Category Archives: politics

Seth Benardete, “Memorial Speech for Leo Strauss”

Posted on by under philosophy, politics

Extended comment follows. I realize this is a long text and longer post. My initial thought was to let Benardete speak his remembrance without further comment. This is an important speech for a number of reasons, and it needs to be public, if only for the simple fact it is a tribute. But I realize some of you want to know more about the scholarly things mentioned and not feel overwhelmed by a number of names and concepts. You also want some general grounds for why this tribute matters, not just those that convince the converted. I hold there is a beauty, a nobility, to what is below. And you’re owed at least an attempt at an explanation.

Memorial Speech for Leo Strauss (1974) [from The Archaeology of the Soul, ed. Burger & Davis]
Seth Benardete

Leo Strauss was a philosopher. He hid this fact as much as he showed it by being a transhistorical historian of philosophy. He was more historically accurate than the “historians of ideas” for the sake of recovering the human horizon whose articulation is indispensable for our ascending to the natural horizon. He realized that a special effort had to be made by us in order to attain to the distinction, which is at the heart of philosophy, between those things which are first for us and those things which are first by nature. His was an ascent from the cave beneath the cave to the cave for the sake of ascending from the cave. ‘Archaeology’ was the only path still open to any possible ‘physiology.’ Strauss thus attempted to rediscover in a wholly original way the sense of the Socratic enterprise itself, which had argued on behalf of common sense against the madness of the pre-Socratics only to ground common sense on a basis inaccessible to common sense. Strauss was not the first to attempt such a rediscovery; but he was certainly faced with greater obstacles, of an apparently solid and philosophical sort, than anyone before him. And yet he did hold a peculiar advantage over those thinkers who in the last hundred years or so have acknowledged that the ancients were more than clever children, and that their thought deserved rethinking. He approached the ancients without the blinkers of modern classical scholarship — a sign of this was his rediscovery of Xenophon the philosopher — for he knew that such scholarship had taken from the start the side of the moderns. For him neither Greek poetry nor Greek philosophy was essentially Greek. He was guided throughout by a thought much older than modernity. Averroism saw the political-theological issue as the philosophical issue, since the problem of the human good is grounded in the city, and the problem of being in god. Political philosophy was therefore the eccentric core of philosophy, and the problem of Socrates the problem of philosophy itself.

In his Thoughts on Machiavelli, Strauss wrote as follows: ‘Thucydides’ History arouses in the reader a sadness which is never aroused by Machiavelli’s books. In Machiavelli we find comedies, parodies, and satires but nothing reminding of tragedy. One half of humanity remains outside of his thought. There is no tragedy in Machiavelli because he has no sense of the sacredness of “the common”.’ Are the ancients, then, tragic Machiavellians and did Strauss himself keep comedy and tragedy in balance? He wrote, after all, on Aristophanes, not Sophocles. Comedy and tragedy is the political-theological issue in its original double form; but philosophy is their joint cancellation. All of Strauss’ life consisted in his making his way back to that pre-philosophical horizon of comedy and tragedy from which philosophy necessarily begins.

The tribal leader of the poets, at least as the West understands poetry, has always been Homer; but among the philosophers, it is Socrates. Their plain opposition to one another is mediated by Plato. The eternal quarrel between poetry and philosophy thus appears as a riddle, for Plato usurps the ground of imitation in order to condemn imitation. In some sense, Strauss was forever engaged in the explication of this Platonic riddle. His explication proved indeed to be another riddle, for in following up a hint of al-Farabi, he never had to have recourse to the symbolic or the mystical in order to vindicate for reason the seemingly poetic in Plato. Imitation is a form of concealment; it is the most obvious as well as the safest way of practicing esotericism; but political prudence in Plato is only paradigmatic; it is ultimately to be traced to a philosophical prudence that has no counterpart among the moderns. The moderns are like spiders, said Swift, who out of the vilest things spin the most beautiful webs; but the ancients are like bees, who from a natural nectar devise something sweeter still. This optimism, as Nietzsche contemptuously called it, is due according to Plato to the causal nature of the good or the idea of the good; and the good is that which subordinates the beauty and the ugliness, which comedy and tragedy somehow discern, to itself. It is that which connects the apparent order and disorder of things with the true order of things. Plato’s writings are imitations of this double order, for only imitation can re-present the doubleness, the riddle, of this double order.

In Natural Right and History Strauss offered a negative proof of the need to rethink classical political philosophy. He showed that the first wave of modern political philosophy, from Machiavelli to Locke, was nothing but the successive dismantling of the disparate wholeness of the soul until it had lost both its wholeness and all its parts. This showing was an anti-Nietzschean, i.e. an anti-historicist historical psychology. It underlined the fact that the study of the soul was central for Strauss in linking up political philosophy with first philosophy. Plato’s psychology was Strauss’s way to Plato’s ideas, and Strauss’s way was the way of the Republic. No single Platonic dialogue, however, can yield Plato’s teaching about the soul; Strauss put great stress on Socrates’ observation in the Republic that the problem of justice there precludes an exact account of the soul, even though the problem of justice seems to require such an account, inasmuch as the structure of the city is presumably in strict accordance with the structure of the soul. The Republic reveals the tension between the political and the natural relation of thymos and eros. Such a tension needs to be represented or imitated. It is imitated through the action of the Republic that accompanies its argument. One might say, in general, that the action of a Platonic dialogue both explains the inadequacies of the argument and deepens the argument. Strauss was the first, as far as we know, to give a coherent account of this double function. He showed that, how, and why the linking up of logos and psyche, which is dialectics, was of the essence of the Socratic revolution. That there are many types of soul, each irreducible to one another, necessarily follows from this linking up (for virtue is and is not knowledge); and these types or wholes, in turn, both underlie the variety of political regimes and point to an essential character of the ideas which is not accessible to us in any other way. The problem of wholes links the city through the soul with the beings. It might seem, however, from his published writings that the ideas were only of peripheral interest to Strauss; but Strauss has properly warned us against writing. In any case, in a letter to me, in reply to some objection of mine which I no longer can remember, Strauss wrote: “I’m aware of the fact that the wholeness of a part does not preclude a plural: there is barely a moment in my waking life when I do not think of donkeys, dogs, and mules.”

Comment:

Why does it matter that “Leo Strauss was a philosopher?” What could possibly be good for us in someone else loving wisdom? I know I have mentioned before that the love of wisdom, philosophy, is not the same thing as actually having wisdom. The value of a scholar, someone who primarily thinks through purposely complicated issues, is questionable.

Yet we do recognize something about being a philosopher which sounds higher, at the least. It’s a tremendous compliment when one does not give it to oneself. Of course, any given height could lend itself to grandiose rhetoric. Benardete says Strauss helped recover the “human horizon whose articulation is indispensable for our ascending to the natural horizon.” Not just that his work enables us to see how we actually live in the here and now, but that such an articulation of how we live, in turn, enables an ascent. We can eventually witness a “natural horizon” where one asks “What is man?” and better understands limits, loves, and possibilities with respect to man as a species, humanity as a whole.

One might say anyone can document how people live or ask “What is man?” and give an answer. It’s not that simple; just like common sense, thinking through things carefully is extremely rare. What makes a true philosopher special is that he can do something seemingly everyday, shared by all humans, and do it extraordinarily well. Benardete speaks to this directly:

He realized that a special effort had to be made by us in order to attain to the distinction, which is at the heart of philosophy, between those things which are first for us and those things which are first by nature. His was an ascent from the cave beneath the cave to the cave for the sake of ascending from the cave.

What is first for us we confuse with what is naturally first. This sounds terribly cryptic, but it’s actually basic Aristotle. When we say something has an end or purpose, what we’re saying is that it exists for something. In other words, what is “first” about a car isn’t only that ore was taken from the ground and turned into metal, giving us material to make a car. Just as primary is the end of a car, why the car was even conceived: that it gets one from point A to point B.

The distinction seems simple enough, but it already speaks to at least two ways of approaching life and knowledge. The talk of the “cave beneath the cave to the cave for the sake of ascending from the cave” is about a famous statement of Strauss’. We have lost sight of the cave of Plato’s Republic, which for Strauss is the realm of conventionality, the city/polis. We cannot begin to properly identify where our beliefs lie and knowledge begins, so we are in the cave beneath the cave. Far more political, ideological, and utilitarian than we assume ourselves being, we need to know about the cave itself to remind us of our limits. But if you do recognize it for what it is, you have the ability to see far more about being human than you would initially expect.

Benardete goes on to highlight how an ancient/modern contrast was useful to Strauss in beginning his inquiries. There are a number of reasons to question such a division: the ancient thinkers can’t see what the modern ones do? Things like Xenophon’s “Spartan Constitution” indicate otherwise. The last chapter of that short work almost makes a king sound like the modern executive. The contrast may not be the most accurate way of approaching the past. However, it does mean one does not take differences for granted, and the power of older thinkers gets its due:

Averroism saw the political-theological issue as the philosophical issue, since the problem of the human good is grounded in the city, and the problem of being in god. Political philosophy was therefore the eccentric core of philosophy, and the problem of Socrates the problem of philosophy itself.

The older debate centered on a specific question. “What is man?” points to the problem of being. Rocks are, animals are, planets are – but who are we? Further, “what is man?” points to the problem of the good. What should we have? What will make us happy? The problem of being and the problem of the good, unfortunately, do not neatly converge. They diverge. “The problem of the human good is grounded in the city.” If you want to know what is good for you, you must take into account what is good for others, what others say is good. “The problem of being [is grounded] in god” only superficially engages what others say about the divine. In the end, we need to know for ourselves what we are capable and not capable of, what we personally find a limit or possibility. Man is between beast and god.

I think the “god” question, in light of the respect for the “being” question, sets up the problem of Socrates. Socrates is an extremely unique individual, even as he is self-sufficient, seeking the nature of things, unconstrained by convention. He is a natural human being, perhaps the natural human being. “Rational animal” applies to him too well.

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates asserts that a tragedian can write tragedy and comedy. He is silent on whether a comedian can write tragedy. Tragedy – you could say the facts of failure and death – speaks to the whole of existence more than comedy. Socrates does more than talk about tragedy and comedy. But we can feel that if his life is worthy to be wondered at, then part of the reason must involve figuring out whether his death was tragic or not. In one sense, it is: human reason cannot secure what is most good, to live well always. But human reason is better than the alternative, which is slavery and self-delusion. The Athenians who killed Socrates thought they were good democrats. No one thinks that of them now, and philosophy, what Socrates died for, is considered indispensable. I confess I need to sit and think a lot harder about what Benardete means by “comedy and tragedy is the political-theological issue in its original double form,” but I think I’ve illustrated the “pre-philosophical horizon of comedy and tragedy from which philosophy necessarily begins.” In wondering how to properly characterize life, one finds oneself asking a lot more about it.

Still, philosophers are not the only ones with questions. Well, perhaps it is proper to say not the only ones experimenting with answers. There is an “eternal quarrel between poetry and philosophy,” but in Plato it is a riddle, “for Plato usurps the ground of imitation in order to condemn imitation.” The poets aren’t today’s poets, people who write things no one else reads. The poets of the ancient world make myth; they are Creators. That Plato writes drama should have destroyed philosophy, but if the drama is properly accounted for, it shows us “a philosophical prudence that has no counterpart among the moderns.”  Such a philosophical prudence is tied to the good. Plato famously hinted in the Republic that there is a form of the good which is a cause. This was taken to be no less than God by Christianity. But it is much stranger upon further examination. The good does have a “causal nature,”  which means what is good “subordinates the beauty and the ugliness, which comedy and tragedy somehow discern, to itself.” You get an account of order and disorder from what is good. But is there actually a form or idea of the good, or is the proper cause human being? Don’t we seek what is good, accept answers based on circumstances and changes, and order things relatively? Benardete speaks of “concealment,” “imitation,” and “doubleness.” What he means is that Plato pulled off a neat trick. In making it seem like there was an absolute good, he actually argued for the relativity of what is good – i.e. the need for human reason.

But we are not just creatures that seek “goods.” We got into the quest for “the good” for a reason. “The first wave of modern political philosophy, from Machiavelli to Locke, was nothing but the successive dismantling of the disparate wholeness of the soul until it had lost both its wholeness and all its parts.” In other words, when Plato’s work was abandoned in favor of more effectual texts, which gave us no less than science, commerce, and a republic, there was a trade-off. The problems of being and the good add up a peculiar way. In the most secular sense, they are the soul. One need not believe in life after death or invisible essences that give motion to our bodies to say that we do things to make our lives count for something. Our soul is almost nothing but our body. It refers to our social situation, our being framed by conventionality, and even then not quite. The structure of a given city does not mirror how our souls – or anyone’s soul – is structured, though we identify with aspects of a city so much that we may die for it (thymos – spiritedness, heart). Our desire, our eros, is a complex phenomenon. To label it radically individual does not appreciate what it actually does.

To understand what is going on – at this moment, we are dealing with an issue in reading Plato – one has to look at the drama of a Platonic dialogue. Plato’s imitation, unlike the poets, does not lead to the same flights of fancy. Rather, it goes back to an all-too-human condition, where what someone says can only be understood in light of how he acts or what he wants. Plato, like Socrates, is looking at human beings and their natures.”[T]here are many types of soul, each irreducible to one another:” political philosophy is the eccentric core of philosophy as it is willing to accept the diversity of mankind even while asking about the best regime.

That political life is a problematic whole, a tension wrought with other tensions, is reflected in Strauss’ statement: “I’m aware of the fact that the wholeness of a part does not preclude a plural: there is barely a moment in my waking life when I do not think of donkeys, dogs, and mules.” As individuals, we are whole parts. We are plural in being singular. That brings us to donkeys, dogs, and mules. Donkeys, with their large ears, hear the initial call. Dogs are the spirited friends of the philosopher. So far, an order. Mules – a hybrid that cannot reproduce itself – do a lot of work with exceptional strength. It sounds strange to call a philosopher a mule, but that is where Benardete leaves us. The singularity of the philosopher is quite an achievement, especially considering he has discovered our own individuality.

All of politics is an attempt to manipulate me. Why should I study it?

Posted on by under politics

Obviously, I cannot convince all of you that political science is worthwhile. Some of you will think that no matter what I say, I’m out to indoctrinate you. And I can’t lie, I do have an agenda. So if people having agendas bothers you, do yourself and the rest of the world a favor and never read anything, watch anything, or talk to anyone. After all, the mindless accusation that everyone is out to manipulate you assumes you are some paragon of innocence who deserves to be treated like an extra special flower by everyone else. It accuses before ever asking whether the accuser has done anything to manipulate others.

Ok. Not a lot of you have left. Great. I think you see that the problem posed is pretty specific. Politics does not pretend; it is openly about power and control. And you’ve got parents and relatives and friends and random people shouting at you about it, telling you that if you don’t think this specific way the world will end. So you react by moving away from politics, seeing your ideals realized another way culturally. Maybe through religion, punk rock, service, sports, etc. To be honest, it’s a weird situation America is in. The polls don’t really adequately describe the lack of interest in civics; they just show we hate Congress. Every time Glenn Beck gets up there and starts yelling about the Founders, I know another student who might have been interested in reading the Federalist decides it isn’t worth it. A high school teacher of mine asked our class one day if we had any interest in being President. 2 or 3 hands shot up. He remarked in his day, in the 70′s (not exactly a time of conservative nostalgia), every hand in the room would have gone up. Not because everyone wanted to be President, but because it was considered an honor worth having and striving for. I’ll bet that anecdote tells more about the current state of U.S. politics than anything else.

So let’s go back a little bit. At some point, Americans more or less believed they had a real hand in their own governance. They didn’t just go through the motions or resign themselves to fear of the other party. To think being President is a good thing shows some belief in the effective power of politics. And it is true, for all the evils that are ascribed to politics, there are many goods that have emerged from it. I don’t think you can say politics alone created racism, but it was a politician who, in proclaiming Emancipation, made it clear that a reunified America would never again tolerate slavery. We just celebrated the life of Nelson Mandela, who promised no retribution on the part of his party after enduring years of second class citizenship and made good on that promise. South Africa isn’t perfect by a long shot – it needs much more competitive elections – but it is primarily white supremacists who falsely insist there is “white genocide” in South Africa. People like Churchill, Jefferson, and Gandhi are remarkable precisely because of their political greatness.

Something about politics, then, can’t just be manipulation. Not if great leaders sacrifice, not if people invest hope and trust in them and receive something – freedom, justice, a better life – for it. Something about the very concept of politics is transformative. And whatever that something is, we’re blind to it.

To make a long story short, we’re blind to it because contemporary approaches to politics are successful. They’re successful because they’re reductive. My prime example: the American Constitution. It’s a pretty successful set of laws, it seems – America’s not exactly weak. So why didn’t people, say, 2000 years ago come up with the idea of a President, a Congress, a Judiciary? Were they too busy riding dinosaurs to work?

The truth is that civilization, if not technology, was relatively advanced in the ancient world. For Aristotle, the city aims “at the authoritative good of all.” This, in the very opening of his Politics, cannot be overthought. First of all, we emphasize individual liberty, typically implying that it is our individual right to not give a damn about others. Here’s Aristotle saying that if you want what is best in life for yourself, it is going to probably involve something social. Your happiness is at stake. “Authoritative” also speaks to what must be agreed to be good: virtues speak louder than vices.

Now the Aristotlean approach is not dogma, despite linking politics with happiness and virtue. Aristotle is a philosopher outlining an inquiry; the Aristotlean polis never existed. The best regime had to be laid out, as only in the best regime can the good citizen be squared with the good man. All of us recognize that there is a distinction between our obligations as a citizen and who we are as simply human. That distinction existed for Aristotle, too, only with the caveat that our political and personal obligations had to reconcile somehow.

The distinction exists for us a more severe way; the political feels almost unnecessary to us. The arrival of Christianity did not do away with pagan thinking about virtue entirely. But it took happiness and set it in the next life, casting doubt on all attempts to rule properly in this life. God is the only judge, the Church His bride. True Christians are citizens of the kingdom of God; true Christians are in the image and likeness of their Maker. The consequence: in the Middle Ages, politics was practically a topic of no importance, though many words were spent on law and virtue. The height of this reasoning is the idea of natural law: the moral law is known through reason. What need is there for deliberative bodies or wise rulers? What need to enforce the law?

When serious thinking about politics reemerged, it did so against both medieval and classical concepts of politics. The medieval concepts had to be overthrown sharply: they were license for the abuses of the Church, warfare between Christian sects, and terrible institutional planning. But pagan thought, since it had been synthesized with the Church, had to go too. Pagan thought did not just limit thinking about politics; inasmuch “Aristotlean physics” is a phrase with currency, it was necessary to attack to have science. The thinking that underlies American Constitutionalism embraces Enlightenment, making all of humanity smarter in ways immediately useful to them. This means an emphasis on scientific progress, which is not strictly the same thing as aiming for happiness or virtue. Education was redefined to be more about utility than character.

In fact, happiness – except in the phrase “pursuit of happiness” – drops out as a necessary end for the citizen. What matters is not so much if we are happy, but we are stable and secure. Machiavelli declared that a Prince is better feared than loved. While he does not mean this to say that we should embrace tyrants that make us all scared, he does mean that our fulfillment in the government we create is not to be had. Government is a necessary evil, devoid of virtue. In Hobbes, who witnessed the religious zeal that drove England into civil war, the primary reason we create government is self-preservation. We cannot trust a “state of nature” where anyone or groups of people could attack anyone. Our individual safety is why we contract to set up a sovereign. It is a far lower concern than happiness or virtue, or conformity with the rational order of God’s Creation. It is a concern centered on fear.

Locke, writing shortly after Hobbes, makes this sort of reasoning palatable to a broader audience. Locke was preached from pulpits in Revolutionary America. Central to Locke is that government respects “life, liberty, and property” – the last famously replaced in the Declaration by “pursuit of happiness.” A government that does not respect these things is violating the rights of man and should be rebelled against.

One can see how more than the right to be safe emerges from property rights. Property really is the key to the Constitution, as well as seeing how much political thinking over the years changed. Neither ancient nor medieval thinking cared much for acquiring property. A virtuous citizenry, for the pagans, would be self-sufficient and diligent in their work. For the medievals, fasting was an obligation. But now, acquisition becomes the heart of things. This is partly because of the need to have useful science and technology, partly also because commerce and trade are less destructive than religious warfare. The big reason, though, comes up in Machiavelli. If a ruler under false pretenses executes one man’s father, that grudge may cause one man – the son – to take up arms. He might get support. He might also decide that his dad was a troublemaker and let it go. But if that ruler takes the father’s property away, the whole neighborhood, anyone with property, is alerted and angry.

Property is a material alarm system which warns everyone if the government is getting tyrannical. For Madison, in Federalist 10, the products of liberty are not just a factional conflict that the sheer size of the United States will never allow to be problem (too many factions, therefore never a majority faction). Our liberty also creates a diversity of properties which are important to us in different ways. This is not Madison being glib; this is the logical consequence of trying to not directly address happiness or virtue. Security, stability, and a view of freedom as what government should not do characterize the American regime. Property rights are integral to all of that. But how exactly does this unite us as a people? Give us moral purpose? It is much easier to say under an ancient view of politics that government is the possibility of collective moral purpose. Lest you think we do not need any such idea – that we can fight for freedom alone – remember that this country tore itself apart less than a hundred years after it was founded over whether slavery was wrong or not.

I don’t think we’re successful in spite of ourselves. For years, we’ve had people willing to look into difficult questions and accept hard answers. To me, the real problem with our deemphasis on studying things like politics or history or literature or philosophy is that, at best, we want to conduct studies to get easy answers. Oh sure, the studies are hard work, the methodology is difficult to defend, the implementation is never quite perfect, and the results do affirm what we’re working with as fundamental concepts. But let’s get real: we want easy answers. We want to know 60% of people will vote one way or another if we tell them something. That reasoning would not have been important 2000 years ago, and is fatal to a republic where our purposes are open. The biggest sacrifices our leaders make involve telling us things we don’t want to hear in order to make sure we have a country 20 years later. At least, those are the sacrifices they made.

On Conservatism, 1/6/14

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1. Nowadays, all I want to do is write.

Not read, not think, not analyze, but express myself as if I have a single, immutable truth. I made my New Year’s resolution to be less angry and more confident.

But I’m not sure I should give up my anger. Anger is the sign one feels wronged, and I’d be lying if I said I weren’t wronged. Or, to be more accurate: that we weren’t wronged.

2. The realities of class and race play out right in front of my eyes every day. At numerous times, I’ve watched whites get second, third, fourth, fifth chances that minorities will never see. I know they’ll never see them because I saw what happened with other races in the exact same situation. People with no support thrown out at the slightest misstep, as if they had support. And I’ve watched people with money pride themselves on their work – as well they should – but as if the job itself could be had by anyone with a little drive or savvy. As if no one else was combing job listings or begging friends for contacts or trying to self-improve with limited time and resources.

What I’ve realized is that all the inequality, all the anger, turns into a strange political phenomenon. It translates messily into class warfare. There’s always a “them” taking from “us,” but the “them” is confused. It’s almost always a straw man, a hypothetical. Maybe it is corporate overlords or government elites or people of other races or religions. What matters is “our” moral purity: we’re the ones who don’t take. We’re the ones who earn.

Except we do take, all of us. One of the things that has me burning is the exploitation of Christianity to dodge the inconvenient fact we’re all sinners. This happens consistently with extreme prejudice by people who in many cases don’t know the difference between the Trinity and One Direction. What they “know” is what they feel, and they haven’t really paid much attention to knowing or feeling. They want to hear there are rules that if obeyed get them into heaven. They do not care at all if those rules bear a striking resemblance to nostalgia more than morality, if they are using a romanticized portrait of their own past to guide them at best. (The biggest problem with me is that I assume people are attentive.)

I’m lucky in a way. My parents’ faults – God bless them – are very evident. That I’m recognized as having next to no prudence helps me remember that in terms of forming a serious moral judgment, I’m on my own. I had better take everything I have – as much of what’s considered human and divine wisdom as possible – and evaluate seriously. I had better do my best to judge and accept judgment, not avoid it.

3. My more liberal friends who want to reach out to everyone aren’t realizing that snakes are everywhere. Conservatives exaggerate their numbers and point at the wrong people, but the idea that some people will take everything if given a chance is correct. Only: every single snake I know nowadays is a self-proclaimed conservative. Right now I’m dealing with some of the most vicious ones, ones who continually take, never giving back, always asking for more. To even listen to them is to walk into a trap. They think their survival is at stake (it isn’t); they see themselves as different (they aren’t); they could care less how you feel or whether you’re being stolen from because you have (you don’t) and they need to survive anyway (as if trust wasn’t worth having). To listen to them is to implicitly justify the fact that they plan on taking from you. You won’t utter a peep as you’re tired of talking to them.

One major reason why I consider myself politically conservative is that I try to stay away from the illusion that people can be better than killing each other over $5 or a place in line at Pizza Hut. That sort of tragedy will always happen. But what’s happening now is that the worst stereotypes about a culture of dependency are manifest. People have been told they’re frauds, cheats, liars, or simply not worthy before even having the chance to do or get anything. Or they think they deserve everything because by their standard, they earn.

What they’ve lost is any sense of shame. Without shame, you can’t have morality. People have to want to stand for something at some point. If they don’t understand why that’s important, they’ll do anything to anyone else. A friend watched a person take several hundred dollars from another who was making less money than he was. And this isn’t the only thing I’ve seen or heard in the last couple of months. There were the libertarians who failed to distinguish between freedom and addiction; the roommate who muscled his way into another apartment and kicked out another who had graciously taken in him when homeless. There are bad people out there, and words alone will not fight them.

4. We are beyond shame. We’ll tweet hate at the President, Republican or Democrat. We’ll say anything to justify ourselves and at times allow ourselves to be purposely consumed by hysteria. We know if we get hysterical or neurotic we can get what we want. The only question left is why we haven’t eaten each other.

But that’s only a matter of time. In the richest country ever in the history of the planet, food banks have shortages. We have hunger on an increasingly epidemic scale. Get out and work, growls the gentleman whose entire income comes from the federal government. I’m working says the leech taking advantage of everyone else – milking every advantage he has – while using the disguise of work.

To have shame is to have a rough equality. I do not expect that we will ever meet the standard of Plato’s Laws, where the richest citizen only has 7 times what the poorest has. But maybe we should look at the Arab world, where a great tumult broke out. Islam offers many that sense of equality, that sense “we’re in this together,” while elites stay secular and cynical, often exacerbating social divisions to the point of violence. But the shame before the law (sharia) has not set in; rather, the law is used to bully others or used in reverse to ostracize its true adherents. With people far more passionate about the possibility of democracy than in our own country – with people who in many cases overcame greater odds to lead and work for others – they might fail. It isn’t religion that’s the problem (the hardline Islamists kill more Muslims than anyone else), or even the awful legacy of U.S. Cold War policy, where merely proclaiming yourself “anti-communist” got you weapons and dollars. The problem is that the spirit of the law is what we must work toward. The law only matters because of unity. Again, look at – maybe to – the Arab world. We are far more comfortable, far from grudges that go back centuries, but we’re at each others’ throats over nothing. To have shame is to know that you are no better than the people you think must serve you, the ones you claim to hate.

On Aliens

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VOCAL RECORDING 132-ALPHA. PRISONER/SPECIMEN X27B. STARDATE 67824.21

The chrome of spaceship Xpthis 3 gleamed as it fired death rays into every major American city. Screams came from every direction and were played on the ship’s loudspeaker. I scrubbed the floor, fearing for my life – I was an early capture. Up to that point, I didn’t think the aliens had a hierarchy. They presented themselves as a collective will. But then I saw things that marked jealousy, fear, resentment. Aliens with what seemed more menial tasks laughed harder at our agony. For Kothos Prime, though, this was another day’s work. I began to think those numbers he worked with were not calculations about jumping to lightspeed, but rather his hedge fund.

Before I was brutally probed by our alien conquerors, I worked for an ice cream shop. I mainly got the job because my girlfriend told me she’d kick me out of our place if I didn’t get off my ass and work. She wasn’t worried about my not paying bills, though that happened from time to time. A rich uncle of mine died and left me a bunch of money. I was given that money for college, but that condition was only told to me in confidence.

As a wise man once said, “I do what I want.”

[sounds of laser fire, running, hatch being opened. Recording ends for a short time.]

Where was I? Oh yeah, school. Part of me thinks that my uncle wouldn’t have cared that I blew my brains out with weed freshman year. First off, why the fuck is high school everything? The last thing I wanted to see was every bullshit clique replicate itself like mold, and that’s exactly what I saw right away. The preppy ones who were dressed just a little sharper, kept up a little better in class. You knew they were there to get the paper and go right back to Daddy’s firm. Then there were the ones trying to be smart – god they were annoying. They were naive enough to think they’d actually get real opportunities, knowledgeable enough to plunge into enough nonsense to deny the reality. There were jocks, alcoholics, stoners, drama queens and a bunch of others, but I stopped paying attention quickly. My uncle gave me money to make something of myself. When I started seeing the groups most likely to rule the world, I just wanted to vomit.

I’ll tell you a secret. Smoking was the best. fucking. thing. ever. OK, that’s not a secret, but it’s like this. OK. You listening? Good. I know, I’m not talking to you all sharp and stuff anymore, but that’s because I’ve found some kickass alien weed in this lab and I am a lot more chill. I do not feel the pressure of telling you everything.

I got into smoking because I liked blowing the smoke. It sounds so stupid, but there you are, and you can just cloud your vision for just a second – everyone can – and you can see the details and the changes in the smoke itself. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the high is awesome. But what’s really addictive is being yourself, without pressure from all around. You know what I mean? I gotta change locations again, I hear a guard coming.

[recording resumes a short time later]

Okay. I forget where I left off. My point was that I never felt I had real opportunities, just money and drugs. My girlfriend works a lot harder than me, but she’ll never admit that she’s not where she imagined she’d be. Straight A’s and an internship and law school: she’s night manager at Walmart. Our money goes toward her debt.

I’ve worked a number of jobs. I think the retail ones best sum up everything I hate. I’m scared to lose hours, scared to not sell enough, scared that the money I make will barely cover expenses. There’s never any time to think positive things when not busy. I quit my last job at Abercrombie after a good manager who made sure we were treated well and things ran efficiently was reassigned. His labor was too valuable to the company; the store was an afterthought. After him, things went downhill fast. I am really liking the ice cream job, though. I get to bring unsold food home.

I encountered the aliens when walking back from work. My girlfriend had texted me some stuff about how much I suck. I’ve gotten used to the anger, but it distracted me. I didn’t realize I was walking into an area that was more fog than sidewalk.

I didn’t realize it wasn’t foggy out.

The aliens definitely were interested in my physical being and my cell phone. It’s really strange – they didn’t ask any questions about governance or history, nothing about society or culture. They did ask questions about diet and exercise, endurance, how I felt in certain climates. They were interested in emotional responses for sure. It wasn’t hard to see that their psychology is very linear: if an object is put in front of me, that must mean a specific thought or feeling. Honestly, after working retail, it’s hard to see a difference in my treatment.

Hup, time to move.

[recording resumes a long while later]

Something’s up. I’m watching the shuttles with what seem to be raiding parties come back to the mothership, and the aliens are always fighting. There was an argument over what was a stolen coffeemaker.

It’s been weeks. I haven’t thought about my girlfriend or my family at all. My time is spent trying to figure out what I’m seeing. What possesses people to take a bunch of ships and soldiers and go some random direction, raiding what they first see? I mean, who does that?

Okay, fine. Laugh. Yeah, we did a lot of that. This is a bit weirder: there’s no pretense of exploration. I don’t even know that they know what raiding is, either. The ships come back with objects as varied as feathered boas and metal from the Sky Needle. It’s like they’re just doing stuff to look like explorers or an army. I haven’t seen any serious attempt at occupation; their transport ships have held steady.

I’m gonna try to steal away on this shuttle. I haven’t thought about the girlfriend or the family because I’ve been focusing on trying to get to them.

[recording, weeks later]

I guarded this device like my life depended on it. I didn’t want it lost or stolen, I didn’t want anyone thinking I was an alien spy. I haven’t recorded because I got back to my girlfriend and family, and they’re gone now. They had a series of devastating mutinies. It turns out the officers were competing amongst themselves in a sport of sorts, a “who can do the most damage and capture the most stuff” competition. Come to think of it, the marks that they were so ridiculously feudal were always there, most present in the things that initially struck me as democratic. What undid them, it seems, was the arbitrary scoring the commanders engaged in. Nothing was ever good enough. If one commander destroyed a whole city by using a ray to create an environmental effect like an EMP, then another stole every fence from a suburb using only genetically modified ninja cats. The men, apparently, saw this initially as unique and worth having pride in. Eventually, they started running out of things to do – yes, even by these pitifully low standards – and the commanders turned on each other, and the men turned on the commanders.

I don’t know how exactly this thing works. It records, but there’s a little sign that might mean I’m on air. We have a chocolate mocha almond flavor at the shop today. It’s a slow day and I could really use the tips. Thanks in advance if you show, especially if you have my coffeemaker.

Introducing Political Philosophy: Some Straussian Resources

Posted on by under philosophy, politics

I just saw this page dedicated to Vermeer and wanted to become an art historian on the spot. There’s something marvelous about assembling and organizing information well – it really does empower students and make things easier for teachers and scholars.

Truth be told, I would love to link to resources on Vlastos or Rawls or Pocock or other schools of thought, but I don’t know them well enough. So I’m sticking to Straussian stuff, hoping someone will make a wiki on another site and we can get a collection of primary sources, secondary sources, blurbs and introductory articles going. My goal here is to get started, so I’m not aiming to be comprehensive. I’m actually aiming to be done in a half-hour.

Political Philosophy & Leo Strauss himself

Ancient Philosophy

Medieval

Modern

This isn’t a lot, I know. But I think there’s a virtue to the fact that resources by “names” are rare. A good wiki will start cataloging and reviewing papers and dissertations on topics by lesser known people. Lord knows we need that nowadays – the way academia is, you’d think there were 3 people who are allowed to read books and have opinions on them.

Xenophon, “On the Cavalry Commander”

Posted on by under philosophy, politics, xenophon

With thanks to Jonathan Culp

Xenophon, “On the Cavalry Commander”

On the surface, this is an exceedingly practical text. Xenophon tells us to make sure the horses in service don’t have bad legs, that the men can mount their horses, etc. There is a catch: in Memorabilia III.3, Socrates has an interlocutor who is an elected cavalry commander. Xenophon declares that he knows the presented conversation happened. This is not a claim he makes about many of his chapters. Socrates gives much of the exact same advice written in the first book of On the Cavalry Commander to the interlocutor, who comes off as extremely ignorant. As it stands, I’m developing an argument that Socrates’ practical advice in III.3 is actually about nobility and the soul. I suspect there is less truly about horses in both writings and a lot more about philosophy and human nature, some kind of direct hint about how Socrates educated Xenophon directly.

However, there is an enormous difference between Xenophon in On the Cavalry Commander and Socrates in Memorabilia III.3 that is revealed by the opening. Socrates never mentions gods or piety in giving the commander advice. He focuses on provision, training, motivation and obedience for horses and men alike. But Xenophon opens his treatise such:

The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage (Cavalry Commander 1.1).

Xenophon is not shy about repeatedly mentioning the service the commander owes to the gods. Is Xenophon more pious than Socrates? Hardly – the morality of this passage is extremely questionable. In return for giving the gods control over your thoughts, you get affection, glory and advantage. This is an attempt to bribe the gods. The “thoughts, words and deeds” that matter the most bring success, not justice or living within one’s means (contrast with: Mem. I.1.19). It is worth noting that Xenophon talks about the gods so much in his little treatise that he apologizes for it later (Cav. 9.8).

The full significance of piety in the treatise requires one to see competing claims about divinity. Xenophon is abundantly clear about the cavalry commander’s perspective. The other opinion comes about a roundabout way, as the figure of Socrates is hinted at. Xenophon’s practical advice is never just that. To take perhaps the most important example: it is sensible advice that one who wants a horse’s feet to be stronger will have it stand on large stones outside of the stable (they didn’t have horseshoes), making that horse as a matter of habit get used to the hardness (I.16). Xenophon gives a hint that this advice is central to the plan of his work, as he tells the reader that if he tries this, he will “believe in the rest of my rules.”

This passage reminds of Socrates’ hardened bare feet, one aspect of his disdain for wealth and his own continence (cf. Mem I.2.5). It only reminds, as we can only speculate. Much later in the treatise, Xenophon discusses how a thoroughly superior cavalry unit would come about, one that would make one’s opponents look like amateurs. The cavalry that will almost literally fly in difficult situations and over rough terrain – Xenophon says they will be like “birds to beasts,” the “sound from the lame” – that cavalry is trained and has hardened feet (Cav. 8.2-3). He goes further, saying that equestrian exercises are no work at all, for they are the activities where man comes closest to flight (8.6). If one is still not convinced of the value of cavalry, there is this: through war, states get happiness from the gods; no other competition among men is like it (8.7).

Our speculation is beginning to see the outline of a pattern. Men compete not just to be better than other men. They are trying to make claims over other men, trying to show that what other men could not do they can do. In other words: man is the species that is emphatically not content with being man. (One can argue that the text most Greeks know is Homer. A figure like Achilles cannot simply be ignored when reading Plato and Xenophon.) Xenophon is quietly pushing the idea that a superior warrior is near godlike while overtly pushing a more conventional piety. Not to make a bad pun, but to stay grounded, we have to try not to think about a lot of training making someone look like they can fly. We’re going to have to wonder why someone with rather tough soles would choose to stay in the city. The answer, I think, lies in an allusion near the end of the treatise. The gods, who know all things, give warnings through a variety of means; a commander must do his best to take them seriously (9.9). Socrates had the same warnings (Mem I.1.3). To a degree, to want the power of a god is to deny oneself direct access to divine knowledge. Why would someone truly godlike compete?

Some Scattered Thoughts on Syria and “Realism”

Posted on by under politics

Everything below could be wrong. I’m just musing hawkishly.

As you all know, the loss of life in the Syrian civil war is at least 93,000. The crisis started March 2011 – a little over 2 years. By comparison: the AP counts 110,600 violent deaths in Iraq from 2003-2009.

Dan Drezner thinks U.S. policy in Syria is probably to let Iran and Hezbollah waste assets in a protracted engagement. He considers this a form of “realism” in foreign policy; he cites one Dan Trombly about the “strategic opportunity” this is:

Given that rapidly overthrowing Assad without major overt military action from a broad coalition of forces is a pipe dream anyway, the United States should consider contingency plans in which it works through, rather than against, the specter of protracted civil war. To be able to bleed Iran in Syria would, relative to the risks involved, be a far more significant strategic opportunity against Iranian power relative to the investment and risk than would be a major overt campaign to overthrow Assad outright. The more blood and treasure Iran loses in Syria – even if Assad stays in power longer – the weaker Iran will be.

Drezner is pretty forthright that we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here:

Now let’s be clear: to describe this as “morally questionable” would be an understatement. It’s a policy that makes me very uncomfortable… until one considers the alternatives. What it’s not, however, is a return to liberal hawkery.

That this has been U.S. policy toward Syria I have no doubt. Forgive me while I vomit. At times I think terms like “realism” or “liberalism” or whatever are covers for the fact that we do awful things to each other and have paper-thin justifications. I don’t even know that this is about justice or saving lives, though, because I’m wondering if the costs of inaction are higher than people realize.

First of all, I need to see clear proof that this disgusting strategy is actually hurting Iran and not strengthening its hand or our other enemies in the region. It seems to me Hezbollah and things like al-Nusra are stronger and more motivated and recruiting. It seems to me this destabilizes more than just our enemies: our allies are victims of everything turning into a Sunni/Shia battle. al-Qaeda and Iran are not just fighting each other in Syria. They’re dragging everyone and their mother into that battle. Hate doesn’t simply kill itself off. It spreads like the plague the more this continues. Are terrorist groups actually getting weaker? Please provide some proof of this.

Second: when you’re the hegemon, your interests are more than you realize and your powers are direct and indirect. I’ll start with the latter. One way in which we prevent future conflicts is simply by outspending the rest of the world combined in our military budget. Similarly, there’s a lot of indirect power exerted in things like this: if the President says there’s a “red line,” and then doesn’t act like that means much, how do our allies and enemies calculate? The incentive to threaten our interests in areas we cannot easily protect grows. Power depends on the perception of power, not just the harder calculations about interests and resources.

And power to some degree does depend on trust, and trust in the larger sense depends on whether we have a vision for a stable world. This is where “the national interest” comes squarely into focus. It is true that Syria is not essential to U.S. interests at the moment. But long term? If people start thinking “hey, the U.S. let 93,000 people die in Syria while the region went to pieces despite having interests in its neighbors Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Iraq,” doesn’t our ability to be a serious broker for peace become compromised? Look, it really helps to remember what “realism” in both its ancient and modern forms is contrasted with: piety, the idea that some quasi-religious bond can unite or moderate nations in good faith. (Interestingly, it does look like, re: classical realism, no less than Thucydides thinks Spartan reverence for the laws could extend to a moderation that would help Athens.) The idea behind realism is that by taking power more seriously than faith, one can get stability and peace.

The U.S. does not get the privilege of being a completely mercenary actor. It’s not a privilege we want. We benefit hugely by being a country other countries appeal to when they have problems.

To be clear: foreign policy seems to me to be a series of tactical considerations. Sometimes you can promote the national interest and your values. Sometimes you have to make do with worse outcomes or unstable allies. There is a lot of nasty stuff that goes on in the name of utility or stability. And I confess, I’m no expert on Syria.

My complaints mainly stem from this thought: our policymakers are paralyzed with fear that Iraq will happen again. Iraq is the worst thing ever, the most terrible thing in the history of terribleness. (btw, drones and wiretapping are awesome). Enough. If you want to talk seriously about policy, you have to learn the lesson, see the costs, and move on and try to apply what you’ve learned. Emphasis on “try.” Right now, we’re running one of the ugliest policies another country could run toward another – and will we promote wholesale butchery through arms sales? – and it isn’t clear whether this makes us or anyone else better. The only thing that’s clear is that it is one less thing we have to do. Except that it isn’t, because Assad has used chemical weapons. If this is “realism,” please inform me what fantasy is.

Also: my money is that we are going to end up intervening in a big way anyway. I need to see some serious thinking not just about interests and opportunities, but also obligations and long term goals for the US.

Notes on a Lecture of Susan D. Collins – “E Pluribus Unum: Citizens, Friends, and Free Thinkers in the Ancient City”

Posted on by under aristotle, philosophy, politics

These are my notes; feedback appreciated, I did what I could to be clear. You can watch the original lecture here. Susan Collins teaches at the University of Houston and is the co-author of a translation of Aristotle’s Ethics. If you’re interested, an interview with her.

Can ancient thought guide current political practice? There are several complications at the start of the inquiry. For example, illiberal aspects of the past: slavery was commonplace in Classical Greece and Rome. Further, our world is so, so different that it is hard to see how two thousand year old theories could be applicable. The use of an iphone can invalidate a restaurant review made 5 minutes earlier. Doesn’t politics require some sense of stability? A continual flux of information and opinion seems overwhelming for concepts made for a world where people would lose all hope in the midst of battle because of an eclipse.

So why not leave the ancient city behind? Well, it emphasizes aspects of political life we tend to neglect. Unity is one of those. Modern democracy nowadays tends to place greater emphasis on a libertine freedom centered around the individual. There are good reasons for this, of course, but older thought may prove useful for finding a way to unity and pride in that unity which involves respect for the rights of all. Aristotle talks about a city working together for an end, for the sake of the good. Our political life doesn’t really allow for reflection on what it means to live well. Rather, it seems to emphasize simply living.

The contrast brings us to the more specific concerns of the ancient city. Family looms large in the Republic, though it is treated somewhat ironically there. Laws are a more fundamental concern for ancient thought generally, as they point to the development of virtues which shape citizens a particular way. The city has a “wholeness and rootedness” that takes man’s sociability seriously; not all law points to mechanism or artifice, creating incentives or disincentives for behavior. However, an overemphasis on law or family can make conventionality in the guise of tradition seem like it only speaks to the higher aspects of humanity. It might become hard to guard against a certain nostalgia for generations past.

Still, there are more “realistic” dimensions of the ancient city, ones that remind of modern concerns such as security. The prime example: the ancient city takes conflict seriously. Conflict is not just one city going to war with different cities, but the problem of many seeking the good within the city itself. Various associations form within the city, i.e. families, where people seek the good for themselves and their allies. Aristotle speaks of an “equal exchange of evils” where various associations and communities composing the city continually demonstrate the harshness of civic life. Hierarchy, force exerted from the more authoritative part of the city, is not just a basic necessity but perhaps even integral to whatever freedom is enjoyed in everyday life.

These more realistic dimensions, when considered in the context of what seem to be idealistic notions, raise fundamental questions. What does it mean to live in common? To have a shared life? What could any of this have to do with force?

It helps to treat ancient political philosophy as somewhat practical, as continuous with problems raised in ancient history that Plato and Aristotle were very familiar with. Herodotus gives us story after story about different peoples with different customs. His “inquiry” – the word we translate as history – focuses on them as they are all about to be conquered by the Persians. It seems some notion of Greek freedom and prudence is opposed to this imperialism. Thucydides, however, starts from the problem of Greek empire. People are far less important in his account than the destruction of war and fatal acts.

Thus, we can see flux and conflict as an “intellectual frame” for the ancient city. For example, consider the first book of the Republic: religion, foreigners, sophists, tyranny and force are all brought up to open a book that will give us an ideal city of sorts. The dialogue Charmides has Socrates back from service at the siege at Potidea, dealing with half-baked notions of philosophy from Critias and Charmides, who are associates of his and wannabe tyrants. Aristotle tells us in the Politics that without law and justice, man becomes the worst of the animals. He must have virtue.

Now Aristotle gives us a distinctively political basis for virtue. He lays heavy emphasis on reciprocity, as evidenced by the discussion of “the equal exchange of evils” above and the famous “ruling and being ruled in turn” of the opening of the Politics. But he also talks about the need to exchange goods for community, the fullness and full implications of “a common way of life.”

This brings us to an “ancient realism,” where themes of flux and force and also community reside. One has to wonder about what true community could be in the face of so much conflict. The “architectonic power” of ancient community sees freedom as stemming from authority. The “closed” society, local and strictly moral as opposed to universal and tolerant, is where law shapes mores and gives a way of life. Law requires reverence and piety.

But the establishment of a pious authority obviously does not make anyone free on its own. Ancient realism wonders how the city encompasses community, family, friends; the question of nature, however, emerges as one moves back to the individual and asks about the ends of the city. A diversity of political communities are comprehended by law. In the city, more natural communities are united by law; friendship matters at least as much as having an armed camp. Aristotle at times speaks of philosophy in the same breath as gambling and exercise. It seems like as one gets a friendlier, better city united by law, philosophy is more susceptible to being attacked by it. Why does anyone need knowledge?

Philosophy doesn’t despair. The activity of philosophy is what enabled the more natural basis for the city to be brought forth. The freedom that is philosophy stays somewhat hidden, but is ever present. As long as people can see conflict and disagreement as natural and work with it politically, they can see the higher possibility philosophy represents – that something positive or meaningful about our nature might be understood.

The Impersonal University

Posted on by under academia, politics

For this discussion: Mike Rice, the administration and Rutgers faculty | Preserving class at Princeton

When I first started in political philosophy, I wondered about the French “liberty, equality, fraternity” versus the whole of American history. All of American history is the tension between liberty and equality, with we the people at various times emphasizing one to the detriment of the other and, in the end, both. Missing, in my experience, is any serious sloganeering on behalf of fraternity. We get plenty about factions fighting each other as the inevitable consequence of liberty from Madison, but not a lot about how we are bound together in a positive way as Americans. I always thought the key issue was this: fraternity is nice and definitely worth having – any political order worth a damn will foster it – but the nepotism and cronyism it can lead to can be a real problem for a republic, especially one that is taking in a diversity of peoples and interests.

In any case, I’ve linked to two pieces above which got me thinking about fraternity and the university. The latter is fairly straightforward. Ross Douthat argues that elite universities exist to preserve an elite class, that the diversity they say they’re striving for is a sham. He talks about the Ivies and others of this status being a social club for rich kids with powerful connections to meet other rich kids. Granted, this is all implicit in the term “meritocracy” – I am reading a bit into Douthat’s critique. It isn’t that our rich, powerful elites fail to work hard or eschew education. They do work hard and take their education seriously. This may make the advantages they have that much more powerful. It becomes that much harder to have class mobility.

I don’t know how much I care for Douthat’s column as a prescription for anything. (The general complaint is noted.) To me, the issue is whether everyone can live comfortably, be educated well, and “rule and rule in turn.” I’ve always been less ticked off at Harvard and Yale’s privileges and more concerned that other schools don’t treat their students well at all (i.e. there are plenty of elites at select fraternities and sororities in state schools, who have an entirely different experience at college than the guy sitting in the library reading all the Kant he can). A major reason I write is that those of us who are being educated owe it to everyone else to explain what we’re doing in school. Equality can come about through a lot of small, positive things. There’s no need for class warfare unless one has identified some awful, terrible corruption that shows no sign of going away.

The other article, though, points to an awful, terrible corruption being perpetrated on everyone in the United States of America. What I’ve been complaining about to friends regarding Mike Rice has mostly been this: how many people covered for this clown’s abuse and tolerated it for how long because of money? Of course, what goes on in college sports – whether we’re talking about coaches or administrators or boosters or whatever – is so mercenary that one would be hard pressed to use the term “fraternal” to describe any aspect of it. The primary reason for Mike Rice’s “rehab” was to secure getting into the Big Ten, which as we all know involves money with lots of tax breaks because we’re talking college here, and thus is far more important than curing cancer or teaching Shakespeare or the million and one other things a university is supposed to do.

Still, “so mercenary” is the key phrase from my rant. Both Princeton and Rutgers show how exploitative the university as a whole is. Either it is working to help perpetuate the Future Oligarchs of America (I believe that is a registered trademark) or it has a crass notion of school/local pride that it uses to generate advertising revenue (you will all not be surprised that ESPN is not very popular on campus). Either we claw our way to the top or emphasize mindlessness as the key to solidarity. There has to be something else worth aiming for here.

After all, it’s difficult to learn things and working together is a necessity. My Greek sucks and I do need help translating things in Xenophon. And hearing from people who know better on different topics than me is always useful. At the least, it’s a reminder that one always has to work for an education and that work never stops. It has to be continual and one does depend on what others have worked on carefully because we can’t fact check everything. We depend on each other to know. There is a basis for real fraternity in this Enlightenment country. One day, we may discover that.

Briefly Noted: Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism”

Posted on by under philosophy, politics

Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism” (in Interpretation Vol. 26 No. 3 Spring 1999)

1. At first, the value of Strauss’ lecture seems to be that of a historical document. It is delivered in 1941 shortly after the fall of France and before it is clear the U.S. will enter war. Strauss, a German Jew, asserts that virtually no one in Germany liked the Weimar Republic; it was considered merely an Anglo-French imposition. He wonders to what degree one can consider the German youth that embraced Nazism nihilistic.

This last question creates an historical and theoretical discussion. The German youth come close to nihilism; they have a nihilism of a sort. To say they have no moral purpose is to ignore the will to sacrifice inherent in their militarism. Where they are nihilistic – they are certainly at a point which can be termed evil – is in their rejection of Enlightenment. They do think reason the enemy, as Western democracy and communism both came from Enlightenment thought. Their arguments are almost exclusively in terms of history: i.e., if you say a “natural law” exists which means their desire for self-preservation has reasonable bounds, they might argue that “natural law” was followed and therefore comprehended by early modern notions of the “law of nature.” This kind of thinking makes the use of reason itself a historical development. For them, there is a peculiarly German way that is neither Western democracy or communism. Heidegger speaks of it in “Introduction to Metaphysics” when he talks about Germany being between the West and Russia. Spengler talks about a “Faustic” science, asserting that there can be nationalist science.

That German way involves some all-too-powerful notions that concern morality. So much for concern with morality: in a way that casual observers  of hypocrisy can’t at all see, a more rigorous thinker must confront its leading to the most evil acts. In Germany’s case, the following seems to have happened. Their militarism wasn’t simply aggression. Cities go to war to preserve a way of life, to preserve their identity and virtue. Morality depends on what is more “closed” than “open.” Complete universality and tolerance must of necessity render morality obsolete. Western democracy certainly has pretensions to that universality and tolerance. Perhaps worse in their mindset is communism. Not that class and inequality aren’t problems, but full equality is not a solution as much as the end of history. Think of the dumbest, crudest person one knows satisfying all his base desires and that alone being the goal of society. There is no way to reprimand him or call him to something higher.

I do think Strauss’ discussion in this lecture needs to be supplemented with his later essay, the Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Independent of its theoretical themes, i.e. whether Spinoza’s hope that a secular, enlightened Europe could be more peaceful and embrace Jews fully, the essay does an excellent job demonstrating how much hatred Germany had for the Jews over its history. It is hard to believe that any idea could have stopped that much hate. In “Daybreak,” Nietzsche hoped for the day all anti-Semites would be shot. For our purposes, the Preface helps further a convincing picture of pre-WWII Germany: a country with a lot of military power and aggression, humiliated, only able to “unite” on what it hates.

2. That’s the historical discussion, as far as I’m concerned. You probably think it is quite theoretical, but Strauss turns to what could have moderated or educated the young Germans who turned to Nazism. That’s where things get really, really interesting.

Strauss cites Churchill’s rhetoric, particularly the “Their Finest Hour” speech, as perhaps being able to save Germany from choosing Hitler. Trouble is, Churchill is British and this is well after the outbreak of war. The peculiar thing about Churchill’s speech is that it is delivered after the fall of France, after England was lucky to salvage its forces from the fighting there. In other words, Strauss is pointing to Churchill’s magnanimous, noble rhetoric as instructive as how one deals with defeat as a part of life. (For later: one of the amazing things about Churchill in this speech is how he levels with the UK about how many troops they have and how the fighting will go. Our politicians, by contrast, can’t even talk to us about the budget without fudging numbers. We are in dire need of statesmen.)

Strauss does not really dwell on the “noble.” Instead, he continues in the latter half of his lecture from a thread left hanging earlier. He had alluded to how the youth of Germany were only educated in history and progress and did not have more traditional, classical teachers who could work with the ambitious and potentially unscrupulous. But later, Strauss spends a lot of time talking about how while the Nazis may have a culture, they certainly do not have civilization. Civilization involves some respect for reason, not just an aesthetic pride. Not the fine arts, not creation or production, but the idea of discovery unites science and morals and puts them on a higher level. This is not to say there is a natural law. It is more to say that reason functions to work to the truly universal, emphasis on “work” and “truly.” There are trade-offs and the twin pillars of Western thought – Jerusalem and Athens – certainly collide and contradict each other, when not having some contradictory elements within themselves.

One might think Strauss’ moral rhetoric excellent, but wonder how it is theoretical. I actually think the basis for an investigation of nobility is being put forth. The trick is to see that Churchill’s rhetoric works for reasons a bit too close to the pride animating the Nazis. The real difference is that Churchill’s rhetoric has, as an end, grace and strength in defeat. Still, it is prone to some utterly inhuman perversions, such as the firebombing of Dresden or this crap that thankfully did not see the light of day during the war. I wonder about defeat – a limit on man, a lack of success – not merely as a moral guide but as the basis of anything theoretical. Socrates’ knowledge of ignorance was just that. Strauss ends his essay with a line from the Aeneid justifying imperium: “to spare the vanquished and crush the arrogant.” One might wonder about self-construction as a species, where mercy is extended by those aspiring to rule in what is hopefully a moment of self-recognition.