Hi, welcome back to the new Thinkery. If you hear my voice, you know what that means. David Barr is not with us. First, I'll say how to Greg.
Greg, how you doing? I'm doing fine, but it's not his usual digestive issues today. In fact, it's not his culinary taste. It's actually the principal reason for not attending the seminar tonight.
I think with this, you're gonna ruin the show. He's quite mad at us because we should, you know, this is probably gonna be ever released maybe in a week or so. But yeah, yeah. Today's Martin Luther King Jr.
Day, right? You got very mad that we were still recorded. We usually record our Monday nights. He just assumed we weren't recording tonight because it's Martin Luther King holiday.
Yeah. As our third today, we have a guest Greg, you might introduce him. It's a returning guest. Yes.
It's a returning guest. I think this is actually now your third episode with us. You've done hobs with us. We had that round table on Strauss that we did at the UATX conference.
And now today we're doing another sort of episode on natural right history, the Hobbs section of modern natural right from natural right history. Yeah. What else should we say, Alex? Just that this is great.
I mean, you know, so we've got the University of Austin Strauss seminar. Was that last week or no? It was the week before that into the weekend and it feels like just yesterday. But it was really great.
I mean, great conversations, very busy schedule. We wanted to record this then, but it just made more sense to wait a bit. But yeah, we're going to go look at the. We did it specifically so that David could be here and the last he thought that the BLM rally was more important.
He said the BLM is more important than NRH. And that's where he's making a stand. Yeah, I guess so. And so I don't know.
Well, thanks for joining us, Devon. Yeah, nice to be with you guys. Long time no to see. Over the last week and a half or so.
Yeah. So I thought a good place to start would be to just, you know, Strauss revisited Hobbs a fair amount. And there's also that, wasn't there a book published Hobbs's critique of religion? It was not published as lifetime, but manuscript found.
He obviously spent those years in England, right? Working on Hobbs. Yeah. And that man is just came out.
The interesting thing about it is it's not complete. So Strauss seems to have abandoned it at the end. It kind of trails off and see only work of Strauss. I know of where he abandoned a book that was fairly well alone.
Yeah, that's, you know, like, you know, like, just 100 years. So it happens to even straps. So it's, and he gets why you've ended? I'm not sure.
I assume the reason is he wasn't completely convinced that he was on the right track. Yeah. That's my guess. But I don't know.
I mean, he then wrote the right about the same time his book cobs his political philosophy. So I think he probably decided that was the better that was the better tactic. Yeah. And so that's, I mean, so he returned to quite a bit.
I mean, there was the that book you just mentioned from the 30s and then natural in history and then shortly thereafter in what is political philosophy? There's that short piece on Hobbs, right? And so this was kind of a returning theme for him, though you get the sense that eventually Machia Valley takes on a greater importance as the founder of modern thought. But I thought maybe you could just say a thing or two because you've written on that later Hobbs, be it's correct.
Yeah, that people on the basis of Hobbs's political philosophy and what is political philosophy? Yes. Yeah. And I assume because you've written on Hobbs that you've also spent quite a bit of time at that early work, which is, I think a really accessible, pronounced and very interesting, a lot of parts of that are quite interesting.
But maybe you could just say something about the importance of Hobbs for Strauss's thinking or his path of thinking why he returned to him. So I mean, I think return to him is right. Obviously, there were, he was engaged with Hobbs for many, many years, but I think there were two real periods where he was most deeply engaged. So one is the 30s.
And then the other is the late 40s, early 50s. So you know, in the natural history chapter, obviously comes out of the ladder of those two. And I think there's some difference. I mean, there's one obvious shift that in the early days in the 30s, he turned Hobbs partly out of the conviction that Hobbs was the founder of modern political philosophy.
And so he kind of pronounces that boldly at the beginning of his the Hobbs book that he did publish in the 30s. And that seems to have been at least one of the major reasons why he was interested in him. But that of course shifted. And he says very directly in a couple places and somewhat indirectly in our sub chapter that his indicates his view changed.
That was Machiavelli that was the founder. But nevertheless, Hobbs doesn't seem to have lost his importance for Strauss. And he, you know, as I think we'll discuss in a bit, he plays a pivotal role in natural and history. But I do think, you know, there's it's interesting because it seems to me that kind of belong to two different moments and Strauss's own development.
Because in the 30s, you could say that's Strauss to borrow a phrase from Heinrich Meyer, Strauss becoming Strauss in that period. It was the maybe the most fertile period in terms of his development. And then in the 50s, it's the more mature Strauss sketching out a broader view that seems to be more fully developed. By the way, just back for just a moment on the early period, I just happened to be rereading the Kruger led the Strauss Kruger correspondence, which is fascinating.
By the way, that'd be a good topic for podcasts, the Strauss Kruger letters. But one thing you can make crystal clear in those letters is how deeply engaged Strauss is with Hobbs during that whole period. There's quite a bit of their exchange that's on Hobbs. And you can see from the beginning there, I think this kind of duality to Strauss's interest in Hobbs.
And the one hand, he loves Hobbs and he expresses that in numerous places in a very, in a way in the natural and history chapter. But he's already critical of him, even in the 30s. And so part of the role Hobbs played for Strauss was, you know, as he was beginning to find his way back to classical thought, Hobbs was a point of contrast for him. And a key point of contrast as the kind of ancients of modern science question began to emerge for him.
Just a small point. I mean, Alex mentioned, you also mentioned that Hobbs, he turned to Hobbs as a bit, as particularly the sort of founder of modern political thought or something like this. And then he moved away from it explicitly, like you said, even the passages that we read for tonight from natural history, I found a really interesting echo of that is on page 166. He says that the man who was the first to draw the consequences for natural right from this momentous change was Thomas Hobbs.
And so he indicates that there was this big break, there was a break in the natural right tradition. And it seems like here, he's laying, he's sort of letting us know what his grounds for the stake were. Hobbs wasn't the one who made the break, but he was the first to draw out the consequences for that break, it seems like. So it's almost, it's an air that sort of makes sense that one would make almost.
Yeah, although if we can get maybe this gets us into the weeds a little too quickly, but there's some difference between what he's talking about drawing the consequences of the air and then pivot that he describes in Machiavelli. So on 166 in that passage, he's talking about the emergence of modern natural science. And then there he is ambiguous formulation that Hobbs was the first to draw the consequences for natural right from that change. But then some paragraphs later, where he turns to Machiavelli about about 10 pages later, he talks about a change that was happening on the plane of political philosophy.
And so you could say that Hobbs was the figure that kind of brought these two, and I think this is one way of thinking about what he's discussing in the Hobbs chapter. He's the one who was bringing these two transformations, these two changes together. I think that also goes some ways to explaining why he doesn't treat Machiavelli at so much length in natural right in history. That's, I think there's other reasons to Machiavelli wasn't a natural right teacher in the way Hobbs was and stars was also planning surely at this point of book on Machiavelli.
So, but I think part of the story is that one of the questions of the Hobbs action becomes, I mean, maybe we can hold this for a little bit later, but one of the questions becomes what was the connection between the new science and the new political teacher? Yeah, I mean, I get the sense that maybe one of the reasons he's, and I know you've been working on thoughts on Machiavelli's to tell me if this sounds right, because you're kind of steeped in this move and Strauss, but he perhaps one of the reasons he felt compelled to turn to Hobbs again, and not just here, but also what is political philosophy is here. Obviously, you have to talk about Hobbs when you're talking about this subject matter, but maybe he needed, you wanted to refresh himself, we had to understand it before he turned to Machiavelli as the roots or somehow sort of work through those texts again, since it had been a few decades and, and experience. So, that seemed right.
Yeah, that does seem right to me. And, you know, one of the questions that surrounds the thought on Machiavelli is how much is that text to be put in the framework of the ancient's modern question for Strauss? And some have argued that that's not really, that distinction is not of such great importance of Strauss and that the Machiavelli book ultimately breaks it down. I mean, it take, take us too far afield right now for me to defend it, my own view, I'll just say it, but I think that's not true.
And I think the ancient's modern question is really at the heart of thoughts of Machiavelli too. So it does make sense. I think that he would want to think about what emerged out of that or the early modern position in the break, the revolution in thought more broadly, which I think Machiavelli and Hobbs are probably the two most important figures for Strauss. Just another small follow up.
I thought I heard you'd say that the sign, the break and the scientific thought did not come from Machiavelli, obviously that makes sense on a lot of levels. But I've always sort of taken parts of chapter 25 with the Princeton indicate that Machiavelli is open to this scientific, now maybe this is way too ridiculous, but right, we can build dikes and dams and stuff like this. So there might actually even be a kind of nation's notion of there are some areas in science that we can imagine, matter and form and this, sorry. Yeah, I think there's a hint of that.
I think there's a limeral of that. I just wouldn't drive that too far. And I think when Strauss lays out Hobbs's natural philosophy, natural science in natural right in history, it's much closer to things like, well, maybe not especially Descartes. Descartes is actually lurking quite a bit at these early pages of the Hobbs section too.
And so I think he's talking about the emergence of modern natural science. I think you could find certain little baby steps in that direction, Machiavelli, even something kind of proto technological about this chapter 25 and using human ingenuity to master fortune more thoroughly than ever. Yeah, so I think there is a grain of that, but I wouldn't, I think, more than that. Interesting.
Yeah, interesting remark in chapter 14 of the Prince where he says, you need to have the Prince needs to have knowledge of the nature of sites. Yes, that, yeah, for the purpose of war, which obviously has to do with your approaching a hill, where might the enemy be? How do you best approach that hill to cover your whatever? But when you think about military technology and, you know, be able to fly planes that can see under the ground to like, you know, a nuclear, like lab in North Korea, that's like a mile underground, you're like, yeah, maybe he's got it.
Yeah, you don't want to push it too hard because it is, you know, it is very different than what you get in like the new organ on. But let's, should we jump into the text? I mean, for sure. One of the one of the interesting things, so we're going to concentrate on the first 17 paragraphs of the Hobbes section, but there's a paragraph that precedes that and so chapters five and six are really like double chapters in a way because they cover two thinkers each with their own sub section, but they are grouped as a single chapter.
Each one is a single chapter, but six does not begin like this. Five begins with a separate paragraph. So it's not in a way three sections, you could say. And the first paragraph, in a way, I think shows that one of the things that's useful about Hobbes is he's way more explicit than people like Locke, or as he's going to go to argue in the second half of chapter five.
In fact, he has this wonderful characterization on page 166. Yeah, that's what I had in mind. Yeah. The man who was the first to draw the consequences of natural right from this momentous change of natural science was Thomas Bob's that improved and impassioned, iconoclastic extremists that first pull up being philosopher.
You think he's going to hate him after that. And he says, who's so enjoyable a writer because of his almost boyish straight fordness. He's never feeling humanity and his marvel, marvelous clarity and force. He was always above that.
I was that was I feel that too. And it's part of the reason I wrote a book on Hobbes. So I've loved that experience. Yeah.
I think you get this this remark. But after calling him boyish, it seems kind of holistic. He was deservedly punished for his recklessness, especially by his country. Like, oh, naughty Hobbes.
But it seems like Hobbes allows you to see something that's going on in the journey much more clearly, or at least in modern natural right teachings, much more clearly, than you might be able to find in obviously Locke or Machiaveli, who, you know, on the basis of the discourses on the basis of Locke's use of hooker, they seem to be far more traditional writer, conservative, say Hobbes is very outspoken. So I don't know, do you want to talk about the world Hobbes in this book a little bit or? Well, the Hobbes chapter, the whole, yeah, or just anything about this first term, whatever you want to jump in. Well, about the, I mean, I do think it's a question about the whole structure of the book and and why there is a Hobbes subsection, why Hobbes plays such a real big role.
And that I would go back, my own view of the book is if we can go way back for a second, it seems to me, there's a very important remark, set of remarks on 33 and 34 pages 33 and 34, because I as I read natural writing history, it is in some ways that it's heart a response to historicists throughout the book. But obviously it's this first chapter that tackles historicists most directly, but near the end, about halfway down on pastry three, pastry three, just as but we need no less urgently a non-historicist understanding of historicism. That is an understanding of the genesis of historicism that does not take for granted the soundness of historicism. And then on the next page, he says something I think sets up the later discussion of the moderns later in the book, he going down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, his historicism is the ultimate outcome of the crisis of modern natural right.
The crisis of modern natural right or modern political philosophy could become a crisis of philosophy as such, only because in the modern centuries, philosophy as such had become thoroughly politicized. Now that's a very striking statement, but it's typical of this book that I think Strauss makes these very arresting statements, but he doesn't unpack them. So he doesn't explain to you there how historicism is the outcome of the crisis of modern natural right, what that crisis was, and what it meant means to say that philosophy had become thoroughly politicized in the modern centuries. But I think Hobbes really is the Hobbes part is the beginning of that story, is in a certain way, Strauss is arguing that Hobbes is, and he means this in an ultimately very complicated way, is politicizing philosophy more thoroughly than the classical authors did.
And so I think insofar as one thing Strauss is doing in this book is trying to give an account of the genesis of historicism, the Hobbes section plays a crucial role. I don't mean to say that Strauss wasn't also just interested in Hobbes in his own right, he surely was, but I think that's an important part of the role that the Hobbes plays in the book. Yeah, I mean you could say with Hobbes by pausing the state of nature as the thing we leave has already made given reason a kind of history, right? And he's already sort of anticipated.
If I can just note on page 166, I said back at the end of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Strauss says related to this, he says, Hobbes exercised a very great influence on all subsequent political thought, continental and even English. And continental, I think, is you're wondering, okay, where is he thinking?
I think, well, if you're tracing the sort of state of nature, you got to think Rousseau and then Hegel and the whole sort of German historicism. Yeah. In the Hobbes book, he says the following kind of late in the book, he says, Hobbes because he announced all orientation by speech goes so far as systematically to deny the virtue character of courage. And just as disdain of speech finally leads to relativist skepticism, the negation of courage leads to the controversial position of courage, which becomes more and more acute on the way from Rousseau by Hegel to Nietzsche and is completed by the reabsorption of wisdom by courage and the view that the ideal is not the object of wisdom, but the hazardous venture of the will.
And so right there, you see, I think Strauss really explicitly connecting moves that Hobbes makes to that continental tradition and then to Nietzsche and the father of radical historicism. Yeah. There's something I think very Hobbes, I think you recognized already 20 years earlier, the crucial place of Hobbes in relation to historicism. Yeah, although he's sort of double sense, one, I think in the sense that some of the later thinkers develop strands that were already in Hobbes and push to be genotions further, and so we're in a way directly shaped by Hobbes.
And then the Nietzsche also that modernity is in some respects a backlash against some of the developed like, you know, what you were just saying about courage and Nietzsche and so forth. So I think Hobbes has influenced both, you could say in a positive sense and then in a negative backlash provoking sense and later developments. And maybe there's a little element of both in in the role it plays in historicism. I'm not, I'm not, I mean Strauss never dots the eyes and crosses the T's on that.
There is that in German I was, if you make some suggestions without really too much, but in the early Hobbes book, he has this great section on aristocratic virtue, I think the chapter is called where he kind of shows how Hobbes deliberately moved away from that. So of course, you get this backlash, you know, towards a kind of emaciated version of greatness of soul and courage. Yeah, and you makes that point in the Kruger letters that we mentioned before quite quite clearly about the point about the Nietzschean celebration of courage being a kind of backlash against a movement inaugurated by Hobbes. It's in his early stuff on Schmidt too.
Yeah, so at the very end, he signals that you need to engage right in. Yeah, that you need to revisit Hobbes in a more radical way than Schmidt did. He presents Schmidt is ultimately too much in the grips of Hobbes, even as he's trying to break free of him. And I think what he most has in mind is that Schmidt never sort of got back to the ordinary, unfillessopic, direct experience of morality that he so that Hobbes played a role in obscuring.
This may be a good segue to the next question on a show. So Schmidt sort of rightfully, I think how actually Strauss went down to it was still in the grip of Hobbes. But here in this chapter, Strauss is talking about the mistake that a lot of folks make when they understand Hobbes, understand Hobbes, understand how important he was in the history of political philosophy. So to what extent or how is Strauss correcting these present day scholars?
And what does this have to do with, that's why I say this, are they right in taking Hobbes seriously as a founder of a truly scientific study of political science, or in his critique of ancient political thought as being sort of idealistic or even dreamlike? What is the mistake that these present day scholars are making? And then one small follow up is, I thought I remembered you saying potentially that when Strauss refers to present day historian, he might be referring to himself. Yeah, I can explain what I meant by that.
It's the reference on the next page from where we were on 167. So the context of that remark is he's not, this is at the beginning of the section that we're going to focus on. And he's talking now about Hobbes's claim to being the founder of political science, political philosophy. And what can that really mean given the fact that there was obviously a tradition in place, well, and Hobbes is well aware of that tradition.
So what can that possibly mean? And he has this line, he says, at the beginning of the paragraph, I'm going to understand Hobbes's astonishing claim, means to pay proportionate attention to his emphatic rejection of the tradition on the one hand, and to his almost silent agreement with it on the other, which Strauss has just mentioned above that he accepted on trust that political philosophy or political science is possible or necessary. They says for this purpose, one must first identify the tradition. More precisely, one must first see the tradition as Hobbes saw it, and forget for a moment how it presents itself to the present day historian.
Now, here's my reading of that, which may be wrong, but here's what it would mean to say that that's Strauss that, you know, there's when you read these early moderns, and I think this is probably was a challenge for Strauss, it's certainly a challenge for those who have been influenced by Strauss like myself, there's such a tendency when thinking back to how they viewed the ancient tradition in particular, to figure that they saw it the same way Strauss himself saw it, or that we've been learned to see it through Strauss. But that's not necessarily true. In other words, I think that there's a real difficulty one has to think part of interpreting these early modern thinkers well is to try to look through their eyes and see how they saw the classical tradition. And so Strauss may mean, I'm not here saying that what I'm going to describe as a classical tradition is exactly how I see it, or how I would describe it.
And Strauss in a couple other places in natural right in history seems to refer to himself as a present day historian, which in some sense he was. And so that was my the meaning of my suggestion. So that Strauss this year trying to say this is how things appear to Hobbes as he looked back on the tradition. Because I also think by the way that Strauss goes on to indicate that there might have been some things about the tradition that Hobbes missed or didn't understand.
So I think in this sense, I mean, I think just Strauss alerting his readers to, at this moment, I'm going to try to see it as Hobbes saw it. You get that in paragraph 10 as well, which if you've read chapters three and four, it strikes you as a strange, right? He says, Hobbes as well as his most illustrious contemporaries was overwhelmed or elated by a sense of the complete failure of traditional philosophy, a glance at present and past controversies suffice to convince them just a glance, right? That philosophy of the quest for wisdom had not succeeded in transforming itself into wisdom.
This overdue transformation, which I don't even think that last name is incorrect. This overdue transformation was now to be affected, the reaction, I think. And you get this later by paragraph 17 at the end of this section, when he says Hobbes' expectation from political philosophy is incomparably greater than the expectation of the classics. And you get this comment back in chapter one where he says, Man is so constituted that he can find his bliss or satisfaction by articulating the riddle of being.
That's not transformation into a wholly scientific political science on the model of Baconian science. This is something quite different, though it might be more scientific in a deeper sense, right? But you get the sense here, as you read it, like you've read earlier in the book, you're like, wait, what is he talking about? What's Hobbes talking about?
He's got this completely wrong. So you've been sort of primed, I think, by Strauss to object to Hobbes' characterization of the angels. Yeah. And I think one thing he assumed, this is what may be what Strauss has in mind when he talks about the momentous thing that he did share, what the body shared with him was that when he says that he accepted on trust the view that political philosophy or political science at possible or an essay, what he may mean is that Hobbes all along assumed that the purpose of classical political thought was to reshape political life in a more rathal direction.
And it had failed in that. But what he, I think what Strauss means to kind of quietly indicate especially when you put it together with that remark you mentioned of 177, is that he didn't quite see that that wasn't the true purpose of classical political thought or to put it another way. They weren't as trans, they didn't try to transform the world as thoroughly as Hobbes did or think that philosophy should play the role of stepping up and saying, I am now the guide of political life. That's a much, and to go back to Greg's earlier question, one thing I think Strauss would say that his contemporary present day historians got wrong is that they didn't appreciate just how revolutionary and transformational these early moderns intended to be, the Hobbes in particular.
And so one thing Strauss is trying to bring out here is just the extent of their revolutionary ambition, which I think he thinks is not something the ancient shared. And there's no, there's no indication in the preceding chapter. I mean, there's doctrines by which the ancient strive to provide some guidance, a modicum of good guidance to political life. They weren't indifferent to that, but they weren't trying to, you know, to, there's this other striking statement on 177 of building the city of man on the ruins of the city of God.
That's not the kind of thing the ancient philosophers would have ever attempted. I think in Strauss's view. And so one small point to connect this then, it seems like Strauss is saying that the scholars failure to recognize the revolutionary character of Hobbes is in some way also part and parcel of their failure to see something about the ancients, namely that what they misunderstood the ancient's like Hobbes, they thought that the ancients were much more interested in the sort of serious political revolution or something like this. Or you could say this that there's kind of everyday assumption that scholars make and in a way, Hobbes may have made a version of it.
The purpose of political philosophy is to provide philosophic guidance of one kind or another, that a state political life in a better and much more rational direction. But I think what Strauss wants to say is insofar as that is true for the ancients, it's true in a much more attenuated limited sense than it was for the moderns. And so much so that in other Strauss wants to blow apart the thought that the ancients and the moderns are basically at one about that and are just going about the same task in two different ways. I think what he wants to suggest, no, it's not the same task.
And some extent, I think he also wants to suggest Hobbes underestimated that or fail to see that. So, and I think that remark that one of you mentioned, I think it's very about the glance, I think, partly there, I do think he wants to suggest that Hobbes and Descartes also says the same thing there. Look, they were too dismissive of classical thought. And they thought the fact that it hadn't led to a kind of consensus of one sort or another was adequate grounds to dismiss it, which Strauss surely doesn't.
I mean, interesting thing, of course, that Hobbes' main critique of the ancient seems to be that their politics was unrealistic or something like this. But then Hobbes himself goes ahead with a very idealistic political thought. But he tries to ground it on what he takes to be very realistic materialism or atheism. And at the UATX, I mean, are you really helped draw from me?
This is on page 170. That Hobbes may not have been as certain of his metaphysical first principles as he puts forward, right? So this is top page 170. Strauss says what he hobs learned from Plato's natural philosophy was not that the universe cannot be understood if it's not ruled by divine intelligence.
Whatever may have been Hobbes' private thoughts, his natural philosophy is as atheistic as epicurean physics. And here you help me to see, I think, that Strauss seems to be trying to imply that Hobbes may have been doubtful about his own atheistic tendencies, that he was, he would may have been a communist atheist, but he wasn't convinced about the grounds of his atheism. And so there's this weird way in which, I don't know, I'm not sure exactly what my question is here, but like, he sort of chastises the ancients for being idealistic. And yet he builds up a whole edifice on something that itself seems to be fanciful or something like this, if that's the right way to put it.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, well, we would put it is it, well, let me try to try to put it out in a related way. So on the one hand, Strauss pulls no punches in indicating that Hobbes wasn't a, it's in fact, in a late note in the chapter, he just says, he says very directly more directly than he probably says about any other thinker anywhere. He just says, Hobbes, you know, I forget what it's unimportant because it's clear to anybody who looks, I think it's for issue, footo 43 to the chapter, where Strauss just tries to give some clear evidence that I cannot prove here that Hobbes was an atheist, even according to his own view of atheism. And then he, but it's clear that that's his business.
All right, but then the more interesting thing is not whether Hobbes was an atheist, but whether he had some doubts about it. And I think the grounds for thinking that Strauss had some doubts about it are several, one is the remark you just mentioned that he says, he says, whatever may have been Hobbes's private thoughts, which suggests that potentially his private thoughts were at least somehow not as atheistic as his doctrine. And then maybe a more clear cut example is when he goes into developing what he does at some length and in very difficult paragraphs, the character of Hobbes's new scientific approach, it has two key lines in it. Or three, if you put together three things, I think it cashes out to the view that Hobbes says doubts.
If you put together a remark at the bottom of 171, where he says, it is probable that what was foremost in Hobbes's mind was not the vision was the vision not of a new type of philosophy or science, but of a universe that is nothing but bodies and their aimless motion. So you could say have a mechanistic, materialistic, atheistic universe. But then he goes on and says, but, but precisely if that's the case, there's a problem. And he is this another arresting, but not fully unpacked formulation that Hobbes was aware that consistent materialism necessarily culminates in skepticism.
And we can talk maybe later if you want about what he means by that because it's not clear there and he could mean different things. But he does, but in any case, he was aware that materialism somehow culminated in skepticism. And therefore he developed a science, a scientific approach that was, you could say in a sense, constructivist or, or, and that leads into the final remark I wanted to mention at the top of 174, another arresting remark, Hobbes had the earnest desire to be a metaphysical materialist, but he was forced to rest satisfied with a methodical materialism. And what he seems to mean is that his conviction was the universe is nothing but matter in motion.
He was aware that if he that view culminated in skepticism, one thing me, what seeming to mean, including the fact that it couldn't fully vindicate itself. And so that view itself wouldn't secure his atheism. And so according to Strauss, as he moved forward with a methodical materialism. Now, what's the difference between a methodical materialism and a metaphysical one?
I think the key difference is a methodical materialism, its principles are every bit as materialistic as the other. It's it works for materialistic premises, but it doesn't claim to know that those premises are absolutely the truth about reality. It says we're going to work on the, let's assume the matter, let's assume that the universe is matter in motion and go forward and construct the model on that basis. And maybe that model does and maybe it doesn't conform to the truth of the universe.
And so I think if that's the case, and and and Strauss then in the very next paragraph adds that that leads to the consequence that natural science is and will always remain fundamentally hypothetical. So this methodical materialism can't ultimately transcend its hypothetical character. And it seems to me that leaves open the most important question, the question of God. And so Hobbes didn't think that on scientific grounds alone, he could rule out the possibility of God's existence.
That's not to say he thought that God existed, but it's to say that he thought his own deepest conviction was on shaky ground. Yeah, so if I can try to restate that a little bit, and then I want to return to this line about consistent materialism, necessarily culminating in skepticism, it's something like this, if it culminates in skepticism, it means, as he says here, you have to find, you have to invent an island or discover an island that would be exempt from the flux of mechanical causation, right? He then goes through a couple of possible discoveries, right, a natural island, as he puts it in corporeal mind, the corporeal mind, and then he's led to this, he was forced to wonder whether the universe did not leave room for an artificial island, not a natural island for an island to be created by science. So it means hypothetical, posited, and therefore not demonstrated, we're not grounded in nature, and therefore sort of opened it out, right?
And from you could say the position of revelation. But I want to go back then to this, the basis of this motion of this sort of argument, which is why this system materialism necessarily culminates, I mean, I can come up with like shaking your offices, but I want to hear what you think he means. I can think of three, maybe four things Strauss might mean by that, and I think there's some evidence in the text for each of them. So I'm really not sure which of these shots I'll just say what I think they are.
One is perhaps Strauss refers a lot to the flux of blind and aimless causation. So he may have in mind the thought that that vision of the universe just does not see it as a sufficiently ordered place to have a sign that's too chaotic, there's too much flux. So you could say maybe the problem is the flux. Another possible answer is, well, the problem is that if the mind itself is just matter in motion, all thoughts are just deterministically impelled by matter in motion.
And Strauss says some things that could point in that direction. So maybe it's the problem of whether thought has enough independence in that vision. And then another possible problem is, well, maybe it's a materialism that Hobbes had come to see. One could assume, think that the roots are material, but you can't know them.
You can't know what those roots are. There's no sense in Hobbes that you can accomplish the pre-Socratic dream of knowing the knowing exactly what those first material principles are. So maybe it's the darkness of the roots, or maybe it's that given that set of that set of problems, one or two or all three of those, it can't rule out the possibility that there's a mysterious divine will with a root of things. And so it could be the problem.
And I don't know which constellation of those. I'd be curious what you think, Alex, because I've one similar things in mind. But I'm just now realizing, so we should explain to listeners, this is the paragraph 12 that goes from page 171 to 172, that this paragraph, in the passages that we're looking at doesn't have any citations to support these claims. And I wonder whether Strauss himself is unsure, because he says he had learned from Plato or Aristotle.
It's not what his source was, and therefore which arguments? Well, he says Plato and Aristotle twice in the third time, Plato were Aristotle, right? So he even varies that. Yeah, so it has to be that he's unsure of the source, right?
That if the universe has the character ascribed to it by democracy and Epicurean physics, it excludes the possibility of any physics of any science, or in other words, the consistent materialism necessarily culminates in skepticism. So I mean, I can see this in like the Theatetus, for example, right? Or the Fato or book beta of the metaphysics has some interesting arguments dealing with protagorean relativism. And I'm sure there's some stuff in alpha.
Yeah. And so you can get a sense that, I mean, my suggestion here would just be that Strauss himself is uncertain of the source, but he knows that he must have learned this because he learned from Plato or Aristotle that there's a limit to this. But I guess this gets to another point that Strauss makes, I know he makes the book from the fundamental question there, Alex was why materialism necessarily culminates in skepticism. I think that's, did you have any thoughts on why that?
Not what the source of this was, but like, why does it necessarily culminate with skepticism? Yeah, my so I mean, I mean, I see what, yeah, I would jump to something. Yeah, like the Theatetus, just because I'm familiar with it, right? And I have a rough sense of some passages in the metaphysics.
But, you know, if you go to the Theatetus and you get the sort of revived, uh, protagonist, which is given a kind of, like, holistic account, the basis of it is a denial of, of possibility of knowledge of truth, which it seems to deny the personal points. Yeah. But if Devin is right, and I suspect that he has that Strauss is saying that Hobbes, Miss Red, Plato, and Aristotle. So then this would, for me, this would leave a question open.
Is it true? So Hobbes learned, and we've already discussed that Hobbes learned and correctly from Hobbes and Plato, Hobbes learned that consistent material is necessarily culminates in skepticism. Is that, is that conclusion right? I think Strauss is, is endorsing that conclusion.
Okay. Yeah. It seems to, but in this, in this way, that's so typical of natural history. He's endorsing it with this very striking statement that he doesn't explain.
Right. And, and so he kind of leaves you wondering. I mean, there's some remarks and I mean, some of the suggestions I came up with are picking up sort of shreds of possible explanations that he has in the vicinity, but he doesn't go. So I mean, one would wish that the next sentence was, and the reason is because, you know, but he doesn't do that.
Yeah. So, I think that very important passage, this whole passage for understanding the whole structure of this opening chunk, because I think it's to see that Hobbes's natural philosophy is natural science left, would have left him dissatisfied on the most important question. Then I think prepares the suggestion that somehow his political philosophy enters into that picture and helps to address that issue. So this, this leads to a really difficult question because, all right, so he seems to have learned something from Plato and Aristotle's writings on natural science, right, or certain arguments and Strauss's endorsing this conclusion.
But it seems like he has a completely different reaction to that, which is that instead of, and this, I think Strauss refers to this in the book from the 30s as the kind of moral basis of Hobbes's teaching that he ultimately makes a kind of decision. There's a kind of decision, as you could say, at the basis of this, and it comes out of a conviction. But then it makes me wonder, how much is he doing that just out of a deep-seated conviction, or because he recognizes that the new natural science needs some kind of political basis or political scaffolding. I don't know how you want to characterize the reason.
I know you've written about this at length in your Hobbes book. So I'm sure you have some nice and precise formulations on this. But it seems like the ancients would react differently, but to what degree did they react differently, because they weren't faced with this new project? And it makes me wonder whether the figure that's really looming in the background here is vacant, with whom Hobbes was obviously close.
I don't know how you want to go at that. I mean, it seems to me that there's two different tracks to the different reactions. Let me put it this way. If both the ancients and the sacratics seem to concom to the conclusion, I mean, it's not both those ancient sacrum tactics and some of the early moderns Hobbes and Descartes.
And by the way, I think he's talking about Descartes here almost as much as he's talking about Hobbes. But prior paragraph is really more about Descartes than it is about Hobbes. I think they both came to the conclusion, both Descartes and Hobbes on the one hand, the sacratics on the other, that the materialistic roots aren't knowable if they even arm it, even if one can even speak of materialistic roots. So they both gave up on something akin to like the pre-Socratic attempts.
But they responded to that. And in each case, there was an awareness that giving up on that also meant that the question of God resurges and becomes a real problem for philosophy. But I think they responded to it very differently, both on the scientific plane and on the political philosophy plane. And the scientific plane, the early moderners Descartes and Hobbes responded by developing this constructive as science, the new hypothetical methodological materialism.
And I think Descartes was doing this every bit as much, maybe a lot more than Hobbes was really developing this methodologically materialistic new science in the full awareness that it was method only methodologically materialistic. And then on the sacratics side, this is where those early pages of chapter four are so important, where he talks about the Socratic turn and the abandonment of the attempt to know the roots and the turn to the articulation of the given whole. And so there, the answer, the sacratics responded not by developing a new constructivist hypothetical science, but by this more limited approach of sticking to the given world and articulating what's knowable in the given world without claiming to know anything about what it's root. So there's that difference.
And then sort of alongside those ventures, they each developed a political philosophy. But the Socratic political philosophy was very different from the Hobbes. The Socratic political philosophy was the dialectical approach that Strauss had sketched something of in chapter four, starting from ordinary opinions and working from there. The modern approach is this much more ambitious attempt to actually transform the political world, to remake politics in a far more radical way than the ancient would have ever attempted.
So I think Strauss ultimately wants to try to indicate that those pieces have to be put together in each case. One small curiosity about the scientific stuff, I'm kind of reading some Aristotle's writings right now, is the way that both Hobbes and Aristotle go back to math as kind of the model of science, but in radically different ways, right? So Hobbes looks at math as like, yes, let's do that in politics. And Aristotle seems to be saying, well, this is the model for what a real science would look like, but it's not clear that we can actually approach it in any field outside of math.
And by the way, there's a problem because it's not clear that the mathematical objects are actually beings. Right. Yeah. I mean, they both go back to math in a way, but again, another sort of radically different track with the as a model for science.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think in Aristotle's case, you wouldn't be the answer to go back to it. They take it and they run with it. Right. But I think this constructive is the approach of the methodological material is actually happened to teach Descartes this past fall.
And I think it's almost more visible and easier to see because it's more fully laid out in Descartes than it is. I taught an opposite there, but it's harder to see. And it also requires digging into Descartes, which is a book that very few people read anymore. It's a very interesting book, but it's not very few people.
Do you think so? My impression of most folks who are interested in natural science is takes us a lot of our field and we can bring back to Strauss here, but it seems like most natural scientists that I meet don't seem to be aware any longer of the hypothetical character of their undertaking. It seems to be taking as a sort of dogmatic article of faith. I guess my wonder, my question there is to what extent Hobbes and Descartes were explicitly in.
So you mentioned you don't see it in Hobbes so much, for example, and that would have that's intentional, like to obscure from future scientists the hypothetical character of their undertaking. Yeah, I think there's a line that's relevant to that near the top of 174. Right. It's actually right before the line about the metaphysical and methodology, methodical materials.
I don't know why I use this methodical. Oh, that's very good. Oh, yeah. This line's not a worry about that.
So, but there's a line before he's talking about this discovery of the island. You could call the island is the island of hypothetical explanations. Is that discovery or invention eventually permitted an attitude of neutrality or indifference or dissimilar conflict between materialism and spiritualism? In other words, it eventually meant that people scientists stopped thinking about that basic conflict, the question kind of died.
And I mean, I don't think for every modern science of this, that's true, but it's certainly a common phenomenon. Yeah, it may be a and I think that's a problem in Strauss's view. One thing he's trying to do in natural history is reawaken awareness of that secular conflict, right? Are getting back to the bird's eye view passage much earlier.
So yeah, I think he thinks that that in a way was a price that the term to methodical materialism means that the metaphysical question ends up getting kind of dropped along the way. We're gone. One question I have in conjunction with Plato and Aristotle, maybe with the ancient chapter. So whereas Hobbes seems to have a decent grip on the sort of autonomous, to tell you in refutations of materialism or problems of materialism, he seems to have a worse grip on the spirit of ancient political thought.
And you see this when you look at, for example, Strauss's analysis of the best regime, where he says things like on page 139, he says, while the best regime is possible, it's actualization is by no means necessary. It's actually is very difficult, hence improbable, even extremely improbable. For man does not control the conditions under which it could become actual, it's actualization depends on chance and Strauss emphasizes the difference between each of these. But then he continues the best regime, which is according to nature was perhaps never actual.
There's no reason to assume that it is actual at present and it may never become actual. And then he says, it is of its essence to exist in speech as distinguished from deed. In a word, the best regime is in itself to use a term coined by one of the profoundest students that played as a public a utopia. And then he finally at the end of 20 says a very paragraph 20 on page 140 says a very imperfect regime may supply the only just solution to the problem of a given community until he finally at the end of paragraph 21 on page 142 at the bottom.
He says, to some reason one may say that is the characteristic of the classic natural right teaching the coming in the twofold answer to the question of the best regime, the simply best regime, which would be the absolute rule of the wise, the practically best regime is the rule under law of gentleman or the mixed regime. Right. So at that point, the best regime is split in two, one that's purely hypothetical and in speech, like exists as an idea, then the best regime in practice, which is far more moderate. And so it makes me wonder, this is all a long way to do a question, which is, does Hobbes, what Strauss says about Hobbes as a sort of part?
Was that? Does he miss the second part that is? Yeah, I think he misses the second part. In paragraph 10, where he says, this overdue transformation was now to be affected, the transformation was supposed to occur in Hobbes himself, not in the world, right?
He seems to, the transformation is a humbling, right, or moderation of this sort of will. And so it just, I mean, I guess I'm getting back to the question of Hobbes's own psychology or what's driving him at bottom. But it seems like maybe, I wonder, is there kind of an implicit criticism of the ancients that, or at least a Plato, where this extreme sort of idealism, because in Aristotle, you could see really clearly there are two answers, right? But in Plato, you could make the mistake of glaucon and it makes you wonder how similar Hobbes is to glaucon in a way, right?
But not a lot of questions. Is there a political system of Plato coming from Strauss or coming from Hobbes? Coming from Strauss that perhaps it took a while, but perhaps the republic provoked a kind of dangerous idealism, right? And a desire to do it in not so impossible a fashion, but in a possible way, perhaps purely hypothetical.
I mean, maybe I'm not so sure he wants to say, though, that the, I think in saying that Hobbes picked up a certain notion from the ancients of what the purpose of political philosophy was when he says that, you know, that at the top of 167, when he says that Hobbes was indebted to the tradition for a single but momentous idea, he accepted on trust the view that political philosophy or political science is possible or necessary. Okay, I, I, that should be given some way, but I'm not sure that means that all of Hobbes is in a sense idealism should be seen as a kind of platonic injection. But I think you don't want to go to Far E. Yeah, so maybe a certain strength.
Yeah, I do think it comes out in the classic natural right chapter that I think that Strauss thinks as a political matter, Aristotle's approach was more sober than Plato's and probably healthier just politically. I mean, there's a passage about not getting caught up in the dialectical world pool and so forth and leaving things in the in the haze or mist or whatever it is when he's talking about Aristotle's difference from Plato. I mean, it's in the context of also indicating that those differences were not that profound. But I do think it's probably Strauss's judgment that Aristotle's greater moderation of expression put it that way was politically more healthy than than Plato's.
Yeah, there's a comment in the early Hobbes book where he says, whereas Strauss says, whereas Plato's political philosophy is and means to be in harmony with opinion as to the just the beautiful and the good and with political experience. So this is, you know, Aristotle pointing down to the ground and sort of go right and think far more deference to ordinary opinion. Whereas all of that Plato's political philosophy is in principle paradoxical and ready to make demands which can't fully be fully justified by political experience. Thus when Hobbes stimulated by mathematics demands an exact and paradoxical political philosophy and by paradoxically means against orthodoxy, he is departing from Aristotle and going back to Plato.
The turning to Euclid, which Hobbes engaged in is to be characterized at first as a return to Plato's. And there's a kind of platonic spirit infusing. And at first, it's very important because he then goes on to that Hobbes didn't really appreciate the whole dialectical character of platonic. That's actually a very interesting chapter that last chapter.
You were just reading from the last chapter of the political modern. Yeah, that chapter is great. And I think it's and that is the fullest, it's Strauss's fullest early statement on the ancients in the moderns. But it uses that connection between Plato and Hobbes ultimately to draw out a difference.
Yeah, and I think when you talk about the dialectical thing, I think that's getting back to the twofold teaching of the best regime. But it requires, I think, you need to have irony at like, right, creating Plato, less than more so than you do with Aristotle to arrive at that conclusion. Yeah, I mean, and for that reason, I think Plato is far more easily and radically misunderstood than Aristotle. Not that Aristotle hasn't been radically misunderstood, but not as radically as Plato.
Plato really invites, really invites complete misunderstanding. We've spoken about that before. A small question about Strauss's mention of protagonists, Epicurus, and others. It's always struck me that maybe this gets a little bit to Alex's question, Alex, sort of linking Hobbes to Plato.
It's always struck me that Hobbes seems to have a little bit in common with the Sophos and Plato's writings. And so he seems to yoke. And I was just wondering if Strauss, I mean, does he say this about a page 167? When speaking of earlier political philosophers, Hobbes does not mention the tradition whose most famous representatives might be thought to be the Sophists.
And here I thought, is he is Strauss implying that this omission, what is he implying by this omission that actually Hobbes did have something in common with the Sophists? That the Sophists were sort of pre-socratic in a way on one hand but then had political teaching on the other. Now, clearly Hobbes' political teaching is not the same as the Sophists. Yeah, to some extent, I mean, there's a footnote late that is relevant.
I can't find it quickly, I'll give up the search. But it's, it's split on 23. It's at the bottom of 184 and 185 where he compares Hobbes with the classical conventionalist. That's a broader group than the Sophist but it includes the Sophists.
And what he brings out is that in many ways he shares their premises about the conventional character of civil society. But what he brings out though is that there's a difference that according to Hobbes, he doesn't bring that out to denigrate civil society. He's not, you could say he's not criticizing the Nomos in light of Fuses. He's praising Nomos against Fuses.
Civil society, the answer to the problem in nature poses is not a reason, nature is not a reason to be critical of civil society. And I think that points to a kind of great difference of intention despite shared premises. Right. And then Lee that Hobbes was in a way public-spirited and did want to transform political life in a positive direction, in a way that the ancient Sophists, they weren't, their main concern was not the betterment of society.
And it's too simple to say that that was Hobbes's main concern, because I think it brings out other things too. But it was certainly a big part of it for Hobbes. And Strauss, I think nowhere retracts in this chapter, the suggestion that Hobbes was public spirited. He makes that suggestion early on.
And I think it gets complicated, it gets modified, it gets cast in a different light, but it I think never gets wholly retracted. So, and I'm not sure he would say the same thing of the Sophists. He certainly does hold. And then there's another passage that's also relevant to that, where he compares Hobbes's his hedonism with Epicurus's.
And Epicurus wasn't a Sophist, but he held some of the same basic views that they did. And he suggests that there's big differences that Hobbes was trying to politicize. It was trying to turn into a political dawn. And so he used this one relation early on about Hobbes as a founder of political hedonism and political atheism.
And he says that's something that nowhere is that passage. No ancient had thought about United States. Nobody nowhere wears it. It's trying to be one sixty-nine.
No pre-modern atheist doubted that social life required belief in and worship of God or God. But he seems to think Hobbes was the first and later seriously doubt that. Yeah. And I think it's, but I mean, this very thing gets characterized in the final paragraph of the section of paragraph 17 as this unbelievable hope.
It's actually it's picking up by things around five where he says, Hobbes fears that his Leviathan might remind his readers of Plato's Republic. No one could dream of comparing the Leviathan to Lucretius's day re-room that tour, which in a letter to Vogelen Straus says it's a philosophy that finds consolation only from, you know, the holding the ugly truth in a whole darkness, right? So it's it's devoid of any extra hopes. The politicizing of the hedonism relies on it seems like a quite dreamlike hope.
So that at the end of paragraph 17, he says, when cannot leave it at saying that Hobbes agrees with the idealistic tradition in regard to the function and scope of political philosophy, right? The idealistic tradition that he criticized as, as, you know, too idealistic is expectation from political philosophy is incomparably greater, which, you know, greater would mean finite versus infinite, right? Right. I mean, yeah, go ahead.
Sorry. Yeah. I just want to finish this. It's incomparably greater than the expectation of the classics.
No skippy on a dream, illumined by a true vision of the whole reminds his readers of the ultimate futility of all that men can do, right? So even the best regime of the plays republic, you find out somebody forgets to carry the two when calculating the nuptial number, and it all falls apart. You don't get that sense of the heart. It's like a grand historical project in terms of, right?
Yeah. And I think what he's trying to bring out there is this, this distinctively modern combo when you then in the next past next couple paragraphs, links it back even to Machiavelli, this distinctively modern combo of, you sort of lower ends, but much, much greater anticipation of their achievement. And so there was, in a way, you could say modern philosophy is deeply pessimistic, but only in a way, because it also has this world transforming hope, which by the way, Strauss, the chapter we haven't talked about much, but at the bottom of 175, that paragraph, it's really important paragraph because it's the one moment where Strauss clearly comes in and is critical. Yes.
And it's the one time in this, which like a digression in a sense, it even is followed by the remark, the return of, and so that indicates two things. It's a digression, but also he's talking about something broader than Hobbes there. And I think what he's talking about in that paragraph is this modern, how this modern hope in a certain way eclipsed an awareness of eternity in modern minds. And he's, I think, rather clearly critical of that development in that paragraph.
So Can I read a bit of that? I think it's really straight. I think he's talking about, he says, it's hard for us, right, for us to understand how Hobbes could be so hopeful where there was so much cause for despair, like don't you realize what you're doing? And he might be thinking here of the consequences of political atheism, somehow the experience as well as the legitimate anticipation of unheard of progress within the sphere, which is subject to human control, must remain insensitive to the eternal silence of those infinite spaces.
So he's thinking of nihilism, or to the crackings of the Moinam Mundi. In fairness to him, one must add that the long series of disappointments, which subsequent generations experience have not yet succeeded in extinguishing the hope, which he together with his most illustrious contemporaries kindled. I think he has the idea that the sort of hopes of liberalism after World War II and sort of political atheism, haven't been at all checked by the realities of political atheism in the 20th century. Is that a fair interpretive point?
I think he wished. So I mean, I think that you would say they have taken a bad ring at certain times, but they haven't died. So I think he's there, he started looking out over all the modernity and saying this kind of tendency to be hopeful about what we could do in the world that subject to human control, it led to a kind of eclipse of eternity. And that and that hope helped keep that eclipse in place, but it but it I think starts things as not ultimately successful.
And you can't keep that. I mean, I would read the very last sentence of this whole half section in light of that paragraph where he says he makes this another striking remark. The very end of the of the half section is one can even safely go much beyond you about just about changing the world and pushing back nature. So the same thought when can you safely go much beyond it and say that man can expel nature with a hayfork when ceases to be reasonable only if one forgets what the philosophic poet adds, common uskwe recur it.
Nature always coming up with nature nevertheless is going to come back. And I think the point about nature is is brought out in this paragraph we've been just looking at. This is remarkable to me how Hobbes has a reputation for realism and Plato for idealism and Plato basically says there's always going to be problems. And Hobbes says we can fix it.
He says basically and what is this the preface on the citizen or to the letter to the editorics, right? We can achieve immortal peace. We can we can we can put an end to war. Okay, maybe if we were there's food shortages or something that but otherwise we can solve this problem.
Yeah, I've always thought it's a kind of glib but true response that the ancients would give to this early modern attack that they're naive utopians and they need to be realists and they I think they would say wait a minute who are the realists and who are the naive utopians? Yeah, so it's interesting he outlines that this hasn't broken this hope for progress. But then he adds something really interesting that brings him to history. He says still last have they succeeded.
That is they being the long series in breaking down the walls which he Hobbes erected as if in order to limit his vision. The conscious constructs have indeed been replaced by the unplanned workings of history. But history limits our vision in exactly the same way in which the conscious constructs limited the vision of Hobbes. History too fulfills the function of enhancing the status of man and of his world by making him oblivious of the whole or of eternity.
I think what's just to say there you would hope that the disappointments with the disillusion with progress you would hope still more but it's been still less accessible is there would disillusion us with history and reawaken a sort of broader question so that when he brings up that nature with a pitchfork thing I think he's maybe if you compare these two passages you want to say you can spell nature a pitchfork but it's going to come back in but it might not be right now. Right? Like nature has succeeded in breaking through history and to some extent Strauss is trying to give nature a kind of vitality it hasn't had in perhaps 500 years. I agree he reminds a lot of the last part of the exchange with Coachev I think it's in the restatement where the question is whether the last man whether they'll necessarily human nature is such that they'll necessarily be a revolt again or whether it could just settle in and Strauss there expresses his thought that it won't that there'll be a revolt but who knows when who knows how and also the track record of such revolts in eternity isn't necessarily so good so listen I think that's true yeah yeah I'll turn down on a more opposite note the vision of the modern that we need to end up positive maybe the cataclysm will help us return to nature so there you go that's a positive note great it has to be a man made cataclysm we need nuclear bombs we need AI to try to murder us we need something like that all of that is possible and do like rates don't eat no I don't know do you want to do more to this I mean there's always more to say but maybe one last observation about that graph we were just dwelling on it seems to be important when he's talking about what Hobbes was insensitive to he has two quotes he talks about the eternal silence of those infinite spaces and the crackings of the Monet al-Mundi and my understanding is that the first of those is a reference to Pascal and the second is to Lucretius and I think it's a sign there that what Strauss wants to indicate is that both there's both a religious tradition or there's both serious Christian thought and thought informed by classical philosophy are not insensitive to this problem and so in a certain sense there's a common ground you could say between deep serious Christianity and classical thought at least on this matter namely that eternity matters and and we shouldn't lose we shouldn't lose our awareness of it or become insensitive to it so that was just one last footnote to that paragraph I have one other topic I wouldn't mind spending a couple moments on this takes us a little far field but it takes us earlier in the book to classical natural right pages 122 123 I just thought that these this one single paragraph was worth a moment time just because you had such interesting things to say about it that is symposium Strauss this is a credit term before it yeah I don't have a question I just thought that you did such a good job laying out some interesting things and I went back to my you know I was sort of thinking through the sanction myself just maybe it is a nice contrast of what we've been focusing on for modern natural right and what Hobbes thought science could do this paragraph seems to be Strauss making clear than he does anywhere else what he thought classical philosophy could do which I like to understanding the whole and I'll just preface it and you should go run with it because what I was struck by and I think I told Alex this was the previous paragraph before this meaty paragraph ends with a quote from the son of them the paragraph that follows this meaty quote begins with a quote from Zenith and although that one's not attributed attributed and then the meaty paragraph itself in the middle has an unattributed reference to Zenith and economic as tribes so that's my little personal pick a day off but just any further thoughts on this full paragraph?
I mean at that point I think I mentioned this at the thing I don't remember but I think I mentioned it's a very strange fact that that paragraph does not have any footnotes not a single one and not an explicit reference to it's all the stranger because cries out for a footnote to the autobiographical section of the fatal which is absolutely ground zero for the reflection here so it's just a very strange thing and I'll give you one small thought. He's also drawing from a few other places like he's also drawing from that very difficult discussion of the idea of the good at the end of book six of the Republic so maybe it's maybe it doesn't have footnotes because it's a pastiche but a lot of things are pastishes that he gives footnotes. So yeah that's really it's a time I'm sorry and I speculated and I don't really this was just kind of my just guessing really no more than that that one reason that this paragraph not a footnote is it's a kind of fusion it may be a fusion of what Strauss learned from classical thought but only could have learned because of the prior prior influence of Heidegger and Husserl and maybe at some extent meant to see it Strauss himself expressing his own view which is a kind of fusion of Heidegger Husserl and classical thought that was my guess make don't take it for anything more than a guess but it's certainly an extremely interesting paragraph that that I think is Strauss's most direct statement on the Socratic turn as a theoretical reorientation and that's its primary point in the basic I we can't probably don't have time to get into the deep nitty gritty but the basic argument of it is the turn away from the attempt to discover the roots of things which the Pre-Socratic were trying to do but trying to get at the unchanging material roots of things to the articulation of the given whole of the given world without a claim to know it's the roots out of which it emerged and then I think the puzzle Strauss poses there and this is another place where he says a very interesting thing that he doesn't explain he says early in that paragraph that approach was indeed of such a character that it permitted and favored the study of the human things as such that is of the human things and so far as they are not reducible to the divine or natural things and then and then at the end of the paragraph he repeats a version of that after sketching the view he says this view makes possible and it favors in particular the study of the human things and you know I think one can get some traction on what he has in mind by the remark about not reducing the human things to the divine or natural things in other words it allows a study of the human things that's not reducing them to things like matter in motion it lets them speak for themselves so to speak but he may also mean more than that and at least in the conference I was speculating that also the question of that's contained in his remark the divine or natural things whether we should think that first principles are divine or natural he may also be pointing in that direction but that too is just kind of a guess this is I think a classic example of the character of the book where Strauss gives you a certain amount but only a certain amount and that this whole book or not this whole book but the key moments of this book seem to me to really have this character of these very powerful arresting but not unpacked statements and part of that may be that he wanted to leave a lot of that work to his readers I think that's right I'll just my one small suspicion with the three Zenofan illusions is that I mean I think what you said about Husserl and Hijer is more important but that somehow his reading of Zenofan's writing helped him to see the incorrect readings of the fatal so dominant in the day right so that I mean what this you know you're right that this should be peppered with illusions of the fatal but that's not this is not the conventional reading of the fatal by any stretch imagination that this is what the ideas are just the shape of the form of the class characters different tribes of beings oh yes and I think I entirely agree with the thought that his love of Zenofan really helped cure Strauss of a tendency many people have to the hyper-plate nice play out right right right right right right right me Robbie too I mean I suspect that for Robbie right he says into a political reading of Plato's immortality and mortality of the soul and the ideas probably also helped appreciate Zenofan and allowed him to use it as a corrective right saying oh well you want a non-metaphysical play though here's this guy who talks about like horses and dogs but yeah you know just just you know another thing that comes out in those letters um this is Zenofan was on some level Strauss's favorite he calls him in a letter to client a special labeling a special darling and and he who had was it he had the good grace or the good something like the good grace to go down through the centuries disguised as an idiot yeah but I think Strauss loves Zenofan even more than do you love Plato I think that's right we can't end on a possible but we're gonna be throwing a straw on Zenofan this will be Chris for your book good good Lord's he was reading Zenofan in bed and he says oh what do you mean he goes on reading Zenofan and he goes you know sometimes when I read Zenofan I even find Plato too loud yeah yeah well it's a great thanks and very generous with your time thanks I'm sure that you guys yeah yeah we'll have to have to have you back on for the Strauss Proogler correspondence of course yeah no it's a I've started listening to you guys while I'm driving around town now my wife looked at my wife looked up my phone so it plays out of the speakers of my car so I can out here do it here you can certainly take a moment to be able to make sure you're listening and thanks for listening and thanks to the folks don't forget to like rate and subscribe and we'll see you next week on the new thing trade