[lit-ideas] Leo Strauss and Neo-Conservatism
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:21:24 -0800 (PST)
Leo Strauss and Neo-Conservatism
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7335
Some excerpts:
This brief summary makes it clear, I hope, that
Strauss was not the "profoundly tribal and fascistic
thinker" described by Drury. But neither is he a
figure with whom liberal democrats can feel entirely
comfortable. His support for them is at best pragmatic
and provisional; it amounts to little more than the
recognition that "at present democracy is the only
practicable alternative to various forms of tyranny."
Nowhere does Strauss acknowledge freedom or equality
as intrinsic goods. Their value, for him, is
instrumental; they create a space in which excellence
can flourish. "We cannot forget? that by giving
freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those
who care for human excellence. No one prevents us from
cultivating our garden or from setting up outposts
which may come to be regarded by many citizens as
salutary to the republic and as deserving of giving to
it its tone." Strauss, in short, is an unashamed
elitist, in the best tradition of the German
professoriat. This in itself is enough to mark him as
a fascist in the eyes of some commentators.
Modern neoconservatism has moved a long way from
Strauss. It has shed his cultural pessimism, his
elitism, his old world scepticism. "Many
neoconservatives," wrote Irving Kristol in 1979, "find
him [Strauss] somewhat too wary of modernity." Strauss
was opposed to all grandiose schemes of political
redemption. He was a conservative, not a
neoconservative; he revered prudence as "the god of
this lower world" and praised the classics for
realising that "evil cannot be eradicated and
therefore ? one's expectations from politics must be
moderate." The attempt to impose democracy across the
globe would have struck him as folly.
But even if it has departed from Strauss, contemporary
neoconservatism nonetheless grows out of a typically
Straussian anxiety. As we saw, Strauss viewed the
cultivation of virtue as the end of politics. But
virtue implies sacrifice, and sacrifice implies an
ideal. The trouble with liberalism is that it tends to
relativise all ideals, to reduce them to mere
opinions. Sacrifice becomes impossible, and politics
in the true sense gives way to economic management. As
a result, human beings sink into a purely private
existence?a condition described by Alexandre Kojève, a
French philosopher and friend of Strauss's, as "the
animalisation of man."
...
But the problem with the neoconservative version of
liberalism is that it is not really liberal at all.
Classical Anglo-American liberalism was emphatically
not a "fighting faith." It was sceptical of all
extreme faiths, religious and political. And although
it fought when it had to, against aggressors such as
Napoleon and Hitler, its preferred means of
promulgation were trade, enlightenment and
international law. The new liberalism is quite
different. It is no longer cosmopolitan, but
nationalist; no longer pacific, but warlike; no longer
sceptical, but zealous. Its model is Israel, that
artefact of political and military will.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Leo Strauss and Neo-Conservatism
