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FeaturesNovember 2007 "Openness" & "The Closing of the American Mind" On the role of ideas of "tolerance" in the intellectual decline.
This is no ordinary matter we are discussing, Glaucon, but
the right conduct of life.
—Socrates, in Plato’s Republic When we talk about Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, it is useful to begin by distinguishing between the book, on the one hand, and the phenomenon, on the other. They are different, if related, things. Let me start with the book. What is it? In the simplest sense, it is a pedagogical autobiography, written by a fiftyish academic philosopher who was also a dedicated teacher and whose experience of university life from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s had left him disabused, mournful, and alarmed. The book is also—let me acknowledge this at once—a curious literary artifact. It is a rich and promiscuous stew that Allan Bloom served up, part polemic, part exhortation, part exercise in cultural-i ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 26 November 2007, on page 11 Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/openness-the-closing-of-the-american-mind-3674
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 The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices Already a print subscriber? click for online access On the moral consequences of relativism (from "The Dictatorship of Relativism.") Relativism as political absolutism On the dangers of relativism to the nation-state (from "The Dictatorship of Relativism.") On the relativist threat to science (from "The Dictatorship of Relativism.") Introduction: The dictatorship of relativism An introduction our symposium "The Dictatorship of Relativism: Who Will Stand Up for Western Values Now?” Introduction: What was a liberal education? An introduction to our special issue on education. New from The New Criterion: ‘Free speech in 
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