Comments on: Straussianism, cont.

By: JP

JP — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:01:21 +0000

PC,
I think you hit the nail on the head. As I said in an ealrier post on this subject, one doesn’t have to subscribe to all of what Strauss believed to appreciate what he attempted. He was obviously under the influence of Nietzsche and Heidegger to some degree. And like many thinkers of his era, he believed that the many philosophers read the ancient Greeks through the prisim of triumphant Christianity. Men and women like Strauss tried to get beyond this frame of reference and look at texts in thier original language without all of the “baggage” 2 milennia of Western Culture. That is, they tried to read Plato or even Machiavelli as they intended to be read – that is, to be taken seriously. This is of course easier said than done. And I think the deeper Strauss delved into the language of these thinkers the more he became convinced of that there was more at play. Again, one doesn’t have to subscribe to Strauss’s conclusions; he at least is taking earlier thinkers seriously.

Alan Bloom applied this methodolgy to Plato. And Bloom believed that if anything, the thinkers of Ancient Anthens were ironic. And therefore, he treated much of what Plato wrote from a perspective of irony. Reading Plato’s Republic takes a different meaning when read this way.

By: PC

PC — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:01:13 +0000

This quote from the article is the most telling:

“This brings us to the question of whether one is able to discover “authorial intention” in a way that most non-Straussian readers of political texts do not think can be done.”

It seems to me that Catholics do this too when they read philosophy and theology. As do many Protestants when they read the Bible.

It is not clear to me how someone could read anything seriously without doing this. But maybe that is the real complaint about Straussians – they take texts seriously – and taking a text seriously is a lot of work

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:50:27 +0000

It’s all very well to claim to divine what others were hesitant to declare — but why should we believe what they declare they have divined? Should we not read with a critical eye to divine what the Straussians are hesitate to declare? Their quickness in seeing such things in others suggest much hesitation on their part.