So I have to give a talk at the American Political Science Association in a few weeks on Strauss. Here are some tentative thoughts for your consideration.
In his essay on Kurt Riezler in WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? Strauss writes “If we are permitted to say that historicism is the view according to which at least all concrete or profound thought essentially belongs to a concrete dynamic context, and that Platonism is the view to which pure thought, being ‘anonymous,’ transcends every dynamic context….” Historicism and Platonism seem to be two extremes and both, in a way at least, “isms” or ideologies. The ideology of historicism was used by philosophers to justify Stalinist and Nazi tyranny or to provide profound significance in the historical activity of beings with names. Heidegger, to say the least, way overestimated the political significance of Heidegger and put the stamp of his philosophic approval on what happened to be happening in 1933–which was the victory in his country of the most immoderate, cruel, and humanly destructive political force.
The ideology of Platonism opposes to any claim for profundity to anything people DO the possibility of anonymous or impersonal pure thought. From the point of view of the pure thinker (the exemplar Socrates–whom Heidegger himself called the purest thinker of the West) contemplating eternity, everything people do is ephemeral and paltry or, as even some Christian writers said, nothing in light of eternity. The most profound human drama is the being with a name becoming dead to himself and emotionally detached from the concerns of the people of his time and place through his encounter with the anonymous truth. He becomes, in fact, emotionally detached from moral longings in general.
Against the Kojeve/Heidegger exaggeration that nothing human is natural or all human freedom is disconnected from biological imperatives–or the laws of nature–the exaggeration of Platonism is the only antidote left, in Strauss’s view. Straussian Platonism, as Ralph has shown, inspires in ambitious and intelligent young men an aristocratic contempt for the pretensions of practice and means to cures them of the longing for justice in this world.
One place Platonism originates, of course, is THE REPUBLIC, where we find the exaggeration of the completely liberated philosopher-king and the corresponding exaggeration of citizens completely in the thrall of the poetic manipulations of the city or cave presented for the benefit of the guys–but especially FOR the smart, emotionally disordered, audacious, and potentially dangerous young men Glaucon and Thrasymachus.
So somehow NATURAL RIGHT vs. HISTORY or REASON vs. REVELATION seem, at least on one level, to be rhetorically exaggerated as stark alternatives. Certainly the faith in the absolutism of the Declaration of Independence that Strauss recommends as safest for Americans has its vitality by not choosing some form of extremism. Its devotion to NATURE is compromised by Locke’s proto-historicism (nature gives we self-creating beings nothing of value) and its devotion to REASON is compromised by the legislative compromise that made Nature’s God both a providential and judgmental God. Because Strauss says any universal human law depends on revelation–and even on a God who is both willful and loving, it’s hard to see how Strauss would have objected to the compromise in Congress between the Calvinists and the Lockean Deists that produced something better than the extremism of either of the parties to the compromise. But then we’re still stuck, perhaps, with defending the compromise as absolutely or even self-evidently true.
August 16th, 2009 | 2:59 pm
So real political philosophy lies somewhere between historisism and Platonism?
August 16th, 2009 | 3:16 pm
Well, not exactly. Historicism and Platonism both claim to be solutions to what are permanent problems. But insofar as Platonism claims to be pure universality and revelation, in Strauss’s view, claims to be pure particularity, I would say that the truth lies somewhere in between reason and revelation so understood.
August 17th, 2009 | 8:48 am
One things that’s unusual about the Platonist ideology (at least in the Straussian view) is that its zetetic character is meant as an antidote to ideology—the Socratic exaggeration that the only knowledge is knowledge of ignorance. The Platonic problem of revelation, as it’s expressed in the Euthyphro, is that it presents itself as beyond Logos but only has significance once ratified by Logos–God can only reveal what man could otherwise figure out. Revelation then becomes superfluous and therefore dubious–Logos provides authoritative guidance, paradoxically, by refusing any particular committments. So it seems like we can contrast Platonism and Christianity with respect to eternity this way: for Plato, the experience of participating in eternity liberates us from our particularity which includes moral responsibility while for the Christian, we participate in eternity, at least partially and in this life, by dint of accepting those same responsibilities. Transcendence for the Christian is personal–we don’t liberate ourselves from our own particularity–we survive as persons intact in the process of individual transcendence. Platonic transcendence has an air of pantheistic absorption to it.
August 17th, 2009 | 11:26 am
I remember reading a huge book by that name edited by Strauss and Cropsey.
I would start with politics as citizenship(politicos–a member of the polis)–a covenant among men to safeguard a territory or a people or a self evident sacred set of rights. Just as the material basis of marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman, the public covenant of citizenship has been understood as a new corporate identity by adult males who agree to act “as one man”. Before we label the notion as fascist that is an Old Testament phrase describing Israel at war. I am always struck how classicists (especially those “more Greek than Roman”) seem so tone deaf to the masculine and military roots of political loyalty. The ubiquitous modern feminist implant is all the more nefarious for inducing unreflected acceptance of current fads for traditional wisdom. Did any “conservative ” feel uneasy as John McCain substituted “all people” for “all men” in quoting our founding document. Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole are the natural leaders of this brave new world where gender is a an accident like skin color which can be ignored as we look for the “best person for the job”.(And if the best person is the wife of a contender or former President well “hey, it is her turn”.) This category confusion induced by the feminsit implant is no more palatable coming from Straussian Professor Mansfield’s book arguing that the best modern paragon of manliness is Margaret Thatcher. I guess that funny gender bender stuff sells well on Harvard campuses and neoconservative seminars. There was another place where such mental gymnastics would be considered bizarre. The Declaration of Independence was a written act of masculine unaminity in July of 76. In April of 75 there was an act of fraternal sacrifice and protective authority which offered the platform for those beautiful words. The milita –that maligned word in the modern lexicon- was the bond of shared masculine duty which every founding father swore upon his sacred honor to support in the battle ahead.
I would think that Christians whose Church is based on a blood oath between a warrior King and his Twelve could see the analogical civic oath of “politikos”. But Christ’s shouldering the cross to slay death and mortally wound Satan has been reinterpreted by those renowned scripture scholars Neitshce and Hitler. They have explained his heroism as pitiful pacifism and American bishops led by Cardinal Bernadine embraced the insult as a seamless garment.
Neutering our political language has deadened and stripped it of the power of ordered love. As a fundamental structure of mature Christian love-Coherent Masculine Publics are more anathema in modern society than male- female couples.(This sexual incoherence is why there has been no deep voiced defense of the male priesthood as a communion of persons reflecting the Trinity even more fully than the marriage bond)
While Straussians are much more interesting than the rights driven modernists, they too seem unable to accept the anthropolgy of public life–a masculine protective bond subordinate to some transcendent reality by which oaths might be sworn.(That would be the living personal God -another reality that Straussians would rather treat with esoteric language than manly public faith). A great book on America as an agreement to love is Bonds of Affection by political science professor now University President Matt Holland. He does not emphasize the masculine character of these bonds but his approach is a terrific synthesis of reason and revelation, linking the military, fraternal and religious bonds in the real lives of three American political leaders.) God speed Dr Lawler in pushing the discussion not forward but deeper.
August 17th, 2009 | 11:36 am
Yes, Strauss’s “Platonism” (and maybe Plato’s) is provided as a sublimation of philosophical-poetic ambition, a redirection that would turn the energies of thinkers away from the universalist-humanitarian (and therefore ultimately nihilist) project of modernity and contain them safely in a kind of ruling that pretends not to be interested in ruling (though Strauss himself knew what he was doing), the gratifying practice of the induction or seduction of the “young puppies” of the philosophic race. This strategy requires surreptitiously moving beyond the plane of the reason-revelation tension (the plane on which the claims of reason and revelation still have enough in common to oppose one another substantively) to a posited higher position in which “reason” or “philosophy” is effectively redefined as exempt from the human stakes of the original tension.
August 17th, 2009 | 11:52 am
Dr. Pence, I agree that the book by Matt Holland is a magnificient effort to show how reason and revelation come together in the lives of particular political Americans. And I actually think that Strauss himself is more accepting of the necessary anthropology of public life than some Straussians. Ivan is right to suggest the questionableness of any claim for liberation from particularity through pure thought, and it does seem that for Strauss personal transcendence is finally an oxymoron.
August 17th, 2009 | 2:29 pm
Peter, you say: “it’s hard to see how Strauss would have objected to the compromise in Congress between the Calvinists and the Lockean Deists that produced something better than the extremism of either of the parties to the compromise.” That might be right, politically. But on the philosophical level, it’s pretty easy to see how he would have objected: he didn’t think it was true. Which is, of course, the fundamental dilemma of “political philosophy” in the Straussian sense.
August 17th, 2009 | 2:33 pm
[...] August 17, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: Christianity, Immanuel Kant, Leo Strauss, Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas | by Bryan Wandel “[T]he Platonist ideology (at least in the Straussian view) is that its zetetic character is meant as an antidote to ideology—the Socratic exaggeration that the only knowledge is knowledge of ignorance.” (The third comment here) [...]
August 17th, 2009 | 2:56 pm
[...] A First Thought on WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? – Peter Lawler [...]
August 17th, 2009 | 3:07 pm
Dr Lawler:
The Jewish thinker who I think was making the most dramatic voyage from Jewish secular intellectual to believer in an authoritative G-d who gives commands is Phillip Rieff. I think of Rieff and Strauss like so many “conservative” Jewish thinkers as great polemicists and descriptive writers but somehow unwilling to bring themselves to the posture of worship. Rief’s last book in the sacred order series on the Jews in Culture is outstanding and very readable. I reviewed it on amazon.com. I suspect you have read him already but just in case, I think you would bring a lot to understanding him.
As a final postscript on philosophers and the Living God: the writing of David Goldman(whom I do not know) as Spengler on First Things has added a dynamism to the conversation which is both masculine and imbued with a sense of the sacred. Unlike so many of our young crunchy cons who are forever “applying Catholic principles to politics”–He seems to think more in terms of nations, wars, men, and character which constitute the grist of religious military history. He also writes as if God is a Living Presence not a philosophical postulate for moral axioms.
August 17th, 2009 | 3:15 pm
Well, that’s how we differ, Sam I think it’s truer, at least, than the thought of either of the parties to the compromise. And for Strauss Lockean constructivism, Calvinism, and the quasi-Thomistic synthesis that the compromise produced all aren’t true. That wouldn’t be such a big problem, from his view, if the Declaration didn’t claim to be both philosophy and law. But I’m ok with the thought that our political Fathers’ practice was better than their theory, although their theory and practice are both far from flawless.
August 17th, 2009 | 3:22 pm
I just saw Ralph’s pithy and true comment and promise to “sample” or plagiarize from it in my talk. I too am a big fan of P. Rieff and a somewhat more wary fan of the astute Goldman.
August 17th, 2009 | 3:22 pm
Samuel: What would it mean for this compromise to be “untrue.” Strauss seems to reject Weber’s thesis regarding modernizing Calvinism because he regards it as a “halfway house” between true “otherworldly” Calvinism and true rationalism. But Strauss himself has shown the instability of modern “rationalism” and … well, I have shown the worldliness of original Calvinism. Modern materialism is accompanied by an unacknowledged idealism, and vice versa. There is no fully coherent, self-knowing “rationalism.” Not even the high-Straussian “classical political rationalism.” Postmodern Conservatism has deconstructed the distinction between “right, politically” and “true.”
August 17th, 2009 | 3:40 pm
Peter: I’m also okay with the thought that the Founders founded better than they knew–or that, in general, unsatisfactory theories can be ratified by satisfactory results. What I’m objecting to is the attribution of this thought to Strauss, for whom it’s altogether to Machiavellian. But maybe you weren’t doing that, as your comment suggests. If not, I think we’re on the same page.
Ralph: I suspect you’re attributing my reading of Strauss’ position to me. Again, I’m much more comfortable with quasi-pragmatist critiques of the distinction between “right, politically” and “true” than I take Strauss to be.
August 17th, 2009 | 3:55 pm
I almost fell out of my chair, Dr Pence, to see someone around here mention Philip Rieff unprovoked, meaning unprovoked by me. Surely this is another great opportunity to say that in my infinite spare time a much-needed essay on Rieff and Strauss will finally get written. The theme, as I just hinted in the other Strauss thread, will be that Rieff helps us think through how badly Strauss might be implicated in the same repression of Jewishness that plagued Freud, and the same denial of Christianity’s Jewishness that sent Christian and post-Christian theorists alike off the rails.
August 17th, 2009 | 4:00 pm
Fair enough, Samuel. So I’m just arguing through you with Strauss. And trying to suggest that Strauss undermines his own rhetoric of “true rationalism” vs. composite half-way houses.
August 17th, 2009 | 4:19 pm
From one point of view, man himself is a composite halfway house. From another he is essentially mind. From another he is a whole person not reducible mind or body or merely some mixture or some composite.
August 17th, 2009 | 5:15 pm
That seems right to me. But does this appreciation for the contradiction and even absurdity of human existence fit with any kind of Platonism?
August 17th, 2009 | 8:22 pm
Well, not Platonism, but maybe, as Ralph says, not that far from what Plato really thought. And in any case, contradiction maybe absurdity no I’m not an existentialist. Some homelessness, yes–the wonderer is a wanderer etc. Strauss says the world is the home of the mind, but there is no pure mind, logos is irreducibly personal etc. etc. Strauss also says that the philosopher is a citizen of the whole, but man is necessarily alienated–as a whole himself–to some extent from the cosmos or the world as described by the physicists.
August 17th, 2009 | 9:35 pm
Peter: “Man is mind, body…composite…halfway house…essentially mind.” Irish or not, you didn’t get that from the Sisters of Notre Dame who taught this recalcitrant Mick that man was mind, body, spirit and if my Voegelin is retained that was a Platonic scheme as well, or else how in heaven’s name do we exist in the metaxy (with a tip of the hat to the Neo-Platonists)?
Or is this autodidact off the track AGAIN?
August 17th, 2009 | 11:04 pm
Wow, you do all talk amongst yourselves. I guess the echo chamber isn’t too deafening yet…
August 18th, 2009 | 8:47 am
Bob, There you go again! The third definition is in fact mine–the human being is a whole person with a personal origin and destiny. Mind, body, spirit seems Platonic–but everything depends on what you mean by spirit. Platonic spiritedness is roughly our “manly” [but finally unreasonable] desire for personal significance. That’s not what the good Sisters meant.
August 18th, 2009 | 5:31 pm
I do hope you’re flattered that I’m deeply studying your written work here at PoMoCon. And, as one wit recently remarked you are ‘eliptical’ (I believe that was the word) and, of course, ironic, which always confuses me, what with me dwelling in the hinterlands. So, it’s to the back of the class.
Also, I can’t find out what happened to Thelia Menninger? She made a movie back in the 90′s then she disappears…..oh, well!
BTW, didn’t Plato have a bunch of defs for spirit?
August 18th, 2009 | 6:13 pm
Mr Poulos:
That would be a very interesting and timely work. You have no spare time with such an assignment pending. It is long overdue that Professor Rieff receive a major print treatment in First Things. I would hope though you would mark an important distinction. Being a secular intellectual who no longer obeys the Commandments or loves “the Lord our God alone” can very much be a celebration and acknowledgement of “Jewishness”. I do not think Stauss denied his Jewishness in any way. He was part of a tradition very active and alive since Leibnitz. That he seldom wrote “as a Jew’ might have been a bit of “esotericism”(SP?) but more often an honest intellectual posture writing as a universal natural right thinker.
The dilemna is not denying Jewishness. What is being denied is not that a man is a Jew but that God is God. That is a crucial distinction especially in America where most Jews we meet are not at all shy about their “Jewishness” but quite embarrassed by the particular nature of the one God who called them out as a chosen people. Rief says before Hitler killed the Jews that Freud klilled them because he destroyed Moses. That accusation is many light years from the first admiring work on Freud which made Rieff famous. This distinction is particularily relevant in debates about religion and politics. Some of us think America is a nation under God and others say we are nation founded on Judaic Christian principles. This is huge difference and my fellow Catholics have been most guilty in pushing the “principles” identity as some kind of superior intellectual feat which distinguishes them from the yahoo evangelicals who keep ending their speeches with a prayer to the living God as if He is really there at the public civic gathering.
I think we are now officially off topic as they say but I agree with the red tory that the present conversation seems an echo chamber of the incomprehensible (that might be a reflection of incestuous debate by PL BC and SG or– just as probable —my own ill tuned ear to musings in deeper waters than i can swim.)
August 18th, 2009 | 8:18 pm
Bob, Tuesday Weld is one great name, but I just don’t know where she’s gone. ON spirit or spiritedness, I’m not sure about Plato having definitions. For one thing, just about all he did was to put words in the mouths of characters, and what Socrates, the character, said was always conditioned by who he was talking with. Arguably just about every darn word out of his dialogic mouth had an ironic dimension. To those who are complaining about the “echo chamber” etc., I gotta say that’s blogging for you, to some extent. But I have to also admit that I was being self-indulgent by trying to you threaders to help me with my “assignment.” Which you certainly have.
August 18th, 2009 | 10:00 pm
Dr. Pence, I have seldom had the pleasure of reading truth so eloquently presented.
August 19th, 2009 | 9:46 am
I still don’t have a clear understanding of “what is political philosophy”. This discussion dealtore with the individual that politics.
August 19th, 2009 | 10:24 am
BC
gratias
DP
August 19th, 2009 | 12:48 pm
Further random remarks on “What is…”: Note the tension between the characterization of “political philosophy” as just one, presumably subordinate, part of philosophy, and other indications that political philosophy is the true beating of philosophy, the part that stands up for “heterogeneity,” thus keeping alive the tension with “homogeneity” (which otherwise risks beings swallowed up in “technology”).
Note further how Strauss does not dispute that philosophy is (if it is sustain the pole of heterogeneity) necessarily “conservative” or “aristocratic,” and how the ultimate justification for this is deeply practical-political: the problem of technology.
Side: every conversation has aspects of an “echo chamber.” Those sharp enough to discern its limits, the walls of the chamber, have a duty to point them out. Or, if they can’t get in, and think they’re interested, then ask for help. Beyond these two options, there is silence to consider.
August 19th, 2009 | 9:50 pm
Interesting post… I wonder only whether there is more to these observations that can be paralleled to whats happening in government. What is Obama’s political philosophy at this point. Clearly it is not popularity, for his policies are certainly not gaining him votes and even his base is not pleased by the bills the democrats have been passing and the president has been signing optimized by health care being at first an attempt at removing superfluous insurance profit to now “The Public Option is not a necessary” part of health care reform. So it would seem that his political philosophy lies somewhere between soft despotism and poor despotism. He either needs to get his philosophy straight or risk falling both out of favor as well as risk falling this country even farther down the path of misfortune.
August 20th, 2009 | 8:35 am
Mr. Hancock,
I think that describing philosophy as conservative is somewhat misleading, or at least incomplete. Classical philosophy may be generally politically conservative but philosophy as such I don’t see Strauss arguing is conservative. Certainly, as you say, classical philosophy is deeply skeptical of the benefits that the many expect from technology. Despite this fact, classical philosophy saw that the pursuit of technology was necessary for war and the preservation of the city. The last pages of Strauss’ Machiavelli book are instructive on this point, and how the ancients and moderns most decisively part company. I think Strauss (and Plato) grant the criticisms leveled against philosophy by Aristophanes. Philosophy is zetetic and therefore cannot but question the ancestral, the gods, traditions and customs upon which the city is built. This zetetic character renders philosophy rather revolutionary. It may have no political program to accompany that radical questioning but that doesn’t necessarily make it conservative.
August 21st, 2009 | 8:32 am
DP,
If you have pursued this in print: “Some of us think America is a nation under God and others say we are nation founded on Judaic Christian principles. This is huge difference and my fellow Catholics have been most guilty in pushing the “principles” identity as some kind of superior intellectual feat which distinguishes them from the yahoo evangelicals who keep ending their speeches with a prayer to the living God as if He is really there at the public civic gathering.”….I should like to read it.
August 23rd, 2009 | 5:01 pm
To John C, What you say makes sense, but Strauss does say that classical political philosophy is for all practical purposes conservative.
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