is largely nugatorySocrates was a theorist who

modern political history without a discussion of Locke, Rousseau and Marx." But can one imagine a discussion of modern political historyof the university as part of modernity that is nothing but a discussion of Locke, Rousseau, and Marx? Politics is replaced by history, and not even by genuine political history but by the history of modern political philosophy, in Bloom's account of America.

Somewhat to the embarrassment of Bloom's thesis, which emphasizes the inability of Americans to digest serious thought, his book has become a popular hit.
needed a good lawyer and better P.R., both of which he in effect got in Plato. Which is not to deny that the "politic" presentation of philosophy is a vital part of political philosophy's meaning; but it was only a part, complemented by the serious philosophic study of "the human things," moral and political affairs. It was as students of such affairs that political philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero prudently offered advice to present and future legislators. Bloom contends, however, that political philosophers never seriously considered themselves as teachers of legislators, because the philosophic study of politics and morality did not amount to very much. Oh, he admits that "politics was a serious study to the extent that one learned about the soul from it"; but on the evidence of his own approach in this book, there is little that one can learn about the soul from politics, as opposed to erotics or culture. "Reading Thucydides," he writes, "shows us that the decline of Greece was purely political, that what we call intellectual history is of little importance for understanding it. Old regimes had traditional roots; but philosophy and science took over as rulers in modernity, and purely theoretical problems have decisive political effects. One cannot imagine

lthough he doubts that politics has anything to teach philosophy, Bloom concedes that political or "politic" philosophy has something to teach politics, namely, moderation; politics must be moderate, mostly if not entirely to protect philosophers. What about justice and the common good? There is no discussion of any politically relevant form of natural right or justice in the book; and this is related to the strange, looming absence of Leo Strauss, who was Bloom's teacher. Strauss's influence is evident throughout, indeed it is massive; but his name is mentioned only once, as an authority on the "low but solid" foundations of modernity. The critique of modern education is, however, generated more out of Nietzsche and Heidegger than out of Strauss. It is Nietzsche and Heidegger who really show that philosophy is possible in this century, for it is theynot Strausswho were "able to face down both natural science and historicism, the two great contemporary opponents of philosophy." Like Nietzsche and Heidegger, Bloom emphasizes the need to retighten the bow of life, to restore the tension and striving that are necessary for man to become great again. This requires re-creating "prejudices, strong prejudices," on the reasonable grounds that the completely unprejudiced mind is empty; for philosophy to liberate men from prejudice, to vivify their souls, they must first be opinionated. Where in American life are these opinions or prejudices to come from? Not from the Founding Fathers' principles, which are too low and selfish, too unerotic; their inevitable exhaustion is what has got us in the present fix. In essence, a new religion or world-view is needed. Given philosophy's inability to will such a new Weltanschauung, however, Bloom must settle for "the good old Great Books approach" as a method for restoring aware-

ness of the fundamental opinions. Great Books are of course less dangerous than Nietzsche's overman as a solution to the problem of the "rights doctrine'" and its embodiment in the modern democrat, the bourgeois, the "last man." Yet Great Books are not a religion, certainly not the Old Time Religion; they restate rather than solve the fundamental problem, which is to will meaning back into the world. Instead, they become a kind of alternative to Socratic dialectic, a sort of hope or illusion necessary to make life worth living. "Perhaps it is our first task," Bloom declares, "to resuscitate these phenomena [opinions or prejudices] so that we may again have a world to which we can put our questions and be able to philosophize. This seems to me to be our educational challenge." Perhaps this is why we seldom see in Bloom's book the elementary responses to students' opinions, concerning, for example, the relativity of "values'1the follow-ups that question, cajole, charm them into sense. Political philosophizing along these lines is always possible, and though powerfully assisted by the Great Books approach, is not dependent upon it to reconstitute a "world" of opinions. Bright students have plenty of opinions, especially about politics. loom's impoverished or abstract conception of political philosophy, which radically separates morality and philosophy, might seem to be balanced by his accounts of the casual amoralism of today's students and the cowardice and phony idealism of Cornell's faculty during the 1969 campus upheavals. Despite his frequent disclaimers of any intention to "moralize," it is these sections, in which he moralizes in spite of himself, that are the highlights of the book. But, to take the latter example, even his marvelously sardonic account of the Cornell uprising studiously avoids proper names. In more than twenty pages devoted to the collapse of the Cornell administration and faculty before the strident demands of the New Left, not a single participant (other than Father Daniel Berrigan) is named! I doubt that this peculiar reticence is caused by delicacy. Rather it is the way that politics looks when moral indignation, which likes to single out the innocent, the guilty, and the heroic, is proscribed as unphilosophic; and when the discrete phenomena of politics are subsumed under theoretical categories. The shameful episodes at Cornell become mere examples of Heideggerianism working itself out. At the same time, it should be noted that Bloom does not regard the radicals' victory at Cornell and elsewhere
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1987

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