Posted on 10/25/2003 5:54:31 AM PDT by George Frm Br00klyn Park
Ron Smith's
"Something to Say"
Commentary
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Leo-Cons
Friday, October 24, 2003 Ron Smith's Something to Say
Have you noticed that one is not supposed to say “neocon” any more? It’s suddenly a dirty word because to use it as identification for a particular school of political thought is said to be “anti-Semitic,” apparently because so many prominent new conservatives are Jewish.
They’re proud of that privately, but since the Iraq adventure has not gone as smoothly as they told us it would, they’d rather not accept public responsibility for ginning up support for the invasion and occupation.
Besides, as followers of political philosopher Leo Strauss, many neocon intellectuals believe ordinary folks shouldn’t be told the truth about matters of importance such as the reasons for expending American blood and treasure on the Iraq War.
Irving Kristol (Bill’s Pappy), sometimes called the Godfather of neo-conservatism, once wrote:
“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”
Understanding what Strauss taught his students is key to understanding how “the use of deception and manipulation in current US policy flows directly from the doctrines [of Strauss]. His disciples include Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives who have driven much of the political agenda of the Bush administration.”
If you are at all interested in learning more about Strauss and his profound influence on the events of this time, read this interview with a Strauss scholar who has been denounced for shedding light on the late teacher’s cultists.
Ruling elites have always gulled the masses. It’s necessary to keep those who are subordinated from realizing the extent of their servitude. Once they learn what’s really going on, you see, the masses are transformed from merely being revolting to being in revolt.
What’s most interesting these days is how the fragmentation of the media, above all the access to information on the Internet, makes perpetrating Noble Lies more difficult than it has ever been. Secrets are hard to keep and public deception is easily exposed.
What truths are appropriate for you?
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THIS article at WBAL / Radio - AM 1090 Baltimore
“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.” ............Guys, Can you handle truth based on stone cold fact??? "Several truths" INDEED. Peace and love, George.........Ruling elites have always gulled the masses. It’s necessary to keep those who are subordinated from realizing the extent of their servitude...........What truths are appropriate for you?
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How often is this laughable fallacy going to be repeated? In Persecution and the Art of Writing Strauss presents a difficult, somewhat dubious and highly technical theory. He argues that Maimonides wrote Guide for the Perplexed in a kind of code that was carefully designed to skate under the radar of the powerful enforcers of religious dogma of that period but that might be intelligible to some scholars capable of interpreting Maimonides particular brand of semiotics. The theory (frankly I don't really buy it, but I am open to persuasion) is not about suppressing truth, but rather about propagating truth!
It is just astounding to watch the false meme that Straus believes the masses can't handle the truth make its way through the popular media. God forbid any of the bozos perpetuating the myth actually pick up a book by Strauss and find out what he really said.
I'm not going to unravel all of the aspects of where Drury lies about or misrepresents Strauss, and where she is correct about him today ... but there's no need for that just now.
The essential thing to note for the moment, is that the entire discussion of Strauss proceeds from Danny Postel's lies about the present. Postel repeats Andrew Gilligan's (BBC) discredited lies claiming that Tony Blair "sexed up" a report on Iraq's WMDs, as well as the American leftwing's lies (misrepresentations of a Wolfowitz interview in Vanity Fair, if I'm not mistaken) claiming that Bush lied about why we went to war in Iraq. Drury and Postel play an intellectual shell game, in which they project their lies onto Bush/Blair, and then project the "discredited" Bush/Blair onto Strauss, and go back and forth.
I just checked out pages 106 and 151 in Natural Right and History, and there's nothing sinister there. The first case is a rigorous analysis of terms like "natural" and "justice." The second discusses the necessity of compromising ideal principles of truth and justice in a ruler. Pretty innocuous, if you ask me. Now, if Strauss had called for philosophical perfection in a ruler, Drury would have called him a Platonic totalitarian. "Heads I win, tails you lose."
For me the importance of Natural Right and History, is in its discrediting of Max Weber's nihilism and in its elucidation of the totalitarian consequences of historism (Historismus, which encompasses Hegel and Dilthey, among others), which applies without caveat to multiculturalism, which -- in spite of its practitioners' historical illiteracy -- in essential respects repeats historism. (Historism may be called "historicism" by some American professors; since I don't hang out with American professors, I'm not sure.)
Some of what Drury condemns Strauss for, seems to be predicated on readers’ ignorance of the ancients. After all, IIRC, Aristotle conceived of a “liberal education” as fit for “gentlemen,” but saw it as inferior to what real philosophers would get.
As for Plato, I'm no expert on Strauss, but I know that the notion that Plato spoke through Thrasymachus is ludicrous. If Strauss said that, he was either nuts or wicked. But I doubt he did; Drury equivocates on the distinction between the “powerful” and the “superior.” For Plato, the superior were superior in terms of their knowledge, which for him automatically meant their virtue, since for him the two were identical. There is no possible basis in Plato's dialogues for identifying his views with Thrasymachus.
As for the notion that the wise sought merely to dally with pretty young boys, Drury sounds like she's never read the Symposium. Socrates merely feigns an interest in sex with young men, in order to spiritually seduce them to the truth. No sex is involved.
Drury's claim that Strauss and Schmitt were kindred spirits is nonsense. They respected each other intellectually, but one was a child of the Greeks, the other a son of Hobbes and the Counter-Enlightenment.
It is true that Strauss believed that society lived off myth, rather than truth, and that the truth had to be communicated within a tiny brotherhood of knowers, but his own writing was anything but opaque. (Strauss-bashers, many of whom have never read him, confound his description of the brotherhood (my term) with his own writing.)
That Strauss was no friend of democracy is meaningless. What academic is a friend of democracy? Hell, what rational person is a friend of democracy? The Constitution limits democracy at virtually every step. The reference to Allan Bloom, however, re Heidegger, sounds all wrong to me. I read Bloom 15 years ago, but was deeply disappointed that he considered Heidegger the most seminal thinker of the 20th century -- and the LATE Heidegger, at that! (I never took the lip-service Bloom paid to democracy seriously.) Even the early Heidegger of Being and Time was worthless, at best. He confused philosophy’s point of departure (the knowledge of death) with its end point. But the late Heidegger was certifiable! This is the man who took the inchoate fragments that Hoelderlin had scribbled inside the tower he was locked in, after losing his mind, and that I passed almost every day for five years, while studying in Tuebingen, and imputed poetic power to them. (I read the original Hoelderlin fragments, and Heidegger’s essay on them.)
One of the many differences between Heidegger and Strauss, is that Heidegger, who had an irrational, charismatic hold over his students (not unlike his Fuehrer’s hold over the German populace), was notorious for projecting his personal beliefs onto texts, while Strauss was known as a rigorous, scrupulous scholar. And while Heidegger embraced the pre-Socratics, deriding all Greeks (indeed, all philosophers!) who followed them, Strauss embraced Plato and Aristotle.
The following background statements on Strauss are really weird.
"Strauss’s post-doctoral work involved study of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and in 1930 he published his first book, on Spinoza’s critique of religion; his second, on the 12th century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, was published in 1935. After a research period in London, he published The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes in 1936.
"In 1937, he moved to Columbia University, and from 1938 to 1948 taught political science and philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. During this period he wrote On Tyranny (1948) and Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)."
First of all, if Strauss was awarded his doctorate in 1921, he would have immediately commenced with his Habilitationsschrift (postdoctoral dissertation, which in the German system was then and still is a requirement for a professorship). At that point, Heidegger was an unpublished, 32-year-old nobody; he wouldn’t publish Being and Time until 1927. Strauss couldn’t possibly have “studied” Heidegger. Husserl, who was thirty years older than Heidegger and widely published, was another story entirely. And since Husserl’s phenomenology and Cassirer’s study of symbolic forms had some vague intellectual kinship, the notion isn’t wholly out of left field. (In her autobiography, Marjorie Grene disputes the widespread belief that Husserl and Heidegger were student and teacher, as opposed to senior and junior colleague, respectively; this makes sense, because their philosophies don’t have a hell of a lot in common.)
But the weirdest thing of all, about the “background” are its omissions: Strauss didn’t spend a “research period in London,” HE FLED THE NAZIS. And he didn’t “move” to Columbia, he landed there, as a safe haven!
As for what Straussians believe among themselves, I can’t say. I’m not a mind-reader, and have not been invited to any of their covens. But this I know: If you are going to impute beliefs to a thinker, you’d sure as hell better be able to document it in his writings.
I'm no expert on Strauss either, but I have been working my way through his oeuvre for the past few months. I know what you mean about the "tiny brotherhood of knowers" Strauss believed communicated truth, but this old Aristotelian notion bears no resemblance to the "doctrine of official lies" Drury and others attempt to ascribe to Strauss. To enter the brotherhood one must only possess the intellectual capacity for membership. Drury may wish to pretend that such capacity is evenly distributed, but every first grader knows different, as do Strauss and Aristotle.
I can find no instance where Strauss claims Plato spoke through Thrasymachus, although he mentions Thasymachus negatively several times in Natural Right and History. Since Drury absurdly calls Strauss "Nietzschean," I suppose it's quite possible she got it wrong about his views on Plato too.
Again your post is fascinating and valuable. I couldn't agree more that "if you are going to impute beliefs to a thinker, you’d sure as hell better be able to document it in his writings." Clearly that's advice the current crop of Strauss' critics should take to heart.
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