The university and democratic life: Allan Bloom's Platonic attack

Abstract

The Closing of the American Mind has become a best-seller, appeared in the BookOf-The-Month Club's selections, and made its author, Allan Bloom, a millionaire. The critical attention has been equally impressive in quantity, if not always in quality: there have been so many reviews of Bloom's book that a collection of them has been published (Stone, 1989). 1 Unfortunately, Bloom's rhe to r i c which has doubtless contributed to the book's popular success has elicited mostly counterrhetoric from critics. 2 In this paper, I wish to focus on an aspect of The Closing of the American Mind which has been virtually ignored by reviewers and which I believe, nevertheless, forms the backbone of not only Bloom's standards in higher education but also his critique of the modem university and its political context (democracy), namely, Bloom's systematic reliance on Plato. 3 In general, critics are more interested in focussing on Bloom's connection, both personal and philosophical, with Leo Strauss. 4 Whatever the influence of Strauss on Bloom, he is quoted only once; Plato, by contrast, crops up at least 40 times in The Closing of the American Mind. Notwithstanding claims that the relative absence of any reference to Strauss holds some subversive significance for the interpretation of Bloom's message, I prefer to focus on what Bloom does say and as I plan to show the message is quite Platonic. In the first part of the paper, I will argue that Bloom is presenting four related theses about the university and democratic life; the evidence for this (some of which has been discussed by reviewers for different purposes) is given in some detail in order to make Bloom's Platonic assumptions manifest. The latter are explicitly drawn out in the second part of the paper where I discuss some of the problems which Bloom's Platonic approach creates, not only for his analysis of the university's (alleged) malaise, but also for his proposed cure.