Hilail Gildin, ed.: An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
Thomas L. Pangle, ed.: The Rebirth of Classical Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Originally published in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. Volume 17, Number 3, Spring 1990. Republished by permission.
“One cannot settle any Platonic question of any consequence by simply quoting Plato,” (Pangle, 193) writes Leo Strauss. Strauss titles a collection of his essay, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy; insofar as Strauss Platonizes, he must be quoted with care. Quoting Plato or Strauss with care means to quote them in the spirit of evidence, in the spirit of ‘pointing to,’ not in the spirit of demonstration, of ‘Q.E.D.’ He who knows he does not know will unfailingly frustrate those who want to know what to believe as well as those who know what they want to believe. The frustration and even suspicion Strauss stirs in dogmatic souls has found ample ventilation in a variety of journals and books. Those readers for whom controversy arouses curiosity instead of indignation may seek firsthand knowledge of Strauss from Strauss’s writings.
Hilail Gildin’s collection will serve as an excellent place to begin. This new edition contains four additional essays: Strauss’s own brief introduction to political philosophy, one on the theologico-political question, and two on liberal education. Gildin’s introduction succinctly outlines Strauss’s principal concerns as a politicl philosopher, particularly the way in which modern political philosophers brought out the nihilistic implications of Machiavell’s thought in ever more elaborate forms, and the consequent need for a renewed radicalism, so to speak—recourse to the Socratic roots of political philosophy.
Strauss adopted the Socratic view of philosophy as first of all a way of life, even the way of life—the highest form of politics or self-rule. This view regards human life as needful of wisdom, as rightly animated by love of wisdom, the quest for knowledge of the whole. Even the vast majority of human beings, who are unphilosophic and content to stay that way, in some sense need philosophy; the political good requires education of qualified young persons for philosophic life, not only for political life as conventionally understood in a given regime. At the same time, philosophers need to start with political life as conventionally understood, to treat citizens’ opinions as portals to understanding, not as barriers to be knocked down. Socratic philosophy contrasts sharply with historicism, which begins with Rousseau’s rejection of the naturalness of reasons and issues in the divorce of ‘ought’ from ‘is’ in the name of realism. For radical historicism, even reality becomes an ‘ism.’ After Nietzsche refuted optimistic historicist progressivism, only self-conscious nihilism remained. The modern attempt to dismiss ideal republics and cities of God in order to free man for reshaping nature to his own liking, ended in a rebirth of tragedy, first with, then without, nobility. “The attempt to make man absolutely at home in this world ended in man’s becoming absolutely homeless” (108).
Modernity often fuses reason to spiritedness, forming ideology and propaganda. Socrates associate reason with eros, not spiritedness, seeking a self-sufficiency that need not harm (or directly help) the philosopher’s fellow-citizens. Only force or, perhaps, a form of love, patriotism, could induce the philosopher to participate in politics. In his essays on liberal education we see Strauss as a kind of statesman, indeed as a reformer describing “the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society” (314). This language will exercises egalitarians among Strauss’s critics, who may overlook his call for “unhesitating loyalty” to decent constitutionalism (345). Or, what is more likely, perhaps some critics balk at constitutionalism itself, and at Strauss’s observation, made in the same breath, that the “grandiose failures” of Marx and Nietzsche should teach us never to separate wisdom from moderation. Be this as it may, even at his most ‘political’ Strauss never fails to point to philosophy, to the awareness of our understanding the philosopher may enjoy, beyond the ambitions of the modern project.
Strauss crafted each of his published essays to stand alone and also, in most instances, to stand within a book. A cautious reader will therefore approach Professor Gildin’s collection with some reservations, concerned that the act of extracting essays form their original contexts will somehow lose many intended resonances. Such fears prove needless here. Gildin has given us a real book, one whose chapters lead logically from one to another, making a coherent argument. Even readers familiar with these essays may find these new juxtapositions instructive. The book’s only shortcoming is its bibliography, which has not been updated since the 1975 edition. If there is another printing, the publisher might consider making this useful revision.
Thomas Pangle’s collection first calls attention not to Strauss as political philosopher but to Strauss as philosopher, to Strauss’s “classical rationalism” or “erotic skepticism” (xi-xii). In this, however, Pangle is as politic as Gildin, given current academic interest (bordering on obsession) with things epistemological. The volume may give Strauss a hearing before those who expect the philosopher to ‘do philosophy’ rather than to ‘know himself’ or to ‘live philosophically.’
In his introduction Pangle quickly brings his readers to politics, to the way epistemology and politics intertwine. “Norms of civic justice, of civic virtue and vice,” emerge from dialogue (xii). Not absolute in the sense that natural laws or categorical imperatives are said to be, they are nonetheless trans-historically valid because they are grounded in unchanging human nature. Modern philosophers attempt to lay down laws evident to non-philosophers, reducing observation, prudence, and classification to methods and rules. ‘Method-ists’ want to overcome the need for both kinds of wisdom, practical and theoretical, and thereby rigidify both politics and philosophy, including the liberal education of potential statesmen and philosophers.
In the United States during Strauss’s lifetime there was much talk of ‘humanism’ as an alternative to totalitarian ideology. Strauss saw that humanism cannot replace the traditional religion as the foundation of morality in commercial republican society, even among the academic elites. Humanism cannot account for the whole of being, as may be seen in Isaiah Berlin’s concept of “negative freedom” or “freedom from,” which needs an absolute foundation but denies itself one on principle (7, 16-17). And even the self-created limits favored by existentialists cannot be seen as limits without “the light of infinity” (38). After the Nazi disaster convinced Heidegger that “contempt for reasonableness and praise of resoluteness” (30) quickly run themselves aground., Heidegger retained his contempt for reason but added patience. His patient ‘waiting-for’ a religion that cannot be consciously created, produced the atmosphere of our own time, called by André Malraux, “the days of limbo.”
Classical political rationalism begins with political opinions but seeks a conversion to truth, away from lies (however noble). “The political man is constantly forced to have very long conversations with very dull people on very dull subjects” (74). he philosophic life avoids much of that, without losing all moderation, and without losing its sense of humor. (“Modern research on Plato originated in Germany, the country without comedy” [206]; too many commentators on Strauss are German, all too German.) Philosophic life begins in wonder; Biblical wisdom begins with fear of the Lord; modernity, which has tried “to preserve Biblical morality while abandoning Biblical faith,” loses philosophic and Biblical virtues (240). Because Western civilization lives in the relation between ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem,’ radical modernity tends toward the disintegration of the West. Contemporary ideologues who chant for the purging of writings by ‘dead, white, European males’ from university syllabi know what they don’t want, sort of. The spirit of Strauss in the pages of these books counsels us to react to such incantations with neither indignation nor dismissive laughter: “The recognition by philosophy of the fact that the human race is worthy of some seriousness is the origin of political philosophy or political science” (126). (Emphasis added and, it is to be hoped, balance observed.)
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