The Closing of the American Mind
Liberal education and the function of the university in a democracy
Prior to the publication of The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom was known in the academic world of philosophy for his publication of a unique translation and interpretation of Plato’s Republic. The Closing of the American Mind was an unexpected and immediate best seller, with strongly favorable initial reviews, including a review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times, an op-ed piece by syndicated conservative commentator George Will, and positive reviews in Time, Newsweek, the Chronical of Higher Education, and The Washington Post. The hardback edition sold nearly a half million copies, and the book remained on The New York Times Bestseller List for nonfiction for four months. However, a second round of reviews was generally more critical, including a characterization by David Rieff that the book is “vengeful, reactionary, and antidemocratic.”
In my view, public intellectuals never came to terms with Bloom’s book, neither his attackers nor his defenders. We have not seen an insightful identification of his insights and oversights, and even less have we seen a taking of stock of what American higher education ought to do or can do to correct its shortcomings and failings.
Does this failure of public intellectuals reflect a habit of self-centered interest in advancing careers, as against a persistent priority to truth and to the long-range wellbeing of the nation? It is a failure with profound implications, because Bloom is entirely correct in viewing the development of higher education, with a clear and responsible sense of its mission, as a necessary dimension in the construction of a democratic society. The crisis of higher education, and its failure to identify and implement necessary structural reforms within the academy, is central to the current confusion, division, and decadence of the United States.
Born in Indianapolis on September 14, 1930, Bloom was the grandson of German Jewish immigrants to the United States; both of his parents were social workers. He enrolled in the University of Chicago at the age of 15, in a humanities program for gifted students, graduating with a BA at the age of 18. He received a Ph.D. in 1955 from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, a unique interdisciplinary program with rigorous academic requirements, even by University of Chicago standards. He spent his career as a professor in the great universities of the United States, France, Germany, and Canada, including Yale, Cornell, the University of Toronto, and the University of Chicago.
Bloom above all was committed to the classics. He believed that the central purpose of the great university—or perhaps elite university would be a more appropriate term—is to introduce young people to the world of the classics. In his view, the most receptive students would become part of an academic aristocracy capable of educating the leaders of the nation—its educators, politicians, lawyers, judges, doctors, teachers, and engineers—many of whom would be educated in the non-elite state universities.
Bloom’s criticisms of higher education are based on its failure to fulfill its mission as he understood it, indeed, its indifference to said mission. And as a secondary theme, Bloom is critical of the post-1965 turn of the African-American movement to black power and black separatism, maintaining that it was based in ignorance of the insights of classic philosophy. He believed that university administrators, ignoring the insights of the classics, gave way under the pressure of black demands, which constituted catering to a type of mob rule.
Bloom’s oversights were many. He did not appreciate the profound aspects of the black power movement as a critique of American democracy, American imperialism, and the neocolonial world-system. He had a superficial understanding of the student anti-war movement in the United States as well as the characteristics of socialism in its diverse manifestations. He did not even begin to see the nefarious consequences of American higher education’s incapacity to appreciate the insights of the people’s movements of the Third World for the past 100 years, nor was he aware of the structural contradictions of the world-system that gave rise to these movements.
Liberal education and American democracy
For Bloom, the mission of higher education in a democratic society is liberal education, in which the question, “What is man,” is a continuous question, and in which alternative answers and thinking on the question are studied, including those answers that go against the tendencies of the time. “The liberally educated person 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.” He further writes that “true liberal education requires that the student’s whole life be radically changed by it, that what he learns may affect his action, his tastes, his choices, that no previous attachment be immune to examination and hence re-evaluation. Liberal education puts everything at risk and requires students who are able to risk everything.”
True liberal education, for Bloom, is the mission, more precisely, of the great university. The great university provides an atmosphere of free inquiry in the addressing of important questions; in contrast, the state university is the place where young men and women study to become doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers, and other professionals. For Bloom, the great university must keep the important questions front and center, which requires study of the great works that addressed such permanent questions in the past; whereas the state university addresses practical social problems like poverty, disease, and war.
Since Bloom did not have the personal experience of studying practical social problems, he superficializes such study. He does not appreciate that it includes the study of the historical and structural sources of world poverty and war, the understanding of which requires a dialogue across civilizations, a dialogue that takes seriously the questions and perspectives formulated by the leaders and intellectuals of the nations and geographic regions of the world. The quest for such “practical” truth is a transforming process, leading the person seeking truth to an understanding beyond what was possible in her or his starting point in a particular nation, region, culture, or social class. And such a quest takes students to a grasping of fundamental historical facts and moral principles that must be understood to create a world environment capable of sustaining and developing human civilizations. Understanding the historical and structural sources of serious and threatening social problems today is the foundation for a reasoned and scientific understanding of the past, present, and possible future march of human civilizations.
Boom did not see that the cultural legacy of humanity includes not only the classic philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; not only the sacred texts of Ancient Judaism and of Islam; not only the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and the literature of Shakespeare; and not only the modern philosophy of natural rights. It also includes the classic philosophy and literature of China, India, and Africa. And most importantly, it includes the sacred texts formed by the speeches and writings of the exceptional anti-colonial and anti-imperialist leaders who constructed in theory and practice during the last 100 years the foundations for a more just, sustainable, politically stable, multi-civilizational, and prosperous world.
Taking this broader understanding of the human cultural legacy into account, I would think that liberal education ought to involve four years of study of all of these classic and sacred texts, combined with the study of one or two languages that would facilitate further study in a particular social context as a life mission, for those so inspired. The study of the classics of Greek philosophy is an important dimension, necessary for the arrival to insight; but so is study of the revolutions forged by the peoples of the modern world, including the American, French, Haitian, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions, to mention the most important of them.
The knowing of alternative answers to the question, “What is man,” involves not only knowing the alternatives formulated by the ancient Greeks but also the formulations of the most insightful and committed among those who have played leadership roles in other parts of the world, whose exceptional gifts were recognized by their peoples.
I will continue to reflect on Bloom’s seminal book during this week.
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