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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strauss studies has come of age., June 18, 2009
Apparently, I came to my study of Leo Strauss (LS) at a good time. LS died in 1973. His work put him well out of the mainstream at the time and was ignored by pretty much all those who had not had the good fortune to have studied with him. But his students proceeded to continue to produce a remarkable (not always the same thing as good) body of work. By the early nineties those students and their students started to produce some of the first book length studies of LS. See, for example, the collections edited by Deutsch, Murley and Novak.
Then came the long dark night of the American soul, i.e., the administration of Bush v.2.0. The rise of the neocons was a boon to such Straussian critics as Shadia Drury. But that period also saw the publication of excellent studies by Tanguay, the Zuckerts, Pangle, Meier and Stephen Smith.
Just for the record, I have never seen much of Strauss in the policies of the Bush administration.
And now that we as a nation have come (a little) to our senses and gotten rid of the UltraMaroon and his minions, it seems like a good time to dispassionately examine the work of a man who was supposed to have inspired many of those minions.
Maybe, just maybe people will now read Strauss to really hear what he has to say. It is my experience that LS is worth more than the reading of one or two of his books. He speaks to so many central issues, e.g., the difference between authority and power, the difference between having a soul and having a self, between reason and law, reason and revelation. He is certainly the most decent and thoughtful proponent of inequality of whom I know. LS held to a variation of Jefferson's idea of a natural aristocracy. In the case of LS, I suppose you could call him a proponent of philosophical inequality.
For all these reasons and many more, Smith's addition to the Cambridge Companion series is very welcome. To my mind, it represents the maturation of the latest period of Strauss studies.
Smith had gathered many people who have contributed to the period, i.e., the Zuckerts, Lampert, Rosen, Behnegar and Batnitzky. The other contributors are equally good. William Galston's essay (for an old leftist like myself) on Strauss' 'embrace' of liberal democracy is worth a review in itself. I will only point out his trenchant discussion of the way that LS perceived the differences between Greek and modern democracy (see pp.198-9). I challenge any liberal or leftist to read this essay (and the others in this book) and not come to see Strauss as providing a powerful challenge to some of our fundamental beliefs.
Some of the other essays are powerful readings of some of Strauss' essays. Behnegar deeply mines Strauss' "Afterward" which is available in Liberalism Ancient and Modern. Shell digs deep into Strauss' essay on German Nihilism. Kraemer culls together many of LS' writings on the medieval Islamic philosophers. And by the way, this is something Strauss critics should consider. He was responsible for a fairly major rebirth of interest in Alfarabi, Avicenna, Maimonides and many other Jewish and Arabic philosophers. Because of his work and those of his students we are a much broader vision of Western philosophy than we did when I studied it in the 70s. For that alone, we are all in his and their debt.
Smith has done a wonderful job. We get interpretations of LS as Neitzschean, as atheist, as agnostic rationalist, as a defender of the Jewish faith, as a follower of Socrates. The odd thing about LS is that he was all of those things. He managed to keep all those differences in a remarkable creative tension because he was that rare thing- a first rate thinker who was also a brilliant and deeply sympathetic exegete.
Whether you are new to the reading of Strauss and looking for a roadmap or someone looking to deepen their reading of LS, this book is should be on your list. It is altogether satisfying. I recently created a Listmania of secondary sources on LS that might be useful to further reading. Read deeply, my friends. We all got some expanding to do.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intellectual Vexations: From Israel to Strauss, December 4, 2009
In my view, it is altogether fitting that Steven Smith be the editor of this collection; for although, in his other works, he does not concentrate solely on the relationship between Strauss and Israel, he has been one of the pioneers in this area of Strauss scholarship, together with M. Zank and K. Hart Green. It is my contention that Dr. Leo Strauss' work is inseparable from this problem; to say nothing of the fact that in 1947--the year that Heidegger issued his "Letter on Humanism"--Strauss said that he re-oriented his project, there is more than an accidental relationship between Strauss and Judaism; the problem of Judaism is, in fact, the heart and core of the series of essays published as "Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy" one of Strauss' last and most enigmatic collections--and anyone who doubts this should note that the massive center of that work hinges upon four figures of towering significance for Strauss:Friedrich Nietzsche, Maimonides, Xenophon and Machiavelli; the central problem that these thinkers address, it appears, is the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem: with the essay by that name--"Athens and Jerusalem": Some Preliminary Reflections"--,also appearing in the center of that most enigmatic work, Strauss has invited us to consider in what way these thinkers are related to Israel and revelation; there is also a missing figure of towering significance for Strauss at the heart of that work--Benedict Spinoza, or Maimonides' great rival for throne and alter;nay two philosophers are missing, for Plato does not appear in the center either--is Plato somehow supplanted by Nietzsche or the reverse? The great issue and central animating problematic of that work, therefore, would appear to be the following dichotomies: Philosophy or Faith, Athens or Jerusalem, Spinoza or Maimonides, Xenophon or Machiavelli and Nietzsche or Strauss. Strauss' life's work, thus, would appear to have its greatest center of gravity in two mutually exclusive worlds, but nonetheless two worlds in contention with one another. There is no simple answer to the question "What did Leo Strauss think should be done about this tension?" and there is no simple answer as to whether in his mind the, perhaps,"noble delusion" of faith was inferior to the, perhaps,"noble delusion of reason." With all of this on the hermeneutic plate, one is sure to need some assistance, a companion, and no better companion than Steven Smith could have been chosen; he would agree, perhaps with my schematic of this centrality of Judaism and its great rivals. Many other authors could have guided the new generation of Strauss scholars and philosophers, but many of them would have dismissed the centrality of Judaism as one such philosopher of whom I am aware did--by saying that Strauss' relationship to Judaism and the Hebrew tradition was something of a passing "flirtation." This, I feel certain, is either a monumental error or exotericism and rhetoric because the philosopher in question knows better; he dissembled in that instance or he does not appreciate, to the degree that Strauss did, the centrality of Judaism; and it is not my belief that the issue of "philosophy versus poetry" is reducible to the other dichotomies I illustrated, nor is it my belief that Strauss so viewed the phenomena. Just as young men err in their judgement often and say too much, so too can older men so err and say too little. Smith does not make this mistake: he carefully cultivates the ground upon which this issue is sown in Strauss' work, however much in so doing, he presents thoughts out of season; if no other Strauss scholar (and I make a distinction between Strauss-scholar and "Straussian": but Strauss-scholars can also be philosophic or philosophers even while dogmatic "Straussians" can never be) had the courage to make this issue central, as Smith does in his work, Mr. Strauss' life's work would never receive a proper reception;only the "pitiable rump" would be exposed. No one of philosophic competence could glance at "Studies in Platoinic Political Philosophy" and conclude that Jerusalem is a mere "flirtation" for this would be obscurantist: What could have caused such a narrowing of vision, I cannot fathom. But I can say that Smith more than rectifies this capital error. We should be grateful that Mr. Smith lived and wrote (SPPP, final page).Plato's Sophist (Carthage Reprint)The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry: Studies in Ancient ThoughtTheological Politics v. Philosophical Politics: Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and the Re-orientation of PostmodernityTheological Politics v. Philosophical Politics: Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and the Re-orientation of Postmodernity
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3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Straussian endgame, November 15, 2009
The recently published "Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss" isn't the best place to start for those interested in the musings of this notorious (and notoriously obscure) philosopher.
For a better introduction to Leo Strauss and the intellectual movement he spawned, see "The truth about Leo Strauss" by Catherine and Michael Zuckert. True, their book is partisan, pro-Straussian and polemical, but nevertheless informative.
But, of course, the sine qua non of Straussian studies are the three books by Shadia Drury on the subject, "The political ideas of Leo Strauss", "Leo Strauss and the American right" and "Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics". Drury is implacably hostile to Strauss, and naturally haven't been invited to contribute to the companion volume. For a more personal (and yes, gossipy) look at Strauss and the Straussians, see Anne Norton's "Leo Strauss and the politics of American empire".
All contributors to "The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss" seem to be followers of Leo Strauss. What I found most fascinating is that they often *confirm* the main accusations made by Strauss' critics. Drury sees Strauss as a covert nihilist, whose ideas were close to the fascistic existentialism and decisionism of Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, and indirectly to postmodernism. Thus, Strauss' conservative "return to the ancients" was simply an exoteric cover for a very different kind of message. In their book "The truth about Leo Strauss", the Zuckerts claim that this is a very curious and recent reading of Strauss.
It is not.
In this volume, Michael Zuckert admits that many prominent Straussians read Strauss exactly in this manner!
When will these people stop their silly pretenses, I wonder?
Another contributor to the companion, Lawrence Lampert, enthusiastically quotes private letters in which Strauss claims to have discovered an esoteric message in both Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides and Maimonides. Lampert further believes that Strauss himself had an esoteric message, and was at bottom a Nietzschean. Stanley Rosen (who also wrote an article for this book) apparently goes one step further: Strauss didn't believe philosophy was possible at all. Even his philosophical musings were exoteric. It also seems as if most Straussians agree with the idea that Plato didn't really mean what he said in his dialogues. Justice, the perfect city, the realm of ideas, the immortal soul...all that was just exoteric window-dressing. The real Plato, it seems, was an atheist or agnostic, who believed the exact opposite of what he wrote. Perhaps even a nihilist? However, he chose not to divulge the harsh truth in order to save society from implosion.
But these are *exactly* the ideas Drury criticizes Strauss of having!
Several contributors quote a letter in which Strauss seems to be suggesting that the only alternative to Nazism is "Roman" and "imperial". Strauss also believed that wars are inevitable and cannot be abolished, and that all societies are necessarily "closed".
Of course, "The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss" also includes articles giving a more moderate interpretation of the old man. Yet, it nevertheless feels as if the matter has been settled. Drury was right, it seems. The entire book feels like a Straussian endgame.
The most interesting articles in this volume are: "Leo Strauss: The Outlines of a Life" by Steven B. Smith, "Strauss's Recovery of Esotericism" by Lawrence Lampert, "Leo Strauss's Qualified Embrace of Liberal Democracy" by William A. Galston and "Straussians" by Michael Zuckert.
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by Catherine H. Zuckert
