Allan Bloom

American political philosopher and classicist who wrote The Closing of the American Mind — a polemical diagnosis of American university culture as nihilistic relativism destroying the capacity for serious thought.

The Closing of the American Mind: American universities have abandoned the Great Books in favor of relativism — students arrive believing all values are equal, which makes serious intellectual formation impossible. Rock music destroys the erotic imagination that great literature cultivates. Straussian hermeneutics: reading texts esoterically for a hidden teaching.