Did Strauss actually inspire neoconservatism, or is that just a baseless accusation?
>>24998292And you read this in what book, OP?
The best book on this is not Shadia Drury (the usual recommendation) but Paul Gottfried's Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America. It's fairly short and covers Strauss well, which basically means it tells you why only a moron would be a Straussian if he's not also a Zionist operative.
>>24998292Go and read the chapter on neoconservatism in Kevin MacDonald's "The Culture Of Critique" and see for yourself
I dunno but BAP strongly recommends him so he's at the very least worth reading
>>24998838Why is it Gottfried can never resist putting down his fellow Jews? The only Jew he ever was politically close to was Rothbard who literally used the word kike all the time and blamed Jews for feminism and called Israel piracy and rubbed shoulders with Holocaust deniers
>>24998930Jews are not nor have they ever been one monolithic entity that hold meetings and divvy up al the evil schemes to keep the white man down.That mindset is a fiction.Groucho=/=Karl=/=Hitler(Yes, Hitler was a member of the Rothschild banking family)
>>24998292Good thread, I encountered this question somewhere else recently. The simplified version I've heard is that Strauss was a proponent of the white lie and this directly influenced the WMD allegations in the Iraq war.
>>24998292Sure, at least Irving Kristol, but this is a bit like asking if Heidegger inspired deconstructionism. Technically yes, but I think people want to know whether the one necessarily leads to the other, and that latter issue is much more dubitable (and Straussians include democrats like William Galston and MAGA like Michael Anton).>>24998838Gottfried is merely a step up from Drury, he's still a poor recommendation. I would think the better recommendation would be to suggest Natural Right and History and ask a reader what their takeaway is. Strauss doesn't say much about modern political practice, and that's because his interest isn't conservatism as such, but philosophy.
>>24998968No, and in fact, you'll barely see him ever discuss the Noble Lie putside of discussing Plato's Republic, where that's a specific teaching pertaining to a falsehood taught about citizenship. Now, he talks about the practice of exoteric writing, but that's not reducible to Noble Lies, and Strauss is clear that aithors have to be taken on a case-by-case basis (some practice exotercism for pedagogical reasons, like Aristotle in his treatises or Descartes in his Geometrie).The big unifying figure among the relevant Neocons was Albert Wohlstetter, but I never see anyone discuss that, and Strauss, on those rare occasions he expresses geopolitical judgement, was skeptical of both the efficacy of regime change and establishing a liberal democratic imperium (see his debate with Kojeve). In any case, it's strange to sometimes see some people imagine that there was never any lying in politics until Strauss.
>>24998985Natural Right and History is a fine book, in my opinion his finest, but it's not easily readable without some guidance. And most of the people in academia who assign it as Straussian gospel don't know 1/100th of what Strauss is talking about - they don't know what historicism or the crisis of historicism is, they don't know anything about Weber's historical sociology, they don't know anything about Heidegger etc. I'd never dissuade anyone from reading primary sources and I do think Strauss is interesting and worth reading, but since 90% of what people who read Strauss in college learn is not Strauss himself (let alone anything Strauss knew) but "Straussianism," I don't think it's bad to go into Strauss himself armed with a primer on Straussianism. Of course, one could always reverse the order. I disagree that Gottfried is "merely" a step up from Drury. He says nothing inaccurate about the many problems with Strauss or his almost unbelievably awful disciples. I also recommend this:https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2006/02/i-am-not-a-straussian-at-least-i-dont-think-i-amand this:https://www.jstor.org/stable/190835 (Prophet and Inquisitor: Or, a Church Built upon Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield's "Strauss's Machiavelli")
>>24999008I should've clarified that it is people critical of Strauss and neoconservatism who view them as being connected in this way.
>>24999029The basic problems with your recommendation is that it reduces the issue to "he said, he said." Gottfried says x, but how likely is anyone going to check that? How likely is anyone going to read Mansfield's several books on Machiavelli (and Strauss's book), let alone Machiavelli's corpus, in order to see whether Pocock's point still holds better? And speaking of "unbelievably awful disciples," how many people is that, really? I disagree with Galston's politics, but does that include him? Does it include Benardete or Kennington or Bolotin or Bruell or the Zuckerts or Tarcov or Cropsey or Carnes Lord? Are we pretending Kristol, Wolfowitz, and Shulsky are the norm? And that's just playing UP Wolfowitz by virtue of his taking a class by Strauss and another by Bloom, since he was part if the Wohlstetter circle with Perle.These things are tendentious and overstated (to the extent that, as you even link, non-"Straussians" like Kagan are accused of being Straussians), and the reasonable adress is to point to Strauss's books. I think you're oberstating the difficulty in reading NR&H, since he never names Heidegger (Heidegger is, afterall, only an undercurrent to the book, and not the meat), Weber's positivistic approach to the social sciences is readily recognizeable, and Strauss clarifies what he's talking about, re: historicism, at some length.
>>24998292If you don't know then read Strauss. You won't read anything. This is about as close to a map as I can offer.>Strauss left to his own devices will blur theoretical and practical. The Straussian in question just becomes a pest.>Strauss --> Locke is the most common form of Strauss's thought, it doesn't even require any familiarity with Strauss (think yourself), this was the baseline for what is commonly referred to as a Conservative by people who don't know much about that (think yourself).>Strauss --> Aristotle was the common baseline for the movement known as neoconservatism. Strauss died before any of them had any political clout so there is no way to know what he would have thought. The overlap is popular but it's difficult to say if this is due to a lack of authority elsewhere or just former Straussians making their way into the system and adapting. >Strauss --> Rousseau (with Strauss's criticism) was the baseline for what could be called a left Straussian for people who cared about that crap (like you).>Strauss --> Rousseau --> Marx --> Aristotle is arguably the most discounted yet most theoretically viable option (Strauss was so theoretically spread that without some selection it just devolves into pestilence.) Strauss conjectured that Marx's philosophy contains a hidden world view that can't be ignored even by the most vehement critics. The Leo Strauss wasn't sure if this was useful theoretical information or not but he did claim it was unique to the timeframe. >Strauss --> Plato (Socrates) --> Hegel's Greek world is also a highly useful theoretical option. Focus is on what is the ideal, strict attention to differences like polus and society.Otherwise have fun navigating the pitfall laden world of Straussian thought. Try not to become too much of a pest.
>>24998292His daughter denies it. That’s good enough for me.
>>24998949Begone from 4chan and never return.
Wasn’t Strauss good friends with Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem?
>>24999197
>>24998930there are in fact good ones
Everyone knows neoconservatism was started by Trotskyists.
>>24999623wsws doesn't sound neocon at all.
>>24999623I've written about this
>>24999135elaborate on the point on marx
>>24999135>Strauss conjectured that Marx's philosophy contains a hidden world view that can't be ignored even by the most vehement criticsWhere does he write about that?
>>24998930The people who hate Jews the most tend to be Jews themselves.
>>24998924you are a xitter intellectual and a cuck
I’m curious how many ex-Trotskyte neocons are actually deep down Kojeveians who lost their stomach over Stalin and jumped ship to liberal capitalism as the vehicle to the universal homogeneous state
>>24999226Not close with Benjamin, but they got along and appreciated each other. He and Scholem were decent friends.>>24999623Yep, look to Wohlstetter, a former Trotskyist himself, and the more decisive influence on the movement.>>25000241>>25000602I wouldn't wonder too much, that anon's word salad says almost nothing coherent. There's a transcript to a lecture course on Marx you can read online (google it), but it's co-taught by his former student Joseph Cropsey, and Strauss is mostly there to fill out the intellectual background and the differences with ancient and early modern philosophy that come up.>>25002048Most of them. I'm surprised more people don't notice that.
>>25002130In his Marx transcript he states that for anyone unable to make it past the surface then you're basically a waste of time. The previous quote was from a different transcript later in his life, although his Marx transcript might also qualify as late Strauss, he claimed it after that transcript. The Strauss transcripts can't provide this to you.
>>25002778No he doesn't. This can easily be checked. Of course, you conveniently can't provide any quotes, since there are none.
>>25003296It can be easily checked. Feel free to read. >Strauss agrees knowledge of the preceding philosophers is required>Strauss agrees Marx completed the classical economics project >the interlocuter agrees Marx's philosophy always comes down to the individual >the interlocutor agrees that Stalin is part of the dialectical unfolding >Strauss and the interlocutor agree Marx's philosophy produces alienation which can lead to separation from society >Strauss and the interlocutor agree that the product of this at some point passes through the German Ideology >Strauss has to agree that Nietzsche and Marx use a highly similar agreement to avoid HegelBy the time you research and understand it's already too late. >inb4 m-m-muh I turditional >inb4 m-m-muh metaphysics n sheeet occult yo >inb4 philosophy be useless bruh no cap frfrfrfr All of those common objections were addressed by Strauss in the transcript.
>>25002130>Most of them. I'm surprised more people don't notice that.Yes. This is pretty confusing as to why this isn’t recognized more. Strauss acknowledged the need for western military power in competition against the soviets in one of his shorter essays (crisis of modernity iirc), but he’s not super hawkish otherwise, in NR&H he sticks to just war theory and holds that common war and conquest toward building a universal empire is counter productive to creating the best classical civilization. The final crux of his argument against Kojeve in On Tyranny is that the universal state would be helmed by a final tyrant that would exterminate philosophy. Given all this, the whole neocon PNAC shit makes it seem like foreign policy hawks were always Kojeveians rather than Straussians. Anyway, the more I read of Strauss the more I like him, and it’s too bad many of his most prominent students and “followers” turned out to be a mix of actual fags and blood first ghouls.
>>25003442Bloody thirsty*
>>25003421First, none of that pertains to what you claimed anywhere above, not nowhere. Second, you seem under some confused impression that Strauss and Cropsey explicating his thought without stawmen is the same as somehow agreeing with it, and not the equivalent of saying "From *Marx's perspective*, Stalin stands this way."You said>Strauss conjectured that Marx's philosophy contains a hidden world view that can't be ignored even by the most vehement criticsAnd>In his Marx transcript he states that for anyone unable to make it past the surface then you're basically a waste of timeNeither of which have you backed up at all.
>>25003442Yes, ugh, finally, someone who gets it. Strauss's views of imperiums are always noted by a skepticism that they're any good for the political life of the regime that has them, and the few occasions he ever speaks about regime change (some 40s paper while WW2 was still going), he didn't seem hopeful.I will say I think the number of his students or would-be-cheerleaders who are trash has been far fewer than his students who are just regular scholars of differing ability, though, to grant a point, the trash ones are so awful that it makes the others look practically invisible.
>>24998949Jews have been such since the first circumcision turned off their consciousness.
>>25003421Literally nearly every point you made requires a highly controversial and liberal reading at minimum, and most of them are downright outrageous conclusions. Where's the evidence? You just made all that shit up.
>>25003447The 2 weren't related in the sense you seem to think they are. I'll go through my Strauss material and see if I can find it for you though. Strauss thought modern philosophy tries to go against the ancients, but he also concedes Marx has the option of using Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy to challenge modernity. I may as well address >>25003515 on your points, I don't mind citing Strauss but neither of you has read the Marx transcript. I don't care about your worthless political affiliations.
>>25003748>The 2 weren't related in the sense you seem to think they are.I didn't treat them like they were, which was why I said ,"*Neither* of which have you backed up at all."I have read the Marx course transcripts, I read them as soon as they were released years back, which is why your oblique comments are doubly frustrating. If you're going to say something, then I look forward to you saying it, but none of your comments in this thread are intelligible.
>>25003838>Strauss agrees knowledge of the preceding philosophers is requiredThis is the source of your frustration. I would also point out that Strauss was a product of his time in Germany. He expressed extreme scepticism that liberal governments like the US could ward off highly collectivist movements and even claimed a similarity to false promises made in Germany. It's still highly debated whether Strauss established a new school of thought, but there is almost a unanimous agreement that he developed a method. There are valid epistemic arguments Strauss wasn't conservative by American standards and the resulting shift in opinion over time was due to American conservatives ceasing to be conservative and moving closer to Strauss. Strauss's thought is an amalgamation and intelligibility isn't a priority.
>>25003748Honestly man, I'm willing to hear you out, and I don't care about the politics of it. The conclusions themselves seem interesting, even if the arguments end up being spurious, but as they stand right now, they're utterly worthless given that you've made blanket assertions without even trying to articulate an explanation. That's the most frustrating part.
>>25003989>This is the source of your frustration.No it isn't. Your lack of coherence is. You made a vague claim about Strauss on Marx, a few anons asked you about it, you made another vague claim that you tried to defend as coming from a late writing that you neither cited nor quoted, you then made a list of passages in mind from his lectures (also uncited and unquoted, so "loosely") without any clear point in mind. >It's still highly debated whether Strauss established a new school of thought, but there is almost a unanimous agreement that he developed a method.The opposite. Even his students (with the exception of Victor Gourevitch) agree that Strauss intended to found a school, the questions are whether it's new and what its contents are. But developed a method? That's the point of controversy, where neither he nor his students think he developed any new method, he thought he was just following Lessing and then Maimonides and Farabi on that.>There are valid epistemic arguments Strauss wasn't conservative by American standards and the resulting shift in opinion over time was due to American conservatives ceasing to be conservative and moving closer to StraussSure, but you've failed to say how this is relevant.>Strauss's thought is an amalgamation and intelligibility isn't a priority.This is totally false. He's not Deleuze or Derrida, no matter how much you want him to be.
>>25004111Strauss - Liberalism Ancient and Modern>Conservatism cannot weather sustained criticism that is guided by notions of unity to truth.>Liberals who still claim beliefs rooted in western history are oblivious to the erosion of this by the changes they demand. Strauss delineated this leads to old style group politics and claimed it was a "relic of marxism" but he goes on to say that this is something that relates back to a society of classes. Strauss claimed the blindspot of liberalism is identified in Marx's philosophy as "common good in a classless and hence stateless society comprising the whole human race or the surviving part of it" and even said something like I find it hard to believe I'm defending Karl Marx. The critique itself leads to 4 directions iirc, Strauss becomes a Socialist leader, Strauss has to remain a center left ideologue and winds up with the people he critiqued, Strauss has to become a hybridization nihilist/philosopher king who can't tell you much other than we need to get to classless, or Strauss turns the political horseshoe into a circle and unites the extremes of both sides against the center. We've informally tested these, and Strauss has thus far tested for all 4 outcomes.
>>25004450From, "An Epilogue" (pg. 219 of Liberalism, Ancient and Modern). >The reduction of the political to the subpolitical is the reduction of primarily given wholes to elements which are relatively simple, that is, sufficiently simple for the research purpose at hand, yet necessarily susceptible of being analyzed into still simpler elements in infinitum. It implies that there cannot be genuine wholes. Hence it implies that there cannot be a common good. According to the old political science, there is necessarily a common good, and the common good in its fullness is the good society and what is required for the good society. The consistent denial of the common good is as impossible as every other consistent manifestation of the break with common sense. The empiricists who reject the notion of wholes are compelled to speak sooner or later of such things as “the open society,” which is their definition of the good society. The alternative (if it is an alternative) is to deny the possibility of a substantive public interest, but to admit the possibility of substantive group interests; yet it is not difficult to see that what is granted to the goose “group” cannot be consistently denied to the gander “country.” In accordance with this, the new political science surreptitiously reintroduces the common good in the form of “the rules of the game” with which all conflicting groups are supposed to comply because those rules reasonably fair to every group can reasonably be admitted by every group. THE “GROUP POLITICS” APPROACH IS A RELIC OF MARXISM, WHICH MORE REASONABLY DENIED THAT THERE CAN BE A COMMON GOOD IN A SOCIETY CONSISTING OF CLASSES THAT ARE LOCKED IN A LIFE-AND-DEATH STRUGGLE, OVERT OR HIDDEN, AND THEREFORE FOUND THE COMMON GOOD IN A CLASSLESS AND HENCE STATELESS SOCIETY COMPRISING THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE OR THE SURVIVING PART OF IT. The consistent denial of the common good requires a radical “individualism.” In fact, the new political science appears to teach that there cannot be a substantive public interest because there is not, and cannot be, a single objective which is approved by all members of society: murderers show by their action that not even the prohibition against murder is strictly speaking to the public interest. We are not so sure whether the murderer wishes that murder cease to be a punishable action and not rather that he himself get away with murder. Be this as it may, this denial of the common good is based on the premise that even if an objective is to the interest of the overwhelming majority, it is not to the interest of all: no minority, however small, no individual, however perverse, must be left out.
>>25004450From the Marx course (pg. 327-8)>Joseph Cropsey: When he himself has to start writing history, it turns out he makes a great reliance on all kinds of things to which the mode of production seems quite irrelevant, and very often they come back to some things even as what some men thought was true or important about, you know, the way of worship and the importance of some place in a part of the world which they called the Holy Land, that kind of thing. And that’s got very little to do with the—now he might say, “Sure, but then you have to go back into the mode of production in order to see why anybody is so vain as to call some spot the Holy Land and why somebody should rather be Protestant than a Roman Catholic” or something like this. Well, by that time, you get the impression that you can prove anything that way, you know, if you’re willing to be ingenious and persistent enough. But the fact of the matter is when he talks about the immediate effective causes of the changes in social life, he has trouble in many cases referring them to the changes in the mode of production. Dr. Strauss, please. >Leo Strauss: I hate this situation in which I am forced to defend Marx. >JC: Defend Marx? Sure. >LS: Well, I would raise this question. Was Marx’s intention here to write history, economic history, a relation of economic history and others? I would say no. [Long discussion, see bottom of pg 328] (Cont.)
>>25004450>LS:...But the main point at which I’m driving is this: Marx would ultimately of course say that ultimately the moral judgment is irrelevant, namely, this: Why did people do all these things, these beastly things: conquering countries, enslaving the inhabitants, and enclosures and what not? Answer: Scarcity; fundamental scarcity. Fundamental scarcity combined with dissatisfaction with scarcity. As long as men were satisfied with scarcity, they were simply primitive and there would not have been any development of human productivity, material and intellectual. This development requires the development of that rapacity and avarice and all these other beastly things. In other words, he would only repeat in a different way what Plato indicates in his brief remarks in the second book of the Republic. You remember the transition from the city of pigs to the real city, when people become dissatisfied with the simple life out of very bad reasons: because they want to have luxuries. But that is a necessary condition for the development of the good city. Good. Now from this point of view capitalism appears in a somewhat different light. Capitalism is that social system which prepares the abolition of scarcity, which in effect achieves already the abolition of scarcity without however drawing the proper conclusions from that. You know this high praise of the capitalist system in the Communist Manifesto, when he says: Look at these things, these are infinitely superior to the pyramids and the Capitol and whatever—these buildings, famous post offices and other—or factories, rather, of the late nineteenth century. Therefore the moral condemnation of capitalism is of course meant seriously by Marx, but it is dialectically integrated into a transmoral whole, if I may say so. Ya? You know?
>>25004450Now that the texts are in front of us at >>25004639, >>25004658, and >>25004661, I'll begin by observing that you get that first passage wrong. He's not talking about political liberalism or conservatism, he's talking about 50s/60s positivistic social science, the kind that models itself off of physics in order to be value neutral. He doesn't say anything about "old style group politics," he's talking about how the positivists, in having a political science that cannot speak of a common good, are compelled to eventually speak only of some group's good. The Marxist denial of a common good isn't taken as a reasonable denial, he's saying that the Marxists "*more reasonably denied" a common good *in comparison with the denial of the positivists*, and because a life-and-death struggle between classes is a *more reasonable* reason than "we decided to number crunch and preferences can't be numbered good." This is about *social science*.The other passage you allude to isn't him just defending Marx, but him telling his fellow lecturer that faulting him as an historian is an unfair criticism, because Marx didn't intend to be an historian, and the the moral component of Marxisms isn't as much the point as the transmoral whole it's developed within.>The critique itself leads to 4 directionsIt does no such thing. You've misread him fundamentally.
>>25004661>Ya?Ha, Arendt said this too, very German. Thanks for sharing.
>>25004698The paradox of convincing or demonstrating Rousseau as the contract only for everyone to turn individualistic upon the agreement of the last person was a paradox Strauss foresaw. Strauss critiqued popper as well. If you can't make it to the universal then you get the relic, if you just want to delude yourself then you get liberalism and in that case quit your bitching. Strauss also conjectured cynicism couldn't make it to the nihilistic philosopher king, think accelerationist movements that pop up quick and die off faster once they get what they want. This critique from Strauss is still one of the most bitterly divisive and fought over parts of his philosophy, either Strauss becomes obsessed with controlling the masses in a post FDR environment through socialism with branding assuring people it's everything but or Strauss goes back to his cave and employs his methods that lead to the infamous split between Straussians that turns into a toss fest whenever there is an encounter. Turning into popper isn't a fucking option. Socialist leader is currently what we have. Feel free to tell me exactly what Strauss meant.
>>25004758>The paradox of convincing or demonstrating Rousseau as the contract only for everyone to turn individualistic upon the agreement of the last person was a paradox Strauss foresaw.Word salad. No clear statement of what the supposed paradox is, "upon the agreement of the last person" isn't a coherent statement.>Strauss critiqued popper as well.No, *Voegelin* critiqued Popper, Strauss just had suspicions that Voegelin confirmed for him.>If you can't make it to the universal then you get the relic, if you just want to delude yourself then you get liberalism and in that case quit your bitching. Word salad. Just say, "if you can't get a universal society, then you end up with group politics." Which isn't Strauss's conclusion.>Strauss also conjectured cynicism couldn't make it to the nihilistic philosopher king, think accelerationist movements that pop up quick and die off faster once they get what they want.Totally unclear. Conjectured where? The philosopher-king as in Plato'sphilosopher-king, or some other entity like a Kojevian ruler? Neither the reasoning nor referents are clear.>This critique from Strauss is still one of the most bitterly divisive and fought over parts of his philosophy, either Strauss becomes obsessed with controlling the masses in a post FDR environment through socialism with branding assuring people it's everything but or Strauss goes back to his cave and employs his methods that lead to the infamous split between Straussians that turns into a toss fest whenever there is an encounter.Still totally unclear, and reads like it only follows your prior statement through magical thinking. The statement "Strauss becomes obsessed with controlling the masses in a post FDR environment through socialism with branding assuring people it's everything but" describes literally no Straussians, not even the Neocons liberals were up in arms over 20 years ago.>Turning into popper isn't a fucking option.No one has said this.>Socialist leader is currently what we have.I don't think you know what words mean, or how sentences relate on a sentence by sentence level.>Feel free to tell me exactly what Strauss meant.There are no permanent political solutions, only temporary circumstantial band-aids. The only thing that matters or justifies life is philosophy, understood as both the search for wisdom and the narrower study of nature.
>>25004823>can only say word salad>nah g it be like muh nuh u>m-m-muh this other author said it better imo you just say word saladEither explain exactly what Strauss meant or get back to sucking dick like the dumb bitch you are.
>>25004837How typing legible English? How about that, huh?
>>25004863I know you can't. I can always show up and make sure you suck my dick whenever I feel like it. Isn't that right you little dick sucking bitch?
>>25004866Wow, ESL *and* a fag? Who is this, is this BAP?
>>25004869>how typing legible englishAre you the Estonian bitch?
>>25004872Pretty sure dropping a word phoneposting isn't as bad as mangling sentences and paragraphs like some language kaiju. "If you can't make it to the universal then you get the relic," whatever it is, isn't English.
>>25004894For Estonians it isn't anything. You're an ideal dick sucker. Most of you are already non-religious and orthodox dick sucking is the runner up. Nato and all. No revolts against the modern world, no traditions either.
>>25004910For someone who talks big, you sure are fixated on having men suck you off, like a fag.
>>25004938I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate something. We both know you can't. Of course I enjoy this. I can tell you're used to this by now.
>>25004957You haven't put forward anything to demonstrate. Like what, how you're misunderstanding the Epilogue passage, or the Marx lectures? I already told you. You fixated on a sentence in each and ignored the entire surrounding context. Everything else is just something you feverdreamed.
>>25004979I agree you are a waste.
