The City and Man

Rating:
Summary: Strauss vs. the "Straussians"?
Review: "The City and Man" consists of three lectures by the famed -- and controversial -- political theorist Leo Strauss: he offers commentaries on Aristotle's "Politics," on Plato's "Republic," and on Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War."

Strauss, who was during his life an obscure professor at the University of Chicago, has recently achieved posthumous fame because a number of his alleged disciples, so-called "Straussians," were among the neoconservatives who conceived and implemented the recent disastrous American conquest of Iraq.

His writings have therefore acquired new interest because of the insight they may provide into the thinking of those who have attempted to create a new American imperium.

Strauss is renowned for his verbosity, for a bizarre numerological fixation on the ancient texts he studied, and for a belief in "esotericism" -- i.e., that the classic authors hid their real teachings in cryptic subtexts discernible only by the most probing of readers.

"The City and Man" definitely exhibits Strauss' verbosity -- it is appropriate bedtime reading only if one needs a cure for insomnia. There is, however, little evidence of Strauss' numerological fetish -- he does at one point allude to a certain numerical symmetry in the structure of Plato's "Republic" based on a two-one-two pattern in the number of Socrates' "interlocutors," but the point is of the sort that any literary critic might make.

And to the degree that Strauss attributes "esoteric" doctrines to his authors in this book, it is again such as any literary critic might suggest -- e.g., he repeatedly suggests that certain characters are intended to illustrate certain ideal types or that the presentation is structured so as to emphasize certain key themes.

The primary conclusion reached in Strauss's first and briefest essay, on Aristotle's "Politics," is uncontroversial: the "guiding question of Aristotle's 'Politics' is the question of the best regime." Aristotle was a "partisan of excellence." However, Strauss further adds, a "difficulty arises from the fact that the highest end of the individual is contemplation." Because the mass of men, unlike Aristotle, are incapable of a fully contemplative life, Strauss claims "that there are examples of men of the highest excellence whereas there are no examples of cities of the highest excellence..." This introduces a theme, which occurs throughout Strauss' work, of the conflict between a life devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and the demands of civil and political life.

Strauss sharpens this point in his longer essay on Plato's "Republic." After explaining in detail Plato's ideal of the philosopher-king, Strauss reveals that the deepest impracticality in Plato's scheme is "the philosophers' unwillingness to rule...Why are the philosophers unwilling to rule? Being dominated by the desire...for knowledge as the one thing needful...the philosophers have no desire for looking down at human affairs, let alone for taking care of them."

It is Strauss' longest and final essay, on Thucydides' history of the brutal war which ended the classical period in Greece, which speaks most directly to our own current condition. Strauss declares that in wartime "manners become altogether depraved...The decay in speech and in deed of moderation is accompanied by the decay of respect for law...a good regime...is averse to war and will avoid every war which can be avoided."

Unfortunately, Strauss argues, democracy leads to imperialism and war: "empire...is not possible without the full participation of the demos [i.e., the democratic mass electorate, what is now called "the people"] in political life; the demos is enthusiastically in favor of the grandest imperial enterprise..."

In the end Strauss condemns "Athenian imperialism," the ultimate cause of the horrifying war, not for its narrow and self-seeking side (which he shows did exist) but rather for its "fantastic political universalism." The Athenians were gripped by a naive utopian belief that culture, enlightenment, and democracy could be exported via military might.

Strauss argues that, rather than "sham universalism" based on military conquest, the only proper form of universalism is "the universalism of thought," the peaceful and non-violent spread of enlightenment through cultural interaction.

In light of Strauss' own arguments, what are we to make of the neoconservative "Straussians" who have brought about the American military conquest of Iraq in order to "liberate" the Iraqi people?

Far from being wise men who wished to avoid the demands of political power, they have struggled and schemed to gain power. They have certainly not, in Strauss' words, avoided "every war which can be avoided"; indeed, they fabricated false stories of "weapons of mass destruction" in order to engineer a preemptive attack. As Strauss predicted, "The decay in speech and in deed of moderation is accompanied by the decay of respect for law..." The decay of respect for law has resulted in grotesque violations of the American Constitution -- the arbitrary denial of habeas corpus, the USA Patriot Act, etc. And there is no secret that all of this is motivated by, as Strauss says, a "fantastic political universalism," the belief that America can and should impose, by force of arms, its own system of "democratic capitalism" not only on the Iraqi people but on the entire world, whether the rest of the world wants it or not.

In short, the neoconservative "Straussians" are the people Strauss warned us about in "The City and Man." They are "Straussians" in name only. In fact, they are the cruel idealists, the humanitarians with a guillotine, who destroy civilization in the name of advancing it. We saw their kind in ancient Athens, in revolutionary France, in Bolshevik Russia, in Maoist China, and, now, in contemporary America.

As Leo Strauss so ably demonstrates in "The City and Man," they are not conservatives; they are nihilists.

Because of Strauss' Teutonic style, his pedantic focus on detail, and his sheer verbosity, "The City and Man" is not easy reading. But, in "The City and Man," Strauss does offer us a timely warning of the horrifying abyss towards which we ourselves are now hurtling.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughts
Review: After reading all the hype about the so-callled neoconservative clique, I had to read Strauss for myself. In the section on Aristotle, I found myself asking: "what's all the fuss?" His thoughts on Aristotle, while ponderous and dry, didn't have the marks of deception, false religion and perpetual war I'd been expecting. Strauss seemed most concerned with legitimizing political philosophy.

Then I read the section on Plato's Republic, and began to wonder. Right here was the notion of hidden meaning, i.e. a philosopher or artist can obscure his/her opinions by speaking through others' mouths (in this case, primarily Socrates).

In the last chapter on Thucyclides, Strauss discusses the concept of "motion" and stillness in relation to a State, whereby motion describes a state of conflict and war, whereas peace is a kind of stagnation. He presents arguments for the greatest Greek war, e.g. Trojan, and suggests that after the greatest war, a society declines. So, that leads me to believe Strauss believed in some kind of perpetual war.

So there it was, the argument many make against neo-conservatism. Still, given the obscurity and room for interpretation in his writing, I can't say that Strauss is necessarily "Straussian." That's up to the whims of those who have studied him and later have positions of power. After reading this book, I can see how it can lead to destructive, and self-destructive behavior, but I don't think Strauss would advocate self-destruction. I find the philospoher too theoretical and lacking in life experience, and these are his greatest weaknesses in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Two Types of Reason, Two Types of Justice
Review: Can you imagine a world of harmony between human mind and the whole so that learned people had trustful knowledge (not either blind faith or questionable hypothesis!) as regards the superiority of the soul to the body, a man's perfecting were not second to his comfortable self-preservation, and everybody conceived of justice as a means to procure common happiness? However close to a utopia, this is the way in which the Greek classical thinkers faced political things twenty-four hundred years ago.

Some of them were nothing more (or less) than philosophers, like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; some others, like Thucydides and Xenophon, were hard-die warriors as well. In a sense, they could not be more realistic. For justice was also understood by them as the outcome of political prudence or the practical wisdom to handle situations in order to serving right and reasonably yielding to compulsion altogether. And how was it that the classics accomplished so unexpected a synthesis of the idea of Justice as a heavenly reward for the wise management of the clash between Right and Compulsion in the pursuit of common happiness? Leo Strauss masterfully tells us in The City and Man

Rating:
Summary: Two Types of Reason, Two Types of Justice
Review: Leo Strauss was generally uderstood to be an originator of the scholarly opinion that Plato wrote esoterically, and Plato's dialogue on justice, "The Republic" has an exoteric message (to the outsiders) and an esoteric message (to the insiders). In 'City and Man' Strauss carefully, elegantly, systematically crafts the arguement by comparing and contrasting a historian, a philospher and finally a poltical scientist. In this neat way of using real men's works, in their historical context, the careful reader can come to appreciate why it was necessary for Plato to write esoterically and why it is consistent with Justice, or say Nature. Easily, yet strikingly, Strauss leads one through the birth of political philosophy, as a political-philosophy, not as a philosophical study of things political. P.S. I love this book.

Rating:
Summary: The city and the political philosophy
Review: The city is the place where the Political Philosophy take there fulfill sense. It's the cavern where the philosopher must return and explain, with precaution, his Knowledge. Furthermore he must guide the city and the people on the right way. Trough, it's necessary explain and know what is the city, which it is their nature, what it is their relationship with the philosopher.

In this sense, in this book Strauss related us the answers to that's questions. He teaches us three different, but complementary, views of the city: the political, the philosophic and the historical perspective of the city.

He gives us numerous clues that it's must take us to value the risks of the single natural human association. He pushes us to think, in the last part of the book, about the risks of overcoming the natural limits of the city. So,he invites us to share his discussion as regards the world state.

As it's common in their books, it is an excellent index from the problems to those faces the political philosophy. I recommend it to you.
[e-mail]