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Title: CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND by Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow ISBN: 0-671-65715-1 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 15 May, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.77 (86 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Bloom deserves to be read more carefully
Comment: When The Closing of The American Mind was published in 1987, it instantly ignited a firestorm of praise and condemnation. Conservatives hailed it as vindication of their long-ignored criticisms about American culture in general and higher education in particular. Liberals denounced it as elitist and intolerant, and they said Bloom wanted to keep students ignorant of other cultures so he could indoctrinate them with his. Neither side had it right. The Closing of The American Mind is, as Bloom put it in his preface, "a meditation on the state of our souls."
Both sides were wrong about the book because they didn't read it carefully enough. Liberals read Bloom's argument for philosophy as an attempt to purge non-white, non-European writers from the cannon on grounds of cultural purity. Conservatives read his plea as an attempt to run all the liberal professors out of academia and replace them with conservatives. But a careful reading of Bloom would quickly prove both of these interpretations false.
Bloom believed Plato's cave was culture, whether that culture was western or not (after all, it was Plato's description of his own culture that created the idea of the cave). Bloom's argument was that students should be forced to read the works of the great philosophers because those writers are the only ones who dealt with the fundamental question of life: what is man. Bloom believed it was the university's mission to equip students with the tools that would enable them to seek the answer to this question and to lead a philosophical life. Only the great philosophers were capable of introducing students to the deepest and most profound life, and without this introduction, students would forever remain in their respective caves.
Bloom never was a conservative, nor was he one who wished to impose his "culture" on others. Simply put, he was a scholar who wished to make his students think - to truly think - about the nature of their existence and of society. The goal of Bloom's book was to show how Americans of all political persuasions, social backgrounds and economic conditions are debating within a narrow modern world-view and have simply accepted as fact a mushy blend of modern theory that repeatedly contradicts itself and stands in sharp contrast to an almost entirely forgotten world of opposing thought: that of the ancients.
In other words, Americans are incapable of true self-examination and self-understanding because they are ignorant of ancient philosophy, which poses the only alternative to the modern concept of man. What Bloom does with The Closing of The American Mind is expose the great Oz by asking him life's deepest questions. Bloom asks the same questions of today's professors and students that the ancient philosophers asked of themselves and their students. He finds that not only does no one have an answer, but no one even understands the questions.
Bloom's confrontation exposes the modern American university for what it really is: one big self-esteem seminar where students are taught self-validation instead of self-examination. Professors are not forcing students to confront the most serious questions of life, but rather are handing them scrolls of paper certifying that the university has bestowed on them qualities which, in fact, they already possessed, those being "openness" and "tolerance."
Of students, Bloom writes, "The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it. They have all been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable and natural rights that used to be the traditional grounds for a free society."
The university, he shows, does nothing to contest this belief, but feeds it instead. The end result is that there can be no more truth or goodness and no need or even ability to make tough choices. Where the purpose of higher education once was to enable the student to find truth, the modern university teaches that there is no truth, only "lifestyle."
There exist in the world polar opposites. Bloom lists "reason-revelation, freedom-necessity, democracy-aristocracy, good-evil, body-soul, self-other, city-man, eternity-time, being-nothing." Serious thought requires recognition of the existence of these opposites and the choice of one over the other. "A serious life means being fully aware of the alternatives, thinking about them with all the intensity one brings to bear on life-and-death questions, in full recognition that every choice is a great risk with necessary consequences that are hard to bear," Bloom says.
He argues persuasively that the modern university does not force students to confront these alternatives at all, much less seriously think about them. Therefore, the modern university fails in its purpose, which is to create students aware of the vast array of possibilities that life offers and capable of choosing the good life.
Bloom has been harshly, and is still continually, accused of trying to force his own ideology on his students. But even a cursory reading of The Closing of The American Mind will disprove this silly accusation. Bloom simply wanted to make students think, to make them understand that there are different ideas of what man is and that they must confront these ideas if they wish to lead a meaningful life. This, he believed, was the university's purpose because it is there and only there that students would be exposed to alternatives to the prevailing intellectual trends. Life will happen to the students, he said, they don't need the university to provide it for them. They need the university to equip them for making the choices that will lead them to the best, most fulfilling life - the philosophical life. It is precisely for this reason that universities exist, and it is precisely this task that they now fail to accomplish.
Bloom's book remains important a decade after its publication because of the depth of Bloom's intellect and the thoroughness of his analysis. Only the last third of The Closing of The American Mind focuses on the modern university. Bloom spends the first two-thirds of the book explaining the modern mind-set and contrasting it with the ancient and the enlightened. He demonstrates the shallowness of the modern mind by repeatedly beating it about the head with Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. With this tactic, Bloom tears apart the vapid pop psychology that passes as deep thought and holds up the shreds for the reader to see their thinness.
But Bloom's attack is also instruction. Through it he takes the reader on an intellectual history tour in which he tracks the evolution of modern thought. Focusing on key words in today's usage, such as "lifestyle," "relationship" and "commitment," he retraces them through history to discover their origins and their true meanings. He then contrasts these words with the ones they replaced, such as "duty," "honor," "love." The depth and complexity of the ancient concepts overpowers the shallow convenience of the modern ones. Bloom tells how, when he showed this contrast to his students, they didn't care. Worse, they recoiled at the very thought of being bound by duty or honor or love as opposed to being committed to relationships via contract.
This contrast is at the heart of Bloom's book: whether humans are truth-seeking creatures who live for the purpose of pleasing God and discovering the good, or whether they are truth-creating creatures who live only for the purpose of satisfying their animal needs and preventing the bad. Bloom believes the former, modernity the latter. Bloom knew that his book would not solve the question or ennoble America. But it would reintroduce the question, which is all that he wanted the university to do. It is tragic that, as he predicted, the universities would cast him out as a heretic instead of making themselves his disciples.
Rating: 5
Summary: Perhaps the most important book ever written in English
Comment: A revealing, penetrating, inspiring text on the state of education and the modern American mind. It was Bloom's life work - his profession at the University Of Chicago - to compare human eras and their standards. Through his research no one has so completely uncovered the ills of our time, or affirmed what is positive. His courage to face modern dogma made Bloom hated by those adhering to new orthodoxies and open to their character assassinations, but Bloom wrote anyway.
Contrary to relativism of the new movements and their extinguishing of deep education - which in the end is a search for the right answers - Bloom claims there are indeed answers to questions concerning the human condition (thus the inspiration), and that "not obvious" does not mean "unavailable". "The liberally educated person," he writes, "is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration."
Today's social relativism is considered "not a theoretical insight" but a "moral postulate of a free society", and hence the current totalitarianism we experience from the Fundamentalist Left as one dare not oppose such rule. (The Left is no different from the intolerant Right, excepting that the Left, hypocritically, advertises themselves as tolerant, while the Right never bothered.)
How did America reach its current state of intolerance to ideas without agreement on first principles? Bloom takes us on a lively tour toward an answer, engagingly written. As example, early on in America, religion was demoted from the level of "knowledge" to that of "opinion" in order to defuse dangerous elements of its passion we still see today in the Levant, but, importantly, the right to religious belief was not lost. This demotion was possible if society were to shrink its claims to moral certainty, subordinating old ways (but not abandoning them) to Enlightenment's Natural Rights. Today this process of "value shrinkage" is taken to such extreme that the original ideas providing its basis are attacked, claiming each period has its "preferences". None are superior, as that would be, by modern perspectives, discrimination. Today, "subordination" is equivalent to suppression. This radical democracy claims limits on anything to be arbitrary (since truth is now relative), all the while emphasizing how mad the white Eurocentric past was, confirmed by body counts of the most lethal century in the record of our species. "The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right," says Bloom, "rather it is not to think you are right at all." Add to this our fashionable characterization that America's historical progenitors were racist, then subordination to Enlightenment's promise is easily jettisoned in favor of embracing any or all ideologies (except those we came from), abandoning fundamental agreement on first principles that form a social contract to begin with.
In this example we see how a kind of generalization of issues allows for the indictment of anything associated with them in order to pervert the old for a new political order, i.e. dethroning Enlightenment for political correctness and postmodernism. In short, we see a stock theme of a civilization's initial spirit and values becoming their opposite. Though Bloom never comes out to say so, one may wonder if this is a marker of a civilization's fall forewarned by Spengler.
Bloom clarifies that "passion" and "commitment" have become the new political validations replacing reason and critical thinking. What the Founders worked so hard to balance (faction) due to its inherent opposition to the common good, is now promoted as a central role of government with its fondness for "groups". With "common good" abandoned, factions are no longer problematic. What the Founders never imagined has set in - not a tyranny of the majority they strived to counterbalance, but a tyranny of passionate, committed minority.
Concerning multiculturalism in education Bloom notes that Greeks searched out other cultures too (as we still should), but for wholly different reasons - to learn what they had to teach about the human condition, not to nullify their own society as we now do. Moderns maintain America's Constitution is the white man's corrupt document designed to suppress, and that Western ways are a bias to be cleansed by exposure to other cultures through multicultural studies. But this is not to learn what they have to teach so much as it is a political maneuver to dismantle the West, its values, standards and science. Intellectual openness used to invite a quest for knowledge and certitude, while the opposite is now true. Open-mindedness means closing ones mind to our very roots. As though to deny them will settle a score with our history for having done so much evil, while conveniently dismissing the good.
While Fundamentalists assumed that removing reason from the mind would remove bias and prejudice, all they have done is vanquished our best tool for correction. Such is the state of the American mind. Though American education is in crisis, Bloom has given us the gift of knowing there is hope on our own.
Rating: 3
Summary: Yeah, but so what?
Comment: My review is in regards to Mr. Bloom's chapter on the corruption brought about by rock music. I really wish I could find out what it is in rock 'n roll that Bloom says drives an individual towards sexual conquest because I haven't been laid in years. This book reads like an updated version of Plato's "Republic." He brings forth some perfectly valid and intelligent points, but by the end of it, I had to ask myself, "so what?" Bloom tells us we need to control new forms of popular entertainment, and even abolish some of it in order to provide only pure, moral art and entertainment that stimulates the intellect rather than lustful and dishonest emotions. Restricting freedom and encouraging nothing but cleanliness is also a form of fascism. Bloom would have made a much more convincing book had he written with more compassion than condemnation.
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Title: Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss ISBN: 0226776948 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.29 |
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Title: Ravelstein by Saul Bellow ISBN: 0141001763 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Slouching Towards Gomorrah : Modern Liberalism and American Decline by Robert H. Bork ISBN: 0060987197 Publisher: Regan Books Pub. Date: 18 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Republic of Plato by Plato, Allan Bloom ISBN: 0465069347 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: September, 1991 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus by Dinesh D'Souza ISBN: 0684863847 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
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