Alan Keyes and Allan Bloom

Jon Rowe has written an absolute must-read essay on our favorite intrepid campaigner, Alan Keyes, and our favorite nihilist-who-sounds-like-a-fundamentalist philosopher, Allan Bloom. I was not aware until I read it that Keyes was the person that Bloom was referring to in his book The Closing of the American Mind, when he told the story of a black student at Cornell who had been threatened by radical black students and the administration would do nothing about it. In fact, other than the fact that they both are social conservatives, I had no idea that Keyes was a student of Bloom at all. As Rowe notes, this does make for a rather twisted situation.

Bloom, you see, was precisely the kind of person that Keyes rants and raves endlessly about - atheist in belief, homosexual in orientation, nihilist in philosophy, and hedonist in his personal life. But Bloom was also convinced that those beliefs were only safe among the elite and the initiated, that the masses needed religion to keep them in line and keep society docile and stable. In short, he supported the authoritarian policies espoused by men like Keyes (who presumably actually believes it) because he thought it was required to control the passions of others, while flaunting and violating what he publicly supported in his own life.

Am I the only one who finds this terribly fascinating? Here's a question for my readers who are also fascinated by it, and by political philosophy in general: how many of our own founding fathers took a similar position? I think one can certainly make a case that Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton, at least, believed something very much like this, that religion was useful as a control on human passions regardless of whether it is true or not. I'd very much like to hear the thoughts of some of my readers on this one, especially Sandefur and shulamite, both of whom have a fairly obvious association with the Straussians.

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I think you're certainly right about many of our country's founders being and considering themselves an intellectual elite. All the presidents until Andrew Jackson. I don't have the classical education to argue the philosophical aspects that others will probably discuss here, but my own family would indeed be quite scary without the "control on human passions" provided by their religious beliefs. Both my parents came from very large families and the depth of their ignorance is astounding. I realized very early on that I couldn't hold a rational conversation with any of my amazingly numerous aunts, uncles and cousins. My mother and her sisters especially were incapable of understanding the simplest of abstact concepts. Everything was (and still is) black and white. It's truly frightening to be part of this gene pool, and without the strong hold of religion my relatives would be regulars on episodes of "Cops". Their entire basis for morality is their absolute belief in the existence of hell. I'm not speculating here, I've been told too many times that I'm going there for the unforgivable sin of questioning faith.

I don't know if this is in any part an answer to your question Ed. I'd like to believe that religion isn't necessary for a civil society, but the turnips in my garden deperately need manure for nourishment.

Thanks. Yes I find this fascinating too (I guess that's why I write about it). Bloom beats around the bush quite a bit in Closing. And because of his style of writing, the book is open to more than one interpretation. Some writers think that Closing is compatible with or even complementary to Bloom's unorthodox life (I'm thinking of gay writer Paul Varnell's review of Ravelstein, where Varnell references Closing).

For instance, even though Bloom trashes the 60s, feminism, the sexual revolution and modern morality, he doesn't have a bad word to say about homosexuality (understandably) in that book. He also alludes to Plato's explanation of "sexual diversity" (Plato's metaphor about longing for one's other half that includes homosexual Eros within the tale) in an approving manner. But all in all, I think my analysis is sound. Folks like Keyes, & Bill Kristol and others who are 100% lockstep against gay dignity wouldn't be so approving of that book and Bloom's teachings in general, if that book weren't really an exoteric endorsement of 1950's style "family values."

Interesting, Harry Jaffa, who is a NOTORIOUS homophobe reviewed Closing. The review is not on line, rather was in some obsure journal. So I've never read it. But from what I have heard, Jaffa makes a BIG deal out of Bloom's refusal to touch the gay issue. And Jaffa viciously trashes gays (which obviously was meant as a personal attack on Bloom) in his review. Since I've never read it, I could be wrong (and would be glad to be corrected) and would like to hear from someone who has read it.

So here's my question: are they right? I think there are several possible ways to frame the question. We could ask, is religion (for purposes of this discussion, let's define religion as belief in a personal God who gives us rules of right and wrong by which we should live our lives) necessary for people to behave decently toward each other in society?

We could ask, if it was somehow proven (hypothetically, as I know of no such proof nor can I imagine one) that there is no God and no possibility of eternal punishment for our actions, would human behavior toward each other become markedly worse?

We could ask, if people become less convinced that there is a god and the possibility of punishment in the afterlife (regardless of whether there actually IS), would it become worse?

Do we have any evidence to examine in answering these questions, or do we just have to do it as a sort of mind experiment? And if the answer is yes to any of those, is it correct to say that we should then pretend that there is such a God and such a potential punishment (continue to teach our children, continue to convince others that this is true, etc) in order to prevent anarchy/rampant immorality/really bad things?

Interesting questions, all. I'd like to get a good discussion going on this and hear perspectives on it from some of my more thoughtful readers and fellow bloggers. So Sandefur, Duemer, Ditz, Anderson, Rasmussen, Kuznicki, Leiter, Benson, Beyerstein, Scheie, Patterico, Duemer and others - step up to the mic, smart people, and let me learn from you.

I'm going to assume that when you say people, that you mean most (emphasis) as opposed to all. I think that OGeorge shows it fairly well--there's usually an exception to the majority.
Nitpicking aside, I think the question of "What would happen without religion?" Here, one basically has to decide if humans are fundamentally self-serving or socially serving.
If it is the former, then yes, I think that religion is necesary. Humans would then be fallable or at least beatable. An unseen, and fundamentally unknowable authority that ultimately has the final say in one's exsitence is a powerful motivator for good behavior. A body that then represents a particular aspect of God still allows for some indivudal identity, but also minimizes destructive tendencies.
If humans are the latter, then I would say no, religion isn't necessary. I think that preserving one's species is fairly well wired into us and the creation of systems as many people as possible (say...a system of justice where justice is blind, and yet punishment can still be handed out.)
On a related note, I notice that the more intelligent people around me tend to be more secular. And generally, so are the better educated. I'm sure there are exceptions...but can education act as a social moderator in subduing and harnessing human passions? I say yes.

By TheTachyix (not verified) on 20 Aug 2004 #permalink

We could ask, if it was somehow proven (hypothetically, as I know of no such proof nor can I imagine one) that there is no God and no possibility of eternal punishment for our actions, would human behavior toward each other become markedly worse?

The problem needs to be unpacked much more. There are many religious traditions which posit a god, but do not have an eternal punishment (or, for that matter, an eternal reward). So it's not about religion versus irreligion--it's about one brand of religion against others (or none).

Barna has this interesting poll that tries to find major differences between believers and non-believers. The only groups that "stand out" are those on the margins: evangelicals and atheists.

For instance, evangelical and non-evangelical born again Christians were the two segments least likely to engage in recycling. Just half of evangelicals and 47% of non-evangelical born agains recycle, compared to more than six out of ten adults who are either atheists/agnostics, adherents of non-Christian faiths, or notional Christians.

While the mass media commonly portray evangelicals as rabidly involved in politics, the survey showed that even though evangelicals were the group most likely to discuss political matters with other people, they were the segment least likely to contact a political official to express their views on an issue. (Past research by Barna has demonstrated that evangelicals are the faith group most likely to register to vote and most likely to vote.)

The study also indicated that even though the Bible and churches encourage fasting for religious reasons, the people most likely to engage in religious fasts are adherents of non-Christian faiths. In fact, the non-Christian people of faith are twice as likely as Christians to engage in fasting.

Atheists and agnostics are sometimes incorrectly portrayed as people who have no interest in moral issues. They survey showed that this group is just as likely to discuss moral conditions and issues as they are to bring up matters related to sports, parenting or politics in personal conversations.

Despite teaching that focuses on the meaning of good stewardship, Christians are more likely to invest their money in lottery tickets than are non-Christians. Overall, 15% of born again and 23% of notional Christians purchased lottery tickets in a typical week, compared to just 10% of other-faith adherents and 12% of atheists/agnostics.

We already inhabit a society in which most "Christians" are believers in name only--and yet society hasn't fallen apart. In other words, those happy atheists predicting the demise of religion got it partly right: dogma survives, and even flourishes, but it's Dogma Lite.

A fairly effective way of looking at this issue is that the more professional ideologues tend to stick to a inflexible position, the bigger the skeletons are in their closet. Take a look at what happened to the Two Jimmies (i.e., Bakker and Swaggart) when somebody got a look at the man behind their respective curtains. Granted, they weren't nearly as well-educated as Bloom was, but the knee-jerk moralizing is still there. And I suspect that when the real dirt gets out on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (not that there isn't plenty of it already), they'll make Jim and Jimmy look like mere pikers in the public debauchery sweepstakes.

By Chris Krolczyk (not verified) on 20 Aug 2004 #permalink

Now I'm intellectually curious. It's often thought that religion is a stabilizing moral influence in Society (capital S, as always). What's the positive evidence? People seem to behave morally (and immorally) despite professed religious beliefs. Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the theistic moralist?

My understanding is that the nation of Israel has the highest percentage of atheists of any society on Earth. I seem to recall that it's something like 70-80%. A truly staggering number, if true. Do Israeli citizen commit an above average number of crimes?

Look at it the other way around. How many atheists are there in prison? Very few I think. In fact, I believe self-professed Christians are over-represented in the prison population.

The first poster here asserts that fear of hell is the only thing keeping his family from being an armed gang. But could it be that cradle-to-grave indoctrination in Chrisianity is what kept them from developing an interest in, and capacity for, abstract thought? Might Christianity have actually retarded their moral development?

By Perry Willis (not verified) on 20 Aug 2004 #permalink

>>>"[H]ow many of our own founding fathers believed that religion was useful as a control on human passions regardless of whether it is true or not."