J.
------------
I am not quite ready for Jacobin. They have real writers over there. Anyway, I've read this essay before somewhere. There is a connection and it goes through the secular civil service traditional training under Confucianism. As I understand it, the tradition has the goal of creating a well nuanced moral and ethical sense of judgment to be carried out as a `wise' magistrate in charge of regional affairs under the Empire and its court system. As I understand it, the traditional method began with a series of examinations to be taken and passed.
So far so good, until you recall we have our own traditions which include training in the law, particularly for officials of the courts. However, we also have the concept of a trial by a jury of peers who are no more qualified than the accused. The basic idea is that your peers can judge your actions as well or better than the experts in court and law.
I am taking my time reading Strauss because each step requires a kind of background check that is nearly exhausive in order to get it right. Mark Lilla is suspect on Strauss and is not neutral. I think he approves of Strauss at least in some fashion.
We do not need an educated elite to run our society. We need a lot less of them than are already present in positions of power. In fact our problem is the chronic problem of elite hierarchies. If the top is rotten, so too all the way down in a top down social structure. For example the Supreme Court is near as rotten as it has been since the 19thC, and hence most of our court system is compromised, rotten, and untrustworthy to find in the people's interest.
The central ideas behind Strauss are a series of anti-enlightenment positions that take us back to the 16-17thC and the struggle between secular and religious authority and the rule of both kinds of law over society. The wisdom of pre-enlightenment thought was that citation from authority carried more weight than reason alone, but reasoning from authority was the best of all. This idea follows the Talmudic tradition in Judaism and or Catholic theology from say Aquinas. I am presently stalled out here because the next thing to read is Maimondies, Philosophy and Law. Maimonidies was nearly contemporary to Aquinas and functioned in more or less a similar manner, as a rational theologian of Judaism, interpreted as an ethical philosophy. Argument from authority through rational means, which pre-dates the enlightenment, the move to elimenate authority, and simply develop argument on its own rational basis, etc, these are the famous moves that Descartes and Spinzoa took. Spinoza just took an eraser to God as the beginning (more or less).
Without the theological mandate, whence society? This gets to the concept of a contractual agreement between members of a society and its overlords. The individual members gain security and protection if they submit to rule under an elite---Hobbes basic idea. Fuck that. I don't get protection or freedom under such an agreement, so I don't agree. I am therefore a relativist, akin to moral turpitude or sex with animals.... something really boring goes here. Under Hobbes, beginning with the `natural' man as animal, well each against all. Or switch to Rousseau's `natural' man as inherently good and a different sort of contract concept comes to the fore. Under all the argument, what is really going on is the differing concepts of the nature of `human nature'. If you agree with the basic science, that people are a mix of inherited and contingent characteristics, then an endless circle follows a chicken and egg path about politics and philosophy.
The Chinese don't belong to any of this and would be a better off without it. They are fully capable of developing worker councils, appointing representatives and carrying out the original communist program, before it got turned into a dictatorship of a single party state apparatus. The last thing they need is the `security' of an authoritarian elite. I suspect they already have plenty that---as we all do.
Maybe the Arabs will come up with something interesting to add to the process of participatory democracy and the endless committee meeting. I don't see an alternative.
I've been reading a lot lately, but none of my homework on Strauss. He is ultimately a boring sort of conventional conservative with too much philosophy background. I may not be much of a believer in progress, but I think we have made some since Aristotle. If nothing else then at least how to administer a much more complex and large scale society. I am not sure I even understand why Aristotle has much to add...
CG