Essential Leo Strauss?

Essential Leo Strauss?

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vindicatingthefounders.com/author/jaffa_v_mansfield.pdf
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DELET THIS

This scumbag is to blame for some of the biggest crises of the last 20 years. Fuck Strauss, I'm sick of the cunt.

that's what the ladies call him

Voice your problems?

For a prime example of the nefarious influence of Strauss, look no further than the Iraq War. His doctrine of the "noble lie" was a particular influence on Tony Blair, who was instrumental in cooking up fake evidence to justify the war.

tl;dr - Strauss was the philosophical father of the neo-conservative movement. His lasting testament is a mountain of dead bodies in the Middle East.

Start with "The City and Man," "On Tyranny," or "An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss."

His letters with Kojeve are pretty essential too.

I'm not nearly well-versed enough in Strauss to engage in the debate over whether or not his thought can truly to be said to be a precursor to the neoconservative movement and resulting actions (although he did teach Wolfowitz), but, aside from hiding the strategic benefits of an Iraq buffer and show of military might to the Islamic world, there wasn't as much 'noble lying' as you suggest with Blair and Bush. They really thought Saddam was colluding (or would soon) with Al-Qaeda and had a WMD program.

Actually that was Plato, the real criminal. Plato was the first totalitarian, responsible for Nazis, Holocaust, Stalin, Gulags, Mao, millions and trillions of deaths, piles of bodies owing to Plato.

Do you only deal with caricatures of philosophers like most people in this board?

>muh neoconservatives
>muh bush

I never understood why Popper's interpretation of Plato took off.

Before I try to give a rough overview of the guy, I want to give a disclaimer that I am in no way, shape, or form, a Straussian. I simply stumbled upon the guy through my study of Plato. So, if anyone is more qualified please chime in and correct me.

Strauss's philosophy is largely based on irreconcilable tensions he finds through his study of the history of philosophy. There are four ones that I recall from reading him. They are (i) the rediscovery of exoteric and esoteric writing, (ii) the conflict between philosophy and politics, (iii) the break between the ancients and the moderns, and (iv) reason and revelation. These are all heavily related but I'll only be writing about the first as it is the one that I understand the most and is imho his most uncontroversial thus most important contribution.

With the distinction between exoteric and esoteric writing, Strauss claims that pre-Modern philosophers (take Kant as an uncontroversial cut-off point for Straussians) write their works both exoterically, that is to express uncontroversial ideas for their own time and place, but also esoterically, that is ideas embedded "between the lines" of the text meant for close readers. He expresses this in his article and later book "Persecution and the Art of Writing". This distinction is by no means a new one as people like Al-farabi bring this up and even more examples of this type of writing can be found in Arthur Melzer's book "Philosophy Between the Lines". Going back to Strauss, the reasons he outlines for writing esoterically is that genuine philosophical discourse is disruptive as it subjects everything to questioning. If one were to not write esoterically, they would most certainly face persecution. Think of Socrates and how he was later tried for corruption of the youth in the Apology. Second, writing esoterically also prevents the abuse of the ideas of the philosophers as only philosophically minded people would catch them. The third and what I view as the most important reason as to writing esoterically is for pedagogy. Purely exoteric writing is fixed. Recall Socrates' criticism of writing at the end of the Phaedrus, in that writing cannot adjust to the arguments of the reader like a philosophical dialogue can. Esoteric writing aims to transcend this. This distinction is best found in the form of Plato, but note that Strauss does not claim that there are "unwritten doctrines" unlike other scholars. This leads to a reconsideration on how we ought to read philosophers.

TLDR - Read "Persecution and the Art of Writing" for his ideas on esoteric and exoteric writing.

Other user gives great suggestions too, but I'd say read them after the article. It's just less than 20 pages after all. Do note that Strauss is not an easy read.

He's a great guy. I read some stuff by Strauss, worth it.

I only then found out that Kojeve and he were good friends. That makes sense. Kojeve himself is a genius, so if he's good enough for Kojeve he's good enough for anyone.

Leo Strauss: We Hardly Knew Ye

>guys, Plato WASN'T REALLY the Christian/Idealist par excellence, he was a psychological egoist and pre-socratic all along!

lel
refer to pic

I think his essay on German Nihilism specifically in the strand of the National Socialists is rather insightful.

>Actually that was Plato, the real criminal

Plato is very smart right? Plato says that the government should lie to the people.

The Government: Yeah.. we lied... but you dont think you are smarter than Plato do you!?!?!

If Plato told you to jump off a bridge?

The guy was engaged with first-rate thinkers too like Heidegger, Husserl, and Gadamer. Too bad that like Heidegger, although Heidegger is a more severe case ofc, his name is soiled by association with certain groups of people thus leaving his philosophy to fall by the wayside.

It should have been Eric Voegelin the one to become popular. But Voegelin wasn't Jewish, he couldn't count on ethnic nepotism.

Well, to start with, Strauss is probably easiest to get into if you're also reading the works of one of the authors he comments on, since it's the power of his commentaries and close readings that have excited (at least initially) a good many of his students. That said, I can say outright that Thoughts On Machiavelli is very hard, as are the late works generally (Studies on Platonic Political Philosophy, the Xenophon books, The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws).

So, I'd suggest taking a look at his lectures courses that are getting put up at leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/courses (just look for the ones with transcripts available).

Otherwise, as far as books are concerned, City and Man is a great start, though the "theological-political problem" of his thought is described at an angle. But you get lots of great material dealing with the Ancients v. Moderns differences and conflict, the differences between political science, political philosophy, and political phenomena, the attention necessary to pay to the way an author says something, and so on. It's truly great, and rewarding both initially and on subsequent reads.

On Tyranny, his commentary on Xenophon's dialogue, "Hiero", is essential for understanding the difference between tyranny and authoritarianism/totalitarianism/fascism/Nazism, etc. The editions containing the dialogue with Kojeve are also great for an opportunity to understand the differences between the ancient and modern political projects, and their relationship to philosophy.

City and Man is an inversion (arguably) of Natural Right and History, which seems like an essential read in light of modern concerns over rights and our possible blindness to their grounds. It's a very subtle work though that requires attending to the footnotes.

Then Thoughts on Machiavelli, which, as per above, is difficult, but also Strauss's most sustained inquiry into the work of a modern thinker, and especially the one Strauss is convinced modern liberalism and political thought has its roots in.

1) If there are any "Straussians" you might want to direct your ire at, one good target would be Abram Shulsky, who, for whatever reason, applies Strauss's *reading of Plato's discussion of the noble lie in Plato's Republic* to intelligence. He's a good target to be furious at.

2) Noble lies? Literally discussed as such only when he's discussing *Plato's notion of the noble lie in the Republic*, in the context of *commenting on the Republic*. The issue of esotericism/exotericism is seemingly similar but unrelated.

3) Wolfowitz took classes with Strauss (one on Plato's Laws, another on Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws), and both doesn't identify as a Straussian, and doesn't seem to hold the Strauss or his students with much regard with the sole notable exception of Allan Bloom. Wolfowitz's big mentor was Albert Wohlstetter, and that's the real story that gets missed when people focus on Strauss, who's influence on politics (understood as the application of his "ideas" to politics) is negligible to not quite non-existent (because, again, Shulsky).

4) Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Pearle, Rove, etc. have nothing to do with Strauss.

5) Strauss was admired strongly by Irving Kristol, and his son Bill, but the neocons are themselves a diverse enough movement to make the more general claim about Strauss as their godfather to be either a massive exaggeration, or false to some large degree.

Very nice summary, user.

Voegelin's plenty interesting, I do agree, but I've never been able to get over his bad tendency to conflate modern and ancient concepts (i.e., his tendency to discuss ancient ideas with modern ones as if they're the same). In that respect, Strauss was more philosophically sound.

Power of nightmares - Adam curtis

What about it?

You should read this for context:
newrepublic.com/article/137410/pro-trump-intellectuals-want-overthrow-america

Strauss is politically relevant.

>Strauss is politically relevant.
Again, not especially. The article mentioned says the following:

>And yet, for all of Strauss’s deliberate obscurity, he’s been a shaping force on American conservatism ever since he found refuge in the U.S. in 1937. Through his hundreds of students, many of whom went on to become distinguished scholars of their own, he created the most robust right-leaning school of thought in the American academy. During the early years of this century, there was considerable journalistic and scholarly hullabaloo about the fact that many key advocates for George W. Bush’s foreign policy (notably Wolfowitz and Kristol) had a Straussian intellectual lineage.

Most of which was addressed above, (i.e., Wolfowitz isn't a "Straussian" and owes infinitely more to Wohlstetter, and the rest of the Bush cabinet had no connection to Strauss whatsoever). Besides, Kristol's influence is questionable (certainly among most Republicans, no one thinks much of him).

>You should read this for context
Otherwise, it's alright for what it is beside having to intentionally force a narrative where one may not be.

1) That Kesler and some of his Claremont associates support Trump in their own differently qualified ways is not interesting in itself unless you can link Kesler and so on to much more significant political action.

2) That the article can discuss the phenomena of "East Coast" and "West Coast" "Straussians" disagreeing with each suggests rather that Strauss's place in this broader matter (intellectuals are supporting Trump) is unclear and not to be determined on the basis of any association with him, his work, or his name.

Calm the fuck down Popper

>there wasn't as much 'noble lying' as you suggest with Blair and Bush
The "dodgy dossier," anyone? The attempts to link Saddam with 9/11? The whole "45 minutes" claim?

Some people have short (or perhaps selective) memories.

To the user claiming that Strauss is responsible for the politics of the Bush era, there have been numerous things written against this claim. A quick Amazon search tells me that Robert Howse wrote a book. Then again, reading a hint of Strauss would make it obvious how politically quiet the guy is which I doubt you have done. One of his main ideas was that politics and philosophy are necessarily in conflict with each other and cannot be reconciled. Recall that he was a philosopher first and foremost. There is no doubt, however, that Strauss admired pre-Modern societies like the polis, which would obviously be characterized as conservative nowadays, for reasons largely relating to the safety and cultivation of philosophy. In that sense he is a conservative. But to claim that Strauss was the philosophical backbone of the Bush era is a whole other thing.

If anyone wants to know more about Strauss besides from the suggestions here, this one being from a Straussian, check out the Mansfield interview on YouTube. Just remember that nobody is a "pure Straussian" thus Mansfield privileges certain aspects of Strauss's body of work. However, the interview deals more with facts about the man, so it shouldn't pose a problem. Its very comfy too. Mansfield has a voice that seems to be both whispering and shouting.

youtube.com/watch?v=t-gH7Waedtk

Thanks

Are you suggesting Bush and Blair pulled that intelligence from out-of-their-ass? It was the asset who was deceiving the government, not the govt. to the masses (outside of the military strategic benefits to the war I mentioned, but that's a given). You can argue the IC were heavily pressured by the neocons to make the intel fit the conclusion they wanted, that Bush and Blair were deadset on their interpretations, or even perhaps there were liars within the administration or allied governments (e.g. UnderSec. Bolton, Israel), but Bush and Blair never outright lied.

t. Heidegger's geist

>To the user claiming that Strauss is responsible for the politics of the Bush era, there have been numerous things written against this claim.
Dozens of books have been written by Straussians in the last decade to do just this,, the best and most thorough of which is Peter Minowitz's "Straussophobia", which pretty well demolishes the most infamous claims.

> dozens of books
sounds like a lot

Is "comfy" Harvey a fascist?
www.weeklystandard.com/the-law-and-the-president/article/7751

Strauss a bit fasci too
www.bradford-delong.com/2011/04/the-real-leo-strauss.html

Whether he _ought_ to be considered politically relevant doesn't matter so much. He has been and will continue to be under the current Straussian administration.

>Is "comfy" Harvey a fascist?
>www.weeklystandard.com/the-law-and-the-president/article/7751
I didn't respond directly to regarding Mansfield, since it seemed that to do so would be petty; Mansfield, in that clip is discussing Strauss as a thinker and about what makes him an interesting one. That said, I'll at least differ from you in one point and tacitly agree with you in another.

1) Mansfield is not a "fascist", or at least, you would have to explain what you mean by fascist such that that accusation isn't just name-calling in place of political understanding. His argument, I think we might agree, could be dubitable in points (his understanding of the Constitution might be argued with, though that seems fine in his case; it's much more dubitable to argue a case from Machiavelli, whose political thought is not necessarily enshrined in the Constitution, though the latter does owe something to the former), but nothing he says in there makes him a fascist. If you think his argument is wrong, which part do you think in particular? (Mind you, one possible way to disagree with Mansfield is *via Strauss's criticism of Carl Schmitt's "Concept of the Political"*; just sayin'.)

2) Mansfield was never a student of Strauss, which gets overlooked given how vocal a cheerleader he is for Strauss. In fact, he disagrees pretty fundamentally with the Claremont set of students (of Harry Jaffa, a student of Strauss). An example:
vindicatingthefounders.com/author/jaffa_v_mansfield.pdf

3) Personally, I really like Mansfield's translations, but I've always been under the impression that he's a jackass who's too impressed with certain political elements of Strauss's work to the detriment of the more important and interesting philosophical elements. Rosen, Benardete, and Kennington are all better readers and students of Strauss than fucking Mansfield.

4) But again, none of this says anything about *Strauss* or his ideas; and again, as per above, Mansfield disagrees with a large set of "Straussians", especially the set linked to the West Coast supporters of Trump in the article at . This is not a good argument about Strauss.

>Strauss a bit fasci too
>www.bradford-delong.com/2011/04/the-real-leo-strauss.html
Wow, a lazy accusation that argues via generalities ("Indeed, a historian of the last years of the Weimar Republic would be hard pressed to identify these cowardly Weimar “liberals” of whom Mansfield speaks...", "For the great majority of the German electorate, “liberalism” was a foreign political ideology", "For cultural conservatives, like Strauss", etc.), as if there aren't any differences worth noting between Strauss and conservatives (of which much is made in Paul Gottfried's "Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America"), or as if there were simply no liberals to be found in all of Germany during the Weimar era and so on. Badly argued. Doesn't even quote the full letter:

(cont.)

"Paris, May 19, 1933

Dear Mr. Löwith,

On your behalf I have in the meantime made the necessary overture to Groethuysen, who is in London. Besides this I had occasion to speak with Van Sickle, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, and informed him about you, your situation, your work and your interests. He made a note of your name, so I am sure he will remember it when he comes across it in Fehling’s letter. As concerns me, I will receive the second year. Berlin recommended me, and that was decisive. I will also spend my second year in Paris, and I will attempt in this time to undertake something that will make my further work possible. Clearly I have major “competition”: the entire German-Jewish intellectual proletariat is assembled here. It’s terrible - I’d rather just run back to Germany. But here’s the catch. Of course I can’t opt for just any other country - one doesn’t choose a homeland and, above all, a mother tongue, and in any event I will never be able to write other than in German, even if I must write in another language. On the other hand, I see no acceptable possibility of living under the swastika, i.e., under a symbol that says nothing more to me than: you and your ilk, you are physei subhumans and therefore justly pariahs. There is in this case just one solution. We must repeat: we, “men of science,” - as our predecessors in the Arab Middle Ages called themselves - non habemus locum manentem, sed quaerimus… And, what concerns this matter: the fact that the new right-wing Germany does not tolerate us says nothing against the principles of the right. To the contrary: only from the principles of the right, that is from fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles, is it possible with seemliness, that is, without resort to the ludicrous and despicable appeal to the droits imprescriptibles de l’homme to protest against the shabby abomination. I am reading Caesar’s Commentaries with deep understanding, and I think of Virgil’s Tu regere imperio… parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. There is no reason to crawl to the cross, neither to the cross of liberalism, as long as somewhere in the world there is a glimmer of the spark of the Roman thought. And even then: rather than any cross, I’ll take the ghetto. I do not therefore fear the fate of the émigré - at most secundum carnem: the hunger or similar deprivations. - In a sense our sort are always “emigrants”; and what concerns the rest, the fear of bitterness, which is certainly very great, and in this sense I think of Klein, who in every sense has always been an emigrant, living proof for the fact that it is not unconquerable. Dixi, et animam meam salvavi.

Live well! My heartiest greetings to you and your wife

Leo Strauss

My wife sends her thanks for your greetings, and reciprocates heartily."

(cont.)

So, the line to make most of is:

"And, what concerns this matter: the fact that the new right-wing Germany does not tolerate us says nothing against the principles of the right. To the contrary: only from the principles of the right, that is from fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles, is it possible with seemliness, that is, without resort to the ludicrous and despicable appeal to the droits imprescriptibles de l’homme to protest against the shabby abomination."

Which is pretty different from "I support fascism". That's a pretty qualified claim that he makes.

>Whether he _ought_ to be considered politically relevant doesn't matter so much. He has been and will continue to be under the current Straussian administration.
Again, you haven't any strong argument that he's a direct and/or definitive cause of our current political issues, whether of the war in Iraq, or of...whatever loose argument seems to be made about Trump I guess, since I guess "intellectuals in Claremont" = Trump's administration or something now.

bump

Like I said earlier, Mansfield is irrelevant. Its a video about Strauss and his teachings and is just that. He does give his own views regarding Strauss but I've cautioned people here about that. Its also impossible to discuss the man fruitfully without discussing your interpretation of the man. The other user made a good point that Mansfield isn't the best Straussian which I really should have mentioned in the post earlier. He pretty much does his own thing. On the fascist accusation, I would hesitate to call someone like Mansfield a fascist. A quick look at his bibliography should suggest otherwise. You seem to be in the habit of calling people to the right of you fascists.

However, the discussion of Mansfield has probably run its course. This is a thread about Strauss and the video was simply used to give a short albeit somewhat biased primer on the guy. It did its function.

how is any of that relevant? like what does any of that have to do with strauss's books? quote where in his books he says anything that would support something like the war in iraq or the kinds of lies the bush administration used or the trump presidency. you won't find anything.

Redpill me on Strauss?

read his wikipedia article tbqh

he also spawned the man the meme the legend Samuel P. Huntington

If anyone is interested, the Leo Strauss Center's website at UChicago has several of his seminars up in audio or transcript format so you can basically take graduate courses with Leo Strauss.

>Samuel P. Huntington
Say no more.

Watch the power of nightmares by Adam curtis.....very influential with nascent neo-cons

Thanks. I'm by no means a neocon but I've found myself growing a bit more hawkish over time.

Lol it looks like utter trash.

Oh boy here we go again

It is. Dumbest version of the "Strauss made the neocons" conspiracy.

So just gonna ignore all them refutations above are ya.

I'm guessing the "le neocon boogeyman" guy posts on these types of threads often?
So can you actually get me up to speed on Strauss?

bump

>I'm guessing the "le neocon boogeyman" guy posts on these types of threads often?
Not really, but every once in a while, since that's largely how Strauss is known to most people at this point.

>So can you actually get me up to speed on Strauss?
Well, biggest thing about Strauss is that he pays very careful attention to how the great philosophers wrote, and this is where the whole "exoteric/esoteric" thing comes in. Authors at different times wrote with greater or lesser degrees of frankness, either in order to protect themselves from the fate of Socrates, to protect their political communities from corruption, or in order to test potential philosophers by making them work out a difficult and abstruse text.

So in short, the history of philosophy ends up really being the history of political philosophy, since even metaphysical and physical subjects can only be spoken about if the local community is sufficiently open to those subjects and doesn't find them blasphemous. So the ancient philosophers often look very different for Strauss, with *maybe* the exception of Aristotle.

Then we have the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, starting with Machiavelli, and the attempt to restrain the place of religion in politics by aiming at the self-interest of many people as the basic standard for politics (as opposed to ancient cultivation of virtue). This thread as been pulled through to today, culminating in certain ways in Nietzsche and Heidegger on the one hand, and positivism on the other. The big interest to Strauss here is that the roots of modern liberalism also seem to contain their own protest, which is what makes liberal democracy seem precarious and weak.

The big issue in the background of all of this for Strauss is the "theological-political problem", which seems to be not just the issue of religion in society, but also of the account of origins and order on the part of philosophy (the attempt to offer a cosmology, if you will). The metaphysical principles of philosophy seem to sometimes be surrogate gods to replace the civic ones. His thought is very difficult on this subject.

But otherwise, his thing is trying to reach a place of understanding that doesn't just accept blindly our own modern and inherited prejudices, and so he spends a lot of time reading the ancients in particular.

I don't think any of that sounds super eye-opening unless you get really into his commentaries and start noticing what might be his own opinions very moderately placed here and there. It also doesn't sound all that sexy; he definitely doesn't accept the modern idea that philosophy needs to either be doing something always new, or constantly progressing like the sciences. But that's pretty much what's up with him, at a very simple level.

Seems fairly interesting. So what got you interested in Strauss?

Wow! Paul Gottfried posts on Veeky Forums!

>I never understood why Popper's interpretation of Plato took off
>"Open Society and its Enemies"
>Open Society

G E O R G E S O R O S

Voegelin also taught at LSU while Strauss taught at UChicago. Maybe if Voegelin spilt his time teaching with coaching football more would know of him.

Neocons=Beltway government and think tank types with JDs/BAs, care about normal politics, maybe took a class with a Straussian back in school

Struassians=PhDs. Teach "political philosophy" (not "theory") in college poli-sci departments, care about esoteric readings of Plato and making sure Paul Gottfried doesn't get a job at an Ivy-tier school

Blow it out your ass.

Saying Leo Strauss was responsible for the Iraq War is like saying Hegel was responsible for the Russian revolution. Strauss was not a proponent of the things you accuse him of, his students were--- eat a cock.

this

Originally I only knew of him as the "godfather of neoconservatism" who had "esoteric" readings of Plato which sounded like nonsense. At some point, as I was getting more serious in my study of Plato, I decided to see what he had to say about the Republic, feeling that, if what he had to say was wrong, that it'd at least be instructive and that I'd be better prepared to argue against such a reading. Right before I actually his writings on the Republic, I took a look at a short essay of his, "The Three Waves of Modernity", and was struck both by how moderate and cautious he was in his claims, and how eye-opening he seriously was in a few pages about the connections between thinkers from Machiavelli to Nietzsche. The result was I suspected something must've been off in my understanding of him, so I downloaded Peter Minowitz's "Straussophobia", and took a look at the same time at the books of Strauss's biggest critic (and the one responsible for spreading the "neocon" meme), Shadia Drury. It became evident that her readings were either willful distortions or the work of a shoddy scholar, and I felt a bit better about reading Strauss at all. Then I found he was totally helpful as a resource to the philosophers he wrote on, moreso than almost any other, and I've been fascinated with his work since then.

Sounds about right.