Was Leo Strauss the German Stranger?

In my graduate seminar on Leo Strauss, we are now reading William Altman's The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism (Lexington Books, 2011).  Our first discussion of this book was instructive.  All of our discussions in this class have been good, for which I am grateful to the students--David Bahr, Nick Blazer, Anthony Clarke, John Grove, Todd Noelle, Kate Paton, Jesse Peck, and Mike Tolhurst.

Altman's book is the most meticulous, rigorous, and stimulating work on Strauss that I have ever seen.  More than that, it's also an insightful study of the "crisis of liberalism" in the twentieth century, considered against the background of the whole history of political philosophy from Plato to the present.  The depth of Altman's thinking becomes even more impressive when one reads his other book that has just been published--Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the "Republic" (Lexington Books, 2012).

Since I am just beginning to study Altman's work, I haven't yet made up my mind about his arguments.  But I will begin--in this and in some subsequent posts--to raise some questions coming out of my seminar.

Altman's bold claim is that Leo Strauss was a Jewish Nazi. 

He calls Strauss "the German Stranger," because he compares Strauss to the Athenian Stranger in Plato's Laws.  The teaching of the Athenian Stranger corresponds to the teaching of Strauss.  And just as the Athenian Stranger left Athens for Crete, where he sought to impose an anti-democratic regime of repression supported by an atheistic religion that denied Plato's teaching of dualism in the Republic, Strauss left Weimar and eventually settled in the United States, where he sought to subvert liberal democracy while secretly promoting the National Socialist atheism of those like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt.  Strauss pretended to do this as a Platonist, but Strauss's Plato was not a Platonist at all.  Strauss's Plato was an atheist who denied the Theory of the Ideas as based on the dualistic separation of Being and Becoming as belonging to two worlds.  Strauss's Plato was not the true Plato, because he was actually the Athenian Stranger of the Laws.  Plato's Laws was Plato's prediction of Strauss and his Nazi program for attacking liberal democracy.

Altman's critique of Strauss depends fundamentally on his disagreement with Strauss's interpretation of Plato.  On the one hand, Altman defends the traditional interpretation of Plato as a Platonist--as one who defended a metaphysical dualism of two worlds that is compatible with Judeo-Christian dualism, and thus he rejects Strauss's reading of Plato as an atheistic monist who denied the eternal, transcendent reality of the Ideas.  On the other hand, Altman disputes the traditional interpretation of Plato as a firm opponent of democracy, because Altman sees a defense of something close to liberal democracy in the Republic, particularly in Book 8 (557c-62e).

Altman claims that under the influence of those like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Schmitt, Strauss turned against liberal democracy in favor of National Socialism, but he disguised his position as a "return to the ancients," and particularly a return to Plato, which allowed him to attack liberal democracy as a denial of ancient wisdom.

Altman's book is massive--591 pages in small print.  Our first seminar discussion was limited to the Introduction (1-28) and the chapters connecting Strauss to Heidegger (143-94) and to Schmitt (195-234).  Next week, our readings will go further into the book.  As I have indicated, a fully adequate study of Altman's arguments probably needs to include his book on Plato.

At this point, I will only offer a few scattered comments and questions, some of which come from my students.

(1)  My students are impressed by Altman's research and argumentation.  But they are not convinced that the evidence supports Altman's claim that Strauss was actually a Nazi.  My impression is that most of them are willing to concede that Strauss in the 1920s and 1930s flirted with fascist ideas.  For example, Strauss's letter to Karl Lowith of May 19, 1933, appealing to "right-wing principles . . . fascistic, authoritarian, imperial principles," provides such clear evidence for this that many Straussians now admit that Strauss was being seduced by fascist ideas at this time.  But my students are not yet persuaded that the evidence surveyed by Altman proves that Strauss was a Nazi from 1933 to the end of his life.

(2)  If Strauss really was a Nazi, how exactly did he expect to carry out his Nazi project?  Altman is not clear about this.  (Peter Minowitz has made this point in "What Was Leo Strauss?," Perspectives on Political Science, 40 (2011): 218-26, which is the first published Straussian response to Altman.)

Altman explains that "Strauss did what no mere Nazi could have done or even dreamed of doing: he boldly brought his anti-liberal project to the United States. . . . he tirelessly promulgated his 'Platonic' critique of liberal democracy in the belly of the whale" (26).  Apparently, Altman sees this as mostly a negative activity of attacking liberal democracy: "I see the German Stranger's project as primarily destructive; it was the theoretical foundation of Liberal Democracy in general that he sought to annihilate, not some new form of totalitarianism that he aimed to erect."  Altman explains: "it is altogether wrong to think that Strauss meditated the rise of National Socialism in his adoptive home: his goal was less ambitious although no less dangerous as a result.  Strauss was patient, far more so than some of his followers have proved to be.  His purpose was simply to take Germany's western enemy out of the picture: to destroy Liberal Democracy's faith in itself.  In this project, he has been remarkably successful.  In the First World War, a single man in a sealed train had eliminated Germany's eastern enemy: Strauss should be understood as the westward-bound 'Lenin of the Right' in the Second" (516).

Where's the evidence that Strauss "has been remarkably successful" in destroying "Liberal Democracy's faith in itself"?  At the very least, wouldn't Altman have to show that Strauss's leading students have been "remarkably successful" in this?  But surely Harry Jaffa and the "West-Coast Straussians" have been defending liberal democracy, and the "Midwest Straussians" like Martin Diamond have suggested that modern Madisonian liberalism might be defended as superior to premodern thought in promoting human excellence.  Is Altman suggesting that only the "East-Coast Straussians" (Bloom, Pangle, and Mansfield) detected Strauss's true teaching about the need to destroy Liberal Democracy?  But if so, shouldn't Altman explain how they have carried out this "remarkably successful" project?

Would Altman say that those Straussians (like Jaffa and Diamond) who have launched vigorous defenses of liberal democracy have been taken in by the exoteric teaching of Strauss, while ignoring the esoteric teaching that attacks liberal democracy?  Even if that were so, wouldn't that indicate that some of Strauss's most influential students did not try to destroy liberal democracy?  But how then can Altman conclude that Strauss has been "remarkably successful" in his Nazi project if so many of his students have not been advancing that project?

(3)  Is Altman suggesting that Karl Popper's argument for Plato as the original source of modern totalitarianism is at least partially true?  After all, Altman seems to say that Plato's Athenian Stranger really was a proto-Nazi.  Altman rightly draws attention to Strauss's identification of the guardians of the law in Plato's Laws as "secret police" (GS, 25; Strauss, AAPL, 89).  Would Altman say, however, that Popper failed to see the implied defense of liberal democracy in the Republic?  And yet Altman never mentions Popper (but see his Plato, 352-53).

(4)  Altman's reading of Plato's Republic as supporting democracy depends heavily on noting the parallel between the description of democracy in the Republic and Hesiod's Age of Heroes (WA, Plato, 348-58).  Altman picked up this point from Strauss, although Altman says "he doesn't draw the proper conclusions from the parallel he discovered" (294).  But doesn't this at least hint at a Straussian reading of Plato as supporting democracy?  After all, Altman praises Arlene Saxonhouse for developing this idea of Platonic democracy, and she can be identified as leaning towards Straussianism.

(5) Altman writes: "Strauss's discovery that Democracy corresponds to Hesiod's Age of Heroes is one of several great contributions he made to Platonic studies.  Weimar proves to be the Age of Heroes in Germany's history, and had there been any actual German Platonists in the early 1930s, they would have combated Thrasymachus amidst the shadows of the Cave" (13).  But isn't it true that some of the German philosophers who joined the Nazi Party were Kantians who embraced a Platonic conception of eternal values as conforming to the Idea of the Good?  I have written about this in a previous post.

I will have more to say about Altman's book in future posts, which will include a post on historicism and Darwinism.