Comments on: What was Leo Strauss up to?

By: Grimly

Grimly — Sun, 16 Nov 2003 21:42:23 +0000

Not to go too deep, I wrote Strauss off when he endorsed Richard Nixon for president in the run-up to the 1968 election. I had previously written Nixon off after seeing a newsreel in which he was shown addressing a group of businessmen, explaining in his most sincere and earnest manner that he was a “liberal conservative” or a “conservative liberal” – I can’t recall which, but it doesn’t much matter because neither makes any sense. * Straussian reading of the books – It was in the late 1950’s that I heard Strauss lecture on Machiavelli and came away from it and the question period that followed unconvinced. Although he was persuasive, Strauss tended to push things too far, almost to a mystical level; that is to say, some of his readings were so esoteric that one had to have faith in order to believe them. He provides a nice field for intellectual exercise, but he is not to be blindly followed; nor is anyone, for that matter. * As for the neocon disciples of Strauss in the U.S. government and what they say, one has a choice: Either they they really believe their public statements, or they are judicious with the truth. Both possibilites are disturbing.

By: David

David — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:17:19 +0000

Henry, If you will forgive my bluntness, Xenophon’s work is favorably cited by Cicero, Machiavelli, and Sir Philip Sidney. This is not proof of his intelligence but it should raise our curiosity at the very least. I’ve read incompetent dismissals of his work by “scholars” such as Charles Kahn so I look askance at all who may disparage Xenophon without truly devoting the time to study him. As for Alcibiades, he is the very symbol for eros misdirected. Strauss never tires of telling his audience about the dangers of trying to educate an Alcibiades. It is interesting to see that while Strauss is reviled by many today, he was one of a very few who actually read Plato’s dialogues as dialogues, rather than poorly written essays ala Aristotle. The fact that the dialogues are read as Strauss (and a few others) claimed they needed to be read is evidence of his insight. That many ignore him as one of the originators of this idea is unfortunate.

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 20:51:45 +0000

Don A very thoughtful critique of my post. I think that you have a fair point when you say that I’m picking out bits and pieces of a contradictory and complex essay that fit neatly into a story. And yet … It could well be that there’s an interpretation of the essay which manages to resolve these contradictions better than I do; all I can say is that I can’t see it (although I would be happy to have it demonstrated to me; half the reason for my putting up a somewhat tendentious post in the first place was to provoke useful commentary and defenses from Strauss fans). And it’s a strange text – why is it so contradictory (it seems from your post that you agree that it is). On Alcibiades – I was speaking ex ante rather than ex post when I call him Socrates’ star pupil. My vague impression (from Plutarch?? one of the later and less reliable commentators or anthologists anyway) is that few realized how important Plato would be until after the death of Socrates. Alcibiades was certainly rather better known at the time, as indeed was Critias. My reading of Thucydides on the Sicilian expedition, which differs, obviously from that of Strauss, is that the story is about hubris getting clobbered by nemesis. Alcibiades is directly implicated in its failure, through his orchestration of the expedition rather than his military prowess. And I think that Thucydides has a lot more time for Nikias than Strauss lets on – Thucydides portrays him as a decent, but limited man, while Strauss portrays him as a semi-Lacadaemonian superstition monger, and very possibly as a hypocritical manipulator. I don’t know of any authority for Strauss’s implication that Nikias may have orchestrated the mutilation of the Hermai so as to discredit Alcibiades; this seems to me to be Strauss’s own invention. But perhaps I’m ignorant of the sources; I’m not a classicist by training. And it does seem to me that Strauss does seek to rehabilitate Alcibiades – and perhaps even to identify the Alcibiadean character as the heart of Athens. Strauss goes to some lengths to discount Pericles as a representative of the spirit of Athens; he also comments that Pericles probably would not have had the necessary phusis to rescue the Sicilian pages, a couple of pages before he says that Alcibiades’ daring might have saved the expedition had it been untrammelled by Nikias etc. When Strauss talks of the glories of the Athenian character, he does so in terms that seem to me to be strongly reminiscent of Alcibiades’ reported virtues – spontaneity, generosity, love of beauty. The implication seems to me to be that Periclean Athens might in fact, for Strauss, have been Alcibidean Athens – Alcibiades representing the Athenian character in politics at its best. On Xenophon – this is one of the few things that I agree with Strauss about – he’s underrated. Although, contra Strauss, I’m not at all sure that he’s a subtle philosopher – I haven’t read the Cyropaedia though. I’m an especially big fan of the Anabasis – perhaps in part because Xenophon was rather easier going than some of the other texts that were assigned when I studied Greek. You’re right – I am in a department with a few prominent Straussians – and very nice colleagues they are to have too. I haven’t argued this through with them, and suspect that I wouldn’t dare to (except perhaps over good dinner and wine in congenial circumstances).

By: Don

Don — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 05:23:05 +0000

Henry: I’ve read Thucydides a few times, and Strauss’s essay a couple of times, and I just don’t get out of either what you do. My impression is not that you use Strauss as you say Strauss uses others, of course, but just that your view of Strauss’s politics colours what you read in(to) Strauss. Given Strauss’s views on writing, which you note, and your own admission that Strauss says contradictory things in his essay, wouldn’t you agree that it’s possible to pick things out of his essay that might jive with what one expects to read, but which might not be his final position? I apologize for throwing out this and a couple more random thoughts, as follows, but I’m a working stiff and haven’t the time to address everything I disagree with in your comments. So allow me just this train of thought. You say Alcibiades was Socrates’ star pupil, but surely that honour would fall to Plato. And assuming the Socratic teaching about justice has anything to do with moderation, then Alcibiades was a downright bad student, and certainly not a philosopher-king. (But a good general, which Nicias, in the end, was not: I think it’s pretty clear from the text, not from Strauss, that Nicias’ pusillanimity in the field and fear of the people at home – not to mention eclipses – led him into policies opposed by his co-commanders Demosthenes and Eurymedon that turned the Sicilian expedition into a disaster; 7.47-50.) In any case, Strauss doesn’t need to rehabilitate Alcibiades to defend Athenian imperialism (if he does). I think that if Strauss wanted to rehabilitate any Socratic student, clearly it was the moderate Xenophon. And doesn’t Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus, while seemingly fond on Cyrus, end up teaching that empire building gets people nowhere? I’d like to pursue this, but can’t. Given that someone in your department not only studied under two of Strauss’s best-known students, but spent a dozen years writing a book on Thucydides, I refer you to him for what Strauss was up to!

By: carla

carla — Mon, 06 Oct 2003 22:00:34 +0000

Robert: Buh-bye! don’t let the door hit you, etc. Leo S., that was extremely funny; thank you!

By: Jeffrey Kramer

Jeffrey Kramer — Mon, 06 Oct 2003 16:17:21 +0000

Robert’s first sentence begins “You clearly…” and follows by making a claim whose truth is (to put it mildly) not at all clear. His second sentence begins “I believe that” and follows by making a claim which is literally unbelievable. His third sentence begins “You believe that” and follows by attributing to Henry beliefs which no sane person could hold and which Henry has of course never come close to implying. He continues by admitting his ignorance about the specific issue in dispute, but begs to be trusted when he declares his certainty that Henry is wrong about it because he (Robert) happens to be particularly wise in the ways of science. He concludes with the projectile ejaculation of a large ball of snot. Clearly, everyone here must believe we have suffered a great loss with Robert’s self-imposed exile.

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 19:25:58 +0000

Henry: You clearly only want to hear the choir behind you, and I need to quit wasting my time on you. I believe that your attitude exemplifies the sum and substance of the problem of the contemporary academy. You believe that the fashionable ideas of the Left Bank are the crown of human wisdom and that everyone and everything who came before is of no value. I will repeat what I said earlier because you did not wish to consider it carefully. I cannot dispute your reading of the text you disscussed as I have never read it. I can wonder if you have read it properly or taken it seriously, because I have encountered Strauss’ teaching in a relativley undiluted form (they never taught from, nor referred to, their own texts, only from the classics)and what you wrote strikes me as being unrecogognizable from the view that I had. I have to go so I shall just say farewell, I’ll never be back this way again. I hope that at some point you will grow to appreciate that you are a finite creature who lives inside time and a tradition.

By: Henry

Henry — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 17:26:13 +0000

Robert I’m going to assume that you’re open to argument; I strongly suspect that you aren’t, but I may be wrong. Your comment said, more or less, that you didn’t know enough about the subject to make any serious comment, but that you felt I was wrong anyway, and that I, and Brad DeLong were simply jealous of Strauss’s learning. This is an ad-hominem – it’s not an argument. You don’t know anything about Brad’s education or motivations, or mine; you’re merely casting a slur. An incorrect slur, as it happens, but that’s beside the point. This fits into a pattern of comments you’ve made on this website over the last couple of weeks, where your clear intent has been to cause offense rather than to engage in argument. Here are the ground rules. If you want to engage in arguments, or criticise, that’s fine. If you want to keep throwing out cheap jibes that seem aimed to offend, and nothing more, I’m going to start deleting your comments from my posts. You’re polluting the pool. My other cobloggers may be more tolerant. Or they may not. Baa – I don’t think that Strauss has to buy into the philosopher king point in order to want to defend Alcibiades as Socrates’ star pupil – and he does defend Alcibiades through some rather heroic exegetic somersaults. When writing “philosopher king turned bad” I was being a little flip, and not trying to imply that Strauss sees Alcibiades as a philosopher king. But my wording was certainly a bit sloppy. My bad. For another example of Straussian interpretation which devolves into sheer and utter looniness, see his take on Machiavelli as parodied by Brad DeLong in the link above.

By: Fontana Labs

Fontana Labs — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 01:01:46 +0000

That post was awesome, down to the email address. Clearly, the owl of minerva flies at dusk. What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 20:32:26 +0000

Leo S: Huh?

By: Leo S.

Leo S. — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 20:18:09 +0000

If we are to study Robert Schwartz's writings, we must first direct ourselves to the problem of how to understand such writing. We cannot, contrary to historicist assumptions, really understand his comments here within the framework of his times; that would be tantamount to understanding his work better than he understood it himself before he has understood it exactly as it understood itself. In this, we realize the problematic character of historicism, because it is evident that the historicist approach of our times is contrary to the non-historicist approach of the past, and so if we are to do justice to a proper historical understanding of his comments, we must reject the horizon offered by the historicist approach and instead realize that he is an able writer and therefore can give all the information required to understand his comments in his comments. Therfore, we can restrict ourselves to only what he says, directly or indirectly, with the goal of understanding him as he understood himself. Schwartz appears first in this comment thread at the twentieth entry. But before that, we must realize that is inadequate to characterize the moment of his posting, since the comment thread itself follows upon a lengthy and ill-informed polemic against Leo Strauss. So we have to consider first the relationship of the comment thread to the post that engendered it before we can understand the significance of his entry at the moment he chose. As noted, the post was a lengthy and ill-informed polemic against Leo Strauss. The word polemic comes from the Greek polemos, meaning war, so we should expect that such a post was meant to inspire a combative discussion, one in which two disputants defend their respective views and attack the opposing ones. The comments that follow are anything but; rather than dispute the views put forward in the post, the comments all express assent with the remarks of the poster, with only varying degrees of wit to distinguish them. So despite the numerous commentators—fewer than 19, since some repeat themselves—only one side of the polemos has been heard. To enter at the twentieth post then is indicative of both the missing second party to this dispute and of the ten-fold strength it has. To enter at this point is therefore a kairos, the right time for action. Note that even with his first word, Robert Schwartz distinguishes himself:

Wow!

So far, the comments have not been a disputatious, but instead continuous assent. Where there is such assent, no variety or surprise is possible and therefore no amazement. Schwartz thus ironically announces himself to be amazed—thaumazein—at the lack of amazement and, through this ironic reversal, doubles the force of his critique. His next words are no less striking:

Alas poor Leo Strauss, z’tl

"z"tl," Hebrew for "zecher tzaddik livrocho," is said of a known scholar or religious leader. So Schwartz literally places Strauss between Greek amazement, thaumazein and Hebrew religion, illustrating the tension that informs all his writings, and the burden he took on to restore the ideas of natural right and ethics to philosophy.

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 18:18:22 +0000

Curtis: “Strauss’ making all political thought from Plato to the Enlightenment into apologetics for hawkish Cold War policies doesn’t seem that much of a stretch.” Sigh! A type of Historicism that Strauss uterly rejected. Henry: I had not read the text you commented on, but I had enough experience in the area to know that you were barking up the wrong tree. I have suggested a way to start a good study of Strauss, and if you read the Grafton article you would understand some of the difficulties in your way. I stand by comment that the efforts of you and others here to deconstruct strauss fall wildly short of the mark and betray a species of jealousy. Your emotional reaction to my comment confirms that I have cut to the quick. Jon H: My secret reading of your secret reading is that you are not as clever as you think you are.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 18:07:17 +0000

Strauss has one Derridist practice. With any thinker he zeros in on the places where they contradict the normal trend of their writing. What Strauss claims is that the few exceptional statements represent the man’s real thought, whereas the many repeated “typical” statements represent an attempt to keep the orthodox happy. To me this method can obviously be overused, but it’s not ridiculous; his example is from someone writing under Islamic rule (which was virtually theocratic), but Catholic Europe also condemned heresy. As far as I know Derrida uses his method in a one-size-fits-all nihilist way; basically nobody every really succeeds in saying what they want to say. I haven’t been motivated to continue reading his stuff, much less that of his US followers. Whitehead used the same method to attribute his own central idea to Locke—the majority of Locke’s statements of his ideas were, according to Whitehead, backward looking, but in a few ambiguous phrases he looks forward to process philosophy. (But what is Whitehead’s central idea? Well, um, it has to do with repeatables and unrepeatables, and temporality, and coming-to-be and perishing, and asymmetrical relations…. Whitehead’s philosophy is important, IMAO, but not easy to summarize). I agree with Curtis about Strauss’s use of the classics. He really uses them as a springboard for his own ideas; I don’t think that he’s reliable as an interpreter of Plato, Aristotle, etc. His independent contribution to post-Marxist, post-Nietzschean conservative ideology is very significant, though, and can’t be wished away. Classics and classical philosophy are rather small fish, compared to foreign and military policy.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 17:49:31 +0000

Robert Schwartz writes: “Rightly or wrongly, I detect in Henry, DeLong and Leiter a jealousy that leads them to deride that which they cannot equal or surpass.” My Straussian reading of your secret meaning is that you’re saying “You’re absolutely right. Strauss was a postmodernist loon. It used to be, all you needed to get ahead in American academia was a European accent, and Strauss made the most of it. At least he didn’t go around talking about orgone accumulators.”

By: Henry

Henry — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 15:16:14 +0000

Robert If you don’t have the “learning” to make an argument, my suggestion is that you refrain from commenting – cheap ad hominems make a poor substitute for proper criticism. To be blunt – you seem to me to have all the attributes of a troll. Looking at your postings over the last couple of weeks, you don’t seem to be much interested in discussion, or even starting an interesting intellectual row – just in provoking a reaction and causing offence. I’m not interested.