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3 4 6 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3According to the author, from 1869 to 1968 secular humanism was able to dojust that. It reinforced the idea that the meaning of life could be taught. Oneproblem with Kronman’s thesis is that, as noted above, the colleges at the timeof the American Revolution allowed a space for philosophy beside theology.Kronman seems to miss the moderating effects of the American Revolutionon colleges. He also shares a thesis with Bloom. Kronman believes thatwe need more doubt in society because people have a certainty stemmingfrom political correctness. On the surface, Bloom disagrees: he asserts thatall modern students are relativists. However, Bloom disdains their certaintybecause students are certain in their relativism. The relativism that Bloomrejects has been transformed into political correctness—certainty in thepolitical correctness of one’s own faction.When people meet as representatives of a certain group, they are notinterested in dialogue. Truth is lost in the dogma of the group. For collegeto be productive students must be free to participate as individual humanbeings. If they are going to be personally engaged in the material, they mustbe free to enter the conversation. College is a quest for truth, not a crusade. 105According to Kronman, students must be open to the idea that their opinionscould be wrong, and that other students may change their mind. Kronmanasserts that the “restoration of the humanities to a position of authority inour colleges and universities is a matter of signal importance. …The traditionof secular humanism must be reclaimed.” 106 He prefers secular humanismbecause it is pluralistic and more open than the antebellum college. He likesthe skepticism that undermines theological certitude even as he appreciatesthe theological contributions of Augustine to the discussion on the meaningof life. 107 Yet in this sense, Kronman is no different from Bloom: “liberaleducation flourished when it prepared the way for the discussion of a unifiedview of nature and man’s place in it, which the best minds debated onthe highest level. It decayed when what lay beyond it were only specialties,the premises of which do not lead to any such vision.” 108 Both Bloom andKronman want to decrease the importance of theology in the academy and,further, political life.105Harry Neumann, “Teachers or Propagandists? A Note on the Decline of Academic Freedom,”Religious Humanism 4 (1970): 125.106Kronman, Education’s End, 203. See also Neumann, “Teachers or Propagandists?,” 125.107Kronman, Education’s End, 121–22.108Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 346–47.