Pluralism

In case you are curious, I will probably put this last week's discussion of Bloom down on my list of most thought-provoking teaching experiences. I had very little idea of what to expect from you, but I thought the discussion was thoughtful, self-reflective, and respectful even at its most opinionated.

I hope that many of the issues we raised will continue to circulate in our class conversation. However, I have been thinking about one point on which I want to follow up. During our discussion, someone stated that the American story is the story of pluralism, and I pointed out that Bloom argues, to the contrary, that the American story is a story of freedom and equality for individuals. My point, of course, was not persuade you to accept Bloom's argument on its face, but to make sure that you understood the difference.

I want to add something that I should have stressed at that point. What we mean when we say that the American story is the story of pluralism -- and I think a lot of Americans would agree with that -- has been shaped in large ways by the history of ideas about culture that we have been studying. Pluralism frequently means now something like cultural pluralism -- a belief that there are multiple ways of living that have a kind of integrity. Debates about pluralism (think of the debates about tribalism versus assimilation in the Mashpee case) are in many ways debates about culture. Of course, Bloom is extremely doubtful about the ascendancy of culture in this anthropological sense.