The Closing of the American Mind
"The Closing of the American Mind," written by Allan Bloom in 1987, critiques the state of higher education in the United States, arguing that it has strayed from classical values in the humanities and social sciences. Bloom posits that American education has shifted away from the rigorous study of "great books" and significant Western ideas, opting instead for a curriculum that favors contemporary trends and popular culture. He asserts that this change has led to a denial of absolute truth, which he associates with postmodern thought, contrasting it with the objective pursuit of truth that characterized earlier philosophical traditions.
In his examination, Bloom draws upon the ideas of influential philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, criticizing the indiscriminate toleration of diverse viewpoints that he believes undermines the quest for truth. He expresses disdain for both contemporary leftist and conservative philosophies, viewing them as contributors to a broader relativism in moral and cultural discourse. Additionally, Bloom critiques the influence of social movements from the 1960s and the rise of multiculturalism, arguing that these shifts have diluted the standards of education. His work resonated with those concerned about these transformations in academia and solidified his position among prominent conservative thinkers of the time. Overall, Bloom's arguments invite a deeper reflection on the evolving landscape of American higher education and its implications for intellectual rigor and cultural discourse.
The Closing of the American Mind
Identification Best-selling critique of liberal arts education and the American university system
Author Allan Bloom
Date Published in 1987
Bloom developed a coherent conservative philosophy of higher education and presented it as a sociopolitical criticism of American intellectual culture since World War II.
Key Figures
Allan Bloom (1930-1992), conservative literary and cultural critic
Allan Bloom asserted in The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy (1987) that American education, especially higher education, had abandoned its classical values in the humanities and social sciences. Rather than following its former ideal of the rigorous study of “great books,” well-defined curricula, and historically significant Western ideas, higher education—Bloom said—espoused trendy authors, experimental curricula, and dangerous new ideas. It had uncritically elevated the popular, tantalizing, and ignoble above the erudite, sublime, beautiful, and complex.
The disinterested search for absolute truth, which Bloom claimed had motivated the Academy since the time of René Descartes and John Locke, had since the 1960’s been superseded by the denial of absolute truth, which Bloom associated with postmodernism. Bloom aligned himself with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whom he saw as serious seekers of truth, and he opposed contemporary academics whom he portrayed as comparing and understanding various points of view without evaluating them objectively. He held that such indiscriminate toleration of other points of view led to a lack of discernment, which rendered the quest for truth impossible. Mounting a wholesale attack on both conservative and leftist philosophers of the twentieth century, Bloom rejected both analytic philosophy and deconstruction, because he believed that they both trivialized the monumental philosophical agenda that had occupied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The deconstructionist method of Jacques Derrida, he claimed, was the last nail in the coffin of reason.
Bloom traced his own intellectual lineage to the distinctive conservatism of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, which he saw as characterized by absolutism and keen judgment. He decried the rise of multiculturalism and linked it to moral and cultural relativism, blaming anthropologistMargaret Mead for the former and sociologistMax Weber for the latter. He identified Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Thomas Kuhn as among the sources of relativism. An absolutist in ethics, he condemned the social movements of the 1960’s and reproached leftists for making thinkers he saw as right wing, such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, speak for the Left. An elitist in aesthetics, Bloom hated rock and roll and subsequent derivative forms of music, which for him were merely sexual. He preferred the subtler emotions of classical music.
Bloom’s arguments rang true with many who were dismayed at the continuing evolution of the Academy. His criticisms of education were neither new nor exclusively conservative: Similar criticism had been made when American universities began teaching American literature, rather than an exclusively English curriculum, and they had also been leveled in England against those who had introduced English literature into a previously Greek- and Latin-dominated curriculum.
Impact
The Closing of the American Mind catapulted Bloom from being only a fairly well known social philosopher and translator of Plato to occupying a prominent place in the ranks of the conservative intellectuals of the Ronald Reagan era, including William Bennett, Robert Bork, Francis Fukuyama, E. D. Hirsch, and John Silber. Bloom’s book was frequently considered alongside Hirsch’s best seller, Cultural Literacy, which appeared the same year.
Bibliography
Buckley, William K., and James Seaton, eds. Beyond Cheering and Bashing: New Perspectives on “The Closing of the American Mind.” Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992.
Graff, Gerald. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Hirsch, Eric Donald. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Stone, Robert L., ed. Essays on “The Closing of the American Mind.” Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1989.