The Closing of the American Mind/How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students

by Bloom, Allan David

• ISBN13: 9780671479909
• ISBN10: 0671479903
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1987-04-01
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

The Closing of the American Mind, a publishing phenomenon in hardcover, is now a paperback literary event. In this acclaimed number one national best-seller, one of our country's most distinguished political philosophers argues that the social/political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis. Allan Bloom's sweeping analysis is essential to understanding America today. It has fired the imagination of a public ripe for change. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 11
Preface	p. 19
Introduction: Our Virtue	p. 25
Students
The Clean Slate	p. 47
Books	p. 62
Music	p. 68
Relationships	p. 82
Self-Centeredness	p. 82
Equality	p. 88
Race	p. 91
Sex	p. 97
Separateness	p. 109
Divorce	p. 118
Love	p. 122
Eros	p. 132
Nihilism, American Style
The German Connection	p. 141
Two Revolutions and Two States of Nature	p. 157
The Self	p. 173
Creativity	p. 180
Culture	p. 185
Values	p. 194
The Nietzscheanization of the Left or Vice Versa	p. 217
Our Ignorance	p. 227
The University
From Socrates' Apology to Heidegger's Rektoratsrede	p. 243
Tocqueville on Democratic Intellectual Life	p. 246
The Relation Between Thought and Civil Society	p. 256
The Philosophic Experience	p. 268
The Enlightenment Transformation	p. 284
Swift's Doubts	p. 293
Rousseau's Radicalization and the German University	p. 298
The Sixties	p. 313
The Student and the University	p. 336
Liberal Education	p. 336
The Decomposition of the University	p. 347
The Disciplines	p. 356
Conclusion	p. 380
Index	p. 383
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