The Plight of University in the Crisis of Modernity. Allan Bloom's Philosophy of Education Reflected in The Closing of the American Mind.

American political philosopher Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind is an important research book reflecting the crisis of American university education from the philosophical perspective. Its publication was seen as a miracle in the history of serious academic works in the 20th century. The author cites the proliferation of relativism and nihilism in America universities,analyzes the sources of crisis from the history of political philosophy based on the profound theories of Strauss School, and lastly proposes the way to restructure the liberal education in American universities. Although Chinese scholars have paid much more attention than before to the neo-conservative doctrine, the Strauss School and the American liberal education and have published papers, their research is not based on a comprehensive knowledge of the ideological origin of liberal education proposed by the Strauss School, which to some extent prevents them from thoroughly understanding Bloom's thoughts on liberal education. According to the Strauss School, the most significant contemporary problems are "the crisis "the of modernity" and crisis of Western civilization." But they insist that if people want to comprehensively examine the crisis of modernity in the western society, they must deny both the modern liberalism and left-wing academic views, which are rooted in the tradition of modernity, that is, having strong faith in modernity rather than antiquity, or even in the future rather than the present. Contemporary liberal scholars and their left counterparts are all "modem" or "progressive people" who criticize the modernity in the vein of the modem school. The Strauss School argue that a vision beyond the liberalism needs to be obtained, and they point out that the western classical thought must be just such a vision, especially the vision of what they called "the Plato- Al-Farabi- Maimonides' political philosophy. "Fully adhering to the Strauss School of thought and research style, Bloom often searched for inspiration from Socrates, Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Kant, and made insightful academic observations of the U. S. academic community and higher education. The shift from the critique of modernity to that of modern higher education was indicated by the Strauss School, but was pushed forward and completed by Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind. The spread of modern crisis in higher education was the basic proposition of Bloom: relativism and nihilism lead to people's indifference to the history of natural rights and the origin of nation. They do not require the abandonment of old or new beliefs in order to retain the agreed natural rights. They worsen the crisis of faith, result in the widespread failure of the social contract,and create a new split. In all,it is producing spiritual closure and poverty in education. This crisis of modern universities highlights the necessity and urgency of liberal education. In Bloom's view,the core of humanistic education is to help students to explore the eternal theme "What is man?" to obtain a full and rich understanding of the world as a whole and to inspire students to continuously explore the answers to significant issues. By doing so, holistic and free persons will come into being. Bloom thus argues that universities need to fully understand the importance of the position and role of great classics, take the initiative in providing general education courses, and actively promote elite education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]