Throughout my graduate education at university, I kept hearing that the German philosopher Leo Strauss has been significantly influential on the “American Right” since the 20th century. I have known that Straussian philosophy played a huge role in modeling Jeffersonian conceptions of American Conservatism, as evidenced by “Neoconservatism” and its grasp on the Republicans between the 1970s and 2000s. To be fair, I have read snippets here and there of Strauss’ work, and it can be challenging to figure out how his ideas went on to influence the philosophical discourse on the American Right. Since some of my own intellectual ideas come from people in the German-speaking world and elsewhere who were either critical or even hostile toward those espoused by Strauss, I feel that I should consider exploring this matter further. Besides, it might just help me flesh out the plot development and worldbuilding of Zero Hour for Gio from Beautiful Monsters.
To begin, I must stress that any evaluation of Straussian philosophy should be done with the presupposition that we are dealing with two halves of Leo Strauss. In essence, a first-time reader of Strauss might encounter him as someone critical of Historicism and Relativism, going as far as to recover a transhistorical moral and religious value system perceived lost in the State of Total Mobilization. This transhistorical moral and religious value system, Strauss believed, was enshrined in the concept of Natural Rights, which is where we find Straussian philosophy having plenty of Jeffersonian Conservative admirers on the American Right.
But there is also another side to Straussian philosophy that most people are not aware of insofar as only an astute reader or a devotee of Strauss could discern in the man’s works. Unlike most contemporary and modern philosophers, Strauss was adamant in viewing Philosophy as a way of life where “‘knowledge of ignorance,’” that is to say that there must be a Socratic-like pursuit of knowledge mired in a sort of “Radical Skepticism,” is the key to grasping the eternal truths of the whole. While every Culture and Civilization has its own interpretations of morality based on its own value systems, there has to be some universal grand truth binding those interpretations together, disregarding all notions of time and place.
In short, Straussian philosophy is a combination of Socratic skepticism and Platonic moralism. It rejects the idea that certain aspects of a Culture, let alone a Civilization, could at any point be considered as the byproducts of an earlier historical epoch or the peculiar expressions of a particular Culture. The would-be philosopher must think naïvely from a standpoint that precedes both the State of Total Mobilization and the Enlightenment in particular to develop their own positions without dwelling on the prospect of a Postmodernity. Only then can they leave the Platonic cave that embodies “knowledge of ignorance” and begin the discovery of true knowledge. But what constitutes “true knowledge” when Straussian philosophy itself leads to endless meandering and riddling? Is it because Strauss intended his philosophy to be so esoteric that its original intent and meaning is at risk of being literally lost, perhaps even distorted by those who strove to “recover” it? Or is it because there never was a genuinely esoteric philosophy to begin with and that the whole point of this was just an intellectual exercise at trying to create an actual one that is timeless, unchangeable, and universal in its totality?
Strauss himself never gave a straight answer nor did he ever intend to provide one. That is the real issue which I have with his philosophy: practically anyone could manipulate his ideas to promote a sort of Manichean absolutism that leaves little to the imagination, deferring to definitions of a world in terms of “Either/Or” rather than “Both/And” and especially the “Neither/Nor.”
The inevitable end-result of Straussian philosophy is a political order led by a self-appointed intellectual elite who are unaccountable to no one except each other and those in the know. At best, it promotes Reactionary thinking that may not necessarily be the most productive for the purposes of any serious political philosophizing or action, as Gio’s experiences have attested on a few occasions. At worst, it encourages the flawed practice of viewing everything within a given philosophical work as being full of timeless lessons without realizing that not everything can be considered relevant to one’s contemporary circumstances.
The Straussian approach to philosophy is to view every philosophical work, even the obviously dated and historical ones, as always being relevant to contemporary times. One loses sight of why a certain idea or concept proved to be more applicable to a particular time and place than before and after, here and there. One also loses sight of the distinguishable variations of the same idea held by different Cultures and Civilizations. This is of course the consequence of Straussian philosophy’s rejections of Historicism and Relativism, of its persistent refusals to attribute ideas, beliefs and concepts to specific times and places.
There is a lesson to be learned from all of this. Not every philosophical idea or concept is going to be entirely relevant to one’s time and place. Always familiarize oneself with the conditions in which something emerged, why it assumed the forms that it did, and how the content informed its politics. When the decision has to be made to start taking something from the past, try to figure out what worked and replace the aspects that did not with something more applicable to contemporary conditions. Never hesitate at the realization that it is far better to create something entirely new than to be dwelling over what came before.
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