Leo Strauss DESTROYS facts and logic with values and norms | 'What is Political Philosophy?' (1957)

"All political action has then in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society", writes Leo Strauss in his well-known essay 'What is Political Philosophy?', published in 1957. For Strauss, political philosophy is essentially normative. We do not understand political things unless we take them as phenomena which cry out to be evaluated as good or bad, just or unjust.

Today's episode is a brief recapitulation of Strauss' essay, which includes his thoughts on the nature of political philosophy and the difference between classical and modern approaches to the discipline. This episode forms a nice contrast to our episode on Raymond Geuss and his approach of political realism.

Do you agree with Strauss that political philosophy is always normative? Or do value-judgements also fall prey to criticism by positivists and historicists? As always, we would love to hear what you think.

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[Lampredi]

Ahh, love the video title. You’ve destroyed the search algorithm with nous and optimisation

[addammadd]

This was effectively and coherently laid out. Thank you for this work.

[matt.]

Love it, thanks for posting. Strauss, Kojève are back as soon as a retvrn to proper optimism is needed, when stupid optimism à la Frankfurt school is over

[jeffsmith]

;
A good contrast.
Another way to approach this topic would be to contrast Strauss’ What is Political Philosophy with George Sabine’s A History of Political Theory.

[timothybaumgartner]

Clear, concise, and insightful. Thank you!

[trylateral]

Leo Strauss and the Straussians are proof that one should never judge a creator by the fandom.

[najooosam]

I love your explanation and I’m surprised I understood the context easily. I have become interested in philosophy lately and I’m so glad that there are video like these.

[clemfarley]

Great video. Thank you. I read this essay years ago, and you did a wonderful job of analyzing it.

[satyricusm]

There is no "technology" prior to the modern world--no "conquest of nature, " if not in tales that reject the hypothetical project as absurd.

[alohm]

17:00 Social media is not to blame for our loss of attention span, our lack of thought, our lack of reading? One book in the last two years is the average reader today.

[ramodemmahom]

As someone who is familiar with Strauss, which of these books do you recommend for a beginner to Strauss's thought, "What is Political Philosophy?" (1959) or "An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays" (ed. Gildin, 1989)? I am thinking of purchasing the latter combined with "Natural Rights and History" (1999).

[calvin_the_hee]

You get a thumbs up for the title alone

[Lampredi]

I have left two other comments on this video which YouTube keeps deleting. Is there any other platform I can leave a longish comment on the video on?

[FMDad-dmqo]

Witty video title and an interesting subject.

[NoReprensentationWithoutTax]

This men has saved me from the nihilism that is the necessary follow up of historicism, not to talk about the apory of modern positivism. By the way, the chinese have translated and studied all strauss works in order to understand the madness of the west.

[pilgrim]

Not that it has anything to do with this discussion, but before I forget. The error of Straussian thought seems bare before beginning. It is common in the Study of Truth, as a whole. Truth, unlike other sciences, has a fixed locus and terminus. Innovation often learns beyond Truth. Certainly beyond the ethics of truth in areas of sociological impact. I have no knowledge of him, or, the field so I only speak from the anecdotal point of observable results since I began to engage modern thought. I will listen now and learn more to see if my theory from observation has any validity.

[smallscreentv]

Great video, thanks!

I’m incredibly surprised that we’re still in a battle between the sophists (relativism) and the philosophers (objective truths)

Plato’s Republic is a bible

Even your point about technology is an example of something that a philosopher, someone who knows the difference e tween good and evil, or someone who re river a proper education could tell you that no thing in itself is good or evil, like money for example, it is the usage of that thing that produces the good or evil.

[christofeles]

This suggests Strauss, in effect, was preoccupied with refuting elements of Nietzsche's thought. Though you make the "Enlightenment project" sound like a form of value relativism. Not sure how Kant would fit into that framing. Surely Rawls has as much a claim to representing that project as anyone, and he would have rejected the concept of radical individualism. Individuals are unthinkable apart from institutions, as Hegel showed and the Ancients presupposed.

To say that modern thought wants to "ground our values in reason itself" is just another way of saying it wants to ground (= give an account/justification of) values. There is no alternative to this endeavor, i.e., an account in irrational terms. Even an account of values in terms of revelation is rational. Reason by its nature seeks the universal among the particular, the formula in the manifold. Nietzsche's view of reason must be allocated to a series of false conceptions of the rational, that is, of what would constitute the true 'irrational.'

Ultimately, only reason contravenes the boundaries of the rational by claiming more order/predictability etc., than is warranted.

Why do so many post-Hegelian thinkers attack reason as if it were the root of self-deception rather than accepting it for what it is – – the correlate of the order of the universe/cosmos? Why do so few British thinkers view reason skeptically?

One could argue, Hume's idea that reason just cleans up after the passions is the template of all restrictions of reason's authority. In fact, it is another formula for a false irrational. Nothing about the passions contravenes the order of the universe which is the correlate and inspiration for the human, discursive-systematic ordering (account giving) of phenomena.

Strauss's defense of revelation against Spinoza does not proceed against reason, but against Spinoza's rationalist prejudices. They are not the same thing. It's best to put the notion to bed that there is an alternative to reason, from the human perspective. Do black holes contradict the order of the cosmos? Obviously not. And if they constitute a dimension of the structure of galaxies, it's hard to see that any of the candidates for the ostensible irrational we have come up with (matter, the passions, the God of Abraham, etc.) fits the bill.

[alecmisra]

Nietzsche was an Aristocratic Radical not a Liberal. He thought that the Ubermensch ideal would necessarily lead to an ever more crushing aristocratic elite. So Strauss is wrong in his take here - at least as you describe it.

[kentonkrohlow]

Strauss is structure in a contingent world - contingent when it's convenient.