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.But, for many of thethink for themselves, and Heidegger is no help where that is bright young boys, or men, their purpose for studying withconcerned.On a much smaller scale, the same can be said Strauss, was to become philosophers. for Strauss. [Drury, 1997, p.77] Illustrative of Strauss s method, is Shadia Drury s reportof a debate between two long-time leading Straussians:Kabbalism in AnnapolisThomas Pangle and Harry Jaffa, which ran in the ClaremontWe also have imprints in the LaRouche movement of Review from fall 1984, through Summer, 1985, and contin-Saint John s College, in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, ued in National Review on November 20 and 29, 1985.New Mexico, with its Great Books program, another off- Pangle had implied that for Socrates (i.e., for Strauss),shoot of the University of Chicago.moral virtue had no application to the really intelligent man,I had the chance recently to speak with a relative of one the philosopher.Moral virtue only existed in popular opin-of our members, who is in effect an evangelist for Saint ion, where it served the purpose of controlling the unintelli-John s, and soon he was giving me thumbnail sketches of gent majority.Elsewhere in the debate, Pangle implied thateach of the courses there.When he got to a class on a Plato for Strauss, philosophy had disproved religious faith.As thedialogue, he said that the teacher had stayed up all night, fight continued, Pangle said that Strauss had characterizedcounting each word in the dialogue, so that she could show America s distinctiveness as modern, which for theher class the central word: word number 25,000 out of Straussians is one of their worst term of abuse.50,000 words, for example.The notion is that the central Harry Jaffa found Pangle s interpretation completely for-word in this sense, points to the central idea of the work.eign to his own understanding of his teacher and friend of It sounds just like Strauss! , I burst out.Yes, he said, 30 years, in Shadia Drury s summary. Jaffa observes thatStrauss is influential in the Greek classics program at Saint such a vision of Strauss is Nietzschean, and he denouncesJohn s.Pangle for having perverted the legacy of Leo Strauss. The influence is probably broader.Already in the 1950s, [Drury 1988, page 182]Saint John s in Annapolis was headed for years by Strauss s life- How is this contradiction possible? As Drury says, .long friend Jacob Klein.Strauss retired from Chicago in 1967,.Strauss taught students such as Jaffa and Pangle differentand spent a year at Claremont Mens College in California.things. [Drury 1988, page 188] The esoteric, or supposedlyThen, from 1969 until his death in 1973, Strauss was scholar- secret teaching which was inculcated into Pangle, Bloom,in-residence at Saint John s at Annapolis.Werner Dannhauser, and many others, including, reported-Now was it an accident that Strauss s books, especially his ly, Bloom s protege Paul Wolfowitz, was indeed purelater books, were unreadable? No; I came to see that it was Nietzsche.In fact, the version which Pangle represented indeliberate.The purpose was to ensure that the huge majority that 1984-85 debate, as outrageous as it may have seemed toof readers will tune out, after finding nothing but some Jaffa, was greatly watered down.From Nietzsche to Leofamiliar-sounding exhortations, such as advice to be moral, Strauss, only the names have been changed, as they say.To20 begin with, what Nietzsche called the superman, or the But the great majority of men and women, on the other next man, Strauss calls the philosopher. hand, is so far from ever being able to face the truth, that itThe philosopher/superman is that rare man who can face it virtually belongs to another species.Nietzsche called itthe truth.That there is no God, that the universe cares noth- the herd, and also the slaves. They require the bogey-ing for men or mankind, and that all of human history is men of a threatening God and of punishment in the after-nothing more than an insignificant speck in the cosmos, life, and the fiction of moral right and wrong.Without thesewhich no sooner began, than it will vanish forever without a illusions, they would go mad and run riot, and the socialtrace.There is no morality, no good and evil, and of course order, any social order, would collapse.And since humanany notion of an afterlife is an old wives tale.nature never changes, according to Strauss, this will alwaysIn a eulogy for a colleague, Strauss said, I think he died be so.as a philosopher.Without fear, but also without hope. It is the supermen/philosophers who provide the herd withAllan Bloom Interprets Plato s Republic[From The Republic of Plato, ©1968 and 1991, that a man can love the truth without telling it. [pp. Interpretive Essay. ] 392-395] .thoughtful selfish men. [p.315] The silent lesson would seem to be that it is indeed If the distinction between friends and enemies, and possible to possess intellectual virtue without what laterthe inclination to help the former and harm the latter, came to be called moral virtue. [p.396]were eliminated from the heart and mind of man, politi- However, he [Socrates] is silent about the charge ofcal life would be impossible.This is the necessary political atheism. [p.400]definition of justice, and Socrates does not simply reject it This was not just any city, but one constructed toas he appears to do. [p.318] meet all the demands of justice.Its impossibility demon- Socrates does not suggest that the just man would strates the impossibility of the actualization of a justwant to benefit all men, only that he would want to benefit regime.The thinkers of the Enlightenment, culminatinghis friends and remain indifferent to the others. [p.324] in Marx, preserved Socrates ultimate goals but forgot his Socrates view is perfectly consistent with stealing insistence that nature made them impossible for men atfrom or killing an enemy just so long as he is not made large. [pp.409-411]more unjust. [p
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