t is such an idea that marks the majority of students whom Bloom has encountered during his career as a professor, and he sees a pernicious danger in the apotheosizing of relativism as a virtue because of the attendant moral chaos that has surrounded it. The bulk of CM is devoted to showing how such chaos has emerged, and what attributes it has.
Bloom's principal objection to the elevation of relativism to the status of the highest moral virtue is that it results in the impoverishment of intellectual pursuit. Because no one philosophy or standard is considered higher, better, or otherwise more worthy of deep pursuit, it becomes nearly impossible for students to determine moral or indeed educational priorities. In this view, while the notion of a democracy of ideas has a pleasantly inclusive ring to it, the fact is that what is called "a democracy of the disciplines" has the effect of dramatically limiting the opportunity to obtain higher education in a way that retains the content of true education. "The university now offers no distinctive visage to the young person. . . . This democracy is really an anarchy, because there are no recognized rules for citizenship and no legitimate titles to rule. In short there is no vision, nor is there a set of competing visions, of what an educated human being is" (Bloom, 1987, p. 337). Lacking any except an anarchy of ideas, the student and the educators can have nothing but the greatest of difficulties in recognizing ideational order when they see it.
Bloom's vision has been attacked as elitist, inasmuch as his focus is on the most selective of American universities. Further, his vision has been attacked as elitist for the reason that there is an implication that among the most select American universities there should be a select curriculum governed by the pursuit of the chief of all academic pursuits: philosophy. This being so, there should be a deemphasis on more career oriented ...