cgrimes at rawbw.COM wrote:
>
>
> And finally, let's deal with Strauss's last point:
>
> ``It was the contempt for these permanencies which permitted the most
> radical historicist [i.e. Heidegger] in 1933 to submit to, or rather
> to welcome, as a dispensation of fate, the verdict of the least wise
> and least moderate part of his nation while it was in its least wise
> and least moderate mood, and at the same time to speak of wisdom and
> moderation. The events of 1933 would rather seem to have proved, if
> such proof was necessary, that man cannot abandon the question of the
> good society, and that he cannot free himself from the responsibility
> for answering it by deferring to history or to any other power
> different from his own reason. (ibid., pp. 354-5)''
>
> What Strauss fails to realize is his own concept of the good, is
> precisely identical to his most deadly political enemies, who were not
> Heidegger. In some abstract sense Strauss and Heidegger were pursuing
> common threads. Idealism which seems to be so natural to philosophy is
> the problem, that is solved by practice, perfecting the means of
> political struggle and process, etc, etc, etc. Knowledge of things
> political comes from the direct engagement where concepts are
> immediately put to their evaluation in action, and judged accordingly,
> by masses of people, not experts and philosophers. Knowledge
> of the political world simply doesn't exist in the abstract.
I agree completely with this (and with the rest of the paragraph below); there are some distinctions to be made within it, however, to avoid having every glitch be the basis for "going back to the drawing board" and starting out from scratch. One way to gesture towards the distinction is the Chinese separation of theory and thought, which lies behind the phrase "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought." The premise was that Marxism provided a generally accurate _theory_ of capitalism, a theory which incorporated the necessity (though not necessarily the possibility) of revolution, but that in each nation or each particular inflexion of capitalism/imperialism revolutionaries would have to think out there own tactics/strategy within their own temporal/spatial context.
This allows the necessary sharp division of Theory from practice which is necessary to avoid dogmatism while insisting both on the ultimate grounding of theory in practice (history) _and_ the necessity for a close unity of thought and action. I've lost the reference, but recently I browsed through an article by (I think) Alan Wald in which he was arguing why the ideas of some small Venezuelan marxist sect (with which he was connected) were or would become essential to the success of that revolution. In other words, he believed that an abstract theory (the phrase is redundant) of revolution arrived at independently from events in Venezuela could directly dictate practice there. This assumed direct application of theory to practice is the very core of dogmatism. The same dogmatic conception of theory also informs various rejections of theory as opposed to "experience." The latter foolishnes would be compared to someone's claiming that his/her feel for falling was a better guide to astronomy than Einstein's relativity theory of gravity.
A lot more to say, but for now I'll stop here. There are some things in the rest of Chuck's post that I could probably quibble with, but on the whole I agree completely.
Carrol