Hi Gary. I'm presently taking a week 'out' to soak up a lecture course at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, on Leo Strauss, the conservative thinker who is revered by many in the Bush administration. The course, convened by Matthew Sharpe (Deakin and MSCP), is concentrating on his intellectual work, but the political looms as a spectre in the background, and it is difficult to get beyond the influence that his thought has had on world events this century.

Strauss was a Jewish-German emigre, escaping to America from the Nazis, and taught (most famously) at The University of Chicago (but also New School for Social Research, as well as Claremont Men's College and St John's College). Some of his students (and their students) include Stanley Rosen (The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Plato's Symposium, Nihilism: a philosophical essay), Laurence Lampert (Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, Nietzsche and Modern Times, Nietzhsche's Teaching, Nietzsche's Task) (note the predominance of scholarship on Nietzsche), Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Peter Berkowitz, Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind), and Francis Fukuyama (End of History and the Last Man). There is a far more comprehensive list at www.Straussian.net, which is a kind of home base for Straussians.

While Strauss specialised in the study of ancient texts (most notably Plato), he held that philosophy in pre-liberal times was inherently political, and so cannot be read apart from a consideration of the political milieu in which it was written. In particular, he claimed that many philosophical texts had to tread a fine line between disclosure and persecution, concealing their political message from the many, while revealing it to the few who would be sympathetic. This gives rise to the esoteric/exoteric distinction so key to Strauss' method of reading: whereby the esoteric level addresses the insiders, and the exoteric keeps the outsiders out. According to Strauss, this 'writing between the lines' is motivated, to be sure, by an avoidance of persecution (a threat to which he was particularly sensetive, having escaped Nazi Germany)... but it is also motivated by the desire to preserve an order of rank, and to reproduce a social hierarchy between the many and those few special ones 'in the know.'

Curiously, a constant complaint of Straussians (Bloom is a good example) is that they are persecuted by a cultural elite, the 'politically correct' intelligensia. The strain of persecution is ironic, considering the clout that these people have in both the intellectual and political spheres, but seems to be necessary to their justification of themselves as a 'closed' community. As you can see by the picture of Wolfowitz at right, there is definitely a classical theme to their self-identification as well, which absolutely permeates the web site... and, as can also be gleaned from the site, they are relentlessly and aggressively right wing.

Update by Gary

We need some more text to counterbalance the photo that Jo published. This is a link to an account the reception of Strauss in Australia over at philosophy.com.

I've downloaded a text from the www.Straussian.net website about soem of the distinguishing aspects of a Straussian approach to political philosophy. These are:

"(1) A return to treating old books seriously, reading them slowly and with an effort to understand them as their authors did, rather than as History does.

(2) A recognition of the political nature of philosophy, that most philosophers who wrote did so with a political purpose.

(3) A recognition that the greatest thinkers often wrote with both exoteric and esoteric teachings, either out of fear of persecution or a general desire to present their most important teachings to those most receptive to them. This leads to an attempt to discern the esoteric teachings of the great philosophers from the clues they left in their writings for careful readers to find.

(4) A recognition of the dangers that historicism, relativism, eclecticism, scientism, and nihilism pose to philosophy and to Western culture generally, and an effort to steer philosophy away from these devastating influences through a return to the seminal texts of Western thought.

(5) Careful attention paid to the dialogue throughout the development of Western culture between its two points of departure: Athens and Jerusalem. The recognition that Reason and Revelation, originating from these two points respectively, are the two distinct sources of knowledge in the Western tradition, and can be used neither to support nor refute the other, since neither claims to be based on the other's terms.

(6) A constant examination of the most drastic of philosophic distinctions: that between the Ancients and the Moderns. An attempt to better understand philosophers of every age in relation to this distinction, and to learn everything that we as moderns can learn about ourselves by studying both eras."

Comments

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson | January 26, 2005 10:01 AM

Posted by: Chris | January 26, 2005 3:10 PM