War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

Forty years later we have Allan Bloom:

Open is Closed

Presumably the corollary, “Closed is Open,” also applies.

Yes, I know Bloom has his arguments and they make some sense given the long leftward slide in academia, but deep down I’ve never been able to square that circle. It still strikes me as a risky sophistry and Bloom still strikes me as a closed-minded person himself, however useful his insights on recent American education may be.

How much different would Bloom’s book be if it were titled, “The Denierism of the American Mind”?

Sorry, but if we cannot agree on the philosophical certainty that A is A and 2 + 2 = 4, then we have nothing further to talk about.

I’m not sure your assertion A is A and 2 + 2 = 4 represents absolute truth in any philosophically meaningful way. Axioms of mathematics, certainly, but truth? How can you know?

My own position is closer to my philosopher friend that while absolute truth exists (or may exist, I go back and forth), it is unlikely that we can know what that absolute truth is. Certainly, we can and should try to know truth, and perhaps we can approach it asymptotically.

The error I see is the statement “truth has a source”. Unless you are looking for causality all the way back to the Big Bang, then there is no source of truth. It just is. To even imagine a source, implies that it is potentially malleable, and thus, relativistic. No… A is A and 2 +2 = 4, independent of the existence of humans in the universe to discover it.

However, we can only discuss morality in terms of humanity. When the lion hunts and kills a gazelle we do not call it murder. They both have their own rules and mandates that their nature imposes upon them. To apply human morality to them would be absurd.

Likewise, the morality of a hunter-gatherer tribe of isolated humans in the middle of the Amazon will be radically different than that of modern city dwellers. Our morality is a tool, invented by humans, for humans. So long as our conditions are changing and not absolute, there can never be an absolute morality.

This is of course grossly oversimplified. The best (in the sense of thoughtful, rigorous, knowledgeable, well-read and humane) philosopher I knew well often expressed the view that while he didn’t think we could know absolute truth, he believed absolute truth existed, or at least the possibility of it existed. Otherwise, the ultimate result of 20th century philosophy was nihilism, and he’d wasted his life. (As a joke he once described Nietzsche as something close to a mad logical positivist, but there was insight even in the joke….)

When I hear conservatives decry “moral relativity” it astonishes me. Morality is not the same as truth. No matter how it eludes us, there is an objective truth. But morality is a highly complex human construct that has evolved along with human societies. Even today, it should be clear that different cultures of the world have radically different moral codes. Hell, I doubt that my next door neighbor has the same moral values I do. Fortunately, they seem to be close enough that I don’t worry about him. It may be that no two human beings carry the exact same moral code by which to judge their actions and those of others by.

That is, of course, why we have Law. Some judge once remarked, “This is a Court of Law, not Justice.” He understood that justice is ineffable. What seems fair and just to me, may not seem at all fair or just to you. If we had the same concepts of fairness and justice, then we would have no need for courts or laws.

And even within the individual, actions that are moral in one set of circumstances may be immoral in a different set. Humans and our relationships with other humans and our societies are massively complex. A lot of our most important literature deals with people trying to decide what is the “right thing” in difficult circumstances. If the “right thing” was always the same, for everyone, all the time… Well, I suppose life would be simpler, safer, and a lot less interesting. But, it isn’t.

manju is easily disturbed. Must be afraid of losing his beefaroni ration.