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Essay on The Closing of the American Mind: Part I
Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind was published in 1987, and it has been bought, if not exactly read, by millions of Americans since then. In many ways this was a very useful book. It brought into public view the scandal of the universities, which openly teach that there is no principled difference between good and evil. Bloom exposes and denounces the pervasive and mindless relativism has exhausted the spirit of the West so badly over the past century.
Bloom's book is a diagnosis of the intellectual and moral ills of our day. If it is not a prescription, it contains at least some suggestions for a cure. The book is most sound, I will argue, in its description of current pathologies. It is partly sound, partly unsound in its account of their origin. It is least sound in its prescription for their healing.
The introduction is a brilliant concise indictment of the modern "openness" of the mind, which is simply the unquestioning dogmatic self-contradictory cultural relativism. Bloom argues that proper openness has nothing to do with what passes for it these days. The uniquely Western belief that other cultures are worth studying, which has its roots in the Greek desire to learn more about others in order to find/construct a better life, has degenerated into a mindless assertion of the equal worth of other cultures. The rationality that was the cornerstone at the creation of the American nation, and which led to a culture firmly based on the belief of inalienable rights, has been replaced by mysticism which perverts the protection of individual rights into protection of minorities.
The introduction is about Our Virtue, that of openness. However, Bloom brings to bear two sorts of openness - one that should be in order for us to be able to philosophize and animates anyone who wishes to learn.....
