Diagnosis of a Kulturkampf

Allan Bloom is a political philosopher, a friend and disciple of the late Leo Strauss. He teaches at the University of Chicago, which appears more and more to be one of the only institutions of higher learning in this country where it is still possible to pursue knowledge and wisdom for their own sakes, where the administration does not believe that the purpose of the university is to “reflect the surrounding society.” At Chicago, as he did earlier at Cornell, Professor Bloom has devoted himself to educating a few discerning students in the great tradition of Western thought, a tradition that once concerned itself above all with the most important things—namely, the question of the true and the good and the question of God. According to the Greeks and to virtually all Western thinkers up to Hegel, these questions were political questions, since no regime could endure unless its relation to the true, to the...