| Closing of the American Mind | 
 enlarge | Author: Allan Bloom
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 129053
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Touchstone Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0671657151
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.92
EAN: 9780671657154
ASIN: 0671657151
Publication Date: April 1, 1988
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 The Dangers of Post Modernism May 21, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The theme of this book is about Post-Modernism, and its disastrous effects on modernity.
Post-modernism is essentially relativism, the strange belief that there are no certainties to our knowledge and understanding, This is a widely held belief system in the social sciences.
To some degree the counter-enlightenment which is what Post-Modernism is (ie, following the enlightenment) has always been with us, its current incarnation is the a direct result of the failure and falsification of Marxism, and its socialist offspring.
Most of the Post-Modernist thinkers are essentially former hard left academics, such as Michel Foucault and Richard Roty ( a man who seeks to redeem the National Socialist philosopher Martin Heidegger btw)
What in essence is being taught to our young people, is not to discriminate in any way shape or form. If there is no objective truth (as the Post Modernist claim )then you cannot say that one thing is better than another, i.e one religion is no better than another, one culture is no better than another, or more importantly, one experiment shows much clearer results than another. thus you have a generation that finds critical thought and objective truth a little hard to grasp.
Without being able to discriminate you undermine the whole basis of the scientific method,( a engineer for example has to chose the best materials for a buildings construction) but Post Modernist social scientists don't much like this idea of constructing reasoned argument on sound evidence, Karl Popper offered them a way of doing so with the idea of piecemeal social engineering, they ignored him, falsely believing that Thomas Kuhn had offered them a more relative view of the world, without the need for critical reasoning.
(Kuhns view of science btw is a very conservative one despite it being embraced by large parts of the so called progressive left, as he points out in the 3rd edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)
If you believe that truth, beauty, morality, Justice are real material things than you will understand the thrust of Professors Blooms argument. If you cant then you need to shift your paradigm, as Professor Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his work, if you are locked in one paradigm then you cannot have any understanding of another paradigm or Commensurability as he puts it, and you will find it impossible to make a clear choice, and in essence thats the crux of the problem.
 How Not to.. April 10, 2007
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book is the disease for which it pretends to be the diagnosis (or even cure). Complaining of rampant anti-intellectualism and shabby reading skills, Bloom dismisses Foucault and Derrida out of hand, plainly without having read a line of their work.
Perhaps these men really are the charlatans Bloom wants to say they are. We have only his word for it here; no evidence, no arguments, above all no acquaintance or engagement with the texts. Exactly what Bloom says is wrong with America.
As a howl of inchoate (and ill-informed) outrage, this book has proven very successful. As what it pretends to be--a sober and rational cultural analysis--the book is a disgrace and an outrage. That Bloom's reputation let this slipshod embarrassment get published in the first place is far more scandalous than any of the utterly uninformed rants that fill it.
The title's reference is, unintentionally, entirely autobiographical.
MW Morse
 The closing of the western mind July 31, 2002
22 out of 32 found this review helpful
This book reflects a wider stagnation of intellect across the western world. It appears to be an anglo-saxon mental illness but it is more to do with wealth, prosperity and insularity that can affect any culture.If you think about it, the liberal 'anything goes' tolerant ethos is the kiss of death for any culture. For example, where children are concerned it is vital to be able to show disapproval to teach right from wrong, good from bad, acceptable from unacceptable. In Britain, for example, teachers are discouraged from showing disapproval - this is causing unprecedented levels of teenage male and female violence. 30% of british men under 40 have a criminal conviction. I'd like someone to write a book on the closing of the british mind. Britain's influence in the 17th/18th/19th was arguably rooted in simple victorian ideas of honesty, work and thrift. Today in Britain you are better off by 'doing it if you can get away with it', avoiding hard work at any cost, and spending as if there is no tomorrow. As the west declines, world influence continues to move eastwards. I see little evidence that people in the west want to confront the failure of 20th century liberal thinking. If anyone knows of such evidence - please drop me a line. God bless America, bye the way.
criticizing relativism he failed miserably at being objectiv August 4, 1999
11 out of 68 found this review helpful
This is one of the neo-conservative jesus-thumping guys that gives some really good books a bad name. Alan Bloom is so indignant about how americans are stepping on his tradition (which really isn't his at all) ---yet he gives as a solution reading some of the most eloquent speakers against tradition (at least of their times) in recorded history. Mr. Bloom, reading about Socrates will _not_ clue americans in to what you see as eternal verities----if anything, it will cause them to question your truths more. In trying to be fair(which is good!), we have indeed been a little unfair to some of the most beautiful, insightful, *still-contemporary* works produced by the human mind. But unfortunately, Bloom's shoddy, personal-grudge-filled, historically inaccurate (see Oakley's _Community of Learning), and rather often blatantly illogical defense will only serve to confuse the issue, and pull the education debate into lost tangents, away from what really matters: what (all) books actually have to say, and how they are important to us in answering the questions raised by ourselves and this universe. I would ask you to please, please not judge 'great books' (or great books programs) because of such a blowhard.
 Somewhat easy to read July 22, 1999
0 out of 21 found this review helpful
Although I did not like his basic idea and found it truly American conservative, his writing was very easy to read through.Please read Nietzsche and French modern philosopher's works afterwards.
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