``..they are correctt about some things. Judge Posner. Carl Schmitt (in fact an actual Nazi.) Leo Strauss. Nietzsche..'' jks
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Really Justin, I am still waiting to hear a defense of Posner in some detail---other than to say he's a nice guy, and you liked working under him. Content, man, content! Do you really want to mount a defense of his defense of Gore v Bush? It is fitting irony that Posner should be on a list of public intellectuals, put there for writing about the decay of public intellectuals...
As to Schmitt, you really need to point out what is worth knowing or reading. It would be nice if you sketched that out because all I've read (Jan-Werner Muller) is some very hard core anti-Semitic, nasty pro-Catholic stuff that is outright nauseating. And let's remember he was more than just another nazis---he consulted in designing and writing their legal system which they had to fabricate ex nihlo after they abolished the Reichstag.
I won't defend Strauss for a minute and I don't think he was correct about anything in what I've read. We are flat out enemies. He is dead wrong on absolutely every topic, turn of idea, or argument he ever made---and his intellectual judgments and appraisals are poorly formed, misapplied, and badly developed.
Strauss is currently being resuscitated as a Jewish philosopher and in my judgment (which doesn't count for shit, since I am not Jewish) such a revival is a very bad turn for Jewish scholarship. Classic modern scholars like Julius Guttmann are far better thinkers, better writers, and far more erudite, in fact beautiful to read precisely because they inform and educate the reader. Strauss at his best is merely confusing, obscure, and wrong.
I haven't read up to this next point (still sorting out Spinoza and Hobbes), but here is a taste of what later developed between Guttmann and Strauss:
``..Guttmann divides his argument into two parts corresponding to the two last chapters of [Strauss's] Philosophy and Law: the first part contains the conceptual-philosophical criticism of the legal foundation of philosophy, and the second a criticism of the philosophical foundation of law. In these parts, Guttmann argues that Strauss's objective philosophical (sachlich- philosophisch) method neither examines the inner meaning of the medieval religious categories nor their relation to one other, but constitutes a formal conceptualization. Thus, in his conceptual critique Guttmann faults Strauss for not representing medieval philosophy in its historical complexity. Guttmann extols the historical method as the valid approach whereas Strauss's textual representation uses the medieval sources unscientifically and because of this he is, according to Guttmann, incorrect on all counts. Yet, as I will show in the following, despite the critical nature of Guttmann's description of Strauss, this description in fact points to the confluence between Strauss's method and Guttmann's own...''
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/volume3/rethelyi.html)
What Rethelyi doesn't realize (exactly because Rethelyi didn't do the history) is that they both start from the same classic German educational background in historical idealism as the accepted methodology of scholarship--and that underlying philosophical foundation is what makes it appear that Guttmann's critique doesn't escape his own critique of Strauss (the same argument Dennis R and Carrol made against my view of Strauss). Rethelyi mentions Herman Cohen's neo-Kantianism, but doesn't seem to understand that early 20thC scholarship into the medieval period was severely limited by the lack of concrete historical detail at that point. We simply know more history and have both more detail and a more comprehensive view of the medieval period than they did.
In fact the 20thC medieval revival in European academia (contemporary with Guttmann and Strauss) was part and parcel of the rise of nationalism and various claims to national identities. For example the Bauhuas in the 20s had a whole section devoted to revivals of medieval crafts like stained glass, woodcuts, calligraphy, handmade papers, bookmaking, egg tempera painting, etc...
[In any event I will side with Guttmann, sight unseen.]
>From my point of view, Strauss is important because he makes a perfect
target. If I can pinpoint each of his wrong turns, I will have added
to understanding what is wrong in a whole range of reactionary
political ideas for the last thirty years. I already know in crude
form what has happened---but it's a matter of developing it with lots
of historical narrative to support it. In my view a postmodern marxist
critique is inadequate for this purpose. As I wrote before, Strauss
was an ideological pimp for the ruling elite. We know that. But there's
more to say...
Then Pugliese drops this bomb:
``AG Gonzales wroye his dissertation on Schmitt...''
Holy fuck, tell me it ain't so.
Okay, is Harriet Miers actually Joseph Mengle's out of wedlock daughter, adopted by a couple in Texas from a mysterious Argentine house keeper...?
The Harriet spawn of Satan, justice from hell's own heart... What was that movie, Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, The Omen...
Carl grumbles:
``..I want rightists of every stripe to feel harried and marginalized. I have no interest in even pretending to give them a hearing. AFAIC, the US is in a state of civil war, and they are the enemy...''
Yes. But part of the fight to harry and marginalize them means making the arguments against them... And then to, while the Right might be close to death as a popularity contest, their political views are written into law and will be part of the political fights for decades to come, especially in the courts and policy circles. That's were the arguments are needed.
CG