Thread by @ZoharAtkins

Leo Strauss was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers of the 20th century and deserves a @threadapalooza. His thought is both controversial and poorly understood. He argued for the critical relevance of ancient ideas and great books.

https://twitter.com/ZoharAtkins/status/1348644167480696835

Like many greats, there's a lot in Strauss to highlight and a lot to de-emphasize, meaning that each person will have their own different version of him. The word "Straussian" gets thrown around a lot, but it's probably impossible to be a Straussian. 2

For me, Strauss is best appreciated as one of a handful of diverse thinkers (including Heidegger, Benjamin, Gadamer, Derrida, Freud) who understood that texts don't say what they seem to. They say both more and less than what meets the casual glance. 3

Strauss's official reason for this is that philosophers hide their true views lest they be cancelled. (Before cancel culture and twitter mobs, there was death by hanging at the king's decree). See Persecution and The Art of Writing. 4

Another reason they hide their views is less out of fear for themselves and more out of fear for society--if the masses implement the true reading it may have maladaptive consequences. Philosophical truth and political fitness are not always aligned (and often contradict). 5

But even if you disagree with Strauss about the deliberateness of the philosopher's concealment, you'll find his thought to be generally consonant with Freud and Marx and a host of others who posit that a text has an unconscious or collective will or subterranean voice. 6

Now Strauss disagrees with all of those approaches because they throw the author's intent entirely out the window, whereas Strauss believes there is an intent, it just takes detective work to find. He's retro in that intent matters but trendy in that he thinks its nonobvious. 7

Still, how do we know if the interpreter has truly uncovered a hidden meaning inherent in the original author's mind vs. produced a new insight via "elucidation" (Heidegger) "deconstruction" (Derrida) or "horizon-fusing" (Gadamer)? 7

Straussianism became a kind of cult in the same way that Heideggerianism and deconstructionism did because it came to become a method for reading, a school. Strauss would reject this because greatness is about thought (the end), not interpretive gymnastics (the means). 9

I'm not convinced by the Straussian method (or any other one) as a matter of objectivity, but I do find it brilliant as a heuristic: we can't verify or falsify the Straussian method, but that shouldn't be the criterion by which we judge it. 10

Here I betray a kind of relativism or anti-Straussian sentiment, in that I see Strauss as a fantastic commentator, but I don't think his readings are always correct. But the idea that texts ventriloquize or double-speak is important, powerful & generative. 11

Taken to an extreme, it leads to apologetics as you can always get things to say the opposite of what they seem to say and this kind of post-truthism is itself a problem for public discourse where intent no longer matters and I get to decide my own facts. 12

But in moderation it leads to the discovery of a human truth, which is that we often tell the truth but tell it slant, whether through outright deception or b/c of self-deception. On an aesthetic level, there are times when it's best not to take people at their word. 13

How we reconcile this with the legal and ethical ideal of attempting to know what someone intends and holding them responsible for it is a great challenge (and a topic for another mega thread). 14

Why should you read Strauss? Strauss would be the first to say you shouldn't read him until you've read the classics and the great works of the philosophical tradition. His stance as a modern is quasi-humble (like Arendt), paying tribute to a tradition that is at its end. 15

At the same time, Strauss manages to make you feel that ancient questions are alive and well because philosophical conundra are enduring. We need Strauss's voice to emphasize that Plato and Aristotle aren't just objects of curiosity, but voices that still worth engaging now. 16

One of Strauss's great foes is "historicism"--a foe he shares with Benjamin and, imo, Heidegger (though he imputes historicism to Heidegger). Historicism means that there is no absolute value or absolute point of view from which we can judge; all ideals are relative 17

Philosophy and philosophers trandscend historical time even though they live in time. Their questions are as transcendent as mathematics. In this way, Strauss is a kind of Platonist (ideas have a reality outside of us). 18

But working backwards, I'm not convinced Strauss refuted (or thought he refuted) historicism. He simply thought or seemed to think that if it were upheld, it would lead to Nazism. Ie relativism may be true or unfalsifiable, but it should be rejected for political reasons. 19

The rel. between philosophy and politics is one of the great themes in Strauss, and one that differentiates him from Heidegger who thought politics not as important as ontology. Strauss corresponded with Carl Schmitt, who argued for the supremacy of politics above all else. 20

Schmitt would have been into cancel culture all around and the politicization of everything seemingly neutral (like STEM). He wouldn't thought 2+2=4 was a form of colonialism but he'd be happy with the woke left saying so as much as the woke right denying global warming. 21

Schmitt thought the most fundamental thing is the line between friend and foe, and thus showing your allegiance to your tribe, your people. Truth imagined as a neutral space is a liberal fantasy. Schmitt was of the right but his ire was reserved for liberals not progressives. 22

Strauss believed this kind of relativism is what you get when you leave the ancient ideals behind, but he also understood that Schmitt's critique held water and pointed to the flimsiness of liberal societies. 23

Strauss's rejoinder to Schmitt is odd, yet Schmitt said it was the best critique he knew of (mind you Strauss was Jewish and Schmitt was a Nazi!). 24

Strauss says that being an agitator and wanting conflict rather than peace (as Schmitt advocates) is itself value neutral. Schmitt wants us to fight and die for our values but offers nothing more substantive than that. In other words, he's a liberal in spite of himself. 25

That Strauss corresponded with Schmitt as well as with Kojeve, a Marxist-Hegelian whose ideas helped shape the EU is a testament to his generosity of intellectual spirit--he welcomed great thought even when it led to political consequences he rejected, even feared. 26

If I have to summarize Strauss it's this: he thought the philosophical life was one of the best ways to live but was skeptical that it could improve society or fend off nihilism. 27

It's the best because intellectual virtue is self-evident, but it's only one of the best because political life is also important and can't be reconciled with philosophical life. 28

It's also not the best, but one of the best, because a religious life can be equally excellent even as it is philosophically unrigorous. In some ways Strauss, who grew up Orthodox Jewish in Germany, became nostalgic for Judaism post-WWII. 29

He wrote an essay called "Why we remain Jews" the gist of which is that antisemitism isn't going away and so one shouldn't try to assimilate. Shaul Maggid would probably call this a form of Judaeo-Pessimism (not unlike Afro-Pessimism) 30

That's hardly an inspiring reason to be Jewish, but his nostalgia wasn't just political; in his essay Jerusalem and Athens he wrote about the power of the Biblical tradition to offer answers to fundamental questions about human nature 31.

He believed that at its core the Bible is founded in Revelation, while the ancients ground themselves in Reason. 32

Of course, the two entwined over time, leading to odd syntheses and Frankensteins in the medieval period. Strauss thought Maimonides to be a compelling thinker, someone who managed to preserve the integrity of both Reason and Revelation without subsuming one into the other. 33

But generally, Strauss felt the two paradigms to be incompatible. Once religious fundamentalism goes down the rabbit hole of (modern) reason it's not long before it loses its origins and becomes a Trojan horse for assimilationist. 34

There's something (conveniently) dualistic about this view of Judaism and religion, as it allows Strauss to justify his own identity as an Orthodox Jew turned philosopher. Philosophy is his path but he doesn't begrudge traditional Jews for sticking to their tradition. 35

Heidegger also used the image of two mutually incompatible but equally dignified paths when he wrote about philosophers and poets. In a way, the poet in Heidegger plays the role that Jerusalem does in Strauss's Athens vs. Jerusalem paradigm 36

I gestured at this idea in last week's Dvar Torah which you can read here: etzhasadeh.substack.com/p/from-philoso… 37

So Strauss is a philosopher who is deeply humble about the limits of philosophy. He distinguishes philosophers from sectarians in that philosophers have questions where sectarians have answers. It's lonely to be a lover of wisdom rather than wise. 38

In his argument with Kojeve, he wrote that he didn't think philosophers would seek to rule or that rulers could become reformed through philosophy. The reason is tragically simple: opportunity cost 39

To be a great thinker requires focus, focus on eternal questions, focus that requires one to be apolitical or at least minimally political. 40

One could dig deeper into the psychological reasons for this, but I'll simply point to a piece of data I once heard from a prominent angel investor: once companies have more than 10 employees the productivity per employee goes way down. The reason: politics. 41

Employees spend more time trying to get ahead, get a salary, a title, a promotion, etc. than doing the work. 42

So Strauss knew about this too and thought pure philosophers had to be unambitious about worldly things to be ambitious about loving truth. He thought that worldly pleasures would corrupt philosophy. 43

Or rather, he presents the Platonic view (the body is a prison) as correct. His addition is that he thinks caring about politics is no different than caring about sports or sex or sleep--it's a diversion. 44

Again, he's not saying don't be political--he's saying you can't have your cake and eat it, too. 45

On the one hand, it's important that rulers not be grotesque tyrants; on the other hand, the philosopher isn't going to succeed at becoming a ruler and shouldn't try. The best s/he can hope for is to have the ruler's ear, and to serve as counselor. 46

But what will the philosopher ask the tyrant or ruler for? Not too much, lest the ruler become impatient or threatened. All the philosopher wants is the state's protection (don't kill us, and possibly give us funding). 47

This is all in his commentary on Xenophanes's Hiero trans. as On Tyranny. The philosopher makes a deal with the proverbial devil--in exchange for a public persona of apolitical neutrality the philosopher will occupy himself with questions that don't, at face, shake the boat. 48

You might roll your eyes at this but I'd venture to say that professors who parrot politically fashionable views in order to teach what they love make this same calculation. The tyrant needn't be the state--it can be campus culture. 49

I have to interrupt my thread to say that Strauss would not have liked Twitter and it would have confirmed his elitist aristocratic stance that philosophy is not for the masses. Schmitt would have liked it, but only insofar as it would lead to violence and not just trolling. 50

Strauss's philosopher is a lonely figure in his refusal of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist politics. 51

Yet Strauss wasn't just advocating for the room of one's own; he wasn't simply an individualist who wanted to be left alone. 52

So the question is how to change culture by way of education so that society doesn't become relativistic (the bad consequence of liberalism run amok) which in turn engenders reactionary fascism 53.

The study of great texts is supposed to do this—but how? It seems more accurate to say that the discovery of great ideas and texts should inspire an aversion to relativism. 54

This is pretty weak as an argument and not born out sociologically—universities are hotbeds of relativism (ie it’s privileged to read Shakespeare so we might as well watch the Wire) 55

But in my own experience Strauss is right—few things can compete with the direct encounter with great texts read greatly. @zenahitz makes a strong argument for non instrumental thinking in Lost in Thought. 56

But where, like Heidegger and Strauss at his esoteric, Hitz says that thinking contemplatively is an end in itself, many turn to Strauss to justify why we should scale liberal arts to save society 57

Ie greats books programs rely on the idea not just that humanities enrich character but that they make us into good citizens. George Steiner who studied under Strauss at Uchicago was skeptical 58

After all Nazism took place in Europe where people enjoyed great books. Nazi officers enjoyed Schubert and Goethe. (Remember the opening of the film the Pianist?) 59

Is a return to Plato really going to save us? Seems preposterous, or just as wild as Heidegger saying after WWII that “only a God can save us.” 60

In short, it's not clear why the social-cultural argument for the Great Books works or why Strauss would have believed it sincerely. The Straussian read of Strauss is that he didn't believe it but wanted us to. 61

The value of a Liberal arts education for all is a myth, a noble lie. Believing in it helps us avert nihilism. Here, it may be too late for us, the myth busted, but the argument not wrong: 62

The death of the humanities for a thousand reasons, including that of their own self combustion under the strain of historicism, correlates with--even if it doesn't cause--decadence and institutional decay. 63

In any case, Strauss would the idea that humanities are dead because of lack of funding or poor pedagogy or bad academic job prospects or whatever functionalist argument you want to make from either the left or the right. 64

He would say the humanities have failed because modernity has failed. They failed with the thought of Max Weber which was itself but an extension of the early moderns, like Bacon and Descartes. 65

Blaming Derrida or Critical Theory or wokeism or whatever you want to do as some cultural conservatives do (it's a minor cottage industry unto itself) is confusing the symptom with the cause. 66

So you're probably thinking Strauss is a reactionary old school curmudgeon. Why should I care? 67

Because his diagnosis is brilliant even if his solutions aren't clear or even agreeable (the same I would argue goes for Heidegger and Arendt)--brilliant critics, but not the easiest to implement, hence I'm here on Twitter taking a leap. 68

The diagnosis is that philosophy (and humanistic study) are devotional activities even if they involve grappling with unsettling questions. The point is not to eviscerate but to love. 69

Yet the college paper and even more so the grad school paper, and thus the academic book are guided by historicism which means by the rubric of "problematizing" and "contextualizing" of analyzing and keeping at a safe distance. 70

We all know the alternative--Sunday school authoritarianism; leader infallibility, cults where you can't voice your dissent, all manners of anti-rationalist quackery. 71

Being able to question and critique goes hand in hand with the liberal ideal of liberty, of finding leaders and authority figures to be suspicious until proven otherwise. 72

But there's a lot of downside to a culture of skepticism, not least a culture that is unable to commit, that esteems irony and being cool above all else. 73

The fear of committing doesn't lead to great optionality, but less--a commitment to be uncommitted, the tragedy of Hamlet. 74

So we need to be passionately committed to the humanities and this means that university education or great books education can resemble religious education in certain ways, even though the origins of the modern research institution was to destroy passion as naive. 75

When Strauss says "Jerusalem or Athens" one way to hear this is that indeed Athens is a kind of alternative to religion, that Socratic reason isn't a means of leaving commitment at the door but a path to the right commitments. 76

I don't think it always works, or scales, or escapes the problems that you find in religious education where the teacher becomes a kind of chanel for the divine and things get antidemocratic and weird. 77

But having spent a lot of time in university, I'm sure that the alternative, a sterile place where there is little inspiration and a lot of "showing one's work" is not great. 78

Humanities have to give up the dream, says Strauss, of being scientific for one primary reason: science can tell us what is, but not what ought to be. 79

But does philosophy have the authority to tell us what ought to be? Strauss thought that it did, on the basis of telling us what is excellent, which is itself determined by human nature--and yet philosophers disagree about the answers to these questions. 80

Still, Strauss would likely retort that there is enough agreement. Besides what matters is less the account of human nature given than that one has an account, that one cares. 81

So the abandonment of questions of human nature leads to totalitarianism by way of liberalism's relativism? Seems farfetched. Besides we can't go back to Plato, can we? And remember, Plato lived in a slave society & that's no good. Enlightenment, did some good, no? 82

While it may be too late for us to return to Plato as a society, we as individuals should try to reclaim the ancients, says Strauss. It may not save society but it's the best we can do. (the quietism reminds me of late Heidegger whose thought was for "the future ones"). 83

It sounds kinda crazy, doesn't it, but bear this in mind. One of Strauss's great rhetorical points is simply that we don't know better than our forebears. In some ways we know worse. Agree or not, it's worth pondering. 84

In this conservative streak, Strauss doesn't just join obvious conservative intellectuals like Chesterton and Burke; he's in line with Adorno and Arendt. A desire to undo the Enlightenment isn't simply a rightwing or leftwing view. It's a common 20th century sentiment. 85

Today the most popular intellectual who thinks we need more enlightenment is @sapinker. Now much depends on what we mean by enlightenment, but in mid 20th c. many greats thought enlightenment was responsible for German and Soviet totalitarianism (+ facile American culture). 86

Strauss didn't think we need to be more reasonable. He thought that classical philosophy is distinguished from modern reason in its respect for the need of myth. 87

I see this kind of argument advanced today by @nntaleb who might say that religion and myth are #Lindy. They're not dumb--we are dumb for not properly understanding them 88

Ie myths can have moral and political truths even if they lack philosophical truth. Pure philosophy, stripped of myth or else built on modern myth, won't end well. Strauss thinks the ancients knew this and were more humble as a result. 89

So Strauss is in the company of those who don't accept fundamentalist religion but also are not bullish on modern reason. I'm in that place myself. It's a surprisingly big tent. 90

in terms of Strauss's reception, some of the problems I flag break down into East Coast vs. West Coast Straussianism; philosophical humanism based in a secret or not so secret atheism vs a traditionalist Catholic aspiration to restore the study of natural law. 91

In any case, that's the beauty of Strauss and so many others--the dissatisfaction with modern reason makes for strange bedfellows. The alignment doesn't break along partisan lines. 92

So the great challenge is what's the alternative to modern reason that isn't simply a regression to authoritarian religion or to pre-enlightened society with its acceptance of slavery? How do we get to enjoy the modern ideal of liberty w/o it leading to relativism run amok? 93

Here the question is likely s than any answers I've seen. To be a philosopher is to appreciate hard questions, not necessarily have answers (it's tragic, for Strauss; it's comic and upbeat for Hegelians). 94

Even if you're not a pessimist about philosophy's capacity to make the world better you should read Strauss as he makes a strong case for a tragic view of life--that hard choices aren't going away and that a messianic future in which all is right and just is an illusion 95

Now, religion does think the messianic is coming, and that's fine--but it doesn't think it's guaranteed by reason; it thinks it's guaranteed by God, and that's the rub. 96

There's no shame in saying the arc of history bends towards justice from a place of Revelation, but things get dangerous when you think that Reason is gonna get you there. 97

Strauss is very serious about serious matters but it's also hard for me not to think that he's a kind of self-hating or self-critical existentialist, who believes himself incapable of fending off the criticisms he launches at others (such as Heidegger). 98

Philosophy is one of the best human pursuits and potentially incapable of saving humanity from self-destruction and horror. Religion which has its own set of political problems may be socially and culturally superior to philosophy even if it's not great for individuals. 99

To square the circle, Strauss must hope for a world in which liberty reigns as an ideal, but in which most don't accept it's full offering. The ancients knew that liberty was double-edged. Liberalism is good, but weak. It's not enough, but the best we have. 100

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