The controversy between the primacy of belief or reason became a major theme for Strauss. He traced it in various ways. He conceived a general and broad ranging argument as the opposition between the theological and the political, and as the origin of the conflict between religious law and political law. This conflict was at the philosophical heart of the Enlightenment project which was seen in these terms as the project to re-found the modern state on rational law, rather than religious doctrine and divine right
Strauss started off considering religious doctrines in Judaism, then he moved on to consider the more broadly conceived idea of an absolute truth, and its expression as law. These ideas follow from the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Reason in this context then takes on its role to interpret given law. Strauss's idea of becoming a Jewish philosopher, in the sense of Talmudist or in more secular form a hermeneutic scholar goes a long way in explain why he is difficult to read.
Strauss sometime during or after his work on Spinoza became an athetist. So he needed to find another founding origin, and he came up with the tradition of natural right and natural law. I think he discovered this alternate universe during the Spinoza study, which contains his first essay on Hobbes. Instead of following the traditions and thought of Helenistic Judaism, he turned to the ancient polis of Plato and Aristotle, and then a scattering of `moderns' like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau and others.
In the few years after his Spinoza or the late 1020s to early 1030s, there is a rough transition when Strauss moves first to Paris, gets marriage and then to London. He works first on Maimonides (Philosophy and Law), then returns to Hobbes and Rousseau. In the interium he met Alexandre Kojeve, Gershon Scholem and Walter Benjamin. (This is an important transistion that I have not gotten into yet. My own order of study started with Natural Righ and History, and I immediately realized my own defficiencies, so I started at the beginning first in Weimar.) In the end of this transistion Strauss returns to mostly to classical studies. Here is a brief biographical sketch. I used it to outline a reading plan that I then followed up to this transistion:
http://members.tripod.com/Cato1/strauss-bio.htm
Before going further I need to clarify something in this exchange:
``...Plato's Republic, more or less. You know rich guys on top, laying around in the middle of the day, sipping wine, talking big ideas, while us slaves are up on hill building the Partheon or the nicely finished streets....'' [CG}
``I have never read a word of Strauss, but this makes me anything but confident of Chuck's interpretations. The *politeia* not only includes the notion of intellectuals being the *poorest* class in society (not even rich enough to have families...) but is manifestly the first communist, sexually egalitarian, text in all history. If what Chuck wrote is the notion of Plato that he got from Strauss, than Strauss certainly is worthless.'' Shane Mage
No, that was not Strauss's interpretation of Plato. It was my crude dismissal of The Republic and ancient Athens, combined, as anykind of ideal state to follow. There is an entire history of commentary on Plato, as a subfield of philosophy. There are many sides to the debates on Plato. One follows something like Shane Mage inticates, and the others follows mine, only of course much more nuanced and polite. Here is a short article that outlines a little of that (thanks ravi). It basically explains that it depends on which part of Plato you want to see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/aug/05/shopping.plato
Here is a hint of where Strauss stood:
``Before going any further, we must dispose of a misunderstanding which is at present very common. The theses of the Republic summarized in the two preceding paragraphs clearly show that Plato, or at any rate Socrates, was not a liberal democrat. They also suffice to show that Plato was not a Communist in the sense of Marx, or a Fascist: Marxist communism and fascism are incompatible with the rule of philosophers, whereas the scheme of the Republic stands or falls by the rule of philosophers. But let us hasten back to the Republic..'' (from History of Political Philosophy, 6p)
The above quote is a rare exception where Strauss just tells his reader what he thinks for a change, and puts himself on the record.
In the two paragraphs mentioned, Strauss outlines Kephalos' then Polemarchos' argument that justice consists in giving to each their rightful possessions. (Each according to his ability, each according to his need?) And the return argument that doing so, is not always a good thing, because the possesions might be bad or do harm to the owner. Therefore wise men must decide what goes to who and how much. And so we arrive at the justification for rule under a clique of philosophers. It is Strauss's contention that The Republic explains how to found a just society. This is Strauss's rendition, not mine.
My rendition of Strauss follows this trace. Strauss was looking for two things really, a system of public order and a system of justice, both highly contentious comodities in Weimar.
The concrete historical argument against following anything like The Republic is found in the neo-classic ideal of an estate system, like that entertained by the US founding fathers. Take Thomas Jefferson's Montebello as an example. It was a slave planation. And I am pretty sure Jefferson conceived his estate as the embodiment of the Greek and Roman ideals.
Now returning to some of the uses Strauss made of the ancient Greeks. He supplanted belief in religious doctrine and reasoning from authority in the rabbinic tradition of Helenistic Judaism for Plato's rule by philosophers shifting from faith to the reasoned wisdom of an elite group who specialize in reason and wisdom and who design the laws and provide the judgements as to what is the social good, what is ethical and moral conduct, what is justice and how it should be carried out. The mob, the laity, the communial congregation don't belong to these deliberations because they are swayed by their lower ordered passions, prone to irrationality, prone to sin, prone to loss of rational discipline. The passions have their place in the order of things, but that place is not in the highest order of things where well disciplined reason and moral probity prevail. This follows from the order of the virtues.
In Hegel's Philosophy of the Right, he questioned how we are to come to know the good and intend to do good. He cites Jacobi, and others answers that the good arises subjectively from within and from intention to do good. Then Hegel argues that this dependence on subjective individual belief and intention can not be trusted. He cites the example of the man accused of doing something bad, and the man's defence, he intended to do good. And, Hegel argues that such subjective concepts deny the possibility of hypocrisy and immorality. Hegel argues instead, the good arises by a subjectivity made public, as a public set of laws that can be contested in public. This goes to Jacobi's argument that belief should be prior to reason. Here is a continuation of Hegel:
``224. Amongst the rights of the subjective conscienousness are not only the publication of the laws (se Paratgraph 215) but also the possibly of ascertaining the actualization of the law in a particular case (the course of the proceedings, the legal argment, etc)---i.e. the publicity of judicial proceedings. The reason for this is that a trial is implicitly an event of universal validity, and although the particular content of the action affects the interests of the parties alone, its universal content, i.e the right at issue and the judgement theron, affects the interests of everybody...'' (142p, Philosophy of Right)
This is the basic argument against Strauss's concept of natural law and natural right. For a brief description of Strauss's concepts of natural right and natural law go here:
http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/straussconference.htm
(Note is a rightwing think tank where they get big bucks to write this shit. Olin is a defense contractor, i.e. weapons of mass destruction.)
Strauss calls the position I take up radical historicism.
My argument goes like this. All the big decisions as to how to run things and what is just and right definitely have to occur in Hegel's concept of public space and have as many as possible involved. The rational justification comes down to something very close to Plato, as Plato is read as a process or procedure of argumentation, but not the specific content---although if that content applies, sure use that too. It's the process itself, the forms of deliberation that are important to focus on---and it was this key insight, that process is more important to a democratic state than the content of its laws, that I think at least Jefferson and others understood when they sat down in a closed meeting to write the US Constitution.
Now more rationalization. What is reason, but exactly the public conduct and practice of reasoning, that is the deliberation itself, the process and the procedure. The public speech of reasoning, is in constrast to the private and subjective nature of belief and faith, where these are given public expression as absolutes, in declarations and decrees, in which the procedure is reduced to a pronouncement. In this realm reason comes later in the interpretations of the what the annoucements mean.
Also notice that all of the concepts that surround reason shift and change in time, in history, and are constantly shuffled and re-shuffled in different ways. This whole process is at the core of the relativistic historical moral and political order. It isn't even a good in itself, because the process certainly can go badly. We try to convince ourselves and others to change their mind because there are no absolutes. We can appeal to law, we can argue law, but we can also change the laws, and do, frequently. The debate between a relativistic view with ceaseless change and against the fixed order and the ideal absolute has a very long history.
In terms of natural right Aristotle for example thought human nature was a fixed set, but in the carrying out of the program of seeking happiness everyone had the right to pursue that in their own way. So that natural right was changeable. Strauss takes up Aristotle on these traces and evokes the concept of Public Safety as the necessary arbiter and limiter of natural right. Ah, yes the national security state and its arguments for the limits on rights in times of national emergency, the need to seek out the enemies within, etc. Then Strauss turns the tables, and gives the state the freedom to determine how best protect itself, so that natural right is only free to change under a state power threatened by external or internal enemies. In other words Strauss takes away the changeable nature of natural right from the people and gives it to the state. And Strauss gives to the state the power to invent its own rights, based on the inventiveness and changeable threats from within and without (see, Natural Right and History, p156-84)
We have certainly seen that process lately and seen how it worked in the concrete when Jonathan Yoo and others helped the US executive branch invent and grant rights for itself, behind closed doors, by executive decree.
The general opposition between change and order goes back further to the Pre-Socratics and beyond. Ovid in the Metamorphosis has a poem, on Pythagoras. Here's an excerpt:
Nothing remains the same: the great renewer, Nature, makes form from form, and, oh, believe me That nothing ever dies. What we call birth Is the beginning of a difference, No more than that, and death is only ceasing Of what had been before. The parts may vary, Shifting from here to there, hither and yon, And back again, but the great sum is constant.
(Pythagoras, 251-258L)
Sounds like the conservation laws of physics, doesn't it? There is also an interesting conflict between the two cosmological principles change v. order in ancient Egyptian cosmology.
In other words, the obvious contention is, that political and social liberation and change, evokes or accompanies a related liberation of the mind and action, But I also agree it is a very risky business. The 1960s in US history certainly must have horrified Strauss, just as it did Allen Bloom.
What I do know, is it helped to illuminated my favorite professor in philosophy Paul Feyerabend, who came of intellectual age in the environs of the Vienna Circle and Popper and revolted. Go here for details:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/
To be brief he tried to inspire his students by the idea that anybody could do philosophy, if they were willing to argue on their feet, which of course is the radical message. That is to say, philosophy and by implication science and politics should be taken out of the hands of the hidebound professional caste and opened to all. The way Feyerabend reasoned there is no rationally valid and fixed in place merit system, so let's sort it out in public with all contingencies possible and entertained.
You could argue the consequences of opening the gate to the barbarians did lead to disaster. Allen Bloom makes that argument. I make the other. It worked to challenge the power elite and it scared hell out them, and that was a good thing to do.
Just as a last note. Dwayne suggested I was being generous posting various things on Strauss. I am not that altruistic, but I like the thought and accept the compliment. In the concrete, it is simply a convenient and available forum to get feedback and correction.
CG
ps. The ideal of philosophy, that it is self-seeking of truth and beauty and therefore free of the corruption of the passions and lower moral orders is complete nonsense. Philosophies have their agendas, so why not make them explicit? This is my philosophical justification for trashing Strauss in the previous post. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy, but then philosophy is certainly not confined the realm of logic.