Bloom writes, "Prejudices, strong prejudices, are visions about the way things are. . Bloom claims that students in the 1980s have prioritized the immediate, blind relegation of prejudice as inferiority of thought, and therefore have closed their minds, as the title suggests, to asking the right questions, so that prejudice may be eradicated through logic and critical thinking, as opposed to empty, baseless instinct. Throughout the book, he attacks the moral relativism that he claims has taken over American universities for the barrier it constructs to the notions of truth, critical thinking, and genuine knowledge. The book became an unexpected best seller, eventually selling close to half a million copies in hardback.īloom critiques contemporary higher education in the United States and how he sees it is failing its students, criticizing modern movements in philosophy and the humanities. In Bloom's view, openness undermines critical thinking and eliminates the point of view that defines cultures. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students is a 1987 book by the philosopher Allan Bloom, in which the author criticizes the openness of relativism, in academia and society in general, as leading paradoxically to the great closing referenced in the book's title.
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