What a delightful and critical perspective on Bloom's classic on classics! Thank you. Now that I'm almost fully retired, I am spending time re-reading books that either shaped my thinking or that I should have read more carefully—including Bloom. Your criticism — both positive and negative — is pretty much consistent with my own.
The trouble with "the great books" is that too many people want to read them they way they want to read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, or the U.S. Declaration of Independence: as if their meaning is clear and settled for all time. (Which is, of course, how the "originalists" on the U.S. Supreme Court pretend to read them.) They don't read them as posing questions and possible answers which still leave the questions unsettled. But then, it's a lot of work to read the classics that way.
Classics also need to be read against the background of what they have to say about the world we live in: were the author's questions the questions we need to answer? does the author's answer answer our questions? are we sure that the question we want an answer to is really the question that needs to be answered? This is, in my opinion, one of the things that went wrong with education in economics (at least in the U.S.) where econometrics seems to have displaced political economy.
By the way, I think I actively forget who-did-it when reading detective fiction because most of the pleasure in reading a who-did-it isn't figuring out who-done-it but the artfulness of the way the story is told.
An interesting idea for a re-read (I remember reading it in the early 90s -- around the same time as Kindly Inquisitors https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/kindly-inquisitors and (bleh) Illiberal Education), and I barely remember them at this point, but I do remember Bloom being endearing in his clear love of the classics.
If you were interested, I'd be curious to know what you think of Michael Bérubé's _What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts_ which is also addresses political questions starting from the experience of teaching undergraduates: https://wwnorton.com/books/Whats-Liberal-About-the-Liberal-Arts/
I did not get around to reading Berube, but I should keep my eyes open for it. My next read from this era, with a different, and much more pessimistic take, is Bill Readings’s The University in Ruins
Inside Higher Ed surveyed 1,100 faculty last year and found that Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters by a factor of ten. But since only 30% responded that they planned to discuss the election with students in class, IHE claimed that "These results all cut against conservative criticisms that left-leaning professors are indoctrinating students."
This typifies why conservatives are so irritated at academia at the moment. When Harvard of 2023 drew comparisons to a typical Viennese university of 1933, Claudine Gay told Congress that Harvard was maintaining a deep commitment to free speech per se. It was a bold claim coming from Gay, a serial plagiarist who had personally ruined a few careers of academics heard to utter analysis that didn't comport with latter-day progressivism. Bloom's charges may still be salient to some degree, but they've taken a backseat to the hypocrisy, gaslighting, and sheer moral failure swirling around the universities at the moment.
Also published in the last 24 hours was a City Journal interview with an anonymous professor at Princeton. It's harrowing, and I direct your attention to the last remark: "I want this university severely punished for its unlawful behavior. I want discovery; I want all the emails to come out that will make it very evident that this university was engaged in illegal discrimination. I want President Eisgruber subpoenaed before Congress to have to account for not only anti-Semitism, but for DEI and for the 'systemic racism' arguments that he’s made. I want him to be publicly put on the stand. That’s what ultimately will deeply embarrass this university."
The sad reality for the relatively blameless universities for which you've worked is that Princeton is a synecdoche for "higher education," and the public sympathizes rightly with that beleaguered professor. At this point, a lot of us don't want reforms half as much as we want consequences.
What a delightful and critical perspective on Bloom's classic on classics! Thank you. Now that I'm almost fully retired, I am spending time re-reading books that either shaped my thinking or that I should have read more carefully—including Bloom. Your criticism — both positive and negative — is pretty much consistent with my own.
The trouble with "the great books" is that too many people want to read them they way they want to read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, or the U.S. Declaration of Independence: as if their meaning is clear and settled for all time. (Which is, of course, how the "originalists" on the U.S. Supreme Court pretend to read them.) They don't read them as posing questions and possible answers which still leave the questions unsettled. But then, it's a lot of work to read the classics that way.
Classics also need to be read against the background of what they have to say about the world we live in: were the author's questions the questions we need to answer? does the author's answer answer our questions? are we sure that the question we want an answer to is really the question that needs to be answered? This is, in my opinion, one of the things that went wrong with education in economics (at least in the U.S.) where econometrics seems to have displaced political economy.
By the way, I think I actively forget who-did-it when reading detective fiction because most of the pleasure in reading a who-did-it isn't figuring out who-done-it but the artfulness of the way the story is told.
This is very kind, thank you! - yes, I agree completely regarding what you say about the value of the great books, and in re-reading them
An interesting idea for a re-read (I remember reading it in the early 90s -- around the same time as Kindly Inquisitors https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/kindly-inquisitors and (bleh) Illiberal Education), and I barely remember them at this point, but I do remember Bloom being endearing in his clear love of the classics.
If you were interested, I'd be curious to know what you think of Michael Bérubé's _What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts_ which is also addresses political questions starting from the experience of teaching undergraduates: https://wwnorton.com/books/Whats-Liberal-About-the-Liberal-Arts/
I did not get around to reading Berube, but I should keep my eyes open for it. My next read from this era, with a different, and much more pessimistic take, is Bill Readings’s The University in Ruins
I have not read that, and I'll be curious what you have to say.
I admit, I read the Berube in part because I've liked his blogging (this remains a classic piece: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/49/r-i-p-liberal-contrarianism/ )
Inside Higher Ed surveyed 1,100 faculty last year and found that Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters by a factor of ten. But since only 30% responded that they planned to discuss the election with students in class, IHE claimed that "These results all cut against conservative criticisms that left-leaning professors are indoctrinating students."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/2024/10/21/faculty-heavily-back-harris-they-wont-tell-students
This typifies why conservatives are so irritated at academia at the moment. When Harvard of 2023 drew comparisons to a typical Viennese university of 1933, Claudine Gay told Congress that Harvard was maintaining a deep commitment to free speech per se. It was a bold claim coming from Gay, a serial plagiarist who had personally ruined a few careers of academics heard to utter analysis that didn't comport with latter-day progressivism. Bloom's charges may still be salient to some degree, but they've taken a backseat to the hypocrisy, gaslighting, and sheer moral failure swirling around the universities at the moment.
Also published in the last 24 hours was a City Journal interview with an anonymous professor at Princeton. It's harrowing, and I direct your attention to the last remark: "I want this university severely punished for its unlawful behavior. I want discovery; I want all the emails to come out that will make it very evident that this university was engaged in illegal discrimination. I want President Eisgruber subpoenaed before Congress to have to account for not only anti-Semitism, but for DEI and for the 'systemic racism' arguments that he’s made. I want him to be publicly put on the stand. That’s what ultimately will deeply embarrass this university."
https://www.city-journal.org/article/princeton-university-president-christopher-eisgruber-anti-semitism-racial-discrimination
The sad reality for the relatively blameless universities for which you've worked is that Princeton is a synecdoche for "higher education," and the public sympathizes rightly with that beleaguered professor. At this point, a lot of us don't want reforms half as much as we want consequences.