The Closing of the American Mind
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Closing of the American Mind
| Full title | The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students |
|---|---|
| Author | Allan Bloom |
| Published | 1987 |
| Pages | 400 |
| Recommended | 2 times |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Allan Bloom’s charge that the American university replaced the pursuit of truth with a dogma of relativism, leaving students unable to read a great book as a claim about how to live — ending as a defence of the great-books curriculum and of philosophy as a way of life. An unexpected 1987 bestseller, and a founding document of the argument about the university that has not stopped since. |
Where I heard about it
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Spotted at Pioneer Book, Provo — November 2018 (Books photo album)
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Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List (March 2026), opening Pursuing the Good Life: Ethics and Personal Growth ahead of MacIntyre, Cicero, Aurelius and Frankl — the argument for why a reading list like his is worth making at all. Bloom appears twice more on the list as a translator: his editions of Plato’s Republic and Rousseau’s Emile are the ones McCord specifies. Full transcription: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
Connections
- Higher Education — the institution the book holds responsible.
- Education — the broader subject.
- Academia — the professional culture Bloom holds responsible.
- Reading — the practice the book is a defence of.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.