[lbo-talk] Re: Strauss, Bloom, and Rashomon

[andie nachgeborenen]

In
> this context it
> is useful to remember that Strauss was a Jewish
> refugee from the
> Nazis. One can understand hwo (why) he might have
> come to think such
> things...'' jks
> 
> But when you compare his reading of say Rousseau and
> Nietzsche with
> that of Hannah Arendt and Ernst Cassirer---who give
> essentially the
> modernist liberal view, the one I learned---how do
> you square their
> views with those of Strauss?

Why try? Different people have different responses to
a situation. There's no law that says that if you are
a German Jewish refugee from Hitler you will end up a
right wind advocate of esoteric philosophies. But you
can see how that might make sense. By this I mean: if
you think that Communsima nd NAzism are manifestations
of Nietzschean nihilism, and N's aristocratic division
of the world into "last men" (yucko) for whom morality
is necessary and potential overmen, for whom morality
is stifling, and you area lso interested in politics,
as Nietzsche was not,a nd you are smart enough to see
that there are contraditions in the classic political
writings of Hobbes, Machiavelli, etc., then you might
be inspired to make a career out of reading all these
writers through the prism of the story of Plato's
Nobel Lie. But just because it makes sense to see how
taht might happen, it doesn't follow that it's the
only route that makes sense for someone like that, a
German Jewish refugee from Hitler.


> 
> All three had roughly equivalent experiences and
> backgrounds as German
> jewish academics, and all left the collapsed Weimar
> Republic at about
> the same time. They all landed academic jobs here in
> the US. 
> 
> I am still in the process of reading Strauss, so
> maybe I'll find some
> overt implication to fabricating separate
> philosophies, one for the
> rulers and one for the ruled. So far I haven't. All
> I've seen so far
> are what I would call disturbed readings.
> 

. Of
> course I believe my own version of history,
> philosophy, and democratic
> states and am therefore completely closed to Strauss
> and Bloom's
> view. On the other hand, their views are such an
> anathema, that I
> can't help but be fascinated by their deformities.

It doesn't follow that just because you disagree with
them that you are therefore totally closed to them. I
can disagree with someone pretty sharplya nd still
understand what he says sympathetically,a nd learn
from it.

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