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.

Altman's Nine Theses on Strauss as the German Stranger

The argument of Will Altman's The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism can be summarized in nine theses:

1. Biblical dualism
2. Biblical liberalism
3. Platonic dualism
4. Platonic liberalism
5. Straussian anti-dualism
6. Straussian anti-liberalism
7. Nazi anti-dualism
8. Nazi anti-liberalism
9. Straussian Nazism

In my comments on these nine theses, there will be some repetition from my previous post on Altman's book.

Altman identifies himself as a Jew, a Christian, a Platonist, and a liberal.  These religious, philosophic, and political commitments support one another, he argues, because the Bible and Plato teach a dualism that provides the metaphysical ground for political liberalism.  Strauss rejects the dualism and the liberalism of the Bible and Plato.  In doing so, Altman concludes, Strauss agrees with the intellectual core of National Socialism--in its nihilistic denial of dualism and liberalism--and thus he became the German Stranger in the United States, seeking to destroy the American enemy of German Nazism.

Altman thus sets a big task for himself.  It's hard to imagine that anyone could provide sufficient evidence and argumentation for all of these claims in one book.  And, indeed, he leaves some of these claims as assertions without much support.

Biblical dualism is one of Altman's less controversial claims.  Given the existence of a transcendent God, reality is divided into "two worlds"--the real world of divinity and the apparent world of ordinary human experience.  This dualistic metaphysics is shared by Judaism and Christianity, because Christianity is originally a Jewish religion.  Here Altman apparently agrees with Nietzsche about the "two worlds" tradition of the Western Biblical culture.

Biblical liberalism is a much more controversial claim.  To support it, he cites only two Biblical verses--1 Samuel 8:7 (on the conflict between the rule of kings and the rule of God) and John 18:36 ("My kingdom is not of this world") (27).  Altman believes that the true solution to the "theological-political problem" is the liberal solution--the separation of religion and politics through religious toleration (527).  It's easier to find this in the New Testament than in the Old Testament, which is why it was easier for Locke to find support for religious toleration in the New Testament than in the Old Testament.  Christian proponents of toleration like Roger Williams contrasted the theocracy of the Jewish polity with the New Testament teaching that Christians were not to expect a legal enforcement of their religion.

In defending Platonic dualism, Altman accepts the traditional interpretation of Plato as teaching "the absolute existence of transcendent Being and the problematic existential status of everything else" (14).  The transcendent peak of Platonic philosophy is the ascent to the Idea of the Good.  This puts Plato in opposition to Aristotle's naturalism.    Plato really is a Platonist, and Aristotle really is an Aristotelian.  Altman elaborates this in his new book on Plato--Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (2012). 

Altman argues that Plato's dualism is found most clearly in the Symposium, the Republic, and the Phaedo.   In the other dialogues, Plato's teaching is challenged in various ways.

In contrast to the true Plato, Altman argues, "Strauss's Plato" (or "Farabi's Plato") is actually the Athenian Stranger of the Laws, which is an anti-Platonic book, with no Idea of the Good and with a political theology that is invented by the Stranger for his political ends.  Strauss distorts the Republic by reading it through the lens of the Laws.  Actually, Altman suggests, the Athenian Stranger is Plato's prediction of Strauss, the German Stranger.

For the student of Plato, Altman's reading of the Republic as Platonic in contrast to the Laws as anti-Platonic is perhaps his most intriguing idea.

Like Clement of Alexandria and Augustine (522), Altman sees Plato's dualism as prefiguring Christianity and the transcendent God of Israel who identifies Himself as "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14).

So, again, Altman agrees with Nietzsche--Christianity is "Platonism for the common people" (19).

Altman's affirmation of Platonic liberalism is one of his most controversial claims.  Traditionally, Plato has been read as a fervent critic of democracy, and generally modern liberalism is assumed to be fundamentally contrary to Plato's political thought.

Oddly enough, one of Strauss's insights supports Altman's reasoning for Plato's liberalism.  Strauss points out that when Plato gives his history of regimes in Book 8 of the Republic, his sequence of five regimes corresponds to Hesiod's history of the five races of men (CM, 130-33; LAM, 35).  Consequently, democracy as the fourth of five corresponds to Hesiod's divine race of heroes.  So, although Plato presents democracy as a bad regime, he also suggests that it comes closer to the golden age than any other bad regime.  The end of democracy is not virtue but freedom--the freedom of each to live as he pleases by choosing from among all the possible human lives.  This freedom of choice makes democracy the only bad regime in which some people can choose the philosophic life.  Indeed, the conversation of the Republic, in which people are free to philosophize about all the various regimes is possible only in a democracy like Athens.  Even if Socrates is a critic of democracy, he shows his preference for democracy by his action in living in Athens, fighting in its wars, and living by its laws.  So while democracy does not aim at excellence or virtue as such, democracy does secure a freedom of choice that allows people the freedom to choose excellence or virtue, including the excellence of the philosophic life.  If one believes that philosophy is the highest life, as Strauss does, then the openness of democracy to philosophy might lead one to regard democracy as at least the best of the bad regimes.

In his book on Plato, Altman elaborates this Straussian insight into democracy as the best of the bad regimes, and this constitutes his argument for Platonic liberalism.  But then in his book on Strauss, Altman never seriously considers the possibility that such reasoning could have supported Strauss's qualified embrace of liberal democracy.

In his book on Plato, Altman comments on "Plato's characteristically serious joke: despite appearances, Democracy--fourth on Plato's list as the Age of Heroes is fourth in Hesiod--is philosophy's golden age; i.e., the golden age tout court" (349).  The democratic freedom to choose one's own way of life is the precondition for Glaucon's choosing justice and the precondition for the philosophic discussion in the Republic--democracy is the only regime where the philosophic life can be freely chosen.

Altman suggests that those like Karl Popper who see the Republic as a defense of totalitarianism fail to see this Platonic endorsement of democratic freedom, and they also fail to see that the totalitarianism of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws is meant to be a challenge to Plato's teaching.

Altman recognizes that the depiction of democracy in Book 8 of the Republic does offer a comically exaggerated image of democracy's aimless freedom and formless equality.  But he suggests that this very comic exaggeration is part of Plato's pedagogy:

"Attacking 'the democratic man' as a lazy, scatter-brained, selfish, shape-shifter, incapable of any sustained and consistent dedication to fixed principle, should be recognized for what it is: effective pedagogy.  Certainly no effective teacher of adolescent males is unfamiliar with Plato's technique.  Through Socrates, Plato is challenging the freedom-loving reader to prove him wrong by overcoming the typical democrat's directionless drift, a drift that leads to Tyranny.  Encouraged by neither the state nor the prevailing temper of the times, any student capable of shame may yet, under the influence of a good teacher, seek other influences--the influence of Greek philosophy, for example--and practice an internal politics quite different from what prevails.  And there is always the fear of what may follow Democracy: of what may happen if no heroes arise." (354)

Was there something like this in the pedagogy of Strauss--attacking "democratic man" so that his freedom-loving students and readers would be challenged to prove him wrong?  After all, Altman praises Arlene Saxonhouse for recognizing the Platonic argument for democracy, but he does not identify her as a scholar influenced by Strauss (350, n. 142).

Altman might respond by arguing that the Straussians can't appreciate Plato's liberalism because they can't appreciate the dualism in which it is grounded.  But this contradicts what Altman notices about the purely naturalistic grounding of democracy in Book 8 of the Republic.  According to Altman, Socrates states "the single most important truth about democracy" (353) when he says: "anyone by nature free regards this city alone as a fit place to live" (562c).  If democracy is rooted in natural freedom, it's not clear that this requires any appeal to a supernatural dualism.  Altman writes:

"This is not to say, of course, that Democracy values the Idea of the Good: none of the defective cities do this.  But unlike the false forms of the merely apparent good sought after in Timocracy (honor), Oligarchy (wealth) and Tyranny (absolute power), Democracy's good is merely an indefinite plurality: freedom (cf. 562b10-c2).  Of course, Plato does not regard freedom per se as the Good.  In fact, it is worth repeating the central Idea of Platonism as often as necessary: Plato regards only the Idea of the Good as the Good.  But because the citizens of a democracy (unlike other cities) can agree on no one thing that is absolutely good--other than the freedom to seek after their good--only here is the door left open to philosophy, as 'the bazaar of constitutions' passage indicates." (Plato, 353-54)

Democratic freedom allows for human beings to pursue their natural desires, which includes the natural desire for intellectual understanding, and a few human beings will be inclined by this natural desire to live a life of philosophic inquiry, which might include questioning whether there is an Idea of the Good.  But regardless of what we might think about the Idea of the Good, we can recognize the natural goods of human life as constituted by the natural human desires.   Liberal democracy is naturally good in so far as it secures the freedom that is the condition for the possibility of the expression of those natural human desires.

My point here is that while Altman is surely right about Straussian anti-dualism--the tendency of Strauss and the Straussians to dismiss the metaphysical dualism of Platonism as not truly Plato's teaching--it's not clear that this must lead to Straussian anti-liberalism.

Moreover, I am not convinced by Altman's thesis about Nazi anti-dualism, because as I have argued in another post, many of the Nazi philosophers were neo-Kantian dualists who appealed to eternal values grounded in some transcendent realm of absolute good.

Clearly, Strauss was a critic of liberal democracy.  But the question in dispute is whether Strauss was a friendly or unfriendly critic.  Against Altman's claim that Strauss was an unfriendly critic of liberal democracy, Strauss's defenders can quote what appears to be a clear statement from Strauss: "We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy" (LAM, 24).

Altman identifies this as the "'Golden Sentence' of Straussian apologetics," because it is so frequently quoted to show that Strauss was a friend of democracy (GS, 356).  Altman's commentary on this sentence illustrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of his argumentation. 

The strength of his argument here is in pointing out Strauss's use of the word "we" in the Golden Sentence, in contrast to his multiple uses of "I," "me," and "my" in the first paragraph of the essay in which the Golden Sentence appears ("Liberal Education and Responsibiliy").  This is significant if one considers what Strauss says about how Maimonides uses the word "we" to distinguish a popular opinion from what he himself believes.

Strauss could have said: "I am not permitted to be a flatterer of democracy precisely because I am a friend and ally of democracy."  I agree that we should criticize Strauss for not speaking in such an emphatic way so that all his readers could recognize him as a friendly critic of liberal democracy.

Nevertheless, the weakness of Altman's commentary is that he fails to note that the immediate context of the Golden Sentence suggests a rather clear but qualified embrace of liberal democracy.  Strauss writes:

"What then are the prospects for liberal education within mass democracy?  What are the prospects for the liberally educated to become again a power in democracy?  We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy.  While we are not permitted to remain silent on the dangers to which democracy exposes itself as well as human excellence, we cannot forget the obvious fact that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence.  No one prevents us from cultivating our garden or from setting up outposts which may come to be regarded by many citizens as salutary to the republic and as deserving of giving to it its tone. . . . As matters stand, we can expect more immediate help from the humanities rightly understood than from the sciences, form the spirit of perceptivity and delicacy than from the spirit of geometry.  If I am not mistaken, this is the reason why liberal education is now becoming almost synonymous with the reading in common of the Great Books.  No better beginning could have been made." (LAM, 24)

Notice that Strauss evokes the same Platonic argument for democracy that Altman adopts: "by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence."  Moreover, many of those influenced by Strauss--Martin Diamond and William Galston, for example--have developed this idea as supporting the conclusion that liberal democracy can cultivate human excellence by cultivating the "liberal virtues."

Moreover, the conviction that a liberal education through the Great Books can promote excellence, at least among those few open to such an education, underlies much of Strauss's influence in promoting the study of the classic texts of political philosophy as well as the Great Books generally. 

My criticism of Altman here is that in his determination to demonize Strauss as anti-liberal, he fails to acknowledge that he and Strauss ultimately agree in their friendly criticism or qualified embrace of liberal democracy as--in James Madison's words--"the least imperfect" form of government.  In his Plato book, Altman writes: "Indeed, the highest praise Plato has for Democracy is indirect.  Why wouldn't that be?  Everyone who has ever fought for Democracy with intellectual weapons knows that it is the worst form of government except for all the rest of them" (354-55).

One example of this "least imperfect" character of liberal democracy is the liberal distinction between state and society.  To demonstrate "Strauss's ineradicable hatred for Liberal Democracy," Altman quotes this "extraordinary passage":

"To realize that the Jewish problem is insoluble means never to forget the truth proclaimed by Zionism regarding the limitations of liberalism.  Liberalism stands or falls by the distinction between the state and society or by the recognition of the private sphere, protected by the law but impervious to the law, with the understanding that, above all, religion as particular religion belongs to the private sphere.  As certainly as the liberal state will not 'discriminate' against its Jewish citizens, as certainly is it constitutionally unable and even unwilling to prevent 'discrimination' against Jews on the part of individuals or groups. To recognize a private sphere in the sense indicated means to permit private 'discrimination,' to protect it, and thus in fact to foster it.  The liberal state cannot provide a solution to the Jewish problem, for such a solution would require the legal prohibition against every kind of 'discrimination,' i.e., the abolition of the private sphere, the denial of the difference between state and society, the destruction of the liberal state." (Altman, GS, 517-18, quoting LAM, 230)

Altman complains that in affirming this as a "truth" in 1962, Strauss had chosen to blind himself to the truth of his experience in the United States where he had been free to live and work as a Jew without persecution.  What Strauss affirms here as a "truth" was actually something that he had learned in Weimar Germany, and he would not allow his American experience to show the falsity of this truth.  But to reach this conclusion, Altman has to pass over in silence Strauss's explanation that he accepts the "uneasy solution" to this problem offered by liberal democracy.  "There is nothing better than the uneasy solution offered by liberal society, which means legal equality plus private 'discrimination'" (JPCM, 317; LAM, 231). 

Strauss's willingness to accept the "uneasy solutions" of liberal democracy and his failure to endorse any anti-liberal alternative as providing superior solutions refute Altman's thesis of Straussian Nazism.

In fact, Altman implicitly concedes the weaknesses in this thesis.  He recognizes that Strauss regarded Hitler as a fool (GS, 323-26, 451-52, 515-16).  He also recognizes that there is no evidence that Strauss ever developed any positive program for moving towards a National Socialist society.

And yet, Altman insists that Strauss was "remarkably successful" in his project "to take Germany's western enemy out of the picture: to destroy Liberal Democracy's faith in itself" (516).  Where's the evidence for this?  Is there any evidence that Strauss and his students have in fact destroyed liberal democracy's faith in itself?  Clearly, many of those under Strauss's influence have actually defended liberal democracy--Jaffa, Diamond, Galston, Anastaplo, and many more.  Would Altman say that all of these people failed to get the secret message from Strauss?  If so, who did get the secret message that Strauss wanted to destroy liberal democracy's faith in itself?

In his section on "My Personal Encounter with Straussianism," Altman begins with this startling claim: "As is now the case with every American, I came under the influence of Leo Strauss long before I'd ever heard his name" (393).  Really?  Every American has been under Strauss's influence without knowing it?  And consequently, every American has been losing faith in liberal democracy?  Wild claims like this weaken Altman's argumentation.

Still, I am persuaded that Altman has shown that Strauss is open to the criticism that he was not emphatic enough in defending liberal democracy against the ideas of Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Heidegger.  Strauss never really offered a thorough refutation of these ideas, and instead he showed some attraction to them--most clearly in his lectures on "German Nihilism" and the "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism."  Significantly, these lectures were not published in Strauss's lifetime.

In "German Nihilism," Strauss seemed to admire the "young German nihilists."  Many of the ideas he attributed to them were recurrent themes of Strauss's writing.  For example:

"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 at it were the goal of modern civilization, and therefore all aspirations directed toward that goal, are irreconcilable with teh 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." (GN, 358)

In "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," Strauss left his reader doubting whether there was any good refutation of Heidegger's Nazi attack on liberal democracy:

"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." (RCPR, 29)

George Anastaplo has told the story of trying to arrange a meeting between Strauss and Strauss's old friend Hans Jonas.  Anastaplo reports that Strauss refused to meet with Jonas because Jonas had met with Heidegger once in the late 1960s.  For Anastaplo, this showed Strauss's hatred of Heidegger for his support of the Nazis. 

I am not persuaded, however, that this story shows that Strauss exercised better judgment in his handling of Heidegger than did Jonas. Jonas had publicly criticized Heidegger's ideas.  In fact, his 1964 lecture on "Heidegger and Theology" provoked an international controversy because of the vehemence of Jonas's criticisms, and there was even a front page story in the New York Times about the controversy.  This led to lecture invitations for Jonas from around the world to explain his disagreements with Heidegger.  Jonas wrote to Heidegger demanding that he renounce his Nazism and confess his mistakes.  Jonas was disappointed when Heidegger refused to answer.  Strauss did nothing like this.  Instead, Strauss praised Heidegger--just after Heidegger had reaffirmed his support for Nazism in 1953--as "the only greater thinker in our time."  Anyone who wants to defend Strauss against Altman's charges must explain Strauss's behavior.

Strauss, Altman, and Darwin: Eternity or Evolution?

In Leo Strauss's "German Nihilism," Will Altman sees some of Strauss's boldest statements of his secret teaching in his sympathetic account of the "young nihilists," but he also sees Strauss pulling away from this and asserting a public teaching that argues against nihilism. 

In a few passages of his book, Altman identifies the secret teaching as an affirmation of Darwinian evolution and the public teaching as an affirmation of Platonic eternity.  That public teaching of Strauss is what Altman embraces as true.  By contrast, I find the Platonic teaching of eternal cosmic standards implausible, and I embrace the Darwinian teaching of enduring but not eternal standards as true.  This Darwinian teaching is not nihilistic, as Altman believes it is, unless one agrees with the early and late Nietzsche that Darwinism is a "deadly truth" because it frustrates our longing for eternal standards. 

Strauss seems to be favorable to the "young nihilists" when he writes:

"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." (363)

But then Strauss pulls back and suggests a criticism of nihilist historicism:

"I frankly confess, I do not see how those can resist the voice of that siren who expect the answer to the first and the last question from 'History,' from the as such, who mistake analysis of the present or past or future for philosophy, who believe in a progress toward a goal which is itself progressive and therefore indefinable; who are not guided by a known and stable standard: by a standard which is stable and not changeable, and which is known and not merely believed." (364)

Altman reads this as Strauss's effort to reassure the reader that he is not attracted to nihilism.  "This has been Strauss's point all along, he now reassuringly suggests.  Moreover, it is only by embracing a timeless, absolute, and unchanging standard that the nihilist can be refuted.  Strauss now seems to be calling for a revival of traditional Platonism ('the Ancients') or even possibly actual knowledge--rather than mere belief--in the Living God ('Jerusalem')" (327).  Altman then proclaims his own belief in this "exoteric teaching" of Strauss.

But according to Altman, Strauss's secret teaching denies that there is any "timeless, absolute, and unchanging standard," and thus Strauss is a Darwinian.  "LS [Leo Strauss] generally ignores Darwin, but in his immorality, his atheism, his historicism, and in his revival of 'natural right' (as opposed to rights), LS is neo-Darwinian" (382).

Altman offers no proof that Darwinism must promote immorality, atheism, and historicism.  But in a footnote, he suggests that he accepts the argument of Richard Weikart's book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (416, n. 85).  I have written some posts on Weikart's books, who argues that Darwin was responsible for Hitler, and that the only alternative to Darwinian Nazism is intelligent design theory. 

One oddity here is that the arguments for intelligent design were originally invented by the Athenian Stranger in Book 10 of Plato's Laws.  So while Altman generally scorns the Athenian Stranger, here he seems to agree with him about the need for persuading people to believe in intelligent design, because any natural evolutionary explanation for human nature within the cosmos will promote immorality, atheism, and historicism.  But the Athenian Stranger's arguments are not very plausible.  And it's not even clear that he believes them himself.

Strauss and the Straussians are ambivalent about this.  (One can see this, for example, in Catherine Zuckert's Plato's Philosophers.)  On the one hand, they suggest that the only alternative to historicist relativism is a Platonic cosmology of eternal standards for human life.  On the other hand, they suggest that Socrates never clearly endorses this cosmology, and that he implies that the ultimate standards for human life must be drawn from human nature, from natural needs and desires, as arising from human biological nature.

My argument is that the Platonic dialogues give us reasons to believe that conceptions of cosmic teleology and the eternity of species are implausible because they contradict what we know by experience.  More plausible, I suggest would be Aristotelian and Darwinian conceptions of immanent teleology and the natural history of the human species that would support standards of moral and intellectual excellence grounded in natural human desires.

These points are elaborated in various posts that can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Are the Straussian Fascists Showing that Will Altman Was Right About Leo Strauss?

I have written about Bronze Age Pervert's Bronze Age Mindset (here and here).  So I was interested in the recent essay by Blake Smith identifying Bronze Age Pervert as Costin Alamariu, who wrote a doctoral dissertation--The Problem of Tyranny and Philosophy in Plato and Nietzsche--under the supervision of Steven Smith, a Straussian political theorist at Yale University.  Blake Smith shows how Alamariu's dissertation explains the Straussian philosophic grounding for Bronze Age Mindset.

This connection of Alamariu's Nietzschean fascism to Strauss fits a remarkable pattern of Straussian influence with other contemporary exponents of Nietzschean fascism that I have considered on this blog.  Richard Spencer studied under Michael Gillespie at Duke University.  Michael Millerman studied under Clifford Orwin at the University of Toronto, although Orwin resigned from his dissertation committee after some newspaper stories publicized Millerman's fascist political philosophy.  Alamariu, Spencer, and Millerman were all shaped in their thinking by Leo Strauss's interpretation of Nietzsche's fascism as the best illiberal alternative to liberal democracy.

This seems to confirm what William Altman was arguing ten years ago--in a series of three books on Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Strauss--that Strauss was the secret theoretician of National Socialism.  Altman presented his "German trilogy" of books as following a tripartite structure suggested by Strauss in his "Three Waves of Modernity."  According to Strauss, the First Wave of modernity came with Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke; the Second Wave came with Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel; and the Third Wave came with Nietzsche and Heidegger.  If each wave comes through a sequence of three thinkers, who is the third thinker of the Third Wave?  Surely, Altman suggested, it must be Strauss himself.  And if the Third Wave leads to fascism, as Strauss indicated, then this would point to Strauss as the thinker who most fully worked out the theory of fascism or Nazism as the anti-liberal solution to the crisis of liberal democracy.

As I have indicated in my posts on Altman, I have found him to be an insightful commentator on Strauss.  But I do disagree with him on two points.  First, I think he overstates his Strauss-as-a-Jewish-Nazi thesis.  In fact, he implicitly concedes some of the weaknesses in this thesis.  He recognizes that Strauss regarded Hitler as a fool.  He also recognizes that there is no evidence that Strauss ever developed any positive program for moving towards a National Socialist society.

Still, I am persuaded that Altman has shown that Strauss is open to the criticism that he was not emphatic enough in defending liberal democracy against the ideas of Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Heidegger.  Strauss never really offered a thorough refutation of these ideas, and instead he showed some attraction to them--most clearly in his lectures on "German Nihilism" and the "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism."  Significantly, these lectures were not published until after Strauss's death.

My second point of disagreement is that unlike Altman and Strauss, I see Nietzsche in his middle period (Human, All Too Human, Dawn, and the first four books of The Gay Science) as providing an alternative--based on his Darwinian liberalism--to the positions he took in his early and late writings.  Nietzsche's Darwinian writings do not suffer from the contradictions that Altman rightly sees in his other writings.  Nor do the Darwinian writings provide any encouragement to the Nazis who appropriated ideas from the other writings.  Nietzsche's Darwinian aristocratic liberalism is intellectually, morally, and politically superior to his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism.  Strauss and the Straussians fail to see this as the Nietzschean way to defend liberalism against its illiberal critics.

Lyric Opera's "Die Meistersinger": Wagner, Hitler, and the Nightwatchman State

The most striking phrase coined by Leo Strauss is reductio ad Hitlerum.  In National Right and History, Strauss argues that Max Weber's teaching about values leads to nihilism.  Just as he begins to make this argument, Strauss observes:

". . . In following this movement toward its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler.  Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy  that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum.  A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler." (42-43)
 

 As Will Altman has noted, Strauss never again mentions Hitler in the book, which leaves the reader wondering where exactly in the book "the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler."  We might also wonder, as Altman suggests, why Strauss doesn't identify this fallacy as a noble fallacy.  After all, why isn't it good that our scorn for Hitler is so deep that we assume that a view is refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler?

I thought about that Saturday night while attending a performance of Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  This was Hitler's favorite opera, and it was often performed in the Third Reich with Nazi sponsorship.  Consequently, many people have been disturbed by the thought that this opera promotes the anti-Semitism, the German nationalism, and the nihilism that led to Hitler's movement.

Of course, a similar reductio ad Hitlerum has been used to criticize Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche.  Just as Wagner provided Hitler his music, it is said, Darwin provided him his science, and Nietzsche provided him his philosophy.  And thus Wagner, Darwin, and Nietzsche are all refuted by their connection to Hitler.  Even if this is a fallacy, it is surely reasonable to question any view of the world that supports such evil.

As I have argued on this blog, there is nothing in Darwin's writing that leads directly to Hitler.  In fact, as far as I know, Hitler never even mentioned Darwin's name, although he did use some of the phrases associated with Darwin.  Even when Richard Weikart argues that there is a history of movement "from Darwin to Hitler," he must admit that there really is no clear connection between Darwin's writings and Hitler.

By comparison, Hitler's connection to Nietzsche and Wagner seems much clearer.  Even so, as I have been arguing on this blog, the Nietzsche of Human, All Too Human provides no encouragement to Hitler and the Nazis.  And Wagner's Die Meistersinger is his one opera that presents a view of the world similar to that of Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human.  Neither of these two works support the anti-Semitism, the fanatical nationalism, or the nihilism of Hitler and the Nazis.

It's significant that just as Die Meistersinger is generally the least popular of Wagner's operas among the Wagnerites, Human, All Too Human is generally the least popular of Nietzsche's books among the Nietzscheans.  My view is just the opposite--that Die Meistersinger is Wagner's best opera, and Human, All Too Human is Nietzsche's best book.  It all depends on whether you prefer explosive frenzy, as the Nietzscheans and Wagnerites do, or sensible moderation, as I do.

Die Meistersinger was first performed in 1868.  Of the ten operas of Wagner's mature work, this is the only comedy and the only opera not based on myth.  The story of the opera is set in sixteenth-century Nuremberg.  The guild of Mastersingers in Nuremberg preserves a proud tradition of German singing governed by rigorous rules.  On Midsummer's Day (St. John's Day), they will conduct a song contest.  The contest is sponsored by Veit Pogner (a wealthy silversmith), and he offers as a prize for the winner marriage to his beautiful daughter Eva.  Eva is free to reject the winner if she chooses, but whoever she marries must be a Mastersinger.  Walther von Stolzing is a young man who has recently arrived in town, and he and Eva have quickly fallen in love.  So Walther must win the contest if he and Eva are to marry.  The problem is that although he can sing beautiful love songs in a passionate style, Walther does not know--and does not appreciate--the complex rules for singing enforced by the Mastersingers.  To win the contest, he will need to follow the wise instruction of Hans Sachs, an older man who is equally skilled in making shoes and mastersinging, and who is the most respected man in town.  In fact, Hans Sachs really did exist as a famous poet and singer in sixteenth-century Nuremberg.  (For the Lyric Opera performances, the role of Sachs has been sung by James Morris, one of the greatest Wagnerian singers of our time.) 

Walther's primary challenger in the contest is Sixtus Beckmesser, an older Mastersinger who wants to marry Eva.  While Beckmesser has mastered the rules of mastersinging, his pedantic stiffness lacks the intuitive insight and youthful passion of Walther's singing. 

Although Sachs does teach Walther the art of mastersinging, while helping him compose the song that will win the contest for him, Sach feels some conflict about this.  Sachs has helped to rear Eva from the time that she was an infant.  And now that she is grown up, he has developed romantic feelings for her, which she reciprocates.  Sachs is a widower whose wife and children have all died.  Marrying Eva would give him both a wife and a child at the same time.  After some struggle with himself, Sachs decides that the marriage of Eva to Walther would be best for everyone, and that he must restrain his longings for Eva in serving the greater good of his community through her marriage.

There are at least three features of the opera that have been seen as points of contact with Hitler's Nazism.  First, Beckmesser has been said to be an ugly anti-Semitic depiction of a Jew who earns a humiliating defeat in his German town.  Second, the opera ends with a speech by Sachs warning that German art needs to be defended from Germany's enemies, which sounds like the German nationalistic rhetoric that favored the rise of Nazism.  The third point brings up the deepest philosophical issue of the opera:  Sachs muses darkly about how all of life is ruled by delusion and madness, for which there is no cure except using the noble delusion of art to redeem human beings from the ugly truth that all that seems real to us is only illusion.  This looking into the nothingness of the world seems to be the nihilism that Strauss saw as primary source of Nazism as a product of the Third Wave of Modernity.

On the first point, it's clear that the anti-Semitic remarks by Wagner in his prose writings provided plenty of material for the Nazis.  For this reason, many people have looked for anti-Semitism in Wagner's operas.  But if one were unaware of what Wagner had said in his prose writings, one would not see any clear evidence of anti-Semitism in his operas.  Particularly, in Die Meistersinger, Beckmesser is never identified as a Jew.  Furthermore, even though he is depicted as ridiculously foolish--the sort of fool we expect to find in a comedy--he also elicits some sympathy from us, and he is a respected and honored member of his community.

Similarly, while one can easily find some anti-Semitism in some of Nietzsche's writings, especially in his attacks on the Jewish sources of "slave morality," Human, All Too Human and other writings of his middle period contain passages where he praises the Jews for what they have contributed to the evolution of culture.  Examples of this would be section 475 of Human, All Too Human and section 205 of Dawn. 

The second point--the reference to Germany and its enemies in Sach's final speech--is a more serious problem for the defender of Die Meistersinger.

After Walther has won the singing contest, Pogner offers him a golden chain with three medals.  Walther refuses the chain, because he is still bitter about the earlier rejection of his singing by the Mastersingers.  Sachs grabs him by the hand and exhorts him to respect the Masters for what they do in preserving their art.  Sachs then warns:

"Take heed!  Ill times now threaten all; and if the German folk [Volk] and Reich should fall, and foreigners should rule our land, no king his folk would understand, and foreign rule and foreign ways would darken all our German ways; what's German and true could not abide were't not for German Masters' pride!  I beg of you: honor your German Masters, and thus you will ban disasters!  And if you have their work at heart, though the Holy German Reich fell, there still will remain the holy German art!"
 

Walther then accepts the golden chain.  The Masters pay homage to Sachs with upraised hands, and all join the people of the town in singing praise for Sach: "Heil Sachs!  Hans Sachs!  Heil Nuremberg's poet Sachs!"

This opera premiered in 1868, just two years before the Franco-Prussian War, at a time when a war between France and Prussia was widely expected.  So this final speech by Sachs could easily have been interpreted as an exhortation to German militaristic nationalism.  Similarly, when Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy announced in 1872 a rebirth of tragedy in Germany through Wagner's music, this appeared to be a clear reference to the Prussian victory over France and the proclamation of the Second German Reich. 

At one point in his revising of the libretto, Wagner struck out this final speech by Sachs.  But then he was persuaded by his wife Cosima to restore it.  So Wagner had his doubts about whether this ending to the opera was appropriate.

In any case, one should see that Wagner's patriotism here is more cultural than political, and not at all militaristic.  After all, it's clear in the opera that art is more important for preserving the German nation than is military or political power.

Furthermore, what one sees in Die Meistersinger is a depiction of a self-governing bourgeois city that is organized primarily through the institutions of civil society--family, church, and voluntary associations.  The only sign of governmental force is the minimal power of Nuremberg's night-watchman.  When a violent riot breaks out at the end of Act 2, the crowd disperses when the night-watchman walks through on his rounds.

It was in 1862, only six years before the premier of Die Meistersinger, that the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalle ridiculed the classical liberals for advocating "the night-watchman state"--the idea that government should be limited to punishing violence and fraud to protect property, liberty, and peace.  Some of the proponents of classical liberalism have actually embraced the phrase "night-watchman state" as a good label for their position.  In his book Liberalism (3rd edition, 1985), Ludwig von Mises observed: "it is difficult to see why the night-watchman state should be any more ridiculous or worse than the state that concerns itself with the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers" (37).

In a liberal regime, the cultivation of the arts and of cultural life generally comes from the natural and voluntary associations of a free society that requires only limited governmental intervention.  That's the case in Hans Sach's Nuremberg.

In the same way, Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human endorses a largely liberal view of society and government in which "higher culture" and the excellence of "higher men" is fostered by the freedom of civil society.  Culture is largely free from political regimentation, and culture is more important than politics.  According to Nietzsche, "the state is a prudent institution for protecting individuals from one another," but any ennobling of the state into a "perfect state" tends to bring a dangerous suppression of the individual (HH, 235). 

Just as is the case in Sach's Nuremberg, Nietzsche presents the majority of people as devoted to the ordinary concerns of life, and they display little human excellence, but a few people with higher aspirations and talents can develop their moral and intellectual virtues through the self-regulating order of civil society.

Much of the appeal of National Socialism came from the claim that liberalism is degrading in its bourgeois mediocrity and thus cannot cultivate the heroic human excellence that goes beyond the base materialism of the "Last Man."

Wagner's Die Meistersinger and Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human deny this claim by showing how a free society can foster the full range of human virtue, from the low to the high, including the virtuous cultural activities of art, science, and philosophy.

I will take up the third point about the connection of Meistersinger to Nazism--the apparent nihilism of Sachs--in my next post.

One of the best performances of Die Meistersinger--in 2001 at the Metropolitan Opera with James Morris as Sachs--can be seen as an online video at the "Met on Demand" website.  There's a free seven-day trial that allows immediate access.  You need to be well rested before you watch this opera.  If you take two 30-minute intermissions, the opera will take five and a half hours! 

I recommend watching it with a good bottle of pinot noir.  My wife and I had two bottles over dinner before the opera and snacks during the intermissions at the Pederson Room at the Lyric Opera House.  A very civilized evening indeed.

Smith and Strauss on Bourgeois Liberalism and the Philosophic Life

Steven Smith's Modernity and Its Discontents elaborates the argument of Leo Strauss and the Straussians for the "crisis of liberalism" as showing "the problem of the bourgeois."  The basic idea for Smith's book comes from Strauss's "Three Waves of Modernity"--the idea that the first wave of liberal modernity is theoretically flawed in ways that provoke two waves of illiberal attacks on modernity. This suggests the question of whether Strauss and the Straussians are proposing some illiberal alternative to the bourgeois liberal order. 

Smith's answer is no, because while Strauss was a critic of liberal democracy, he was a friendly critic who saw liberal democracy (like that of the United States) as the best practicable regime for the modern world, despite its weaknesses.  And, therefore, Smith says, Strauss was actually "a classical liberal who believed that present-day liberalism requires the support of certain premodern sources of authority if it is to be sustainable" (292).   Smith is relying on what Will Altman has called the "Golden Sentence" of Straussian apologetics: "We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy."  (Altman points out that Strauss is careful here to use the word "we" rather than "I," and that Strauss says that Maimonides uses the word "we" to distinguish a popular opinion from what he himself believes.)

It's not clear how Smith's claim that Strauss was a friend of liberalism is consistent with Smith's observation that in his lecture on "German Nihilism," Strauss implicitly included himself among those young German nihilists who preferred a "closed morality" that was "based on such old-fashioned virtues as loyalty, duty, honor, and self-sacrifice" as showing a higher level of humanity than an "open morality" that was "divorced from the particularities of nation, race, or class" (250). Smith is silent about Strauss's assertion in "German Nihilism" that National Socialism was "a return to a pre-modern ideal."

We must wonder whether Smith's reading of Strauss as a classical liberal is persuasive.  In particular, given what Strauss said about the supremacy of the philosophic life and about the conflict between philosophy and society, we must wonder whether a bourgeois liberal regime can allow for such a philosophic life.  And if the open society of a liberal regime can be open to philosophy, does that refute Strauss's claim that every stable society must be a closed society that cannot tolerate the skeptical questioning of philosophers?

In order to separate Strauss from the illiberal critics of the Enlightenment, and thus protect Strauss from Will Altman's charge of being a Jewish Nazi, Smith distinguishes between the radical Counter-Enlightenment of those like Joseph de Maistre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, and Martin Heidegger, and the moderate Counter-Enlightenment of those like Strauss, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Isaiah Berlin (348-49).

Smith's distinction here between two forms of Counter-Enlightenment is strange for at least two reasons.  First, to put Strauss on the side of Berlin rather than Heidegger ignores Strauss's severe criticism of Berlin as failing in his attempted defense of liberalism and Strauss's fervent endorsement of Heidegger as the one great thinker of our time who has refuted liberalism.  Strauss writes: "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" ("Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," 29).  Remarkably, Smith is silent about this claim by Strauss that Heidegger has refuted any argument for rational liberalism.

The second reason why Smith's distinction is strange is that in assigning Nietzsche to the radical Counter-Enlightenment, Smith is silent about Nietzsche's defense of the Enlightenment and liberalism in Human, All Too Human and other writings from his middle period.  As I have argued in some previous posts, Nietzsche lays out in his middle writings a vigorous defense of Darwinian aristocratic liberalism as superior to the Dionysian aristocratic radicalism of his later writings.

Smith does not see that in order to push Strauss towards Berlin and away from Heidegger, he has to implicitly reinterpret Strauss as a Platonic or Aristotelian liberal who embraces Berlin's advocacy of both liberal pluralism and negative liberty, so that the individual liberty secured by a liberal regime allows a few people to choose the philosophic life as the highest end, while most others choose different lives with a different ranking of ends.  In other words, Smith has to interpret Strauss as being what Michael and Catherine Zuckert have identified as a Midwest Straussian, who believed that bourgeois liberty allowed for the expression of the bourgeois virtues, which could include the intellectual virtues of the philosophic life.

Another way of putting this is to say that Smith has to read Strauss's classical liberalism as based on a liberal interpretation of both Plato and Aristotle.

Strauss is best known for his illiberal interpretation of Plato as arguing that the philosophic life is the only naturally good way of life, and that this philosophic life is necessarily in irreconcilable conflict with society.  As Smith puts it, this can be expressed as a syllogism:

"Major Premise: Philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion, including opinions about political things, by knowledge.

"Minor Premise: Opinion is the medium of society.

"Conclusion: Philosophy is necessarily at odds with society." (304)

If this is true, then Strauss would seem to be saying that a liberal open society is either impossible or a foolish mistake, because no stable society can be open to philosophical questioning.  No society can safely tolerate the philosophic life.  Therefore, philosophers must employ esoteric writing to hide what they are thinking, and thus protect philosophy from social persecution, while also protecting society from subversion by philosophical questioning.  Plato's metaphor of the cave in The Republic shows that society must always be ruled by illusory opinions rather than philosophic enlightenment.  And Plato's Apology of Socrates shows that society must persecute Socratic philosophers who corrupt the young and deny the gods of the city.

But as Smith indicates, Strauss also offers a liberal interpretation of Plato.  While Book 8 of The Republic contains the "severest indictment" of democracy, according to Strauss, it also presents democracy as a "multicolored coat" in which every way of life, including the philosophic life, can be lived.  And, after all, Socrates lived his philosophic life in Athens until the age of seventy, and he could not have lived this life in Sparta (298).  Thus, as Will Altman has argued, Plato might endorse liberal democracy as the regime most open to the philosophic life, because "anyone by nature free regards this city alone as a fit place to live" (Republic, 562c). 

This suggests the possibility that a liberal open society could overcome the conflict between society and philosophy by creating a free market of ideas, so that philosophers would no longer need to practice esoteric writing.  In fact, Arthur Melzer has pointed to that in his Philosophy between the Lines.  Since about 1800, he observes, the art of secret writing has largely disappeared, because in modern open societies, we no longer see the need for hiding dangerous philosophic ideas.  That's why Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing was so novel--and controversial--because he was rediscovering an art of esoteric writing that was common before 1800, but that had been rendered unnecessary by the triumph of the liberal open society over the past two centuries.  Smith suggests the same point when he writes: "It is certainly far from evident that a strategy adopted by Halevi, Al-Farabi, and Maimonides, writing in times of considerable hostility to philosophy, remains applicable in a modern democratic age where the demands for intellectual probity and 'transparency' have become not just private but also public virtues" (308).

Notice the startling implication here.  What often seems to be Strauss's signature idea--the irresolvable conflict between society and philosophy and the necessity for esoteric writing as dictated by that conflict--has been refuted by the success of bourgeois liberalism in creating an open society where the philosophic life can be openly lived in the free market of ideas.  Does that follow from Strauss's liberal interpretation of Plato?

Smith also suggests a Straussian liberal interpretation of Aristotle, although he is not as explicit about this as he is with Plato.  Strauss often asserted the supremacy of the philosophic life as the only naturally good life, in contrast to which the merely moral person appears as "a mutilated human being" (Natural Right and History, 151).  Book 10 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics can be read as supporting this idea of the philosophic life as a purely solitary contemplative life that is superior to the moral life.  From this view, as Smith says, "morality is at most instrumental to the attainment of a kind of contemplative autonomy," in which the philosopher does not need morality or any engagement with other human beings (309).  Here there seems to be no common ground between the moral life of society and the philosophic life of the solitary thinker.  Here Aristotle seems to affirm a dominant end conception of the good life as directed to one end--philosophic contemplation.

But in the books on friendship (Books 8 and 9) of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle speaks of the political association (koinonia) as an association of associations in which people pursue their diverse conceptions of the good life in association with others who share their ethical ends, and this includes those who pursue the philosophic life in association with their philosophic friends (NE, 1160a9-31, 1170a13-1170b19).  This conforms to what Smith identifies as Strauss's understanding of philosophy as a way of life, in which the aim is "to create spiritual communities in which the individual members could seek to live freely and in friendship with others who had chosen a similar way of life" (293).  In democratic Athens, philosophical schools could form voluntary private associations (like the Academy and the Lyceum) in which philosophic friends could gather with others who shared their devotion to the philosophic life.  In this understanding of Athens as an association of associations, Aristotle seems to affirm an inclusive end conception of the good as a multiplicity of moral and intellectual goods, with different ways of life organized by different rankings of those multiple goods.

This suggests the possibility, which Smith never considers, that modern liberalism is the expansion of ancient Athenian liberalism.  After all, even Strauss admitted that "the city of Athens was rather liberal" ("The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy," 47).  This would cast doubt on the sharp Straussian dichotomy of ancients and moderns.

Aristotle's inclusive end conception of the human good as supporting a free society in which individuals pursue their diverse ends in association with others of like mind looks a lot like Berlin's understanding of liberal pluralism and negative liberty, in which the negative liberty of an open society allows for the fullest expression of value pluralism in the diverse associations that people form to pursue their differing conceptions of the good life.  We might think that Strauss could not have endorsed this, because he criticized Berlin's value pluralism as a relativism that created the crisis of liberalism by denying any absolutist affirmation of liberalism as conforming to the human good of human nature. 

But as Smith indicates, Berlin denied that his value pluralism was value relativism (277-86).  While Berlin believed that there were many different good ends for human life, and that these good ends were not perfectly harmonious, yet he believed that these good ends were not "infinitely many," because they were all within the "human horizon."  Berlin affirmed both "a common human nature" and "a wide variety of cultural experience" (The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 11).  The pluralism of human nature--that human beings have different natural ends or desires--is an objective truth about human nature, and therefore this pluralism is not relativism.  By virtue of our shared human nature, we all share in the generic goods of human life--such as, for example, self-preservation, family life, friendship, social status, religious understanding, and intellectual understanding.  (These generic goods correspond to what I have called the 20 natural desires of our evolved human nature.)  But how we rank these generic goods will vary across cultures and across individuals.  A liberal open society secures the negative liberty that allows for individuals live different ways of life in association with others in their families and associations, and these different ways of life will manifest different rankings of those generic goods.  Those with the temperament and talents of a Socrates will live a philosophic life that ranks intellectual understanding as higher than the other generic goods.  Others will live different kinds of life with different rankings of the generic goods.

This seems to be what John Locke meant by a free society that would secure the pursuit of happiness for diverse individuals with diverse conceptions of the good life rooted in human nature.  The summum bonum is not by nature the same for all human beings, but all human beings by nature "are both concerned and fitted to search out their summum bonum" (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.12.11).  Locke's point seems to be that there is a summum bonum--a highest good--for each person that constitutes the natural standard of happiness for each person.  But there is no single highest good for all people, because different people will rank the generic goods of life in different ways.

Human nature sets the standard for the human good.  By nature the generic goods characterize the human species.  By nature the individualized goods characterize human individuals.

A bourgeois liberal society conforms best to this human nature, because a liberal open society will secure both natural liberty and natural virtue--the liberty of individuals to develop those moral and intellectual virtues that express that ranking of the generic goods of human nature that constitutes the best life for those individuals.  In such a free society, someone like Strauss, who "fulfills the office of philosopher to the highest degree," will be free to live the philosophic life in friendship with other philosophers; and the rest of us will be free to live other kinds of life that best conform to our individual propensities and talents.

Smith concludes his book by declaring that "the narrative of progress is no longer sustainable" (352).  He believes this is true because antibourgeois intellectuals have said that it is true.  He never reflects on the fact that this contradicts the reality of the life that most of us live today in bourgeois liberal societies.  Because of market freedom, cultural pluralism, and the bourgeois virtues, our life today is generally more peaceful, more just, and richer in both material and spiritual goods than has ever been the case for human beings at any previous time in history.  Does Smith really believe that that is not progress?

Strauss's Secret: "The Most Terrible Truth"

This semester, I am teaching a graduate seminar on Leo Strauss and the debate over Strauss and his legacy.  One of the crucial issues in that debate is whether Strauss was a secret writer.  

One of Strauss's most famous claims is that many of the classic writers of political philosophy have practiced an art of secret writing, by which they could convey an esoteric teaching that is unpopular or heterodox to a few careful readers who are philosophic, while conveying an exoteric teaching that is more popular or orthodox to the many careless readers who are unphilosophic.  This claim--elaborated in Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)--suggests the question of whether Strauss himself was a secret writer with a secret teaching.  If he was, then what's the big secret that would be so disturbing to most readers that it needs to be hidden from their view?

Some of Strauss's critics insist that his secret teaching was his promotion of fascist or Nazi ideas as an alternative to modern liberal democracy.  One piece of evidence for this is in a letter to Karl Lowith in May of 1933, in which he endorses "the principles of the right . . . fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles," and declares that "there is no reason to crawl to the cross, neither to the cross of liberalism, as long as somewhere in the world there is a glimmer of the spark of Roman thought."  Another piece of evidence is Strauss's interest in Carl Schmitt, who became a leading Nazi theoretician.  In his "Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political," Strauss seemed to endorse Schmitt's argument that liberalism had failed and that the bourgeois values of liberalism were decadent.  Strauss sought "a radical critique of liberalism" and a "horizon beyond liberalism," although he thought Schmitt had not gone far enough beyond liberalism.  When the students of Strauss speak about the "problem of the bourgeois," they seem to be following Schmitt in his scorn for bourgeois liberalism. 

In Strauss's lecture on "German Nihilism" in 1941, he traced this disdain for bourgeois life to Nietzsche as a formative influence on the "young nihilists" of Germany, and Strauss suggested his partial agreement with their "heroic nihilism": "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."  The Straussian allure of "heroic nihilism" is manifested in Harvey Mansfield's account of the "manly nihilism" of Nietzsche and Teddy Roosevelt, and in Mansfield's praise of George W. Bush's "one-man rule" in advancing the imperial power of the United States.

These and other lines of evidence have led people like William Altman (in The German Stranger) to charge that Strauss was a Jewish Nazi.  I am not yet convinced that there is enough evidence to support such an inflammatory accusation.

If Strauss had a big secret, I think, it's to be found elsewhere--in what he identified as "the most terrible truth."  When a writer has a deeply disturbing message that he wants to transmit to his philosophic readers while hiding it from his vulgar readers, Strauss suggested, there are various techniques available to him.  A writer can convey his own views through writing interpretive commentaries on the texts of other writers, so that only careful readers will notice his implicit endorsement of ideas attributed to others.  A writer can also hide his most unpopular views by putting them at the center of his text, because careless readers tend to pay more attention to the beginning and ending of what they read than to the middle.  In Strauss's Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), the central chapter--and the longest chapter--is a commentary on Lucretius's On the Nature of Things.  The exact center of the book is page 135, where Strauss concludes his study of Lucretius by explaining "the most terrible truth."

As I have indicated in some earlier posts, Strauss saw Lucretius as the exponent of "liberalism ancient and modern," because Lucretius was the one premodern thinker who came closest to modern liberal thought, particularly as based on modern natural science.  The central insight of Lucretius's argument is that "nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal or deathless, or that the eternal is not lovable" (LAM, viii).  Lucretius proves the mortality of the world as a product of emergent evolution from atoms in motion: "the world is one of the many arrangements of atoms which in a very long time came about through the furious clashes of the blind atoms without the intervention of an ordering mind or a peaceful agreement agreement between the atoms; and once it has come about, it preserves itself for a long time" (123).  Since the world is not the product of an ordering mind, the world is not teleological, although it contains intelligent species--particularly, human beings--that have evolved to be teleological in their natural striving to satisfy their natural desires (125-26).  Since the world is not intelligently designed by a divinely providential mind, the world is indifferent to human beings and thus provides no cosmic support for human purposes.  Moreover, while the world is enduring, it is not eternal.  The world and everything in it--including the human species and all other species of life--will eventually collapse into the ceaseless motion of atoms that will then produce another world.  This is, Strauss believes, "the most terrible truth."  He writes:

"Lucretius does not speak here [in Book 6], as he did in the section on the thunderbolt, of men's tracing the terrifying phenomenon to the wrath of the gods; he only alludes to men's believing that the gods in their kindness vouch for the sempiternity of the world (601-602); on the other hand, he says explicitly that men 'fear to believe' that the world will die a natural death (565-567). It is this fear for the world, that is, for this world, for everything that is a man's own or his nation's own, which gives rise to the belief in gods and therewith also to fear of the gods; the fear of gods is not the fundamental fear. The fundamental fear gives rise in the first place to fear of that very fear, to fear of the most terrible truth." (LAM, 135)

In his footnote to this passage, Strauss cites Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1050b22-24, and On the Heaven, 270b1-16. Aristotle indicates that "eternal movement, if there be such" depends on the eternity of the heavens, and he identifies the eternity and divinity of the outermost heaven as an ancestral belief based on faith or trust (pistis).

Strauss hints that he agrees with this teaching of Lucretius. "Lucretius' poetry makes bright and sweet the obscure and sad findings of the Greeks, that is, of the philosophers" (83). "One may therefore say that philosophy is productive of the deepest pain. Man has to choose between peace of mind deriving from a pleasing delusion and peace of mind deriving from the unpleasing truth. Philosophy which, anticipating the collapse of the walls of the world, breaks through the walls of the world, abandons the attachment to the world; this abandonment is most painful" (85). "Religion thus appears to be a human invention which serves the purpose of counteracting the indifference of the whole to man's moral and political needs, for not all men are or can be philosophers" (100). (See also 88, 91, 95-96, 106, 119.)

Although Strauss often seems to defend religious belief by arguing that revelation cannot be refuted by reason, some of his readers have suspected that his big secret is his atheism. But even if he was an atheist, his writing on Lucretius suggests that atheism is only part of a deeper truth--"the most terrible truth" of the perishability of the world that is hidden by religious belief in an eternal order of intelligent design that cares about and for human beings.

This "most terrible truth" also illuminates what Strauss in the Introduction to Natural Right and History identified as "the problem of natural right." There he said that this problem is that "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe" that seems to have been refuted by modern natural science. He explained: "From the point of view of Aristotle--and who could dare to claim to be a better judge in this matter than Aristotle?--the issue between the mechanical and the teleological conception of the universe is decided by the manner in which the problem of the heavens, the heavenly bodies, and their motion is solved" (7-8). This emphasis on cosmic teleology is reinforced by Strauss's claim that "the primary object of philosophy" is "the heavens and the heavenly bodies" (PAW, 20; "Farabi's Plato," 364-65, 382-83, 390-91).

But if Strauss agreed with Lucretius that the universe is neither eternal nor purposeful, then natural right cannot be defended unless it is rooted in the immanent teleology of human nature as an enduring but not eternal product of a natural evolutionary process.

As Strauss indicates, Aristotle spoke of the cosmology of eternal order as based largely on mythic stories and traditional religious beliefs. By contrast, Aristotle spoke of the biological study of living beings as closer to human life and more open to direct study. While Platonic cosmological science (like that of Timaeus) looks for the eternally fixed order of Being, biological science looks to the temporal flux of becoming. Empirical biology manifests an immanent teleology of enduring but not eternal species that does not depend on any cosmic teleology of eternal order.

Strauss even pushed Plato in this direction by denying that Plato believed in the eternal order of the Ideas or the immortality of the soul (PAW, 13-15; "Farabi's Plato," 364, 371, 376), which meant pushing Plato in the direction of Lucretius.

The culmination of all of this could be Nietzsche's Darwinian argument in Human, All Too Human that "everything has evolved," and that therefore there are no eternal truths, although modern science can satisfy the free-spirited philosopher in the quest for the "humble truths" of nature, which include the moral and political truths of evolved human nature.

In an earlier book, Nietzsche had warned against Darwinian evolution as a "deadly truth"--the phrase echoed in Strauss's "most terrible truth"--but Human, All Too Human shows how a "gay science" of evolution can affirm the intrinsic purposefulness of mortal human life in a mortal universe where everything evolves.  Thus does a seemingly deadly truth become life-affirming.

This is what I have tried to do in defending "Darwinian natural right," in providing a scientific grounding in evolved human nature for natural right.  And yet most of the Straussians scorn such an enterprise. 

In fact, most of the Straussians are silent about substantive arguments for the natural ground of natural right.  Does this silence point to the real Straussian secret--that the Straussians don't really believe in the truth of natural right, because they are nihilists, even if manly nihilists?

Sometimes the Straussians suggest that the only clear standard of natural right is the natural ranking of the philosophic life as the only truly good life, which includes a denigration of moral and political life as lacking any natural justification.  But even here the Straussians never lay out the substantive arguments necessary to prove the natural supremacy of the philosophic life.  Does this mean that they are so radically nihilistic that they regard even the choice to live a philosophic life as an arbitrary choice with no grounding in nature?

Some posts on related points can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.