Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Bloom's book is probably one of those who got provocative reviews in the New York Times, making it a bestseller which no one reads. At almost four hundred pages long, it is quite dense, and Bloom shares the Straussian love of long paragraphs. As such, probably most people who bought it cracked it open, read a few pages, and then consigned it to an indefinite prison sentence on the bookshelf.

Closing is a critique of the soul of the American university student; Bloom writes about choice, love, eros, music, and the history of thought (my favorite section), especially how words like "values", "ideology", and such words come to American popular thought and altered their original meaning; he writes how all these elements culminate in rather nihilist-unawares ways of thinking and being. Closing is often beautifully written (especially when he is discussing the merits of a particular book), and while its arguments were sometimes surprising, more often it voiced sentiments and concerns already at work within me. It fell upon fertile soil, you may believe that. This book and Crisis of European Sciences should be enough to convince anyone of the importance of liberal education, which of course for Mr. Bloom is the answer; the Great Books education. This has earned him hatred from other sectors, who accuse him of only teaching students what to read, not how to think for themselves, but any intelligent person can mock the pseudo-thinker who would be blinded enough to say such a thing.

One of its finest achievements is how Bloom is able to show us (for though I am a zealot for liberal education, I am also a Millennial and a modern, however much I may hate both of these things) ourselves. It is occasionally as frightening as peering into a mirror, for we often do dislike what we find.

"An American student knows only the word 'philosophy', and it does not seem to be any more of a serious life choice than yoga."