Against Allan Bloom
When looking at Plato, I find that I am strangely struck dumb. I cannot say anything about him. The form of his writing is unspeakable; one can only speak about the image of his writing, in the interpretations of the moderns, who live under the regime of contemporary democratic power.
Post-modernism never happened; we are all still modern, whether we like it or not. The very term post-modernism is an obvious contradiction, whose only meaning is negative, demonstrating through its very form the very impossibility of one’s ever thinking one’s way out of one’s own time. Those who would oppose modernity, from Leo Strauss’s post-doctoral students to Osama bin Laden and his fellow students of Sayyid Qut’b, are all doomed to be thoroughgoing moderns and even modernists, subject to what Hegel called the “necessary alienation” – time. Granted, modernism is (and always was) a manifold, variegated affair, a thousand movements at once, all in opposing directions, each one a incoherent mess of contradictions on its own, as complex as a “fundamentalist” “traditionalist” Afghan warrior with his own satellite dish, American-made Hawk surface-to-air missile launcher, and Soviet ak-47, or as Jay-Z puts it, “like Che Guevara with bling – complicated.” *
There is a tendency among thinkers like Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom to depreciate modern philosophers in favor of the ancients. But if it is true that modernity lacks the reverent calm and poise of antiquity, then these thinkers transgress their own most sacred and self-imposed rule, desecrating the ancients by turning them into moderns, translating silence into a maddening din. Indeed, in his treatment, Socrates becomes far more “Machiavellian” than Machiavelli ever was, and Machiavelli is the representative of all the moderns, the prototype of the Enlightenment thinker who seeks to disseminate all knowledge of how things are and what leaders truly do. Bloom tells us that this is what separates the Enlightenment thinking from ancient philosophy in footnote 36, to Book V of his translation of Plato’s Republic (p. 460), where he (bizarrely, perhaps for the sake of sheer esotericism) decides to place the fullest and clearest statement of his own thesis:
There is no necessary connection between a man’s being born a ruler and his having philosophic talent or passion; nor is there any connection between a man’s having philosophical talent and his being born in a city that would ask him to rule (the philosopher has neither the desire to be a ruler nor would he do what is necessary to impose his rule on an unwilling people). This statement is indicative of the most fundamental difference between Plato’s political teaching and that of the Enlightenment. For the moderns, knowledge necessarily leads to political power. Stated otherwise, the dissemination of knowledge gradually transforms civil society and insures the realization of decent regimes. Plato denies this contention; knowledge as knowledge does not effect political change, and knowledge disseminated is no longer knowledge.
There is much confusion in this passage. First of all, Plato does not deny this contention, at least not here – he merely refrains from affirming it. The passage in the text to which this footnote refers is Socrates’ first clear mention, in the Republic, of the concept of the philosopher king. The very last line of dialogue that Socrates speaks previous to this one is Socrates’ announcement, “Well here I am,” in response to Glaucon’s question of what change would be necessary to make (not “a small or easy one, but possible”) in order to transform society into the republic of virtue. A few lines later, Socrates says – coincidentally, no doubt – “Come now, follow me,” to which Glaucon replies, “Lead.” (pp. 153, 154 in Bloom’s translation; 473c – 474c in the original).
Bloom appears to take it at face value that the philosopher doesn’t have the desire to be a ruler (cf. Book VI, 520d: “That city in which those who are going to rule are least eager to rule is necessarily governed in the way that is best…” and 521b: “Have you any other life that despises political offices other than that of true philosophy?” ). But isn’t it possible that precisely here, and not in the other places, Socrates is being ironic? Isn’t he revealing his will to power? Isn’t he, not so subtly, nominating himself king? The familiar image of the philosopher is the meek and gentle barefoot man, swaddled in a toga, dreamily drawing geometric proofs in the sand until soldiers push him aside. But what makes a philosopher a philosopher is certainly not the clothes he wears, or the fact that he is pushed aside, but his devotion to wisdom, deep within his soul. Couldn’t this image itself be a stratagem, and a bit of a playful one?
Mightn’t the true philosopher actually be the jackbooted drill-sergeant, ordering his men to seize the government buildings? We think of the academy as being a peripatetic band, leisurely strolling and stroking their beards, as they discuss the dimensions of the universe through green gardens. But Plato presents us with the image of an academy that more closely resembles an insurgent training camp, with young male inductees performing athletic military exercises, to a martial soundtrack. If knowledge in Plato’s day had not yet effected political change, perhaps this was because it was not yet truly knowledge as knowledge. (All of the big three monotheisms, each clearly influenced by Platonism, have indeed effected much political change.)
Beyond that, Bloom is taking liberties when he claims that the second statement concerning the moderns is merely the first “stated otherwise”. To say that knowledge gradually transforms civil society is much less than to say that it leads to political power for any particular knowledgeable person. The science that led to the development of the birth control pill has clearly transformed civil society, but it is not clear that this transformation led to political power for those who achieved or disseminated this science. This kind of hand waving is intended to cause the reader to skip over what is being asserted.
More importantly, to say that knowledge leads to political power says absolutely nothing about decency, and by no means makes any claims about insuring decent regimes. To claim this would be to equate knowledge with decency, that is, to deny the existence of what Nietzsche calls “cruel truths”. It is silly to argue that moderns believe anything like this, and indeed, the pattern from Machiavelli to Hobbes to Meslier to Sade, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault, and in some respects even more gentlemanly writers like Rousseau, Hume, Stirner, and Marx, has been to elucidate these cruel truths. Thus Bloom does not really successfully contrast Plato with the moderns; on the contrary, his Plato (which is quite an interpretive extrapolation from the text) is actually among very agreeable company in the world of the moderns, and might even be regarded as the most modern of all moderns, the most up-to-date, the avant garde.
It is possible that Bloom correctly interprets Plato, but if so then he grossly misinterprets the moderns. Perhaps he does this ironically, to signal to those who know that he is in fact a modern, with the characteristic modern irreverence. It is the essence of modernity to reject, even to reject one’s contemporaries, and even oneself, in so much as one does not transform and become new. Thus modernity must reject modernity, though it only becomes all the more modern in doing so, and indeed modernity was always this way from its inception.
Bloom’s contention hinges on the idea that the reign of the philosopher king is so unlikely as to be a practical impossibility, and that Plato knew this: “What then was the use of spending so much time and effort on a city that is impossible?” he asks on p.409. “Precisely to show its impossibility.” But the caste system in India is not unlike “Callipolis” in many ways: a small, hereditary clan of people dedicated to the contemplation of ideal forms on top (the Brahmin caste), a larger, but still small group of military leaders to execute the will of the dominant class (the Kshatriya) next, followed by traders (Vaishya) and peasants (Shudra) below this, a system of arranged marriages keeping the entire society functioning, and a notion of justice that consists of fulfilling one’s duty in whatever station one happens to have been born (dharma). Need we add that traditional Vedic culture also included a belief in metempsychosis, including the possibility of reincarnation as a non-human animal, or that it included a very strict regulation on music and sculpture, particularly when concerned with the depiction of a god?
Indeed, as Socrates suggests, this society not only is possible, not only has existed, but is moreover extremely stable – in India, it lasted thousands of years without significant interruption, even under the rule of the Buddhists, Muslims, Turks, and British, and even today is difficult to eradicate, with a large population dedicated to the current democratic regime trying very hard to do so. And though India is enormous, and comprehends nearly a fifth of the world’s population, it is by no means alone in this regard. Similar systems have operated in Indonesia, in Malaysia, and for centuries a somewhat similar system existed in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt, which Plato experienced firsthand. Callipolis further resembles in many other regards the regimes of Sparta and Crete from Socrates’ own time. True, none of these regimes had “women and children held in common,” however that was a feature of the Canela in Amazonia, who besides held sexual festivals perhaps somewhat reminiscent of those that Socrates describes. Nor are the Canela necessarily unique. Indeed, if many historical anthropologists are to be believed, then ritualistic, orgiastic holidays have been a common practice in many cultures, including those of Classical Greece and Rome. These, in turn, may be derived from the near-universal practice in Paleolithic times involving special occasions during which nomadic tribes (who might otherwise be enemies) would meet to exchange young marriageable partners – the only times that new sexual contact would be allowed without the fear of incest. The Olympic games may derive from such exchanges, which were often considered sacred, and enshrouded in myth – not unlike the festivals of Socrates’ beautiful city. And no well-informed person would claim that the communal sharing of material goods is impossible – in pre-agricultural society, it is the rule rather than the exception, and it is still practiced by most nuclear families, even within capitalist society. But all of this is really beside the point. Irrespective of the actual practicability of the Callipolitan regime, it is clear that Plato believed it was possible, since he tried to bring such a regime into reality under the rule of Dionysius II in Syracuse. This one fact alone renders Bloom’s argument incredible.
Moreover, the examples of India, Indonesia, and especially Egypt serve to demonstrate a far deeper problem with Bloom’s thesis. According to Bloom, “Socrates, contrary to fact, places the best regime first,” in its “necessary downward decay” into other regimes. Bloom sees this as partly ironic, partly a pedagogical device, “in order that the quest for wisdom not appear to be in conflict with the political prejudice in favor of the ancestral.” (p.416) All of this is based on Bloom’s misconception that the republic of virtue is a utopian plan for the future, rather than a reminder of what has been forgotten. This error derives from Bloom’s fundamental error, which concerns the order of metaphysical priority of the various regimes. In Bloom’s contorted reading of this passage, “Socrates taught, in the discussion of the ideas, that the end, not the origin, of a thing is its nature. Here he appeals to Glaucon’s faulty philosophical understanding by putting what is really the end at the origin.” Instead of all these wheels within wheels, necessary for Bloom’s interpretation, why not simply take Plato at face value? Bloom’s failure to consider traditional societies far older than democratic Athens, like those of India and Egypt (one is tempted even to include Persia) is evidence of an unforgivable provincialism – he tends to “rely too much on the narrow experience of our own time.” (cf. pp. 414,415)
Why does Bloom reverse Plato’s history, putting the aristocratic republic last? He claims that his reverse order for the regimes is “common sense,” but a notion of gradual degeneration is a common theme in many cultures, from the Indian notion of the Kaliyuga to the Mayan calendar, and is besides supported not only by millions if not billions of modern pessimists but also finds analogy in the sciences with the physical process of entropy. More to the point, it was a very important notion for the Greeks, and these passages in the Republic make unmistakable references to Hesiod’s Works and Days, which discuss the ages of man, from the Golden to the Iron. So whence cometh Bloom’s out-of-joint time?
Scratch the surface, and Bloom’s political agenda shines through, despite all of his claims to be apolitical or antipolitical. The reason Bloom reorders time is to try to transform Plato into a modern. He even explicitly mentions “Communism” and “Fascism” (p.409) as though Plato would have any concept of such things. In regards to Communism and Fascism, “Socrates thinks about the end which is ultimately aimed at by all reformers or revolutionaries but to which they do not pay sufficient attention. He shows what a regime would have to be in order to be just and why such a regime is impossible.” (p.410) Bloom’s Plato is little more than Ayn Rand writing “Anthem” – perhaps the greatest philosophical genius of all time is thus rendered into a crude cartoonist.
This is really what is most fanciful in Bloom’s interpretation. Bloom is both a remarkably sensitive translator and a remarkably imaginative interpreter, and his quiet audacity is very seductive. And I think he succeeds admirably in showing that much of what has been taken overly literally in Plato can be seen as nuanced, complex, playful, flirtatious, and even ironic. But what he sees behind the apparent meaning of the Republic is too pat, too anachronistic, and too convenient to be believed. Was Socrates, deep down, Milton Friedman?
Aristophanes, in the Birds, had (comically) charged that the imitators of Socrates, the esokrotoun, were elakonomanoun, that is, mad with love for Sparta, the militant, totalitarian foe of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, and thus dangerous to Athenian democracy. Bloom, seemingly simply for the sake of being contrary, writes that Socrates “is actually engaged in a defense of democracy against its enemies, the potential tyrants and lovers of Sparta[.]” (p. 421) This is really going too far. All of Bloom’s supporting evidence for this statement comes not from the text but from his own head, including his notion that philosophy can only exist within a democracy. This type of arrogance could only come from the political faction that seeks to shove democracy down everyone’s throats. One would be hard pressed to claim reasonably that Vedic India and China during the Warring States period were democratic, but one could easily say that the Bhagavad-Gita and the works of Confucius, Lao Tzu, and the Legalists were philosophy. Indeed, the Socratic form of philosophy is more easily adapted to a rigidly stratified society than a democracy, especially if Bloom is to be believed and “knowledge disseminated is no longer knowledge.” Perhaps it is true that Plato would have (at least mentally) opposed the Khmer Rouge or the Peoples’ Temple had he known them, but that in itself is no reason to suspect that he would vote Reagan.
Take, for instance, this passage from Bloom: “…[I]t might well be asked why it is necessary to harm enemies, or why there need be enemies at all. The answer is twofold. There are unjust men who would destroy the good things and good life of one’s own family or nation if one did not render them impotent. And, even though there were not men who were natively unjust, there is a scarcity of good things in the world.” (p.318) “The answer,” indeed. Whose answer? Bloom may have his own very good reasons to believe these speeches, and cause to protect his own, but they are certainly entirely foreign to Plato, and to the Republic. They are, in fact, utterly modern. The economic idea of scarcity is very recent, and Socrates in the Republic offers a very different answer to this question: that in the healthy city, what Glaucon calls fit for sows, indulgences are unnecessary, and only in the city of Glaucon’s fevered imagination, born of his appetites, does war become necessary. And it is only the dis-ease of Glaucon’s amnesia that causes him to forget that this is not an actual city, but an image of his soul. By presenting these statements as “the answer,” born of nature and necessity and not of confusion, Bloom illegitimately makes Plato an apologist for capitalist imperialism and the forces of modernity.
Bloom’s mistake is in assuming that there is only a choice between totalitarianism and democratic capitalism, a mistake born of his myopic cold war historicism. Isn’t it possible that Socrates and Plato were not so limited in their imaginations that they were unable to see their way beyond both of these absurdities, to come up with their own, independent political ideas, neither Guelf nor Ghibbeline, neither Coke nor Pepsi? And I don’t mean some kind of hodge-podge mixture of totalitarianism and democratic capitalism, but something truly outside of both. Bloom’s only answer is: retreat! “Socrates’ political science, paradoxically, is meant to show the superiority of the private life.” (p.415) He also explains that “The Republic serves to moderate the extreme passion for political justice by showing the limits of what can be demanded and expected of the city; and at the same time, it shows the direction in which the immoderate desires can be meaningfully channeled.” (p. 410) Yes – into the closet, as it were. If Bloom believes the purpose of the Republic is to render anyone capable of thinking docile, to turn all potential political activists towards mere poetry appreciation, then he commits the same error of which he accuses Cornford: causing Plato to become boring (p.xv), bleeding the text of what is valuable in it, which is also what makes it wild and dangerous.
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