A short life of the author
Allan David Bloom (14 September 1930 – 7 October 1992) was an American philosopher, classicist, and professor of political science at the University of Chicago whose book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987) became one of the most improbable bestsellers in American publishing history — a dense, learned, deliberately unfashionable argument about Plato, Nietzsche, and the state of the American soul that spent months on the New York Times bestseller list, sold over a million copies, and ignited a culture war about higher education that has never fully subsided. Bloom argued that American universities had abandoned the great books of the Western tradition in favour of cultural relativism, that rock music had degraded the souls of the young, and that the 1960s had catastrophically weakened the life of the mind. He was lionised by conservatives, attacked by the left, and misunderstood by almost everyone.
Life
Bloom was born in Indianapolis, the son of social workers. He entered the University of Chicago at fifteen and studied under Leo Strauss, the German-born political philosopher whose influence on American conservative intellectual life has been enormous. Strauss taught that the great philosophical texts contain hidden, esoteric meanings accessible only to careful readers, and that the surface teaching of philosophers like Plato and Machiavelli deliberately conceals deeper truths. This method of reading — slow, close, reverential, suspicious of modern progress — shaped Bloom’s entire intellectual life.
Bloom studied in Paris, befriended Raymond Aron and Alexandre Kojève, and immersed himself in the French intellectual tradition. He taught at Yale, Cornell, the University of Toronto, and the University of Paris before returning to the University of Chicago, where he remained for the rest of his life. At Cornell, he witnessed the armed takeover of Willard Straight Hall by Black student activists in 1969 — an event he regarded as the defining catastrophe of the American university, the moment when the faculty surrendered intellectual authority to political intimidation.
The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
The book is in three parts. The first, “Students,” is a portrait of the contemporary American undergraduate — raised on rock music and relativism, unable to articulate why anything might be better than anything else, superficially tolerant but incapable of genuine conviction. Bloom’s infamous chapter on music argues that rock and roll is a Dionysian assault on the rational soul — Mick Jagger as the destroyer of Socratic inquiry. The argument is deliberately provocative, but Bloom was serious: he believed that the constant stimulation of the passions through popular music made the contemplative life impossible.
The second section, “Nihilism, American Style,” traces the intellectual genealogy of American relativism from the German philosophy of Nietzsche and Heidegger through its vulgarisation by American social scientists and educators. Bloom argues that the American academy imported European nihilism without understanding it, turning Nietzsche’s terrifying confrontation with the death of God into the bland assertion that all cultures are equal and no values are objectively defensible.
The third section, “The University,” is an attack on the contemporary American university as an institution that has betrayed its mission of liberal education — the formation of souls through encounter with great texts — in favour of specialisation, careerism, and political correctness.
Reception and Controversy
The book’s reception was explosive. Conservatives embraced Bloom as a champion of Western civilisation and traditional values, which was partly a misreading — Bloom was a Straussian, not a cultural conservative in the usual American sense, and his philosophical commitments were more radical than his political allies understood. Liberals attacked the book as elitist, racist, and reactionary. Martha Nussbaum published a devastating review; academics complained that Bloom ignored feminist scholarship, multiculturalism, and the contributions of non-Western traditions.
Bloom’s personal life added complexity. He was gay — a fact he did not publicly acknowledge but did not actively conceal — and died of AIDS-related illness in 1992. Saul Bellow, his close friend and colleague at Chicago, published Ravelstein (2000), a novel transparently based on Bloom that portrayed him as a brilliant, extravagant, deeply closeted figure whose public conservatism sat uneasily with his private life.
Other Work
Bloom was also an important translator. His translations of Plato’s Republic (1968) and Rousseau’s Emile (1979) are notable for their fidelity to the philosophical argument of the original texts and for their extensive interpretive essays. Giants and Dwarfs (1990) collected his essays on Shakespeare, Swift, Rousseau, and other figures.
Critical Standing
The Closing of the American Mind remains one of the essential books of the American culture wars — a work that diagnosed real problems (the decline of liberal education, the vulgarisation of relativism) through a lens that was itself problematic (elitist, nostalgic, and blind to legitimate critiques of the Western canon). Whether one agrees with Bloom or not, the book’s influence on American debates about education, culture, and values is undeniable.
Collecting Bloom
The Closing of the American Mind (1987, Simon & Schuster) in first edition with dust jacket brings $30–$80 — the book was a massive bestseller, so copies are common. Signed copies are scarce (Bloom was not a frequent book-signer) and bring $150–$300. His translations of Plato and Rousseau are modestly valued. Giants and Dwarfs (1990, Simon & Schuster) brings $15–$30.