Reading Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind as an undergraduate in the 1980s made me realize my education was missing something important and generated a powerful urge to course-correct. The book was controversial and seems to have had an enduring legacy, which I don’t feel inclined to grapple with here. Whatever its faults or virtues, it alerted me to philosophical sources that were relevant to the currents of thought that swirled in my adolescent head.
