Rather, what the Straussians think is true and in need of a coverup is that the world is meaningless, God is dead, there are no objective values, everything is permited. But this, they fear, is too strong medicine for the hoi poloi, who must be told that religious faith and objective values are very important, otherwise we will all loot and rob and kill and rape and upset the social order. In this context it is useful to remember that Strauss was a Jewish refugee from the Nazis. One can understand hwo he might have come to think such things. Now, the appeal of this arcana to Americans is a different matter.
Btw, the Straussians are only a small corner of the elite right, most of whom have no particular philosophy beyond what you can read in the Wall street Journal editorial pages. Most right wingers, even very smart ones, have no interest whatsoever in deconstructing Plato's Laws or Xenophon's On Tyranny or Rousseau's Emile, for versions of the Straussian's pseudo-Nietzschean message. (Pseudo, because N believed that there were true values, they just hadn't been invented anew yet, and he hated and dispised politics of all sorts, right wing almost as much as left wing.) Theya re musch more interested in setting up their 20-something actress mistresses in a pied-a-terre in Manhattan, and makinga nother zillion dollars.
jks
--- Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> This is mostly a question to Justin, or whoever else
> who is
> interested. The implicit question is who is crazy?
>
> I am about half way through Allen Bloom's Closing of
> the American
> Mind, and have finished three essays and a book
> review by Leo
> Strauss. I am trying to figure out the elite
> rightwing. I realize this
> is not a stunning conclusion, but I think these
> people are completely
> crazy.
>
> Here is an excerpt from a film review of Rashomon by
> James
> Berardinelli that illustrates by analogy:
>
> ``...Many people watch Rashomon with the intent of
> piecing together a
> picture of what really occurred. However, the
> accounts are so
> divergent that such an approach seems doomed to
> futility. Rashomon
> isn't about determining a chronology of what
> happened in the
> woods. It's not about culpability or innocence.
> Instead, it focuses on
> something far more profound and thought-provoking:
> the inability of
> any one man to know the truth, no matter how clearly
> he thinks he sees
> things. Perspective distorts reality and makes the
> absolute truth
> unknowable.
>
> All of the narrators in Rashomon tell compelling and
> believable
> stories, but, for a variety of reasons, each of them
> must be deemed
> unreliable. It's impossible to determine to what
> degree their versions
> are fabrications, and how many discrepancies are the
> result of
> legitimate differences in points-of-view. It's said
> that four
> witnesses to an accident will all offer different
> accounts of the same
> event, but there are things in Rashomon (namely,
> that each of the
> three participants names himself or herself as the
> murderer) that
> cannot be explained away on this basis. And the
> impressions of the
> `impartial' observer further muddy the waters,
> because, despite his
> protestations that he doesn't lie, we trust his tale
> the least.
>
> In the end, we are left recognizing only one thing:
> that there is no
> such thing as an objective truth. It is a grail to
> be sought after,
> but which will never be found, only approximated.
> Kurosawa's most
> brilliant move in Rashomon is never to reveal what
> really happened. We
> are left to make our own deductions. Every time I
> watch the film, I
> come away with a slightly different opinion of what
> transpired in the
> woods. But not knowing remains a source of
> fascination, not one of
> frustration, and therein lies Kurosawa's greatest
> achievement...''
>
> When I was reading Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom's
> rendition of
> philosophy, history, and their analysis of current
> society I felt like
> I was in Rashomon, listening to a story with the
> same characters
> re-arranged in an un-recognizable plot. The Strauss
> and Bloom story
> ultimately bares no fidelity to my version.
>
> This impression goes against Shadia Drury's theory
> that Strauss and
> probably Bloom were creating noble lies. I suspect
> they were trying to
> see their world through the history of ideas, for
> much similar reasons
> that I do. But their own understandings of society
> and humanity were so
> vastly different than mine, that they literally
> couldn't read history
> the same way as I do. Hence the conclusion I am
> living in Rashomon.
>
> Chuck Grimes
>
>
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>
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