[lbo-talk] Re: Strauss, turd in punch bowl

Brad Mayer Bradley.Mayer at Sun.COM
Mon Oct 27 20:42:19 PST 2003


The Strauss-Arendt connection is the one with the most practical interest: Strauss as degenerate Arendtism.

The ideological sequence Arendt-Strauss precisely describes the arc of postwar U.S. imperialism. Arendt the dominant sensibility then, Strauss dominant now.

"The quickest and easiest antidote to this noxious offal is to pick up Hannah Arendt in place of Strauss, and carry on the same historical and classical selected readings."

"Strauss mirrored Arendt, as if following in her footsteps like some evil little troll who turned everything she wrote inside out. In any event, the very convenient thing about using Arendt is you can easily back her up with historical scholarship, political histories, political philosophy, and most modern (post-WWII) social science research. She doesn't need interpretation, arcane, and serpentine arguments, skepticism, doubt, dubious motivations, or obscurantist readings to understand. In a intellectual sense, Arendt became an American and Strauss never did."

-- /**********************************************************************/ Brad Mayer

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