The State Of Nature and The State Contrasted In Alan Bloom’s Closing Of The American Mind

 Original quote From Allan Bloom’s Closing Of The American Mind

….Anarchism ... arises as soon as politics and laws are understood to be repressions, perhaps necessary, but nonetheless repressions of our inclinations rather than perfections of them or modes of satisfying them….

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My Original Question:

Why does anarchism arise from this?

Asking not arguing.

How is law to be understood as perfecting our inclinations or as a mode of satisfying them, when law stops us doing what we’re inclined to do?

I don’t get that.

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Fuller Text Provided:

….The first reaction to the self’s maladaptation to society, its recalcitrance to the rationality of preservation and property, is the attempt to recover the self’s pristine state, to live according to its first inclinations, to “get in touch with one’s feelings,” to live naturally, simply, without society’s artificially generated desires, dependencies, hypocrisies. This side of Rousseau’s thought that arouses nostalgia for nature came to the United States early on, in the life and writings of Thoreau. Recently, joined to many other movements, it came to full flower and found a wide public. Anarchism in one form or another is an expression of this longing, which arises as soon as politics and law are seen to be repressions, perhaps necessary, but nonetheless repressions of our inclinations rather than perfections of them or modes of satisfying them. For the first time in the history of political philosophy, no natural impulse is thought to lead to civil society, or to find satisfaction within it. Yet those who first drew the distinction between nature and society (which obviously means society is of human making, not in any way natural), thought that the preference would immediately be and without hesitation for society. As a matter of fact, the distinction was made in order to emphasize how desirable society is, how fragile man’s existence naturally is, and thus to extinguish those passions based on imagining that protection comes from nature or God, that rebel against civil society. Man, if he is sensible, separates himself from nature and becomes its master and conqueror. This was and still is the predominating belief of liberal democracies, with their peace, gentleness, prosperity, productivity and applied science, particularly medical science….

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My Further Questions And Comments

Something here is just a touch unclear to me, apart from not seeing how here my second question is answered. I do see now how Rousseau’s idealization of the natural man, which rejects political authority and laws, can be seen as anarchic.

I don’t see in this page the answer to my second question, only the assertion that raises it.

Bloom says, I think, Rousseau’s romanticism marks the first rejection in political philosophy of the idea that our natural impulses lead to civil society and our fulfillment within it. 

Those who counter posed the state of nature and the state, meaning the latter is man made not natural, had thought our immediate preference would always be the state and our satisfaction within it. 

The distinction is meant to exemplify our precariousness in nature 

and to drive out those “passions” that have us “rebelling” against our life in the state, which is to say, civil society. 

Sensible men put their stock in the state, detach themselves from nature and master it, “conquer it,” the predominant belief in liberal democracies, with their litany of benignities. 

So two things:

1: My second question still stands: in civil society don’t we repress, suppress our natural drives to conform to its laws and conventions, rather than satisfying them within it?

2: My slight unclarity, is Bloom gently twitting liberal democratic benignity or unreservedly praising it? He seems detached from his description of it, as if mildly mocking it. But maybe I’m mistakenly reading that into it. 

And:

I imagine/remember an answer to my “second question:” our drives are fulfilled and satisfied to the highest order by civilizing them, on the idea of the erotic perfecting itself in our highest actions, say sex ennobled in marriage or our  highest action, doing philosophy.

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