Leo Strauss.
I have mentioned once or twice on this page the name Leo Strauss, a semi-famous professor (and, some say, philosopher) who fled Germany to escape the Holocaust, and went on to teach at the University of Chicago, and then at St. John's.
Strauss believed in some unusual things. Unusual, at least, for my modern American sensibilities, though Strauss himself thought them perfectly natural conclusions. He was a noted interpreter of the Platonic dialogues, and brought to them a sense of contextual awareness and eye for sublte meaning that seemed previously to have escaped most readers. It was Strauss's belief, in fact, that all of Plato's writings contained both exoteric and esoteric meaning - that is, some interpretations obvious and some very subtle - and that this was a concious decision on Plato's part. To Strauss, truth was a privilege - one to which not all were privy.
Fast forward now to more modern times (basically the 80s but it's difficult to date all of this stuff). Another U of Chicago professor, Allan Bloom, is Strauss's premiere student, and perhaps one of the first to be considered a "Straussian" himself. Bloom is best known for an excellent translation of Plato's 'Republic,' and it can't be denied the man knows his stuff. However, when he publishes his own book, he does not expect to rock the academic and political world as strongly as he does.
The book is called 'The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students.' It's an immediate success, even making national bestseller lists. It's not hard to see why: the book is culturally blunt, even violent, in its treatment of multiculturalism, relativism, and the indoctrination of the young by a democratic government that can only produce good citizens if it produces them stupid.
I'm about half way through this book right now. It caught my eye at a large used book sale at the home of a tutor emeritus of the college, and I immediately recognized Bloom's name from my copy of the Republic.
More to the point, I recognized his name because I have become fascinated with Straussianism over the past semester. It started with my language tutor telling us stories of all the Straussians at St. John's alone (he is himself a part of the lineage, but his field (the biology of Aristotle) precludes him from really being involved). Fascinated, I found this site
, which, among other things, offered me a detailed list of all current notable Straussians. It seemed as though nearly half taught at St. John's, including the Dean (and, interestingly, the incoming Dean for next year). When I ran across the Bloom book, I realized I had the opportunity to remove Straussianism from a shadowy intellectual cult, and to try to understand it myself.
A week or so later, and as I said about half the book, I am completely sucked in. The opening of Mr. Bloom's book:
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.If you're in college now, like me, or if you attended post-60s revolution, that should have struck home with you. It certainly did for me - I entered St. John's as a moral relativist. I will be leaving this year wholly changed. Before, I could not explain very well why this was. I knew that Socrates had convinced me that there really was more to my world than my body and the things that it could sense. But I didn't know why that was important.
If nothing else Bloom has been a great help in this. Relativism, as he says, is not a solution to the problem of discovering goodness, rightness, or virtue. Relativism gazes into our human past and sees the bigotry, the ethnocentricism, the hate and folly and failing, and evaluates them critically, as it should. The problem is: relativism says that, in light of these human defeats, we must not try to correct our errors; we must simply assume that there can be no error, or that we are perpetually at its mercy.
Relativism is not a solution. It is a retreat, and a surrender.
Today, speaking with the aforementioned language tutor before class, I jokingly told him that my math tutor was out to get him for being a Straussian. Unphased, he rejoined: "That's fine. But you should know, Mr. Socol, that I just got finished reading your [somewhat text-analysis-heavy -ed] paper, and it appears you've become a Straussian, too." Rather taken aback, I sat down.
"Was it a bad paper?" I asked.
"No," he said. "Actually I liked it a lot. But you had better be careful - you seem to be Straussianizing rather unwittingly."
I realized that never before in my life have I been in a place that could change me on an intellectual level. The changes I made in the past - my loss of faith, my devotion to the sciences, my committment to reading and writing - were all things I had imposed on myself.
No longer is that the case. I have spent a year in which, unbeknownst to me, my whole intellectual outlook has been heavily modified. So heavily modified that I didn't even realize it until someone told me. The feeling is both exhilirating and frightening.
I have much more to say about this soon, but this is getting to be far too long.
Strauss believed in some unusual things. Unusual, at least, for my modern American sensibilities, though Strauss himself thought them perfectly natural conclusions. He was a noted interpreter of the Platonic dialogues, and brought to them a sense of contextual awareness and eye for sublte meaning that seemed previously to have escaped most readers. It was Strauss's belief, in fact, that all of Plato's writings contained both exoteric and esoteric meaning - that is, some interpretations obvious and some very subtle - and that this was a concious decision on Plato's part. To Strauss, truth was a privilege - one to which not all were privy.
Fast forward now to more modern times (basically the 80s but it's difficult to date all of this stuff). Another U of Chicago professor, Allan Bloom, is Strauss's premiere student, and perhaps one of the first to be considered a "Straussian" himself. Bloom is best known for an excellent translation of Plato's 'Republic,' and it can't be denied the man knows his stuff. However, when he publishes his own book, he does not expect to rock the academic and political world as strongly as he does.
The book is called 'The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students.' It's an immediate success, even making national bestseller lists. It's not hard to see why: the book is culturally blunt, even violent, in its treatment of multiculturalism, relativism, and the indoctrination of the young by a democratic government that can only produce good citizens if it produces them stupid.
I'm about half way through this book right now. It caught my eye at a large used book sale at the home of a tutor emeritus of the college, and I immediately recognized Bloom's name from my copy of the Republic.
More to the point, I recognized his name because I have become fascinated with Straussianism over the past semester. It started with my language tutor telling us stories of all the Straussians at St. John's alone (he is himself a part of the lineage, but his field (the biology of Aristotle) precludes him from really being involved). Fascinated, I found this site
, which, among other things, offered me a detailed list of all current notable Straussians. It seemed as though nearly half taught at St. John's, including the Dean (and, interestingly, the incoming Dean for next year). When I ran across the Bloom book, I realized I had the opportunity to remove Straussianism from a shadowy intellectual cult, and to try to understand it myself.
A week or so later, and as I said about half the book, I am completely sucked in. The opening of Mr. Bloom's book:
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.If you're in college now, like me, or if you attended post-60s revolution, that should have struck home with you. It certainly did for me - I entered St. John's as a moral relativist. I will be leaving this year wholly changed. Before, I could not explain very well why this was. I knew that Socrates had convinced me that there really was more to my world than my body and the things that it could sense. But I didn't know why that was important.
If nothing else Bloom has been a great help in this. Relativism, as he says, is not a solution to the problem of discovering goodness, rightness, or virtue. Relativism gazes into our human past and sees the bigotry, the ethnocentricism, the hate and folly and failing, and evaluates them critically, as it should. The problem is: relativism says that, in light of these human defeats, we must not try to correct our errors; we must simply assume that there can be no error, or that we are perpetually at its mercy.
Relativism is not a solution. It is a retreat, and a surrender.
Today, speaking with the aforementioned language tutor before class, I jokingly told him that my math tutor was out to get him for being a Straussian. Unphased, he rejoined: "That's fine. But you should know, Mr. Socol, that I just got finished reading your [somewhat text-analysis-heavy -ed] paper, and it appears you've become a Straussian, too." Rather taken aback, I sat down.
"Was it a bad paper?" I asked.
"No," he said. "Actually I liked it a lot. But you had better be careful - you seem to be Straussianizing rather unwittingly."
I realized that never before in my life have I been in a place that could change me on an intellectual level. The changes I made in the past - my loss of faith, my devotion to the sciences, my committment to reading and writing - were all things I had imposed on myself.
No longer is that the case. I have spent a year in which, unbeknownst to me, my whole intellectual outlook has been heavily modified. So heavily modified that I didn't even realize it until someone told me. The feeling is both exhilirating and frightening.
I have much more to say about this soon, but this is getting to be far too long.
posted by Max at 8:51 PM
2 Comments:
I find his assertion that relativism is common strange. I don't know anybody who I've talked to about anything intelligent who takes relativism seriously except one. Although I suppose my circle of acquaintances doesn't represent people as a whole.
Oh, c'mon now. Relativism is awesome except if it isn't.
I wouldn't feel alarmed at the change in your own intellectual bearings anyway, it happens to the best of us in this sort of situation. That you're aware of it on this level, I think, can be taken as an encouraging sign. No worries, Borris.
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