One of these things for me has been the evil and perfidious character of Professor Leo Strauss. I have known Strauss only as the author of a perverse reading of Plato and as the intellectual father of American neoconservatism. Not being a neocon myself, that was all I needed to know. The Straussians, I had learned, were a "cult" within right-wing American politics with Leo Strauss the evil genius presiding. Somehow, I also learned, he had been responsible for the Iraq War. Beyond that, I didn't have the time or inclination to actually read Strauss. There are countless commentaries on Plato to read; why bother reading one by the guy who taught Plato to Paul Wolfowitz?
It was a mistake. I've been listening to lectures by Strauss on youtube and also jumping into a copy of his major work, The City & Man. I'm only just getting into it, but already I see what a challenging and useful way of approaching Plato Strauss offers. And so far, I am not finding any frothing-at-the-mouth neocon fascist, as expected. Scanning over the whole thing, it all looks exceedingly interesting and I wish that I'd found time to look into it years ago. Goodness, Strauss was lecturing in 1966. It's not new. I've just been lazy.
With my interest whetted, I have then been wondering why Strauss has the reputation he has. Is he really that evil? Perhaps I'm missing something? I discover that, in fact, the view of Strauss that I have had conforms to that found in the books of a Canadian academic named Shadia Drury. She has written several books on Strauss and it is she who paints Strauss as the sinister author of neocon political ideology. It is she who described the students of Strauss as an intellectual "cult" operating behind the scenes to orchestrate such diabolical acts as the Iraq war. This is exactly the view I had of Strauss. I've never read or even heard of Shadia Drury, and yet I am her mouthpiece. Somehow, her views on Strauss have become my views on Strauss. It filtered down through the internet and became a fixture in my intellectual furniture: the evil Strauss.
But not everyone is happy with Shadia Drury's portrayal of the old professor. A book published in 2009 entitled Straussophobia by Peter Minowitz takes her to task. He says that what we have in her work is nothing less than a fully formed entirely delusional left-wing conspiracy theory. The Straussians, according to this theory, are a secret club who have been running America. They were all students of Leo Strauss, who brainwashed them with neo-nazi ideology and sent them out to weazle their way into positions of power from where they could unleash their evil plans. In order to portray Strauss thus, Drury has misquoted and misunderstood Strauss and very often just fabricated ideas and connections. This estimation of Drury seems widespread. Thomas Pangle, a former professor of political philosophy at Yale, went all out and slammed Drury's portrayal as unscholarly and incompetent. Others describe Drury as offering "Strauss for morons."
It all becomes much clearer to me. Shadia Drury is a familiar type. Feminist, leftist, post-colonial studies, social scientist, lectures on "social justice". Oh dear. Strauss, I know, would be utterly anathema to such academics on any number of grounds. For a start, Strauss made himself unpopular by reinstating the study of Plato and Aristotle in the social sciences long after they had been expelled as boring, elitist old white males. In an age when the social sciences were mesmerised by Derida and co. , Strauss was heading in exactly the opposite direction. I taught Classics for many years. Our social scientist colleagues hated us. Why? Classics is everything they hate. The narrative of the elite. That is exactly what they are out to smash.
It seems that half the people Drury claims studied under Strauss never did, and of those who did half of them never had the power and influence she imagines. She claims that all sorts of people are members of the secretive Strauss club. Most of these claims don't seem to have any substance at all. It is Leftist mythology, a demonology. But it was all eagerly lapped up by Leftists everywhere. Who knows? I probably read it first in George Monbiot.
But I'm not a moron, so I have decided to put aside Drury's fevered fantasies and have a good look at Leo Strauss. Already I know I am unlikely to agree with his conclusions, but already the reading I have done has been very worthwhile. Strauss is refreshingly free of the type of relativism - he calls it "historicism" - that infects so much contemporary thought. (My goodness, the post-modernists must despise him!) His approach to Plato gives proper account of absolutes. The first thing I take away from Strauss is this: he reads the Platonic dialogues in absolute time, not in a historical relativism. Goodbye Gilbert Ryle! and good riddance.
In The City & Man, Strauss writes:
Plato's work consists of many dialogues because it imitates rthe manyness, the variety, the heterogeniety of being. The many dialogues form a kosmos which mysteriously imitates the mysterious kosmos. The Platonic kosmos imitates or reproduces its model in order to awaken us to the mystery of the model and to assist us in articulating that mystery. There are many dialogues because the whole consists of many parts. But the individual dialogue is not a chapter from an encyclopaedia of the philosophic sciences or from a system of philosophy, and still less a relic of a stage of Plato's development. Each dialogue deals with one part: it reveals the truth about that part... Each dialogue, we venture to say, abstracts something that is most important to the subject matter of the dialogue. If this is so, the subject matter as presented in the dialogue is strictly speaking impossible. But the impossible - or a certain kind of impossible - if treated as possible is in the highest sense ridiculous or, as we are in the habit of saying, comical. The core of every Aristophanean comedy is something impossible of the kind indicated. The Platonic dialogue brings to its completion what could be thought to have been completed by Aristophanes.
That's a great place to start, a great way to look at the dialogues. Comedies, "in the highest sense ridiculous."
- Harper McAlpine Black
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