the theoretical life

So only in the past couple of months, and thanks to a fairly recently developing interest in philosophy, have I been thinking about such grandiose ideas as the purpose of life and knowledge. It all started, I'll admit, with the book Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom.

 

He expresses a lot of interesting ideas in the book. I agree wholeheartedly with some and disagree violently with others, but it was the first book I've read in a long time that really made me think. I read the whole thing twice, struggling to follow his arguments and seeking out some of his sources, but it was as if a door had been opened for me. He dedicates a large part of the book to an intellectual history, starting with Plato and following the development of philosophy in Europe, the radical break that was the Enlightenment and its effect on the founding fathers' doctrine of human rights. He then moves back to Europe and writes a confusing but intriguing history of the effects of Continental philosophy on America. His framework is a discussion of the state of American higher education, and it is in the last section, where he steps to the defense of the intellect, where he is most compelling.

 

Anyway, he offers an eloquent defense of the life of the philosopher and the intellectual, arguing that they have an invaluable place in society. He continuously hearkens back to the great minds of the past, and asserts that it is just because we have removed the classics and rigor from our curriculum and forgotten these great thinkers that we haven't seen anyone rise to rival them in our own time. The university, he believes, is meant to be a repository of all the accumulated knowledge, with philosophy, as the study of knowledge and the discipline that addresses life's most critical questions, at the head. Instead, philosophy and the classics are languishing, forgotten, thrown in with the social sciences that struggle from their inability to define themselves. In the meantime, the natural sciences, which never have to justify their existence, flourish separately, with no concern for the other disciplines. It is this radical divide, he argues, that is at the heart of the problem of the university.

 

He addresses the accusation that the life of the intellectual, a life spent thinking, is frivolous in the face of such real problems as war. Devoting oneself to thinking seems to lack utility, which is the American standard for value, and even the academics themselves have come to doubt themselves, and the usefulness of their enterprise. So, the universities are no longer unified and confident repositories of knowledge full of models of the theoretical life, but rather fragmented and uncertain, encouraging specialization and doing little to teach students how to think or live.

 

That defense of the theoretical life, of the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake, was probably the thing that most affected me. In my first few years of university, I admired my professors deeply, wanted to be an academic myself and had great respect for the mission of the university. At some point, however, that started to peter out, and I began to doubt whether all that I was learning was really preparing me for anything. By the end the life of my mind, so to speak, was practically dead.

 

But Allan Bloom has almost singlehandedly revived it. I'm thinking again, and what I'm thinking about lately is the purpose of life. More on that later.