Allan Bloom | |
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 Bloom in 1989 | |
| Born | Allan David Bloom September 14, 1930 Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | October 7, 1992 (aged 62) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education | University of Chicago (BA, PhD) École normale supérieure |
| Notable work | The Closing of the American Mind (1987) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy |
| Thesis | The Political Philosophy of Isocrates (1955) |
| Doctoral advisor | Leo Strauss |
Main interests | Greek philosophy, history of philosophy, political philosophy, Renaissance philosophy, Nihilism, continental philosophy, French literature, Shakespeare |
Notable ideas | The "openness" of relativism leads paradoxically to the great "closing"[1] |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in the United States |
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Allan David Bloom (September 14, 1930 – October 7, 1992) was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, Yale University, the École normale supérieure, and the University of Chicago.
Bloom championed the idea of Great Books education and became famous for his criticism of contemporary American higher education, with his views being expressed in his bestselling 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind.[2] Characterized as a conservative in the popular media,[3] Bloom denied the label, asserting that what he sought to defend was the "theoretical life".[4] Saul Bellow wrote Ravelstein, a roman à clef based on Bloom, his friend and colleague at the University of Chicago.
- ^ Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 42.
- ^ Hitchens, Christopher (2002). Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere. Verso. p. 226.
- ^ Sleeper, Jim (September 4, 2005). "Allan Bloom and the Conservative Mind". The New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
- ^ Bloom, Allan. Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990, Simon & Schuster, 1990 pp. 17–18