[lit-ideas] The Neocons and Leo Strauss
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:43:59 -0800
Ah, yes. Very good. I have read several auricles like the one you quote
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1D61639F934A35755C0A965
9C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2 ) This one, being by his daughter is
particularly telling but consistent with the others I've read. I hope JL
reads this article. It makes Strauss sound like someone he would like. I
might be remembering wrong, but I thought JL said he hadn't read Strauss.
Everyone who really knew Strauss or Strauss's writings says something like
this. Where the others get their information is a mystery to me. I was
afraid to probe Irene's ad hominem response to Strauss for fear she would
add the one thing usually accompanying the things she said, namely, "and he
was a Jew."
I'll tell you what I thought he meant by the bit I quoted. I thought he
meant people who get caught up in the minutiae of detail or the precise
meaning of words such that they lose the sense of their argument and in the
process lose their audience. That may not be a fair assessment, however,
because it appeared in the introduction of Douglas Murray's
_Neoconservatism: Why we need it_ and he was invoking Strauss in order to
promise to strive to avoid being someone who confused his readers by 'blind
scholastic pedantry.' I was once again annoyed by responses (to my notes on
_The Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace_ that picked out some word
or illustration and focused on that without ever responding to or even
acknowledging the existence of the main argument. My readers seemed engaged
in 'blind scholastic pedantry,' or so I imagined in my pique.
I was having a bad morning and when I read that quote by Strauss, I thought
I ought to buy the book out of which it came in order to understand more
clearly what he meant, but when I saw the title I thought perhaps it was
something I had already purchased and began to search through my books. By
then my typical early-morning headache had moved up a few notches so I gave
the whole thing up.
Last night on CSPAN I watched a segment focusing on Jacob Heilbrunn's _They
Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons_. Heilbrunn is a conservative
but critical of the Neocons. For anyone who remembers my earlier notes on
this subject, I would put him in the Fukuyama camp, that is, someone who
thought the Neocon idea had some merit initially but subsequently concluded
that the Neocons surrounding Bush had urged him to take the country off in a
wrong direction by invading Iraq.
However, he, like everyone else on the panel, thought the common perception
of Neocon power was vastly over-rated. Two of the people on the panel were
economists. One of them said he personally knew and had known for 30 years
every Neocon Heilbrunn mentioned in his book. He didn't think there was an
actual Neocon movement because Neocons invariably disagreed with each other.
Furthermore they denied being Neocon.
I thought I'd try to finish the pro-Neocon book by Murray before receiving
the anti-Neocon book by Heilbrunn.
And yes, Strauss has been misrepresented. I've read that time and time
again. "Strauss" and "Neocon" have become swear-words used by people who
don't know what they really mean and don't really care.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 6:12 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Peace Mystics
Lawrence wrote
I recently ran across a quote from Leo Strauss who described people who
either missed or were unwilling to grapple with the main points of
argument as becoming "confused by the 'blind scholastic pedantry' that
exhausts itself and its audience in the 'clarification of meanings' so
that it never meets the nonverbal issues."
--------------
Of course, now I don't dare ask what 'the nonverbal issues' (of an
argument) MEANS. 'Issues' that aren't mentioned in the argument?
Argumentum ad baculum?
The very best argument is one such that if you accept the premises but
don't accept the conclusion you die. A pretty good argument is one such
that if you accept the premises but not the conclusion you get very,
very sick. Maybe that's what Strauss meant.
For those interested in his daughter's impressions of Strauss, here's a
link to a NY Times opinion piece by Jenny Strauss Clay, a professor of
classics at the University of Virginia.
--------------
Recent news articles have portrayed my father, Leo Strauss, as the
mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United
States foreign policy. He reaches out from his 30-year-old grave, we are
told, to direct a ''cabal'' (a word with distinct anti-Semitic
overtones) of Bush administration figures hoping to subject the American
people to rule by a ruthless elite. I do not recognize the Leo Strauss
presented in these articles.
[continued at]
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1D61639F934A35755C0A9659
C8B63
Robert Paul
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