Flowers Bloom (7d)—Emile Blooms

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Flowers Bloom."

One year ago on Round and Square (11 May 2011)—Seinfeld Ethnography: George as Marine Biologist

[a] JJR RF

I am supposed to give a series of lectures this week on Allan Bloom, the obscure University of Chicago professor who wrote a blockbuster bestseller on education precisely twenty-five years ago. At this time in 1987, The Closing of the American Mind was climbing the New York Times bestseller list. I am going to try a new approach. Instead of posting what I have written (I do a lot of that here on Round and Square already), I am going to post some of what I have been reading in preparation for the lectures. Consider this week's posts—which will appear under various topics on Round and Square, ranging from "Beginnings" and "Flowers Bloom" to "Displays of Authenticity" and "Endings"—as lecture preparation. 

And, just for the record, regular readers probably already know that I will post the actual lectures not long after they have been given. This week's posts focus on the preparation process, and tackling Allan Bloom's arguments should get your blood pumping. Today's text comes from the foreword to his 1978 translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. Rousseau considered his treatise to be a definitive and authentic argument for crafting "natural man" who can negotiate the ferocious pitfalls of civil society.

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5

 ***  ***

We finished yesterday's post with a remarkable paragraph that bears repeating. You see, even if, in the end, I disagreed with many of the arguments Allan Bloom made about political philosophy, the Western canon, and the dangers of multiculturalism...even if I had rejected everything...I would still hold him up as one of the most significant figures in mid-twentieth century intellectual life.

Pourquoi?

[b] Remarkable RF

Bloom's translation of Plato's Republic is excellent, and—as we saw the other day—his philosophy of translation has had a profound influence on me. It is not that I am particularly comfortable with his idea of "literal translation," but the pedagogical force behind it is something that is worthy of deep consideration. That is one of the reasons why I am focusing on Bloom and his teaching these days. It is worth noting, as well, that there is another dimension to his translation of the Republic. His "Interpretive Essay" is one of the more thoughtful reflections on Plato's work ever written. We'll address more of that in the course of the next month or so.

There is something bigger, though. "Anybody" (meaning any deeply-learned person with a powerful grasp of Greek, English and political theory, as well as the dedication to spend the better part of a decade wrestling with the text)...anybody could have done another Republic translation. Rousseau's Emile is different. Unlike the same author's Confessions and the Social Contract, very few American readers were familiar with one of the greatest works ever written—a "story" of raising a child (little Emile) from birth until marriage. Allan Bloom shows his genius for understanding the most formative texts of Western civilization by placing these two works side-by-side. "Anybody" (see above) could translate the Republic. Only a Francophilic genius could pick the Emile out of obscurity and raise it to the level it deserves among American readers. Let's look again at yesterday's paragraph before moving on to the foreword to the English translation of the Emile.

          Finally, in terms of my own experience of these last twenty-five years,
          after the Republic I translated Rousseau's Emile, the greatest modern
          book on education. Rousseau was one of the great readers of Plato, and
          from my time on that work I gained an even greater respect for the Republic.  
          Emile is its natural companion, and Rousseau proved his greatness by
          entering the lists in worthy combat with it. He shows that Plato articulated
          first and best all the problems, and he himself differs only with respect
          to some of the solutions. If one takes the two books together, one has the
          basic training necessary for the educational wars. And wars they are, now
          that doctrine tells us that these two books are cornerstones of an outlived
          canon. So, I conclude, the Republic is always useful to students who read it,
          but now more than ever.

[c] Henri...nature RF

Something is going on here, and it is profound. These two books need to be read together, and they matter. A lot. Take a look at the foreword to Allan Bloom's translation of Rousseau's Emile. The sentence deserves underlining. It says a great deal about Bloom, as does the final paragraph (read it all of the way down the page). Then read the whole book. Then learn French. That's what Bloom says.

     This translation is meant
     to give the reader a
     certain confidence that
     he is thinking about
     Rousseau and not about
     me, as well as to inspire
     in him a disconcerting
     awareness that, to be
     sure, he must learn French....

Foreword to Rousseau's Emile

Allan Bloom (1978)

[d] Captain Nimes-o RF

When I wrote the preface to my translation of the Republic, I did not have to argue the importance of the book; I had to justify only the need for a new translation when there were so many famous existing versions. With Emile the situation is the reverse: there is general agreement that the only available translation is inadequate in all important respects, while the book itself is not held to be of great significance and has little appeal to contemporary taste. However, this is not the place to make a case for Emile. I can only hope that this translation will contribute to a reconsideration of this most fundamental and necessary book.

The translation aims above all, at accuracy. Of course, no intelligible translation could be strictly literal and simply bad English would misrepresent Rousseau's very good French. Style cannot be separated from substance. But unless the translator himself were a genius of Rousseau's magnitude, the attempt to imitate the felicity of his language would fail and would distort and narrow his meaning. One would have to look at what one can say well in English rather than at Rousseau's thought. He is a precise and careful writer. He speaks of a real world of which we all have experience, no matter what our language. He, above all writers, thought he spoke to all men. The translator must concentrate on making his English point to the same things Rousseau's French points to. And this is best done by finding the closest equivalents to his words and sticking to them, even when that causes inconvenience.

[e] Eglise translation RF

Every translation is, of course, in some sense an interpretation; and thus there can be no mechanical rules for translation. The question, then, is what disposition guides the translator: whether the impossibility of simple literalness is a fact against which he struggles and a source of dissatisfaction with himself, or whether he uses it as an excuse to display his virtuosity. As with most choices, the right one is least likely to afford opportunities for flattering one's vanity. The translator of a great work should revere his text and recognize that there is much in it he cannot understand. His translation should try to make others able to understand what he cannot understand, which means he often must prefer a dull ambiguity to a brilliant resolution. He is a messenger, not a plenipotentiary, and proves his fidelity to his great masters by reproducing what seems in them to the contemporary eye wrong, outrageous, or incomprehensible, for therein may lie what is most important for us. He resists the temptation to make the book attractive or relevant, for its relevance may lie in its appearing irrelevant to current thought. If books are to be liberating, they must seem implausible in the half-light of our plausibilities which we no longer know how to question. An old book must appear to be old-fashioned, and a translator cannot lessen the effort required of the reader, he can only make it possible for the reader to make that effort.

[f] 1759 RF

Therefore the translator will try to imitate the text, insofar as possible following sentence structure; he will never vary terms Rousseau does not vary, but where Rousseau repeats a particular French word, the translator will repeat its English equivalent; he will never choose English words whose origins are in later thought, even though Rousseau may have been the inspiration of that thought. This is what I have tried to do, but I have often failed. A verb of capital significance like sentir and its various derivatives—such as sentiment, sensible, sensibilité—simply defied reduction to Rousseau's unity of usage. Sometimes I have had to use "feel" and its derivatives and sometimes "sense" and its derivatives; and a very few times I have had to use an English word with an entirely different root (always trying to link it with "sense" or "feel"). On the other hand, I have been fortunate with other important words like nature and its derivatives; and the reader can be sure that if they occur in the translation, they are in the original French and vice versa. This translation is meant to give the reader a certain confidence that he is thinking about Rousseau and not about me, as well as to inspire in him a disconcerting awareness that, to be sure, he must learn French....

I undertook this translation with a selfish motive; I thought it the best way to familiarize myself with a book which was very alien to me but which seemed to contain hidden treasures. One of the results of this project has been a new sense of what it means to be a teacher and of the peculiar beauty of the relationship between teacher and student. Only Socrates rivals Rousseau in the depth and detail of understanding of that most generous of associations. And learning from Rousseau has given me the occasion to learn from my students while teaching them. Over the past eight years I have given several classes on Emile, and the interest it provoked gave evidence of its usefulness. By students' questions and suggestions I have been led toward the heart of the text. It provided a ground for community among us in the quest for understanding ourselves. As this translation progressed, I have used it in my classes and my first thanks go to all those students who read and corrected it, testing it in the situation for which it was intended....

[g] Grande RF

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5

Notes
[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile [Translated with an introduction by Allan Bloom] (New York: Basic Books, 1979),vii-ix.

Bibliography
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile [Translated with an introduction by Allan Bloom]. New York: Basic Books, 1979.

Flowers Bloom (7c)—Bloom's Republic II

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Flowers Bloom."
One year ago on Round and Square (10 May 2011)—Around the World in Eighty Days

[a] Learnin' RF

I am supposed to give a series of lectures this week on Allan Bloom, the obscure University of Chicago professor who wrote a blockbuster bestseller on education precisely twenty-five years ago. At this time in 1987, The Closing of the American Mind was climbing the New York Times bestseller list. I am going to try a new approach. Instead of posting what I have written (I do a lot of that here on Round and Square already), I am going to post some of what I have been reading in preparation for the lectures. Consider this week's posts—which will appear under various topics on Round and Square, ranging from "Beginnings" and "Flowers Bloom" to "Displays of Authenticity" and "Endings"—as lecture preparation. 

And, just for the record, regular readers probably already know that I will post the actual lectures not long after they have been given. This week's posts focus on the preparation process, and tackling Allan Bloom's arguments should get your blood pumping. Today's text comes from the preface to the second edition of his incomparable translation of Plato's Republic. It is a "do-over" that builds upon Bloom's spectacular success with The Closing of the American Mind. It is also a "do-over" in another respect. Bloom makes the argument—a specific argument—for looking again at Plato and his Republic.

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5
 ***  ***

[b] Bumper Acropolis RF

I have put this particular text from Allan Bloom under the topic "Just Do It Over." It is the preface to the second edition of Plato's Republic (a do-over of sorts in its own right). More significantly, though, it is a plea for another look at one of the key texts of Western civilization. He wrote this preface four years after The Closing of the American Mind swept the bookstores. Both Bloom and his publishers were clearly interested in extending the moment, as it were, and those years in the late-1980s and early-1990s were packed with prints and reprints of Bloom's work. We'll get to all of them this week on Round and Square as we consider Bloom World.

The plan has been to go "in order," so we have looked at Shakespeare's Politics (1964) and the first edition of Plato's Republic (1968). We are skipping ahead to 1991 today precisely so that we can juxtapose the prefaces. We'll go back to the 1970s tomorrow, but today's text is a perfect lead-in to my position on Bloom. I may have disagreed with the bulk of his argument about Western canons and intellectual fodder, but his translation of the Republic and the Emile (which we will consider tomorrow) is a gift to learning that makes him—to my mind—a truly significant figure in the world of letters. I will have much more to say about these matters in the coming days.

Plato's Republic—Preface to the Second Edition
Allan Bloom (1991)

[c] Moon Unit RF

When I teach the Republic now, the reactions to it are more urgent and more intense than they were a quarter century ago when I was working on this translation and this interpretation. The Republic is, of course, a permanent book, one of the small number of books that engage the interest and sympathy of thoughtful persons wherever books are esteemed and read in freedom. No other philosophic book so powerfully expresses the human longing for justice while satisfying the intellect's demands for clarity. The problems of justice as presented by Plato arouse more interest, excitement, and disagreement at some points than at others. When non-philosophers begin their acquaintance with philosophers, they frequently say, "This is nonsense." But sometimes they say, "This is outrageous nonsense," and at such moments their passions really become involved with the philosophers, frequently culminating in hatred or in love. Right now Plato is both attractive and repulsive to the young.

[d] 道 RF

This is most obvious when they reach the section of the Republic where Socrates legislates about music. Between the late-1940s and the mid-1960s there was a lull in music's power over the soul, between the declining magnetism of high romanticism and the surge of rock, and music was not much of a practical or theoretical problem for students. They took note of the fact that Socrates is for censorship—a no-no, of course—and went on, not talking much account of what in particular is being censored. If forced to think about it, they tended to be surprised that music above all should be the theme of censorship when that seemed to  be the likely candidates were science, politics, and sex. But now that musical frenzy has resumed its natural place, Socrates is seen to be both pertinent and dangerous. Discussion is real and intense, for Socrates understands the charms—erotic, military, political, and religious—of music, which he takes to be the most authentic primitive expressions of the soul's hopes and terrors. But, precisely because music is central to the should and the musicians are such virtuosos at plucking its chords, Socrates argues that it is imperative to think about how the development of the passions affects the whole of life and how musical pleasures may conflict with duties or other, less immediate pleasures. This is intolerable, and many students feel that the whole Socratic understanding is subversive of their establishment. As I said, the Republic is perennial; it always returns with the change of human seasons.

[e] Bellicosity RF

Another theme, not unrelated to music, also suddenly became current in the late 1960s and remains central to general and professional discussion of politics: community, or roots. And again the republic becomes peculiarly attractive and repulsive because no book describes community so precisely and so completely or undertakes so rigorously to turn cold politics in to family warmth. In the period just after World War II, no criticism of what Karl Popper called "the open society" was brooked. The open society was understood to be simply unproblematic, having solved the difficulties presented by older thinkers. The progress of science was understood to be strictly paralleled by that of society; individualism seemed no threat to human ties, and mass society no threat to meaningful participation. The softening in his narrow liberal position can be seen in the substitution in common discourse of the less positively charged term technology for science, the pervasive doubt about whether the mastery of nature is a very good idea, and commonly expressed sentiments of lostness and and powerlessness on the part of individual citizens.

[f] Lostness RF

In the days of thoughtless optimism, Plato was considered irrelevant and his criticism was not available to warn us of possible dangers. Now it is recognized that he had all the doubts we have today and that the founding myth of his city treats men and women as literally rooted in its soil. Everybody is sure that Plato knew something about community, but he makes today's comfortable communitarians uncomfortable by insisting that so much individuality must be sacrificed to community. Moreover, they rightly sense that Plato partly parodies the claims and the pretensions of the community. The uninvolved Socrates, distrustful of neat solutions, does not appear to be a very reliable ally of movements. Plato, criticized in the recent past for not being a good liberal, is now shunned for not being a wholehearted communitarian. He is, however, back in the game.

But, above all, the Platonic text is now gripping because of its very radical, more than up-to-date treatment of the power of the philosophic imagination, Plato treats the question as it was never again treated up to our own day—proving thereby that reason can penetrate to the essentials at any time or place. Perfect justice, Socrates argues in the dialogue, can be achieved only by suppression of the distinction between the sexes in all important matters and the admission of women on equal footing to all activities of the city, particularly the virtual suppression of the bodily differences between the sexes and all the psychic affects habitually accompanying those differences, especially shame, which effectively separates women from men...

[g] Stele will RF

For students the story of man bound in the cave and breaking the bonds, moving out and up into the light of the sun, is the most memorable from their encounter with the Republic. This is the image of every serious student's profoundest longing, the longing for liberation from convention in order to live according to nature, and one of the book's evidently permanent aspects. The story still exercises some of its old magic, but it now encounters a fresh obstacle, for the meaning of the story is that truth is substituted for myth. Today students are taught that no such substitution is possible and that there is nothing beyond myth or "narrative." The myths of the most primitive cultures are not, it is said, qualitatively different from the narratives of the most rigorous science. Men and women must bend to the power of myth rather than try to shuck it off as philosophy wrongly used to believe. Socrates, who gaily abandons the founding myth or noble lie he himself made up for the sake of the city, looks quixotic in this light. This can be disheartening to the young person who cares, but it can be a beginning of philosophy, for he is perplexed by a real difficulty in his own breast. This is another case where Platonic radicalism is particularly timely for us.

Finally, in terms of my own experience of these last twenty-five years, after the Republic I translated Rousseau's Emile, the greatest modern book on education. Rousseau was one of the great readers of Plato, and from my time on that work I gained an even greater respect for the Republic. Emile is its natural companion, and Rousseau proved his greatness by entering the lists in worthy combat with it. He shows that Plato articulated first and best all the problems, and he himself differs only with respect to some of the solutions. If one takes the two books together, one has the basic training necessary for the educational wars. And wars they are, now that doctrine tells us that these two books are cornerstones of an outlived canon. So, I conclude, the Republic is always useful to students who read it, but now more than ever.

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5

Notes
[1] Plato, Republic [Translated with an introduction by Allan Bloom] (New York: Basic Books, 1968),vii-x.

Bibliography
Plato, Republic [Translated with an introduction by Allan Bloom]. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

[h] Guardian duty RF

Flowers Bloom (7b)—Bloom's Republic I

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Flowers Bloom."
One year ago on Round and Square (9 May 2011)—Displays of Authenticity: Tip Jars

[a] Re: public RF

I am supposed to give a series of lectures this week on Allan Bloom, the obscure University of Chicago professor who wrote a blockbuster bestseller on education precisely twenty-five years ago. At this time in 1987, The Closing of the American Mind was climbing the New York Times bestseller list. I am going to try a new approach. Instead of posting what I have written (I do a lot of that here on Round and Square already), I am going to post some of what I have been reading in preparation for the lectures. Consider this week's posts—which will appear under various topics on Round and Square, ranging from "Beginnings" and "Flowers Bloom" to "Displays of Authenticity" and "Endings"—as lecture preparation. 

And, just for the record, regular readers probably already know that I will post the actual lectures not long after they have been given. This week's posts focus on the preparation process, and tackling Allan Bloom's arguments should get your blood pumping. Today's text comes from the original preface to his incomparable translation of Plato's Republic.

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5
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[b] Contrast RF

If you saw yesterday's post, you have gotten a little bit of a sense of Allan Bloom and his approach to living and learning. His 1964 book focused on Shakespeare as a way of understanding life, love, politics, and culture. He was only getting started, though. Four years later, Bloom published a translation of Plato's Republic that could not be ignored. Not only did it find a significant niche on the Plato-translation-bookshelves, but Bloom continued to find his voice, as it were, with regard to the developing culture wars that would rise, fan, and flame for the next five decades—right up to the present (to)day. Few readers noticed Bloom's positions until he published The Closing of the American Mind nineteen years later. The preface from which I quote below seems to keep closely to the scholarly-translation shore, but many of his later arguments are adumbrated in this and other texts from the 1960s. The culture wars were crackling, and one of Bloom's contributions—as he himself saw it—was to lay an intellectual foundation for a peculiarly ambitious kind of conservatism.

Conservatism? In academia? I hear you cry...

Yes. As I have already noted in "Flowers Bloom," conservatives love to love Bloom. He has been venerated by the likes of William Buckley, William Kristol, and Rush Limbaugh. Whether Bloom loved them back is another question, and I have my own ideas on that matter after several tens of hours of discussion with Bloom in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Let's just say, for now, that one wouldn't recognize much of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, or Grover Norquist in Professor Bloom, and today's Republican party—while containing the member here or there who has read Bloom's work—often don't know what to do with his unashamedly intellectual focus or his lifestyle.

Of the latter, don't over-interpret. I just mean that he loved France.

[c] Past RF

Bloom was complex, and caricatures of him are facile. This is why I am writing about him twenty-five years after our first meeting. Yes, I found him to be argumentative and often overly-critical of the study of culture and history—especially for someone who spent a lot of time thinking about culture and history.

Nonetheless, he was unquestionably one of the most influential teachers I have ever had. This is because I have read his books without rushing to judgment. Unlike some of my peers back in graduate school, I did not revere Professor Bloom. I wasn't one of the "disciples" (as some of us mocked our Bloomian peers back in the day). This might have been why I read his work carefully and critically. It was a godsend to be able to argue...and discuss...some of these matters with him. In this case, the text below and some of my discussions with Bloom led me to rethink many of my preconceptions about translation just at the time that I was starting to do a good deal of it myself. Greek. Chinese. You might be surprised how engaged in such conversation Bloom could be.

I recommend doing what I did a quarter century ago. Read Bloom. Let him tick you off (he'll try, I guarantee you). Work through some of the nooks and crannies of his positions. It changed my life—no matter how I might have felt about literal translations...and other stuff.

Plato's Republic—Preface to the First Edition
Allan Bloom (1968)
This is intended to be a literal translation. My goal—unattained—was the accuracy of William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle. These versions are so faithful to Aristotle's text that they are authorities for the correction of the Greek manuscripts, and they enabled Thomas Aquinas to become a supreme interpreter of Aristotle without knowing Greek.

[d] Big deux RF

Such a translation is intended to be useful to the serious student, the one who wishes and is able to arrive at his own understanding of the work. He must be emancipated from the tyranny of the translator, given the means of transcending the limitations of the translator's interpretation, enabled to discover the subtleties of the elusive original. The only way to provide the reader with this independence is by a slavish, even if sometimes cumbersome, literalness—insofar as possible always using the same English equivalent for the same Greek word. Thus the little difficulties which add up to major discoveries become evident to, or at least not hidden from, the careful student. The translator should conceive of himself as a medium between a master whose depths he has not plumbed and an audience of potential students of that master who may be much better endowed than is the translator. His greatest vice is to believe he has adequately grasped the teaching of his author. It is least of all his function to render the work palatable to those who do not wish, or are unable, to expend the effort requisite to the study of difficult texts. Nor should he try to make an ancient mode of thought sound "contemporary." Such translations become less useful as more attention is paid to the text. At the very least, one can say that a literal translation is a necessary supplement to more felicitous renditions which deviate widely from their original.

The difference from age to age in the notions of the translator's responsibility is in itself a chapter of intellectual history. Certainly the popularization of the classics is one part of that chapter. But there seem to be two major causes for the current distaste for literal translations—one rooted in the historical science of our time, the other rooted in a specific, and I believe erroneous, view of the character of Platonic books.

[e] Text RF

The modern historical consciousness has engendered a general scepticism about the truth of all "world views," except for that one of which it is itself a product. There seems to be an opinion that the thought of the past is immediately accessible to us, that, although we may not accept it, we at least understand it. We apply the tools of our science to the past without reflecting that those tools are also historically limited. We do not sufficiently realize that the only true historical objectivity is to understand the ancient authors as they understood themselves; and we are loath to assume that perhaps they may be able to criticize our framework and our methods. We should, rather, try to see our historical science in the perspective of their teachings rather than the other way around. Most of all, we must accept, at least tentatively, the claim of the older thinkers that the truth is potentially attainable by the efforts of unaided human reason at all times and in all places. If we begin by denying the fundamental contention of men like Plato and Aristotle, they are refuted for us from the outset, not by an immanent criticism but by our unreflecting acceptance of the self-contradictory principle that all thought is related to a specific age and has no grasp of reality beyond that age. On this basis, it is impossible to take them seriously. One often suspects this is what is lacking in many translations: they are not animated by the passion for the truth; they are really the results of elegant trifling. William of Moerbeke was motivated by the concern that he might miss the most important counsel about the most important things, counsels emanating from a man wiser than he. His knowledge of the world and his way of life, nay, his very happiness, depended on the success of his quest to get at Aristotle's real meaning.

[f] Platon RF

Today men do not generally believe so much is at stake in their studies of classic thinkers, and there is an inclination to smile at naive scholastic reverence for antiquity. But that smile should fade when it is realized that this sense of superiority is merely the preservation of the confidence, so widespread in the nineteenth century, that science had reached a plateau overlooking broader and more comprehensible horizons than those previously known, a confidence that our intellectual progress could suffer no reverse. This confidence has almost vanished; few scholars believe that our perspective is the authoritative one any longer; but much scholarship still clings to the habits which grew up in the shadow of that conviction. However, if that is not a justified conviction, if we are really at sea so far as the truth of things goes, then our most evident categories are questionable, and we do not even know whether we understand the simplest questions Plato poses. It then behooves us to rediscover the perspectives of the ancient authors, for the sake both of accurate scholarship and of trying to find alternatives to the current mode of understanding things.

It is not usually understood how difficult it is to see the phenomena as they were seen by the older writers. It is one of the most awesome undertakings of the mind, for we have divided the world up differently, and willy-nilly we apply our terms, and hence the thoughts behind them, to the things discussed. It is always the most popular and questionable terms of our own age that seem most natural; it is virtually impossible to speak without using them. For example, H.D.P. Lee, in describing his view of a translator's responsibility, says, "The translator must go behind what Plato said and discover what he means, and if, for example, he says 'examining the beautiful and the good' must not hesitate to render this as 'discussing moral values' if that is in fact the way in which the same thought would be expressed today." (The Republic [London: Penguin, 1956], p. 48) But if one hurries too quickly "behind" Plato's speech, one loses the sense of the surface. Lee shares with Cornford and many other translators the assurance that they have a sufficient understanding of Plato's meaning, and that meaning is pretty much the kind of thing Englishmen or Americans already think. However, it might be more prudent to let the reader decide whether "the beautiful and the good" are simply equivalent to "moral values." If they are the same, he will soon enough find out. And if they are not, as may be the case, he will not be prevented from finding that out and thereby putting his own ideas to the test...[1]

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5

Notes
[1] Plato, Republic [Translated with an introduction by Allan Bloom] (New York: Basic Books, 1968), xi-xiii.

Bibliography
Plato, Republic [Translated with an introduction by Allan Bloom]. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

[g] Big trois RF

Flowers Bloom (7a)—Shakespeare's Politics

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Flowers Bloom."

One year ago on Round and Square (8 May 2011)—George Strait's "Chill of an Early Fall."

[a] Blooming politician RF

I am supposed to give a series of lectures this week on Allan Bloom, the obscure University of Chicago professor who wrote a blockbuster bestseller on education precisely twenty-five years ago. At this time in 1987, The Closing of the American Mind was climbing the New York Times bestseller list. I am going to try a new approach. Instead of posting what I have written (I do a lot of that here on Round and Square already), I am going to post some of what I have been reading in preparation for the lectures. Consider this week's posts—which will appear under various topics on Round and Square, ranging from "Beginnings" and "Flowers Bloom" to "Displays of Authenticity" and "Endings"—as lecture preparation. 

And, just for the record, regular readers probably already know that I will post the actual lectures not long after they have been given. This week's posts focus on the preparation process, and tackling Allan Bloom's arguments should get your blood pumping. He liked being an irritant, and today's reading (from 1964) already has a few of Bloom's notorious rough edges. A few.

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5
 ***  ***

If you have read Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, you will see the germ of Bloom's argument here, stated twenty-three years before it caught the imagination of the American public. People who knew Bloom back in his own graduate school days at the (then new) Committee on Social Thought have told me that he was making similar points back in the mid-1950s. I can attest—having studied and, more importantly, argued with him in the late-1980s—that he stayed with the message to the end of his days. 

[b] UC look-alike RF

The lack of preparation on the part of America's youth is only part of his argument. Just as important for Bloom was the waning of a shared intellectual culture—one that Bloom thought of as quintessentially Western. Although this definitely was a matter of contention for him, it is necessary to add that language richness deepened over the ages also plays into his position. Another point that requires emphasis is Bloom's frustration with—and contempt for—disciplinary boundaries. Shakespeare is bigger than the English department, Bloom states. Much bigger.

Shakespeare is ours—all of ours.

If you read the last few lines carefully, you should have noticed that it is not easy to caricature Allan Bloom. To be sure, the right has claimed him and much of the left has eschewed him. As I state at some length in the introduction to the Round and Square series "Flowers Bloom," almost everyone has gotten Allan Bloom wrong. He reveled in it, and spent a good deal of rhetorical energy annoying his adversaries. Even in this early work—written about a decade after he received his Ph.D.—we can see the gamesmanship, to be sure, but also the seriousness of purpose for which he was known by colleagues and students for the rest of his career.

Take a look at the first few pages of Shakespeare's Politics. We'll move on to Bloom's translations of Plato and Rousseau later this week.

Political Philosophy and Poetry

Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa (1964)

The most striking fact about contemporary university students is that there is no longer any canon of books which forms their taste and their imagination. In general, they do not look at all to books when they meet problems in live or try to think about their goals; there are no literary models for their conceptions of virtue and vice. This state of affairs itself reflects the deeper fact of the decay of the common understanding of—and agreement on—first principles that is characteristic of our times. The role once played by the Bible and Shakespeare in the education of the English-speaking peoples is now largely played by popular journalism or the works of ephemeral authors. This does not mean that the classic authors are no longer read; they are perhaps read more and in greater variety than every before. But they do not move; they do not seem to speak to the situation of the modern young; they are not a part of the furniture of the student's mind, once he is out of the academic atmosphere. This results in a decided lowering of tone in their reflections on life and its goals; today's students are technically well-equipped, but Philistine.

[c] 2B...or not RF

The civilizing and unifying function of the people's books, which was carried out in Greece by Homer, Italy by Dante, France by Racine and Molière, and Germany by Goethe, seems to be dying a rapid death. The young have no ground from which to begin their understanding of the world and themselves, and they have no common education which forms the core of their communication with their fellows. A Marlborough could once say that he had formed his understanding of English history from Shakespeare alone; such a reliance on a poet today is almost inconceivable. The constant return to and reliance on a single great book or author has disappeared, and the result is not only a vulgarization of the tone of life but an atomization of society, for a civilized people is held together by its common understanding of what is virtuous and vicious, noble and base.

Shakespeare could still be the source of such an education and provide the necessary lessons concerning human virtue and the proper aspirations of a noble life. He is respected in our tradition, and he is of our language. But the mere possession of his works is not enough; they must be properly read and interpreted. One could never re-establish the Mosaic could one use Shakespeare as a text in moral and political education on the basis of his plays as they are read by the New Critics.

There has been a change in the understanding of the nature of poetry since the rise of the Romantic movement, and it is now considered a defiling of art's sacred temple to see the poem as a mirror of nature or to interpret it as actually teaching something. Poets are believed not to have had intentions, and their epics and dramas are said to be sui generis, not to be judged by the standards of civil society or of religion. To the extent that Shakespeare's plays are understood to be merely literary productions, they have no relevance to the important problems that agitate the lives of acting men.

[d] Lady McB RF

But when Shakespeare is read naïvely, because he shows most vividly and comprehensively the fate of tyrants, the character of good rulers, the relations of friends, and the duties of citizens, he can move the souls of his readers, and they recognize that they understand life better because they have read them; he hence becomes a constant guide and companion. He is turned to as the Bible was once turned to; one sees the world, enriched and embellished, through his eyes. It is this perspective that has been lost; and only when Shakespeare is taught as though he said something can he regain the influence over his generation which is so needed—needed for the sake of giving us some thoughtful views on the most important questions. The proper functions of criticism are, therefore, to recover Shakespeare's teaching and to be the agent of his ever-continuing education of the Anglo-Saxon world.

These essays are intended as first steps in the enterprise of making Shakespeare again the theme of philosophic reflection and a recognized source for the serious study of moral and political problems. The task is double difficult, for, not only must the subtle plays, difficult in themselves, be interpreted, but the authentic intellectual atmosphere in which they were written must be recovered. We no longer look at man, the state, or poetry as they were once looked at; and, without some clarity about the way Shakespeare saw them, all the careful study of the text will be of little avail. We would only see the things we set out to find or which are within the range of our vision. The texts and their meaning are of course the only important things; the origins of Shakespeare's thought or its relation to its time are of relatively minor interest compared to the permanent significance of his meaning. It is this meaning that we must try to discover, but we must do so with full consciousness that it is no longer immediately accessible to us, owing to the passage of time and, more particularly, the vogue of new doctrines which have made our perspective other than that which Shakespeare counted on in his audience.

[e] Shakespeare's people RF

The authors of these essays are professors of political philosophy, which means that they are outside the field of Shakespearean criticism, given the current division of the academic disciplines. We respect the competence of our colleagues in the literature departments are are aware of the contributions of recent scholarship. But we contend that Shakespeare is not the preserve of any single department in the modern university. He wrote before the university was divided as it is today, and the knowledge he presupposes cuts across these partly accidental lines. He presents us man generally, and it is not to be assumed that a department of literature possesses any privileged position for grasping his representations comprehensively. Consider a work like Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse—does it belong primarily to a philosophy department, a literature department, or a language department? Surely to all and to none; perhaps most of all to the educated amateur. We suggest that this case is the same with Shakespeare...[1]

Shakespeare   Republic1   Republic2   Emile   Emile1   Emile2   Emile3   Emile 4   Emile5

Notes

[1] Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa, Shakespeare's Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 1-4.

Bibliography

Bloom, Allan and Harry Jaffa. Shakespeare's Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

[f] Night twelve RF

Primary Sources 1A.06—Playing Ball 玩皮球

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."
One year ago on Round and Square (7 May 2011)—Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center  

[a] Play ball RF

Over the course of the next year or so, Round and Square will take readers step-by-step through a very particular kind of primary source—the elementary school readers used in the mid-1980s in the Republic of China educational system. Every schoolchild on the island of Taiwan read these texts back then, and they are the foundation for understanding matters of education, acculturation, language acquisition, and translation. They were also the source of a very large chunk of my early anthropological and historical education. 

I encourage readers of Round and Square to follow these posts whether or not they read Chinese. It is clear enough where I begin speaking to language learners (the section called "Language Notes" at the end). Everything else, with the exception of the actual Chinese text, can be understood by anyone who takes the time to think about what an entire education from the ground up might be like. The introduction to this series explains these matters thoroughly, and will be posted soon. In the meantime, take a look at how first-graders (for that is where we begin) started to read their world in Taiwan a generation ago. This is "textbooks from history," and there is much to learn.

School's out—at least for the day. It's time to play, and out comes the equipment. Here again, we see the ubiquitous (leather) sphere (皮球). The play that we see in this text (and the 1985 pictures of energetic youth)...is gendered. The girls bounce the ball. The boys kick the ball. In at least a nod toward athletic equity or parallelism, "you" bounce the ball more times; "I" kick it farther. As we wrap up lesson six, you will notice that three texts have been narrated—such as it they are—by a little girl, and three more by a little boy. Three have focused on home and family, while three more have dealt with life in and around school. I point out these matters now so that you will begin to notice how gender dynamics interact with life inside and outside the household, even in the first semester of first grade.

By the way, I have tried to reproduce the text as children read it in 1985. There is no way to render the English this way without being obtuse. If you read Chinese, though, you will start on the right and read down...then left.

6-Playing Ball
The school day is over. Come, come, come!
Everyone come and play ball!
You bounce the ball. I kick the ball.
Bouncing the ball—you bounce it more times than I do.
Kicking the ball—I kick it farther than you. 

六   玩皮球

我     踢     你     拍     我     你     大     來     下     
比     皮     比     皮     踢     拍     家     來     課     
你     球     我     球     皮     皮     來     來     了     
踢              拍             球     球     玩                       
得              得                              皮                       
遠              多                              球

_____________________________________
  遠     多     拍     家     大     下     球     皮     六

                                                     踢     課

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

六  玩皮球
下课了     来来来
大家来玩皮球
你拍皮球
我踢皮球
拍皮球    你比我拍得多
踢皮球    我比你踢得远

*A simplified text is unthinkable in an ROC worldview. I don't "work" for them, though, and am including it for two reasons. First, an almost disturbingly large number of my students these days can't read traditional characters. This is problematic, but I acknowledge (grudgingly) the reality. Second, it should be an eye-opener for students on either side of the "simplified/traditional" divide. Just look. Finally, if you want to read anything written before 1950, you need to learn traditional forms. Get over it. It's not political. It's literature...and politics and history. If you can only read simplified forms, you can read what (Mao) wrote, but not what he read (unless it has been edited and adapted). Think about it.

[b] Bear ball RF

History and Culture Notes

No more pencils...or book (bags). At least until tomorrow morning. After seven or so hours of structured learning, rambunctious (yet exceedingly polite) little 1985 school children get to play ball. I lived near a school when I was in Taiwan from 1985-1987, and I can attest that the school day begins with the playing of the Republic of China national anthem. The end of the day is somewhat less structured, but no less momentous. 

Back then, as now, many children rushed off after school to various "cram schools" to shore up English, mathematics, and other skills. This is what, for me, makes this text especially interesting. The text seems to cry out that kids like to play. The time for that is after school. To many Americans, this will seem so basic that it does not require mentioning. If you feel that way, you've probably never spent much time with Chinese students. To be sure, the pressure does not ratchet up in too serious a fashion in first-grade, but I certainly noticed all of the little preschoolers and first-graders when I taught English in a cram school...in the 4:00-6:00 slot before dinner.

[c] Bite ball RF

The combined message from my perspective in 1985? Play ball!...

...unless you plan to get high test scores. In that case, leave the ball in your book bag and repeat after me: "a b c d e f g..."

Translation Notes

This text is straightforward in most respects, even for first-grade. I have already noted that "leather ball" for 皮球 would be ridiculous. The two-character phrase has taken root, and it is the generic term for "ball." It should be obvious that the translation of the title should not be "playing leather ball."

Language Notes

Note the use of 比 for comparison in the text. This character figures prominently in all sorts of phrases, ranging from basic comparison ("I kick the ball farther than you") to "nothing can compare." Finally, note again the adverbial use of 得. "Bounce more (times)" and "kick farther" both use 得 after the verb. If you have studied Chinese for even a few weeks, you know the pattern. If memory serves me well, however, it takes even native speaker children (and American college students) a little while to get comfortable with it. The character's use in these first days of elementary education shows how important it is to the Ministry of Education. 

As we say back home, "得 ain't 的, and if you think it is, you need to go back to the 的rawing boar得.

[d] Bounce-kick RF