[lbo-talk] Leo Strauss (was: Anselm Jappe)

Michael Hoover mhhoover at gmail.com
Tue Sep 19 10:43:44 PDT 2006


On 9/18/06, Michael J. Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
> Strauss was the founder and guru of a cult of right-wing
> lumpen-intellectuals, headquartered at the very right-wing
> University of Chicago, where I served a term in graduate
> school. The Straussians were a very silly bunch, given
> to Anglophilistine high-table mannerisms and prating about
> Plato. But they had quite a sense of mission and esprit
> de corps -- sort of a secular Opus Dei for right-wing
> unreligious Jews.
>
> The esoteric/exoteric distinction was very important to
> the Straussians, along with the sense of being a secret
> elite. This being the United States, where fantasy and reality
> are carbureted into an explosive mist, the Straussians
> did go on to form a not-insignificant element of the
> ideological cadre of what became known as
> "neoconservatism."
> --Michael J. Smith
<<<<<>>>>>

one of the ironies of '30s german intellectual emigre story is that strauss was sponsored by harold laski, also interesting that strauss taught at new school for a time...

strauss circled around 'caucus for a new political science' that emerged out of american political science association in late 60s, to extent that anyone - either in or or out of political science - knows about caucus, it is thought of as left-leaning...

considering caucus in terms of discontented rather than dissident poli sci people (back then anyway) helps explain presence of likes of strauss, as well as daniel moynihan, and david easton...

despite his conservative politics, strauss labelled himself on the 'left' of the profession in his defense of 'ancient' political science against 'modern' political science, his rationale for this was that he - like 'the left' - was issuing a challenge to mainstream 'orthodoxy' in the discipline...

strauss/straussians attacked 20th century poli sci icons such as arthur bentley (easton owes title of his mid-century _the government process_ to bentley's early century _the process of government_), harold lasswell, herbert simon...

as most significant form of behaviorism, voting studies came in for big-time disdain and scorn...

strauss, in _natural right and history_, specifically critiques 'unqualified relativism' that he claimed initially took over german philosophy and later became characteristic of western thought in general and especially u.s. social science and liberalism (he cites this as an example of the victor ultimately being defeated by the vanquished)...

strauss essentially lumped 'liberal relativism' (he didn't use term 'moral relativism'), historicism, and natural science into similar 'bad' category, crisis of political thought required that western political theory - which strauss claimed had been in decline since machiavelli and hobbes - recover truth of classical political philosophy in plato and aristotle...

of course, 'eternal truth' that strauss believed in could only be uncovered by likes of strauss which explains all that esoteric reading crap...

elsewhere, strauss argued that experimental method was dangerous because it obscured need for moral absolutism (he wrote a number of articles for journal _social research_)...

on a side note: c. b.. macpherson acknowledged heavy reliance upon strauss' book _political philosophy of hobbes_ in developing the theory of 'possessive individualism'...

michael hoover (who, but for funding snafu, was headed to poli sci dept at chicago for grad school not longer after strauss in mid-70s, what a long, strange trip that would've been...)

.



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