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Leo Strauss Explained by a Neoconservative Straussian
Leo Strauss, Conservative Mastermind
By Robert Locke
FrontPageMagazine | May 31, 2002
... there is only one school of conservative intellectuals that has taken root in academia as a movement. They are the Straussians, followers of the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973). ... Strauss is an ambiguous, sometimes even troubling, figure, but he is essential to the conservative revival of our time. ... As a crude measure of his importance consider the following list of his students or students of his students: Clarence Thomas; Robert Bork; Paul Wolfowitz; Alan Keyes; William Bennett; William Kristol; Allan Bloom; John Podhoretz; John T. Agresto; and myself.
[Somehow he forgot the most famous of all, Irving Kristol.]
... He [Strauss] believes that contemporary liberalism is the logical outcome of the philosophical principles of modernity, taken to their extremes. In some sense, modernity itself is the problem.
Strauss believed that America is founded on an uneasy mixture of classical (Greco-Roman), Biblical, and modern political philosophy. ... Strauss comes is the outstanding critic of the abandonment of the classical element. His key contribution to fighting the crisis of modernity was to restore the intellectual legitimacy of classical political philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle. ...
The holy grail of Straussian scholarship has been to understand the ancient philosophers not from a modern point of view but from their own point of view. ... Strauss contends that the modern view of politics is artificial and that the ancient one is direct and honest about the experience of political things.
The key Straussian concept is the Straussian text, which is a piece of philosophical writing that is deliberately written so that the average reader will understand it as saying one ("exoteric") thing but the special few for whom it is intended will grasp its real ("esoteric") meaning. The reason for this is that philosophy is dangerous. Philosophy calls into question the conventional morality upon which civil order in society depends; it also reveals ugly truths that weaken men’s attachment to their societies. Ideally, it then offers an alternative based on reason, but understanding the reasoning is difficult and many people who read it will only understand the "calling into question" part and not the latter part that reconstructs ethics. Worse, it is unclear whether philosophy really can construct a rational basis for ethics. Therefore philosophy has a tendency to promote nihilism in mediocre minds, and they must be prevented from being exposed to it. The civil authorities are frequently aware of this, and therefore they persecute and seek to silence philosophers. Strauss shockingly admits, that the prosecution of Socrates was not entirely without point. ...
Strauss not only believed that the great thinkers of the past wrote Straussian texts, he approved of this. It is a kind of class system of the intellect, which mirrors the class systems of rulers and ruled, owners and workers, creators and audiences, which exist in politics, economics, and culture. He views the founding corruption of modern political philosophy, to be the attempt to abolish this distinction.
Some dispute whether Straussian texts exist. The great medieval Jewish Aristotelian Moses Maimonides admitted writing this way. I can only say that I have found the concept fruitful in my own readings in philosophy. On a more prosaic level, even a courageous editor like my own can’t print certain things, so I certainly write my column in code from time to time, and other writers have told me the same thing.
According to Strauss, Machiavelli is the key turning point that leads to modern political philosophy, and Machiavelli’s sin was to speak esoteric truths openly. He told all within hearing that there is no certain God who punishes wrongdoing; the essence of Machiavellianism is that one can get away with things. Because of this, he turned his back on the Christian virtue that the belief in a retributive God had upheld. ...
Admittedly, the concept of the Straussian text is one susceptible to intellectual mischief in the form of wild claims about the esoteric meaning of texts, not to mention rather off-putting for anyone who doesn’t like know-it-all elites. But before getting too huffy about this elitist view of the good society, it is best to remind oneself that it is strikingly similar to the view cultivated for centuries by the Catholic and Orthodox churches and by Orthodox Judaism, not to mention other religions: there is a small number of men who know the detailed truth; the masses are told what they need to know and no more. Free inquiry outside the bounds of revelation is dangerous. ...
Did Strauss find the answer? Did he think he did? Or was he just spinning a new myth for intellectuals to keep them from spreading relativism and nihilism? There are vigorous Straussian partisans for both views.
Strauss believed that the great competitor of philosophy is revealed religion. He believed that reason and revelation cannot refute each other. He believed that religion was the great necessity for ordinary men. For him, religion is in essence revealed law, and he took his native Judaism to be its paradigm. Strauss had an ambivalent attitude towards Christianity. ... Nietzsche was right: man needs lies. Or, as we saw above, maybe some men don’t.
Strauss was an atheist, which is the thing I find most troubling about him. He never produces a proof that there is no God. More seriously, there’s his apparent certainty that (Judeo-Christian) religion is false, not just uncertain. Of course he combines this with a vigorous defense of that same religion, which is part of what makes him attractive to conservatives, but there’s something unnecessary and rather dangerous about being an atheist rather than an agnostic.
The canard has been leveled at Strauss that he was in a profound sense anti-American. This is so because he is the profoundest modern critic of the modern natural-right teaching on which our society is based, but as I argued above, this is an incomplete view of our foundation, and he only criticizes modern natural-right because he thinks it destroys itself and becomes untenable.
His most serious reservation about the Cold War was its lurking premise that the undesirability of Soviet world rule implied the desirability of American world rule.
When I was a student at the University of Chicago, there was a circle clustered around Allan Bloom and his great Nobel-laureate friend Saul Bellow. Favored students of the usually haughty Bloom were gradually introduced to greater and greater intimacies with the master, culminating in exclusive dinner parties with him and Saul in Bloom’s lavishly furnished million-dollar apartment. (Read Bellow’s novel Ravelstein if you want the details). Bloom was reputed to say that he liked his students to come to him "virgins," not having read philosophy before, so he could shape their entire outlooks. Straussians talk in a kind of code to one another. When one refers to someone as a "gentleman," it means they are a morally admirable person but not capable of philosophy. They network in academia and in Washington and find one another jobs. A lot of their academic money comes from the John Olin Foundation. This is the inside dope on them.
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