hinkle@vim.ARPA (Gerald Hinkle ) (08/19/88)
Warning- first time poster 8-) I will admit right now to not having read 'Closing of the American Mind'. However, I have read reviews of it on this net and in papers. Bloom seems upset with the US education system, especially colleges and universities. If he or any one else believes that going to a liberal arts education will reintroduce ethics and morality to the leadership of America, they obviously have not been in college recently. Or they are over-estimating liberal arts and its "powers". Ethics and morality are not taught by a course of study, they are instilled by one's enviroment at home. I believe that most young people today have their opinion of right and wrong fairly well set by high school, and a philosophy course will not make them stop cheating on others. If you grow up in an enviroment where cheating is practiced (dad lies on his taxes, your neighbor brings home boxes of supplies from work, etc.), you will percieve it as normal behavior. Good guys finish last, right? Got to get my share, 'cause the godd@*& next guy will if I don't. Try this one- It's not a crime if you don't get caught. My friends and I used these and others in high school, and friends of mine in college used them from day one. NO- we weren't coniving weasles on the stock market, just average kids from nice backgrounds (parents income over 40,000, both at home, non-abusive). I like to think(and have been told) we're nice guys. Take a look at telivision, or better yet, take a gander at the nightly news and see where your kids also get taught ethics (or lack thereof). The government of the US tried to legislate morality once. It was called Prohibition. In case you're wondering, I AM 20 years old, and AM going into my third year of mechanical engineering studies at University of Delaware. -- Gerry Hinkle
matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) (09/01/88)
In article <558@vim.ARPA> hinkle@brl.mil (Gerald Hinkle (VLD/SAB) <hinkle>) writes: >The government of the US tried to legislate morality once. It was called >Prohibition. I agree with your comment (deleted here) that morality is best taught in the home. However, I disagree with your assertion that it is impossible to "legislate morality." There are some cases where it has apparently worked. For example, sociologists have done studies which have found that civil rights legislation of the 60's did in fact change people's attitudes in the South. Norm
pywy@vax5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU (09/01/88)
Bloom. Bah, Humbug! As much as I wish I could approve of a book which insists that everybody ought to read Plato's Republic and other worthy classics, and that Americans NEED to be exposed to MORALLY SERIOUS liberal scholarship, this book is NOT IT. Bloom gets just about everything wrong; he thinks rock music is a more powerful force in American life than TV, that somehow "cultural relativism" has lead to a rejection of ANY strongly held beliefs by ALL Americans (evidently Chicago *is* some distance from the Bible Belt, heh!), blames Nietzsche rather than Existentialism for belief in "commitment" as the primary moral value, etc., etc. His treatment of Nietzsche is, to my mind, a perversion of Nietzsche's line of argument; Nietzsche is pretty heavy going, but I think that to categorize him as a moral relativist is wrong (Nietzsche wants to restore classical, i.e. Roman, virtues, as opposed to Christian virtues, to a position of pre-eminence; you might even say that Nietzsche wants to take the argument of Thrasymachus in _Republic_--"might is right"--make it *intellectually* powerful, and thus posthumously trounce Socrates) Nietzsche's concern about the Last Man is a concern about the human species degenerating without producing anything *superior*, more *noble*; the proposed solution is the transcendence of "the human condition" through heroic thought and action, a scary project, but one which is upon us already. Further, to call Nietzsche an "historicist" without backing up the argument leaves me just plain puzzled. More generally, the guy seems to be utterly ignorant of modern science. He argues that scientists are motivated by a desire for celebrity!??? Not the scientists I know! I find it hard to believe Bloom knows ONE. He clearly has not gotten the message that undecidable propositions exist. Turing? Godel's theorem? Quantum mechanics? Huh? These just don't exist in his world, where certainty reigns. To top all this ignorance off, he cites no references for anything. Bloom explains all! He also has a mulish temper: he carps at people without naming names, leaving you to puzzle out the references, e.g. he seems to be attacking Hans Bethe for statements made during the Cornell strike without actually naming him, except as a "Nobel prize-winning physicist" (could be somebody else, how can I tell?). (Nietzsche would probably mark this book off as a work profoundly influenced by bad digestion.) This book is a bad joke. Especially so because you know that 95% of the people buying this best-seller don't get past the critique of Nietzsche! Badly written, poorly argued, uninsightful, metaphysical . . . junk. For ugly contrast, Russell Kirk (a REAL conservative of the Catholic stripe) wrote a much better (not great, but better) book on higher education a couple years back which chronicled his experiences as a _belles lettres_ in academia, and his suggestions for reform (including high school curricula). Kirk, for example, takes the institutional problems seriously, while Bloom seems to believe that everything is determined by intellectual history since Nietzsche. Bloom, e.g., argues at the end that McCarthyism was "nothing," no professors have ever lost their tenure-- Kirk notes an interesting case in '58 or so where a faculty member was discharged from a state school because he would not attend football games! Not McCarthyism perhaps, but still not a tribute to the "sanctity of tenure." I myself look at the blurbs on the jacket and think, "American culture gets what it deserves--a big hit book, praised by busy fools, opaque, stupid, and profitable." Insult Americans enough, and they'll look up to you. My wife told me I shouldn't oughta spend $11 bucks on it, and I suppose she was right! kevin saunders net hacker, cornell u.
levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) (09/01/88)
In article <2970@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>, matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: > In article <558@vim.ARPA> hinkle@brl.mil (Gerald Hinkle (VLD/SAB) <hinkle>) writes: > >The government of the US tried to legislate morality once. It was called > >Prohibition. > I agree with your comment (deleted here) that morality is best taught > in the home. However, I disagree with your assertion that it is > impossible to "legislate morality." There are some cases where it > has apparently worked. For example, sociologists have done studies > which have found that civil rights legislation of the 60's did in > fact change people's attitudes in the South. > Norm I'm curious, does this mainly reflect the attitudes of a new generation that has grown up with the effects of the civil rights legislation (e.g., racial integration) and is now used to it? I would only think that this would work well in a situation where the legislation and enforcement actually succeeds in bringing about a new "status quo" long enough for a new generation to get used to it. Without question this happened with civil rights. Prohibition (and I must confess, the current illegality of `recreational' drugs) are another story. Enforcement for these fell (and falls) so far short of achieving the goal that their efficacy in changing the emerging generation's idea of the status quo is questionable. -- |------------Dan Levy------------| THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE MINE ONLY | Bell Labs Area 61 (R.I.P., TTY)| AND ARE NOT TO BE IMPUTED TO AT&T. | Skokie, Illinois | |-----Path: att!ttbcad!levy-----|
russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) (09/02/88)
In article <2970@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>, matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: > ...I disagree with your assertion that it is impossible to "legislate > morality." There are some cases where it has apparently worked. For > example, sociologists have done studies which have found that civil > rights legislation of the 60's did in fact change people's attitudes in > the South. Big difference. Civil rights legislation destroyed legal barriers (prohibitions) that inhibited *access* between blacks and whites, thus giving everybody a chance to learn. By contrast, prohibitions have the opposite intent and seek to make forbidden practices *inaccessible*. Prohibitions appeal to a certain kind of mentality, but they don't really make much sense if one believes that progress depends on education and a broad mind. -- Russell Lawrence, WP Group, New Orleans (504) 456-0001 {uunet,killer}!wpg!russ