Responding to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind - pt. 2

In The Closing of the American Mind between pages 286-287 we find Hobbes, one of the formative thinkers and contributors to America today. He seemed to promote a police state of sorts, citing that it would be best for the public, because, after all, it is the fear of death that drives men, and further, to compliment that would be the pursuit of health, meaning that the only two important things in a society that believes this would be doctors (health care) and police. How interesting this is because those are the subjects of our general conversations today. At least many of the philosophers saw this, but in the very postmodern world that we live in today, this may not be the case anymore.

Hardly anyone thinks about death - at least in the sense that they don't want to. The truth is likely that the person does think about death but wants to suppress it and deny its reality until it is pressed upon them at the time of their own immanent death or the same of a close loved one. Everything is about the here and now - this life. What happens after death in inconsequential at best and irrelevant at worst. Thus, they might think upon death, but only insomuch as to postpone it a little bit.

To many of the postmodern persuasion (if not all) they subscribe to annihilation at the end of life. To them the spiritual doesn't even exist. This thought is hardly new. Richard Weaver speaks to this in the introduction of his book Ideas Have Consequences. He points out that this thinking actually dates back to the 14th century and the ideas of William of Occam - the elimination of the existence of transcendentals. This is an interesting (in a morbid sort of way) side note, because he wasn't even talking about believing in a certain transcendental. It wasn't the idea that you agreed or disagreed with it - it was the idea that, in order to realize your full potential as a human being, you had to disallow for their existence altogether. When this happens then the conscience becomes ambiguous and the existence of God becomes a fable.

Inherent with this shift is the idea that man is basically good. Some philosophers have been teaching this for some time now, but never has this idea run so rampant before. On page 291 Bloom states that modern philosophers "did not [. . .] understand the ineradicable character of evil." When talking with a gentleman yesterday (May 4, 2008) I asked him about sin and he looked at me as if I had just grown a third eye, as if that were a question with an obvious answer, and, it seemed, the man could figure out, so why couldn't I? To propose the concept of sin was nearly too much for this gentleman, so archaic that no one would even study that theory. He says that either what you call "bad" or "sin" is only your opinion, or, it is not your fault and is probably due to brain damage, maybe even from going through the birth canal!

How does one talk to such a man? He all but spit upon God's Word, obviously showing his distaste for it.