Book Review: The Closing of the American Mind

An amazing and humbling book, and also one that I wish I had read while I was still in college. Bloom's basic thesis is pretty simple: 1.) Democracies are inimical to any kind of elitism; 2.) The primary role of the university in a democracy is to create a philosophical elite (Nothing scary here. By philosophical elite he means a group of people capable of asking and attempting to answer the Big Questions which he defines as "reason-revelation, freedom-necessity, democracy-aristocracy, good-evil, body-soul, self-other, city-man, eternity-time, being-nothing."); 3.) American universities have manifestly faield on all accounts due to a collusion between the native democratic impulse and imported German philosophy that attacked the foundations of reason. The three points that I have laid out are only the briefest description of a tremendously deep book.

Bloom also says a lot of other things obviously and says them extremely well. He talks about race, music, and the sixties in a completely unapologetic tone, which may cause some readers to be put off. They shouldn't be. Even if they disagree (perhaps vehemently) they should stay the course and see if they agree with Bloom's basic point. Closing can be quite difficult to get trough at points, not because of the writing style but because of the material it covers. It would behoove the reader immensely to have some familiarity with Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Nietszche, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Weber (I had only the most passing familiarity with any of these but could still follow Bloom's basic thread, so don't lose heart). If the book does prove to be too much, skip ahead to the last section: "The University." Here lies the core of Bloom's message, although without most of this supporting argument, i.e. the majority of the book.