Ancients and Moderns: Did Leo Strauss Exaggerate the Break?

so the the plan is for each of us to speak for approximately 10 minutes and that should give us plenty of time for discussion q a at the end and at which point you'll be invited to to get involved yourselves so without further ado let's start off with dr john culp all right can you hear me is this okay okay so um got 10 minutes i wrote a paper that's that's way too long especially if you read between the lines so i will try to get through everything i have to say we'll see what happens so um according to leo strauss modern political philosophy represents a modification of pre-modern or classical political philosophy and not only that but it represents a rejection and a repudiation those are his words of classical political philosophy and the question for this panel is whether or not he's exaggerating when he says this and i'm going to argue that at least with regard to the subjects of work and business for profit and the working class and businessmen which is to say 80 percent of every human being who's ever lived strauss's characterization is accurate while the ancients almost uniformly disparage manual labor the laboring classes money-making commerce and businessmen the moderns tend to elevate the esteem for or dignity of these subjects further these opposed estimations follow from the larger and more fundamental disagreement of principle i would say between ancients and moderns regarding the ultimate purposes of politics so there's a real difference here not just one of rhetoric and tactics that's what i'm going to defend and so i'll try to substantiate those claims and if i have the time i will anticipate some objections and reply to them ahead of time so to begin with the ancients and to consider in the first place the ancient estimation of manual work and the people who do it um and it's not hard to discern their opinion the ancients generally present those who work for a living as ipso facto incapable of practicing virtue as aristotle says it is impossible to pursue the things of virtue when one lives the life of a vulgar artisan or laborer giving over one's hours and strength to the performance of merely necessary tasks and there are plenty of statements to that same effect in plato's writings since manual artisans laborers and subsistence farmers are incapable of practicing virtue they are therefore excluded from citizenship in plato's republic plato's laws and in the best regime offered by aristotle in the politics which is to say they are not citizens in either the best regime or the second best regime and thus the ancient estimation of working of workers is very very low sometimes get the impression that they think if only the vulgar could be dispensed with altogether through you know smarter craftier donkeys or something like that so you have to have them okay now with respect to business and money-making um it's said more than once in both plato and aristotle's works that the pursuit of money and profits is also incompatible with the pursuit of virtue as aristotle says those who engage in business for the sake of profit are serious about living but not serious about living well thereby banishing them to the outer darkness in the aristotelian universe so not only is business incompatible with virtue commerce for profit is said to be unnatural because all true wealth is wealth for some use and every use has a definite limit to it and so to seek profit for its own sake is to seek a means as an end and that is unnatural and beyond that or in conjunction with it plato and aristotle consistently criticize lending at interest that is to say the credit cards in all of our pocket books uh what used to be called usury as aristotle says usury is most reasonably hated because it is perverse to seek to make money off of money thus the ancient estimation of business and businessmen is like that of working workers very very low except for very limited commerce and necessary items merchants and profiteers are cancers on the body politic that is the party line now these judgments regarding work and business are both deductions from a common principle namely that the proper function of political science or political no uh you can know whether i'm serious about that one the proper function of political society is the cultivation of virtue in the citizenry and since that requires leisure citizens must have leisure and that means that the citizens um in the best regime or the best possible regime should be basically landed gentry who have independent wealth and thus can devote themselves to the cultivation of public affairs and virtue rather than working for a living so manual workers and merchants on the other hand will be either slaves or serfs or disenfranchised subjects and of course there will be very little commerce in the best regime and just one other thing i should mention is that in the platonic story the very best regime refuses to even compromise with the institution of private property itself not even private property so there's no unalienable right to private property according to the ancients and with that i segued to the moderns with if i'm right about five minutes to go so um okay how far from being that's because i'm a modern revenant ancient i keep track of these things okay but far from being contemptuous of manual work the moderns often praise it so long as it is honest you know you think for example benjamin franklin and his poor richard or is that father abraham's way to wealth those kinds of things um you know you might think of locke's claim that god has given the earth to the irrational and industrious rather than the idol and the quarrel as implies approval of honest activity of all prudent and hard-working people and it also by the way implies a disparagement of the land of gentry which is a theme that runs throughout modern political philosophy and you can even go further and say that in america at least it was thought that honest labor you know that vulgar arts that as aristotle would have called them as seen as a one of the best paths for the acquisition of virtue and this i i get from tom west's book the virtues of honesty sobriety frugality civility and the just respect for the rights of others all come from working for a living so you know you can say that they sort of turned the ancient estimation on its head work was held in higher esteem than leisure and workers were either superior to or at least not inferior to aristocrats with view to the most important virtues the moderns also rehabilitate business commerce and businessmen following machiavelli they believe that it is all together natural to desire to acquire and that the task of politics is not to stifle that but to make sure to channel it into honest pursuits that's obviously not machiavelli's line but everybody came after him so seeking profit is not a reproachable vice but rather an intrinsic characteristic of most human beings and indeed you have a right to it an unalienable right to it again provided it's honest so you know walk in the moderns they don't go quite as far as gordon gekko and saying that greed is good um but if gordon gekko had any pictures on his wall other than that divine rand uh it'd be much more likely to be lock than aristotle now commerce itself is recognized to be of much higher dignity than the ancients that afforded it commerce becomes an instrument of peace enlightenment comfortable living it spreads ideas inventions goods all around the globe while creating ever greater economic interdependence among nations and thereby discouraging war and aggression this is khan's perpetual peace uh you get these kind of arguments in monastery and in hume and others and just as commerce is seen to be of higher dignity so are businessmen and the merchants who carry it out um hume for example refers to merchants as one of the most useful races of men uh what you know aristotle's head would have exploded if he had tried to put those words together okay so and now justice commerce is rehabilitated so is usury that is lending at interest you get this beginning with francis bacon basically argues we want commerce in order to have commerce you have to have lending and interest because people will not lend if they cannot make a personal profit from it which is exactly the reason why the ancients banned usury because they didn't want commerce so you see they both understand how the motives work here but uh the estimation of commerce then uh where the re-estimation of commerce leads to a re-estimation of usury and so instead of being morally discouraged it should be prudently regulated by the state so the endorsement of commerce and usury is of a piece with the general modern endorsement of the political goal of building large powerful commercial republics lock for example says that the great art of government is to protect property and thereby encourage industry thus making a state wealthy and strong uh bacon says something similar this is this line of policy is explicitly rejected by the athenian stranger in plato's laws that's for moderns energetic commerce and active businessmen are seen to be integral parts of a healthy political order and just as the various ancient estimations of work and workers business and businessmen all follow the common principle that the aim of politics is the cultivation of virtue so to the various modern estimations of these things follow from the common negative principle you could say and as straus says that the proper end of politics whatever it might be is not the cultivation of virtue there isn't universal agreement about what the end of politics is uh it could be security glory peaceful self-preservation um comfortable self-preservation preservation of property unalienable rights protection of liberty autonomy so on and so on but for none of these thinkers is virtue an end much less the end of government uh they are aware of its importance of course but as a means to peaceful social coexistence government does not exist to perfect your soul nor to send it to heaven and that is basically the modern stance and so um i will leave the objections if you want to say this is exaggerating the difference there's more common ground and i will say yes i grant it and i have something to say about it but i don't have the time and if you say hair corp you were forgetting the fact that beginning with rousseau the moderns began to reject all this stuff about acquisition i say i know that too and i have something to say about it too and if you're lucky you'll get to hear it but i'm out of time see if this works i'm going to present something of a different take than dr culp on this whole question and uh so the title of my presentation this afternoon is strauss's understatement of the importance of virtue and lock venerable is leo strauss's authority on matters of political philosophy in certain circles today the tradition strauss imparted to his students the straussians entails not only a particular method of reasoning uh reading but also certain substantive views on the teachings of particular thinkers those views are consideration of those views in turn provide straus with a characterizing the history of political philosophy with a certain trajectory a very marketed downhill slope perhaps stress's clearest and hence most memorable formulation of this view is to be found in his essay what is political philosophy there strauss contrasts what he calls the classical solution to the problem of political philosophy with the modern solutions so let us begin with his characterization of the classics all classical political philosophers strauss declares agreed that the goal of political life is virtue but what is virtue according to the classic says strauss virtue is man's natural and or aim for quote man is by nature directed towards virtue or perfection end quote to define the end of politics in terms of virtue then is to say that the end of politics and the end of man is exactly the same the good of the man to use another famous straussian formulation corresponds exactly to the good of the city the moderns in turn all rejected the classical scheme as unrealistic machiavelli thus emerges as the founder of modern political philosophy as he was the first to teach that we ought to cease to take our bearings by virtue the highest objective which a society might choose says traus in place of virtue machiavelli urged men to take their bearings by the objectives which are actually pursued by all societies freedom from foreign domination the rule of law prosperity glory or empire in straus's presentation then the moderns not only cease defining the end of politics in terms of virtue in the classical sense but also redefine virtue as quote the sum of habits which are required for or conducive to achieving the objects men really actually pursue so virtue as a consequence becomes merely useful in the service of one of these other lower objectives now it's important i think to try to understand the character the departure strauss is describing more precisely in his view the moderns in redefining the end of politics are not simply distinguishing the goal of politics from the goal of man the sort of division implicit for example in the separation of church and state on the contrary in redefining the end of politics in terms of the goals men actually pursue the bonders are not only abandoning the promotion of virtue as an explicit public aim but are thereby enthroning some immoral or selfish impulse as the ruling principle of the soul and strauss's view in other words to define the end of politics as anything other than virtue for virtue's sake is to elevate some form of human self-interest as the guiding principle or aim of life and thus lowering the horizons of political life the moderns are also necessarily promoting quote the degradation of man hence that downhill slope according to strauss then each of the early modern thinkers he addresses urge men to take their bearings by some selfish or immoral impulse machiavelli says strauss elevated the desire for glory hobbes in contrast deflates as he puts it the grandeur of machiavelli's glory by relying instead upon the more common or vulgar desire for self-preservation or the fear of violent death locke in turn effectively adopts hobb's ruling impulse that makes it more effective lockstraus says quote realize that what man primarily needs for his self-preservation is less a gun than food or more generally property thus the desire for self-preservation turns into the desire for property for acquisition and the right to self-preservation becomes the right to unlimited acquisition and lost hands to repeat according to strauss the right to self-preservation becomes the right to unlimited acquisition and it was through this change as well as a sly rhetorical style uh strauss suggests that machiavelli's departure from the classics was most fully achieved okay so um uh you know economism is machiavellianism come of age now as a faithful straussian it pains me to call into question any astralis teachings nevertheless i am compelled to point out some of the more remarkable aspects of his summary of the history of political philosophy and uh if i had a few more minutes i could talk about his characterization of the classics but namely um i would draw your attention to the fact that his characterization of the end of politics as virtue and virtue being understood as ultimately as the perfection of man raises the question of what is the content of that virtue are we talking about moral virtue uh intellectual virtue um is it clear and in any case in his obscure treatment of it uh that enables him to uh and the problems attending that by the way um that enables him to uh uh his obscure use of the content of virtue i think uh helps him obscure what you see it elsewhere in his writings which is how problematic the relationship between the city and man really is but on the modern side which is what i wanted to focus on i think strauss's characterization of lots teaching are actually wondrous and essentially taking over hobb's plan to resp repeat strauss's characterization quote the desire for self-preservation turns into desire for property for acquisition and the right to self-preservation becomes the right to unlimited acquisition for locke then the aim or end of political life becomes the pursuit of comfortable self-preservation which aim is likewise presented as the ruling or guiding aim of the degraded souls residing in a locking order on my view this characterization is a caricature what emphasizes one aspects of locke's overall teaching exaggerates its implications for morality and utterly ignores other aspects of his teaching which undercut it all together so let me indicate briefly what i mean by this first like all caricatures strauss's characterization of lock does bear some likeness to its original the greatest evidence in support of this portrait of lost teaching is be found in his second treatise of government their lock not only unambiguously defines the end or aim of government in terms of the protection of property but in his presentation of the laws of nature and hence the goals or aims human beings ought to pursue heavily emphasizes man's obligation to preserve himself and hence to acquire property in the service of that goal such acquisition following the invention of money and hence the transcendence of the natural limit of spoilage also appears limitless in quantity whereas the acquisition of property was subordinated to the requirements of virtue for the classics in other words lockheed acquisition appears unbridled but even on the basis merely of the second treatise strauss's portrayal of lock exaggerates how selfish lox teaching really is in suggesting that law can thrown the desire for acquisition or more precisely unlimited acquisition straus implies that the right to acquisition for law proceeds in the absence of all moral restraint it implies in other words that locke's teaching is thoroughly selfish and imposes upon the individual no obligation whatsoever to others but of course this isn't correct the right to acquire property like all other aspects of man's natural freedom is delimited by the laws of nature including the equality principle on this basis lock draws a distinction between liberty and license and in the area of acquisition between ineffect legitimate modes of acquisition and illegitimate modes of acquisition so acquisition by virtue of being a hitman slave trader or pirate for example is not legitimate for lock and short the equality principle not only appears to ground the individual's right to rule himself by nature but also imposes upon every individual the obligation to refrain from interfering with the like right of another now someone might reasonably protest well but how expansive is this obligation doesn't lock define this in negative terms in other words just don't hurt people okay this is not a positive command act in a certain virtuous way and though this language is perhaps uh open to some different interpretation i think that that characterization is basically correct importantly however even this does not this account of moral obligation does not exhaust locks discussion of moral obligation in the second treatise itself much forgotten in this connection is his discussion of the family and the far more expansive obligation the laws of nature impose upon parents so as locke puts it in section 56 quote adam and eve and after them all parents were by the law of nature under an obligation to preserve nourish and educate the children they had begotten not as their own workmanship but the workmanship of their own maker the almighty to whom they were accountable for them parents owe it to their children in other words not only to refrain from harming them well you would call that simply neglect if parents left it at that but to protect and nourish their bodies as well as to educate their minds until those children reach the age of reason this is a very extensive obligation indeed and one that will assume even fuller proportions when lock clarifies uh in some thoughts concerning education what the ultimate aim of education is but the greatest problem with strauss's characterization of locke's teaching is that it simply ignores the kind of character lock explicitly seeks to cultivate in his treatise on education locke wrote some thoughts concerning education his treatise on education in 1690 just one year after the 1689 publication of his two treatises in this treatise lock suggests that the ultimate aim of education is happiness not the endless acquisition of property which happiness consists essentially in the possession quote of a sound mind in a sound body lock divides the education to a sound line into four main parts virtue wisdom breeding and learning of these he emphasizes that virtue is the first and most essential part for it forms as he says quote the true foundation of future ability and happiness but doesn't this view of virtue relegate virtue to being a mere means sounds reminiscent of strauss's characterization of the moderns a means to happiness if not unlimited acquisition but it's still a means well the answer to this i would say is is yes and no on the one hand lot does emphasize that virtue is an indispensable means of attaining happiness a point incidentally that aristotle also makes in book 1 chapter 7 of the ethics on the other hand like locke likewise emphasizes that the aim of education to virtue is to cultivate children who are attracted to virtue for its own sake and i quote tis virtue then direct virtue which is the hard and valuable part to be aimed at in education all other considerations and accomplishments should give way and be postponed to this this is the solid and substantial good which tutors should not only read lectures and talk of but the labor and art of education should furnish the mind with and fasten there and never cease till the young man had a true relish of it and placed his strength his glory and his pleasure in it if the education culminates as a dog in short the lockheed gentleman will view virtue as being attractive for its own sake finally it is worth noting how the virtues to be inculcated stand specifically in relation to the acquisition of property while the limitless accumulation of property may be allowed by government this is not the sort of character lock seeks to cultivate in fact he condemns this behavior which is nearly universal in young children in the strongest possible terms and i quote covetousness and the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of being the root of all evil should be early and carefully weeded out and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others implanted section 110 like the styles the desire of having in our possession more than we have need of as the root of all evil and he encourages the cultivation of the virtues of liberality and justice as essential correctives for this impulse whereas justice essentially entails habituating children to refrain from taking the possessions of another liberality consists in habituating them to part easily and freely that's a quote with their possessions and so by a constant practice lock suggests children having made it easy to themselves to part with what they have good nature may be settled them in them into a habit and they may take pleasure and peak themselves in being kind liberal and civil to others in short then coming back to our question does strauss understate the importance of virtue and locks overall teaching the answer i suggest is a resounding yes thank you thank you by the way uh we got a bunch of people standing in the back there's plenty of room so if you want to come down people will squeeze in a little i'm sure oh very nice it's good my the topic of the talk my topic is strauss's 1972 restatement on machiavelli and my my argument is uh a little bit different from from tiffany's um in the sense that i think that actually the first critic of straussianism was strauss himself and that in the 1972 version of his uh of his teaching on machiavelli he points in that direction uh although i don't think it's uh it's as explicit as he could have made it but he i think that the indications in this essay are that he was deliberately deliberately modifying some of the views that had come to be accepted by that time by 1972 as as part of what one might call the standard straussian orthodoxy the uh and and i think that strauss had decided by that time uh this has been shortly before he died he had decided that uh perhaps he had been a little bit too successful in his earlier effort to convince people that it was important to return to the ancients uh he had done that by disparaging the moderns and i think began he began to wonder has whether his disparagement of the moderns was so successful that people were no longer really willing to read them with the kind of care they deserved and with because of the kind of respect that strauss himself had for them i don't believe strauss changed his mind in any respect on machiavelli in 1972 i believe that he changed his mind about how to speak publicly about it and therefore he emphasized certain themes i think in that in that presentation that he had de-emphasized in some of his earlier more popular ones especially the one that tiffany miller was was quoting from the uh the title essay of what is political philosophy um i i have a um i have a full-scale interpretation of this chapter which i can't present here but i'll but i'll just give you a couple of examples i think of what of what characterizes his uh strauss's fresh treatment uh in this in this context and i'll start with the beginning and end of the chapter uh chapter this is the chapter on again the chapter on machiavelli from from the uh from the history of political philosophy uh the in the first paragraph of the chapter strauss mentions a disagreement between aristotle and isaiah with respect to what virtue is aristotle the philosopher says strauss favors magnanimity and isaiah representing the biblical view favors humility later in the chapter strauss shows that machiavelli had high praise for the magnanimity of camillus that is to say on this topic machiavelli takes the side of aristotle over isaiah of athens over jerusalem now if we turn to the end of the chapter strauss takes up there the question of whether speech alone can rule men and he says quote sophists believed or tended to believe in the omnipotence of speech machiavelli surely cannot be accused of that error unquote and then strauss goes on in this important respect machiavelli and socrates make a common front against the sophists that's the last line of the chapter machiavelli and socrates make a common front so in other words at the very beginning of the chapter and at the end of the chapter there's something very important that machiavelli and some classical thinkers agree upon in the earlier statement on machiavelli in in what is political philosophy i should say the earlier popular statement that leaving out of account the book on machiavelli here because that is not a popular statement that is a totally obscure statement uh but the chapter what is in what is political philosophy is the one that everyone reads in that chapter strauss would seem to have classified machiavelli with the sophist on precisely this point because strauss says there that machiavelli is quote the first philosopher who attempted to force chance to control the future by embarking on a campaign of propaganda in other words strauss is suggesting in the more earlier popular statement that machiavelli was the first philosopher who believed that speech can change the world speech is omnipotent and that would put and that would of course put machiavelli on the side of the sophist if that in fact was his opinion in the 72 restatement on machiavelli strauss no longer says anything of the sort he never accuses machiavelli in that chapter as being a propagandist who believes he can change the world by speech alone and and he also nor does ignored as he called machiavelli a teacher of evil in his final statement the if we go back to the beginning of the chapter as i said he starts off with the jerusalem jerusalem versus athens question and and then going and then the next right at the beginning of the chapter he follows that with a a comment on the um on or makes this statement is could the could the disconflict between jerusalem and athens perhaps be at the bottom of modern philosophy now strauss doesn't say how it is at the bottom of it at that point in the chapter but he does say in that very at the beginning of the chapter that the quote there is no holy god for aristotle and the greeks generally unquote and what that means i take it is that strauss was saying that the moderns faced a situation that the greeks did not have to face biblical revelation in other words the conflict between jerusalem and athens could not have existed in greek philosophy because they had no knowledge of jerusalem and its holy god the greek gods are not holy gods and if we and if we begin if we go to the end of the chapter again briefly uh where the question is uh machiavelli's difference from the sophists in regard to the omnipotence of speech uh that's very odd because machiavelli according in the way that strauss presents him never talks about the sophists and never criticizes them it strauss who brings up the sophists as people who believed in the omnipotence of speech and if one asked the question of who is it that mac that machiavelli might have had in mind in his insistence that speech is not omnipotent one might think that the answer is in fact precisely those who believe in the holy god uh that is to say if you if those who believe that in the beginning was the word and that the word created all of reality or those who believe that quote only say the word and i shall be healed that is to say the holy god seems to be the god who is outside of nature who is completely able to quickly dominate nature the possibility of the omnipotence of speech in other words comes to the fore i suggest uh not not because of the moderns not because of this notion of the conquest of nature through propaganda but rather rather in connection with something that has happened in in the history of religion prior to machiavelli the emergence of the concept of the omnipotent god the machiavelli um in in the chapter that uh that i'm talking about in this 72 chapter on machiavelli uh in the strauss prophecy history uh the theme is primarily machiavelli on religion although there is some brief discussion of machiavelli on morality if you look at the earlier treatment of machiavelli in the what is political philosophy chapter in that treatment strauss says i'm not going to talk about religion and what he also says in that in that earlier chapter is machiavelli agrees with the average on the subject of religion a point which then strauss repeats in 1972 agrees with the averillis who are the averis well according to 1972 chapter ovarists were medieval aristotelians so in other words what strauss says in both statements but is that on the subject of religion strauss and aristotle are in agreement by his equation of aristotle with the excuse me of strauss strauss equates machiavelli with the average uh in each case and then a virus with the ancients as for as for the question of morality however there's where the difference lies and that gets to dr kopp's presentations he gets called because the presentation that we heard from dr kolp is there really is a difference in the teaching of the ancients on the subject of morality and it's and it's unders and how how the political order is to understand the moral teaching so what i'm suggesting is that in the latter in the last statement that strauss made on machiavelli he focused on those on that topic namely religion where machiavelli could could be said to largely to agree with the classics whereas in the earlier statement he focused on the theme morality and politics where there was more of a disagreement now whether that disagreement and of course the famous disagreement is that machiavelli publicly repudiates the authority of morality and political life and argues instead for expediency that's that's the public teaching of machiavelli and that is not the public teaching of any of the classical philosophy so you have to there's no question that there's a difference there uh drastic difference nevertheless even on that subject it turns out that there is an interesting parallel uh which strauss alludes to in this in the later chapter in the 1972 chapter uh and that is indicated in the following quotation strauss writes occasionally machiavelli makes a distinction between vertu and bontak virtue and goodness that distinction was in a way prepared by cicero who says that men are called good on account of their modesty temperance and above all justice and keeping of faith as distinguished from courage and wisdom cicero the ciceronian distinction within the virtues right goodness which is modesty temperance and justice versus courage and wisdom this ciceronian distinction in its turn reminds us says drouse of plato's republic in which temperance and justice are required of all whereas courage and wisdom are required only of some straus is implying in this quotation that machiavelli's distinction between virtue and bon top in fact restores in its way the platonic or ciceronian perspective against the view that the natural law inflexibly mandates the practice of all the virtues at all times and that of course was believed to be the teaching of thomas aquinas in his treatise on law that reason gives you absolute moral commandments that have no exceptions uh machiavelli's critique of moral absolutism from that point of view could be taken to be in fact a restoration of the earlier understanding that's 10 minutes okay so i will now conclude and mention one one final point machiavelli refers frequently in his writings to terror as an important and useful political tool he argues that rome was able to save itself in times of extreme adversity by bringing back the original terror the recovery of ancient virtue in rome after any after a political disaster consists of the reimposition of the terror and fear that had made men good at the beginning at the beginning there is not love but terror strauss says uh mackie strauss remarks that machiavelli's understanding of the original terror anticipates hobbes doctrine of the state of nature now strauss does not mean that machiavelli intended to bring back the original terror indeed but he does want to bring it back in speech he wants to remind me strauss thought that machiavelli wanted to remind men of their vulnerability pointing to two things both the need for the people to submit to walk and the need for the rulers to be strong and sensible in their actions and in their thinking straus speaks throughout this chapter that of machiavelli's intention of restoring quote ancient virtue unquote which will make men once again strong in body and strong in mind now i didn't i haven't had a chance to talk about the way in which machiavelli intends to restore ancient virtue with respect to the philosophic question i focused more on the question of the political and the religious but i believe also there's that other dimension as well which we can talk about later if anyone chooses thank you very much yes well can we have a discussion please dr d alvarez this may be professor west's last appearance at a politics panel or lecture as a ud faculty member let me take a few minutes to express my gratitude to him our gratitude to him for his teaching his scholarly work and the council and the many other contributions he has made to the university and the department i mentioned this because he has accepted a position at hillsdale college where he will find greater support for and greater recognition of his work dr west has been one of the fundamental pillars of our politics program the other being i'll just mention is glenn thoreau i mentioned that because both came to us in the same year 1974 and we lose both in approximately the same year with both with both a program which has been and still is one i hope one of the strongest in the nation in political philosophy eva bran called dr west's work always interesting because he raised questions that no one else did and brought to them a powerful exposition and mode of arguing very like the one that we that this panel addresses he has been and i just mentioned this with quotation marks a quote revisionist and quote on socrates aquinas hobbes lock dockville the american founding he won't call himself that of course he is simply telling us what in fact he is let me add that the presence of western thoreau made this department a place where it was truly a pleasure to teach marked by intellectual vitality and collegiality we shall miss dr west when i mentioned my regret that is leaving he reminded me of what strauss had said at his farewells lecture at chicago where strauss remarked that what had been said about his leaving was that if you were out of schlitz you were out of beer but then he said there were many other brands of beer and then he said it is my intention to explain the socratic question well dr west is a unique brew and there are not many comparable brands but let us continue to speak on the question of strauss now i agree with dr west's description of the intention of machiavelli i have no doubt that he intended the restoration of prudence which he thought had been lost for centuries and in fact the mention of propaganda as dr west points out is really in connection with the church's propaganda and that it does not reflect that of course as he said his imitation is going to be that of the propaganda of the church and that's it and and the imitation then of the way in which uh the church uh spread its its gospel and now and i agree that machiavelli had to get rid of what west calls the moralistic veneer in his in his printed copy which was given to me the moralistic veneer of classical teaching and in a way that is the point i guess i'll just simply raise this question can one speak of the surface of the classical concern for virtue and and regarded as as something not truly fundamental can one remove that veneer scrub it off and then throw it into the dustbin or the question is can one become fully human without a concern for ethical virtue consider this sentence from the nikomakiyan ethics it is clear from what has been said uh what is clear from what has been said then that it is not possible to be good in the governing sense without prudence nor to have prudence without ethical virtue and that's going to be the question that i would raise that is is machiavellian prudence really prudence in the uh a classical understanding and and if there is that fundamental difference in what does that finally what are the consequences of that uh one of the things i like to say that if you want to see the monuments of mercury valley the effects of machiavelli take a look around you professor west says an apparent agreement with strauss that machiavelli narrows the horizon this is the last part of his stock that i don't think he was able to get to that machiavelli narrows the horizon through which that is the horizon the nitrogen horizon through which everything is seen and understood in the sense that it makes his readers see things in a perspective that he imposes on them his next sentence is perhaps the key one for me anyway but machiavelli himself may well be free of that horizon in his own mind uh i would agree that he probably was free of that horizon in his own mind my question is what happens to those on whom he imposes his perspective his teaching does machiavelli's teaching lead one to be free of that horizon west said that he was going to discuss that point he didn't come to it uh the question is what about uh philosophy now that's that does he uh is does he lead the young man because that was what he was interested in uh to philosophy the giovanni singing to philosophy now there is a you know the uh the um in the uh rafaeli stanza the roughy raphael's painting of the academy you have socrates in the background with apparently alcibiades in a violet robe of course and alexander with his helmet uh talking to socrates and one wonders about that what is he teaching alcibiades and alexander perhaps not to rule perhaps not to uh not to have empire we know there is the alcibiades one and two uh in which we have uh a socrates attempting to persuade all societies from such dreams of power what happens if you tell the young men that what you should do is take power and do everything you can to rule now what perspective does that impose them upon upon them and how much has our intelligence here forgot now about what the uh forgot you can say about the place of ethical virtue in in human life now in one more brief comment and i asked this in terms of dr miller's paper by the the one question i have about locke and i'll have to review this and think about it and the question is whether his understanding of virtue is finally utilitarian dr miller says no but it comes that the it becomes for the sake of the noble and that's my question now is there a concern for the noble finally which is which which she said at the end uh is indeed to act for uh to act morally for its own sake and that for something that is expedient or profitable for one the difficulty of course with utilitarianism and this is why you have that degrading effect i see that she mentioned is that it leads to a calculating character thermistor clean one might say rather than aristodean which is forgetfulness of the noble which then slides into a corseting of the soul to using things and human uh beings simply instrumental and again my question in these terms is there is there in the forgetfulness of the noble and the moderns and and and this forgetfulness i do think is leads to a corruption of the human soul uh at first i just i i'm not sure i agree with dr culp that attention to uh time is an ancient virtue i think i think it's probably a modern german one it's a modern oh okay okay yeah uh okay uh i will uh uh second uh professor gill versus comments on dr west i've had the fortune of being a student of his and then being a colleague for the last 20 years or so and one thing i will note is his generosity of spirit willingness to help out talk about things um but secondly i i would say uh and i've said this before uh i hope not in his hearing that professor west i think more than any academic i know though he argues things forcefully as one knows uh is willing to rethink and revisit such things and that it seems to me is the mark of the way that one ought to operate uh okay we'll i hope we'll have a chance to say more about dr west at a later point while he's still here okay so the question of the uh division between ancients and moderns uh uh leo strauss it might be said uh both overstated and understated uh the difference between the ancients and moderns uh i'll say a little bit about about both and i tend these to be somewhat their responses to to dr culps and dr miller's uh pieces all uh not maybe not directly maybe we could uh tease that out a little bit more later on well the overstatement to begin with that of the division between ancients and moderns might be seen simply in the use of the terms themselves uh we might anticipate that's any such categorization would necessarily paint with a broad brush neglecting the differences between the multivarious thinkers that make up the philosophical divisions a shorthand way of getting at the issue then might be to ask if strauss thought of himself as a modern now it may be that he can avoid getting entangled in this debate by referring to himself as a scholar rather than as a thinker and this of course he does uh in his essay on heideggerian existentialism uh strauss writes this heidegger made a distinction between philosophers and those for whom philosophy is identical with the history of philosophy some important i think for someone uh who edited a history of political philosophy the strauss goes on he made a distinction in other words between the thinker and the scholar i know that i am only a scholar but i also know that most people who call themselves philosophers are mostly at best scholars at best scholars i do think it's odd when i run into someone and they say well you know that i'm a philosopher and what that means is they teach philosophy it's not the same thing uh okay but the distinction yet the distinction between ancients and moderns though surely can't be drawn simply on the basis of when one was born for example is there a greater similarity between say plato and epicurus than between epicurus and hops and strauss's view that might be a difficult assertion i think to sustain so maybe we instead have to look at deeper philosophical distinctions and i will focus then on just a couple of questions that i think might illuminate the topic uh so the first one straus states in his essay what is political philosophy which has already been referred to a couple of times that the classical solution to the problem of political philosophy uh is that he he calls it that the problem of political philosophy is found in the agreement that quote the goal of political life is virtue and the order most conducive to virtue is the aristocratic republic or else the mixed regime end quote now one of the claims of many defenders of the modern project is that while it may be true that there is a shift in the modern view that leads away from the aristotelian or to mystic we might say understanding of virtue that that does not mean that there is an abandonment of the concern for virtue or for the development of some human excellence there is in fact the claim goes a new concept of virtue that comes to replace that older consensus and the new concept includes virtues which are emblematic of the political program that seems to accompany the modern consensus this will often mean virtues or qualities we might say which make democratic society possible and indeed allow it to flourish virtues such as self-reliance initiative frugality entrepreneurship uh other koch related issues virtues the list sometimes referred to as bourgeois virtue now while we might spend substantial time talking about such things uh that is what what to the extent that they are virtues and how they might differ from the ancient conception of virtue for the sake of time i'll just make uh this suggestion that much of this account of modern virtue is not really a discussion of virtue but of something quite different and allow me here then just to what cite one instance of this uh this is a passage actually taken from newman's idea of the university uh but newman is is quoting from the initial inaugural lecture uh given to the first by the first chair of political economy at the university of oxford uh william nassau senior uh in which he quote senior is saying this uh my senior by was a a a friend of uh became a friend of tocqueville's uh he says my answer uh is that the pursuit of wealth now this is senior william nassau senior speaking the pursuit of wealth that is the endeavor to accumulate the means of future subsistence and enjoyment is to the mass of mankind the great source of moral improvement unquote and uh newman says of this now observe how exactly this bears out what i have been saying it is just so far true is to be able to instill what is false uh i grant that ordinarily beggary is not the means of moral improvement and that the orderly habits which attend upon the hot pursuit of gain not only may affect an external decency but may at least shelter the soul from the temptations of vice perhaps these habits of good order guarantee regularity in a family or household and thus are accidentally the means of good moreover they lead to the education of its younger branches and they thus accidentally provide the rising generation with a virtue or a truth which the present has not okay then he could continues though but without going into these considerations further than to allow them generally let us rather contemplate what the author's direct assertion is he says the endeavor to accumulate for enjoyment the the means of future subsistence is to the mass of mankind the great source of moral improvement newman comments the soul in the case of the mass of mankind improves in moral excellence from this more than anything else that is from heaping up the means of enjoying this world in time to come i really should on every account be sorry to exaggerate but indeed one is taken by surprise one is startled on meeting with so very categorical a contradiction of our lord saint paul synchro system saint leo and all the saints now of course the fact that such ideas might be at odds with christian teaching is not necessarily an indication that they are a source of a divide between ancient and modern virtue but i will suggest that they are for the sake of argument i will simply assert that um that aristotle's account of acquisition uh might uh suggest there is more of a similarity between the aristotelian and satanistic view uh than in this uh view of senior okay a second related question uh that i want to turn to that that is the relationship between virtue and nature are you timing you got two minutes two minutes that's that's not that's not right you'll want to check that again okay um uh all right what am i going to say then um put it this way uh on the uh a second question we might address is is this is it the function of law to make men good uh when aquinas asks this question in the treatise on law it's a preparatory analysis of his larger disquisition on the force of law which he considers to be an external influence on human action while thomas does know following aristotle that law can be good in one of two ways that is good simply or good relative to the regime or to the presupposition of the regime as aristotle uh puts it the context clearly indicates i think uh that thomas is talking about the good simply okay so what i would i want to suggest then is uh to to the extent that the law that is the human law uh is derivative of the natural law as it is in st thomas we might ask to what extent the law that is the human law in the modern context is derivative of some other entity the natural law or as it's typically put the law of nature and uh to summarize i'll just have to say this the law of nature for modern man to the extent he accepts its existence seems to serve the function similar to that of fatherly advice in tocqueville's view which tocqueville says is received as information which information of course can be accepted rejected or overthrown but it is in no way binding that is it's not law in the strict sense or one might say in the ancient or medieval sense of law okay so just one passing comment at the end an understatement i think of uh strauss's distinction between the ancients and moderns um i think is this there's this kind of sense of optimism uh that i find in in strauss and his account of the power of human reason um which uh i'm not sure actually the rest of his argument does actually sustains um but just one quick note on it he does he he mentions uh in passing uh in his critique of modern social science that that there is a singular exception uh to the problems of modern social science and that's in roman catholic social science surely he didn't think that was true there's no evidence it seems to me that roman catholic social science is any different from secular social science okay well i'm out of time you

Channel: University of Dallas

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Keywords: University of Dallas, political philosophy, Leo Strauss, Thomas G. West, Leo Paul de Alvarez, Jonathan Culp, Richard Dougherty, Tiffany Jones Miller

Id: pomXajGtQCQ

Length: 57min 46sec (3466 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2012