Does the Skull of the "Dragon Man" Denisovan Support the Human Self-Domestication Hypothesis?

 

A Video on the "Dragon Man" Skull That Has Been Recently Identified by DNA Evidence as Denisovan

Four years ago, I wrote about the "Dragon Man" fossil skull found in the Dragon River region of northeastern China.  This week new studies of this skull have been published in Cell (Qiaomei Fu et al. 2025) and Science (Qiaomei Fu et al. 2025b) showing that the DNA in this fossilized skull identifies it as one of the Denisovans, a group of humans that split from the Neanderthal line and survived for hundreds of thousands of years before going extinct.  Carl Zimmer (2025) has written a good article on this research.

Denisovan fossils were first discovered in 2010 in the Denisova Cave in Siberia.  Since then, other Denisovan fossils have been found in a high-altitude cave in Tibet, in a cave in Laos, and in both the highlands and lowlands of New Guinea, which indicates that these people were flexible enough to live in a wide range of environments.

Billions of people today carry Denisovan DNA, inherited from human interbreeding with Denisovans hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Until now the Denisovan fossils have been a few small fragments--half a broken jaw, a finger bone, a small fragment of a skull, three loose teeth, and four chips of bone.  But now the identification of the Dragon Man skull as Denisovan allows us for the first time to see what a Denisovan face looked like.

The Dragon Man skull's cranial capacity is around 1,420 cubic centimeters, which puts it within the range of modern humans.  But there are some differences in the fossil skulls that point to ways that Homo sapiens surpasses other Homo species.  One of the most evident differences is in the brow ridges.  Notice how far the brow ridge of Dragon Man projects from the face, much farther out than for a typical Homo sapiens skull.  A similar difference can be seen even within the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens.  The older human skulls show a more prominent brow ridge than the younger human skulls.  Men tend to have thicker, more overhanging brow ridges than women, which is caused by men having higher levels of testosterone than women during their development, particularly during puberty.  So we can say that the skulls of Homo sapiens are more "feminized" than the skulls of other Homo species like Dragon Man, just as younger human skulls are more "feminized" than older human skulls.  You can see this craniofacial feminization in these human skulls:

On the left, you see a 110,000 to 90,000 years-old human male in lateral (top) and frontal (bottom) views, compared to that of a recent African male (right).  The older skull on the left shows the large brow ridges and long and narrow, masculinized face characteristic of Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic-associated humans, as compared to the more feminized face of recent humans.

As I indicated in my previous post, this can be seen as evidence for the Human Self-Domestication Hypothesis: just as some wild animals have evolved through domestication to become tame animals living around human beings, so have human beings domesticated themselves in that ancient human ancestors were selected for being less aggressive and more socially tolerant individuals; and thus human beings have evolved by self-domestication through what Brian Hare has called "survival of the friendliest."  Some of the evidence for this is found in our anatomy, particularly in our faces.

The neurotransmitters and hormones that mediate aggressiveness have effects on skeletal development, particularly in craniofacial growth and development.  So if there has been evolutionary selection for social tolerance--for survival of the friendliest--we can expect to see changes in skeletal morphology, so that in human evolution younger human skulls are more "feminized" than older human skulls.

This could explain why Homo sapiens has survived to the present, while the other Homo species--like the Denisovans--have gone extinct.  Through self-domestication, human ancestors were selected for being less aggressive and more socially cooperative individuals.  Because of this increase in social tolerance, people in densely populated groups could cooperate with one another rather than fall into conflict.  This would allow for increasing human populations with dense social networks, so that more people interacting with one another promoted the generation, retention, and diffusion of cultural innovations, which would stimulate complex symbolic and cultural behavior as indicated by language, art, ornamentation, hunting and fishing technology, music, and long-distance trade.

The Denisovans like Dragon Man failed to achieve this, and consequently they went extinct except for some of their DNA that survives today in Homo sapiens because of ancient interbreeding between the different hominid species.

REFERENCES

Qiaomei Fu et al. 2025a. "Denisovan Mitochondrial DNA from Dental Calculus of the >146,000-year-old Harbin Cranium." Cell 188: 1-8.

Qiaomei Fu et al.  2025b. "The Proteome of the Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin Individual." Science (June 19).

Zimmer, Carl. 2025. "Mysterious Ancient Humans Now Have a Face." The New York Times (June 18).

"No Kings!" Is the Waa-Bark of America's Chimpanzee Politics of Resistance to Trump

Last Saturday, we saw a massive display of chimpanzee political rhetoric.  Subordinate chimpanzees utter pant-grunts to signal their fear and submission before a dominant chimp.  But subordinates can also utter waa-barks to signal their defiance of a dominant chimp.  If enough subordinates scream their waa-barks, and if the dominant chimp does not have a sufficiently strong coalition of supporters, he can be overthrown.  The five million people in the "No Kings" protests against Trump were shouting their waa-barks.  The people at Trump's military parade celebrating his birthday were pant-grunting their submission to Trump.  But reporters noticed that the number of spectators at the parade was small, and many of them were looking at their phones to see images of the massive crowds at the "No Kings" protests.  The waa-barks were louder than the pant-grunts.

Although chimpanzees do not have language, they do communicate with one another through sounds, postures, and facial expressions that convey information.  Often that information is about social rank.  An alpha male might engage in a loud display of intimidation that asserts his dominance over the group.  Other chimps might respond to this by signaling their submission to him.  Or they might respond with signs of resistance and defiance.  And some might even signal that they want to overthrow him.  Thus chimps engage in political rhetoric, because they try to persuade one another as to how their social order should be organized.  

We could also identify this chimpanzee political rhetoric as Lockean insofar as subordinate chimpanzees can protest against despotic dominance by the alpha male and thus limit his power, which moves towards the egalitarian social arrangement seen in human hunter-gatherer bands with an egalitarian style of hierarchy in which the leader is only primus inter pares ("first among equals").  This is what Locke saw in the state of nature in which all men are by nature equally free.  Not that all are absolutely equal, because some will have higher status than others, and some will become leaders of their social groups.  But that all adults have the natural right to be free from being unduly subordinated to anyone else without their consent, and that they have the natural right to punish those who threaten their life, liberty, or property (Second Treatise, pars. 4-10, 54, 94, 105).  

To explain the Darwinian evolution of this human state of nature, we should expect to find precursors of this human egalitarianism in our pre-human primate ancestors.  And if we assume that the common ancestor of humans and the African great apes was similar to a chimpanzee, then we might expect to see evolutionary preadaptations for an egalitarian style of dominance in chimpanzee groups.  In fact, as Christopher Boehm has argued, we can see in chimpanzees similarities to the ambivalent political nature of human hunter-gatherers that shows a tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance (Boehm 1993, 1999).  

Dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to seek the power over others that comes from superior rank in a group.  The political life of primates is organized around dominance hierarchies in which the old tend to have dominance over the young and males tend to have dominance over females, although females can also have a dominance hierarchy, and sometimes coalitions of females can resist male dominance.  This is a political universal for chimpanzees, both in the wild and in captivity; and for human beings throughout history.  Winning or losing dominance is determined by patterns of coalition formation that depend on shifting circumstances and individual decisions.

Deference is the natural propensity of individuals to submit to those who are dominant.  As political universals, deference is the correlative of dominance.  Among the various species of political primates, there are distinctive behavioral cues, both verbal and nonverbal, by which subordinates defer to dominants.

Counter-dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to resist being dominated.  Among some primates, subordinate individuals can resist excessive dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

The variation in this behavior creates differences in dominance style across species.  As Frans de Waal has observed, rhesus monkeys show a "despotic dominance style" in which subordinates cannot challenge dominants; but chimpanzees show an "egalitarian dominance style" in which subordinates can restrain dominants (de Waal 1996).  Dominant chimpanzees are expected to mediate conflicts within the group and to lead the group in conflicts with other groups.  Dominant chimpanzees can be challenged or even deposed if they do not properly carry out their conflict-mediation role.

Like chimpanzee politics, human politics shows a dominance hierarchy that can be egalitarian in style, based on the principle that leaders are only first among equals.  This egalitarianism is most evident among human hunter-gatherers who use various kinds of sanctions (from ridicule and disobedience to ostracism and execution) to punish leaders who become too despotic in their dominance.  This resistance to dominance was probably a crucial part of human evolutionary history in the Paleolithic era (from about two million years ago to 10,000 years ago).  But with the establishment of large bureaucratic states based on agricultural production, which began more than 5,000 years ago, many states have been more despotic than egalitarian.  The emergence and spread of Lockean liberal democracies over the past three centuries is in some ways a return to the egalitarian dominance of the foraging way of life in which subordinates limit the power of dominants.

To the old question in political philosophy as to whether human beings are naturally hierarchical or naturally egalitarian, the answer from biopolitical science is that human beings are both.  Niccolo Machiavelli was right to see that human political nature is torn by the tension between the propensity of the few to dominance and the propensity of the many to submit to dominance while also resisting oppressive dominance.  The history of political practice and political thought turns on this natural ambivalence interacting over time with particular political circumstances and decisions.

As an illustration of this political ambivalence among chimpanzees, here is Jane Goodall's description of an incident she observed in July of 1964 in Gombe:

"Mike, the new alpha, rests in the shade of a tree.  A sudden crashing in the undergrowth heralds the arrival of Goliath, recently deposed from the top position.  Mike does not move as Goliath charges flat out toward him, dragging a huge branch.  At the last moment Goliath turns aside, swings into a nearby tree, and sits motionless.  Only now does Mike begin to display, swaying the vegetation, hurling a few rocks, then climbing into Goliath's tree and swaying branches there.  When he stops, Goliath displays again, leaping ever closer to his adversary until Mike responds.  For a few moments both are wildly swaying foliage within 2 meters of each other; but there is no fight.  They swing to the ground and charge off through the undergrowth, running parallel, then sit staring at each other.  Goliath stands upright and rocks a sapling; Mike hurtles past, throwing a large rock.  For the next twenty-three minutes the performance continues, and during the whole episode the only physical contact between them is when one is hit by the end of a bough swayed by the other.  Finally, after a three-minute pause, Goliath moves rapidly toward Mike, crouches beside him with loud, submissive pant-grunts, and begins to groom him vigorously.  For half a minute, Mike ignores him, then turns and grooms his vanquished rival with equal intensity.  For more than an hour, they groom until both are relaxed and peaceful" (Goodall 1986, 409).

Notice the ambivalent political rhetoric in this incident.  The male dominance hierarchy is determined by the directionality of displays and pant-grunting among the adult males.  Goodall has kept a quantitative record of this for many years so that she can track the ever-changing history of the dominance hierarchy. If an alpha male is secure in his dominance, he displays towards the others in the group, and he receives pant-grunts from the others; but he never pant-grunts toward any of them.  When Goliath displays towards Mike, Goliath is challenging him, attempting to take the alpha position.  Both are feeling aggressive and fearful at the same time.  Each is trying to bluff down the other.  But while Goliath wants dominance, his fear of Mike finally drives him to signal his submission through pant-grunting; and Mike accepts his submission by reconciling with him.

Displays are more common than physical attacks, because chimps would rather avoid the danger of serious physical injuries that come from attacks.  Charging displays are threats that serve to maintain or challenge the existing order of dominance.  But reversals in rank among the males are usually the result of physical fights.  And while size and strength are important for success in displays and fights, psychological traits--such as intelligence, ingenuity, boldness, persistence, and shrewdness in forming coalitions--are crucial for success.  Mike was actually one of the smaller adult males when he overthrew Goliath, but he figured out how to use empty kerosene cans in his noisy charging displays to shock the other males and throw them into confusion until they submitted to him.  As I indicated in a previous post, Boehm and Goodall have compared Donald Trump's bombastic rhetoric to Mike's displays.

The vocal rhetoric of chimpanzees is complex.  Goodall and other primatologists have identified at least 32 distinct calls that convey particular emotions or feelings (Goodall 1986, 127; Arcadi 2018, 116-23).  One of them is the pant-grunt that Goliath uttered to signal a feeling of social apprehension and submission.  Another is the waa-bark that signals anger and defiance.  Dominant individuals can use waas as a warning to subordinates.  But from his careful study of chimp videotaped vocalizations, Boehm has concluded that most waas are used by subordinates to express their defiance of dominants (Boehm 1999, 164-69).

Boehm has seen this illustrated by what de Waal reports in his studies of the chimps in the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Georgia.  When new adult males were introduced into the community, the Yerkes females acted as a power coalition that rejected males seeking the alpha male position.  Finally, they accepted Jimoh as the alpha male.  But when he acted as a bully, the females punished him.  

For example, one day Jimoh saw that Socko, an adolescent male, was mating with one of Jomoh's favorite females.  Jimoh chased Socko around the enclosure and refused to stop.  Socko was screaming and defecating in fear.

Several females nearby began to waa bark.  They looked around to see the reaction of others.  When others began to join in the waa barking, the intensity of their protests became deafening.  Finally, Jimoh got the message.  He broke off his attack to avoid any further attacks from the females.  It was as though the chimps were taking a vote, and Jimoh had lost the vote.  If Jimoh had not stopped his attack, he might have been overthrown and even killed.

Here are the evolved primate roots of Lockean political rhetoric, in which we see the political ambivalence in the tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.

Last Saturday, we saw a great debate between the deference to Trump at his military parade and the counter-dominance of resistance to Trump at the "No Kings" protests.

Steven Cheung, the communications director for Trump, has said: "The so-called No Kings protests have been a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance."  Of course, that is what he has to say--he has to tell those of us who attended one of the protests that we must not believe what we saw with our own eyes.

Like I say, that's chimpanzee politics.

(Some of the material in this post comes from a previous post.)

REFERENCES

Arcadi, Adam. 2018. Wild Chimpanzees: Social Behavior of an Endangered Species. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Boehm, Christopher. 1993. "Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy." Current Anthropology 34:227-254.

Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goodall, Jane. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

de Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

June 14, 2025: The Day Donald Trump Lost the Consent of the People

 As I have thought more about the "No Kings" protests on June 14, and what I saw in the Grand Rapids protest, the more I am inclined to think that was a turning point for the resistance to Trump's dictatorship.

As many as five million Americans participated in the "No Kings" protests across America in over 1,500 communities.  This was possibly the single biggest mass protest in American history.  At the same time, the military parade for Trump's birthday in Washington was a pathetic flop.  If you don't think so, just Google the images of the "No Trumps" protests and the military parade.  Look at Trump and Melania.  Do they look enthusiastic about the parade?  Decide for yourself.  Look at the images of people scattered over the grass and the stands.  Does that look like a big turnout for Trump?  Why were there no Trump supporters at the Grand Rapids "No Kings" demonstrations--or at other "No Kings" gatherings as far as I can tell?

Why didn't my wife and I see Trump supporters at the Grand Rapids rally?  Were they all in Washington for the military parade?  Well, apparently not.  Because the parade was not well attended.

Now, I understand that most of us might assume that overturning a monarchic dictator like Trump might require that a great majority of people would have to rebel against his rule.  But as Chenoweth has indicated, as few as 3.5 percent of the people actively involved in a resistance movement might be enough  to overturn a dictatorial regime.

Most human beings are passively deferential to whatever regime rules over them.  A smaller group are actively supportive of the regime--like Trump's fervent supporters.  But that leaves an active third or so of the people who might actively resist--by protesting--like the "No Kings" protesters.

Donald Trump is aware of that.  That's why he's so visibly disturbed by the fact that his people did not turn out on June 14--either to  support his military parade or to harass the "No Kings" protests.

Popular Lockeans at the "No Kings" Protests Against Trump

 

On February 19, 2025, this picture was posted on the official White House "X" account.  Trump had posted: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD.  Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED.  LONG LIVE THE KING!"

My wife and I participated in the "No Kings" protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  This was one of over 2,000 protest gatherings across the United States attracting millions of participants.  We were surprised by the size of the crowd.  There appeared to be something over 20,000 people, which is about ten percent of the population of the city of Grand Rapids.  The first rally was in the park on the Grand River in front of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum.  When we arrived, the park was so packed with people that it was impossible for us to get in, which was also true for thousands of other people milling around the area.

We were also surprised that there were no police anywhere, as if the Grand Rapids police had decided that there was no reason to expect any disruptions from the protest crowds.  Moreover, there were no "Proud Boys" or "Michigan militia" types carrying guns who might have caused trouble.  Later in the afternoon, we heard about the political assassination in Minnesota that reportedly caused some of the "No Kings" protests in Minnesota to be cancelled.

These protests were scheduled for June 14 to counter Trump's military parade in Washington to celebrate his birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.  I watched the parade on CSPAN.  The CSPAN cameras showed remarkably small crowds in the bleachers and on the grass.  Of course, the White House claimed that over 250,000 people attended.  But if that were true, the Mall would have been completely covered with people, which was not the case.

To me, Trump's military parade was really dull and lifeless.  Many of the spectators at the parade showed the same reaction.  Here's a picture of some of them:

The "No Kings" protests raise at least two kinds of questions.  First, what motivates millions of people to turn out for these mass protests?  What do they expect to achieve?  And how likely are they to succeed?  

Secondly, what's wrong with monarchy?  Why do most Americans--and perhaps most people around the world today--assume that monarchy is bad?  Should we take seriously the argument of some intellectuals supporting Trump (such as Curtis Yarvin) that monarchy is a better form of government than democracy, and therefore Americans should be happy to have Donald Trump as their king?

NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE AS LOCKEAN NATURAL PUNISHMENT OF DICTATORS

The people participating in these mass protests can be identified as "popular Lockeans."  I have written about that term as used by historian T. H. Breen to describe the ordinary Americans who supported the American Revolution in acting according to the principles of John Locke even though most of them had never read Locke.  In the state of nature, Locke thought, everyone has the "executive power of the law of nature," which is the natural right to punish those who violate the law of nature; and this can be expressed in both violent and nonviolent resistance to tyranny.  The American Revolution began with American nonviolent resistance from 1761 to 1775, followed by the violent resistance in the Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783.  June 14, 1775 was the day that George Washington was formally appointed Commander of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.  In July of that year, the "Appeal to Heaven" Flag was adopted as a battle flag for the American Army, which explicitly invoked Locke's term for revolutionary violence.

Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues see the "No Kings" protests as part of the growing nonviolent resistance to Trump.  As indicated in some previous posts, Chenoweth has compiled an impressive data set (from 1900 to the present) for violent and nonviolent resistance movements that shows that every campaign of nonviolent protest that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful.  As indicated on the "No Kings" website, the organizers are inspired by the "3.5 principle"--believing that mobilizing only a small proportion of the people in mass protests can overturn a dictatorial ruler.

Over the past 40 years, scholars like Chenoweth and Gene Sharp have developed practical rules for organizing successful nonviolent resistance movements.  One of the most important features of this is avoiding violence by having well-trained "marshals" at every protest whose job is to manage the crowd to suppress any disturbance that might become violent.  We saw those marshals at work at the Grand Rapids protest.

The political theory of nonviolent resistance is Lockean in being founded on the fundamental principle that all governmental authority depends on the consent of the governed, and therefore governments fall when the people withdraw their consent through nonviolent or violent resistance.

As Chenoweth has indicated, protest movements succeed when they gain momentum.  And momentum can be measured through a simple law of physics:  momentum equals mass times velocity (p = mv).  The momentum of dissent is a product of participation (mass) and the number of protest events in a week (velocity).  So as the number of participants in the "No Kings" movement increases, and as the number of protests per week increase, the movement gains momentum, and thus becomes more successful.

The test will come when law enforcement and military people are ordered to shoot the protestors.  Will they obey their orders?  If they disobey, then the protestors have won.  Even if they obey, this will provoke a moral revulsion in the country that will draw more people into the protests.

Another test will come in the mid-term elections in November of 2026.  If opponents of Trump take control of the two Houses of Congress, then the Congress can impeach him.  If Trump's Republicans cancel the elections, then the popular movement to overturn Trump's rule becomes stronger.

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF MONARCHY

But why "No Kings"?  Why are so many Americans not persuaded by Yarvin's argument that Robert Filmer's defense of divine-right monarchy was superior to Locke's theory of government by popular consent?

As I have indicated in previous posts, monarchy was the most common form of government for over 5,000 years, but then around 1900, the number of nonmonarchies began to surpass the number of monarchies.  There are two possible reasons for this.  First, monarchy has always depended on perceiving society as a rigid hierarchy in the chain of command, in which everyone knew his place.  At the top was a ruling elite--the monarch and one or two percent of the people who were nobles and priests.  At the bottom, about 80-90% of the population were peasants.  One possible answer as to why this premodern conception of natural and divine hierarchy has been undermined in modern culture is that modernity has adopted the Lockean evolutionary symbolic niche construction of the bourgeois culture of equal liberty.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

Consequently, as I have written previously, the few monarchic governments that survive today--like the British monarchy of King Charles III--are not real monarchies because the king is only a ceremonial head of state without any absolute power.

A second reason for the decline of monarchy is that the development of mass communications has made monarchy unnecessary.  In the past, democratic or republican forms of government were possible only in small societies where the people or their representatives could meet all together at one public assembly--Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic, for example.  Larger societies were so disconnected that they needed monarchy as a focal point to which everyone could look as the central authority.  But then with the growth of communications technology--the printing press, newspapers, national postal systems, the telegraph, radio, television, and finally the internet--large societies have become so highly mobilized and interconnected that there is less need for a monarch as a focal point for authority.  

The internet has made it easy for popular mass movements like the "No Kings" protests to form across large societies and even around the globe.  And that's why it's so hard to preserve autocratic rule in the modern world without shutting down or at least censoring the internet.

How Leo Strauss Predicted the Nietzschean Nihilism of Trump's Intellectuals

                                                                          Leo Strauss

Francis Fukuyama has published an essay for Persuasion on "A Chilling Prediction by Leo Strauss."  He reproduces an excerpt from a lecture on "German Nihilism" that Strauss gave in 1941 at the New School for Social Research.  In his prefatory remarks, Fukuyama says that we should find this text "chilling" because Strauss's intellectual analysis of the young German nihilists supporting Hitler's Nazism describes perfectly the thinking of those far-right intellectuals who today are supporting Trump.

Just like the German nihilists described by Strauss, Fukuyama observes, American far-right thinkers today--like Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin, and Costin Alamariu ("Bronze Age Pervert")--want to destroy liberalism because it is morally degrading in promoting the soft hedonism of the open society rather than the hard heroism of the closed society. 

This points to Strauss's primary claim in his lecture:  "German nihilism desires the destruction of modern civilization as far as modern civilization has a moral meaning." He explained: 

It is a moral protest.  That protest proceeds from the conviction that the internationalism inherent in modern civilization, or, more precisely, that the establishment of a perfectly open society which is as it were the goal of modern civilization, and therefore all aspirations directed toward that goal, are irreconcilable with the basic demands of moral life.  That protest proceeds from the conviction that the root of all moral life is essentially and therefore eternally the closed society; from the conviction that the open society is bound to be, if not immoral, at least amoral: the meeting ground of seekers of pleasure, of gain, of irresponsible power, indeed of any kind of irresponsibility and lack of seriousness.

Strauss saw that the intellectual godfather of this German nihilism is Friedrich Nietzsche--the Nietzsche who scorned the ignoble pleasure-seeking life of the "Last Man" based on the slave morality dictated by the Christian principle of the equal dignity of all human beings, which denied the master morality of the few noble masters fit to rule over the multitude of inferior human beings.  In foreseeing the future emergence of a new nobility of those few superhuman higher men entitled to enslave the many subhuman lower men, Nietzsche has had a seductive appeal to those young nihilists who imagine themselves becoming the masters at the top of the natural order of rank in a new hierarchical closed society at war with its liberal enemies.

As Strauss indicated, what made this intellectual attitude "nihilistic" was that while it was clear about what it denied--liberalism--it was not clear about what it affirmed because its preferred alternative to liberalism was vague.  Since its No was more emphatic than its Yes, it was nihilistic in its passion for destruction--for Nothing--without offering any vision of what exactly would replace liberalism.

Similarly, Fukuyama suggests, today's "post-liberals" have no coherent conception of what should replace liberalism.  On the one hand, Deneen and Vermeule seem to want something like Catholic integralism--a Catholic theocracy enforcing a religious morality.  On the other hand, Yarvin and Alamariu are atheists who want to return to some kind of pagan hierarchy enforced by a strong, even tyrannical, government.  All that the two sides have in common is their hatred of liberalism.

This hatred of liberalism is also what moved the German nihilists to support Nazism.  And, as Fukuyama indicates, Strauss seemed to clearly reject Nazism in his 1941 lecture when he identified it as the "lowest, most provincial, most unenlightened and most dishonorable form" of German nihilism.  But still, Strauss argued, liberals needed to understand the nihilistic roots of illiberal politics in order to see the power of the Nietzschean nihilistic critique of liberalism.  Fukuyama thinks the same is true today in America: liberals need to understand why the American far-right intellectuals hate liberalism and why that hatred of liberalism as rooted in Nietzschean nihilism has such an appeal for many people today--particularly, the young men supporting Trump.  

Actually, Fukuyama does not explicitly mention Trump in his remarks, but the implicit reference to Trump is clear.  It should be noted, however, that while Fukuyama explains the far-right intellectuals supporting Trump as illiberal nihilists, he has explained Trump himself as motivated not by any ideology but by what Nietzsche called ressentiment--"acute resentment of others based on wounded pride, perceived disregard, fears of inadequacy, and a desire to exact revenge on those who had earlier failed to pay adequate respect."  I have explained this resentment as an expression of Trump's chimpanzee grandiose narcissism.  Moreover, Fukuyama has suggested, the core of the MAGA movement is mostly moved not by any ideology--like the illiberal nihilism of the far-right intellectuals--but by the shared resentment of people who think they have not been respected by those who belong to the elites and look down on them with disdain.  This explains why Trump's staunchest supporters will remain loyal to him even when they suffer economically from his policies--such as high tariffs that will harm many of Trump's voters.

I agree with everything Fukuyama says here.  By the way, I also agree with Fukuyama's defense of liberalism as first announced in his 1989 "End of History?" article.  

But I do think Fukuyama misses three crucial flaws in Strauss's reasoning that should come out of a careful reading of his "German Nihilism" lecture that are pertinent to our understanding of, and our response to, both German and American nihilism.  

First, Fukuyama does not notice Strauss's quiet endorsement of the "young nihilists" that Will Altman and others have identified as evidence that Strauss was attracted to the nihilism of the Nazis.  

Second, Fukuyama also does not notice that in naming Nietzsche as the godfather of illiberal nihilism, Strauss failed to recognize Nietzsche's support for liberalism in the writings of his middle period (particularly, Human, All Too Human).  

Third, Strauss had also failed to see how philosophic proponents of liberalism like John Locke and Adam Smith had shown that liberalism cultivates the moral and intellectual virtues, which refutes the charge of the illiberal nihilists that liberalism must be ignoble and degrading.

Since I have previously elaborated each of these points, I will only briefly summarize them here with links to previous posts and references to the 4th edition of Political Questions (PQ4).

STRAUSS'S NAZISM?

Fukuyama's excerpt from "German Nihilism" does not include this passage:

I have tried to circumscribe the intellectual and moral situation in which a nihilism emerged which was not in all cases base in its origin.  Moreover, I take it for granted that not everything to which the young nihilists objected was unobjectionable, and that not every writer or speaker whom they despised, was respectable. . . . Let us then not hesitate to look for one moment at the phenomenon which I called nihilism, from the point of view of the nihilists. . . . A new reality is in the making; it is transforming the whole world; in the meantime there is: nothing, but--a fertile nothing.

Notice that in taking "the point of view of the nihilists," Strauss actually goes a long way towards endorsing their position: some (most?) of that to which the nihilists objected really was objectionable, and some (most?) of the writers and speakers whom they despised really were despicable.  This is one piece of evidence cited by Will Altman for his provocative claim that Strauss supported Nazi nihilism in its attack on liberalism (PQ4, 491-99).

In "German Nihilism," Strauss took "the point of view of the nihilists" in explaining their argument that an illiberal "closed society" was ennobling, while a liberal "open society" was degrading.  Any reader of Strauss will know that he often embraced this idea that every healthy society--and particularly, the premodern societies like Athens and Sparta--was a closed society as opposed to the modern open societies of liberalism that inevitably became corrupt.  Actually, as I have argued, Athens was a much more open and liberal society than Strauss was willing to admit--that's why the philosophical schools of Plato and Aristotle could flourish in Athens but not in Sparta.

Strauss did not allow "German Nihilism" to be published while he was alive.  It was not published until 1999 (in Interpretation), which was 26 years after his death in 1973.  Was this because he feared that it was too open in suggesting his sympathy for German nihilism?

Similarly, Strauss's praise of Martin Heidegger in "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism" was not published until 1989 (in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism), 16 years after his death.  Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933.  He offered vigorous philosophic defenses of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  And he never apologized for his support of the Nazis--right up to his death in 1976.

Strauss had been a student of Heidegger, and he praised Heidegger as the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.  In "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," he left his reader doubting whether there was any good refutation of Heidegger's Nazi attack on liberalism:

All rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance and power.  One may deplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophic positions which have been shown to be inadequate.  I am afraid that we shall have to make a very great effort in order to find a solid basis for rational liberalism.  Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight.  But here is the great trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.

Notice how emphatic Strauss is in using the word "I" here.  He once explained that one form of esoteric writing was to use the word "we" to seemingly endorse a common opinion, rather than saying "I," which suggested that one was truly endorsing that opinion. 

This is part of the evidence supporting Altman's argument that Strauss saw himself as the culmination of the "Third Wave of Modernity" that overthrew liberalism--first Nietzsche, then Heidegger, and finally Strauss.

Although I am not fully persuaded by Altman, I am persuaded that he has proven that Strauss often implied some endorsement of the Nazi attack on liberalism, and he never publicly and emphatically rejected Nazi nihilism and affirmed liberalism--as did some of his friends like Hans Jonas.  That was a moral and intellectual failure on the part of Strauss. 

NIETZSCHE'S DARWINIAN LIBERALISM

Another of Strauss's failures was in saying that Nietzsche initiated the Third Wave of Modernity that would lead to the illiberal nihilism of Nazism.  Although this might be true for the early and late writings of Nietzsche that were so often praised by the Nazis, it is not true for the writings of the middle period, and particularly Human, All Too Human.

In this book, Nietzsche defended a Darwinian liberalism that rejected many of the main ideas of his later writing--such as the celebration of the Ubermensch (the Superman or Overman), which became a theme for the Nazis.  

One can make a good case (as Bruce Detwiler does) for "Dionysian aristocratic radicalism" as the political teaching of Nietzsche in his early and late writings.  But one also needs to recognize that Nietzsche's endorsement of liberal democracy rooted in Darwinian evolution in the writings of his middle period contradicts what he says in his other writings.  Then, if one compares those two teachings, one can make a good argument that Nietzsche's Darwinian aristocratic liberalism is morally and intellectually superior to his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism (PQ4, 457-60).  This is Nietzsche's defense of liberalism against the attack of the German nihilists.

Strauss failed to see this.

LOCKE AND SMITH ON LIBERAL VIRTUES

Strauss also failed to see how Locke and Smith had made powerful arguments for liberalism's moral and intellectual virtues.  One of Strauss's most influential pieces of writing--particularly among the far-right intellectual critics of liberalism--is his interpretation of Locke in Natural Right and History, which presents Lockean liberalism as promoting a vulgar and soul-deadening soft hedonism, which Strauss famously called "a joyless quest for joy."  This is the Locke that "post-liberals" like Patrick Deneen have scorned.

But as I have argued, this ignores much of what Locke wrote about how a free society secures the liberty that allows for the cultivation of moral and intellectual excellence--including the freedom to live the philosophic life (for people like Strauss!) (PQ4, 489-91).  So, while critics of liberalism like Deneen insist that Lockean liberalism teaches "pursuit of immediate gratification" and the "absence of restraints upon one's desires," he says nothing about how Locke contradicts this claim in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.  In that book, Locke stresses the importance of parents educating their children so that they have a sense of shame in caring about their good reputation (secs. 56, 61, 78).  Locke says that "the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best though the appetite lean the other way" (sec. 33). "It seems plain to me that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them" (sec. 38). Children must be taught that "covetousness and the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of" is "the root of all evil" (sec. 110). 

Above all, Locke insists, children must be taught and habituated to show "civility"--respect and good will to all people (secs. 66-67, 70, 109, 117, 143-44). Here Locke's emphasis on the need for "civility" is part of what Norbert Elias identified as the "civilizing process" promoted by early modern liberalism to overcome the incivility, violence, and corrupt manners of medieval pre-modern Europe.  Deneen and Strauss are silent about all of this.

They are also silent about Smith's argument about how a liberal society--"allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice"--promotes the moral and intellectual virtues.  Strauss said almost nothing about Smith, but Strauss's thinking about liberal political philosophy shaped the interpretation of Smith developed by Joseph Cropsey, Strauss's student and colleague.  Cropsey claimed that in Smith's "commercial society," commerce takes the place of virtue.  But as I have indicated, Cropsey ignored or played down everything Smith said--particularly, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments--about how the moral and intellectual virtues are cultivated in a free society (PQ4, 340-48).

Moreover, Cropsey was completely silent about how Charles Darwin saw that Smith's moral philosophy was confirmed by his scientific theory of moral evolution, and how this has been deepened by the evolutionary studies of morality over the 150 years since Darwin's Descent of Man (PQ4, 316-28).

Strauss and the Straussians have failed to see how a careful reading of Nietzsche, Locke, and Smith can reveal the nobility of liberalism in securing the liberty that makes virtue possible, thus refuting the moral critique of liberalism by the illiberal nihilists, including those today who try to provide the intellectual justification for Trump's illiberalism.