Closing of the American Mind

The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that ?hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy? (The New York Times)?now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition.

In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that "hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy" (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites.

Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom's argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.

Autorentext

Allan Bloom was Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College and co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago. He taught at Yale, University of Paris, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, and Cornell, where he was the recipient of the Clark Teaching Award in 1967. He died in 1992.

Inhalt

Contents

*Foreword by Saul Bellow

Preface

Introduction: Our Virtue*

PART ONE. STUDENTS

The Clean Slate

Boob

Music

Relationships

*Self-Centeredness

Equality

Race

Sex

Separateness

Divorce

Love

Eros*

PART TWO. NIHILISM, AMERICAN STYLE

The German Connection

Two Revolutions and Two States of Nature

The Serf

Creativity

Culture

Values

The Nietzscheanization of the Left or Vice Versa

Our Ignorance

PART THREE. THE UNIVERSITY

From Socrates' *Apology to Heidegger's Rektoratsrede

Tocqueville on Democratic Intellectual Life

The Relation Between Thought and Civil Society

The Philosophic Experience

The Enlightenment Transformation

Swift's Doubts

Rousseau's Radicalization and the German University*

The Sixties

The Student and the University

*Liberal Education

The Decomposition of the University

The Disciplines

Conclusion

Index*