Recently I purchased a copy of Heirich Rommens' The Natural Law from Liberty
Fund Press. It is an interesting book, made even more interesting given his
life in Germany. He and Strauss were contemporaries, and both were forced to
leave because of the Nazis.

My question is whether Strauss wrote a review of this book, and if so, where
is it published? Those on the list that took classes from Strauss, did he
ever mention the book or Rommen and comment on his work?

I find it a nice read, but wrong on some crucial issues.

Ted Vaggalis wrote:

> From: Ted Vaggalis <tvaggali@...>
>
> Lance:
>
> This is just fine!!!! I am a satisfied list member.

Great!

On another subject:  I notice that this list has been rather quiet for the last
few weeks.  That leads me to suggest that the floor is open for suggestions of a
new topic for discussion.  It would be
interesting to test out the capabilities of the new list server.  As I mentioned
before, on the new system the message turnaround time should be very short --
just a matter of minutes.  And for those people
for whom a high-volume list is a problem, you have the "digest" option or you
can set your subscription to "nomail" and read the archives at the Onelist.com
website.

--
Lance Fletcher, President
The Free Lance Academy Foundation
for information send message to info@...
http://www.freelance-academy.org
lance@...

Lance:

This is just fine!!!! I am a satisfied list member.


At 08:43 PM 12/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
>From: lance@... (Lance Fletcher)
>
>Hi everybody,
>
>I hope that by this time everybody has received the notice that the
>leo-strauss list has been moved to a new server and that the new
>address for the list is leo-strauss@onelist.com.  I have also
>disable the leo-strauss list on my old server. If you post a message
>to the old list address, you will receive an error message advising
>you of the new address.
>
>I understand Ted Vaggalis misses "the old neighborhood."  I would be
>interested to hear feedback from others about whether the new server
>is working well, because I am trying to decide whether to leave my
>lists at Onelist.com for now or to go to the labor and expense of
>setting up my own server.
>
>I think Onelist.com may provide a higher quality of service than I
>could ever hope to provide with a relatively slow internet
>connection.  But I would be less than candid if I did not admit that
>this arrangement looks as if it will involve much less
>administrative effort on my part -- which would free me up to
>participate more actively in the discussions.
>
>Lance
>
>--
>Lance Fletcher, President
>The Free Lance Academy Foundation
>for information send message to info@...
>http://www.freelance-academy.org
>lance@...
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>to digest, go to the ONElist web site, at http://www.onelist.com and
>select the User Center link from the menu bar on the left.
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Slow Reading: http://www.freelance-academy.org  To unsubscribe by e-mail,
just send a message to: leo-strauss-unsubscribe@onelist.com
>

Lance:

Actually I was just trying out the new list. I like it just fine. Please
excuse my playfulness. Next time I will make a serious contribution to the
Strauss list.

Happy Holidays.


At 08:11 AM 12/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
>From: lance.fletcher@... (Lance Fletcher)
>
> > From: Ted Vaggalis <tvaggali@...>
> >
> > So this is what the new place looks like. I miss the old neighborhood.
>
>Ted,
>
>Are you serious?  Exactly what is it that you miss?
>
>Always eager to oblige,
>
>
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Hi everybody,

I hope that by this time everybody has received the notice that the
leo-strauss list has been moved to a new server and that the new
address for the list is leo-strauss@onelist.com.  I have also
disable the leo-strauss list on my old server. If you post a message
to the old list address, you will receive an error message advising
you of the new address.

I understand Ted Vaggalis misses "the old neighborhood."  I would be
interested to hear feedback from others about whether the new server
is working well, because I am trying to decide whether to leave my
lists at Onelist.com for now or to go to the labor and expense of
setting up my own server.

I think Onelist.com may provide a higher quality of service than I
could ever hope to provide with a relatively slow internet
connection.  But I would be less than candid if I did not admit that
this arrangement looks as if it will involve much less
administrative effort on my part -- which would free me up to
participate more actively in the discussions.

Lance

--
Lance Fletcher, President
The Free Lance Academy Foundation
for information send message to info@...
http://www.freelance-academy.org
lance@...

> From: Ted Vaggalis <tvaggali@...>
  >
  > So this is what the new place looks like. I miss the old neighborhood.

Ted,

Are you serious?  Exactly what is it that you miss?

Always eager to oblige,

So this is what the new place looks like. I miss the old neighborhood.

As I recall, Strauss was in Israel during the '54-'55 academic year.

Hilail Gildin




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On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Scott Michael Alexander wrote:

>  We are currently in year 5759.

Thanks for the explanation [snipped] of the terminology, Scott.  One
further question:  Is the current year supposed to be 5759 years
after Creation?  Or is the reference point something later than that?







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The Jewish year 5732 began in the Fall of 1971 and ended in the Fall of 1972.
Lag B'Omer occurs in late Spring, after
Passover.  So seventeen years before that would be 1954-55, when Strauss spent
the entire academic year in Israel,
according to a reply to my query that I received from Prof. Kenneth Green of
the University of Toronto.

Michael Kochin

Cameron Wybrow wrote:


> Sacks's book (his commentary was reprinted by Edwin Mellen Press,
> unchanged) has a preface which begins:  "This book began in Jerusalem one
> Saturday afternoon about seventeen years ago at the home of Professor Leo
> Strauss.  Since I had met him briefly the previous year while still an
> undergraduate, we had occasion to talk about many common friends, and the
> talk soon centered on Genesis."
>
> At the end of his brief preface Sacks dates the preface:
>
> "Jerusalem, Lag B'Omer 5732".
>
> I have no idea what the Jewish date means.  What I do know is that Sacks's
> preface was available in typescript form as early as 1977, with the same
> text, so that "seventeen years ago" must be 1960 or earlier.  Strauss must
> then have been living in Israel for some period in 1960 or earlier.  There
> is no way of telling how long Strauss lived in Israel from this note; it
> might have been as little as one semester, or as much as a few years.
> Someone who knows more will have to fill out the details left ambiguous by
> Sacks.
>
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** Reply to note from leo-strauss@... Sat, 14 Nov 1998
20:16:22 -0500
> At the end of his brief preface Sacks dates the preface:
>
> "Jerusalem, Lag B'Omer 5732".
>
> I have no idea what the Jewish date means. What I do know is that Sacks's
> preface was available in typescript form as early as 1977, with the same
text,
> so that "seventeen years ago" must be 1960 or earlier. Strauss must then
have
> been living in Israel for some period in 1960 or earlier. There is no way of
> telling how long Strauss lived in Israel from this note; it might have been
as
> little as one semester, or as much as a few years. Someone who knows more
will
> have to fill out the details left ambiguous by Sacks.

It would have been May 2, 1972.  Lag B'Omer is always the 18th of Iyyar,
usually
falling in late April or early May. The term Is an acronim for the 33rd day of
the
Omer, a sort of midway marking point which has certain historical
considerations
from the Roman period attached to it, a day of semi-mourning, which Christians
could, I suppose, regard as 33 days before Pentecost in general Gregorian
calendar
terms, since Pentecost is a word deriving from 50, which is essentially the
same
50 day counting period from Passover to Shavuot, which is the feast of weeks,
ie,
7 weeks, 7 x 7 = 49 + 1 = 50.  We are currently in year 5759.

Your friend,

Scott Alexander


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On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Rafe Mitchel Major wrote:

> See the Introduction to Sack's Lion and the Ass (Published as Interp. of
> the Book of Gen.) and Anastopolo's Epilogue in Artist as Thinker.
> Both speak of his daily life in Isreal.
>
> Rafe Major

Sacks's book (his commentary was reprinted by Edwin Mellen Press,
unchanged) has a preface which begins:  "This book began in Jerusalem one
Saturday afternoon about seventeen years ago at the home of Professor Leo
Strauss.  Since I had met him briefly the previous year while still an
undergraduate, we had occasion to talk about many common friends, and the
talk soon centered on Genesis."

At the end of his brief preface Sacks dates the preface:

"Jerusalem, Lag B'Omer 5732".

I have no idea what the Jewish date means.  What I do know is that Sacks's
preface was available in typescript form as early as 1977, with the same
text, so that "seventeen years ago" must be 1960 or earlier.  Strauss must
then have been living in Israel for some period in 1960 or earlier.  There
is no way of telling how long Strauss lived in Israel from this note; it
might have been as little as one semester, or as much as a few years.
Someone who knows more will have to fill out the details left ambiguous by
Sacks.






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See the Introduction to Sack's Lion and the Ass (Published as Interp. of
the Book of Gen.) and Anastopolo's Epilogue in Artist as Thinker.
Both speak of his daily life in Isreal.

Rafe Major

On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, Michael Kochin wrote:

> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
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>
> How many times was Strauss in Israel?  Strauss gave "What is Political
> Philosophy?" as a lecture at Hebrew University of
> Jerusalem, as I recall.  What other visits did he make?  Did he deliver any
> lectures other than WIPP?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael Kochin
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How many times was Strauss in Israel?  Strauss gave "What is Political
Philosophy?" as a lecture at Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, as I recall.  What other visits did he make?  Did he deliver any
lectures other than WIPP?

Thanks,
Michael Kochin
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[Apologies for any cross-posting duplication]

Mary,

You should be aware of something before proceeding further. Ivor and
Christopher are priests in a secret cult of knowledge, wise men who wish to
demonstrate to you that they are in privileged possession of sacred wisdom
and they wish to turn you away from any path which you might pursue on your
own toward the truth of which they are in exclusive possession. Men of words
and specialists in language, scholars with their own privileged preserve,
they wish to keep you in bondage as did the Schoolmen of old. In the early
modern period peopled by giants such as Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley
and Hume, it was thought necessary to wrest control of philosophy from such
priests and scholars who, as Berkeley expressed it, throw up a cloud of dust
and then complain that they cannot see. If philosophy, and Plato's
philosophy in particular, is only to be understood by those who possess
special training in ancient languages, arcane expertise in linguistic
structure and related studies, and if these Ivorian and Christopherian
priests and cult members are the exclusive experts who alone can judge of
the Platonic philosophy, then we are all enslaved to them. Ordinary men of
common sense and scientific knowledge must bow to them. There were several
ways in which the great philosophers of early modern philosophy liberated us
from enslavement to these priests and scholars of words and ancient
languages, but principal among them were two:

(1) Ancient texts could be translated into the vernacular and as a result
the rest of mankind could have access to these texts and the scholarly
commentaries to judge for themselves which made sense and which were
jibberish without resort to the priests and scholars of words and language.
The reasoning was that in a study such as science or philosophy, where it is
the subject matter that is important (not, as in e.g. poetry, where the
original language is crucial to appreciating the poet=92s use of rhyme or
meter and other techniques), a competent translation of the original text
was infinitely superior to the false and misleading "translation" of
scientific and philosophic ideas in the form of a commentary, filtered
through the mind of one of the priests or scholars who distort and mislead
for their own wicked purpose=97namely, to enslave mankind and keep us all =
  in
a cave-like darkness in which only the expert Ivorian and Christopherian
interpreters of the shadows (read: "where only the experts in dead words and
ghoulish languages and empty concepts) possess the _authority_ to speak on
issues of importance. In this cave world, the shadow-interpreter and
shadow-translator are king. If you show them a real thing apprehended
directly by sensation/intuition, they will condemn both you and the actual
thing as unreal impostors which defile reality and show disrespect for the
shadows. The principles of Platonic philosophy--no less than the equations
of physics--are not bound by the limitations of language or words, for the
words are merely a thin and wispy cloud very easily penetrated by any ray of
sunlight. If you can grasp the equation, then you can apprehend the science.
And this is no less true in philosophy: if you have senses, if you are
capable of nothing more than seeing or hearing or otherwise perceiving, then
simply on your own you are capable of replicating and evaluating the
insights and principles of any great philosopher. What great and genuine
science and art and philosophy have in common is their universal
accessibility and their independence, for all intents and purposes, from the
bounds and bonds of words and language. Despite what the Ivorian and
Christopherian priests tell you, you are a free human being capable of
seeing as well as any other-=97and therefore as capable as any other of
meeting the challenge of philosophy. Whether we speak of the equations of
science or the equations of the Platonic forms, the expertise consists not
in words and language but in the power of sensation/intuition and thought.=
=20

(2) The modern philosophers also freed us from the prejudices of the priests
and scholars by demonstrating that progress of knowledge requires no special
training in Latin and Greek, but rather originates in perceptual insights
into a reality which is accessible to all through the ordinary senses. By
establishing that no knowledge (however exalted that knowledge may be) is
possible without intuition/sensation, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, etc.
established that every perceiving and thinking human being, using his own
senses and mental powers, was a better judge than any of the scholars and
priests of words and languages and concepts. In the hands of the Ivorian and
Christopherian priests and professors of philosophy, expertise in words and
language becomes the principal obstacle to progress in the sciences, the
arts and philosophy. Did the men who made Galileo recant lack for knowledge
of ancient languages and skill in shaving words and concepts? What about the
men who condemned Socrates?

The professors and the Ivorian and Christopherian cult priests and scholars
of words and language will tell you that your own powers of perception are
useless to you,  and that there is no such thing as a Platonic form to be
found either in reality or in the works of Plato=97-and therefore you must=
  not
look for such. They have done you the service of looking for you and there
is no need to strain your own very dim powers of perception. Plato did of
course make the mistake of confusing adjectives with nouns and then at times
may have spoken about them as if they had been made into objective
realities, but we must make allowances for an ignorant man who lived in an
ignorant and linguistically unsophisticated age.=20

Once again I recommend that you explore Schopenhauer=92s account of Plato=92=
s
theory of the forms. Do not be dissuaded by the pseudo-scholarship of the
Christopherian priests. All they do is brush off the dust from their Cliff
Notes and reference books and other secondary sources on Schopenhauer and
the other philosophers and make believe they have examined what they really
have to say. It is once again nothing more than the booming voice of the
Wizard of Oz, trying to scare you away from looking for yourself.

The Ivorian and Christopherian scholars are like the practitioners of
Oriental art, of whom one noted artist and art critic has written: "It is in
this spirit that the Indian cotton printers work today as was observed by
Lockwood Kipling, who describes them as designing flower-patterns from a
flower placed behind them, at which they give only an occasional glance. The
European artist would place his painting beside the flower and compare the
two: the Asiatic turns away from it to avoid being distracted=85."=20

This is why Oriental art is not genuine art at all=85and why Oriental
philosophy is not philosophy at all. Whatever they may be (something we
might discuss another time), they are not art or philosophy. Genuine art and
philosophy are based on the concentrated and sustained comparison of
original and copy using sensation/intuition and without this they are
absolutely vacant.=20

At least Oriental art and philosophy may be something genuine=97even if they
are genuinely not art or philosophy. The Christopherian and Ivorian words
and scholarship are nothing genuine, merely a ghoulish warning: Thou shalt
not enter into the realm of original perception and thou shalt not apprehend
reality. Submit to our authority, acknowledge our superiority in words and
language, deny that there are Platonic forms, deny that there is anything
beyond words and language and historical facts and drama worth knowing in
Plato, and wisdom is yours. This siren song has shipwrecked philosophy on
the rocks of empty concepts and has plunged us into our present and much
expanded new middle ages.=20

You should stuff your ears full of wax to prevent against hearing this
wretched sirenic wailing. In fact, I suspect that the roots of the wings of
the soul, of which Plato writes in the Phaedrus, had to be melted and
unblocked for a twofold purpose: not merely to free the wings but just as
well to provide a melted wax with which to stop-up the ears--to prevent the
soul from being bewitched by the incantations of the cult priests from whom
the Ivorians and the Christopherians derive. How unlikely that this wax
should be provided by God for no purpose but to be melted away and=
  discarded!=20

Science, art and philosophy have in common that they are aids in the
portrayal and apprehension of reality as well as the wise conduct of life.
Platonic philosophy suggests that there are equations of human (and
non-human) forces of nature and character which we can distinguish, forms of
human character which are no less subject to mensuration than the forces of
nature which are the concern of the physicist and chemist. For those who
will only venture to unchain themselves and take a look with their own eyes,
the method of mensuration is there to be grasped in the dialogues.=20

True Platonic philosophy only seems to have ended with the death of Plato. I
am confident that this is not the case. There must have been other Socrates
and other Platos over the centuries, and they have no doubt continued the
Socratic-Platonic enterprise in secret. Is it imaginable that such a great
enterprise would be foresaken, even in a climate as hostile to philosophy as
our own? I am confident that Schopenhauer must have heard about this
enterprise and was attempting to break the news to the world. Perhaps he was
even involved in it. He offered lectures at the University, but
unfortunately nobody attended. As a result, out of bitterness he decided to
keep the information about these Platonic researches to himself. But there
must have been other Platonic and Socratic scientists have been developing
the science of forms during all these centuries. Therefore, there would have
to be a fully developed science of Platonic forms, with instruments and
experimental techniques no less powerful than the most precise tools of the
physical sciences. And I am sure that there are Platonic scientists out
there carrying-out Plato=92s mensuration project, and actually measuring the
degree to which all of us participate in the ideal forms: to determine
whether we are sophists or philosophers, mathematicians or artists; and
measuring the degree to which each participates in courage and justice and
virtue and wisdom and intelligence and humanity. Please keep your eyes open,
and I will do likewise. -- In the meantime, keep a good store of wax on hand
for emergencies.

Some specific comments on the cave allegory are interspersed below. My
general characterization, however, is that your approach to these
allegories, paralleling that of Ivor in his account below, makes it
virtually impossible that to understand their significance if you continue
along this path:

>>Ivor 30-OCT-1998 writes:
>>
>>
>>>515a5ff. "Do you think that such people first of all would see anything=
  of
>>>themselves and of each other, other than the shadows cast onto the wall
>>>opposite them by the fire?" "How could they," he said, "if they were=
  forced
>>>all their life to have unmoving heads?" [My rough translation]
>>
>>OK, you've given me something to ponder. My first thought is, that this=20
>>means that they can't see themselves or their fellow prisoners, all they=
=20
>>can see is shadows (cast by the artifacts but the prisoners don't know=20
>>that). Or, as Mary suggested, there could be occasional shadows of(the=20
>>upper parts of) themselves as well.  Schema:
>>
>>| 			  fire
>>| 			  fire
>>| 			  fire=09
>>| O |                 fire
>>| | |
>>|    prisoners low
>>  wall=09
>>
>>This way shadows of both artifacts carried behind the wall and some of=20
>>themselves could be seen on the front wall.
>>
>
>Might be some hope for the cave. But the Phaedrus winged chariot seems
>pretty incoherent.
>

Though I am pleased to see the richness of Plato=92s image once again
stimulating an interchange on the cave and other allegories, I can see that,
on Ivor=92s side, he is not willing or capable of seeing or representing the
image properly, nor can he undertake to interpret it adequately. It is
impossible for Ivor to "see" for he will only conceptualize. Just look at
Ivor=92s remarks below, dripping with arrogance and condescension toward=
  Plato
(see also my remarks below after Ivor=92s). =20

Your remark shows that you are taking an attitude of, if not Ivorian
condescension, then a lack of effort to explore the allegory and its
significance. A great and profound account is not something at which you may
glance and conclude: "OK, there=92s some hope for Plato=97but this [is]
incoherent." This, quite frankly, is simply a sign of utter intellectual
puerility and laziness.

Stanley Rosen teaches his students to approach Plato in the following way (I
paraphrase and apologize for any inaccuracy): When you read Plato, assume
that you are either uneducated or a fool and that Plato is wise--far, far
beyond your ability to even begin to appreciate. If something in Plato seems
wrong, irrational, vague or ridiculous, assume that you are wrong and that
it is merely your own stupidity and/or ignorance which prevent you from
understanding what he is saying; or, in the extremely unlikely case that
Plato is saying something that is "wrong", assume that he is doing so on
purpose and with the end of using the error for the purpose of very promptly
leading you to the truth of the matter.=20

Is this dogmatism or an appeal to authority=97an attempt to get you to bow=
  and
unthinkingly accept what Plato says in the Christopherian and Ivorian
manner? I believe that it is in no way intended by Rosen as such, and that
the suggested approach is for precisely the opposite purpose. If it is not
obvious why this is the case, please let me know. Certainly, I do not
recommend it in any spirit of dogmatism or authority.

One of my concerns is that, in your list of "possibilities" below, you do
not even allow the possibility that the allegory "adds-up" perfectly in
itself, and that it is _your_ incapacity or inability or inadequacy or your
unwillingness to diligently and responsibly pursue the matter, which makes
you think that it does "not quite add up." I realize that you attribute
deliberation to the error; still any such imputation is premature in the
extreme. I realize that you are being flip, in your expression "winging it",
but you can be confident that Plato did not patch together some haphazard
account and that every element is perfectly in place. Haphazard accounts by
Plato would be quite out of character.

>I see these possibilities, for starters:
>
>1. Plato made each metaphor deliberately not quite add up. Perhaps as some
>say about the dialogs -- to get the students to thinking. Or perhaps to
>keep attention focused on the actual point/s -- by making them the common
>factor/s among several versions of the metahor. Keep switching, so the
>listeners can't forget it is a metaphor.
>
>2. Deliberate, but because no one consistent version could hold all the
>information he wanted to give. EG the 'prickling, teeth cutting'
>sensations, the feeling of 'a wing' growing under one and lifting, etc.
>Perhaps those were sensations that really accompanied what he was talking
>about, so he wanted to put them in, whether they quite fitted with the
>chariot or not.
>
>3. Not deliberate, just sort of, er, winging it.=20
>
>4. Scribal errors?
>
>
>Actually, 2 might have 1 as a by-product.
>
>Personally, I see a sort of /Alice in Wonderland/ quality. Carroll, Lear.
>Such mixed images freshen the mind.
>
>
>
>>But this whole cave thing is an image, something inherently far removed=20
>>from "the truth" and reality, by nature vague and indistinct.  So to=20
>>make much of some little detail like, how could the prisoners see their=20
>>own shadows, is to make too much of little details of the image. It is=20
>>trying to "make the analogy walk on all fours," to focus on the trees=20
>>instead of the forest.=20

Here you see the perfect expression of the priest of words and language,
revolted by reality and quickly turning away from it. To Ivor, the fact that
the cave is an "image" is equivalent to saying that it is "inherently far
removed from the truth". For, in his view, the truth lies in words and
language and concepts. To Ivor, perceptions and images are "by nature vague
and indistinct" and this makes them incompatible with reality which consists
of perfectly distinct words and concepts. And I suspect that you would have
great difficulty finding another Plato scholar to disagree with him. That
this is absolutely contrary to every word that Plato wrote, and absolutely
contrary to the spirit of all of the great modern philosophers who
maintained that thoughts can only be clear and (dare I say it) _real_ to the
degree that they arise out of images and sensations=97is something utterly
alien to Ivor and beneath his contempt.

This viewpoint of the Ivorian and Christopherian priests of words and
language is directly contrary to all genuine philosophical theories. If you
would but diligently explore this image of the cave, you would have no
difficulty in penetrating through to the inner meaning of the Platonic
philosophy. In fact, without following the thread of this and the other
Platonic images and account of sensation, not the least progress is=
  possible.

This is one of the great virtues of Schopenhauer=92s philosophy, his
demonstration that all genuine insight into the Platonic forms is only
possible through perception. A very special form of perception indeed; but
perception none the less. The forms are real. They are apprehended _through_
perception. There is a science of the forms. There is no science without the
forms. Science has made progress in the science of mensuration of non-human
forms. Mankind has made virtually no progress since Plato died in the
science of measurement of Platonic forms since then=97at least none that has
come to light. It is possible to measure objectively such forms as virtue
and justice. Together with a suggestion about how to develop a science of
perception by means of which we can formulate specific scientific techniques
for mensuration of each person=92s participation in the forms, it is the
knowledge of real and ideal forms which the work of Plato is all about. This
is the knowledge which we can use both to guide and assess our conduct and
that of all others. The Ivorian and Christopherian flatulence to the
contrary, this is what philosophy is exclusively about. Schopenhauer
explains this very effectively in his works, with special attention to the
fundamental importance of perception/intuition to the knowledge of the
Forms. Only when you dissolve the scales of words and language and abstract
concepts which obstruct your vision will you be able to appreciate Plato
properly. All it takes is to open-up the eyes so we can see. I for one am
not put off by the Ivorian and Christopherian assault against reason which
contends that we do not have knowledge right now and therefore can never
hope to discern either the degree of success of Plato=92s enterprise or the
truth itself. Recall the image in the Meno of a traveler=92s attempt to find
the road to Larissa. If we listen to the siren song of the Ivorian and
Christopherian priests of words and language and drama and historical
details, we will remain forever paralyzed with fear and forever lost, never
venturing forth with courage to attempt to find the path to any truth.

>
>Yes. At least, trying to make all the details add up at once, might miss
>the point.
>
>Hm. If the passage actually says (or strongly hints) that the prisoners
>could see their own shadows -- then that's a point to focus on, without
>worrying about how.=20
>
>Unless...
>
>> The key message of "do you suppsoe. . . that the=20
>>prisoners see anything of themselves . . . besides the shadows ..." is=20
>>that they don't understand themselves and their own natures, they are=20
>>deceived about themselves because they take shadows for reality.=20
>
>Yes.
>
>... if as I suggested, beginning to unfasten the bonds and stand up --
>involved seeing one's own shadow stand up larger than before, perhaps
>learning to distintuish it from the OM-made shadows around. "Know Thyself"?
>
>Of course there would be stages in this. First, seeing one's own shadow up
>and moving, would be an indication that one had got out of the bonds. Then
>he would have to turn away from that shadow to go outside and see his own
>real body.
>
>
>
>Mary
>
>

While you are engaged above in trying to supplement the allegory, I would
not recommend that you rush off and so quickly abandon Plato=92s own=
  account.
Your investment in rigorously exploring this account and, I might suggest,
relating it to other accounts of similar forms of perception, will enrich
you greatly.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

All the best,=20
Sherry

Sherry L. Wieder, MD
email:  Sherry L. Wieder <emagine@...>

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Cross-posted from the Plato e-list in case this post is of interest to
Straussians (with apologies for any duplication):

Mary,
There is only one thinker in modern times who had the least grasp of Plato's
philosophy, in large part because he shared (1) the commitment to pure
rational idealism and the objectivity of knowledge and at the same time
shared with Plato (2) the most refined form of artistic temperament. (The
only others who seriously attempted to understand Plato, Berkeley and Kant,
failed to make any breakthrough because they lacked the artistic temperament
which is an absolute requirement for penetrating through to any
understanding of Plato. It is virtually impossible for any modern reader to
understand anything about Plato without going through Schopenhauer. He has,
in effect, translated the theory of forms into modern terms. I recommend
especially that you read his principal work, the World as Will, and his
shorter work, the Essay on the Freedom of the Will. In his work you will see
that the artist serves as the eyes of the philosopher, providing pure
insights into the Forms which the philosopher then works up into a system.
Whatever you do, pay no mind to the jibberish of all the higher sorts of
nincompoops who say that Plato's philosophy is about words and his dialogues
are about drama. They are the dead twigs and branches of the poisoned-tree
tradition of analytic philosophy, postmodernism, and other recent vogues,
trends and movements which have reduced philosophy itself to what John
Silber, philosopher and recently retired president of Boston University has
called an "assault on reason." Most of them despise Plato's thoughts--or
would do so if they understood any of them. Instead of taking seriously the
absurdities and hypocrisies of those who have no use for the theory of forms
and those who despise what Plato and Socrates had to say about the forms as
_realities_, try approaching Plato through Schopenhauer who advocated the
forms with genuine insight and did so unreservedly.

Here's a question: Whether you end-up agreeing or disagreeing with a theory,
do you want to learn what it is really about from those who understand and
personally affirm and advocate it, or from those who despise it and pervert
it into a deformed and unrecognizable image of itself? To put it in terms of
legal argumentation: If you are an innocent man accused of a capital crime,
do you want a lawyer defending you who believes in your innocence; or do you
want a lawyer who is convinced of your guilt? -- Schopenhauer is the most
vigorous and (despite certain appropriately irrational elements) rational
advocate for the man he calls "the divine Plato," and for Plato's theory of
forms, and there is no better path into Plato's thought than through his
highly original account. As far as I know, there is no other philosopher
since the inception of modern philosophy who openly adopted and adhered to
and advocated and incorporated the Platonic theory of forms into his own
original philosophy (or vice versa). Schopenhauer was one with Plato in
regarding the forms as realities and as the ultimate principles of
knowledge. From him you will hear no empty nonsense about words and language!

Schopenhauer casts the forms as transcendent "forces of nature" which
explain everything in human and non-human nature, from electricity and
magnetism, to the forms of personality which make one man a genius and make
another a mass murderer, one man a sophist and another a madman, one man a
poet and another a mathematician. Underlying all such phenomena are Platonic
forms. The most important are the forms of human character which make each
of us what we are, both as types and as individuals. How do we learn about
those Platonic forms of human character?--Through the eyes of the artist!
That's right: Shakespeare and Rembrandt! If this account interests you
sufficiently, and if you share a bit of the artistic temperament, I'd be
pleased to discuss with you Schopenhauer's interpretation of the forms, as
you make your way through his works. [Some additional comments below.]


At 10:15 AM 10/27/98 -0800, you wrote:
>At 09:29 PM 10/26/98 -0500, Sherry wrote:
>>Mary,
>>Your question presupposes a prior one, namely, What is the proper approach
>>and subject matter and starting point of philosophy (and art):
>
>The same for both philosophy and art?
>

See my remarks, above, on the difference, notwithstanding the ineluctable
importance of both.

>
>>(1) abstractions or (2) perceived things and the realities in which they
>>participate?
>
>Or possibly both? The abstractions within a frame of perceived things, I
hope.
>
>
>> The recast of the description of the cave you offer in your
>>post, within the bounds of your quotation marks below, is _abstract_.
>
>Well, abbreviated. If Plato had used the theatre approach, then it would
>have been another choice, whether to add enough detail to invoke the actual
>experience of going to a theatre (if they had any enclosed ones). And
>whether to make that detail realistic -- or different, to show we're not in
>Athens any more, Glaucon -- or when and how fast to change from realistic
>to different.

Remember that no written account however detailed or realistic or suggestive
can ever reproduce an original aesthetic visual experience or insight. Plato
certainly comes as close as one humanly can, but warns against the inherent
limitations (not merely aesthetic) of this written form of exchange.

>
>
>>Plato's original account in the cave allegory is, to the highest degree
>>possible, intuitive/perceptual and as such is entirely opposed to such
>>abstraction.
>
>Yes.
>
>
>>Among other things, you must assume that (as with any genuine
>>perceptual insight) there is an infinite amount of truth to be mined out of
>>Plato's presentation;
>
>I am very glad to hear that. Something else I have wondered about, is "as
>he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes." Why is it this way,
>instead of the eyebeams/gaze going out and resting on the seen object?
>(Which would be more intuitive/perceptual, at least in my experience -- and
>also permitting a sense of exchange of molecules, nourishment, 'drinking in
>the view'.)
>

Here it has to be assumed that Plato is at least in part playing with the
Empedoclean notion of effluences which in its more elaborate account
(combined with Heraclitean flux, etc.) goes in both directions (see the
account in the Theaetetus, for example). Keep in mind that Plato ultimately
rejects such physical explanations as "remarkably crude," but uses them (and
the element of truth that is in them) to make a point--a point which is
sometimes (intentionally) false and sometimes true--and sometimes a
combination. It is necessary that you see the relatively elaborate account
of motions in Theaetetus to gain a more complex understanding of perception
(both artistic and non-artistic). Try relating that account to your
interpretation below.


>
>>it is not a fixed and circumscribed "given" such as
>>you would encounter in geometry
>
>
>Well, I suppose the 'givens' of a geometry problem are fixed. But the
>working of it seems quite pleasantly perceptual.
>
>
>>--or in your abstract formulation. It is not
>>accidental that you raise the notions of "...right brain. Or, more
>>precisely, a turning inside-out of the two modes/objects."
>
>
>No, it certainly wasn't accidental.
>
>The 'dialogs as dramas' approach is right-brained, a look at the whole
>corpus set out in a sort of diagram.
>
>To focus on a metaphor with a lot of solid detail in it, is also
>right-brained.
>I'd expect, that each major metaphor would have a lot of extra details, for
>the purpose of reflecting the whole overall pattern -- a reflection from
>inside, of the whole diagram-structure (or of whatever that diagram was
>reflecting).
>
>Kind of like a reflecting ball inside a formal garden. Or a pearl set into
>a panel of geometric lace.
>
>At a middle-sized view, I suppose some people see mostly abstractions --
>left brain. The isolated sentences/paragraphs, and the obvious bottom line
>of each metaphor.
>
>Panning out, we see the drama of each dialog, and further out, the various
>diagrams -- right brain.
>
>Zooming in, into the details of a metaphor, far enough in to lose the
>middle-sized view -- again right brain. (Finding perhaps the reflecting
>pearl view.)
>
>All this was what I meant by 'inside-out'.
>

This is just the sort of provocation of perceptually-based insights that
Plato most enjoyed engendering and I would love to hear you amplify further
on these thoughts! Of course, as a neurologist I must tell you that this
right/left brain stuff is a great and desperate over-simplification, and
that simple laterality of the brain can never account for all that is
attributed to it. But you are no doubt generally on the right track in
pursuing the "matter" in this way.

>
>/snip/
>
>>Abstractions or concepts are dead and empty, as Kant pointed out, and what
>>alone admits life and reality into any thought is the direct
>>intuitive/perceptual insight.
>
>I am very glad to hear someone say this. Also, didn't Aristotle say that
>analogies are self-correcting (perhaps sometimes because they sometimes
>'participate' in their objects)?
>
>> This fundamental principle of Kant is entirely
>>derivative of Plato. --  This said, is it possible to recognize the crucial
>>difference between your formulation below and that of Plato?
>
>It seems that my abbreviation resulted in what I called an 'obvious bottom
>line' of the metaphor.
>
>> Is it clear why
>>the former is antithetical to the Platonic philosophy while the
>>intuitive/perceptual presentation is essential to it? Is it apparent why the
>>purest possible intuition/perception is the starting point of (Platonic)
>>philosophy no less than art?
>
>Yes. I am very glad to hear this.
>
>> If this question interests you further, I'd be
>>pleased to recommend further.
>
>I would appreciate that very much.
>

I have to rush off now, but please let me know if I can be helpful in
recommending further or clarifying what I have said.

==============================================

All the best,
Sherry

Sherry L. Wieder, MD
email:  Sherry L. Wieder <emagine@...>

==============================================


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The Free Lance Academy listserv will be offline from today, October
30, until sometime on Sunday, November 1. I apologize for the
interruption which is due to the fact that I am going away for a
couple of days and currently the system can only run when I am here
to attend it.

As a preliminary announcement, let me mention that after I return I
am planning to move my lists to a new server which will provide much
faster and more continuous service.

Lance Fletcher, president
The Free Lance Academy Foundation, Inc.

Since Michael Mills has indicated an interest in continuing this
discussion about political correctness, let me throw in a little bit more
in reply to Mr. Sorensen, with whom I largely agree on these issues, in
order to achieve some focus on the one or two spots where there may still
be productive disagreement:

On Wed, 21 Oct 1998, Steve Sorensen wrote:

> On  10/20/98, Cameron Wybrow wrote:
>
> >But no one is forcing them to acquiesce in anything.
>
> > No one is trying
> >to take the podium away from the politically correct.  What one must take
> >away is their right to control everyone else's podium.
>
> I see you do not read left wing journals of opinion--or right wing for that
> matter. They argue that, and this is just popularized Nietzche, that he who
> controls the schools controls everything (and Nietzche is right about this).
> As I pointed out previously Hobbes made explicit his desire to replace
> scholasticism in the universities.

I acknowledge that there are people on both the right or the left who want
to "control the schools".  I disagree with both of them, not only for
practical reasons (I dislike both the corporate agenda of global
capitalism and the welfare state), but for a principled reason, that
schools, especially universities, in *our* society, i.e., Western Society,
ought to aim for the expansion and increase of thought, not control of
thought.  The former goal is the great gift of the Greeks to us, and we
have a mandate to preserve that.  Islamic society has no such fundamental
principle; Babylonian society had no such fundamental principle; our
society does.  The West is unique.  Freedom of thought and expression,
whatever its drawbacks, is one of the main things that has characterized
us.  If we lose that, we lose a large part of our identity, of our
self-conception, of our mission.  Perhaps the loss of that mission would
be a good thing; certainly the politically correct seem to think so.  But
I don't think it would be.  I think the university should be (whether it
is or not, whether it often has been or not) the institution for
preserving freedom of thought *par excellence*.  The university should be
the place where everyone has the divinely-given (as it were) right to make
everyone else feel uncomfortable, to utter unpleasant thoughts, or
thoughts which make us question things we would rather not question.  The
feminists should be allowed to utter the most horrid blasphemies about the
sexism of Shakespeare, and the atheists the most horrid blasphemies about
revealed religion; and the male chauvinists should be allowed in turn the
right to utter the most reactionary statements about the role of women,
and the religious the right to ridicule and mock the sacred Enlightenment
belief in "progress" and "science".  If this is not what is taking place
in our universities, then to that extent our universities our not
universities in the true sense, at least as I conceive them.  So I can
agree with everything you say about the attempt to seize control of
universities, and still deplore it.

> To speak of threats against freedom of
> speech is misleading. The real battle is over who becomes the majority and
> controls department hirings and publication all the way from the top
> universities down to the textbook in the smallest grade school. You cannot
> make this debate go away by saying lets have a "marketplace of ideas" or let
> everyone have their chance to speak.

I agree that I cannot cause evil and self-serving ideologues to cease
their destructive activities by saying that they should not engage in
them.  I was appealing to an ideal of what a university should be, not
denying the grubby facts of what the university has become.

> Now of course we have today a different orthodoxy, or at least a battle over
> what the orthodoxy should be. But I suggest that the current difficulties
are
> a consequence of having lost sight of the reasons for the old orthodoxy,
which
> led to the claim that there was no orthodoxy and that all forms of speech
> should be allowed, which led to the demand that the old orthodoxy be torn
down
> because it is fundamentally unjust and a new, just and good one be put in
its
> place. The old orthodoxy, the one of Shakespeare and Donne, was attacked on
> the grounds it was oppressive, tyrannical and evil--not because Arthur
Miller
> was defended as Shakespeare's equal but Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. The
> promoters of the new orthodoxy are not going to make the tactical mistake of
> the old and pretend freedom of speech is what is important. No, they openly
> defend themselves in the name of justice and truth. Which is, I think, how
the
> old orthodoxy should have defended itself and should now be defended.

Of course the new orthodox abandon freedom of speech; they have no respect
for it; it was only a means to power for them.  The early Christians spoke
only of freedom to worship unmolested -- until the time of Theodosius. And
we know what happened after that.  What the Romans did sporadically to
Christians prior to Constantine was indefensible; but what the Christians
did systematically and relentlessly to Celtic and Scandinavian religion
after they obtained power was equally indefensible.  We almost lost the
Elder Edda, and that sin against the human spirit alone would have
warranted the roasting of all the existing bishops and Popes in hell for
all eternity.  The absolute and complete truth of Christianity does not
justify suppressing non-Christian beliefs.  Similarly, the absolute and
complete truth of feminism cannot justify suppressing non-feminist
beliefs.  That feminists will try to suppress such beliefs without any
justification I take for granted.  In that respect they are very much like
the advisers to Theodosius.

> >I mostly agree with this; except that it downplays the very large role of
> >cautious sniff-the-wind academics who are in general inclined to oppose
> >controls on freedom of speech but when put under pressure cave in.
>
> Well I suppose there will always be cowards. The question is what will make
> them courageous. You say denounce them and shame them into courage.

I am not trying to make cowards courageous.  I was suggesting that at
least they might have been made ashamed to support measures designed to
restrict freedom of thought and expression.  This would have moved them
from the position of cowards working for the enemy to the position of
cowards sitting on the fence, doing no good but at least not doing any
harm.  If that had worked, the hardened politically correct campaigners,
the ones incapable of feeling shame because they believed that their ends
justified all possible means, would have lost all the soft allies they
needed on their march to acquire power.

> Let us say this is too high a standard for professors. We are not going to
get
> real courage from them. So the best we can hope for is that imitation
courage
> which is fear of opinion or shame.

I will gladly settle for "imitation courage" from contemporary professors,
because I expect no other kind from them.  I have spent too long among
academics in the humanities and social sciences not to know what a
pathetic sampling of human virtue they display.  If all they are capable
of is fear of healthy opinion, I will take it.

> I am still not convinced that you will
> cause shame by denouncing them. In my experience when I denounce someone
they
> merely get angry at me and strike back in kind.

You should denounce the evil people you cannot change, and you should
gently shame the semi-evil people, the potential allies, that you have a
chance of changing.  Surely that is sensible policy?

> I am all for "controlled, intelligently directed anger."

Good.  We agree.





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On Thu, 22 Oct 1998, Michael Mills wrote:

> At 12:54 AM 10/20/98 -0500, Cameron Wybrow wrote:

> >But no one is forcing them to acquiesce in anything.  I am quite willing
> >to allow them to pepper their books with the word "humankind", and pepper
> >their lectures with the same.  I have no inclination to interfere if they
> >choose to lecture or write articles about the sexism of Dickens and praise
> >the virtues of Virginia Woolf.  Where the line must be drawn is where they
> >attempt to force others to use their prescribed vocabulary and prescribed
> >social analysis -- which they do every time they institute a campus speech
> >code, compel their students to use what they call "inclusive" language on
> >pain of failure, force the removal of some allegedly offensive play of
> >Shakespeare from the school or college curriculum, etc.  No one is trying
> >to take the podium away from the politically correct.  What one must take
> >away is their right to control everyone else's podium.
>
> I believe the argument in reply would be that these people find the
> traditional canon so offensive that it is a form of oppression or coercion
> to ask them to share a university with partisans of the canon.  Therefore, I
> believe they would argue that true freedom means an absence of coercion,
> which means in turn that all the tyrannical partisans of the canon should be
> persuaded to change their ways -- or be exiled (fired).

They would indeed argue something like this, but the fact remains that
they have the right to persuade every living soul in the university that
the canon is oppressive, and if they should succeed in doing so, the canon
will cease to be taught, by the voluntary consent of its former defenders.
So why are they not content with the opportunity to evangelize and
convert?  The answer is:  they fear that they will not be able to persuade
everyone without a gun, and since justice requires that everyone be
persuaded, they have a right to the gun.  So what have universities done?
Given them the gun.  Brilliant.  Now they can wipe out whatever they find
offensive at universities.  Unfortunately, what they find offensive is the
traditional idea of the university itself.

> >In any case, I agree with Bloom, and I do not think we are far apart in
> >our intentions, and I suggest we leave this topic.
>
> What a pity -- I was enjoying the interchange.

I yield to your wishes.  I have sent one more reply out to Mr. Sorensen
tonight.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Dear Mr. Sorenson,

At 11:17 AM 10/21/98 -0500, you wrote:

(snip)>
>I am all for "controlled, intelligently directed anger." I am just waiting
for
>an account of just what that would look like. And I am not convinced that
>intellegently directed anger would be prophetic denunciation of those who
hire
>minority candidates with substandard qualifications or establish speech codes
>or those who do not stand up to such things.  This sounds more like moral
>indignation than anger to me.
>
Why is moral indignation not angerr or a form of anger? And is moral
indignation a bad thing? Just wondering.

Best regards,

Dan Watkins






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At 12:54 AM 10/20/98 -0500, Cameron Wybrow wrote:
>


>
>But no one is forcing them to acquiesce in anything.  I am quite willing
>to allow them to pepper their books with the word "humankind", and pepper
>their lectures with the same.  I have no inclination to interfere if they
>choose to lecture or write articles about the sexism of Dickens and praise
>the virtues of Virginia Woolf.  Where the line must be drawn is where they
>attempt to force others to use their prescribed vocabulary and prescribed
>social analysis -- which they do every time they institute a campus speech
>code, compel their students to use what they call "inclusive" language on
>pain of failure, force the removal of some allegedly offensive play of
>Shakespeare from the school or college curriculum, etc.  No one is trying
>to take the podium away from the politically correct.  What one must take
>away is their right to control everyone else's podium.

I believe the argument in reply would be that these people find the
traditional canon so offensive that it is a form of oppression or coercion
to ask them to share a university with partisans of the canon.  Therefore, I
believe they would argue that true freedom means an absence of coercion,
which means in turn that all the tyrannical partisans of the canon should be
persuaded to change their ways -- or be exiled (fired).


>
>In any case, I agree with Bloom, and I do not think we are far apart in
>our intentions, and I suggest we leave this topic.

What a pity -- I was enjoying the interchange.

Michael.




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At 01:52 PM 10/19/98 -0500, Steve Sorensen wrote:


>
>So the "rational strategy" needed is a rational defense of liberal
>education--or rather of political philosophy. [snip]
>
>
>Let me say that I do not think such a strategy means defending liberal
>education as apolitical or the job of the university as understanding the
>world. Rather liberal education, as Strauss argues, "is the necessary
endeavor
>to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Liberal education is
>required for the exercise of civic responsibility. Liberal education is meant
>to produce gentlemen. Gentlemen are free from indignation.
>
>

Of course, those whom such a strategy would oppose would be indignant at the
suggestion of establishing an aristocracy within democratic mass society:
they would regard any aristocracy -- much less the cultivation of
"gentlemen" -- as another arm of this tyranny of the dead, white, European
males which they had so recently overthrown.  So I fear that the strategy
would still be greeted as a partisan effort.  (sigh)

Michael.




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A couple of weeks ago I wrote, in part:

"Mr. Sorenson continues to amuse with his tenacious inability to accept the
obvious.

"One must try to think and not debate."

Mr. Sorenson responded:

"Perhaps one must look for the subtle as well as the obvious. One example of
which is that telling your interlocutor that he is laughable and blind does
not encourage him to reflect rather than respond with a spirited defense.
Perhaps also we should raise the question what is the best way to make men
rational."

Mr. Sorenson, you misunderstand this point as well.  That you misrepresent
my statement as to have implied that you are "laughable and blind"
indicates that you still are debating.  My goal, to the extent that I had
one at all, was not to get you to reflect, but to assist you in taking the
first step toward reflection, that is, to remain silent.  I judge from your
posts that your first impulse is to create a division between yourself and
your interlocutor.  I, on the other hand, entered the discussion not to
engage debate or prove you wrong (I do not have the time for this as I once
did, as the lateness of my reply reflects), but to point out that you and
Mr. Grant actually agreed on the major premise--that philosophy is not
partisan in the sense of serving partial interests--and that the point of
disagreement emerged out of your not recognizing that his claim that
philosophers may be partisan must be understood at a very practical level,
the level of the city or of the political.

In response to my admission that the foregoing is not a profound argument,
you wrote:

"I did not mean to indicate you were being profound. That we should look to
deeds as more trustworthy than words is a not uncommon point of view. And your
view that 'men always divide' is indeed the view of the Cretan. I do not think
it is the view of Socrates--or the Athenian Stranger."

Socrates believes that men _should_ not divide into separate camps and
_would_ not do so except that they have insufficient knowledge.  But he
knows full well that men _do_ in fact always divide, and no example of this
is more telling than his own trial in Athens.  Athens perhaps should have
listened to Socrates rather than kill him, but it did not understand the
good as well as he.  Socrates aimed at the common good, the Athenians did
not, but they thought that they did.  And let us be frank, Socrates hardly
uses the most convincing rhetoric to make his case before the Assembly.
That is, the issue is not simply that he lacks the rhetorical skills of,
say, a Thrasymachus.  Rather, he quite clearly baits the jurors, especially
when it comes time to recommend his own sentence.  Socrates emphasizes the
difference between Athens and himself even though, of course, he repeatedly
speaks of his intention to serve the good of the city.  One might say that
he does this in a partisan manner, opposing his views to those of the
Athenians with only a superficial attempt to encourage them to move from
their partisan stance.  I do not claim to give the definitive account of
the Apology here, but one may reasonably argue that Socrates (or Plato at
any rate) employs the essential element of partisanship and war--the
drawing of lines between opposed sides--in order to make a larger, perhaps
rhetorical, statement about the relationship between philosophy and
politics.  The point here is that when I refer to the partisan philosopher
I refer to the concrete, practical situation facing the political
philosopher, who, because of the conflict forced upon him at times by the
partisans of evil, must himself be partisan in order to preserve the good,
either for the moment or for posterity (the latter was perhaps the case
with Socrates).

You continue:

"You said above that 'men always divide,' and here you say that there is
always a tendency towards conflict.' But you deny that men are always in
violent wars. One wonders if there are not nonviolent wars, perhaps cold
wars. [Hobbes quote.] So it does seem that you are arguing that men are
always at war whether or not they are actually shooting at one another.

"I do not think that Strauss agreed with Schmitt that the seriousnessness of
the political lies in its tendancy toward conflict at all times. The
seriousness of the political lies in play and education--see the comment of
the Athenian Stranger below."

First, the tendency toward war is always there in political life precisely
because men always divide into opposed groups.  Whether violent war occurs
depends, among other things, upon the degree of conflict--that is, to what
extent the opposed sides mistake the common good.  For example, I suspect
that the liberal democracies of the West have not gone to war with one
another in the last fifty years because, for the most part, they maintain
forms of government that are broadly consistent with the requirements of
human nature: freedom, justice, etc.  Or in the words of our present
discussion, these countries tend to agree on much of what makes up a
reasonable understanding of the common good.  Then again, these nations and
peoples are certainly not perfect, or even philosophic, and thus war may
eventually arise among them.

Second, you simply misunderstand me when you imply that I think that the
"seriousness of the political lies in its tendency toward conflict."  What
I wrote in the immediate passage to which you responded was that the
seriousness of the political "manifests" itself in the conflict between men
with opposed ideas of the good.  War is the effect, not the cause, of such
seriousness.  It is man's attempt to know and follow the good in which the
seriousness of the political lies.  However, war and conflict stemming from
opposed ideas of the good, rather than the good itself, usually provide the
material of philosophic inquiry.  This is the basic teaching of Socrates'
turn to the political things in search of knowledge, his turn to the
opinions of men.  The ultimate consequence of this turn, perhaps, is
Socrates' confrontation with Athens over its view that he had betrayed the
most sacred of its opinions concerning the good.  Socrates' turn is
simultaneously the improvement of philosophy (by giving it its surest
access to knowledge of the whole through the human things) and the
politicizing of philosophy (in the sense that the philosopher--now
political philosopher--has a stake in or obligation to the city as its
philosophic umpire).  The point here is to understand--as I think Strauss
understood by always emphasizing the primacy of the political, the first
cave rather than the cave beneath that cave--that the turn to the political
is not contrary to but coterminous with philosophy.  I suggest that the key
here is to understand the character of the cave to which Strauss wants to
ascend.  This is the point--the most important point--I was referring to at
the end of my last post, the point you ignored entirely but to which I
shall return at the end.

You continue:

"For the Stranger what is most serious is play and education: 'But the fact
is that in war there is not and will not be by nature either play, or
again, an education that is at any time worthy of our discussion; yet this
is what we assert is for us, at least, the most serious thing....so as to
live out their lives in accordance with the way of nature, being puppets,
for the most part, but sharing in small portions of truth.' ([Laws] 803d,
804b). For the Spartan this is too much: 'Stranger, you are belittling our
human race in every respect.' And the Stranger responds: 'Don't be amazed,
Megillus, but forgive me! For I was looking away toward the god and
speaking under the influence of that experience, when I said what I did
just now. So let our race be something that is not lowly then, if that is
what you cherish, but worthy of a certain seriousness.' Strauss comments
that this is 'the typical disagreement between the philosopher and the
legislator.' (WIPP, p. 92, fn. 20) One notices that the Stranger does not
draw lines here. He lets the Spartan keep his illusion."

Again, you are missing what is plainly obvious in the very passages you
quote from the _Laws_ and from Strauss!  Yes, the Athenian allows the
Spartan to keep his illusion, but the line itself is drawn: the Stranger
and Megillus do disagree, and Strauss makes this perfectly clear with
reference to "the typical disagreement between the philosopher and the
legislator"!  What you do not see (and what Strauss clearly sees) is that
what is very important, along with the content of the Athenian's speeches,
is the dramatic context in which they occur.  Megillus's defense of the
warlike nature of humanity emerges in the dialogue as the warlike opponent
of the Athenian's attack upon such nature.  The Athenian is drawn into the
conflict by, to use my rather dramatic language, the Spartan's party of
evil.  Now whether violent war breaks out between the two is determined by
the prudential judgments of each man and his attempt to further what he
takes to be the good.  Both men are equally political, but only the
Athenian (as the philosopher) is actually on the right side, while the
Spartan (because he possesses faulty knowledge of the good) is not.  As
long as the conditions are propitious for doing so, each man seeks to
persuade the other that he is right.  In the Apology, the conditions are no
longer propitious or, as I intimated above, perhaps the best rhetorical
position for Socrates by the time of his trial is his public drawing of
very clear lines. Unlike the Stranger of the _Laws_ (who leaves open the
possibility for further education of his interlocutors), perhaps this is
the best Socrates can do for Athens, especially given his advanced age.

You continue:

"Surely there is a difference between coming to sight as partisan and being
partisan? Let me say I am not arguing that philosophy is 'transcendent' or
that being 'non-partisan' is the same thing as defending the common good. The
common good is not transcendent--unless we accept the City of God as the
common good. But let us stay here within the horizon of classical political
philosophy since we are discussing Strauss and philosophy. And to be
'non-partisan' is nothing more than to be neutral."

This paragraph is a fine example of your apparent desire to debate rather
than consider thoughtfully what I have written.  You state here either mere
truisms that I have not denied (such as, being non-partisan is not the same
as defending the common good) or you criticize my use of unobjectionable
concepts by insisting on narrow definitions of them ("non-partisan" can
simply mean not partisan, "transcendent" can simply mean not bound by
partial considerations of time and place, as in Strauss's use of the term
"transcendent natural right" in WIPP).  If you truly are concerned with
making men more rational, please stop proving my point about the propensity
of man to create conflict, stop creating differences where none exist.

You continue still:

"It seems to me that Strauss makes these things clear in his essay on
classical political philosophy. He says political life, as you argue, is
characterized by conflicts between men asserting opposed claims and that
those who raise a claim believe what they claim is good for them. This does
not mean they believe what is good for them is the common good, which is
indicated by the public defense which is sometimes insincere of any such
claim in terms of
justice. Now Strauss says that such conflicts call for arbitration, 'for an
intelligent decision that will give each party what it truly deserves. Some of
the material required for making such a decision is offered by the opposed
parties themselves, and the very insufficiency of this partial material--an
insufficiency obviously due to its partisan origin--points the way to its
completion by the umpire. The umpire par excellence is the political
philosopher.' (WIPP, pp. 80-81)

"The political philosopher comes to light--to the political men
themselves--not as a partisan but as the arbitrator or umpire among the
parties. . . . And he [the philosopher] does this [make civil strife cease]
by completing the arguments which are defective because they are partisan
so as to show the way to give to all what they truly deserve--and by
persuading all to agree."

You are now repeating the same misinterpretation of Strauss that you
provided before.  Strauss is certainly clear, but he does not say what you
say.  For example, Strauss remarks in the very next sentence that you do
not quote: "He [the philosopher] tries to settle those political
controversies that are both of paramount and of permanent importance."  The
philosopher _tries_ to do this, he does not necessarily succeed.  Indeed,
Strauss notes that in the course of the political philosopher's eminently
political task of umpiring the city's disputes, "he has to raise ulterior
questions, questions that are never raised in the political arena; but in
doing so he does not abandon his fundamental orientation, which is the
orientation of political life."  The political philosopher's role leaves
him in a difficult predicament: he must educate the city as its umpire, but
in doing so he runs the risk of raising questions which antagonize _all_ of
the partial interests in the city.  The political philosopher does not
necessarily come to light as the umpire "to the political men themselves."
And Strauss certainly does not say that the city sees the philosopher as
such.  If the philosopher is successful, if the circumstances are
propitious, then he may come to light to the parties themselves as such an
umpire.  This distinction is important and is evident in the very passages
in Strauss to which you refer.

Let us be clear.  Strauss does not say that the philosopher cannot be
partisan because he pursues the common good.  Rather, he says that the
philosopher is not partisan because he does not pursue partial interests.
Strauss has the capacity to understand that, by definition, the philosopher
is a partisan of the common good, over against those who are partisans of
partial interests.  As you do above with "non-partisan" and "transcendent,"
you insist on a definition of partisan that is incorrect because
incomplete.  Partisan can mean, among other things, either the preference
for and pursuit of partial interests or preference for and pursuit of the
common good by a party.  Most parties think that they are the latter when
they usually are something closer to the former, while you believe they
always are only the former.  As I wrote before, you simply have a problem
with the word partisan.

Let me say that the substantive difference between us is so
trivial--because virtually nonexistent--as not to merit discussion.  I only
entertain the question because, judging by your various posts to the list,
you display knowledge of the literature and an interest in philosophy.  On
the other hand, you also display an unfortunate tendency toward eristic and
captious arguments.  I wonder which angels of your nature will prevail.

Now let me turn to your last comments, where you addressed, however
inadvertently, potentially more substantial topics.  You wrote:

"If you say that 'persuasion is not the issue' then I say that politics is not
the issue.  If there are men who cannot be persuaded then they must be
conquered and enslaved. In fact they are natural slaves if they cannot be
ruled by persuasion. The rule over natural slaves is not political rule, it is
despotism.  It is very important to draw a clear line between despotic rule
and political rule, between rule by force over those who cannot be ruled by
reason and rule by persuasion over fellow citizens."

Again, you do not allow yourself to see the full range of options.  If we
look to Aristotle, which your terms seem to reflect, we learn that there
are not only the stark alternatives of political and despotic rule, but
also kingly rule, such as that of a father over his son or a monarch over
his subjects.  And at the end of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ Aristotle
sensibly notes that the laws must have teeth in them, that men, like
children, need force or the threat of force, as well as persuasion, to live
rightly.  Or more generally, implicit threats of force, as with the use of
partisanship, may at times serve moral education and persuasion.  And while
conquest may be necessary at times, enslavement should only be necessary,
if at all, in a limited sense: the ultimate end of the party or city or
nation of good is the education to virtue of all.  There is a difference
between moral corruption and natural slavery.  The Russian people, for
example, may not yet be fit for free government, but neither are they fit
for slavery.  The imminently practical question concerns how to lead them
to freedom.

Lastly, you commented:

"I do not argue that persuasion never fails or that war can always be
avoided.  As I said at the beginning of this post, the question is what
makes men likely to be rational?  Because both the question of how to
achieve peace and how to be victorious in war depend upon making men
rational.  The common advantage requires that all men be as rational as
possible, and the purpose of the art of kalam is to make men as rational as
possible."

Now you're on to something.  The immediate questions arise as to what you
mean by "kalam" and what is the relationship between the kalam,
partisanship and philosophy.  In one of his clearest statements outlining
this question (_Persecution and the Art of Writing_) Strauss writes:

"What distinguishes Maimonides' kalam from the kalam proper is his
insistence on the fundamental difference between intelligence and
imagination, whereas, as he asserts, the Mutakallimun mistake imagination
for intelligence.  In other words, Maimonides insists on the necessity of
starting from evident presuppositions, which are in accordance with the
nature of things, whereas the kalam proper starts from arbitrary
presuppositions, which are chosen not because they are true but because
they make it easy to prove the beliefs taught by the law."

And as Strauss says in _Philosophy and Law_ and elsewhere, Maimonides,
largely following the falasifa, considers his philosophic kalam to be
preferable, not only because philosophy (Aristotelianism) is preferable to
arbitrary presuppositions, but because the Law is for him already a given.
That is, he need not concern himself with the Law as such because
revelation has supplied the defect of a completed philosophy--the falasifa
and Maimonides are "free to Aristotelize."  The key here is that the Law is
the necessary condition of all that follows, including Maimonides' kalam.

But a particular problem arises, to which, as I have emphasized before on
this list, Strauss recurs many times, beginning with his confrontation with
Schmitt: the status of the political and the Law.  That is, we have before
us, as Strauss made certain to emphasize, the theological political
problem.  Jaffa has, more often than anyone else, explicated the precise
problem to which Strauss returned again and again.  For example, in his
exchange with Pangle, which I quoted in a post to this list a year or more
ago, Jaffa writes:

"Strauss speaks at the end [of his examination of the _Kuzari_] of Halevi's
'basic objection to philosophy,' which, he says, was 'not particularly
Jewish, nor even particularly religious, but moral.'  Halevi's objection
becomes Strauss's when we substitute for philosophy such contemporary
representatives of 'philosophy' as 'scientific social science.'  In
general, however, Strauss's project is far more difficult than Halevi's.
In the eleventh century, philosophy, in some of its widespread
manifestations, had irresponsibly endangered the moral order.  An attack on
philosophy would not adversely affect the Socratics--for they would not
only support, but if possible direct the appeal to revelation.  They would
do so by means of what it would not be too misleading to call a 'Socratic
_kalam_.'  In our time, there is no traditional piety which can form the
moral substratum for any such '_kalam_.'  Modernity's prejudice against
traditional piety is equally a prejudice against traditional moral
philosophy, and the reason which informed it.  Religious fundamentalism
tends to be anti-rational; but what we might call contemporary academic
philosophical fundamentalism is equally so!"

We must engage in the Socratic kalam.  But this is an enormously perplexing
problem for the reason Jaffa notes.  The immediate task, then, is the
recovery of something like traditional piety, which takes the form in
Strauss's writing as the ascent to the first cave, the rendering of the
political as completely undeniable.  I think this idea informed Mr. Grant's
original defense of the proposition that philosophers may be partisan; it
certainly did mine.  That is, philosophers may be political (partisan) in a
fashion that goes beyond umpiring, proponents of a new kalam which is
characterized not so much as Aristotelizing (though this is an integral
part of it), but more so as Platonizing.  Moreover, as I intimated earlier
in our exchange, Strauss highlights the limitations of the philosophers
generally, their inability to see the city with complete clarity, as the
city sees itself.  The ascent to the first cave suggests a kalam that is
somewhat different than the Socratic or philosophic kalam.  Indeed, this
kalam may well appear, at first glance, to be less like that of Maimonides
and more like that of Halevi.  The primacy of the political is evident in
any case.

Scot Zentner
CSU, San Bernardino





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On  10/20/98, Cameron Wybrow wrote:

>But no one is forcing them to acquiesce in anything.

> No one is trying
>to take the podium away from the politically correct.  What one must take
>away is their right to control everyone else's podium.

I see you do not read left wing journals of opinion--or right wing for that
matter. They argue that, and this is just popularized Nietzche, that he who
controls the schools controls everything (and Nietzche is right about this).
As I pointed out previously Hobbes made explicit his desire to replace
scholasticism in the universities. To speak of threats against freedom of
speech is misleading. The real battle is over who becomes the majority and
controls department hirings and publication all the way from the top
universities down to the textbook in the smallest grade school. You cannot
make this debate go away by saying lets have a "marketplace of ideas" or let
everyone have their chance to speak.

As Wilmoore Kendall pointed out in The Function of a University, it was never
true that "our universities are the guardians of no orthodoxy--that within
them all questions are open questions and no mind really a mind unless it is
an open mind...." It was always the case that each department in a university
has a discipline and guards it against all challenges, placing formidable
obstacles to all but the most marginal challenge to its orthodoxy. Kendall
asks, "Do they really, over in the biology department, grease the wheels for
the young man who has decided that no matter what others may think Lysenko was
right, and everybody else wrong? Do they really provide him the fellowship
support he requires in order to exercise his freedom of inquiry, encourage him
not to bow to authority handed down from the dead past, and urge upon him his
duty to follow the bent of his instincts wherever they may lead him? Do they
really, over in the English department, lay down a red carpet, as at !
a Polish wedding, for the graduate student who has got himself convinced that
Arthur Miller is a finer playwrite than Shakespeare, or that the late Edgar A.
Guest was a more accomplished poet than Donne, and make it their business to
provide him the facilities he needs in order to do the research necessary for
establishing his novel hypothesis? Or do we find, in point of fact, the
reverse situation--where the graduate student is likely to thrive, grades- and
fellowship-wise, to the extent that he identifies and feels at home with his
department's orthodoxy. Is it not the same when, having satisfied a committee
of his elders of his mastery of the content and methods of inquiry of his
discipline, he turns to seek a teaching or research appointment--when, a
little later, he aspires to promotion, and when, all long the line, he turns
to his professional journals to ask for publication of his findings?"

Now of course we have today a different orthodoxy, or at least a battle over
what the orthodoxy should be. But I suggest that the current difficulties are
a consequence of having lost sight of the reasons for the old orthodoxy, which
led to the claim that there was no orthodoxy and that all forms of speech
should be allowed, which led to the demand that the old orthodoxy be torn down
because it is fundamentally unjust and a new, just and good one be put in its
place. The old orthodoxy, the one of Shakespeare and Donne, was attacked on
the grounds it was oppressive, tyrannical and evil--not because Arthur Miller
was defended as Shakespeare's equal but Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. The
promoters of the new orthodoxy are not going to make the tactical mistake of
the old and pretend freedom of speech is what is important. No, they openly
defend themselves in the name of justice and truth. Which is, I think, how the
old orthodoxy should have defended itself and should now be defe!
nded.

>I mostly agree with this; except that it downplays the very large role of
>cautious sniff-the-wind academics who are in general inclined to oppose
>controls on freedom of speech but when put under pressure cave in.

Well I suppose there will always be cowards. The question is what will make
them courageous. You say denounce them and shame them into courage. I was not
to long ago on this list defending the position that courage was not a
rational virtue because in the Laws it is said that "soul becomes courageous
without reason and by nature." But then I was reminded that Aristotle says
that the courageous man is one "who endures or fears the right things and for
the right purpose and in the right manner and at the right time..." and thus
courage involves intellectual virtue because the courageous man obeys the
noetic part of himself when he stands up to fearful things.

Let us say this is too high a standard for professors. We are not going to get
real courage from them. So the best we can hope for is that imitation courage
which is fear of opinion or shame. I am still not convinced that you will
cause shame by denouncing them. In my experience when I denounce someone they
merely get angry at me and strike back in kind.

>But are they free from healthy anger against injustice?  Are they right to
>be angry when a minority candidate with substandard qualifications is
>hired over a majority candidate with superlative qualifications?  If
>gentlemen do not get angry over such things, will these things ever be
>changed?  Is it better to wait until the mob gets angry over them, given
>that the mob's anger is less likely to be proportionate to the cause?  I
>am pleading for controlled, intelligently directed anger, not uncontrolled
>rage.

Mobs, angry over hiring of minority candidates with substandard
qualifications? Are you talking about mobs of students? Like in the sixties?
Is this not what Bloom dismissed as no real threat?

I am all for "controlled, intelligently directed anger." I am just waiting for
an account of just what that would look like. And I am not convinced that
intellegently directed anger would be prophetic denunciation of those who hire
minority candidates with substandard qualifications or establish speech codes
or those who do not stand up to such things.  This sounds more like moral
indignation than anger to me.

Lest I seem to simply oppose everything and offer no real alternative, let me
give this example of effective punitive rhetoric. After Agamemnon's plan to
test the resolve of the Greeks failed and Odysseus had to restore order to the
army, Thersites got up in the assembly and attacked Agamemnon in the words of
Achilles. The revolt against Agamemnon's authority had now spread to the ranks,
who interpret the issue of honor as a question of spoils. This by the way
seems to be to be exactly how academics interpret the issue of honor. Odysseus
then stood up, delivered a sharp rebuke of Thersites, which he coupled with a
threat to strip him naked, and then beat him on the back and shoulders with
Agamemnon's scepter; Thersites doubled over, a warm tear fell from his eye,
and a bloody welt formed on his back; he sat down in fear, and in pain gazed
helplessly as he wiped away his tear; but the rest of the assembly was
distressed and laughed with pleasure at him. Homer quotes the speech !
everyone spoke as he looked to his neighbor: "My oh my! Odysseus has done
thousands of noble deeds in initiating good plans and marshaling for war, but
now this is the best he ever did: he checked the scurrilous slanderer; surely
his proud spirit will not stir him again to upbraid the kings with
reproaches." The speech of the army is the only effective form of rhetoric. It
consists of concealed self-denunciation, in which one wipes off onto another
one's own wickedness. There must be a figuration of wickedness as self-evident
as Thersites, the ugliest man who came to Troy, who says what everyone is
thinking. He must then undergo real punishment and be denounced in such a way
that everyone who sees it will say to himself how much he deserved it. If
Odysseus, however, had attacked Achilles whom Thersites was imitating (like
certain people today imitate Nietzche or Heidegger) or the Assembly itself
which was enjoying the insults to Agamemnon (like students enjoy Nietzche's
attack!
s on Christianity or democracy or the rule of law) his rhetoric would have
failed.

The problem of how this is to work for Americans however is indicated by the
fact that what Alexander Pope, in a footnote to Theresite's speech in his
translation of the Iliad, called "sedition", John Adams in his Defence of
Constitutions, I. 246, refers to as "freedom of speech." It seems to me that
if the univerisities, if America, is to stand or fall by freedom of speech
then punitive rhetoric or denunciation cannot work. It cannot work because
punitive rhetoric requires some orthodoxy for its effectiveness. In order to
cause shame there must be some opinion one fears and if no orthodoxy then no
authoritative opinion. If this is the case, if the universities are to be
concerned with simply producing philosophic inquiry, then reason alone must
rule. To shame people into being philosophic cannot work, you can only shame
them into obeying the law or the orthodoxy. So if there is to be effective
punitive rhetoric there must be an orthodoxy, and therefore concord based upon
it.

Such an orthodoxy, to return to how this discussion began, cannot be seen as
partisan or it will not be effective. Odysseus unified the assembly by beating
Thersites only because there was already agreement on what the proper order
should be, which agreement only needed to be restored. I suggest that any
kalam to work in America must present itself as the restoration of the
founding--as say a vindication of the founders--not as the defense of a
particular party and its agenda. Odysseus was not seen as defending his
interest or the interest of some faction but the right order of the army
itself. This does not, by the way, preclude innovation. But innovation must
present itself also as restoration, as say the correction of some intervening
distortion or corruption.

>In any case, I agree with Bloom, and I do not think we are far apart in
>our intentions, and I suggest we leave this topic.
>

As you wish.

Regards,

Steve Sorensen



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I have read with interest some of the comments made regarding
modern science on this list and at the same time John Wenger and I
have been writing to each other off the list. Recently, he
answered one of my messages with the quoted passage below. As I
hope that Mr. Wenger doesn't mind, I am making my reponse public
to contribute to the recent debate.

Dear John

I have been considering an answer to this posting for a while,
which is why my response is delayed. It occurred to me that I
haven't been all that clear with you, and that I ought to make
some fundamental points so that you can see where I am coming
from.

> Why is there something wrong here if there is good and bad
> knowledge?  The
> philosopher is capable of handling what others cannot handle.
>  Why should that
> bother you?
>
> You are right that abstract knowledge is not bad per se, but
that the
> knowledge is misused.  The problem is that there are plenty
> of people who make
> perfectly good scientists but are unable to understand
> political philosophy.
> Things might work out if philosophers had totalitarian
> control over their
> republics, but that is not a practical solution.
>
> Of course, at this point there is no practical solution; the
> genie is out of
> the bottle.
>
> Finally, you should know that you are making the same points
> to me that Steve
> Sorensen is concerning the scientist's not being content with
> knowledge but
> desiring power as well.  I think there are plenty of
> scientists who want
> knowledge for its own sake, but I don't know if I can stand
> up to the Pehme-
> Sorensen power axis.

Modern science cannot by its very character be a matter of
"knowledge for its own sake". It is in fact the antithesis of it.

Let me explain:

When Aristotle, for example, and other ancients speak of knowledge
for its own sake, they speak of what is eminently "knowable" and
recovering what that it is. It includes the knowledge of what is
knowable, what such things are the eide and genera are, what is
god, what is truth, what is limited, what is unlimited, and the
whole of what one might include in the entire Aristotlean corpus,
but definitely in the Metaphysics (etc.). The "god" of the
philosophers in this case is a knowledge of the knowable, the
known, which is "seen" or contemplated with no effort to rework or
reform or alter anything at all of man or nature. It is a
deliberate attempt to unify with what is knowable, both of oneself
and outside of what we are. Strictly speaking, there is no
activity whatsoever, except the noetic union with what is
knowledge and what is knowable. It is knowledge for its own sake,
because this knowledge does not contribute at all to any human
action. It is proud contemplation. It transcends human action. The
contemplative life thus is opposed to the human life of action. It
refuses any dignity to the human workshop, for it understands and
becomes one with the end of all human action, the good itself. It
is radically apolitical, because the satisfaction embodied in the
noetic realization of this knowledge is singular to a man capable
of it. This knowledge will never be social and it is esoteric by
its very nature as it is privilged only to a few. The
contemplative life is the ultimate liberation from the world.

The god of modern science, however, is the _un_known. Modern
science does not seek what is eminently knowable, but it attempts
to dig out a nugget known as a "fact" out of the infinite darkness
of the unknown. It seeks to verify by ritual experimention in the
darkness. Steve Sorensen's priestly moralizing about science is at
best laughable, because the very character of his moralizing is
attempting to put limits on something that has no limits.
Experimental science has no limits, thus it is fundamentally
amoral. One pursues such science ultimately with no respect for
anything but the nuggets it provides.

Moreover, modern science's experimentation is a religion of power
where to get at its facts it must alter, recreate, create, and
destroy nature and life. Our contemporary universities like the
one in Dallas where masters of morality draw their paychecks and
socialized financial assistance and  where young men and women
learn their precision experimentation are filled with the corpses
of dead or dying animals, wasteful power plants that burn our
natural resources, vast millions of dollars spent in industrial
manufacture, and so on. Modern science expends the resources of
life, and ultimately at a cost of life.

It destroys life in an effort to get to a fact, a fact that is
verifiable in a "controlled setting" that can be "replicated,"
repeated over and over again. It is a violent intervention into
nature and life, this science, because the control, the more
control, the more perfect control, provides the modern scientist
with his riches. The more control over the experiment, the more
intense is the power released. (And, of course, the more power
released the less control we have over it--boom!)

Thus, theoretically, if we bombard certain atomic particles with
other particles at a certain speed such and such a subatomic
particle will be released. Thus, we build a cyclotron, and then
another even bigger one, and then another one, bigger still. In
nature, genes are not take out of one cell and transplanted in
another. Theoretically, however, it is possible. Thus, we
deliberately alter and create a new form of life at a cost of
life. This greedy cult of modern science cannot deal with what is
not verifable by experiment, by altering nature and life. Thus, it
knows nothing of happiness, for example, and yet it believes in
itself, because it exploits and creates and is precise in its
immolation of the past and the present in favor of the new.

The infinite character of modern science is the most wasteful of
all human activities short of war itself (which modern science
serves rather diligently). It destroys the past, including its
past collection of facts, with an ease that only serves continue
the infnite use of future resources. And again, because modern
science has become so ingrained in our everyday financial and
social life, its greatest ability (to reproduce, to reduplicate
the experiment over and over) has been translated into a desire
for copies in our world as well as a conformous desire for the
same copies, the same car, the same computer, the same this or
that.

Modern science, thus, is at the very core not of contemplation,
but the human workshop. Its appeal and feel that one can studied
science for its own sake comes from its difficulties, the
requirements of problem solving. Nevertheless, not all problem
solving is contemplation. It is a delusion that one can study
modern science for its sake, because modern science is the
powerful means we have ever developed to accomplish our actions.
We can fly from one place to another as if it were magic. We can
kill millions in a few seconds. We can extract the riches of the
earth anywhere on earth no matter what the clime.

What Strauss has done for us is to expose the character of this
science once it is socialized and used as well for understanding
political life. If one truly believes in knowledge for its own
sake, one would order all of social life in such a way to make it
possible for a single man to enjoy this knowledge (that would go
over big in the universities with all the young 20-year-old
philosophers). The application of modern science to understanding
political life is neither scientific nor can it with any accuracy
actually tell us anything about political life. The reason is that
what constitutes human life is involved with nothing but
unverifiable phenomena. For all the attempts to give human life a
genetic answer, for example, we have yet to find the diseased gene
that causes Christian fundamentalism or right-wing politics
(although there is that hope ever still among biologists--perhaps
we ought to found a charity modeled on the American Cancer Society
to aid in this noble cause). This great inability of science
(which Strauss in part details in WIPP) mirrors its goal and
procedures as a facilitator of action and human industry. Modern
science cannot use itself to make itself aware of its place in the
hierachy of human life. In truth, because modern science is an
infinite activity within the unknown, it is exoteric. The esoteric
is the awareness and knowledge that only philosophy or the proud
contemplation provides. This division in the ancient world (as
Strauss discusses throughout this work) means that nothing is
truly known unless it is estoeric. If we follow through on
Strauss's writing, we find that the division between the esoteric
and exoteric collapsed in modernity. In the ancient world, the
exoteric depended on the esoteric--action was continually
consecrated to the divine. The basis of morality etc. was based on
this very division between human activity and human knowledge or
awareness, first, on a very basic religious level and ultimately
in philosophical contemplation in someone like Aristotle.

The eradication of this division results in moderns not knowing
what to do with their acts, individually and socially. The entire
moral structure of human life is eradicated at the same time. The
wonderful rituals of the past, for example, that detailed exactly
what one had to do at exactly what time were based on an esoteric
awareness. Today, we have absolutely no purpose to what we do,
except to the extent that social dictates tell us or our hungers
demand. As nothing can be known unless it is esoteric, modern
science ultimately has to be under the direction of the esoteric.
However, the destruction of the esoteric has resulted in our
actions being entirely freed in an anarchistic way. There is no
regulation of action, not because there is not right religion or
the throes of atheism, but because modern science has taught man
that one can dispense with a regulated public life, with limits.
We can do that because modern science has triumphed politically
over some of the great awarenesses of the past, including the
cosmos and the god that once was part of the proud contemplation.
We are freed from the demands of divine regulation, because the
basis of the divine regulation is not there, according to modern
science. It never existed. The entire Aristotlean ediface based on
an indeterminate theos contemplating himself at the outmost edge
of the universe is wrong. As Aristotle was the authority of
authorities, this cosmological turn sadly was taken too seriously
in favor of modern science. (Strauss, of course, provides an
alternative, a noetic alternative.)

Hence, there is no way that modern science can be studied for its
own sake.

Best regards,

Kalev




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On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, Steve Sorensen wrote:

> On  10/18/98, Cameron Wybrow wrote:
>
> >And the normal reaction of human beings when they are forced to
> >acquiesce in the face of power is to become angry.  As I believe that
> >anger against a political tyranny is in a sense "rational" anger, because
> >it is trying to restore the nature of political society deformed by the
> >tyrant, so I believe that anger against political correctness at the
> >university is "rational" anger, because it is trying to restore the
> >nature of the university deformed by the politically correct
> >professoriate.
>
> This is half true. It is true that anger against tyranny is rational because
> it is anger in defense of justice. In fact in this sense all anger is
> rational. As Aristotle says, anger is the response to a percieved injustice.
> (N. Ethics, 1135b28) But as Aristotle goes on to say, the difficulty is that
> the issue is not one of fact but of justification. The two parties agree on
> the facts but dispute on which side justice lies. Those you denounce as
> "politically correct" think they have overthrown a tyranny--namely that of
> dead white european males or of the canon. They believe that the adherence
in
> the humanities to "great books" is merely the unjust and tyrannical
oppression
> of women, minorities etc. and thus become angry when forced to acquiesce to
> it. They will meet your indignation with equal indignation.

But no one is forcing them to acquiesce in anything.  I am quite willing
to allow them to pepper their books with the word "humankind", and pepper
their lectures with the same.  I have no inclination to interfere if they
choose to lecture or write articles about the sexism of Dickens and praise
the virtues of Virginia Woolf.  Where the line must be drawn is where they
attempt to force others to use their prescribed vocabulary and prescribed
social analysis -- which they do every time they institute a campus speech
code, compel their students to use what they call "inclusive" language on
pain of failure, force the removal of some allegedly offensive play of
Shakespeare from the school or college curriculum, etc.  No one is trying
to take the podium away from the politically correct.  What one must take
away is their right to control everyone else's podium.

> >And if my suggestion (that a
> >passionate attack on those who opposed full freedom of speech would have
> >been in order) is wrong, the question remains, what *rational* strategy
> >could have preserved the university from what happened to it in the
> >last twenty years?
>
> It has been suggested to me that a guilty conscience is the cause of the
> capitulation of faculty in the humanities to all sorts of threats and
demands
> by various groups. Humanities professors quite simply did not know any
longer
> why what they taught was important and felt guilty for holding down
> prestigious and well paying jobs based upon nothing. The universities gave
way
> because they believed these movements possessed a superior moral truth.
This
> is not true in the sciences and professors of science have had no trouble
> defending their disciplines despite repeated attacks by various post modern
> movements.
>
> So the "rational strategy" needed is a rational defense of liberal
> education--or rather of political philosophy. As Bloom has pointed out in
his
> Closing, there was no real threat from outside the university because
society
> respected it and believed it should be autonomous, and this still seems
> largely true today. "There was essentially no risk in defending the
integrity
> of the university, because the danger was entirely within it. All that was
> lacking was a professorial corps aware of the university's purpose and
> dedicated to it." It seems to me that this is still lacking. If someone who
is
> convinced they are wrong stops fighting it does not mean they are a coward,
> and they will not be persuaded to fight again by denunciation.  One cannot
> have the courage of one's convictions if one believes those convictions to
be
> false.

I mostly agree with this; except that it downplays the very large role of
cautious sniff-the-wind academics who are in general inclined to oppose
controls on freedom of speech but when put under pressure cave in.  I have
assembled a pretty large informal count over the years of those who would
entirely agree with Mr. Wenger but who won't state their disagreement with
feminists, etc., publicly.  They let Mr. Wenger and others like him take
the heat, waiting to see who is likely to win -- then they passively shift
their votes to the apparently more powerful side, which in recent years
has been the politically correct side.

> Let me say that I do not think such a strategy means defending liberal
> education as apolitical or the job of the university as understanding the
> world. Rather liberal education, as Strauss argues, "is the necessary
endeavor
> to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Liberal education
is
> required for the exercise of civic responsibility. Liberal education is
meant
> to produce gentlemen. Gentlemen are free from indignation.

But are they free from healthy anger against injustice?  Are they right to
be angry when a minority candidate with substandard qualifications is
hired over a majority candidate with superlative qualifications?  If
gentlemen do not get angry over such things, will these things ever be
changed?  Is it better to wait until the mob gets angry over them, given
that the mob's anger is less likely to be proportionate to the cause?  I
am pleading for controlled, intelligently directed anger, not uncontrolled
rage.

In any case, I agree with Bloom, and I do not think we are far apart in
our intentions, and I suggest we leave this topic.





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On  10/18/98, Cameron Wybrow wrote:

>That concord is good for a state I don't deny; but concord is not peace at
>any price.

"Peace at any price" is slavery. As the Declaration says, it is the duty of
the people to overthrow a government which fails to secure their rights. If
concord--that is to say consent--is impossible, then revolution is necessary.
Now of course one must distinguish, as the Declaration does, between evils
which are sufferable or light and transient causes on the one hand and
despostism on the other. Prudence dictates we should consent to the former and
not to the latter. Now I am arguing that to say that concord is impossible but
to reject revolution is like denouncing a burgler while handing over your
wallet. The question is not what price are we willing to pay to get peace, but
what price are we willing to pay to preserve freedom.

>And the normal reaction of human beings when they are forced to
>acquiesce in the face of power is to become angry.  As I believe that
>anger against a political tyranny is in a sense "rational" anger, because
>it is trying to restore the nature of political society deformed by the
>tyrant, so I believe that anger against political correctness at the
>university is "rational" anger, because it is trying to restore the
>nature of the university deformed by the politically correct
>professoriate.

This is half true. It is true that anger against tyranny is rational because
it is anger in defense of justice. In fact in this sense all anger is
rational. As Aristotle says, anger is the response to a percieved injustice.
(N. Ethics, 1135b28) But as Aristotle goes on to say, the difficulty is that
the issue is not one of fact but of justification. The two parties agree on
the facts but dispute on which side justice lies. Those you denounce as
"politically correct" think they have overthrown a tyranny--namely that of
dead white european males or of the canon. They believe that the adherence in
the humanities to "great books" is merely the unjust and tyrannical oppression
of women, minorities etc. and thus become angry when forced to acquiesce to
it. They will meet your indignation with equal indignation.

>And if my suggestion (that a
>passionate attack on those who opposed full freedom of speech would have
>been in order) is wrong, the question remains, what *rational* strategy
>could have preserved the university from what happened to it in the
>last twenty years?

It has been suggested to me that a guilty conscience is the cause of the
capitulation of faculty in the humanities to all sorts of threats and demands
by various groups. Humanities professors quite simply did not know any longer
why what they taught was important and felt guilty for holding down
prestigious and well paying jobs based upon nothing. The universities gave way
because they believed these movements possessed a superior moral truth.  This
is not true in the sciences and professors of science have had no trouble
defending their disciplines despite repeated attacks by various post modern
movements.

So the "rational strategy" needed is a rational defense of liberal
education--or rather of political philosophy. As Bloom has pointed out in his
Closing, there was no real threat from outside the university because society
respected it and believed it should be autonomous, and this still seems
largely true today. "There was essentially no risk in defending the integrity
of the university, because the danger was entirely within it. All that was
lacking was a professorial corps aware of the university's purpose and
dedicated to it." It seems to me that this is still lacking. If someone who is
convinced they are wrong stops fighting it does not mean they are a coward,
and they will not be persuaded to fight again by denunciation.  One cannot
have the courage of one's convictions if one believes those convictions to be
false.


Let me say that I do not think such a strategy means defending liberal
education as apolitical or the job of the university as understanding the
world. Rather liberal education, as Strauss argues, "is the necessary endeavor
to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Liberal education is
required for the exercise of civic responsibility. Liberal education is meant
to produce gentlemen. Gentlemen are free from indignation.


Regards,

Steve Sorensen



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On  10/18/98, Alfred Mollin wrote:

>The strength of the hippies and yippies as a political
>force grew rather than shrank.  And they revelled in their irrationality.
>Point Wybrow.

Tallyrand did not have to compete with television.

Regards,

Steve Sorensen



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Concerning the denunciation of evil:

I remember reading, some thirty years ago, Henry Kissinger's first book --
an expansion of his doctoral dissertation -- on the hundred years of peace
prior to the outbreak of World War I.  One of his heroes was Tallyrand.  If
I remember correctly it was Tallyrand to whom he attributed what he regarded
as a particularly shrewd political practice.  When faced with enemies
motivated by irrational passions, Tallyrand would offer them some point of
concilliation that a reasonable man could not reject.  Tallyrand knew, of
course, that his enemies would reject the proposal, but he was confidant
that in the rejection of his proposals, his enemies would be displayed for
all to see in  their naked irrationalities, and their influence would
disappear.  According to HK, it worked marvelously well.  Point Sorensen.

It was most interesting to me to see HK try to put Tallyrand's lesson to
work when he became Nixon's Secretary of State.  Upon HK's accension, the
anti-war activists, primarily students, were offered rational, conciliatory
measures about the war by Nixon, and, predictably, they rejected them.  This
pattern occurred several times.   To say the least, it did not work
marvelously well.  The strength of the hippies and yippies as a political
force grew rather than shrank.  And they revelled in their irrationality.
Point Wybrow.

The tactics of the administration changed rather quickly from rational
accommodation to confrontational denunciation ("nattering nabobs of
negativism," was one of Spiro's best efforts!).  Of course, that didn't work
very well either, but then perhaps nothing ever does.  Point Mollin.

Regards,

Alfred Mollin







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test 1

Lance Fletcher -- The Free Lance Academy
http://www.freelance-academy.org
lance@... --- lance.fletcher@...