Toward the conclusion of the first lecture on Allan Bloom, we noted what many believed a contradiction between Allan Bloom and the more narrowly economic thinkers within the Chicago School. The Chicago School, from its earliest beginnings in the Austrian School to its most recent expression in Gary Becker, wants to situate value in the price mechanism, both individually in the isolated exchange and in aggregate among all economic actors. This economic individualism could be mistaken for precisely the value-relativism against with Allan Bloom rails. But is it?
Here I will suggest that while value-relativism and economic individualism (as expressed in the price mechanism) are related, they are related in a manner that absolutizes the economic decision-maker, herein making room for the kind of critical thinking recommended by Allan Bloom.
In order to recognize how the price mechanism makes room for and, in fact, constitutes, the critical thinking that Allan Bloom recommends, we first need to take note of a more thoroughly traditional way of understanding the relationship between these two seemingly opposing ways of understanding the human subject and value.
In any discussion of the human subject and value, we need not take Descarts’ cogito ego sum as our point of departure. We could begin much earlier with the subject of Protestant Reformer Martin Luther’s believer or John Calvin’s elect or, even earlier, with William of Occam’s razor, which compels thought to pursue the shortest distance from its point of departure to its conclusion. In all of these instances, the traditional way of fixing the human subject, isolating it from its mere form of appearance or from the material world by which it is surrounded, is recognizable by this isolation itself. Thus, for example, for Martin Luther, even if faith is the empty and powerless void that invites God’s presence, it is only once faith is exercised that it overcomes the devil and the world. Even the election of John Calvin’s saint, which is from all eternity, focuses our attention on the extraordinary power of this subject, the human subject, even though its value, numerically speaking, is “zero.”
It is out of respect for this absolute “zero,” this null set, that neoclassical economic thought assiduously refuses to define it in terms of external variables. Free choice is sacrosanct not only because without it we are compelled to ascribe price to forces that arise from the sphere of necessity, but because the necessity to which we would then have to ascribe choice would in that case be poly-form, plural, heterogeneous and therefore could not be solved for x. The human subject, however, as Leo Strauss has already observed, cannot without great disservice be reduced to the forces by which it is allegedly composed.
But is this “zero” or null set, this inscrutable subject, identical or even related to the utterly “open mind” simply waiting to be filled by whatever content happens to come along, but that refuses on principle to anchor itself to any specific thing save the principle of tolerance?
No, it is not, or at least not on traditional grounds. After all, on traditional grounds our free subjectivity is free because it is an analogue of divine freedom. And, just as divine freedom cannot admit to being determined extrinsically without jeopardizing its absolute power, so (as Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, and Immanuel Kant conclusively show) neither can human being be truly and fully human (and therefore analogically related to the divine) should it trace itself to the forces and powers by which it is surrounded. Yet, no one would conclude on account of this absolute divine freedom that the divine is therefore guilty of value relativity. To the contrary, the value established by the divine subject is all the more on these grounds deemed absolute (see John duns Scotus (1265/66-1308), William of Occam (1287–1347)). By analogy, the human subject too displays its relationship to the divine by attending not to the material forces that shape it, but, to the contrary, through reason tempered by faith (St Anselm (1033-1109)) setting its mind on those things that are above.
To use a more familiar historical example, while the German Social Democrats in 1932 display their value relativism by appealing to parliamentary democracy, due process, and the social forces that shape the German community together, the Nazis, by contrast, display their value absolutism by appealing to absolute, non-negotiable standards, the will to power, and by rejecting any argument appealing to extrinsic determination.
If we are correct in concluding that the free and absolute form of the one (price) is related to the free and absolute form of the other (value), the question still remains about how they are related. Must we conclude that C Schmitt, L Strauss, H Arendt, and now A Bloom are correct?
I would argue not. Instead, I would argue that the empty subject, the “zero” or null set of human subjectivity or agency, is itself analogous not to divine being, but to the value form of the commodity. For, like the commodity form, this human subject has fragmented into two interrelated, but not mutually constitutive forms. And, like the commodity, it is the immaterial value form that dominates its material form of appearance. Where, in fact, this is not the case—where the material form of appearance gains mastery over the value form, where the isolated individuality of the commodity bears no relationship to the network of values that compose society—there the commodity is held to be meaningless. So, too, the isolated individual human subject whose particularity A. Bloom holds to be without value or meaning.
The inadequacy of A Bloom’s argument, however, is already evident in the earlier argument between Plato and Aristotle. In this earlier argument, Plato insists that the guardians turn their backs on the mere shadows and reflections playing upon the cave wall and instead set their gaze upon the pure ideal forms themselves. To which Aristotle objects that such a life of contemplation might just as well take place as a person sleeps as when he is awake. In other words, it does not require life at all. Instead Aristotle recommends the life of action. But, says Aristotle, not all human beings are equally capable of acting since not all human beings are sufficiently free from necessity to intelligently choose their actions for themselves. Therefore, Aristotle sets to work identifying the material conditions that make for freedom.
Under these conditions value is conditioned. And value changes depending on its conditions. But this hardly makes value relative since its conditions are not relative. We can therefore reflect intelligibly about the conditions that make for freedom.
The freedom that arises from commodity production and exchange by contrast can take upon itself any value whatever. It is what GFW Hegel called “indeterminate freedom.” Yet, because it is the product of a process in which value is absolutely isolated from its material form of appearance—and in which it therefore appears to be unconditioned by this material form of appearance—it can easily mistake the values that automatically arise from its own action as absolute.
In fact, I would argue that that is precisely how Allan Bloom’s moral subject stumbles upon his absoluteness, his complete and total freedom from extrinsic determination. Those who are extrinsically determined, whose being is subject to necessity and whose thought is therefore determined and for this reason not free, cannot but play a detrimental role in the constitution of their world. It is they, individuals subject to necessity, who mistake their bondage for a natural and necessary condition of human being. And it is for this reason that, when they demand a place in the world, they base the justice of their demand not on what they actually hold in common with all other human beings, but on what distinguishes them, their identity, the very features that display the imprint of extrinsic forces upon them—their race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc.
A. Bloom, by contrast, hails those features that genuinely are or might be universal. This human subject is not extrinsically determined, but determines itself by bracketing those features and forces by which it has been shaped. He is not a closeted homosexual, a man. Rather he is (capital “M”) Man. His thoughts are valid because they hold valid for all Men. And the proof that they hold valid for all Men is that he resolutely refuses to defend himself by an appeal to his own historical and social specificity. Were he to do so he would have to renounce any claim to universal validity.
This is a theoretical concession of towering proportions. A Bloom on principle cannot identify the social and historical conditions of possibility for his own interpretive categories. His categories must merely be asserted as absolutes, defended for the logical coherence—which, of course, holds for any well-formed argument—but cannot be shown to be adequate to their object.
What I have shown is that his interpretive categories not only have coherence, but that they arise out of and take their form from the unique historical and social circumstances that hold in mature capitalist societies. Since all interpretive categories are shaped by their historical and social place, this, by itself, is not a strike against them. But, having taken notice of their historical and social form, we can now set out to establish how well they account for the phenomena they are seeking to interpret.
The answer, I think it can be shown, is that they account for this phenomena poorly.