Tag: Education

Topics

Books

The Republic of Plato

– The Republic of Plato, translated with notes and an interpretive essay by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.  Second edition: Basic Books, 1991.
Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against… More

The Failure of the University

– "The Failure of the University," Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 4, American Education: Toward an Uncertain Future, Volume I (Fall, 1974), pp. 58-66.
Excerpt: Tocqueville, democracy’s great friend and admirer, reminds us in this passage of the Platonic tripartite division of the soul?desire, spiritedness, and reason. Accord ing to… More

The Education of Democratic Man: Emile

– "The Education of Democratic Man: Emile," Daedalus, Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time (Summer 1978), pp. 135-153.
Excerpt: Thus Emile is one of those rare total or synoptic books, a book with which one can live and which becomes deeper as one becomes deeper, a book comparable to Plato’s Republic,… More

Rousseau’s Emile

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, translated with notes and an introduction by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1979.
Excerpt: Here then we have Rousseau’s response to Plato. Plato said that all men always begin by being prisoners in the cave. The cave is civil society considered in its effect on the… More

Our Listless Universities

– "Our Listless Universities," Change, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr. 1983), pp. 29-35.
Excerpt: I begin with my conclusion: students in our best universities do not believe in anything, and those universities are do-ing nothing about it, nor can they. An easy-going American… More

The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education

– The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education: Collected Essays, 1986.
Excerpt: Therefore a truly political judgment is maintained so long as the issues are matters of life and death. Policy orientation helps keep the focus which we are too likely to lose. It… More

The Open Mind

– Interview with Allan Bloom, The Open Mind, PBS, 7 June 1987.
Watch The Closing of the American Mind on PBS. See more from The Open Mind.

The Closing of the American Mind

– The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, with a foreword by Saul Bellow, Simon & Schuster, 1987.  Reprint, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Excerpt: I used to think that young Americans began whatever education they were to get at the age of eighteen, that their early lives were spiritually empty and that they arrived at the… More

Undemocratic Vistas

– Martha Nussbaum, "Undemocratic Vistas," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988.
Excerpt: 1) Philosophical education is practical. It is the rational search for the best human life. Its subject is, above all, the study of moral and social conceptions, and its purpose… More

Review of The Closing of the American Mind

– Sheldon Wolin, review of The Closing of the American Mind, Theory and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Mar. 1989), pp. 273-282.
Excerpt: Moreover, Bloom deceives his readership by failing to own up to the hornet’s nest of complications that arises once so much is wagered on a rejection of… More

An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited

– Sidney Hook, "An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, The American Scholar, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp.  123, 126-128, 130-132, 134-135.
Excerpt: This denial of the truth about the rampaging students of the sixties is reflected even in the most respectable of the critical reviews Bloom has received. Among the most… More

Reflections on Bloom and His Critics by Peter Lawler

– Peter Lawler, "Reflections on Bloom and His Critics," The Journal of General Education, Vol. 41 (1992), pp. 273-285.
Excerpt: The many, it turns out, are less consistently democratic than the few. Radical anti-elitism or egalitarianism is the doctrine of those defining themselves by their devotion to… More

Remembering Allan Bloom

– Clifford Orwin, "Remembering Allan Bloom," The American Scholar, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 423-430.
Excerpt: The least fair of all the accusations later leveled against Allan was that he was an ideologue. Like all of us, he harbored inclinations in that direction, inclinations all the… More

Erotic Adventures of the Mind by Diana Schaub

– Diana Schaub, "Erotic Adventures of the Mind," Public Interest, Winter 1994.
Excerpt: It is this “fall of eros” which Bloom addresses. If The Closing of the American Mind diagnosed the problem, Love and Friendship delivers the cure. It is not an institutional… More

“The Closing of the American Mind,” Revisited

– S. J. D. Green, "The Closing of the American Mind, Revisited," The Antioch Review, Vol. 56, No. 1, Our Therapeutic State (Winter 1998), pp. 26-36.
Excerpt: Take heed of the subtitle: How Higher Edcation Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. For that is what the book is really about. Moreover, in… More

The Legacy of Allan Bloom

– "The Legacy of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with Werner Dannhauser, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Joseph Bottum and MaryAnn McGrail, hosted by the Hudson Institute, C-SPAN, 18 May 2000.
Panel members discussed author Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, a fictionalized account of the author’s friendship with professor of political philosophy Allan Bloom, best-selling author… More

The Historical Context of Allan Bloom

– "The Historical Context of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with James Ceaser, James Miller, John Tomasi and John McWhorter, hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, C-SPAN, 3 October 2007.

Allan Bloom and America by Thomas West

– Thomas G. West, "Allan Bloom and America," Claremont Review of Books, 19 November 2007.
Excerpt: Nietzsche, one of Bloom’s authorities on the current malaise, rightly points out the debilitating effect of Great Books education in our world, in a passage I first read… More

On Allan Bloom by Michael Zuckert

– Michael Zuckert, "On Allan Bloom," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 81-83.
Excerpt: As Bloom sees it, students, and their education, are victims of the spread of liberal Enlightenment ideas, which have come to undermine the structure of relationships that… More

Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education

– Patrick J. Deneen, "Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education, Rightly Understood," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 49-55.
Excerpt: The educational theories of Allan Bloom and John Dewey could not apparently be more at odds. Bloom argued on behalf of the aspiration of philosophy to apprehend the truth, even if… More

Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind

– Nathan Tarcov, "Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 84-85.
Excerpt: The second point I would like to make is that although Bloom directed withering criticism against the current academic trends that denied the possibility of learning from the… More

The Book That Drove Them Crazy

– Andrew Ferguson, "The Book That Drove Them Crazy: Allan Bloom's 'Closing of the American Mind' 25 Years Later," Weekly Standard, 9 April 2012.
Excerpt: Among much else, Bellow dramatizes the suddenness of the wealth and fame that rained down on Bloom in the late 1980s. The cause, as Bellow says, was the publication of a warlike… More

Re-Opening the American Mind

– Liel Liebovitz, "Re-Opening the American Mind," Tablet, 11 April 2012.
Excerpt: The bravado hid a far more serious vein. Those who accused him of elitism, Bloom argued, were getting it all wrong. He wasn’t a cranky conservative—a “grumpy guru,” as… More

Allan Bloom’s Guide to College

– Matt Feeney, "Allan Bloom’s Guide to College," New Yorker, 12 April 2012.
Excerpt: I don’t point this out to suggest Bloom was blind to these ironies. I do so  to note that he is a less reliable ally in the partisan fight against relativism  than many… More

Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later

– "Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later: The Continuing Failure of Higher Education?," panel discussion with Nathan Tarcov, Bill Kristol, Hillel Fradkin, Janet Dougherty, moderated by John Walters, hosted by the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC, 15 June 2012.
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students offered a… More

The Reopening of the American Mind

– Jay Schalin, "The Reopening of the American Mind," The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, 4 July 2012.
The publication of Closing of the American Mind was followed by the 1989 appearance of Rush Limbaugh on the national airwaves and the Internet’s emergence in the early 1990s. Conservative… More

Conference on the 25th Anniversary of The Closing of the American Mind

– Conference on the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, hosted by the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University, 21 Sept. 2012. The first panel is on Students and is chaired by Arthur Melzer, with Kathryn Sensen, James Hankins, and Paul Cantor as speakers. The second panel is on the University and is chaired by R. Shep Melnick, with Nannerl Keohane, Rita Koganzon, and James Piereson. The third panel is chaired by William Kristol and features Margaret Soltan, Michael Davis and Nasser Behnegar as speakers.  
   

Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education

– Harvey C. Mansfield, "Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education," The New Atlantis, Summer, 2013.
Excerpt: Allan Bloom in his famous book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), drawing on Max Weber, calls the “fundamental issue” of our time “the relation between reason, or… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Yet is one right to believe that Bloom represented political philosophy at its highest reach, and that he spoke for the best life possible? During the season of Bloom’s… More

Essays

The Republic of Plato

– The Republic of Plato, translated with notes and an interpretive essay by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.  Second edition: Basic Books, 1991.
Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against… More

The Failure of the University

– "The Failure of the University," Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 4, American Education: Toward an Uncertain Future, Volume I (Fall, 1974), pp. 58-66.
Excerpt: Tocqueville, democracy’s great friend and admirer, reminds us in this passage of the Platonic tripartite division of the soul?desire, spiritedness, and reason. Accord ing to… More

The Education of Democratic Man: Emile

– "The Education of Democratic Man: Emile," Daedalus, Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time (Summer 1978), pp. 135-153.
Excerpt: Thus Emile is one of those rare total or synoptic books, a book with which one can live and which becomes deeper as one becomes deeper, a book comparable to Plato’s Republic,… More

Rousseau’s Emile

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, translated with notes and an introduction by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1979.
Excerpt: Here then we have Rousseau’s response to Plato. Plato said that all men always begin by being prisoners in the cave. The cave is civil society considered in its effect on the… More

Our Listless Universities

– "Our Listless Universities," Change, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr. 1983), pp. 29-35.
Excerpt: I begin with my conclusion: students in our best universities do not believe in anything, and those universities are do-ing nothing about it, nor can they. An easy-going American… More

The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education

– The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education: Collected Essays, 1986.
Excerpt: Therefore a truly political judgment is maintained so long as the issues are matters of life and death. Policy orientation helps keep the focus which we are too likely to lose. It… More

The Open Mind

– Interview with Allan Bloom, The Open Mind, PBS, 7 June 1987.
Watch The Closing of the American Mind on PBS. See more from The Open Mind.

The Closing of the American Mind

– The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, with a foreword by Saul Bellow, Simon & Schuster, 1987.  Reprint, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Excerpt: I used to think that young Americans began whatever education they were to get at the age of eighteen, that their early lives were spiritually empty and that they arrived at the… More

Undemocratic Vistas

– Martha Nussbaum, "Undemocratic Vistas," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988.
Excerpt: 1) Philosophical education is practical. It is the rational search for the best human life. Its subject is, above all, the study of moral and social conceptions, and its purpose… More

Review of The Closing of the American Mind

– Sheldon Wolin, review of The Closing of the American Mind, Theory and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Mar. 1989), pp. 273-282.
Excerpt: Moreover, Bloom deceives his readership by failing to own up to the hornet’s nest of complications that arises once so much is wagered on a rejection of… More

An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited

– Sidney Hook, "An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, The American Scholar, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp.  123, 126-128, 130-132, 134-135.
Excerpt: This denial of the truth about the rampaging students of the sixties is reflected even in the most respectable of the critical reviews Bloom has received. Among the most… More

Reflections on Bloom and His Critics by Peter Lawler

– Peter Lawler, "Reflections on Bloom and His Critics," The Journal of General Education, Vol. 41 (1992), pp. 273-285.
Excerpt: The many, it turns out, are less consistently democratic than the few. Radical anti-elitism or egalitarianism is the doctrine of those defining themselves by their devotion to… More

Remembering Allan Bloom

– Clifford Orwin, "Remembering Allan Bloom," The American Scholar, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 423-430.
Excerpt: The least fair of all the accusations later leveled against Allan was that he was an ideologue. Like all of us, he harbored inclinations in that direction, inclinations all the… More

Erotic Adventures of the Mind by Diana Schaub

– Diana Schaub, "Erotic Adventures of the Mind," Public Interest, Winter 1994.
Excerpt: It is this “fall of eros” which Bloom addresses. If The Closing of the American Mind diagnosed the problem, Love and Friendship delivers the cure. It is not an institutional… More

“The Closing of the American Mind,” Revisited

– S. J. D. Green, "The Closing of the American Mind, Revisited," The Antioch Review, Vol. 56, No. 1, Our Therapeutic State (Winter 1998), pp. 26-36.
Excerpt: Take heed of the subtitle: How Higher Edcation Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. For that is what the book is really about. Moreover, in… More

The Legacy of Allan Bloom

– "The Legacy of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with Werner Dannhauser, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Joseph Bottum and MaryAnn McGrail, hosted by the Hudson Institute, C-SPAN, 18 May 2000.
Panel members discussed author Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, a fictionalized account of the author’s friendship with professor of political philosophy Allan Bloom, best-selling author… More

The Historical Context of Allan Bloom

– "The Historical Context of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with James Ceaser, James Miller, John Tomasi and John McWhorter, hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, C-SPAN, 3 October 2007.

Allan Bloom and America by Thomas West

– Thomas G. West, "Allan Bloom and America," Claremont Review of Books, 19 November 2007.
Excerpt: Nietzsche, one of Bloom’s authorities on the current malaise, rightly points out the debilitating effect of Great Books education in our world, in a passage I first read… More

On Allan Bloom by Michael Zuckert

– Michael Zuckert, "On Allan Bloom," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 81-83.
Excerpt: As Bloom sees it, students, and their education, are victims of the spread of liberal Enlightenment ideas, which have come to undermine the structure of relationships that… More

Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education

– Patrick J. Deneen, "Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education, Rightly Understood," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 49-55.
Excerpt: The educational theories of Allan Bloom and John Dewey could not apparently be more at odds. Bloom argued on behalf of the aspiration of philosophy to apprehend the truth, even if… More

Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind

– Nathan Tarcov, "Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 84-85.
Excerpt: The second point I would like to make is that although Bloom directed withering criticism against the current academic trends that denied the possibility of learning from the… More

The Book That Drove Them Crazy

– Andrew Ferguson, "The Book That Drove Them Crazy: Allan Bloom's 'Closing of the American Mind' 25 Years Later," Weekly Standard, 9 April 2012.
Excerpt: Among much else, Bellow dramatizes the suddenness of the wealth and fame that rained down on Bloom in the late 1980s. The cause, as Bellow says, was the publication of a warlike… More

Re-Opening the American Mind

– Liel Liebovitz, "Re-Opening the American Mind," Tablet, 11 April 2012.
Excerpt: The bravado hid a far more serious vein. Those who accused him of elitism, Bloom argued, were getting it all wrong. He wasn’t a cranky conservative—a “grumpy guru,” as… More

Allan Bloom’s Guide to College

– Matt Feeney, "Allan Bloom’s Guide to College," New Yorker, 12 April 2012.
Excerpt: I don’t point this out to suggest Bloom was blind to these ironies. I do so  to note that he is a less reliable ally in the partisan fight against relativism  than many… More

Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later

– "Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later: The Continuing Failure of Higher Education?," panel discussion with Nathan Tarcov, Bill Kristol, Hillel Fradkin, Janet Dougherty, moderated by John Walters, hosted by the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC, 15 June 2012.
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students offered a… More

The Reopening of the American Mind

– Jay Schalin, "The Reopening of the American Mind," The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, 4 July 2012.
The publication of Closing of the American Mind was followed by the 1989 appearance of Rush Limbaugh on the national airwaves and the Internet’s emergence in the early 1990s. Conservative… More

Conference on the 25th Anniversary of The Closing of the American Mind

– Conference on the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, hosted by the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University, 21 Sept. 2012. The first panel is on Students and is chaired by Arthur Melzer, with Kathryn Sensen, James Hankins, and Paul Cantor as speakers. The second panel is on the University and is chaired by R. Shep Melnick, with Nannerl Keohane, Rita Koganzon, and James Piereson. The third panel is chaired by William Kristol and features Margaret Soltan, Michael Davis and Nasser Behnegar as speakers.  
   

Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education

– Harvey C. Mansfield, "Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education," The New Atlantis, Summer, 2013.
Excerpt: Allan Bloom in his famous book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), drawing on Max Weber, calls the “fundamental issue” of our time “the relation between reason, or… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Yet is one right to believe that Bloom represented political philosophy at its highest reach, and that he spoke for the best life possible? During the season of Bloom’s… More

Commentary

The Republic of Plato

– The Republic of Plato, translated with notes and an interpretive essay by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.  Second edition: Basic Books, 1991.
Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against… More

The Failure of the University

– "The Failure of the University," Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 4, American Education: Toward an Uncertain Future, Volume I (Fall, 1974), pp. 58-66.
Excerpt: Tocqueville, democracy’s great friend and admirer, reminds us in this passage of the Platonic tripartite division of the soul?desire, spiritedness, and reason. Accord ing to… More

The Education of Democratic Man: Emile

– "The Education of Democratic Man: Emile," Daedalus, Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time (Summer 1978), pp. 135-153.
Excerpt: Thus Emile is one of those rare total or synoptic books, a book with which one can live and which becomes deeper as one becomes deeper, a book comparable to Plato’s Republic,… More

Rousseau’s Emile

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, translated with notes and an introduction by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1979.
Excerpt: Here then we have Rousseau’s response to Plato. Plato said that all men always begin by being prisoners in the cave. The cave is civil society considered in its effect on the… More

Our Listless Universities

– "Our Listless Universities," Change, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr. 1983), pp. 29-35.
Excerpt: I begin with my conclusion: students in our best universities do not believe in anything, and those universities are do-ing nothing about it, nor can they. An easy-going American… More

The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education

– The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education: Collected Essays, 1986.
Excerpt: Therefore a truly political judgment is maintained so long as the issues are matters of life and death. Policy orientation helps keep the focus which we are too likely to lose. It… More

The Open Mind

– Interview with Allan Bloom, The Open Mind, PBS, 7 June 1987.
Watch The Closing of the American Mind on PBS. See more from The Open Mind.

The Closing of the American Mind

– The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, with a foreword by Saul Bellow, Simon & Schuster, 1987.  Reprint, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Excerpt: I used to think that young Americans began whatever education they were to get at the age of eighteen, that their early lives were spiritually empty and that they arrived at the… More

Undemocratic Vistas

– Martha Nussbaum, "Undemocratic Vistas," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988.
Excerpt: 1) Philosophical education is practical. It is the rational search for the best human life. Its subject is, above all, the study of moral and social conceptions, and its purpose… More

Review of The Closing of the American Mind

– Sheldon Wolin, review of The Closing of the American Mind, Theory and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Mar. 1989), pp. 273-282.
Excerpt: Moreover, Bloom deceives his readership by failing to own up to the hornet’s nest of complications that arises once so much is wagered on a rejection of… More

An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited

– Sidney Hook, "An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, The American Scholar, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp.  123, 126-128, 130-132, 134-135.
Excerpt: This denial of the truth about the rampaging students of the sixties is reflected even in the most respectable of the critical reviews Bloom has received. Among the most… More

Reflections on Bloom and His Critics by Peter Lawler

– Peter Lawler, "Reflections on Bloom and His Critics," The Journal of General Education, Vol. 41 (1992), pp. 273-285.
Excerpt: The many, it turns out, are less consistently democratic than the few. Radical anti-elitism or egalitarianism is the doctrine of those defining themselves by their devotion to… More

Remembering Allan Bloom

– Clifford Orwin, "Remembering Allan Bloom," The American Scholar, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 423-430.
Excerpt: The least fair of all the accusations later leveled against Allan was that he was an ideologue. Like all of us, he harbored inclinations in that direction, inclinations all the… More

Erotic Adventures of the Mind by Diana Schaub

– Diana Schaub, "Erotic Adventures of the Mind," Public Interest, Winter 1994.
Excerpt: It is this “fall of eros” which Bloom addresses. If The Closing of the American Mind diagnosed the problem, Love and Friendship delivers the cure. It is not an institutional… More

“The Closing of the American Mind,” Revisited

– S. J. D. Green, "The Closing of the American Mind, Revisited," The Antioch Review, Vol. 56, No. 1, Our Therapeutic State (Winter 1998), pp. 26-36.
Excerpt: Take heed of the subtitle: How Higher Edcation Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. For that is what the book is really about. Moreover, in… More

The Legacy of Allan Bloom

– "The Legacy of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with Werner Dannhauser, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Joseph Bottum and MaryAnn McGrail, hosted by the Hudson Institute, C-SPAN, 18 May 2000.
Panel members discussed author Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, a fictionalized account of the author’s friendship with professor of political philosophy Allan Bloom, best-selling author… More

The Historical Context of Allan Bloom

– "The Historical Context of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with James Ceaser, James Miller, John Tomasi and John McWhorter, hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, C-SPAN, 3 October 2007.

Allan Bloom and America by Thomas West

– Thomas G. West, "Allan Bloom and America," Claremont Review of Books, 19 November 2007.
Excerpt: Nietzsche, one of Bloom’s authorities on the current malaise, rightly points out the debilitating effect of Great Books education in our world, in a passage I first read… More

On Allan Bloom by Michael Zuckert

– Michael Zuckert, "On Allan Bloom," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 81-83.
Excerpt: As Bloom sees it, students, and their education, are victims of the spread of liberal Enlightenment ideas, which have come to undermine the structure of relationships that… More

Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education

– Patrick J. Deneen, "Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education, Rightly Understood," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 49-55.
Excerpt: The educational theories of Allan Bloom and John Dewey could not apparently be more at odds. Bloom argued on behalf of the aspiration of philosophy to apprehend the truth, even if… More

Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind

– Nathan Tarcov, "Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 84-85.
Excerpt: The second point I would like to make is that although Bloom directed withering criticism against the current academic trends that denied the possibility of learning from the… More

The Book That Drove Them Crazy

– Andrew Ferguson, "The Book That Drove Them Crazy: Allan Bloom's 'Closing of the American Mind' 25 Years Later," Weekly Standard, 9 April 2012.
Excerpt: Among much else, Bellow dramatizes the suddenness of the wealth and fame that rained down on Bloom in the late 1980s. The cause, as Bellow says, was the publication of a warlike… More

Re-Opening the American Mind

– Liel Liebovitz, "Re-Opening the American Mind," Tablet, 11 April 2012.
Excerpt: The bravado hid a far more serious vein. Those who accused him of elitism, Bloom argued, were getting it all wrong. He wasn’t a cranky conservative—a “grumpy guru,” as… More

Allan Bloom’s Guide to College

– Matt Feeney, "Allan Bloom’s Guide to College," New Yorker, 12 April 2012.
Excerpt: I don’t point this out to suggest Bloom was blind to these ironies. I do so  to note that he is a less reliable ally in the partisan fight against relativism  than many… More

Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later

– "Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later: The Continuing Failure of Higher Education?," panel discussion with Nathan Tarcov, Bill Kristol, Hillel Fradkin, Janet Dougherty, moderated by John Walters, hosted by the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC, 15 June 2012.
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students offered a… More

The Reopening of the American Mind

– Jay Schalin, "The Reopening of the American Mind," The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, 4 July 2012.
The publication of Closing of the American Mind was followed by the 1989 appearance of Rush Limbaugh on the national airwaves and the Internet’s emergence in the early 1990s. Conservative… More

Conference on the 25th Anniversary of The Closing of the American Mind

– Conference on the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, hosted by the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University, 21 Sept. 2012. The first panel is on Students and is chaired by Arthur Melzer, with Kathryn Sensen, James Hankins, and Paul Cantor as speakers. The second panel is on the University and is chaired by R. Shep Melnick, with Nannerl Keohane, Rita Koganzon, and James Piereson. The third panel is chaired by William Kristol and features Margaret Soltan, Michael Davis and Nasser Behnegar as speakers.  
   

Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education

– Harvey C. Mansfield, "Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education," The New Atlantis, Summer, 2013.
Excerpt: Allan Bloom in his famous book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), drawing on Max Weber, calls the “fundamental issue” of our time “the relation between reason, or… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Yet is one right to believe that Bloom represented political philosophy at its highest reach, and that he spoke for the best life possible? During the season of Bloom’s… More

Multimedia

The Republic of Plato

– The Republic of Plato, translated with notes and an interpretive essay by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.  Second edition: Basic Books, 1991.
Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against… More

The Failure of the University

– "The Failure of the University," Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 4, American Education: Toward an Uncertain Future, Volume I (Fall, 1974), pp. 58-66.
Excerpt: Tocqueville, democracy’s great friend and admirer, reminds us in this passage of the Platonic tripartite division of the soul?desire, spiritedness, and reason. Accord ing to… More

The Education of Democratic Man: Emile

– "The Education of Democratic Man: Emile," Daedalus, Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time (Summer 1978), pp. 135-153.
Excerpt: Thus Emile is one of those rare total or synoptic books, a book with which one can live and which becomes deeper as one becomes deeper, a book comparable to Plato’s Republic,… More

Rousseau’s Emile

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, translated with notes and an introduction by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1979.
Excerpt: Here then we have Rousseau’s response to Plato. Plato said that all men always begin by being prisoners in the cave. The cave is civil society considered in its effect on the… More

Our Listless Universities

– "Our Listless Universities," Change, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr. 1983), pp. 29-35.
Excerpt: I begin with my conclusion: students in our best universities do not believe in anything, and those universities are do-ing nothing about it, nor can they. An easy-going American… More

The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education

– The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education: Collected Essays, 1986.
Excerpt: Therefore a truly political judgment is maintained so long as the issues are matters of life and death. Policy orientation helps keep the focus which we are too likely to lose. It… More

The Open Mind

– Interview with Allan Bloom, The Open Mind, PBS, 7 June 1987.
Watch The Closing of the American Mind on PBS. See more from The Open Mind.

The Closing of the American Mind

– The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, with a foreword by Saul Bellow, Simon & Schuster, 1987.  Reprint, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Excerpt: I used to think that young Americans began whatever education they were to get at the age of eighteen, that their early lives were spiritually empty and that they arrived at the… More

Undemocratic Vistas

– Martha Nussbaum, "Undemocratic Vistas," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988.
Excerpt: 1) Philosophical education is practical. It is the rational search for the best human life. Its subject is, above all, the study of moral and social conceptions, and its purpose… More

Review of The Closing of the American Mind

– Sheldon Wolin, review of The Closing of the American Mind, Theory and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Mar. 1989), pp. 273-282.
Excerpt: Moreover, Bloom deceives his readership by failing to own up to the hornet’s nest of complications that arises once so much is wagered on a rejection of… More

An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited

– Sidney Hook, "An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, The American Scholar, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp.  123, 126-128, 130-132, 134-135.
Excerpt: This denial of the truth about the rampaging students of the sixties is reflected even in the most respectable of the critical reviews Bloom has received. Among the most… More

Reflections on Bloom and His Critics by Peter Lawler

– Peter Lawler, "Reflections on Bloom and His Critics," The Journal of General Education, Vol. 41 (1992), pp. 273-285.
Excerpt: The many, it turns out, are less consistently democratic than the few. Radical anti-elitism or egalitarianism is the doctrine of those defining themselves by their devotion to… More

Remembering Allan Bloom

– Clifford Orwin, "Remembering Allan Bloom," The American Scholar, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 423-430.
Excerpt: The least fair of all the accusations later leveled against Allan was that he was an ideologue. Like all of us, he harbored inclinations in that direction, inclinations all the… More

Erotic Adventures of the Mind by Diana Schaub

– Diana Schaub, "Erotic Adventures of the Mind," Public Interest, Winter 1994.
Excerpt: It is this “fall of eros” which Bloom addresses. If The Closing of the American Mind diagnosed the problem, Love and Friendship delivers the cure. It is not an institutional… More

“The Closing of the American Mind,” Revisited

– S. J. D. Green, "The Closing of the American Mind, Revisited," The Antioch Review, Vol. 56, No. 1, Our Therapeutic State (Winter 1998), pp. 26-36.
Excerpt: Take heed of the subtitle: How Higher Edcation Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. For that is what the book is really about. Moreover, in… More

The Legacy of Allan Bloom

– "The Legacy of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with Werner Dannhauser, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Joseph Bottum and MaryAnn McGrail, hosted by the Hudson Institute, C-SPAN, 18 May 2000.
Panel members discussed author Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, a fictionalized account of the author’s friendship with professor of political philosophy Allan Bloom, best-selling author… More

The Historical Context of Allan Bloom

– "The Historical Context of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with James Ceaser, James Miller, John Tomasi and John McWhorter, hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, C-SPAN, 3 October 2007.

Allan Bloom and America by Thomas West

– Thomas G. West, "Allan Bloom and America," Claremont Review of Books, 19 November 2007.
Excerpt: Nietzsche, one of Bloom’s authorities on the current malaise, rightly points out the debilitating effect of Great Books education in our world, in a passage I first read… More

On Allan Bloom by Michael Zuckert

– Michael Zuckert, "On Allan Bloom," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 81-83.
Excerpt: As Bloom sees it, students, and their education, are victims of the spread of liberal Enlightenment ideas, which have come to undermine the structure of relationships that… More

Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education

– Patrick J. Deneen, "Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education, Rightly Understood," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 49-55.
Excerpt: The educational theories of Allan Bloom and John Dewey could not apparently be more at odds. Bloom argued on behalf of the aspiration of philosophy to apprehend the truth, even if… More

Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind

– Nathan Tarcov, "Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 84-85.
Excerpt: The second point I would like to make is that although Bloom directed withering criticism against the current academic trends that denied the possibility of learning from the… More

The Book That Drove Them Crazy

– Andrew Ferguson, "The Book That Drove Them Crazy: Allan Bloom's 'Closing of the American Mind' 25 Years Later," Weekly Standard, 9 April 2012.
Excerpt: Among much else, Bellow dramatizes the suddenness of the wealth and fame that rained down on Bloom in the late 1980s. The cause, as Bellow says, was the publication of a warlike… More

Re-Opening the American Mind

– Liel Liebovitz, "Re-Opening the American Mind," Tablet, 11 April 2012.
Excerpt: The bravado hid a far more serious vein. Those who accused him of elitism, Bloom argued, were getting it all wrong. He wasn’t a cranky conservative—a “grumpy guru,” as… More

Allan Bloom’s Guide to College

– Matt Feeney, "Allan Bloom’s Guide to College," New Yorker, 12 April 2012.
Excerpt: I don’t point this out to suggest Bloom was blind to these ironies. I do so  to note that he is a less reliable ally in the partisan fight against relativism  than many… More

Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later

– "Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later: The Continuing Failure of Higher Education?," panel discussion with Nathan Tarcov, Bill Kristol, Hillel Fradkin, Janet Dougherty, moderated by John Walters, hosted by the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC, 15 June 2012.
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students offered a… More

The Reopening of the American Mind

– Jay Schalin, "The Reopening of the American Mind," The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, 4 July 2012.
The publication of Closing of the American Mind was followed by the 1989 appearance of Rush Limbaugh on the national airwaves and the Internet’s emergence in the early 1990s. Conservative… More

Conference on the 25th Anniversary of The Closing of the American Mind

– Conference on the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, hosted by the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University, 21 Sept. 2012. The first panel is on Students and is chaired by Arthur Melzer, with Kathryn Sensen, James Hankins, and Paul Cantor as speakers. The second panel is on the University and is chaired by R. Shep Melnick, with Nannerl Keohane, Rita Koganzon, and James Piereson. The third panel is chaired by William Kristol and features Margaret Soltan, Michael Davis and Nasser Behnegar as speakers.  
   

Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education

– Harvey C. Mansfield, "Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education," The New Atlantis, Summer, 2013.
Excerpt: Allan Bloom in his famous book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), drawing on Max Weber, calls the “fundamental issue” of our time “the relation between reason, or… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Yet is one right to believe that Bloom represented political philosophy at its highest reach, and that he spoke for the best life possible? During the season of Bloom’s… More

Teaching

The Republic of Plato

– The Republic of Plato, translated with notes and an interpretive essay by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.  Second edition: Basic Books, 1991.
Excerpt: The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens’ accusation against… More

The Failure of the University

– "The Failure of the University," Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 4, American Education: Toward an Uncertain Future, Volume I (Fall, 1974), pp. 58-66.
Excerpt: Tocqueville, democracy’s great friend and admirer, reminds us in this passage of the Platonic tripartite division of the soul?desire, spiritedness, and reason. Accord ing to… More

The Education of Democratic Man: Emile

– "The Education of Democratic Man: Emile," Daedalus, Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time (Summer 1978), pp. 135-153.
Excerpt: Thus Emile is one of those rare total or synoptic books, a book with which one can live and which becomes deeper as one becomes deeper, a book comparable to Plato’s Republic,… More

Rousseau’s Emile

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, translated with notes and an introduction by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1979.
Excerpt: Here then we have Rousseau’s response to Plato. Plato said that all men always begin by being prisoners in the cave. The cave is civil society considered in its effect on the… More

Our Listless Universities

– "Our Listless Universities," Change, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr. 1983), pp. 29-35.
Excerpt: I begin with my conclusion: students in our best universities do not believe in anything, and those universities are do-ing nothing about it, nor can they. An easy-going American… More

The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education

– The Crisis of American Democracy and Liberal Education: Collected Essays, 1986.
Excerpt: Therefore a truly political judgment is maintained so long as the issues are matters of life and death. Policy orientation helps keep the focus which we are too likely to lose. It… More

The Open Mind

– Interview with Allan Bloom, The Open Mind, PBS, 7 June 1987.
Watch The Closing of the American Mind on PBS. See more from The Open Mind.

The Closing of the American Mind

– The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, with a foreword by Saul Bellow, Simon & Schuster, 1987.  Reprint, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Excerpt: I used to think that young Americans began whatever education they were to get at the age of eighteen, that their early lives were spiritually empty and that they arrived at the… More

Undemocratic Vistas

– Martha Nussbaum, "Undemocratic Vistas," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, New York Review of Books, 31 March 1988.
Excerpt: 1) Philosophical education is practical. It is the rational search for the best human life. Its subject is, above all, the study of moral and social conceptions, and its purpose… More

Review of The Closing of the American Mind

– Sheldon Wolin, review of The Closing of the American Mind, Theory and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Mar. 1989), pp. 273-282.
Excerpt: Moreover, Bloom deceives his readership by failing to own up to the hornet’s nest of complications that arises once so much is wagered on a rejection of… More

An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited

– Sidney Hook, "An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited," review of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, The American Scholar, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp.  123, 126-128, 130-132, 134-135.
Excerpt: This denial of the truth about the rampaging students of the sixties is reflected even in the most respectable of the critical reviews Bloom has received. Among the most… More

Reflections on Bloom and His Critics by Peter Lawler

– Peter Lawler, "Reflections on Bloom and His Critics," The Journal of General Education, Vol. 41 (1992), pp. 273-285.
Excerpt: The many, it turns out, are less consistently democratic than the few. Radical anti-elitism or egalitarianism is the doctrine of those defining themselves by their devotion to… More

Remembering Allan Bloom

– Clifford Orwin, "Remembering Allan Bloom," The American Scholar, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 423-430.
Excerpt: The least fair of all the accusations later leveled against Allan was that he was an ideologue. Like all of us, he harbored inclinations in that direction, inclinations all the… More

Erotic Adventures of the Mind by Diana Schaub

– Diana Schaub, "Erotic Adventures of the Mind," Public Interest, Winter 1994.
Excerpt: It is this “fall of eros” which Bloom addresses. If The Closing of the American Mind diagnosed the problem, Love and Friendship delivers the cure. It is not an institutional… More

“The Closing of the American Mind,” Revisited

– S. J. D. Green, "The Closing of the American Mind, Revisited," The Antioch Review, Vol. 56, No. 1, Our Therapeutic State (Winter 1998), pp. 26-36.
Excerpt: Take heed of the subtitle: How Higher Edcation Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. For that is what the book is really about. Moreover, in… More

The Legacy of Allan Bloom

– "The Legacy of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with Werner Dannhauser, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Joseph Bottum and MaryAnn McGrail, hosted by the Hudson Institute, C-SPAN, 18 May 2000.
Panel members discussed author Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, a fictionalized account of the author’s friendship with professor of political philosophy Allan Bloom, best-selling author… More

The Historical Context of Allan Bloom

– "The Historical Context of Allan Bloom," panel discussion with James Ceaser, James Miller, John Tomasi and John McWhorter, hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, C-SPAN, 3 October 2007.

Allan Bloom and America by Thomas West

– Thomas G. West, "Allan Bloom and America," Claremont Review of Books, 19 November 2007.
Excerpt: Nietzsche, one of Bloom’s authorities on the current malaise, rightly points out the debilitating effect of Great Books education in our world, in a passage I first read… More

On Allan Bloom by Michael Zuckert

– Michael Zuckert, "On Allan Bloom," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 81-83.
Excerpt: As Bloom sees it, students, and their education, are victims of the spread of liberal Enlightenment ideas, which have come to undermine the structure of relationships that… More

Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education

– Patrick J. Deneen, "Strange Bedfellows: Allan Bloom and John Dewey Against Liberal Education, Rightly Understood," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 49-55.
Excerpt: The educational theories of Allan Bloom and John Dewey could not apparently be more at odds. Bloom argued on behalf of the aspiration of philosophy to apprehend the truth, even if… More

Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind

– Nathan Tarcov, "Reforming Higher Education and the Opening of the American Mind," The Good Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008), pp. 84-85.
Excerpt: The second point I would like to make is that although Bloom directed withering criticism against the current academic trends that denied the possibility of learning from the… More

The Book That Drove Them Crazy

– Andrew Ferguson, "The Book That Drove Them Crazy: Allan Bloom's 'Closing of the American Mind' 25 Years Later," Weekly Standard, 9 April 2012.
Excerpt: Among much else, Bellow dramatizes the suddenness of the wealth and fame that rained down on Bloom in the late 1980s. The cause, as Bellow says, was the publication of a warlike… More

Re-Opening the American Mind

– Liel Liebovitz, "Re-Opening the American Mind," Tablet, 11 April 2012.
Excerpt: The bravado hid a far more serious vein. Those who accused him of elitism, Bloom argued, were getting it all wrong. He wasn’t a cranky conservative—a “grumpy guru,” as… More

Allan Bloom’s Guide to College

– Matt Feeney, "Allan Bloom’s Guide to College," New Yorker, 12 April 2012.
Excerpt: I don’t point this out to suggest Bloom was blind to these ironies. I do so  to note that he is a less reliable ally in the partisan fight against relativism  than many… More

Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later

– "Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind Twenty-Five Years Later: The Continuing Failure of Higher Education?," panel discussion with Nathan Tarcov, Bill Kristol, Hillel Fradkin, Janet Dougherty, moderated by John Walters, hosted by the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC, 15 June 2012.
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students offered a… More

The Reopening of the American Mind

– Jay Schalin, "The Reopening of the American Mind," The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, 4 July 2012.
The publication of Closing of the American Mind was followed by the 1989 appearance of Rush Limbaugh on the national airwaves and the Internet’s emergence in the early 1990s. Conservative… More

Conference on the 25th Anniversary of The Closing of the American Mind

– Conference on the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, hosted by the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University, 21 Sept. 2012. The first panel is on Students and is chaired by Arthur Melzer, with Kathryn Sensen, James Hankins, and Paul Cantor as speakers. The second panel is on the University and is chaired by R. Shep Melnick, with Nannerl Keohane, Rita Koganzon, and James Piereson. The third panel is chaired by William Kristol and features Margaret Soltan, Michael Davis and Nasser Behnegar as speakers.  
   

Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education

– Harvey C. Mansfield, "Science and Non-Science in Liberal Education," The New Atlantis, Summer, 2013.
Excerpt: Allan Bloom in his famous book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), drawing on Max Weber, calls the “fundamental issue” of our time “the relation between reason, or… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Yet is one right to believe that Bloom represented political philosophy at its highest reach, and that he spoke for the best life possible? During the season of Bloom’s… More