Closed Mind: A Critique of Allan Bloom

Allan Bloom was perhaps the most vehemently anti-pop culture person ever, and this was my critique of his book. The picture of my cat was included because he is so cute!

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

–          “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats 

Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind is a treatise on the state of education in America as it examines nearly every conceivable aspect of society with the central thesis being that acceptance is leading civilization toward its downfall. He argues that as classical texts are being replaced in the classroom, society has lost a precious resource in constructing values for man to live by. One could view this book as a manifestation of the aforementioned “Second Coming” by Yeats.  A staunch advocate of the classics, Bloom argues that the once pure nature of education has been fundamentally changed due to the idea of “openness” that has been implemented in universities since the 60’s. The book was a surprise hit that stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for non-fiction for ten months, but it has had its share of critics. While some believe the book to be the quintessential argument for classical literature as the foundation of our education system, others claim that Bloom’s focus is too narrowed and can be construed as ethnocentric and overly polemical.

One look into Bloom’s biography and it isn’t any wonder why he upholds his particular ideology. At the age of 15, Bloom decided that he wanted to attend the University of Chicago after reading an article in Reader’s Digest. Bloom began his education there in 1946 where he studied under famed German philosopher Leo Strauss. According to James Atlas of the New York Times, “Strauss was a fanatical celebrant of the ancient Greeks. The subsequent history of philosophy, he argued in many of his books, was no more than a distortion of the values they proposed – the quest for the true, the good, the beautiful.”

Eventually, Bloom received his Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thoughts after writing his dissertation on the Greek rhetorician Isocrates. Bloom went on to briefly teach at Yale and then eventually Cornell. It was during his tenure at Cornell that Bloom had to confront issues of race and feminism that eventually comprised the essential foundation of his beliefs on openness. With such a strong classical foundation, and powerful, life-changing events occurring during his formative years of teaching, it isn’t any wonder that Bloom went on to write The Closing of the American Mind.

The crux of the book lies within the idea of openness. Essentially, the acceptance that all cultures/customs/ways of life are all individually unique and special has lead to a plethora of problems including poor education, lack of national identity, and a dangerously independent mindset that has formed in the wake of tradition’s destruction. This idea is best exemplified when Bloom writes, “Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing. No longer is there a hope that there are great wise men in other places and times who can reveal the truth about life” (34). To Bloom, our openness means that there is no universal truth because all ideals are considered not necessarily equal, but at the very least accepted as possibilities for individuals.

Bloom attributes this loss of universal truth to the profound affect that openness has had on religion. He states, “As the respect for the Sacred . . . has soared, real religion and knowledge of the Bible have diminished to the vanishing point” (56). Bloom’s point being that religion and the Bible provide a common ground for people to discuss and think about the important questions in life and without commonality, no one is able to uphold philosophical discussion. So, while openness may seem positive in respect to the feelings and beliefs of individuals, this acceptance leads to the inability to communicate due to a lack of common ground.

From this fundamental idea, Bloom proceeds to critically pick apart each aspect of American society in order to fit his thesis on the danger of openness. While certain assertions are fair critiques (the lack of interest in reading, the dangers of self-centeredness and a lack of community), others are unfair attacks on progressive movements (feminism and the civil rights movement are among the topics within Bloom’s crosshairs) where Bloom denounces attempts made at equality as events that have merely furthered our dissention into factions.

After picking apart the ways in which individuals have managed to cut themselves off from mankind as a whole (including a particularly humorous chapter on the dangers of rock music where Mick Jagger is compared to a drag queen and the dangers of music are described as, “life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged maturbational fantasy” [75]), Bloom goes on to address the history of philosophy and the role of the University declaring “it need not concern itself with providing its students with experiences that are available in democratic society. They will have them in any event. It must provide them with experiences they cannot have there” (256). Bloom is specifically talking about philosophic experiences because outside of a liberal education, students won’t have an opportunity to explore the philosophical implications of life.

In the final third of the book, Bloom explains the roles of the three key components to the University (the Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities) and denounces the Sciences for having divested itself from the Humanities. His solution to the problem of education is classical literature where he states, “liberal education means reading certain generally recognized classic texts, just reading them, letting them dictate what the questions are and the method of approaching them” (344). Bloom even goes so far as to attack the methods that the Humanities are currently using by stating, “Professors of the humanities have long been desperate to make their subjects accord with modernity instead of a challenge to it . . . there is a furious effort to make them up-to-date” (375). This philosophy of education posits an interesting conundrum because it presumes that students can gain valuable insight from merely reading a classical text

His final points on the state of the Humanities are directly related to his arguments on openness and a lack of common philosophical ground. If the problem with modern man is that over acceptance has lead to mankind being without a compass toward truth, then the solution that Bloom offers lies within the Great Books because within them lies absolute truth.

While Bloom may have the best intentions with his statements on education, his logic is inherently flawed. Bloom states that, “Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion,” (63). While this goal is certainly admirable and perhaps even indisputable, the assumption made is that the solution lies only within classical literature. It further presupposes that all students will have the same reading and interpretation of classical literature and that this interpretation will be to the benefit of mankind.

In essence, Bloom is oversimplifying the state of the human soul by stating that the void that leaves students feeling incomplete can be filled by reading the works of Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, and others. While there is no denying that the works of classical literature and philosophy are absolutely influential and powerful, presenting them as the only solution for all that ails society is a one-dimensional solution given the variety and depth of ethical issues that exist today that classical writers could never have addressed.

Furthermore, a liberal education doesn’t apply to all students (nor should it), but Bloom suggests that an educated person is only one who studies the classics. He states “there is no vision, nor is there a set of competing visions, of what an educated human being is . . . better to give up on liberal education and get on with a specialty in which there is at least a prescribed curriculum and a prospective career,” (337). This is elitism in its purest form because the subtext is that higher education is meant exclusively for philosophical endeavors and any practical education offered by a university can’t be as fulfilling.

Despite the fact that his work is elitist, bigoted, and downright insulting in portions, one cannot deny that Allan Bloom poses some of the most important and fundamental questions that Generation X should have addressed and that Generation Y has trouble contemplating today. The most important issue presented is the complex nature of the American identity.  After all, we are a nation of immigrants, yet we define ourselves as Americans, so there must be something that transcends our differences. Furthermore, if one were to define what it means to be American, what of those characteristics transcends our particular location to define the whole of humanity? All of this returns to Bloom’s main point of the search for truth; considering that Americans are told to be open to all styles of life, the quest for truth is nearly impossible because there is nothing to compare when everything is accepted.

For Bloom, openness is an obstacle to truth, but it should be considered paths toward the truth. If truth is the ultimate destination, then openness is simply a variety of roads towards that destination. While classical literature is certainly a viable road to the truth, popular culture can be another road for some. Mankind must decide what is true, but the only way to do so is to be open to options of what truth can be. After all, as Bloom said himself, “Man is a culture being, not a natural being. What man has from nature is nothing compared to what he has acquired from culture. A culture, like the language that accompanies and expresses it, is a set of mere accidents that add up to a coherent meaning constitutive of man” (190). While Bloom’s operational definition of “culture” in this sentence is referring to classical literature (and therefore should have been “Culture”), it should be read in the general sense of culture. So, it is imperative for individuals to explore their OWN cultures in order to achieve self-discovery and eventually a sense of community.

Ultimately, the argument presented in Bloom’s book comes down to a tension between two diametric opposites that Benjamin Barber narrows down to, “the open mind and the open society, being asked to close the university to the many in order to secure it for the few” (87). So, while Bloom’s concern for the soul of mankind is a powerful and worthwhile meditation, the argument that the solution lies within the great books is far too narrow given the diverse nature of mankind today. Of course, Bloom would argue that this is the very point of his book – that mankind has become so diverse that it is more essential for a centralizing force of education – but the solution presented is narrow-minded and  wrong-headed. It presumes that the truth only lies within these works and it is honestly insulting to the human race by suggesting that mankind hasn’t progressed at all in the quest for truth.

The problems that Allan Bloom posed in The Closing of the American Mind are no closer to being solved today than they were at the time it was published. In fact, the essential conceit made by Bloom has in a sense been revised in Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation with arguments against the digital age of students. Both authors completely dismiss the idea that the solution to mankind’s problems could lie within ourselves because as the speaker at the beginning of to the song “Firewall” by Bright Eyes states, “Problems of the future can be solved by mankind because you create them.”

Works Cited

Atlas, James. “Chicago’s Grumpy Guru.” The New York Times. 03 January 1988. Online.

Barber, Benjamin. “The Philosopher Despot: Allan Bloom’s Elitist Agenda.” Essays on the Closing of the American Mind. Robert L. Stone. Chicago; Chicago Review Press, Incorporated, 1989. 87. Print.

Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York; Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987. Print.

Bright Eyes. “Firewall.” The People’s Key. Saddle Creek. 2011.

Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming.” The Literature Network. Jalic Incorporated. Online.