Michael Kadish
At 02:38 AM 10/11/1998 +0200:Dear Sir, I am an American student in an overseas program at Ben Gurion University in Be'er er Sheeva, Israel. As you may know from your former coworkers at Tel Aviv University, your book, Closing of the American Mind is used as a text book in the literature classes. We are expected to write papers on your work, and if it does not put you out of your way too much, I would appreciate if you could clarify yourself in a few places, specifically in the "Books" chapter.
I appreciate the sentiments described for the most part, I agree that most people do not read enough, nor appreciate it enough, and I furthermore agree that feminism has created a dilemma in the understanding of great works. However, I did a double take at the line on page sixty-five which reads, "And as for racism, it just did not play a role in the classic literature, at least in the forms in which we are concerned about it today, and no great work of literature is ordinarily considered racist."
I could not help but think at that instant of a good ten books that have been considered racist. (Perhaps these are not, in your eyes literature; this is more than possible. I have never been good at differentiating between regular fiction, and "literature.") Granted, some of the allegations are a bit silly. Huckleberry Finn being banned for use of the word of "nigger," should not in my mind be considered racist, for it is nothing more than using the language of the people, I also agree that Macbeth's critics among the new occult religion of Wickan, could be somewhat ignored. Candide's anti-Semitism is a bit harder to overlook, with "A Christmas Carol," slightly more, and The Merchant of Venice more than that. I think that by the time you get to The Jew of Malta, you have completely stepped into blatant racism. 1001 Arabian Nights, stories of the Grimm brothers, Canterbury Tales, or even The New Testament have minute but distinct and rather blatant sections of anti-Semitism couched in seemingly inoffensive stories and morals. It's not just anti-Semitism, though it seems more prevalent, perhaps due to the fact that Jews were the general scapegoat in Europe. I think that Othello could insult blacks, but I think they are more rightfully, in my opinion, angered by Heart of Darkness or Titus Andronicus.
Each of the books by Jules Verne (Again if this isn't "literature," I have to apologize. It is listed as a classic to say the least.) uses nothing but the stereotypes of the nationalities of its characters to define their character.
Lazarillo De Tormes, Ghosts, Canterbury Tales, and the preShakesperian Romeo And Juliet are all horribly anti-Catholic and/or anti-church.
I'm not saying that I despised any of these books, I enjoyed each of them. However, I can not comprehend your statement. I'm sure that if I was better read I could find more examples of racism. I have not read a complete book of Kipling, but from what I have, it assumes Indians to be lesser peoples. I cannot in fact think of a classic that goes through the effort of introducing a minority as a character without using its stereotypes as plot material.
The other part of your book that I would be grateful if you could clarify comes on page 67, when you discuss evil. You write: "They have no idea of evil; they doubt its existence." I like to think that in the ten years since you have published this book, there are a great more amongst us who fully appreciate the concept of relativism. It is not a new idea, Kurt Vonnegon is your age. I personally think that it's growing, and am glad. It is in fact my opinion, such as you wrote, "that there are evil deeds, not evil people." I would go on to say that the deeds only become "evil" in retrospect. Even then, however, it can be rationalized. There is a reason of why people do X, Y, and Z, and it comes from a coherent psychological pattern in their actions. Unless I have completely mispegged you, I do not think that you truly believe that the devil, or some "Dark Force," is guiding them. If you do believe strongly in the presence of the Devil, than I ask you to look at Milton. In Paradise Lost, though hardly the authoritative book on God and the Devil, it is coherent and understandable why Lucifer takes the path to betray God. If you can comprehend why it was done, you are on the first step towards Relativism.
You could have been in that position. Are you so sure that you would not have done it? If not then are you not in fact evil?
An insane person cannot control their actions, and thus cannot be considered truly evil. Any sane person's actions can be rationalized. Though you apparently did not agree, you printed Nixon and Hitler as the poster children of evil. I do not believe that Vietnam was a good idea, but one can understand Nixon's idea that we should go in full force and get it done with. If that had worked as it should have, he would have done what was necessary for the country. It seems leaders during war are only evil if they lose. It was only due to the fact, that beyond his control, the plan did not work Afterwards, when he kept covering himself up until so much of what he had done wrong was apparent, that the public could call him evil. They blamed him for the deaths, but they could not attack him until his reactions that, quite honestly, many people would have made.
You cannot blame the quarterback Sir, if you were also under the opinion that a fourth down pass would have caught the other team off guard.
Being a Jew, it is not so easy to rationalize Hitler, and I certainly do not believe he is right. However, this is what he was taught to believe. This was the conclusion he came to. Mein Kemf's disorganized writings may in fact may make this letter look downright elegant and well written, but he only went about setting up his Utopia. He did not personally kill six million people, he merely initiated a system to help his people. (One cannot be to sure these days, but I do assume you do believe that the Holocaust did in fact transpire.) His citizens, being told to think with their hearts, not with their minds, were following orders, doing what had now become "good," and it seems cannot be blamed. He set up a plan, and had good intentions. It would seem neither was to blame. However the action is considered evil.
If you accept Nietzche, then every person is looking out for themselves, and nobody really cares about anybody else. (In an extreme nutshell.) Then, by that account, everybody's evil. If everybody's evil, then it's truly universal, has no opposites or degrees, and then does not exist. Or, perhaps the only decent thing to do would be to destroy everything, but then we would be no better than Hitler. (Paradox ensues.)
Forget Nietzche I said this before, but allow me to explain again If there is any one action that makes you bad, or evil, can it be said that you could never do it? If the circumstances push and push you, and everybody else for that matter, will reach that level. It's a matter of luck and situation you have not reached this level of "bad, or "evil." If however, the playing fields were to be truly leveled, then, everybody's evil. If everybody's evil, then it's s truly universal, has no opposites or degrees, and then does not exist. Or, perhaps the only decent thing to do would be to destroy everything, but then we would be no better than Hitler. (Paradox ensues.)
I believe that the whole notion of evil comes from mankind's use of stories. Stories have villains, and we look for them in real life. The problem is that life is not as objective as stories. A story is just one segment of one person's s life. The Iagos or the demons, or any handlebar mustached villain that you name, when placed in a three dimensional world have a perspective, and an understanding, that an author, with a point to get across, does not see fit to mention. Wilder, in The Importance of being Ernest directly mocks your position when she tells him that she is curious, because she has never met an evil person before. It's rather easy to say that a person you personally know is evil. If you dig, though, you will find out otherwise.
Look Sir, I do not intend to convince you that I am correct. I merely write my opinion, and I desire your rebuttal. I do not want to say in my papers that you ignored obvious facts. Being a professor on the Committee for Social Thought, you presumably gave a great deal of thought to what you wrote, and would merely appreciate some qualifications.
I realize also that at the time of your writing of this book, I was not fully aware of the situation around me, having been just ten years old at the time, and if there is something I misunderstand about the previous decade let me know. If furthermore your opinions have changed, or even if you feel that the students of today are more to your liking, please answer me as such. I am quite certain that you have been asked these two questions since you wrote the book, but having not been able to acquire a clarification, I apologize, but must ask you directly.
Thank you very much for your time,
Michael Kadish
Badguy4
Badguyfor
ICQ # 8181671
"Giving up smoking is easy; I've done it hundreds of times." -- Mark Twain
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVI am sorry to have to inform you that Allan Bloom died in October 1992. The University of Chicago forwards his mail, electronic & other, to me as his colleague & former literary executor, but of course I cannot presume to speak in his name in responding to your questions. Instead let me refer you first to his other books, _Shakespeare's Politics_, _Giants & Dwarfs_, & _Love & Friendship_, especially as they may bear on some of your concerns. In his essays on "Othello" & "The Merchant of Venice" in _Shakespeare's Politics_ he makes the case that they are thoughtful considerations of the problems involved in the relations between blacks & whites & between Jews & Gentiles, rather than racist diatribes. Similarly in his essay on "Romeo & Juliet" in _Love & Friendship_, he argues that it present a serious critique of Christianity or the church rather than mere prejudice. Not every critical thought on these subjects ought to be stigmatized as antisemitic, racist, or anti-Christian. I am not aware of his having written on many of the other works you mention. While many works of classic literature have come under attack as racist in the decade since he wrote the sentence you question, the puzzle remains that only with the rise of academic feminism did "the canon" come under general attack.
As to relativism & evil, I can't think offhand of any of his other writings to refer you to. He was familiar of course with the classic argument of Socrates (Machiavel's in _The Jew of Malta_ too, by the way!) that all evil is from ignorance & therefore not fully voluntary or blameworthy In my own name, I would say only that I do not think it is necessary to say that I would not have done something or been like someone under the same circumstances in order to say that something or someone is evil. On the contrary, I think I have done some evil things & confronted evil in myself. I do not understand how your version of relativism serves to guide you in your own choices (I assume you do experience the making of choices as to how to live & what sort of person to become.) Retrospectively someone else might explain your choices by your circumstances, but you know you choose & can't avoid responsibility for pursuing good & avoiding evil in that way.
This I can say only on my behalf, not Professor Bloom's.
best wishes in your education,
Nathan Tarcov,Professor
Committee on Social Thought & Department of Political Science
In his essay "Books," the late Dr. Allan Bloom writes, "[The present generation has] no idea of evil, they doubt its existence�.Hitler is just another abstraction, an item to fill up an empty category�.Perhaps they believe that evil deeds are performed by persons who, if they got the proper therapy, would not do them again---that there are evil deeds, not evil people1." From the context of this essay, the tone of the book, and his general disregard for the youth of America, it is quite clear that Dr. Bloom does not agree with this position. He ends his point, and his essay on the same page with, "Thus, the most common student view lacks an awareness of the depths as well as the heights, and hence lacks gravity." However, a problem that many of the abundantly numbered disciples of Bloom face is that he did not go ahead to name in this essay what he considers evil. Nor is evil unmasked in the rest of the book, nor in any of the late professor's works.2 What did he see that was evil, that his students had ignored? Did he have anything in mind?
Magazine Description Allure is a popular monthly magazine geared toward professional modern women, with a focus on beauty, health, and fashion. Each issue is packed with beauty and hairstyling tips, the latest fashion trends, and the scoop on what the stars are wearing.
I searched through three books by Allan Bloom, I will admit that I did not read them in depth, but by going page by page looking for key words, and by use of the index, I did come up empty. Giants and Dwarfs, The Closing of the American Mind, and The Republic of Plato, all mentioned evil, how to deal with evil, what to think of evil, the dangers of evil, but never does it ever say that X, or anything Xesque was evil or bad.
Confirmed by Tarcov's response, no concrete answer as to what he thought of as evil is in print. The best that we can do is to take sources that concern him, and postulate. Any of the various theories on evil brought forth here, may have been his views. Since any of them could have been, the point is to show that any of these possibilities that I can find will not float. This is not an attack on Dr. Bloom, it is an attack on the notion of evil that he had left open. The only ways to prove any of "his" theories wrong would be to either find a hole that would allow everything to be evil, or to show that Dr. Bloom, were it to have possibly been his opinion, would have overlooked a crucial point in the theory, which would have made himself evil, thus he no longer would be in a position to judge. Again, there is no text that shows what he himself thought, we have to examine the possibilities we can find.
The closest I could come to his opinion in his writing, was a few lines from The Republic of Plato. This book3 is Plato's The Republic, that, to quote the cover of the book, "translated, with Notes and an Interpretive Essay, by Allan Bloom." I find that the fact that the answers came out of this book a bit ironic, due to the Greeks' general beliefs. Ancient Greece interestingly taught an direct link between "right and wrong" and "good and bad". They were taught that to be good, one had to do right, respect the gods and to be moderate, wrong and bad, were the opposite, and that was relatively it. Every person went to Hades (Hell), and "demons," by Allan Bloom's translation, was the universal afterlife, regardless of good or bad.4 Heaven was a finite situation, limited in pleasures. It needed philosophy, according to Plato, to be fully appreciated.
5Three parts of the book in particularly struck me as relative here, on the subject of evil. Plato, according to page 70 of Bloom's book, stated: I suppose we'll say that what both poets and prose writers6 say concerning the most important things about human beings is bad-that many happy men are unjust, and many wretched one's [sic] just, and that doing justice is profitable if one gets away with it, but justice is someone else's good and one's own loss-- [is wrong.]" By that Socrates, or Plato, or possibly Bloom, states that there is good and bad, but that the cynical view, which states that "good" has no effect on the person who acts on it is misleading. A person who does good, finds it their own reward and the person who warns of the negative reverberations of doing good deeds, the discussion goes on to say, is therefore bad.
The discussion in the book turns to the question, by section 330a, whether or not a person is morally able to, in some circumstances, break laws. In Bloom's ongoing interpretive essay, he himself writes on page 315, "If everyone had to decide whether the law properly apply in each law that arises, the political result would be anarchy." It would seem then, that to most men, in Bloom's eyes, good, is just following the laws. There may be a few exceptions, but he continues on the page to say that to figure out when these exceptions where occurring would be "a task beyond the capacities of energies of most men."
I don't think it's a surprise to anybody who has read Allan Bloom, to hear him say one should always follow the laws, and not try to deviate.
The third example is the clearest. By page 301, Socrates is beginning the conclusion of his arguments, and says, "From this he will be able to draw a conclusion and choose - in looking off towards the nature of the soul-between the worse and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it towards becoming more unjust, and better the one that leads it to become juster. [sic] He will let everything else go�.He must go to Hades [Hell] adamantly holding this opinion."
Thus, there are three opinions of good and bad. Two of which are not truly from the mind of Bloom, and even the middle one which is, it could be said that he was merely following Plato's logic.
However, Bloom doesn't tell us what evil is, so we have to assume the possibility that Bloom did agree with these notions. If he did believe that "a person who told others that doing good would have negative consequences" was evil, then when Allan Bloom mocks the desire to sensitize males, and says that "To attempt the latter [stopping men from being concerned only with themselves] is both tyrannical and ineffective, a true political or social order requires the soul to be like a Gothic cathedral, with selfish stresses and strains helping to hold it up,"7 is he not advocating hubris? If hubris, the selfishness that was a sin to the Greeks, and most every society, is being advocated or allowed by Bloom, then it would appear that Bloom is evil. (Even if readers do not agree with the logic, I am sure that many would agree with some of these conclusions.)
Or, if breaking the law is almost never permissible, and deciding when it would be, is "a task beyond the capacities of energies of most men," then it would seem that the entire position of Allan Bloom as The Angry White Male (anti-political correctness stance) is evil? He is intentionally violating the unwritten laws that society makes. The point that he thinks the certain laws are silly is irrelevant, because to judge the laws is the "task beyond the capacities of energies of most men."
Of course, this could completely different, if he thinks himself able to handle "a task beyond the capacities of energies of most men." Whether because Allan Bloom is a philosopher, or because Allan Bloom, is a professor, or because he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or due to whatever circumstances, let's give Prof. Bloom this ability. His actions would be permissible, he would then be the wise philosopher who could guide the people. If that were the case, than I wish that this wise philosopher would have written something on good and evil. Regardless, Bloom, by translating, editing, explaining, and spinning, created a work for the masses that "prepare[s] the way for philosophizing�[and is] a living teacher that makes his students think"8 Bloom teaches the same masses to believe in such a position as held by him. This does not make him, by any definition, evil, but, by not teaching precisely what evil was he was doing his part to create chaos because as Plato said, "If everyone had to decide whether the law properly apply in each law that arises, the political result would be anarchy." If Bloom has the skill that is above and beyond that of normal men that allows him the ability to foresee the consequences of the philosophies then surely he saw the result of not writing in black and white what constituted his evil. The result then is, either he does not possess this ability, and according to Plato should be ignored as a philosopher, or Bloom intentionally strove to see his followers live in chaos. If that's the case, it would seem, that he should once again be ignored.
If Dr. Bloom agreed with my third reference to good and evil from The Republic of Plato, ("good" is what makes a person more just, "bad" makes a person less just), and went to Hell firmly keeping his beliefs, then once again he created a problematic belief. Bloom's major position on society, at least what he is being remembered for, especially on literature is his unacceptance of feminism. In fact, Allan Bloom's writings, showing his unacceptance of feminism, and "the attacks on the canon on the charges of racism" that followed have garnished him a spot on David Duke's webpage.
Perhaps Duke is misusing or misquoting Prof. Bloom, but assuming that equality is just, and knowing that Bloom did not agree with equality, at the very least, to the degree of equality of gender, (See my letter above.) he then took the "worse" path, which would make him bad or evil.
Again, Bloom, if he could tell us, might say that those were not his views. Perhaps the views of Bloom's prot?g?, Nathan Tarcov, agree the views of the deceased mentor. To reiterate Prof. Tarcov's views:
In my own name, I would say only that I do not think it is necessary to say that I would not have done something or been like someone under the same circumstances in order to say that something or someone is evil. On the contrary, I think I have done some evil things & confronted evil in myself. I do not understand how your version of relativism serves to guide you in your own choices (I assume you do experience the making of choices as to how to live & what sort of person to become.) Retrospectively someone else might explain your choices by your circumstances, but you know you choose & can't avoid responsibility for pursuing good & avoiding evil in that way.
The negatives here gave me a headache while working through them, so here is what Prof. Tarcov is saying,
1) He would not intentionally put himself in a position where he would be able to say whether someone is evil.
2) There is evil, he feels that he has found himself doing evil.
3) Other people, after the fact may declare what you have done as evil, but only you know the truth.
4) This may or may not be Allan Bloom's opinion.
If these do not represent what Bloom's views were, then fine, but this may be the closest we can get. If these were Dr. Bloom's views, then there is a quality which I agree with. Even if this is just Tarcov's view, there is a limited quality which I agree with. A person, after the fact, may declare an action of another as having been evil (this is #3), but that in no way makes that action evil, nor does it mean that it was evil.
If this is the case, then Bloom's annoyance at the fact that his students could only name Hitler, when asked who was evil,9 seems unjustified; no mortal third person can really know what, or more importantly, who, is, or was, evil. Tarcov, by saying even says that he "would say only that [he does] not think it is necessary to say that [he] would not have done something or been like someone under the same circumstances in order to say that something or someone is evil," even manages to clumsily say that he would not want to be able to know who or what is evil.
With Tarcov indicating that evil is not something to be judged by an outsider, combined by Bloom's contempt with the students who could not pinpoint examples of evil, the possibility that Bloom would have agreed with his prot?g? grows dimmer. In fact, I don't think I need a Ouiji board to know that Tarcov's mentor would not have agreed with this.
But, perhaps, Bloom may have agreed with part of Tarcov's view, let's look at Tarcov's other point. To try to prove that evil exists, by saying, "Oh, I've done it," is a gutsy approach, not taken by many. He is sacrificing himself for his teacher's theological beliefs. It's noble, but it doesn't answer many questions, and it still leaves a few too many problems. If evil is in all of us, something all of us must conquer, the response to "Who's evil?" gives two possibilities. Either, the answer is "everybody," in which case, Bloom's "evil people" would be redundant, or the other possibility would be "anybody who has not conquered the evil within them." It would seem though, that nobody has escaped the inclination to do evil, and if anybody can fall prey, to any degree, then they once again anybody gets the black mark of EVIL.
Again, that probably wasn't Bloom's quote on evil. There is one other source that deals with evil and Dr. Bloom. A Doctor Allan Bloom, from the University of Chicago, plays the nationally respected opinion on psychopaths in The Silence of the Lambs. The book was not written by Bloom, but by Thomas Harris. The book is not dedicated to Allan Bloom, and the character, Allan Bloom is never seen in the book, though he is quoted by name, and used as the expert. I have not seen a mention of the connection between the two on any publication\book\webpage, and I am thus on my own for interpretations.
To be fair, there is a chance that Dr. Bloom was used as a foil for Dr. Lector. The only time we hear Allan Bloom speak, he is being broadcast over the television, he is never with any of the main characters. Dr. Lector speaks, and has the omniscient narrator in his mind at times. The two doctors are used as a contrast. Both are given a great deal of respect, but Bloom is respected by the population at large, whereas Lector has lost the public's support, despite his possibly superior insight.
The complex situation of the plot is not important here, but when the head of the FBI is trying to get a list from the hospital to come up with suspects, he goes to the hospital for a list of patients with an unusual common denominator. The hospital does not want to release at the information, then the head of the FBI lies about the source of the idea. Immediately, the head of the hospital is amazed at the big guns being brought in. "'Allan Bloom endorsed that?'"11 Bloom is simply given a great deal of respect, and is the "expert." Later on, on page 210, the head of the hospital discovers the truth, and asks, "'You let me think that Allan Bloom authored that little theory, but it was Hannibal Lector, wasn't it?'" Bloom may be the expert, but it would seem that Bloom was the one who really knew better.
Throughout the book, Clarence, who has a background in psychology, visits Dr. Lector in the maximum security Mental Asylum, and they each, openly, try to get a complete mental psychological profiles of the other. So, more interesting to me then, is at one point in one of the many discussions, Clarence talks to Dr. Lector about describing people through books, specifically, Dr. Bloom's. Dr. Lector replies, "'Life's too slippery for books, anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.'"12 That could be considered a contrast to "Without literature, no such observations are possible and the fine art of comparison is lost."13
There is a chance then, that Allan Bloom did not have reason to approve of this book, nor its philosophies. However, he is given respect. The above examples were examples of devils advocate. Desperate to put Bloom's reaction on television after one of the attacks by Buffalo Bill, they played an interview he had given three weeks before. "He didn't say much at all, but he was known to be an expert probably the expert on the subject, and the network wanted to show his face."14 Bloom is never attacked nor proven wrong; so if the book is using him as a foil, it is certainly not an example of the "right" approach versus the "wrong" one. It may be the concept of psychology explained from an outsider versus psychology explained from an insider. More probable, in my opinion, Bloom is being praised by a student of his in the student's book, just like in The Republic. There is Bloom, and the other side�that gets a rather inhuman portrayal.
The point of this essay was to determine what Bloom had believed evil was. He was never clear on this issue, never stated it outright in print. The only way to counter the unstated beliefs then, is to accept some of the assumptions. The Republic may or may not have shared his views, Tarcov may or may not share what was Bloom's views. If you do not buy those possiblilties, I only have one more. The Silence of the Lambs talks about evil. It mentions Allan Bloom. There is a small chance that the book was written to be against Bloom's views. However, the possibility of the book being written with respect to Bloom is too important to overlook.
Allan Bloom's skepticism towards the students who "believe that evil deeds are performed by persons who, if they got the proper therapy, would not do them again-that there are evil deeds, not evil people,"15 seems to be justified by the actions of characters that resemble a Hannibal Lector or a Buffalo Bill. Early on, page 20 to be exact, Hannibal discusses whether he is evil when he says, "'Nothing happened to me Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism�.Nothing is ever anybody's fault, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil?'" So, to proceed with this concept evil happens. Evil is the people who murder, know they're murdering, are sane, and don't care about the murders, or at least such a person is evil.
Whether or not there are any Dr. Lectors in the world, I don't know. However the Dr. Lector in the book makes an interesting point on the next page. A cynical man, he enjoys reading the newspaper, and looking for disasters that hurt the people whom one would expect to be assisted by the a divine hand, rather than hurt by it. "'I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The fa?ade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it?'" He goes on to point that "tornadoes and flamingoes all come from the same place." It's often taught, especially in religious Sunday schools, that God will help and hurt people. A rather universally accepted notion however, says that it's bad, or evil, to intentionally hurt somebody, especially if that person didn't do anything to deserve the punishment. Lector then, is putting the same conditions on God, and God often (often enough for a "collection," anyway) easily offers examples of Himself hurting the innocent.
Wait, God's evil? That kind of kills the whole notion of good and evil. It shows another hole in Bloom's argument, anyway, if the above theory was shared by him. If God is evil, and we are in His image, as it says in Genesis, then we are doing nothing wrong, and furthermore, to be divine is evil. This goes on to create strange results. God is evil, God creates our destiny, God wants us to be like him, so if the bible is His, then Hell is much better than its reputation, with Heaven being overrated. Or, the other possibility I see is that we are the victims of The Ultimate Sadist, all of us being placed in some strange this universe while He's striving from our torment. To give Him a little bit more respect, we can lessen that to: morality may mean nothing, he imposed these rules upon us just to watch our reactions to His seemingly random stimuli, because, as we're told, "God works in mysterious ways."
If it's all a reversal, as in the first possible conclusion, then all of morality\the bible\religion\humanity is really just a reverse psychology test-- and the winners are the ones who reverse the most. If it's one of the other two conclusions then good has no recourse whatsoever, and we should live "evil" lives, in our own self interest. I think that these extensions, when presented to Dr. Bloom, assuming the premises were believed by him, would make him rethink his position.
If Bloom doesn't believe in God, there are still holes in the logic. Without God, one is evil when he violates Kantian concepts of good and evil, and does not care that he is destroying society. The late Dr. Bloom, it appears, could have potentially agreed with the fictitious Dr. Lector on this Kantian approach. Dr. Bloom may well be Atheist or Deist, his writings indicate that he supports the conformity created by religion, but he never states his respect for God qua God. Dr. Lector's "collection of church collapses" may be his way of showing that there is no God.
This then, may be the closest we can find in a book that concerns him. But, as discussed in the book with Lector's quote of "I happened," Lector was misdiagnosed by Dr. Bloom. According to Bloom's unnamed book, Lector is merely a dillusional psychopath, yet we are told, and we see, that he is in fact a completely rational human being. This would then be one of the illusive coherent incorrigible evildoers that would prove Bloom's "Books" theory correct. Silence of the Lambs explains just how scary the concept it is. Even somebody who expects this evil to exist is caught off guard. It also says however, that this elusive unreformable evildoer would be such a rarity that those who would be expecting it wouldn't be able to. If there is Bloom's evil, and Bloom misses it, then he is no better than his students.
We will never know Allan Bloom's true beliefs on the matter until some of his missing writings are brought forth. As it is, Dr. Bloom insulted his students for being unable to tell him an example of evil. Bloom could not tell, or at least did not tell us what he felt it was. I have looked through three sources that may have contained the answer, I have shown each to be off in suh a way that would either cause everything, God, or Bloom evil, any of which would destroy the argument.
Evil remains a myth.
