Leo Strauss versus Straussianism: Legacy against Assumed Reality
By Joseph Andrew Settanni
Anyone who knows anything at all of proper depth about the writings of Leo Strauss would so conclude easily that he would have been, of course, totally appalled at the obviously bizarre notion of an ideology of “Straussianism” or anything like it whatsoever. But, strangely enough, what has occurred?
A Jewish man, whom Adolf Hitler would have thoroughly enjoyed murdering, said to have been clearly bookish, genuinely humble, quite scholarly, evidently erudite, and other such often ascribed encomiastic epithets has, some decades after his death, aroused tremendously fever-pitch emotions of intense hate, profound scorn, deep derision, increasing revilement, etc. beyond all levels of reason. The incredible intellectual phenomenon, moreover, of “Staussophobia” has even been identified by Peter Minowitz. Amazing, isn’t it?
Some important questions, however, could be asked, below, by which to fairly determine if all this assumed weighty and substantial opposition, disgust, and hatred are truly rationally based.
Scoundrel or Philosopher?
Did he, perhaps, ever openly fancy himself the great leader of any political, social, etc. mass movement deliberately intent on conquering the world? No. Was this scholar, e. g., a busybody rabble rouser who had wildly exhorted his (blood thirsty or insane) followers into acts of civil disobedience or just outright violence? No. Did he overtly or, perhaps, was he ever privately known to have endorsed political leaders mostly susceptible to introducing his ideological programs for sociocultural or econopolitical transformation? No. There is, in short, no practical basis for this bold case of character assassination.
Given the above honest answers, which can be freely verified by anyone so doing a study of the life of Leo Strauss, it needs to be confidently said that there are, in fact, no valid and rational reasons for the despicable accusations, allegations, asseverations, etc. placed against him by increasing numbers of people. Most of these opinions appear dependent upon secondary or tertiary sources of information, for unlike, e. g., Marx, he had never forced his “followers” to believe in every word uttered, by him, under the penalty of repudiation for any divergent opinions.
He seems to have become the Edgar Allan Poe figure of modern philosophy; no one who really becomes acquainted with his controversial writings, as with the Honorable Alexander Hamilton as to American political history for another example, can be neutral; eventually, he gets loved or hated; one becomes, sooner or later, anti or pro-Strauss.
Thus, the Straussian critique of modernity finally gets confronted, though most people had and still do quite significantly misinterpret what he had to say, even up to 180 degrees of error; equally, he was not, however, the proponent of any ideology; no “ism” should be attached to his name.
To cut to the proverbial chase, however, Strauss is often alleged, whether just so blatantly or otherwise, to have been a true teacher of evil who had, in turn, deliberately inspired evil in too many of his most prominent disciples (aka former students). And, into this odd mixture of contention, there are both leftwing and rightwing Straussians (and possibly others) who, thus, have been implicated in such an amazing accusation, as if it were, dare one say it, some kind of Straussian conspiracy.
Of course, the many detractors or at least most, and it’s a still growing number, would not wish to be as candidly explicit, as stated in this present article, and, on average, do usually prefer to just sort of say or hint at his being really wrongheaded or covertly egotistical, meaning in various ways. But, the invidious denunciation, by sustained insinuation if nothing else, yet remains, nonetheless.
It is, therefore, given the inherent lack of rationality and credible substance for any such charge, an incredible indictment, a savage assault, with both continuing serious implications and ramifications. Although all readers are encouraged to read his writings before consulting secondary or other texts, an effort will be made to discuss his thoughts based upon what he actually wrote, not what he is alleged to have thought or taught, dreamed up or had spoken, as per allegations.
Of course, the automatic expectation favoring strongly the unquestioned pursuit of true excellence in the studying and practice of philosophy necessarily, by definition, includes an elitist attitude that gets confused, by diminutive minds, as the (antidemocratic) demand for elitism. So, yes, the intellectual defense of the superiority of classical versus modern philosophy gets itself criticized for being elitist, for a superior education is also, by its very nature, elitist, of course; any well-trained mind ought, therefore, to be appropriately oriented toward excellence, meaning, then, as its only logical and proper standard.
No ESP, however, will be ridiculously exercised here nor any vainglorious attempt to, supposedly, probe psychiatrically into his conscience. His soul belongs to God. His conscience was his responsibility. His works can still be examined objectively, regardless of negative criticism. The one significant caveat to be retained in mind, it could be fairly mentioned, is that the author of this article is not a Straussian.
But, the negative portrayal of him as a moral monster is, as contended here, so absolutely ludicrous beyond measure, beyond reason. In the end of such analysis, most of his severest critics are, thus, really just self-righteous prigs.
A plethora of ridiculous mischaracterizations have come about, as with, e. g., Christopher Hitchens (a militant New Atheist cognoscenti, recently at room temperature) claiming that both Ayn Rand and he were atheists; the former person, no doubt whatsoever was; however, on his death bed, he there chanted prayers, though not being an Orthodox Jew, of course, but a firm believer in God nonetheless.
The strange charge of atheism is oddly similar to the condemnation of Socrates. This is since Strauss would not worship the gods of modernity [as Socrates was an “atheist” regarding the Athenian gods], which situation becomes, thus, rigged into being a theoretical charge of (modernist) atheism, one jocularly supposes.
He lovingly taught the love of sophia, of wisdom, which is what philosophy is supposed to be all about anyway; so, of course, he then got profoundly hated by an ideologically, pragmatically, positivistically, and materialistically obsessed world. This is—no surprise—the very definition of modernism, the pursuit of modern political science and its so cognate metaphysics.
In essence, it is to be both correctly perceived and understood that nihilism, the genuine end product of fulfilled modernism, greatly detests philosophy, which acts as its obvious negation. Nihilism, in the end, wants absolutely no gods to exist besides it, as Nietzsche himself would have openly admitted.
What the Philosopher Wrote
In his Thoughts on Machiavelli, Strauss finally found out where and when, in terms of modern Western political and philosophical thought, a moral and ethical derailment had absolutely occurred; earlier in time, he thought that Hobbes, as in his The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, had started this definitive break in what previously had been the accepted perennial tradition of Western (political) philosophy and its cognate impact upon political cogitation.
In turn, political science also, as a direct consequence, became unfortunately disrupted and perverted in the direction of what may be simply put as a might-makes-right ideology of power on earth. What is being meant?
Strauss had clearly insisted that the great evil of Machiavelli was that he did not necessarily (always explicitly) teach evil per se, rather, the great malevolence of that Renaissance Florentine writer and politician was really that he claimed to have found out that there actually is no such thing as evil.
The German-born refugee from Nazi Germany tried, therefore, to warn his readers about the innate and integral perniciousness of such a bold doctrine, especially because he had, obviously, seen it empirically manifested during his own lifetime. Machiavellianism, as no surprise, has real consequences, e. g., a once Hitlerian Germany.
But, that was only a part of what Strauss had, interestingly, taught in his writings. In addition, he there presented the significant and critical idea that philosophers could exercise the practice of a special kind of secret writing that could, however, be read if a student applied himself carefully and vigorously to learning how to decipher such literature.
The idea was that philosophical writing could be creatively composed for the deceptive sake of not easily disclosing, divulging, too much too soon, especially if common people may obtain access to such deliberately sophisticated literature. The knowledge of such encryptional hermeneutics is, quite logically, held to be absolutely essential for then enabling a correct interpretation.
For instance, doing just a plain reading of Kant gives the overt impression that he was a sentimental, harmless, committed Christian philosopher merely determined upon elucidating philosophical points in a subtle manner, though with no controversial intentions involved, of course. [And yet, it can be well remarked how Richard M. Weaver had perceived the true linkage between sentimentality and brutality, e. g., Joseph Stalin.]
On the contrary, for Strauss, Kant was really a crypto-atheist ideologist, devoted to Rousseau’s radical thinking, intent upon so corrupting further philosophical discourse toward the end of subverting the political, social, and cultural status quo; this was done, furthermore, to help bring about a decidedly moral and ethical revolution in thought to fundamentally change all of society, culture, and the political order forever.
One can gain this highly revealing and, for most people, startling insight about Kant, he contended, by doing the special reading needed to gain a more profound insight as to what was being meant, not simply what appeared to be written. Certain philosophers, through a kind of skillful word play with semantic devices, have the ability to “hide” things in plain sight, thus, making correct decipherment difficult for untrained minds; Hegel and some others easily had this ability.
Strauss, author of Persecution and the Art of Writing, asserted that Kant wanted to avoid harassment or other persecution, during his life, by having/using a kind of coded writing that would be detected by the cognoscenti or properly trained philosophers, not the ignorant public at large, the uneducated rabble.
One manner of metaphysical opposition to this Straussian contention is, e. g., that the liberal Western mind abhors the notion of anything that might be hidden, implicit, secretive, or mysterious; knowledge must be open to be empirically valid, explicit, clear, non-mysterious, and non-secretive debate in line with this modernist (read: vulgar) attitude. Different mindsets, of course, do think differently.
The Anglo-Saxon mind, similar to the American, is not readily given to the treating of any metaphysical subtleties as to different and ranging hues and colors of thought; the continental European intellect, for instance, is more at home accepting the notion of conspiracies or, at least, people plotting nefariously and, often, covertly or indirectly for their own desired ends. The Byzantine mind, at an extreme, simply accepts deviousness, meaning substantive cunning and guile, as just a plain fact of life.
This difference of opinion, which is really more than just a simple difference of opinion, has provoked much enmity against him, including from many so-called conservatives who do detest such purported intellectual elitism. His own “hidden” writing was mainly done to protect himself from liberal and leftist critics who would, surely, attempt to vulgarize or mischaracterize what he was actually trying to say by defending classical political thought as opposed to modern (read: modernist) political thought.
Vulgar or boorish minds are only capable of pedestrian or inferior thought regarding the higher insights of advanced metaphysical cogitation and cognizance. Most of Strauss’ critics generally fall into such a category, of course; they lack, for instance, even Aristotelian common sense, among other failings.
The Illiberality of the Liberal Open Society
Liberals and leftists, they who do dominate society and culture, do refuse to understand, much less acknowledge, that the praised (idolatry of the) Open Society, defended by Karl Popper, can yet engage in persecution and suppression of those who, by rational disagreement, still object to its modernist strictures heavily stressing positivism, pragmatism, materialism, and, finally, nihilism.
It takes an advanced intelligence, however, imbued with solid knowledge of classical philosophy to be able to critically recognize such an abstract order of life as a form of superstition, of unreasoning belief. Idolatry, by definition, is when the worship (enlightenment) is made greater than the god (presumed tolerance). As a predictable result, social civil liberty and the exercise thereof becomes necessarily debased in the lust for Utopia, which never comes from the Hobbesian Leviathan’s existence.
They, the progressives and their ilk, cannot conceive of how actually repressive the “enlightened” Open Society of modernity can truly be; this includes, e. g., the pernicious and, in fact, so insidious but extremely effective censorship of silence in academia, and beyond that realm. To them, it is simply inconceivable that Liberalism can, in practice, be decidedly illiberal, intolerant; and, they think of their opinions as the only genuinely reasonable ideas acceptable to fair-minded people everywhere, which is the art of echoing their own prejudices and bigotries among their “enlightened” themselves.
Strauss, consequently, wrote in the hideous shadow of such sophisticated repression; and, many today simply do not possess, therefore, the much needed perspicacity, sagacious perspective in depth, to properly appreciate and appropriately comprehend his inspiring achievement under such unpleasant circumstances, which ought not, thus, to be surprising given the hatred or contempt directed at him. Is there really any proof, however, that can be actually provided, in real and substantive terms, as to the true results of the Open Society in squalid, foul, practice versus glorified theory?
One can go through four years of college and even endless years of graduate schooling, e. g., without once encountering a significant body of anti-progressive or conservative writers, which charge would, of course, be denied, as such, by the liberals and leftists. It is repudiated, of course, because it is the truth. But, the horrendous phenomenon of what has been properly called oppressive tolerance does exist as a fact of important human reality, of sociocultural life in America.
As long as certain highly adverse or critical opinions/thoughts are not, in fact, really permitted to be ever widely circulated, meaning especially among those who may affect the direction of the society, culture, or political order, they are, in effect, eviscerated effectively enough to then become totally harmless to challenge the status quo. No extremely adverse points of view are held as being reasonable and, thus, rationally acceptable to those who think of themselves as, by definition, enlightened and, so entitled to simply discriminate at will.
All non-liberal/unprogressive thought is axiomatically reduced in value and then depicted as the mere gestures of primates unworthy of any true and real respect, much less any equal recognition. Liberal = superior [master race], by definition; non-liberal = inferior [untermensch]. The reification of truth itself occurs so that whatever is defined as or pronounced to be liberal becomes directly consonant with truth itself.
But, the enormously terrible moral and ethical dangers are not really ever perceived, by its “true believer” adherents, concerning such deliberately arrogant ratiocination that easily encourages integral intolerance and contempt, bigotry and prejudice. In this Straussian context, Liberalism is, definitely, not what it positively purports to be, which is, in truth, the least to be said.
No dramatically substantive and effective rightwing (or other) oppositional thought is then ever allowed to fairly compete, therefore, with the predominant ideological cognition of the majority of academic institutions in this country; this is particularly true for the Ivy League and those allied colleges and universities that feed into it. In that context, to all intents and purposes, rightwing cognition does not at all exist nor, moreover, is it to be permitted to be even acknowledged as existing, among sophisticated gentlemen as it were.
But, more to the point, this is not thought to be unfair or unusual, improper or abnormal, in any way, shape, or form. It is seen, thus, as merely being consonant with totally acceptable normality and civility, normative cultural reality and simply standard social conduct. Therefore, based upon all of the above argumentation in the preceding paragraphs, it is logically seen that this is representative of a Nazi mentality, which is what Strauss seemed to have been warning against. How so?
And, how is Nazism fairly related to Liberalism? Consider, as an example, if there were a “gentleman’s agreement” that the assumed non-presence of Jews was to become a normative matter in a society, though it was known that Jewish people may, actually, exist. Only their presence need not be acknowledged.
Concerning this kind of situation presented, when is a liberal not like a Nazi? Guess at the answer. The radio commentator Mike Savage, among others, has thought through this question, philosophically speaking. What may be said? A real liberal is a Nazi. The Open Society can, thus, just act as a mere façade; it becomes a convenient tool of domination by the power establishment, the ruling class, the political class.
The overt proof of the pervasiveness and strength of the Open Society is, however, the sinister degree to which it can so successfully repress ideas, contrary to its own overt propaganda defending free expression, which may severely and intelligently question its ideological dominance. Thus, as a direct logical consequence, Straussian teachings and the vitriol, the venom and bile, directed against them do need, then, to be properly seen in the revealing light of such truth.
Why the Enduring Hate?
Another reason for massive amounts of hatred that is still so perniciously directed against Strauss is because he had, intriguingly, noted the correct historical genesis of ideas that places Nazism on the ideological left, not right, as a form or mode of Liberalism. This finding, after years of study, had earned him the unending wrath of all those on the left, not just professional liberals, who hotly denied any such kind of association between Liberalism and Nazism.
Of course, true to form, dedicated progressives and others have, as should be expected, accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer, an obvious Jew whom the Nazis hated. One must also believe, it is guessed, that as a so “loyal” crypto-Nazi, Strauss had, in fact, deviously fled abroad (to save his Hebrew life) for the real, dastardly purpose of (covertly) advancing the (virulently anti-Semitic) cause of Nazism. When it comes to denouncing him, let there be no limit to the (insane) charges made. All Straussian thought must, supposedly, be fully eradicated through unrestrained calumny and cognate unmitigated spite.
But, what is more amazing still, perhaps, than all of the above is the fact that he has become apparently inextricably linked to neoconservatism, meaning then essentially, when all is said and done, rightwing socialism; this is mainly related to the power-addicted idea that Big Government, a statist-oriented establishment, is best run by neoconservatives and their supporters, depending upon the circumstances or issues, on either the right or left.
This was, truly, empirically seen in George W. Bush’s promoted compassionate conservatism and exuberant cosmopolitanism with his related foreign interventionism, the glorification of the welfare-warfare State beloved by neoconservatives. Therefore, there exists the supposed extrapolation of a Straussian foreign policy strongly favoring foreign adventurism/interventionism to uphold militarism and nationalism suitable for a Big Government, establishmentarian attitude. And yet, the contradiction to all this, seemingly, is the (Wilsonian-internationalist) idea of spreading democracy around the world.
What is incredibly beheld, however, is the extreme notion that a man who had manifestly denounced the power politics of Machiavelli, who warned against tyranny, is openly implicated in fostering an ideology empowering the State; and, this is now supposed to be ardently believed in as, thus, being unquestionably, undoubtedly, true. And, why not? Shouldn’t just any slander be simply believed, if repeated as a Big Lie long enough and loud enough to, thus, enhance its then assumed credibility?
No criticism or critique to the contrary is, furthermore, intellectually acceptable as being philosophically viable and valid, according to the cognitive stereotypical dictates of those who are positively fixated upon such an absurd and illogical position. Strauss, moreover, had vividly witnessed the past realities of the wildly democratic, radical, progressive, socialist Weimar Republic and its various degradations and wholesale evil degeneracy; he rightly feared for America and the Western world; he saw what a Weimar would, logically, produce, if there were to be a kind of ideological recapitulation within a country.
Of course, there is the absurd problem that the thinking/writing of his followers, students, gets imputed wholesale back to him, as if he must be held always personally accountable for them on the then retail level. Maybe, however, many of them did not appropriately understand and fully comprehend properly what he really had actually said. It is not that impossible concerning any assumed such imputation of retroactive responsibility.
There is a true difficulty with such a problematic position. For example, many people thought T. S. Eliot, in his earlier poems, had been a political progressive and so, inspired by reading his works, many young men, it has been recorded, joined the Loyalist (read: Communist) side in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Is Eliot, therefore, to be held supposedly responsible for them, meaning due to their unfortunate misunderstanding and, thus, complete misinterpretation of what he poetically had meant to say?
The fair answer should, of course, be no. Equally, along another avenue, students actually in Strauss’ classes were free to always filter all of his teachings through their own ideological perspectives, for he was not ever, e. g., engaged in any indoctrination of propaganda for any ideology. This is why, contrary to what has been often alleged, insanely or absurdly, by his strange critics, he did not, e. g., cryptically or covertly teach in favor of esoteric nihilism.
Though he did not use the expression, the modernity wanted by the liberals and leftists, as preached, no less, by Machiavelli, would surely bring about what can be called the “Weimerization” of the West. Big Government, as is so definitely supported by neoconservatism, is a certainly natural and logical ally of Weimarization, so the idea of Strauss, author of On Tyranny, as being “the” or one of the major fathers of that ideology simply does not make any rational sense whatsoever.
Governmentalization and bureaucratization naturally allies itself to militarization of a political order that deforms it into a regime of power because it, thereby, ceases to be any true kind of constitutional (aka limited) government qua governance; furthermore, the politicalization of thought, under such a despotic regime, reduces everything to the needs prevalent for the advancement of the predominant ideology.
But, he never wrote in (secret or open) favor of establishing authoritarian or autocratic, power-obsessed regimes intent upon enforcing modernism, as is often said, though, of course, usually obliquely. Yet, it would be odd, however, if he may be thought to have been a supporter of egalitarian democracy; the political-constitutional ideal of classical politics is the mixed regime as was clearly defended, e. g., by Aristotle’ thus, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy, by definition, were characteristically inferior regimes, due, if nothing else, to their manifestly inherent excess.
In pagan Greek thought, all excess attracts Nemesis and gets punished as a logical consequence; thus, Heracles (the Greek for the Roman Hercules) gets his supremely inordinate strength penalized by the Seven Labors forced upon him. Strauss, steeped heavily in classicism, certainly knew this also. Such ancient mythology had influenced the then contemporary political thinking, which was non-ideological.
All classical political thought, contrary to the practice of modernist thinking, fully stands opposed to all ideologies; Machiavelli, it can be noted, was the originator of political modernism, meaning specifically the modern tradition of political thought that is, in fact, basically indistinguishable from ideology.
Thus, ideology replaces classical politics, including political philosophy as well as political science within the perennial tradition, meaning in the realm of modernity; therefore, it is highly improbable, at a minimum, that he was secretly a supporter of tyranny. But, on the other hand, the failure to worship democracy supposedly makes someone, axiomatically, an “enemy of the people” in that classical politics has a definite bias against any purely democratic polity; he is denounced, as a result, for having been an antidemocratic philosopher, meaning a natural opponent of liberal democracy, of modernist politics.
Strauss had perceived presciently that the debasement of the quality of ideas, seen in contemporary philosophy, is prefaced upon the disparagement of moral teachings presented in the higher levels of metaphysics, which leads the horrible way toward a New Weimar, not Utopia. He, thus, was no champion of neoconservatism or any purported version of it; such would be, of course, inherently anathema to the classical tradition of political philosophy defended staunchly, by him, during his professorial career; and, those are the facts, though this assertion, of course, get denied repeatedly.
But, this supremely ignorant thesis, discussed within the broader general context of post-World War II conservatism, is extensively defended in a recent ludicrous work by Dr. Paul Gottfried, in his Leo Strauss and Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal.
What is meant, of course, is that if one has followed cogently the aforementioned argumentation, in this article, it can be, then, fairly concluded that Gottfried’s book is ludicrous; this is because it is based, clearly, upon a misinformed or ignorant thesis relative to the questionable appraisal of conservatism made in the context of analyzing Strauss and his legacy.
It should be rather obvious, therefore, that anything, in any way, shape or form, that might be conjured into a vacuous existence called “Straussianism” has no proper substance whatsoever; it is, thus, a mere figment of heated imaginations, an abstraction deserving no admittance at all into intelligent debate or rational discourse, now or ever. Such is as vile an ideological and weird concoction as was Nazism, as is also Communism, by whatever euphemism (e. g., Obamacare).
Conclusion
Nevertheless, be that as it may, Strauss, who was philosophically inspired, so that he had to be gracious and magnanimous to all his foes and detractors, including political thinkers, philosophers, and political scientists, even while he lived, never grew bitter.
This scholar’s chief “sin” was his refusal to bow low and worship (democratic) Liberalism and, so, the expected castigations followed, along with the vapid posthumous contempt. It is logically suspected that anti-Semitism is, also, involved in the criticism, being that, on average, most neoconservatives are Jews, especially many prominent ones. He, insightfully, said, regardless of opposing voices, that they may be fully excused, according to his generous mode of reasoning, for two most pivotal reasons.
They do not know that Rome burns [the entirety of Western civilization itself is in extremely grave peril]; and, that they fiddle [engage in simply useless disputations or, much worse yet, actively do promote decadence and destruction] while it does. That was the upright pronouncement of the same fellow who wrote: The City and Man, The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws, Natural Right and History, and What Is Political Philosophy?
And, this is mainly why the honored name of Leo Strauss will go on being rightly remembered, while such names as Paul Gottfried do deservedly fade, sooner or later, into the background of meaningless public debate.
