Thursday, October 27, 2016

New Article & the Straussian Appeal

I like the work of Leo Strauss and his followers more for their method of analysis as opposed to their conclusions. Say what you want about them, they have tremendously influenced "conversations" in academic and intellectual circles.

Take, for instance, this new article written by professor of law and Donald Trump speechwriter F.H. Buckley in The American Conservative. I generally don't agree with the tenor of the article. Though, I think the article is interesting, makes some good points and is therefore worth reading (which is what I think in general of T.A.C.).

This quotation below relates to the mission of American Creation:
[M]ost intellectuals on the right draw their inspiration not from the Judeo-Christian tradition but from abstract theories of natural rights that have little need of God. They revere Jefferson, but as Walter Berns once asked me, just what kind of a god is “Nature and Nature’s God” anyway? At most, He’s Descartes’s god, as seen by Pascal, where he appears in Act I of the drama to give the system a “little push” and then departs the scene. But if that’s all He is, why do we need Him?

[...]

... By resting their political beliefs on abstract axioms of natural rights they have subscribed to theories of learned heartlessness; and it is a testament to their personal goodness that they’re better than their theories.
 
One doesn’t learn empathy or kindness from John Locke. Perhaps it’s not something one learns at all. The natural lawyer says it’s written on one’s heart; the evolutionary biologist says it’s coded in our genes, which perhaps comes down to the same thing. But it’s not to be derived from abstract theories. At best it’s a philosopher’s premise, not his conclusion, as it was for Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. We might get it from our families, or be reminded of it by novelists such as Dickens, Hugo, or E.M. Forster. Mostly, however, we get it from religious education and belief. 

[...]

... Even devout Christians will prefer to speak the language of natural law and natural rights, conceding to the secular left the principle that moral and political arguments can be framed only in terms that might appeal to people of other or no faiths. But in so doing they abandon the firmest and most encompassing foundations of our moral language.
... The natural-rights theorist can tell you what others owe him, but not what he owes to others save for the thinnest of duties: don’t harm others, don’t steal from them or defraud them. Does that sound like a complete moral code? ....
This is East Coast Straussianism, something the author learned from at the very least Walter Berns whom he cites. This isn't West Coast Straussianism. (Though, I've heard Berns, along with Michael Zuckert categorized as "mid-Western," something in between East and West Coast Straussianism.)

Berns may have been wrong on the "Nature's God" part of the Declaration of Independence. The personal writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin demonstrate they believed in a warmer deity. Or perhaps there is some chain of reasoning that demonstrates this "Nature's God" is more deistic than even those authors understood Him to be.

The East Coast Straussians thought natural rights were a "solid" place to rest a political order, but also a "low" place, and therefore should be supported but with a corrective. The explicit politics of revelation (what Buckley argues for) is one such corrective.

The Straussians are often termed "neoconservatives." I think many are; and some are not. But Mr. Buckley is the furthest thing from a non-religious Straussian neoconservative.

But he learned from them.

5 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

[M]ost intellectuals on the right draw their inspiration not from the Judeo-Christian tradition but from abstract theories of natural rights that have little need of God.

True only to a degree. In natural law theory, a statement must be able to stand without relying on God and certainly by not relying on the Bible. However, Leo Strauss himself accuses natural law theory of being only disguised Biblicism that doesn't hold up without revelation.

So if this is actually about Strauss, it's by someone who never read him. See page 164, Natural Right and History

https://is.gd/Lq4Hj8

see also

http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/8/0/6/3/p380632_index.html

Jonathan Rowe said...

I know more from Bloom, who as you know, I believe speaks for Strauss, there is a distinction between natural law and natural rights. Natural rights are Hobbesian-Lockean and thus "Modern."

I think Bloom would say natural law came in two forms. One would be Aristotle and is part of the "Ancient" tradition for which they, as professors of philosophy who happened not to be Christians had an affinity (even if they didn't necessarily believe in the metaphysics).

The other would be "natural law" after Aquinas got his hands on Aristotle. And in that case I think they believe he made it the handmaiden to revelation and Christian thought.

I write this without checking the link which I will do now.

Tom Van Dyke said...

I tried to fake Strauss too, when I was [not so very much] younger. But the reason he's worth studying is precisely because you can't fake him.

I believe speaks for Strauss

Believe what you will but whenever one puts Bloom's words in Strauss's mouth, we find upon closer examination that it isn't so.

Bloom was not a philosopher. He was a clever man, but a mere polemicist and hedonist. He will be forgotten soon, in fact mostly already is. Leo Strauss will endure for awhile yet, for he wrote to and for the ages, not for his times, as Allan Bloom did.

Bloom's condemnation of the Rolling Stones makes him an object of ridicule. Strauss would never expose philosophy to such ridicule. He spoke of the serious things seriously.

Jonathan Rowe said...

"Bloom's condemnation of the Rolling Stones makes him an object of ridicule. Strauss would never expose philosophy to such ridicule. He spoke of the serious things seriously."

It's not easy to write a book. I agree that Bloom probably put too much time bound cultural criticism, idiosyncratic opinions, to speak to the ages.

Strauss loved both Gunsmoke and Perry Mason, but that didn't find itsway into his scholarly work, right?

Tom Van Dyke said...

Bingo. Strauss never wrote a single word he hadn't slaved over. He designed his work to be read 1000 years from now, if it were worthy.

Hey I think Bloom has some great points, esp culture not being synonymous with civilization. But Strauss wrote of the permanent things, or as he put it, the "perennial" things.