Chuck Grimes wrote: > Hope you don't mind. I am using your post as a pretext to think out loud. > Any memories or thoughts about your Straussian professor, what you studied, > etc. I'd like to read them.
I've been fascinated by the Straussians for a long time, partly because one of the group of guys I hung around with in college (Yale) was the son of a Straussian (or something like that) named Harry Jaffa (at Claremont, I believe). My acquaintance encouraged me to take a political theory course with a Straussian named Thomas Pangle. So I did. Being an undergraduate, I really didn't get much out of that course, except a sense that the professor thought there were hidden meanings in Plato, Aristotle, etc., all the way up to Machiavelli. I doubt that the Straussians ever converted anyone to conservatism. Rather, people already converted (say by being mugged, in the old joke) are likely to become Straussians. But there are also other types of conservatives... (The Bush-era neoliberals sometimes were Straussians, but some were ex-Trotskyists. I'm sure there are other types.) There is also some sort of schism within the Straussians. I don't know what it's about. It could be a personality conflict. Or a response to the fact that Allan Bloom was gay. Who knows? > I decided as a matter of principle to ignor this noble lie business. It is > essentially a ruse to make ridiculous interpretations of standard works seem > credible. Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes were not writing code. They were > intense > critics of their time and had every reason to hide out from severe > pumishment. ... It's possible that some of this stuff was written in code. By the way, the Straussians are not alone in seeing hidden meanings. When reading old political theorists, almost everybody "reads between the lines," "deconstructs," "unpacks," "understands by putting into context," etc. What's unique to the Straussians is the coherent secret message seen in all of the theorists they like: "we need to hide our true nature from the masses and to aid the elite." -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, you should at least know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
