Welcome back to New Thinkery. My name is David Barr. With me, as always, it's my good friend, Alex. Pretty, how are you?
Well, David. Holidays are over. Yeah. I still hear, but that's a nice visit.
How are you doing? Yeah, he's been visiting. It's been nice. We both have family that's somewhat far away.
And Greg is visiting with his father, too. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm in here in Macedonia, Georgia.
My mom and dad. Where's that in relation to a city? Like, it's about an hour north of the city. What's up with these, like, there's Macedonia, there's Athens.
Is there some story behind that? Georgia? Is that Latin name? My future son will be the leader of the Macedonian Empire over this continent.
That's the plan. Thank you for that. You know, sacrificing information for a bad joke. Anyway.
Sorry, sorry. I have no idea why they chose these things because, you know, they moved over the new country and they had to name stuff like that or something. There's not any, like, immigrant population here or anything. It's classical education, still exerting its influence.
And connections to tonight's text. What are we reading tonight? A lecture that Leo Strauss delivered 26th of February, 1941. So four years before the conclusion of World War II and also prior to a US involvement.
So kind of to set the stage. By 41, Strauss had made it to the United States, fleeing the Nazis. And he was a professor of political science at the new school for social research. And he delivers this lecture in the general seminar of the graduate faculty to, I guess, presumably graduate students and faculty members.
I guess we're in the audience. And but the title is German nihilism. And obviously a topic of the moment, but one that I think Strauss considers there to be some confusion on. And he kind of unpacks nihilism, German nihilism in particular, what that means.
And then he has some kind of thoughts on the future. Yeah, it's it's unpublished. Is that correct? It was published eventually, but not his lifetime.
It was published in interpretation. No, no, no, that's what I mean. So it wasn't, he never prepared it for publication. So the you can Google German nihilism, the Ostrops, you'll find a nice PDF with an introduction that somebody made somebody I think associated with Strauss that are not sure.
But at least in consultation with his daughter, Jenny Strauss-Gley. And they went and found the tech written manuscript, which also had hand written imendations and the kind of cobbled this together. The general seminar we should say was called experiences of the Second World War. And it looks like from you can get this a little bit from by inference from some of the text, other faculty members representing their ideas on national socialism, on nihilism, including one piece that was eventually published.
And he mentions that it's about to be published on sort of intellectual roots of Nazism. And it's interesting. One of our listeners, these themes Steve Hayward pointed out this, you know, if it wasn't published in his lifetime, why not? And he has another, he has another very similar essay called living issues in German post-war philosophy.
He's published in Heinrich Myers, yeah, the living issues of German post-war philosophy. Given in 1940, it echoes a lot of the same themes. This was published in Heinrich Myers book, English translation, is a neo-strouse and theological political problem. And he points out, why not?
Why didn't he publish either of these pieces, right? And maybe he's, and this is my sense of it, he's a bit more direct, much more critical, and Steve's very clearly the problems and less giving to his readers. Yeah, so go ahead, you want to jump in? Just add two small things.
One is, I think another reason not to publish it, we were talking about this before we started recording, is that it gets really in the weeds discussing the work of a couple of scholars. I think that's probably a reason as well. And another reason, I don't know, this is fair or not, but I suspect that one reason might be, he's very sympathetic to the German youth, which probably wasn't, you know, that's a controversial position to take, I think, sort of trying to be sympathetic or trying to understand why young Germans in the 1930s would have attracted to national socialism. And of course listeners will all know that Strauss was Jewish and it's a sort of strange thing.
And that he passed his Hitler in the piece, obviously. But I think when you're saying Greg that there's a potential for some misunderstanding or to cause him some harm. I wonder if that's not a potential for misunderstanding and also it's sort of, there are flashes of really sort of academic technical kinds of things. But it's, nevertheless, I think it's actually very interesting, and this is only where there's our second episode recording Strauss, I think together.
Is that right, fellas? We did the... Just for three, yeah. We did the...
Of course you should be writing. Yeah. Right, right. So this is our only or second one.
I thought it was really important to do. I sort of, as we were, it's footballing ideas for topics. This particular work of Strauss has been quite interesting to me and quite compelling lately in the last few years. We mentioned, I mentioned that one of the things that Strauss does in this article or this lecture, I suppose, is he tries to diagnose what's going on psychologically in the, what made them find this right-winged political party so attractive.
And I've just noticed a similar dissatisfaction among some of my students the last few years. And so I sort of thought that maybe this helps us understand what's going on in the souls of young people who might be attracted to politics that might be viewed as nihilistic. I don't know. You've had experience in all Owlers-Tren.
Yeah. You're teaching in Bernola Hibby, though, so maybe you don't have that issue. Why I teach engineering students, which are kind of different kind of need among them. I mean, I'll be teaching the philosophy department of the semester so I'll see, but it's like...
But yeah, I think there's... You see this a lot online, obviously, but... I mean, so to go back to your point about why you might not have published it, that there might be some shocking statements. I mean, you go so far as to say that it might be sound to reject a minor civilization, right?
That modernity might be an era and straws make states and it's elsewhere. But to say, make those statements in proximity to the points about national socialism is a bit risky for being misunderstood. He makes similar statements in natural right in history where he talks about the reductive ad hit later on, right? We might get a little close to some people who are things here, but don't worry.
That's not what we're talking about. I think that that goes... And that I think connects to the present day issues. I think when you see rising tide of nationalism, where you see the rejection of the sort of global liberal order, the rejection of liberalism generally, and there's a lot of people making a lot of money with their critiques of liberalism.
When you see the popularity of people like Patrick De Nene or Yohar Marzoni, I mean, not to lump them in, but there is a general kind of distrust and justifiable distrust with modernity. So it's a very timely essay even, you know, what is it, 80 years after it was originally given? So what Alex and I are suggesting is that... Well, a couple of things.
First Strauss in this article is titled German Iles and what he seems to be trying to do is to explain the root of German Iles. Where did it come from? What explains it? What's so attractive about it?
And Alex and I are also suggesting, I suppose, that we're seeing some... Obviously it's not the same as different Americans or others of different Germans, but there does seem to be among some young... I'm old now, I guess, but among some young people, I'm seeing a tendency to reject modernity. The integralist you mentioned, right?
There are other various stripes of folks who are saying that modernity... Patrick De Nene's famous book that comes out, right? Liberalism is not just that... Liberalism is decayed, it's that it's rotten to the core.
And so I've seen this in the souls of my young students, some impressive young people, by the way, some very impressive young people. And Strauss gets at this when he talks when he likens them to glaucon. And so I'm sure we'll get to that in just a moment. Before we go too far, Alex, and I just asked you a simple question, one that I would have felt silly asking when I was in grad school, but I probably should have.
What is nihilism? Yeah. Every time I think about that, I'm drawn into... We did an episode on Worspeak by Lisa and Vauxhall with Michael Grinky, and he wrote the preface to that.
And the first line he gives, the first word and sentence is just nothing. It's kind of funny opening, but that's our answer to most of our questions. This is what nihilism is. Nihilism is what's the purpose of life?
Nothing, really. What's the end of our political community? Nothing. There's nothing there.
It's posited. It's made up, but there's nothing to believe in. There's not a new genuine aim, as he puts it there. Strauss offers a kind of...
a few working definitions. He kind of proposes very simple ones, like, willing nothing, which means the destruction of everything, including oneself. So the will to self-destruction. Nihilism shows up in German military's room, but it also can show up in alcoholism, which is, I think, a version of nihilism we still see today.
Oh, oh, oh, oh. I know you're always drinking whiskey down these shows. And then finally, the one he works with, which he admits is a kind of commonplace, but he says it's not bad, is the rejection of the principles of civilization as such. And what he means by civilization is not just like art and stuff like that, but its civilization is organized around the cultivation of reason and of the mind, a belief in the ability to actually reason, soundly about human affairs.
In two ways, theoretically, to reason practically. So, science on one hand and morality on the other, it was a twin pillar of civilization. They seem to go together, they seem to inflict, they seem to be a tension, but it's the reason and theoretical sciences have lost in one hand and wrong. Yeah, and I think...
So the piece is called German nihilism. So it's an analysis of the phenomenon, of the notion of nihilism, in a particular form that it takes in German nihilism. Maybe I can give an overview of just how the essay unfolds to give us a sense of what's going on here. Yeah, I think that'd be helpful.
It breaks up into basically three parts, as he himself divides it up. The first is he's going to get at the motive underlying German nihilism, which he says is non-nihilist. That motive being this critique of modernity, this dissatisfaction with modern life. What makes it nihilistic is that this no to modern life is not accompanied by, yes, there is no positive vision.
In fact, if there is a positive vision, and there are a few, he suggests, the nihilist, the young German nihilist, did have visions, but they didn't really matter. They were refuted, it didn't change their program, which implies that they were just window dressing. Yeah, great. Just a small point on this.
I think the part that really, for me, the part that really makes this article interesting is that the root, and this isn't this part, I believe, of German nihilism, is a straw-diagnosis, is strangely moral. So I would have just assumed that the problem is that they're nihilists, because they're immoral, they don't care about these things. And Strauss is adamant that the source of this nihilism is actually paradoxically, precisely that they're moral. They're rejecting majority on moral grounds, it seems.
But you're right, they're not replacing it with any positive, yes. The moral impulse, as it becomes clear in part three of the essay, is a detraction to courage, in particular. Especially the martial virtues, right? Yeah, yeah.
But courage, what makes an allistic, is courage, untouchable. The good, yeah, the good prudence, right? We'll get a bit of the time here. After going through that, he goes in part two to the circumstances or the situation in which that motivation led to nihilistic aspirations.
He talks about, in particular, he spends, you think of circumstances, situations, and I think of sort of political machinations. He spends most of the time talking actually about education, specifically the way in which progressive education, by which he means socialist, communist, he means, or ideas of modern progress, actually exacerbated things worse. And he offers some intimations of an alternative. The third part is to give that definition of nihilism.
Again, that's the rejection of civilization definition. And then he applies it to Germany and to German militarism, in particular. This is the longest section, the whole essay is quite short. It's not 16 pages, 17 pages, but more than half of it is devoted to that.
And there's a lot here is where Greg was talking about the scholarly bits and some of the minutiae of German culture, German sort of politics at the time. Might be a little bit lost, but I do think it is quite important. And he ultimately ends in this discussion with a really interesting comparison of Nietzsche and the English, where Nietzsche's relationship to the English and how the English as a civilization might respond, and then even gets at the symbolic significance of what he calls the Anglo-German war at the time, but you start about World War II, what the deeper issue with the more abstract significance of it is. Even if I just touch on, I'm not sure if I'm going to do a great job on the art show here, but I was struck by how much Strauss, you know, I think that political scientists and historians, they talk about the causes of the war war II and the attractions and the economic causes, right, the disgrace of the war ones.
And you alluded to this in your account of sort of laying out what this piece is about. I'm struck by how much emphasis Strauss places on education and how much blame he places not on the students, but on the teachers. And you mentioned this just a moment ago, we talked about the progressive education Strauss says, quote, I'm convinced that about the most dangerous thing for these young men was precisely what is called progressive education. They rather needed old fashioned teachers, such old fashioned teachers, of course, as would be undogmatic enough to understand the aspirations of their people as end quote.
So Strauss is saying that this generation of teachers and we have the list here of some of these teachers and teachers of teachers, right, Nietzsche, younger and so on and so forth. But what he's implying is that they didn't understand the deepest longings of the souls of these elite German youths. So he's connecting Strauss's German nihilism to the decline in old fashioned education. I have a question for you else.
What's the connection between old fashioned education and liberal education? Is that? That's immediately where my mind goes as well in thinking about this. Yeah, because I thought he wasn't connecting them, which I would have assumed immediately like, well, clearly what they need is good old fashioned liberal education and I didn't see that in text.
Yeah, he doesn't get into it. I mean, you're inclined to want to connect this maybe to some of his other writings where he brings up the influence of Nietzsche, like liberal education responsibility, which we haven't done in episode on, but we probably should at some point. Sure. Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, to just add on to what you said about the progressive education, it's very tempting to see in students who say no to the present, those who will say yes to your conception of the future to this dream, this vision of the future. The problem is they say they say to know to that as well. So you mistake that in mistaking their their their their note to the present as a yes to your future. And what you end up with is you just accelerate you had fuel to that fire and what do you end up with no positive vision.
What he means by old fashioned education, I think is federally laid out in the course of this. He talks, for instance, of trying to set politics on a natural basis, right, to give it some kind of standard that is known and not really positive really believe one subject to sort of rational justification. I'm thinking a little bit here and I've a result that's at least what it reminds you of. I was actually recording episode on on the beginning of the politics right where the city is said to be natural and therefore your Republican in a way governance right, ruling and being ruled in turn is said to be in a way natural that would be one kind of of a basis.
Right. I also think, and I don't notice this in the show so I made this place to mention it. The idea of a natural politics or something like this or the old fashioned politics. I think you're right that he's talking about Aristotle and aerosols conception of the political man because I don't know if you caught this.
I'm sure you did because our friends and burns mentioned his chapter on this church hill right like the idea that the statesmen are the one the great soul man right what they really needed was to see what the German use what they really needed to see was that this old fashioned type this impressive aristocratic gentlemanly statesmen was possible even in this corrupt degraded modern liberal world. And if they could have been made to see that there was still the possibility of human greatness that might have tempered some of their moral indignation against modernity something like that. Yeah. And when we put in this is getting out of this we're already looking towards the end but this is I think one of the underlying theme no comes up early the church will.
But it's going to the end is the English seem to be he says quite clearly they're not as politically radical they don't get a philosophically radical they don't get at the root of the basis questions where the Germans do. For that reason it seems to me because they're politically more sound right but they can cultivate somebody like church because they didn't throw away the classical viewed way that somehow England had. Although it was at the forefront of modernity in so many ways right still had retained something of its pre-modern ways and so that that's somehow a healthy mixture of modernity is regime that. Is modern but still somehow holding on to the better parts of the pre-modern the aristocratic ways even as go to know it's interesting but.
Even though it's low but stable ground I think you jettison interesting civilizational relishes to so for instance the English can't be said to have produced the kind of interesting thinkers that Germany did. In the same period. Yeah that's exactly in 100 years you know before World War II. Yeah, the each of the way he suggested that he was right to diagnose the philosophic deficiencies of the English wrong to identify that as some sort of deeper.
Political problem or something like a cultural civilization problem is actually sign of civilizational help in a way. One of the things I found I'm sorry I'm sort of a little bit like you can rain me on as you see fit but. Just the idea that the young people the young Germans were morally they sort of found unsavory what modernity had to offer and even the especially the goal of modernity which is sort of the world. Like world peace right the thing that we all sing about and remember all the I'm older than you are but all the bands in 1980s they all came together and all the things that was seen songs about love and peace.
We're in a conquer world hunger we're going to call this on the other and what's interesting and I think I'm somewhat sympathetic to this actually is that this they found repugnant like the young people found the idea of world peace awful because they just asked in there here I think they're talking back to what will the world look like in a world of world peace. I thought that his target there was communism. I think it is I think what was interesting I think what Strauss is saying is that the young German youths were repulsed by the world of. And they also I think there was significant overlap and I think the communist didn't realize this in a way this is why I think Strauss thinks communism is the second wave after the first wave of liberalism.
The goals of communism are actually very much similar to the goals of liberalism right just a world peaceful state where everyone has all their basic. Need to sort of everyone satisfied and I think you're right that he's pointing out that the German youth were specifically opposed to communism but not only communism they were also opposed to liberalism right so they were opposed to. They were opposed to natural rights as mentioned natural rights if I remember in this article so here's here's a quote I just want to read on page 360 of interpretation piece Strauss says. Quote the prospect of a pacified planet without rulers and ruled planetary society devoted to production and consumption only to the production and consumption of spiritual as well as material merchandise was positively horrifying to quite a few very intelligent very decent.
End quote so they're more lead decent people who are also by the idea of a world peaceful state because all it will mean is where it becomes for consumers and producers will be spiritually empty. It's the base thing and I think it's just last man right I guess he will take this from a high to low from a but if you've seen you guys have children so you probably seen it right this cartoon wall right like. You haven't seen Alex I was compelled to watch it and I sort of thought I don't like cartoons was having but it was actually quite good and one of the things that portrays fairly well I think the premise is like the world has been ruined so it's very much you go whatever. But there are the premises that humans have become just they live in these pods they drive around they drink slurpees all day everyone's obese and the machine stake are all the work for them and if you're not repulsed by the world I mean I think something's wrong with you like it's humanity is debased I was talking about nihilism one of my classes and one of my students brought up Wally I always think of that Seth Rogan cartoon with the.
Food in the supermarket the one that ends with the food orgy. Oh that car. Yeah. I was very adult.
I was sick. Move it. Anyways. Yeah.
I mean we had Richard Buckley talking about. I was on association with National Socialism and I think I saw in the writing specifically two writings in total mobilization and that later served as the kind of basis for a book he wrote called the worker. He saw in this a kind of revival of each in or applied each in. I mean just to give you guys a step I read total mobilization and preparation and younger offers in their really incisive critiques of progress and he also offers a vision of what the modern technological state could do that would be redeeming any.
Basically talks about the organization of all industry and of all life around the ability to totally mobilize right for him World War one offered something actually kind of redeeming in a way and he has this wonderful memory goes from a steel but the idea is if we could just organize everything around this we could actually accomplish quite a lot right we can in fact maybe conquer the globe but organizing everything around this offers a kind of redeeming vision and this notion of power being organized around the military virtues he in a way is getting from from Nietzsche and younger and Heidegger and a lot of other people are all kind of feeding on this and Carl Schmitt as well the way he understands politics is basically friends versus enemies. All of this is building on this sort of idea of power struggle and strife as they and in particular reaction to progress in this notion of the last man of just having pleasures and being obese and all that only a small point Schmidt I see Schmidt all over the place now. And it seems extremely popular and that's why I thought this piece would be so interesting sorry good one thing that struck me about this is the lack of any like a positive or prescription unless I missed it in its subtlety so. Yeah so one half expects to to read the diagnosis and then the intellectual diagnosis of the present ills and their genesis and then have Strauss kind of point to a thinker who can help you return to a classical ideal or something like this instead he says well thank God we have England.
Well I think that that's a good point but it may be it's more buried than I realized but I took him to be saying you're right there's Churchill on the one hand so in the world of practical politics I think he's saying England. But the other thing he does is England deserves to be imperial yes he does and it probably did but the other thing I think is important is he says that this nihilism this German is rejection of the twin pillars of civilization so science on one hand and morality on the other. And so he wants is I think in the moral or practical realms return to the lecture which he says in a letter to is it to a letter to Carl Lewis do you remember Alex where he says that he says explicitly that Churchill is the example of ourselves great soul man. And so there is implicit heartening of aerosol and practical matters and in the realm of science I can't find the passage really quickly but I'm sure I could give you a moment he's very careful distinguished science from modern science and so he implies very clearly that the nihilistic rejection of science makes the mistake of identifying modern science with science.
And so it's not very much about a positive project you write David I think he's opening the door for what he'll talk about another writings which is the idea that there are other rationalities or other understandings of science philosophy that can prove superior in many ways to modern philosophy modern science. The rational thought of the grace he doesn't mention one Greek right. Let me let me let me I think David's getting back to this question I think it's a really helpful just guiding question again the Hayward question right why did he publish this I think that might be another reason when he gives the argument on page two three fifty eight the critique of modern society of the open society as he quotes it he advocates on behalf of the closed society in many ways when he in natural right in history in the first two chapters lays out his critique of historicism and relativism what he's in a way is is totally critiquing right the after effects of thinkers like hide your when he gets finally to chapters three and four to laying out the origin of classic natural right in the teaching of classic natural right he comes to defend the closed society but for instance on natural history p 1 32 you get such statements as this civil society as a closed society is possible and necessary so this is an endorsement of this critique of the open society in accordance with justice because it is in accordance with nature. The reason you might not have posted for the very reason that you you say David in a essay in which he's critiquing people for saying no he seems to be saying no right what is this natural basis what is this standard he suggests one exists but he doesn't lay it out at meeting to look at this as a kind of him working out in practical politics questions right in the way that I encourage him is young man living in Germany.
Maybe he's working out the ideas that would receive fuller form in specific I think a natural right history. Yeah, right. Let's go. So he just didn't consider this up to his caliber or were he in.
I think risky is a problem. He rejects nihilism which rejects everything where you left you need to be given something right. But this is a question about this when I didn't understand he defines the nihilism of the German youth I thought that it wasn't a so I agree that it was a rejection of the old way of things but I thought it was an endorsement of this new kind of this new way with Hitler or whatever project that was about so I thought they did believe in something. I mean I'll push back a little bit here and again maybe I'm supplying stuff that maybe I'll just write he works out later but when he implies that the German youth they're like little glaucons I took him to be saying that what they really needed was political lessons and moderation and that really is the kind of education precisely what they needed and the prescription is they need better teachers so I took him to be pointing out the shortcomings of Heidegger at all and showing that these guys didn't really understanding.
Heidegger and these other folks these other German thinkers didn't understand sufficiently the difference between modern science and ancient science in other words. The fundamental mistake that Heidegger makes right seems to be saying that modern science can be traced directly back to ancient science and so failing to make that distinction I think made Heidegger there are two problems one is it made him just lost my time thought one is it made him insufficiently aware of the problem but then making him insufficiently aware of the problem inclined him to this German solution. So then I'm heading out today on the germ the feelings of the German came lazy on something. That's a good question I think it's a university level.
I think I think I mean one could go so far as to say a lot of this might be overturned by I mean we covered this a bit in our persecution episode but I do think Strauss specifically from some of the things he says there but elsewhere as well was trying to re envision what education would look like right. And it looks very limited and academic right and it is kind of talked about the university but in a way you see this contemporary fights over education right education is the lifeblood of the future right and so in a way it's it's by publishing on these ancient texts exhibiting their teaching showing that they still have a kind of vitality that we're ignoring is is a way of rethinking the university and so you see I mean Greg and I've talked a bit about how he echoes of what Strauss is doing here obviously I think absent a lot of the militarism it's usually tied to just working out and other things and other things I mentioned but but you know you you you do I think see that that's moderated a bit right by his emphasis on the classics on Plato and Aristotle whereas for Nietzsche Plato especially but also for Heidegger is a source of corruption right this is a down step on pre-socratic Plato sorry Strauss is is like a confused time Strauss is really I think pushing in the direction say there's a real there's something that stands up to the modern critique. I want to say I think that I mean given we know what I imagine what Strauss was thought between their different human types. I'm not sure that Greek philosophy is the answer for the majority of these German youths and so then the question is the answer for them and they need to church all they need to practice answers they need the old fashioned morality the old fashioned religion they need I mean one thing he points out here is that all we talked about this is that almost all these I listen to this obvious were atheists and that this was a huge problem for German politics is that they write were no longer believers and I wonder a couple questions here one is what's uniquely dangerous about right right wing atheist why are right wing dangerous anymore dangerous than left wing maybe they are you're not even left wing atheist or just Marxist and so I've got that but I mean as you think about just face writings that Strauss has I wonder if when he talks about the demise or the decline of old fashioned education he doesn't also have in mind the fact that so many of these German youth weren't religious anymore they didn't have a traditional bringing in that sense as well.
Well then I wonder why he looked England for the answer the same phenomenon would have been occurring there too. Yeah I think there's the example of English upper classes sure you can hold out church Hill as a kind of a wrist to teal in grateful man but he wasn't your typical aristocrat right but he did you know he went off to sandhurst and he found wars he wasn't constituted in the same way that a lot of the upper class members of the upper class. So maybe we should just let me read from the second last page of this video to just give us a sense of what Strauss has to say about the English he says I believe that Nietzsche is substantially correct in starting that the German tradition is very critical of the ideals of modern civilization and those ideals are of English origin he forgets however to add that the English almost always had the very underment prudence and moderation not to throughout the baby with the bat. That is the prudence to conceive of the modern ideals as a reasonable adaptation of the old and eternal ideal of decency rule of law and of that liberty which is not licensed to change circumstances.
This taking things easy this muddling through this crossing the bridge when one comes to it may have done some harm to the radicalism of English thought but it proved to be a blessing to English life. English never indulged in those radical breaks with the traditions with traditions which played such a role on the continent. They never got rid of the classical tradition so in a way it's almost like an invederate moderation. I've had this experience when talking to certain English very far between people.
I was just talking and she said she acted very very progressive on all these issues and I said do you think you guys will ever go for the year-round? I think that's a bit much. It's just like all this stuff that you fell on to this moderation that's so habitual for the English something like that and I think obviously a form or substantive way is a credit to the English not as philosophers but as a people. And maybe that that always keeping the classical tradition there might not necessarily produce a church or obviously the questions how do you teach virtues and old socratic question but it at least provides fertile soil.
Rather than the soil that's so devoid of this is teaching or so opposed to this teaching the way that Heidi Grenne each were. Do you think that it doesn't produce them at all? Do you think that's why any reference to America is absent from this piece? In later he does mention the opposite.
He's extremely complimentary. But in this work he doesn't point to us as the ideal in singlin. Perhaps that's because we hadn't entered the warrior. Yeah, I'm also not sure the stress thinks we are an ideal.
Do you think that he really thinks England is? No, he thinks it's an ideal. I mean he's not philosophically complimentary of the English at all. Right.
But he points to them having a kind of political advantage. I mean if America is more of an idealist because it's a bit more philosophic at least than it's founding. Right. But I take him to be on the one hand praising the English but I think also pointing to a sort of philosophical defense.
You'll get further reading German authors than English I think he's suggesting but it might be better to live under English society if you want. Healthy politics. I mean since you were talking about the United States, one wonders, I guess I just wanted to explore that a little more. Maybe this isn't very helpful but to what extent is England like United States and to what extent is it not?
Do we have that, you know, Alice and I, one of the reasons we are both interested in turning to this is because we saw some reason to turn to it on the base of the current contemporary political climate. And so do we have similar traditions in the United States? Does United States have this sort of healthy political institutions that Strauss attributes truly or genuinely or falsely or not? I don't know.
I mean, I think that's a very interesting question. Is there something, so the Germans rejected tradition. Is America more like India or is America more like Germany? Does that question make sense?
Like what does the token say about United States? Does America work because it does precisely what Strauss is saying that the English do? Right. There's this healthy mix of tradition and modernity.
Well, healthy issues I suppose. Or is that not fair? What did it put it? Are we just entirely?
Why do you say something more about Tokyo where you're thinking about those lines and what you're going to do now? Well, I mean just on the simplest and most obvious level to me like the clearly America is much more religious than Western Europe. Does that provide a sort of anchor tradition that counterbalances modern nationality? Yes, of course we're utilitarian.
Yes, of course we're materialists, but we're also historically we've been deeply religious. Maybe that's declined in the last two or three generations, but to fulfill that in the 1830s that the religiosity of America was healthy. So something like that. I guess that's what I have in mind.
Let me try it another way. Something like Hillsdale or Claremont or Ashbrook Center, right? Trying to build up a Lincoln or George Washington. Can those models or what Strauss thought Churchill could serve for English, right?
And then teaching that to American used as a sub lubrious undertaking. Yeah, I mean, it seems to be. I mean, he has this statement about, let me find it. I haven't noted here on page three 71 about what happened in Germany, right?
And this is in the absence of an example of something like Churchill or of the religious and sort of liberal education, right? That could that could have offered something like a vision of that in absence of the man itself. He says he talks about the problem of reducing all morality to utilitarian aims to the useful. And he says the difference between the noble and the useful between duty and self interest is most visible in the case of one virtue, courage, military virtue.
The consummation of the actions of every other virtue is or may be rewarded. It actually pays to be just temperate or vain, unificent, etc. You might have glock on here, right? An item, yes.
One can appear just or even be just and you'll get something for it. The consummation of the actions of courage that is deaf on the field of honor, death for one's country is never rewarded. It is the flower of self sacrifice. Courage is the only unambiguously, unutilitarian virtue, right?
In defending men's morality, that is non-versenary morality, that is utilitarian morality. The German philosophers were tempted to overstress the dignity of military virtue in very important cases. I mentioned Schätte Hegel and Nietzsche, they succumbed to that temptation. Yeah, so I think, I don't know if I'm answering your question as much as adding a little bit to it.
Yeah, there's this, there's this, I think, in a way an American culture kind of bulwark against this, this corrosive English teaching. The English were not corroded by having on teaching because of this in veteran moderation. But the Germans, in a way, were civillizationally more susceptible to the corrosive, which is funny because Germans, you think they're all tough. It seems like there's a kind of fragility there, right?
And that made them fall into motors. Sorry, Greg, you want to jump in. Well, actually two points I wanted to talk a lot about this, the attraction of the war, like virtue to the journalists. But before that, you mentioned this, the German youth were not happy with the reduction of the moral to the useful.
So we've been talking about Socrates, I can't help it, be reminded that Socrates does that in a number of places. And that in deeply, in other words, I've been saying that maybe Socrates offers an answer to this glaucon like long of the soul. But in a few of the platonic dialogues, and I'm thinking actually most notably of Xenophon's symposium, whereas Socrates very emphatically insists on this reduction of the noble to the useful. And so, I don't know, in one hand, I want to draw a clear distinction between utilitarianism and the credit-global philosophy.
On the other hand, there are these points where they seem to at least look like they converge. I don't know how much more we'll go to that. I'm happy to switch gears and talk to the work virtues. Yeah, so I mean, I think the thing with glaucon is he ultimately gets a very religious construal of philosophic life in the myth of Earth, right?
This idea that if he makes the right choice of life, he might in the afterlife get to choose an even better life than he'd be prepared for it by having adjusted life before. That seems to be the sort of outcome of that desire to transcend the mere useless. The difficulty is that the Socratic thought in reducing virtue to knowledge, intellectualizes them as well, whereas this is a conscious irrationalism, right? In a way, right?
An endorsement of death. He mentions once Euler's essay on pain, right? The nobility of pain. And in general, just the endorsement of military life of near-death experiences and of even of dying on the battlefield.
He mentions that going through a battle like the Somme was in a way a greater thing, the greatest peak of humanity, like the ordinary soldier. That's not Socratic rationalism, right? And at least the rationalism offers, not like a natural basis. Yeah.
No, that's very good. And I can't help but I don't overstate my sympathy with this, but I can't help but be sympathetic to the notion that modernity is deeply corrupt. I mean, like you just turn on the radio or TikTok, right? Or you do whatever you want, right?
I mean, like the lyrics of music, the way that people dress in public, the big way of pornography. I mean, it's not hard to see how a moral person could look at this and say, we just need to reject this root and branch it. I'm not sure. You're disgusting.
And that's just in my living room, not even, you know, not even in the world writ large. And so I, you know, I don't know. It's hard not to see this corruption. And I think maybe this is helpful.
I don't know. I get to return to my own defense here. But like Strauss would say, yes, this toleration is openness to all human types, but that openness also means that it's open to a variety of impressive types, like church holds or straws or such. But I don't know.
I, you know, I taught Islamic law, contemporary Islamic law, but I taught students. And I sort of jokingly talked about how Said Putsob came to Denver in the 1950s and saw people swear dancing and was repulsed by the immoral, you know, by the way, and you're not going to tell him what he talks. You just tell him moral, the lyrics and the dancing were. And then I read to them, you know, whatever the top 10 song in the Billboard 100 is of the week.
And sort of, and last time it was wap, we've already done the wap, but I'm not going to make the same joke. But right? You read the lyrics. What no, I don't remember what it was.
I think it was a derogatory term for immigrants. But in any event, it was just, you know, I mean, you read these lyrics out loud. You're like, yeah, of course, how can any decent person not think that this is, that were corrupt, that this sort of completely morally degraded. And the result, I think, would be to turn and I would talk about this a little bit would be to turn to courage because courage and this is why aerosol treats it first.
In the list of the moral virtues, because it's the one virtue that you can't, and you just read this passage Alex, it's the one virtue that you can't in any way reduce to being good for the person who acts graciously. Like all of the other virtues can resound to the benefit of the person who's being morally virtuous, but not this one. And so I think that you see, like, it's not, well, actually more moderator, I should do this. It's like, we need to turn to the virtue that's the most polar opposite of this corrupt, depraved self indulgence society.
And the only one that makes the most obvious sense is one that's obviously self-denial, and that's courage and that's sacrifice. It's an ability to do it. It's on her. It's dying in battle.
So I see, I see, I see, I see, Strauss helps me to see why they would turn to courage above all in response. And therefore why they would be attracted to a political program that is so heavily, I guess, engrossed with violence. Yeah, listeners at home should note that as Greg says all this stuff about the degradation of honest society right behind him is a big sign with a paps-blue ribbon. And it says, what do you have?
What do you have? Cold beer. That's right. What are you drinking from?
What are you drinking from? You're going to be braier glass? Yeah, I'm drinking from the McBrayer legacy bourbon. This is a new glass in my old man county for Christmas.
So it's fair to say that Greg critiques of alcoholism and therefore he's one step away from him. Yeah, while he's philosophizing. So, for us, painless and Socrates did it. That's what I'm going on.
That's my defense. I have it in the Republic. I thought they don't eat or drink. I thought that was the little joke.
I'm the Zenefan scholar. He's the Plato scholar and Zenefan supposing that Socrates gets tipsy. Well, you don't know him, Plato, suppose you can't know. Oh, I'm in the Republic.
But yeah, right. On this note, by the way, just for what it's worth in passing, I think I saw this in the Burns essay on this. He emphasized that Strauss points out repeatedly that Socrates did not think that manliness was a philosophic virtue, or a philosophic virtue. And so there is this bifurcation on my hand.
It'd be interesting to talk about that because there is a kind of philosophic courage. Yeah, as we know. I think you think philosopher's manly that's why he's the most for license plate. We all know you think.
I don't know how rid of the bike. It's not. No, but the idea of the courage to keep thinking even when you're ignorant, you try to figure things out. I think there's a kind of fear that can arise that you have to deal with or overcome.
I don't know. I'm stent on this. I encourage you. Any mailbag questions?
Let's do some no-bag questions. So our friend at the show and former guest Justin Groch is impossible to answer questions. Let's skip those. I'll just say people should go look at it for a because I'll read them.
But let me read what Socrates G. Apostle A.O.D.S.M.P.C. D.C.M.O.M.O.M.O. And why did Senor, then Strauss-Iano have a tuna sandwich every third Wednesday?
Why indeed? Motherf***.mihi Piskam at Eggo Platon M. Capillon. I think that's give me fish and I will seize Plato or I'll seize Plato.
There you go. So that's what's the old saying of flavoriness of Aralate. In this one, Glimps is the cunning, the wicked poiosis of the Platonizers of Old and then he has a snowman emoji. I have no idea what any of that means.
Right. Well, I can't publicly phrase that account, but other people find it deeply hilarious. There's a good question. I don't have any answers.
Donald at Rivers of Europe wants to hear about Strauss and Spingwell. I don't have any thoughts. Do you, Greg? No.
I'm going to hear you guys read Spangler. Weren't you reading it? Yeah, I took it from my grandfather's shelf. This is your question.
What's here? I've never, I've never read. I just have the book. I see.
Do volumes. Let me read Justin's questions and if you guys have thoughts on it, but otherwise I think they're good thought-provoking questions for more detail. I think close. So three, three points are questions in ascending order of points.
One, did you notice that Strauss translated Nietzsche's Let's Sir Mench as latest man? Obviously. Yes. Yeah, I got that.
That was on. Yeah. Yeah. I think that might, maybe I was just like a German thing.
I don't know, but it's possibly significance. He says 360, but C375. Why do you think he did that to point to Spangler? I don't know.
Maybe. Two, why the two different ways of referring to the Isle of Minerva on page 363? This could just be an editing issue, but with the Ostrassian, you never know. And number three, this would be the most important.
What is the most important difference between the principles or principle of modern civilization and the principle or principles of civilization as such? And specifically, how does the resistance to the modern principle of aggressive progress and the admiration of Churchill on the one hand go along with the idea that the English deserve quote, to be and to remain an imperial nation, end quote, on the other? But what it's worth is this incredible essay that always repays your reading. Thanks for the notch to do so.
And thank you for these insightful questions that I've never thought on whatsoever. I don't know. Yeah, I got nothing. I do think I was struck by that third question that it really deserves some thought, the difference between the principles of modern civilization and civilization as such.
Well, I think I tried to hit on this a little bit again with the idea that modern science is not equal science. Yes. And modern morality is not equal morality, right? So on the one hand, he gives examples of modern morality.
I can try to find the page, but it's natural rights. It's utilitarianism. There's a third, right? So I mean, you contrast that with the Risitilian understanding of morality more over to you.
And then on the other hand, of course, science, you've got a difference. So different conceptions of morality and science, I think, no? Yeah. Yeah.
I think so. One thing real quick, Justin just followed up with another tweet. He's actually followed him. He could actually forget all that shit.
Just explain to me how the canai and it works. Yeah, like that one's an easy one. That one's an easy one. Is that where he likens Churchill to the Roman?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's Roman. David's trying to talk about it.
That's what he's doing. Would you say we've been blinded by science, Greg? I think the Oliver Minerva might have blinded me with science. Yeah.
Don't forget to don't forget to like, rate, subscribe, don't eat. David is doing a little dance for the folks at home. Do you know what I'm doing video? We could.
And remember, courage is not the answer. What does not kill you sometimes? It kills you. Oh, all right, folks.
We'll see you next week. Bye bye.