Thread by @DamonLinker

@DarrenJBeattie Interesting thread. Velkley’s Strauss isn’t quite mine, though it’s much closer to mine than most of the other Strausses out there. I also have immense respect for Heidegger as a philosopher, though I side with Strauss against him. I’d like to explain why. 1/22

@DarrenJBeattie I’d summarize Velkley’s position on Strauss as follows: The city is the natural starting point for philosophy because it reveals itself as a whole—a kind of cosmos, a moral order that makes sense of everything, and thus can satisfy eros. 2/22

@DarrenJBeattie Philosophers notice contradictions in accounts about the character of this whole that ultimately point to the reality that the city’s account is not a true whole, thus stymieing eros’ satisfaction. 3/22

@DarrenJBeattie In the end, the city is merely an (inadequate) effort to make sense of the *true* whole that lies beyond the city that encompasses all cities—the cosmos itself. 4/22

@DarrenJBeattie Hence the city gives an intimation of the *true* whole while failing to be one itself. Put differently: Taking the city’s (any city’s) account seriously exposes aporia and points (erotically) toward a larger (eternal) whole that would satisfy eros. 5/22

@DarrenJBeattie But, for Strauss, this philosophic whole ultimately reveals itself *also* to terminate in aporia—paradoxes, riddles, enigmas, which are ultimately reflections of the enigmatic character of Being itself. (Here LS and MH are much closer than most readers realize.) 6/22

@DarrenJBeattie This means that the eros that impels philosophy never receives full satisfaction. The fractured whole of the city mirrors the fractured whole of the cosmos in which all cities arise and pass away. 7/22

@DarrenJBeattie What does this have to do with a critique of Heidegger? My answer may be more me than Velkley, but I’m not sure. 8/22

@DarrenJBeattie First, I think, Heidegger doesn’t have a proper account of eros leading us to question moral, political, and religious experiences w/n the city. Philosophy from Plato on down might arise from an erotic longing for eternity. But not MH’s own “thinking.” 9/22

@DarrenJBeattie Heidegger’s own thought arises from rigorous reflection on the meaning of certain experiences of nothingness—in moods of anxiety, deep boredom, awe, etc.—and how they point toward the truth of Being as nullity and Dasein as the site for its revelation. 10/22

@DarrenJBeattie Paired with this is point 2: Heidegger’s account of the emergence of philosophical reflection from out of pre-philosophic experience has no moral content. It’s a purely formal structure of relationships. (SZ, 1, 3) 11/22

@DarrenJBeattie That has enormous consequences. Strauss’ view is that no city could ever satisfy us erotically. (The “best regime” exists only “in speech.”) 12/22

@DarrenJBeattie But because Heidegger leaps out of the city so easily, bypassing a dialectical examination of the city’s erotic promises and its failures to satisfy them, … 13/22

@DarrenJBeattie he runs the risk (and I think with the foolish Nazi enthusiasm, succumbs to the risk) of believing an actually existing city might be “authentic.” 14/22

@DarrenJBeattie This isn’t a mistake Strauss would make, because he understands that the city as such cannot satisfy the erotic longings for the soul. But MH allowed himself to think that the “city” of Nazi Germany could “stand in the storm” of Being. 15/22

@DarrenJBeattie That’s a delusion—a delusion born of MH’s unexamined hopes to find an authentic home in the world. The fact that his ideal home is a mountain hut struggling to stand up against the storm instead of Periclean Athens isn’t that significant. 16/22

@DarrenJBeattie I think one way to understand the later, post-Nazi Heidegger is to see that he learned some imp lessons along these lines. The fatalism of his late position is one valid response to realizing that no city could do what he hoped the Nazi city could do. 17/22

@DarrenJBeattie But I still question, with LS, whether even the late MH fully understood himself—above all, the unexamined moral longings that led him to foolishly place his hopes in Hitler in the first place. 18/22

@DarrenJBeattie Those are hopes perhaps wrapped up as much with thumos as eros. If this is right, and MH failed to understand himself, because he leaped too quickly and easily out of the city to a fixation on Being, … 19/22

@DarrenJBeattie Then this would imply that his account of Being is also defective in some ways—since an adequate account of how Being has revealed itself in the world presumes a full understanding of *what* has been revealed. 20/22

@DarrenJBeattie This implies a need to conduct philosophy as Plato did, by raising the “what is …?” questions and dialectically examining on various, conflicting accounts of what is good and what is just, and only ascending to Being once those have been thought through. 21/22

@DarrenJBeattie Anyway, that’s more than enough for now. 22/22