Closing of the American Mind

Bloom sets the stage for his examination of the decline in the quality and content of American higher education by means of a discussion of what he describes as moral, ethical, and philosophical relativism of student bodies and of society as a whole. In order to see how he develops his argument, it is useful to note the content of that description, which is defined by his assertion that relativism is deemed as the primary virtue from which a whole range of subsidiary modes of belief has emerged. As he puts it,

Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue,

the only virtue, which all primary education for more than

fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness

and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance

in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of

life and kinds of human beingsis the great insight of our

. . .
situations that have derived from the social pressures that feminist agitation has promoted (if not caused). Bloom passes over the fact that today, female and male college students have justifiably similar professional expectations. That is not, however, his principal concern, and this is why Honig's disagreement with Bloom is short of the mark. For Bloom's suspicion of what feminism, as a socially pluralistic view of modern life, has wrought is contained in the larger question of how socioeconomic or sociopolitical pluralism has interfered with the more central problem of higher education. As Bloom puts it (p. 121): [Students] impregnated with that [pluralistic] psychology live in a subbasement and have a long climb just to get back up to the cave, or the world of common sense, which is the proper beginning for their ascent toward wisdom. . . . these students are the symbols of the intellectualpolitical problems of our time. They represent in extreme form the spiritual vortex set in motion by loss of contact with other human beings and with the natural order. But all students are affected, in the most practical everyday way, unaware that t
. . .

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Approximate Word count = 3445
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)

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