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Monday, June 09, 2003
Crazies
Sullivan has posted again on Leo Strauss, this time linking to an article written by Strauss's daughter in defense of her father. I've written about this twice already (you can find both posts here), so I'd just like to add a few points:
1. I am still amazed at how insane people can become over the idea of Strauss. Go here for an example, including the comments. Would it really be so painful for critics to show some evidence to justify their venom?
2. As a few of the comments to my earlier posts attest, there can be problems with some who find themselves enamored with Strauss and his students, just as there are with every group of thinkers. (Don't get me started on the pain of watching, when I was in graduate school, the English students prostrate themselves in front of the French post-modernists who had stints guest teaching there.) Furthermore, as with any way of thought, there are characteristic ways in which "Straussianism" might come up short, say, an overemphasis on politics. It is simply absurd, however, to think that somehow these folks are outside the realm of reasonable discourse.
Eddie 1:42 PM
Sunday, June 08, 2003
Equality
I'm not much of an egalitarian, but I found in Hobbes an account of the equality of man that I can affirm:
...if we look on men full grown, and consider how brittle the frame of our human body is, which perishing, all its strength, vigour, and wisdom itself perisheth with it; and how easy a matter it is, even for the weakest man to kill the strongest: there is no reason why any man, trusting to his own strength, should conceive himself made by nature above others. They are equals, who can do equal things one against the other; but they who can do the greatest things, namely, kill, can do equal things. All men therefore among themselves are by nature equal.... (The Citizen, chapter one)
Of course, it would not be right to say that all people are equally good at killing. A professional soldier, or martial arts expert, will have an edge on an elderly lady, but that doesn't mean that an elderly lady can't kill you if she sets her mind to it. For the most part, if someone wants you dead and is willing to pay the consequences, your chances are not too good. For Hobbes, it is this mutual fear that makes society necessary.
Society, according to Hobbes, eases this mutual fear and allows for trust, which is pleasing in itself, and which also makes possible promises and contracts. It seems to me, however, that a little of this fear is not such a bad thing for society to maintain. Under normal circumstances, most people have no desire to be violent, and many of those that do are deterred by the consequences, but circumstances are not always normal. People can have their existence threatened, whether physically or financially, and some people are willing to stake their life for the sake of dignity. It is good that we should be a little afraid to push people to these limits.
As angry as it makes me to see people abuse others by breaking the law, I am made at least as mad by those who abuse others with the law's full blessing. To those who understand how to manipulate the system at the expense of others, I want to say to them: Don't you know that you are vulnerable too?
Eddie 5:40 PM
Friday, June 06, 2003
Lifelong Learning
I've just reached the end of the first of two weeks at a workshop in Annapolis. It has been fairly grueling: two sessions a day of discussing difficult material, three hours a session. I feel like I've been here a month. It has been a good opportunity for me to read some books, and I will appreciate the money, but it isn't something I'd choose for the fun of it. Basically, I have no desire to be a student again. I don't mind teaching, although I wouldn't be pissed to win the lottery, but I have no desire to be a student. Didn't I graduate at some point?
I am always amused by people who talk about lifelong learning. Of course we learn as we get older, but do you really need formal instruction for that? I don't want my students to be students forever. I hope that they will learn how to learn such that they don't need someone to hand them a syllabus and give them a pop quiz.
Not too long ago I talked to a woman in her thirties who wanted to take a class on photography. Maybe that makes sense, but I couldn't understand why she didn't just go get a camera and start taking pictures. Get a book too if necessary, but just start taking pictures. When she couldn't do something she wanted to do, or her pictures were not coming out right, or she just wanted to experiment, then it would make sense to go look for someone. And probably that someone shouldn't be a professor teaching a class.
This week has been a painful reminder that I am my own best teacher.
Eddie 8:41 PM
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Scientific Americans
For the next two weeks I will be in Annapolis, Maryland at St. John's College attending a workshop. My access to a computer is limited, but I hope to keep posting.
On my way up here, I bought a Scientific American dedicated to recent theories of human evolution. I was particularly drawn by the question on the cover "Why do Humans Walk Upright?," although I still haven't found the answer. Anyhow, I was struck by how quickly the theories change, and how little evidence these theorists have to work from. In many cases they will infer a whole structure from a small sample of bones, which isn't entirely implausible depending on the bones, but there is enough ambiguity in the evidence that researchers cannot come to agreement. The scarcity of evidence seems to be responsible for the rapidly changing theories. If you have a 1000 bone sample, one more might not mean much, but if you have only 3 from a given time period, an extra one can change the picture radically. Plus they are constantly finding samples from time periods where none had been found before.
Some matters are not so much in dispute. Homo sapiens have been around about 200,000 years, and there doesn't seem to be much overlap with other hominids, except maybe a little with the Neanderthals. (Notice I didn't write Neandertals. When a term enters English, don't screw with it!) Tracing the lineage of homo sapiens back, however, runs into difficulty and dispute, because it is not clear that every hominid is in our line of descent. Some may have branched off before the homo sapiens and become extinct. In fact, this is thought to be the case of the Neanderthhhhals. (Go ahead and say it aloud, just to piss off those Euro-sensitive paleontologists.) So some hominid finds may only be cousins of ours, not ancestors. Furthermore, the scientists cannot always agree that these bones are hominid bones at all. What one scientist will build a theory on, another will claim to be the bones of an ancient gorilla!
In short, this stuff isn't exactly settled. A biologist colleague of mine tells me that Stephen Jay Gould, the famous popularizer of evolutionary theory, used to throw away his course materials for Human Evolution every two years. Given the speculative nature of the content, I'm not sure why anyone would teach such a course.
I am sure, however, that I will soon hear some of these accounts from Scientific American treated like gospel and the earlier theories, yesterday's excitement, treated with condescension. That condescension reveals how science enthusiasts have so much in common with the followers of fashion. "He still thinks hominids evolved from the savannah (giggle, giggle). Everyone knows the oldest finds now are from the forest." The general public doesn't really understand how thin some of this theorizing can be, so there is always a market to sell these stories to. Like me, apparently.
So, on the one hand, we have this unskeptical consumption of today's breaking scientific research. On the other hand, how many people can prove that the earth and all the planets rotate around the sun and not vice versa? I'm not sure I could, even though I have spent time with some of Galileo's texts that helped establish the point. I'm guessing that most people would be even harder pressed than I. It isn't a pretty picture.
Eddie 7:21 PM
Friday, May 30, 2003
Marshall
I was just reading Talking Points Memo, as I do every so often, and was struck wondering about what motivates a guy like Marshall. He is rational and manages to qualify his claims to give a sense of fairness, yet there is hardly anything he writes that is not designed to make Republicans look bad and Democrats look good.
There is something intellectually dishonest in this, whatever your political bent might be. Political parties are opportunists, and they will shift as they need to meet the times. Practically speaking, this makes sense, and only an idealist would think it out of bounds for a party to do what it needs to survive. Political parties represent a large group of people and interests that don't necessarily coincide. Here are some issues that lead me typically to vote Republican: national defense, gun rights, and a general uneasiness with the entitlement mentality of the Left. I am much less persuaded, however, by the social conservatism that the Republicans represent, and I am unsure of who has the better argument concerning budgets and deficits. I live with the parts I don't like to further the parts of the agenda I think are more important. I suspect most people in politics are the same way, and it is understandable why they might often remain silent rather than alienate their friends and allies. Marshall is not a politician, however; he is a journalist.
I'm not arguing here that Marshall should be unbiased, as if that means anything. I would be more than happy for him to defend whatever politics he believes in. But he doesn't really defend a politics. Instead, he is trying to advance a politics, or at least a political party, by playing up whatever might tarnish the Republican's image. I doubt this is very hard to do, but it is not hard to do in either direction, which makes his choices so suspect. In short, Marshall is spinning just like any other politician. That doesn't mean he is spreading falsehoods. It just means that he uses the truth instrumentally.
I don't trust him. I want to trust him. He is obviously intelligent and seems pretty decent. But I never can believe when I read him that I am getting a proper perspective, and I rarely even feel compelled to seek out what that perspective might be. Part of why Andrew Sullivan is my favorite blogger and the New Republic is my favorite political magazine is that both are willing to stray from party loyalty for the sake of intellectual integrity. I may not agree with either of them on various issues, but I never think I'm being spun. I've come to like Christopher Hitchens for the same reason, and it is paying off, from his perspective, in that I take some of his criticisms of the U.S. much more seriously than I would have coming from other sources.
It is sometimes said that we should distinguish the argument from the one making the argument. To do otherwise, we are told, is to commit the ad hominem fallacy. There is a point to this, but we can't underestimate the significance of moral authority when it comes to communication. There are a lot of voices out there, and we must select among them before we can even pay close attention to what they are saying. Marshall, and those like him, whether on the left or the right, lack that authority.
Eddie 9:21 AM
Thursday, May 29, 2003
Exhaustion
I remember that, when I was younger, the older people would talk about their nerves. People would beg out of certain situations because their "nerves can't handle it." My mother would speak this way. If everything was just too much, she would say that "my nerves are shot." When I was younger, I don't think I ever really understood what she meant, and translated this phrase simply as "mom is tired."
I still hear people talk about nerves occasionally, such as the phrase "get off my nerves," but generally now we seem to talk about stress. Life is stressful. Many, even doctors, attribute ill health sometimes to stress, and we are instructed to find ways to reduce our stress level. There is a reaction against this attribution too, because it can sometimes make illness the fault of the sick undeservedly, and because it can sometimes alleviate the fault of the sick by placing blame on external factors, as in "I've got to reduce my stress to bring my blood pressure down," even if the person might do better to just lose weight.
I'm not sure why, but I think I prefer the reference to nerves over the reference to stress. Nerves speaks to our biology, the capacity of our nervous system to handle the signals of our existence, while talk of stress suggests to me the ideal of a stress-free existence. As Heraclitus tells us, however, a stress-free existence is neither possible or desirable:
We must recognize that war is common and strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity.
Gravity makes it possible for us to walk upright, but gravity is also part of our undoing.
This brings me to my central question: has society outpaced our nerves? Are we biologically equipped for the world we have made?
Here are some signs that our nervous system is not sufficient:
1. Our capacity to appreciate the good in our lives has diminished. Our pursuit of pleasure is so relentless and so successful that we struggle to feel any of it. We are like the junkies always chasing that first high.
2. We have way too many signs -- literal signs -- to direct us. We do not read situations so much as read the instructions that govern the situation. Speed limits, bulletin boards with policy changes and schedule reminders, and the menu in the fast food restaurant all shout at us to pay attention. We learn to ignore them, but even ignoring a sign takes something out of us. Even if you don't think about the food value charts on grocery products or read the legal contract that is printed in small type, there is a part of you that knows you are potentially putting yourself into a dangerous situation.
3. We push more and more into our subconscious. Driving on the highway, we place high demands on our nervous system. We must detect relative motion in an instant and navigate a large metal frame at high momentum with just the smallest of movements of the steering wheel. If we leave this act to our consciousness, we will respond too slow and we will become exhausted. Instead, we learn to drive automatically. This too is tiring, however, and doesn't really allow our conscious thought to operate as freely as we might like. Listening to music while driving is quite satisfying, but it isn't really such a good way to hear the music.
I do not know if there are more precise ways to measure this phenomenon. Even if there were, we might well miss the point, because we would use as our standard a creature whose nerves are already under heavy stress. It seems to me, however, that we would do well to learn more about our biology and its limits, and learn to factor those limits into the choices we make.
Eddie 1:55 AM
Monday, May 26, 2003
Tidbits
What is the opposite of schadenfreude, i.e. taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others? I don't think envy or jealousy quite gets it, unless you use the terms broadly. One can feel pain at the success of others without wanting exactly what they have. The problem is more that you are being reminded of your own inadequacy.
I have done things that cause me pain when I think back on them (even though I don't believe in regret!), but I've never embarrassed myself as regularly as do some of the clowns on Trading Spaces. I just saw one of them putting in a rock-climbing wall in a child's bedroom. Lawn darts are illegal, but rock-climbing walls are ok?
I miss lawn darts. The English, as always, are more civilized than we are.
Is there any reason we associate the scent of lemons with cleanliness other than the use of that scent in household cleaners? Can lemon juice be used to clean with?
Eddie 10:34 PM
Saturday, May 24, 2003
Consumption
I've often heard it said that the United States has only a small portion of the earth's population but consumes a much greater share of the earth's resources. I thought I would track those figures down and discovered that the stated figures run about like this: the U.S. is roughly 5% of the earth's population and consumes 20-30% of the resources. Interestingly, the use of these statistics is common, but a citation to an actual source is rare. (And the places it gets used are some real winners too; here is one explaining to kids why the Arab world rightly hates America.) After looking at about 15 sites, I found only one reference, and it was generically to the World Wildlife Fund, but I couldn't find anything at that site on these numbers at all. Is this one of those urban legends?
Even if the numbers are true, however, it isn't clear why this is important. Let me give some reasons:
1. As far as I know, the United States doesn't literally steal anyone else's resources. We pay for them, which means that for both parties there is a fair exchange. If we cut down on consumption, as most everyone quoting these statistics recommend, the countries selling these resources would make less money. I don't think they would consider this a positive development. So even if our consumption of resources amounts to nothing more than our using them to build a mountain like Richard Dreyfus did with mashed potatoes in Close Encounters, as long as we can pay for them, everyone is better off.
2. Of course, we aren't buying these resources to build a mountain for the aliens to find us. We make things with those resources! This is a good thing too, and it explains how it is that we can buy those resources to begin with. This would be the interesting statistic that I've never seen: how does the percentage of resources consumed compare to our production?
3. Let's not forget that for many of these resource-rich but otherwise poorer countries, their resources are more resources for us than they are for them. How much oil does it take to run Saudi Arabia? If the Saudis could only use their oil themselves, and not sell it to others, its value would plummet greatly. On the other hand, if the United States had those kinds of reserves, the value of the oil would remain roughly the same. There are some books in my university's library that only I and a few others have checked out. As far as those books are concerned, the time they've spent with me is entirely disproportionate to the time they've spent with university faculty and students generally. This is ok, however, because I am one of the few people who gives a flip about them in the first place.
4. As other countries sell their resources, they become richer. If they are smart, they will build real economies with substantial production. If enough countries do this, our consumption (as a percentage) will go down.
Am I missing something, or are these unsubstantiated statistics a sign that a large part of our population has zero understanding of economics?
Eddie 1:13 AM
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Empowerment
Ever notice how people who talk a lot about empowerment are also often people who blame the misfortunes of themselves and others on the "system"?
Epictetus, in his Enchiridion (Handbook), says the following:
The condition and characteristic of an uninstructed person is this: he never expects from himself profit (advantage) nor harm, but from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is this: he expects all advantage and all harm from himself.
For Epictetus, the development from ignorance to knowledge is primarily a transformation from being a passive victim of circumstance to being the author of one's own being. Like all the Stoics, Epictetus refuses to entertain the fantasy of a world where everything goes the way you want it. You cannot expect the world to make you happy, and you shouldn't trust what you don't have control over yourself. Epictetus finds power in spite of the world's unfriendliness.
I tend to see stoicism as the last (and best) refuge for the desperate, but I believe Epictetus is correct about the fundamental goal of education. Western philosophy may have a tendency to underestimate the virtues of passivity, but, since passivity is our natural state of mind, it is important to give emphasis to the power of transforming the world into something livable. (Side note: it may be the fatal flaw of the Green movement to not properly acknowledge this.) We pay lip service to this goal while continuing to program a reality that will make the world safe for all.
Eddie 1:36 PM
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Friendship
I have just recently read the Lysis, a Platonic dialogue that inquires into the nature of friendship. You won't find too many philosophical discussions of friendship today -- I remember a faculty member in graduate school asking "why are friends important?" -- but philosophers in antiquity raise the topic quite a bit. Aristotle, for example, lets the discussion of friendship provide a culmination of sorts for his account of the moral virtues.
Of course, the term friend covers a wide range in that literature, including family and the relationship of citizens. At issue are the different bonds that hold people together. As classical Greek culture marked the rise of urbane culture over tribal culture, it was of particular interest how the family bond becomes superceded by the role of citizen. Today we tend to think of people being citizens from birth because for us citizenship is primarily a legal category. Also, the modern state claims a far greater power in the raising of children; thus the rights of citizens become the rights of children. In an earlier time, however, becoming a citizen means, in part, having a voice independent of one's father. In the evolution of culture, such a development is not trivial.
Aside from differences of historical circumstance, friendship also drops out of modern philosophy as ethics and politics move toward more abstract universal principles. The Kantian ethic is the epitome of this abstraction, in which the matter of duty is unaffected by the issue of what your bond to someone is. In this sense, Kantian duty is different from the duty of the Stoics, who maintain the ancient sense that different relations call for different responsibilities. Even Utilitarianism, however, which is often placed as an alternative to Kantian ethics in modern philosophy, abstracts beyond the particular bonds between people and demands a calculus that considers the good of each person individually. The impartiality of justice seems to require that we set aside our personal connections in determining what is best.
For these reasons, and probably others, we have stopped asking about the nature of friendship. When I talk about friendship in my classes, I think my students consider me to be attempting to stoop to their level, as if I were asking them about their favorite music and movies. We expect the young to place significance on their friends, but there is also a cultural expectation that family and career will eventually replace these bonds. In asking about friendship then, I appear to be asking about something juvenile, which they take very seriously in the present but less seriously in their projection of their own future.
A sign that friendship is taken less seriously is that few people would let the fundamental decisions of life be decided on this basis. Who would decide against a marriage simply because their friends didn't approve? Who would avoid a job promotion because it took them away from their friends? Who even honestly expects their friends to be the same throughout life?
To some extent, we are relearning the importance of the topic of friendship as we witness the different kinds of social relations that exist between citizens of different polities. Nothing is more striking in totalitarian cultures, whether it be Soviet Russia or Iraq, than the fundamental distrust that exists between people, even family members. Totalitarian culture kills the public sphere and poisons the private sphere as well. Those who defend limited government are also concerned with the nature of social bonds; how do people see each other when it is taken for granted that each person has an entitlement from their fellow citizens to provide them with a good life? What happens to traditional notions of respect, gratitude, and hospitality when such an entitlement mentality sets in?
The topic of friendship may thus be still with us, especially if we use the term broadly as the ancients did. What has not resurfaced as an important consideration, however, is what friendship might be in its perfection. We may talk about "true friends," but we are not very demanding as to what might count as an instance of it. If my washing machine breaks down and my neighbor agrees to let me use his machine instead, I might praise my neighbor in this way, as in "You are such a true friend."
For many of the ancient philosophers, and even some of the early moderns, however, true friendship was rare and was the highest possible human relationship. Aristotle describes a true friend as "another self," meaning that we consider the well-being of a friend as equal to our own. Among true friends there is no distance. Montaigne concurs, and even employs as an example of true friendship the man who, in his will, bestowed upon one friend the responsibility of his mother and upon another the responsibility of his daughter. According to Montaigne, the giving over of the responsibility was a greater sign of friendship than the accepting of it.
This kind of talk is not utterly alien to us, but it is not entirely familiar either. Perhaps friends have been sacrificed, along with the extended family, to the demands of a modern capitalist economy, which requires that its workers be always available to move to whatever place makes them most productive. Perhaps too friendship has been lost to modern marriage; when husband and wife are considered equal, and their union is centered on themselves, rather than on having children, it looks to be a friendship as well. More than once I have heard someone say "I married my best friend." Perhaps friendship apart from marriage is no longer different enough in kind to survive the competition. Can marriage adequately subsume true friendship? I'm not sure, but it should be noted that the vows of marriage have no parallel that I know of in the realm of friends. Friends may take oaths about particular deeds, but not usually about the friendship itself.
There are a number of difficult questions to answer when it comes to friendship. Why is a shared existence more meaningful than a life of solitude? To what extent does friendship require similarity, and how much does it depend upon complementary qualities? Where does friendship fit in the hierarchy of human relations, and what kind of polity is needed to preserve it in its proper place? For these questions to be real, however, we would have to agree that friendship is itself a serious topic for discussion.
Eddie 8:34 PM
Occupation
If nothing else, the argument that the U.S. was not ready for nation-building in Iraq, with which opponents of the administration are having a field day, is yet more evidence against the notion of the U.S. as an imperial power. An imperial power would have had more experience with this sort of thing.
Eddie 8:30 AM
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Blue
After two months it is still difficult for me to write about this, but I have to admit how deeply dissatisfied I am that this guy was judged the Happiest Man in America.
Update: I forgot to mention that you can test your own level of happiness here. I scored in the top 35% in general happiness, but my optimism score was not so good. I can't confirm the scientific accuracy of the test, but it does have lots of numbers!
Eddie 12:35 PM
Monday, May 19, 2003
A Bargain
Now you can get into Sarah Michelle Gellar's pants (and blouse!) for only $4000 or so. (And no, I'm not above trolling for cheap hits.)
Eddie 12:16 PM
Women's Studies
Hegel said that history is over, by which he meant not that clocks stop ticking or things stop happening but that there are no new important human truths to be discovered. Human beings should be free, and the state should be organized to make that possible. Working out the details of what that means is not so easy, but Hegel doesn't think there is any wisdom to supercede it nor any future philosophical developments that could be anything but distractions from it.
So far, he seems to be right. While there are still reactionary forces in support of traditional societies around the world, none of those forces are representing a credible alternative. And they may not die easily, but it looks like die they must. As for new ways of thinking that are fundamentally anti-liberal, only fascism seems to qualify, and it has not shown itself to be much of a success. Communism could be said to be a new philosophy from Hegel's day, but it too has been discredited, and anyway it doesn't dispute that individual freedom is the goal, even if it never seemed to promote it in practice. In the United States especially, but I think even in the world generally, the real debate is between versions of liberalism. The conservatives tend to defend a more classical liberalism, with emphasis on individual's making their own way, while the welfare liberals believe that individuals can only be free when the state guarantees all of the conditions that make such freedom possible. It is a vital debate, but the extremes have been eliminated (laissez-faire capitalism, libertarian anarchism, and complete socialism), so the debate is over a fairly narrow range of turf. (Defenders of the Green movement may think they have a new opposition to liberalism, and they would be right, but without elaboration I will say that this political philosophy is ultimately just as destitute as fascism and that the concern of the environment can be and has been and will be absorbed into the liberal order.)
I think this constitutes a bit of a problem for those engaged in women's studies. The emancipation of women is, to my mind, unquestionably an advance for humanity, and nearly everyone in the West agrees. The desire to emancipate women in the Middle East, for example, finds support even from conservatives, who consider that emancipation an important step in disrupting traditional tribal culture. Nonetheless, as important as the emancipation of women is historically, is there anything of deep political significance to be learned from it? Isn't this emancipation just an extension of the idea of freedom that Hegel found taking root even back in the early 1800s?
There are plenty of feminist positions that argue for unique ways that women see the world, but it seems to me that these positions are distractions and, if true, would only undermine the emancipation that they support, for why should men be persuaded to give up power to people who think fundamentally different from them? The real point, however, is that most people don't think that there are these fundamental differences. As exciting as it is for academics to describe this feminist vision, the general public doesn't buy it, and proponents of this vision have almost no political power. This can be seen particularly with younger women, who are thoroughly feminist in terms of the belief in women's equality, but much less likely than their female elders to think that the world needs to make exceptions for them.
Women's studies then can give us an important view of history, and even describe areas where the struggle for emancipation continues, but what can it really teach us about fundamental truths of human nature and politics? None, I think. As someone who is mainly interested in these kinds of truths, I have to admit there is hardly anything of less interest to me than the study of women.
Update: After looking at this post for over a day, I feel a need to provide an addendum. Given the different roles traditionally given to the genders, there is a very important question of how society can respond to the emancipation of women from those roles, and an answer to this question would constitute real progress. Unfortunately, I think women's studies often as not gets in the way of this question because of its political agenda to push that emancipation forward. If you believe, as I do, that the modern world rests upon the foundations of earlier tribal societies (as opposed to simply sitting on top of the graves of those societies), there is a real concern for what happens when those ancient practices become transformed, akin to the transformation Aeschylus faced, in the Euminides, of an earlier vengeance culture into a culture of law. To ask the question honestly, however, requires you to be open to the possibility that the emancipation of women brings with it loss and potential danger, a position which most academic feminists consider hostile to their cause.
Eddie 2:29 AM
Thursday, May 15, 2003
And This
Since I've been getting a fair amount of traffic for my last post (thanks Invisible Adjunct!), I thought I would add one more relevant item. As I made reference to but did not discuss, there is a belief that Straussians constitute a cult, or perhaps a cult of cults, with Strauss as the primary cult leader and his students with their own smaller circles of the devoted. Ted Hinchman, in a post that inspired me to write up my own thoughts, does not use such strong language, but does speak of "the undergraduate infatuation with a charismatic professor round which Straussianism as a movement has been built, and which I myself was mercifully spared."
If you read Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's scarcely fictional account of Allan Bloom, you will find a similar story, although Bellow presents the phenomenon without the negative judgment. (As well he should, since his most recent marriage was to one of Bloom's students.) Bloom's students are devoted, even after graduating and leaving Chicago. Bloom socializes with them and even plays the matchmaker between them, as he did with Bellow and his wife. Obviously this is not the norm for professors in American universities.
My experience with Straussians -- I hope everyone by now realizes that I'm using the term somewhat loosely -- does not match Bellow's account exactly, but there is a bond between the students and their teachers in this crowd that helps give birth to the notion of the cult. Ted uses the term charismatic and I am reminded of some of the charismatic churches I visited in my youth. I would prefer to call the bond erotic.
In Plato's Symposium, both Socrates and Aristophanes present eros as a desire for wholeness. In Aristophanes' account, eros is a mundane desire, a fleshly craving visited upon creatures who once had the audacity to storm Mount Olympus. In Socrates' account, spoken through the persona of Diotima, eros is still divine and represents in its fullest form the desire to be made complete. From this account, all significant learning is erotic; the soul realizes its emptiness and desperately craves satisfaction. As we find in the Phaedrus, this desperation can be spoken of as a kind of madness. Surely lovers are prone to embarrass themselves, and it is always noteworthy when a Platonic character blushes.
The divinity of eros makes it fundamental to our well-being, but the madness of eros makes it politically dangerous. A standard Straussian interpretation of the Republic, for example, is to make note of how eros in the "ideal" city is subdued (through arranged mating and otherwise) for the good of the city. The city falls apart when the leaders lose track of the proper calendar for this arranged mating and people have intercourse out of season. And the depiction of the tyrant, who represents the worst of human possibilities, centers around his erotic madness.
Straussian teaching thus places great emphasis on the passions, from an attitude of both piety and distrust. In this regard, they are pagan, because the ancient Greeks believed (unlike the Christians) that, although everything divine is to be respected, not everything divine is always good for you. The gods wreak havoc in mortal affairs. In teaching about the passions, Straussian teachers aim at a moral education that develops the passions and a political education that explains how human institutions manage the passions for civil order. Thus there is also a piety and distrust of human institutions among the Straussians, but for opposite reasons; piety, because human institutions preserve civil order, and distrust, because they do so at the expense of the human participation in the divine.
The uneasiness of many with the "cult" of the Straussians, and with the presence of the erotic in a university setting, speaks to all of the tensions that I have been mentioning. We worry about the vulnerability of young minds hungry for learning and about the ambition of teachers who want to help form those minds. In response, we sometimes set up the ideal of the teacher as a disinterested presenter of alternative theories. I have colleagues, and have had professors, who are proud that they can teach a whole semester without their students having any idea of where they stand. This attempt to avoid passionate education is, however, just a different education in the passions, and not a very profound one. It is an education in words and speeches, the letter without the spirit. It is an education that convinces many that an education will not satisfy their deeper longings.
It should be noted, however, that Socrates, in Plato's Symposium, shows some concern about the mixture of teaching and the erotic as well. At the end of the dialogue, Alcibiades complains that Socrates would not sleep with him, regardless of his beauty, wealth, power, and devotion. Socrates responds by pointing out that the exchange would not be even, because Alcibiades would be receiving spiritual satisfactions while Socrates would be receiving only pleasures of the body. In doing so, Socrates called to account the whole Athenian practice of male homosexuality.
(As an aside, I must say that I favor Socrates' argument against sexual relations between teachers and students far more than I do the contemporary argument about abuse of power. The concern about power springs from a secondary feature of today's education i.e., that it provides a credential, and applies only to cases where a student feels pressured to have sex to receive a grade. Socrates' argument speaks more universally to a more serious problem, which is that the student seeks to satisfy the desire for completion through the body rather than through the mind. These students fail their education by being satisfied with proximity, and their teachers fail them by letting them take that satisfaction.)
Straussians teach about the erotic, and their teaching is erotic, because it calls upon the students to recognize and follow their desires. We can say that such teaching is open to abuse, but I think that this means only that such teaching is doing something important. Besides, I have not seen such abuse. Straussian students are sometimes imprudent and express a contempt for the teaching of others, just as the followers of Socrates hurt his name through their poor attempts to imitate him. The Straussians that I have known and admired work as hard to take seriously every philosophical school as anyone else I've known. It is unfortunate that some of their students are dismissive of others, but that cannot be blamed entirely upon the teachers. Those who fall in love are always jealous and protective of their beloved.
Eddie 1:07 PM
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Straussians
About a week ago, the New York Times ran an article "exposing" the nefarious influence that the cult of Leo Strauss has in the Bush administration, especially among the famous neocons running our foreign policy. As Andrew Sullivan said, this is a story that pops up every now and then to scare old ladies and small children. It seems like I remember an article in Newsweek during the Reagan administration and then new ones occasionally ever since.
The reason that the Times, as well as other publications, find this to be newsworthy is because of the charge that Strauss and his "disciples" are anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian, noble-lying elitists who are secretly placing their operatives in politics and academics. I am reminded of the charges leveled against Socrates from his younger accusers that he didn't believe in the gods of Athens and that he was corrupting the young, except that Socrates did this openly. The Straussians are Machiavels to boot.
Just as Athens had a case against Socrates, so I believe the accusers here have some basis to their arguments. Nonetheless, the accusations against Socrates were ultimately unjust, and I want to indicate why I believe they are unjust here as well.
Let me begin by giving my background in the issue. In college and graduate school, I have studied with three professors linked to Strauss: one a student of Harvey Mansfield, another a student of Allan Bloom, and a third a student of Stanley Rosen. Two of those have been central to my education. I have read more Strauss than most people, but not so much really. I have also read some from Bloom, Rosen, Benardete, and others. I say all this to make it clear that I am no expert in such matters, and yet I have had my fair share of experience with the crowd. Would I consider myself a Straussian? I guess I identify with Straussian philosophy about the same way I identify with Christianity: if you think I am a believer, I won't back away from it, but if you think that I am not, I won't challenge you either.
Of the charges against the Straussians, the most common perhaps is their belief that many of the classical texts of the Western tradition have two readings: the surface (exoteric) reading and the hidden (esoteric) reading. Why would an author hide his meaning? One possibility is that he doesn't expect to be understood unless the reader is willing to take the time and care to unpack his work. Another possibility, and the one that the Straussians emphasize, is that good writing always has some dimension that is politically significant, and not every political opinion is safe to openly express. The charges against Socrates provide evidence of this. Not only was Socrates considered by many an atheist, he was also considered unfriendly to Athenian democracy. The Church has been another source of potential discomfort, requiring careful circumlocutions to stay clear of. (The phrase "It's just a theory" that creationists throw at evolutionary biology actually has a precedent in early modern science; it was a way for scientists to work on models without contradicting Scriptural authority.) In the present age, with freedoms of speech and association, it may seem less relevant for someone to be afraid of open speech, but we should remember that Athens had freedom of speech and association as well. If the need for esoteric speech has disappeared, I would hazard that it is less a function of open democratic institutions as it is that speech is increasingly losing its power in our post-modern world. Why hide what you say when no one takes what you say seriously anyway?
The belief in the necessity of esoteric speech has the inevitable tendency of alienating others. It is like the people who insist that everyone acts out of self-interest. The principle may not be true about everyone, but, safe to say, it is true about them. Likewise, this belief in esoteric speech gives the impression of a secret society with its own handshake and funny hats. Unfortunately, in my experience, the suspicion generated against Straussians turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you shun someone as being a cult follower, chances are their activity will look increasingly cult-like, which is ironic, given that the Straussians have written a lot of books and they are all generally available. You don't have to learn the handshake.
Moreover, there are a good many authors for whom the esoteric/exoteric distinction seems to make a lot of sense. If you read Plato closely, taking into account the dramatic elements, the myths, the images, and the historical references, you end up with a lot on your hands that isn't easy to explain. The myth of recollection found in the Meno, for example, is such a poor account that it fails on its own terms, which even my freshmen can figure out without much prodding. This same bad argument then becomes central to the Phaedo, where Socrates is trying to comfort his friends concerning their fear of death. Is this not evidence of a gentle lie? To take another example, Descartes wrote a letter to his friend Mersenne saying that he was continuing to use the language of the Aristotelians in his work, but that his real intention was to undermine Aristotelian physics (which the Church supported).
Our democratic ethos, which I largely share, favors frank, uncomplicated speech. The aristocratic ethos, on the other hand, employs subtlety and reserve. There are some things that are just not polite to talk about. That doesn't make them untrue or unimportant; rather, they are unspoken because speaking them threatens civility. Read Jane Austen and you will find many conversations where what is being said has one significance for most but peculiar significance for someone in particular. Our inability or unwillingness to believe that someone might write one thing and mean another is due partly, I believe, to our being ill-mannered by aristocratic standards. Our language is coarse; we assault each other with the truth.
If this explanation seems far-fetched, I should point out that most of the Straussians I have spent time with have impeccable manners, and expect the same from their friends. I had to educate myself so as to not offend, just as I had to learn to not offend the few people I've met who still hold onto the old Southern aristocratic ways. It is not a way of being that is natural to me, but I respect it, as it demands an extreme sensitivity to others. If you arrive at someone's house for a party, it is important to take note of what is being offered and who has been invited. The host has probably spent a great deal of time deciding on the menu and the company, and it is important to be appreciative. Straussian readings shows the same sensitivity, as if the author was a host who had carefully planned an elaborate event. One reads slowly, and patiently, and with an effort to pay attention to every detail, trusting that such attention will be rewarded.
These aristocratic sensibilities explain in part the hostility directed toward the Straussians. Most American conservatives today are not conservatives in this sense. They are really old-fashioned liberals. There is a conservatism, however, that believes that virtue, i.e., excellence, is uncommon, and that it must be cultivated through a demanding moral and intellectual education. Such an education sets you apart, and prepares you to lead.
There is an elitism at work here, but it doesn't strike me as particularly pernicious. The egalitarians thrive so much on people's resentment that they are always suspicious of leadership, but the truth is that most people are happy to have someone in charge. That someone shouldn't be a dictator, so some form of oversight is important, but most people would just as soon not feel compelled to be up to speed with the political issues of the day. Personally, I am somewhere in between. I have a desire to be informed and to help shape opinion, but I have no desire to actually lead. Everything I've been in charge of has met an untimely death. And if I'm not going to be in charge, I want someone who is demanding of themselves, someone who can see beyond their private sphere.
The old Athenian system of election by lots is not, to my mind, a workable system. There are people who are naturally ambitious and interested in the honor and power that comes with ruling. What needs to happen is for these ambitious people to be educated so as to want more from office than petty prestige. They need an education to make them worthy of their position. Again, such an education will set them apart. It would be impolite for them to remind the rest of us of this fact, but it is true nonetheless. This may sound offensive to some, but it is not a thought that only occurs to Straussians. Wasn't Kennedy calling on a generation to become public-minded, to ask what they can do for their country? Wasn't this clearly an elitism of "the best and the brightest"? And what would the alternative be?
So are the Straussians anti-democratic? Well, in my experience, they don't make a fetish of it. Democracy, as many have said, is the best of the worst. Great people can flourish in it, because every human type can flourish in it, but greatness is not particularly encouraged or particularly rewarded. Indeed, excellence can be an obstacle to those who can't negotiate the resentment of others. Recall Heraclitus:
What the Ephesians deserve is to be hanged to the last man, every one of them, and leave the city to the boys, since they drove out their best man, Hermodorus, saying 'Let no one be the best among us; if he is, let him be so elsewhere and among others.
At the same time, and this cannot be stressed too much, the Straussians have as a fundamental concern the threat of tyranny. They may not be democrats exactly, but they are not authoritarians either, and the perversity of the latter is to them far worse than the laxity of the former. The question they face, and we should all face, is this: is democracy strong enough to resist tyranny on its own? Or does it need the presence of an aristocratic element to do battle for it? This is Jaffa's reading of Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln was the man who temporarily used the powers of the tyrant to preserve the Union's strength against dissolution, for it is in the dissolution of democracy that tyranny is born. Not all the weapons that democracy needs to preserve itself are democratic in nature.
The Straussian philosophy, like all political philosophies, is open to excess. The search for hidden messages can lead to interpretive license and a strange alienation from the wider community of scholars. Elitism can lose its civility, and some people who aren't so special can misidentify themselves simply by keeping the company of those who are. But excesses are possible everywhere, and these are not so dangerous.
Like the rare Calvinist who doesn't consider himself part of the elect, I am sympathetic to the Straussian philosophers even if I don't measure up entirely. The charges against them are not altogether untrue, but they participate in the same kind of dishonesty that they consider the Straussians to be guilty of. Those making these charges act as if they themselves are willing to be completely exposed and transparent. It is the nature of politics that each party attempts to reveal the unpleasant truths that the other holds dear. The Straussians are remarkable not for their revelations but for their belief that there are good reasons for some matters to be somewhat hidden. Those who claim otherwise are lying, and it isn't particularly noble.
Note: Although lengthy, I didn't intend this to be a comprehensive account of Straussian philosophy. For a briefer yet broader account, look here.
Eddie 11:02 AM
Monday, May 12, 2003
Thanks
...for stopping by. I have a lengthy post I'm working on, but right now the lack of sleep and the alcohol are limiting my judgment. Please check by later in the day tomorrow.
Eddie 11:32 AM
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