Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Barn with me. It's always my good friend Alex, pre-Hurry Alex. How are you doing?
How are you doing? How are you doing? And with us is our good friend, Greg McBrayer. How are you doing Greg?
You know, honestly, a little rough. I feel like making your way in the world that they takes just about everything you got. Yeah, yeah. So what's it like as a man with a tenured job that is nearly impossible to be dislodged from?
Like, say more. You say that, but I mean, like, I feel as though taking a break, sure would mean a lot. I'm just glad that sometimes I can get away and come here where you guys know who I am. And you're glad that I came.
The show is a respite is one chance. I'm really glad that I'm here. So that makes me feel really guilty for my good. Good, good.
Anyway, I was just so happy to be here. That's all. I'm happy to have you. So can I say, I haven't elapsed myself all day.
So we're doing this as our third episode on what is political velocity on the third part, right? Whip. Whip, yeah. Have you guys like seen, like I can't get away from Jerry Seinfeld.
Have you seen him everywhere? Yes. Yeah, he's like giving a due commencement. Different from David Barn.
Watch that actually. David Barr's due commencement. He gets at 6 a.m every morning. But he's giving a commencement to Duke.
And he's like on talk shows and everything. And so I'm sitting around, I'm driving around, think about what is political philosophy. And I'm like, I'm wrapping this up. I just find myself going, what is political philosophy?
Is it political or is it politics? It's not politics. It's not politics. What does it do with political philosophy?
That's pretty good. Yeah, I was just like I found myself doing all sorts of stupid. I won't belabor it, but. That's funny because I think if you look at him I'm trying to do these Seinfeld Strauss.
It's good. I think if you was the Georgia stanza of political philosophy. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, he's the best character on Seinfeld. That's right. That's exactly what I mean. It might be the best character in all of TV is pretty f***ing on it.
He's very, very so annoying. I hated that guy. Exactly. He was great.
So what are we doing? What is political philosophy? Part three. Model.
The modern salutian's. So on the run show, we have why are we doing this? And I would say the answer is because we did part one or two. Yeah.
That's covered. Yeah. How do we say that? Should we talk about?
So just for those who haven't heard or remind you, because it's probably been a week or two, there's three parts to the work. The first is the problem of political philosophy. The second is the classical solution. The third is the modern solutions.
And it begins with this idea that there are multiple solutions. And so I think the main question we want to focus in on is why does modernity characterized by plurality while antiquity by a singularity or uniformity? I don't know, Greg. Do you have other things you want to?
Well, I was just going to say because two is better than one. That's the obvious reason. No, we should probably summarize the previous ones just so we can maybe get. So what was the gist of part one, Alex?
The problem of political philosophy? Yeah, I think we disagreed on this. So I'll lay out my view. I think that the problem of political philosophy is the heterogeneity of that.
I think that comes up as the value of problems. The only time problem is mentioned in the section with the title of political philosophy. And that heterogeneity of ends is posed towards the end of part two as the mystery of the whole and the different quests. He mentions the quest for cosmology in particular in that part.
And so you've got to sense that maybe that's the problem. And the classical solution seems to be an articulation of those problems or the tensions between ends. And the modern, I guess I'll just follow this thought. You're going to do it.
Yeah, is that they lower the standards. So they talk about, he talks about there's a principle, a modern principle, which is a rejection of the classical scheme as unrealistic. The word scheme, which is a David Barr, is one of David Barr's favorite words. Yeah, he uses a sort of monkey value initially, but then for all the early moderns, up until Rousseau, and then he doesn't use it anymore.
And it seems like there's a principle, rejecting answers to unrealistic, that requires lowering the standards. And that means you come up with a scheme to fit those lower standards, a kind of plan or a plot, even I think you mean scheme in the Greek way of a shape or form. Modernity takes several forms and these are the solutions, but also scheme in the Machiavellian way, right? Like, scheming and plotting.
And there seems to be an effort. And that scheme, he says, gets transformed, mitigated, modified. He uses a few different verbs of it. Up until Rousseau gets to where we get a sort of break in modernity.
And I think you get something like the attempt to return to something like a higher ends, but in a peculiarly modern form. There's a kind of struggle to reassert those ends. And it seems like Strauss is trying to do so by a return to the ancient. So I think he ultimately is situated toward the end as a kind of new stage of eternity or the history of philosophy.
And so I think that's why there's multiple schemes is that the principle admits of a variety of constructions. Machiavellian scheme is said to be constructed. And so I wonder whether that's the reason for the plurality. The heterogeneity of ends gives a singularity.
You want to articulate that heterogeneity. That's a singular purpose. But if you have a principle and you're trying to come up with a plot or scheme to fit it, that admits perhaps of different applications. Right.
So I'll just mention principle and scheme, but it's not just constructing this Greek kind of terms. So he's looking at the models maybe through ancient. Let's say that. Well, one small point.
The new thinker, he come here, folks, because we're not only giving you new philosophical insights, we give you new words, neo-logisms. I don't know if he caught this, folks, but Alex Priu said Machiavellian is schlie. So he's turned... I believe not just into an adjective, but into an adverb.
So that's... I stopped listening because I was trying to figure out what that meant. But it also seems like you summarized all of our three. So I don't know where we go from here.
We're done. That sounds persuasive. It's a very difficult episode. Don't read the like, rate, subscribe.
I just want to... Just briefly, what Alex gave you was more or less a description of Strauss's the way that Strauss lays out his argument. Right. To...
We discussed in previous episodes, obviously, what we think Strauss is getting at and what's at play. We did this a lot in the first episode. So we'll try and close some of those loops with respect to his project in this essay. Go on, man.
Well, a couple small points. One is I'll try and provide the scheme that Strauss himself lays on to the modern solutions. Just by way of giving it... Okay, Alex and David both laughed.
I guess it's just me and you listeners. Oh, no, Alex is waiting. Okay. David was just plugging in.
All right. So first I'll just give you an outline of part three, the modern solutions. You guys have to talk to Greg. Greg's sphere was broken.
Because the second he starts talking, we both walk away. That's absolutely... I see because it's making too much noise. But...
Oh, literally as I started talking, they were like, Boost! No, I'm just bending down. You're sitting here. I was just bending down.
As I was saying, remember that beginning episode how great... I was saying how great it was to come here. And you guys, it's like a little respite. It's like our own little...
Anyway. There are four parts to the modern solution, part three. The first part is simply an introductory paragraph. Why we speak of modern solutions in the plural.
That's paragraph 44. And then I think you kind of get Strauss giving you a mini version of his article, The Three Waves of Modernity. Because I see the rest falling into three waves. The first wave of modernity, the second wave of modernity, the third wave of modernity, the first wave, which is paragraphs 45 through 59.
Disguses Machiavelli principally. And then Hobbes in a single paragraph. And then further modifications of Machiavellianism in paragraph 89, where Strauss discusses Hobbes modifications, then Locke's modifications, and finally Montesquieu's modifications of Machiavelli. Sidebar, when Alex was speaking, he was talking about the way that Machiavelli is modified by later thinkers.
It strikes me on my ring of Strauss that Machiavelli knew this and intended these further modifications. He sort of allowed others to do the necessary work that he knew needed to be done. So that's the first wave, paragraphs 45 through 59. The second wave discusses Rousseau and German idealism.
That's paragraphs 60 through 65. Rousseau gets four paragraphs 60 through 64. German idealism gets a single paragraph 65. And the third wave is the final paragraph, Nietzsche, paragraph 66.
A couple of other small points before we move on. Almost half of this part is devoted to Machiavelli, 13 paragraphs in fact. And I think that that is a reflection of Machiavelli's singular importance for modernity. But I will also say that looking back now on the structure of this whole work, what is global philosophy, it seems clearer now that the modern solutions give birth to the current predicament, it seems to me, or the current problem of global philosophy, maybe it's it where.
So it's like part three takes you back to part one, which then turns you back again to part two. That's all I got. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, the idea that Machiavelli's half of this chapters is pretty striking, right?
Right. It's I mean, the central paragraph is about Machiavelli's success. Let me go in one thought here because I liked your point about how Machiavelli's provoking this in paragraph 14, I renumbered each time, which I guess is 47, 57, yeah. It's 14, 57, yeah.
Yeah, he says the following. The first paragraph about how Machiavelli, so that the end of paragraph 56, 13 is this posthumous success of Machiavelli is not comparable importance to that which came about through the transformation of his scheme, a transformation which was inspired by his own principle. So if you want to see this like a philosophical issue in these Greek terms, it would be about the tension between a principle and a scheme or a principle and a kind of structure made to actualize that principle. But he says the following, a Machiavelli scheme was open to serious theoretical difficulties.
The theoretical or cosmological basis of his political teaching was a kind of decayed Aristotelianism. This means that he assumed but did not demonstrate the untenable character of teleological natural science. With any says, this proof was supplied or was thought to be supplied by the new natural science of the 17th century. And here he's bringing up bacon at the end of the paragraph.
So it's almost like by assuming or pointing in the direction of a new possibility, scientific possibility, he provokes people to fill in the gaps. Right. That's exactly right. Yeah.
Well, how he did what he did. Right. This is related to going on a little bit of tangent. Just the connection between natural science and political science, he just reminds me of the way that Strauss treats the character classical political thought and its relation to teleology as well.
It seems like in places, in some places, Strauss insists upon the connection between, for example, aerosol's political science and his cosmology and other places he's at pains to divorce them and say, no, no, aerosol's politics is completely separable from his cosmology. Third point, by the way, it's not clear to me that aerosol's teaching regarding teleology is aerosol's final understanding of things. There might be some difference for Strauss, which he hears about aerosol teaches and whatever is not actually holding from other things. And I think one way to sort of back that point up is in paragraph, the first paragraph of section three, we are fine.
I want you back that claim up. He talked about the fundamental principle of modern political philosophies and he says, it's rejection of the classical scheme as unrealistic. It's the only time he refers to the classics as having a scheme and that scheme we then find later is Aristotelianism, which is then decayed into a non-teliological form. It seems like the moderns notice there's something wrong with Aristotelianism without noticing, and I don't know if he wants to say this about my book, without noticing that Aristotle himself knew that.
Right? And so it's now the result of this and we'll get to this when we get to the third wave, but the result of this at the end of the essay is a kind of oblivion and a rejection of eternity. And it seems like a kind of nihilism ends up creeping in. And so...
Hold on real quick, there's a pressure on that point notes. So what you're saying or implying is that Aristotle's scheme, which may not have been his final position, Aristotle somehow understood that that scheme provided a salutary function in preserving his natural science. His natural science seemed... I don't know the rest of the way, but it's not like he presupposed it because they're intentioned, but that it provides a necessary counterbalance for most people.
That science divorced from this kind of teleology can, except for hand-full people maybe devolve into nihilism. Yeah. Okay. One way to put this is...
I think one of the ways of thinking about what Aristotle is up to is you look in the politics and you don't get a discussion of religious education or theology that you do in the republic. Aristotle's theology is primarily to be found in book Lamb of the Metaphysics. This of course I think with a point you've made a lot, Greg, is that... I mean, the episode with Ariel Halford, we recorded it before this, but it'll come out I think the week after this, but one of the things you brought up is maybe the ancient's anticipated monotheism.
I think one reading of Aristotle and what he does with his physics and metaphysics is to shift the gods from the city to the cosmos. Right? And then you have a cosmic deity that looks closer to something like Christianity or monotheism than what you get in Plato, where you get gods of this city versus that other city. And in that sense, you would be mistaking the political project of Aristotle, a kind of way to secure a place for philosophy for his actual thought.
Right. Right. Right. Right.
Right. Right. Right. You'd be making the same mistake that Aristotle indicates or hints that people made in reading Plato as well.
Exactly. Yeah. And Strauss also indicates that Machiavelli paved the way for these modifications that Hobbes would make and Locke would make and Montesquieu would make. But maybe it's worth pointing out what those modifications are.
How does Hobbes modify? So these are the modern solutions plural and you get three major solutions, but even within the first solution, you get some disagreements. Maybe the first thing to ask is what is Machiavelli's solution to the political to the problem with liberal philosophy? Maybe that's the best place to start.
And then we'll talk about Hobbes and Locke's monotheism modifications. And then it'll be an obvious what Rousse's rejection of those. Well, although of one element and you can jump on this, but he sort of takes Christian propaganda and he uses that tactic to promote this idea of forcing chance. As he says, Machiavelli's the first philosophy attempted to force chance to control the future by embarking on a campaign, a campaign of propaganda.
So he's trying to control the future of philosophy, I suppose, but also just of the West, and sort of the political forces of the West, do a kind of propaganda mission. And it's important to emphasize the idea of forcing chance or conquering chance because it will run through all the way to the last paragraph of this section, feeling the consequences. Is it fair to say that this sort of conquering of chance, maybe this comes out in Hobbes's correction of Machiavelli? At least I thought maybe it was on page 4, 849.
So I don't know, paragraphs, what's that 15 and 16? Machiavelli places great emphasis on the founder, whereas Hobbes places a great deal of emphasis on the state of nature. Those aren't the same, but one can see how they're different, right? And so that therefore maybe connected from Machiavelli part of the solution to the problem of global philosophy is glory.
That doesn't seem to satisfy that. But then you see that Hobbes mitigates this teaching that's all about glory or power. And he turns it into this desire for self-preservation. So you get the kind of alternate for Machiavelli, it's glory or power.
But then the modification Hobbes makes is democratizing it because now we're talking about everyone and everyone has this desire for self-preservation. It seems that's what Hobbes is grounding his solution to the little problem on. Okay, we can rely on self-preservation. That's it.
So then that is what led me to think going back that Machiavelli is modified in Machiavelli. And it's obvious I think to see the modification from Hobbes to Locke. And this I'm quoting him verbatim, paragraph 16 or 59 on page 49. Thus the desire for self-preservation, Hobbes, turns into the desire for property for acquisition and the right to self-preservation becomes the right to unlimited acquisition.
That's Hobbes to Locke. And so Locke's solution to the book, Ramas, we'll just turn everyone into a sort of profit maximizer or something like this. Yeah? Yeah, and this is the bourgeois man becomes, to use Risoui in terms, becomes Locke's solution.
Yeah. Okay. It's Machiavelli in inquisitiveness. Right.
Into economism. So you're not acquiring new principalities, you're acquiring hedge funds and buildings with your name on them on rivers and stuff like this. Yeah, exciting. Yeah, the rejection of glory as vanity.
You're telling a story about glory right before we got on from one of our listeners was talking about your new city. There's another lady, glory. Am I wrong? Yeah, yeah.
It's something about glory. And I think he was an I was because he kept using the word whole. So I think about like an abyss or a living, right? But I don't know.
We have to tell us what all that's about. Yeah. Well, I think he was thinking that glory, like right now, it's rejects of glory is vanity, right? It's a whole.
It's ignorant. Yeah. So therefore it's a kind of vanity of all vanities. Yeah.
So my idea is that all this is stay away from the glory. That's what I'm going to tell you. That makes sense. It's tempting.
It is a good life. It's a simple. Well, not the best life, but it's up there. Right.
The art in opolis. We got to stop this. What? I recommend people read Strauss's early Hobbes book.
A lot of these points are really clear there as well as his. Well, we've talked about German I was a lot that is notes on cautionants concept of the political where you get a sense that standards are lowered by Machiavelli, but then they're made it's made sober without sublimity and subtlety by Hobbes, right? So which is a reference back to page 2080 says of the ancients in the first really beautiful paragraph of the second section says the spirit which animates classical political philosophy may be described as serenity or sublime, so bright. Like, ah, isn't that lovely?
Now it's just sober without any redeeming qualities, but that rejection of glory of the pursuit of honor as a whole, as vain searching by Hobbes leads to a counter movement in German thought to, you know, under the influence, some of the influence over so but to find some redeeming like not a glory hole so much as a as a glory mountain or something like that, right? That one could call it. I just Google some of the terms you're using shameful shameful. I had an image search on to that was a big mistake.
Oh, wow. Oh, my lord. This is unful. I'd like to apologize to the listeners.
I had no idea. This is a family show. We had no idea. Yeah, I was just that.
Moving on. Yeah. Russo. So I go back to Machiavelli.
There's a couple of things I'm not going to talk about. We already talked about cosmology. That's important, but in paragraph 12, which is on page 45, the preceding paragraph and that paragraph, one of the things I'd like to hear a little more about is Machiavelli refers to religions as sects, not get your head out of the other day, but not SCX, SCCTS. And I'm just wondering, so he's trying to explain religion in human terms and he, there are a few, this is important for a number of reasons Alex has already alluded to the notion that you can conquer the world with sort of propaganda, the inimitation of how religions have conquered the world.
Also sort of Strauss says Machiavelli assumed that every religion or sect has a lifespan of between 1,666 and 3,000 years. Now, a few questions. Number one, where in the world is, I know that this is in the discourses, but where does Machiavelli get this from? Is there any legitimacy to this claim?
I mean, it does make sense that religions would sort of have lifespans unless it's the one true religion, but other than that, it seems like, yes, sure. I mean, the Roman gods went away, the Greek gods went away. Does anybody worship Zorast or any more other than the Prius? I come from a long line of Islamic fundamentalist, Greg.
Oh, right. I keep forgetting. My own sense is about your uncle in the helicopter crash last week. I apologize.
Yeah. After speaking positively about Seinfeld, I think I might have a helicopter crash pretty soon. Oh, God. Oh my goodness.
Yeah. I don't know. That's funny. I wonder if you wanted to say it as a lifespan and you had a true religion that's just coming up top of my head.
Does this mean that the second coming and the end of the news is very good. So I guess maybe that's either it's just around the corner or it's going to be, but or it can mean it's all going to end. Right? Because Machiavelli says, you know what I mean, Strauss says, if it's 3,000 years, that might mean Christianity will last another 1,500 years according to Machiavelli.
No, yeah. Or maybe it's about done. Does Machiavelli. Did you get the sense that, I mean, he's, he interprets this that you're right, like he's going to fail.
Do you get the sense that he's he's modifying? I don't know. He says that he borrows not only one element from Christianity, probably Ganda, but there is a kind of similarity between the ends he adopts and only. Yeah.
Yeah. So we can connect to the ends, but there's another way in which I think he's a messianic Christ and it's that I think the success of Christianity depends on his late, like Paul's conversion is really important, right? And Peter as well. So the fact that Jesus has followers who write about him is extremely important and can't perpetuate what he's up to.
And I think that Machiavelli sees, uh, Sloc Montesquieu as his disciples as it were. And so that's another way that I think he's imitating Christ. This is on paragraph 11. But in the ends, yeah, I mean, look, this is, this is really controversial, but I do think that I think that the title of the Prince in fact is a reference to the notion that Machiavelli sees himself as the true Prince of Peace, that the title that Christians sort of put on Christ as Prince of Peace, that Machiavelli's view is that Christianity actually tears the world apart and that he is in fact the actual Prince of Peace.
So in other words, the egalitarianism, the, the comfort, actually, I'm not sure if that's very Christian, but the comfort and the peace, that's, he's the one who's not sure all that actually that. Yeah, the comfort is not very Christian for its worth. Yeah, there's a kind of, uh, desire for the lasting, I mean, I don't know, it's, I guess, blessed to the poor though, the meek and that's that and that's that and the other and you'll suffer if you follow me. There's a kind of release, you know, and I- But my, my yoke is light though, he says Jesus.
So maybe it is sort of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so when he, when he makes this point about, I like that formula that he's the new Prince of Peace because it does feel like you lower the standards and you can find accommodating solutions, but you can achieve the ends of, of, of peace, you know, relatively, that said, there's like a nationalism and a kind of, um, um, sort of martial quality, not just to, you know, obviously the art of war, but also to his thought, he's engaged in a kind of battle. So, but I suppose that's, uh, it's not dissimilar with Christianity where there is this like comfort repose, et cetera, but also hellfire.
Right. That gets, you know, um, you know, the King of France to give up land for a divorce, you know, that's like, I just listened to a really good lecture series, uh, lecture at the time. One of the St. John Friday series actually on hell.
I think the guy's name is Ron, half Litzom, half Litzom, he gave a lecture there called What the heck is hell? Divine judgment in the book of Matthew. So you can find that on, not that we should be promoting other podcasts, but St. John says a pretty good podcast.
They just released those Friday night lectures. The heck is hell is a good title? It was a good title. I was really jealous of that guy.
I was with the hell is heck. I've never understood that. I've been interested in there's a Greeky lecture I had listened to you on, uh, what is heaven? Like what must heaven be like?
Like, or what might heaven be like? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I want to listen to that too. And when path he doesn't fully illuminate or he illuminates it, um, through maybe the son of Machiavellia is modern science. I thought he would have said more about the, um, uh, what bacon rot or what bacon, uh, surmises, especially in this, in the crowd that he's speaking to who are already kind of well aware of the, uh, the, uh, assaults, uh, from modernity, but there's, there's another kind of assault that, that, that leads purports to be non ideological and that's, that's technology and the, and the dangers of technology. Why do you think that he doesn't go into bacon?
And, um, because he's kosher. Okay. That's good. That's given.
I give him, I give him. He's interwist love. It works. Everyone wants an episode.
Greg has a real real. Yeah. Um, it is interesting. He brings up bacon, right?
And bacon is responding to the serious theoretical difficulties, right? And then he just says, but the real, the main reason it had to be modified is scheme was it's revolting care. So it's made by hell. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You're the revolting character of his scheme, right? Just like the murders and all that sort of stuff.
So, uh, and the rape and the, you, you get the sense that that perhaps paragraph 14, like paragraph 16 and 17 of the last section, which would deal with cosmology, these are all the issues that he's dancing around that if you're really engaged with, right? Like bacon's rejection, the proof of the defects of Aristotelianism, right? The question of genuine Aristotelianism or what aerosol generally was saying. Other Socrates understanding of the quest for cosmology, all of these issues might show a greater kinship between Strauss and somebody who's revolting like Machiavelli, who rejects the biblical tradition as an imaginary principality rather than pairing the classics with revelation as a kind of enemy of modernity, which Strauss often forges that alliance when he, when he can't.
So, I mean, that would be my sense of why he might want to wait it. I was also wondering to the degree, the degree to which Israel is a political community whose survival depends inordinately upon natural science. I mean, that is that, I mean, just water, for example, let alone security sort of things. It's just sort of very impressive technologically.
Go on. Well, I've been a few times. I just sort of am deeply impressed by how much we think about the nation. I'd say that you think that Israelis would say that?
I don't know. They would doubtless agree with that statement. Yeah. You think that the primary, their primary, um, onto survival?
I thought it was just the great book. Oh, fair enough. The rest on that, that, that, that supreme pillar. And then of course, like you need that modern.
I mean, I know that even right now it's like a huge hub of tech, right? Or something like this. Yeah, a Tel Aviv in particular. Yeah.
But I don't know what, I just don't know what, I don't know what, that's true in 1950, whatever when Strauss was doing this talk. Yeah. I want to do an episode on Lawrence of Arabia. I was watching it a while back and I thought this is great.
But one of the points that comes up at the end of the movie is he's trying to give the Arabs their own state and he brings them to Damascus and they get there before the British. So they're in control and then it turns out there's no water and people are dying. He's led these people out of the desert for like civilization, but civilization now means modern civilization. And so they're forced to change and they have to give control to the British, which is symbolic of generally the West having control and so far as it's technology, all these places.
So his desire for a primitive life would have to remain in the desert. It can't go to Damascus and it's a sort of conflict that I think these people still living under these ancient books base when survival, et cetera requires technology. At the end of Thought San Mankevelli talks about this a lot of how the ancients can see to the modern, even though they're anti-innovation, they can see to the moderns when it comes to warfare, necessity, governance in this situation. And so that requires a dilution of sort of the classics vision on some level.
Yeah. It's almost, I mean, David's right. It's strange. Strauss seems to be downplaying the scientific aspect of modernity.
And it seems, I mean, he talks about cosmology for goodness sake, which doesn't seem like it's any part of what Machiavelli and Hobbes and Lach are up to. But he doesn't talk about the scientific or only barely elude so when it's clear that it's clear to me, even in Machiavelli, I think we alluded to this in the episodes we've done, that he is intending not just to political but also a scientific revolution. I mean, nature is to be conquered in all its facets. Yeah, you know, it's interesting way back in part one, there's all these like lovelies the anus about philosophy, political philosophy in the quest for the whole and all that sort of stuff and how political philosophy grants all philosophy in section two, like paragraphs, 16, and it seems like when he gets too close, every time he gets close to what he's really pointing out with that, he will shift into a moralizing.
Right. So he'll shift away from bacon to hops. He'll shift to talking about Heidegger, you know, and national socialism at an obvious attempt to introduce a kind of moral judgment in place of a scientific or philosophical question. This isn't keeping with the whole theme of this talk.
It seems to me this essay, What Is Political Philosophy? It seems to take its bearings by the notion that political philosophy is a philosophical in foreign politics. It's the attempt to replace opinion about political things with knowledge about political things. Elsewhere, Strauss has some notes that philosophy is actually the moderate or prudentially guided philosophical inquiry.
And so I'm saying that. Look, I don't want to get political philosophy either. It's a branch of philosophy of politics. And that seems to be the definition of political philosophy that Strauss is going within this essay.
Elsewhere, he seems to say political philosophy is actually philosophy done in a political or covert manner. In other words, what it's really interesting and ultimately is not who should rule or what you govern, but actually what are the beings and how do we actually understand them and that this sort of dialectical inquiry into political matters can actually help you understand the character of the whole or something like this. That seems to be entirely absent here. The whole whole or a different.
The whole whole, the WHOLE, which is glorious. Is the WHO like the A-hole? Is that a different whole? Listen, listen, listen, I'm fine when it's in you, and though for you trot that kind of garbage I know, and you'll end up.
Can I ask you guys a serious question? I don't know if you can. Yeah, probably not. Again, I asked this in a previous episode.
Strauss was invited to give this talk, but he didn't have to. He's a human being. He doesn't have to get on a plane to the WHOLE land and give this exact talk. He's a WHOLE land.
He wanted him. He could have given a talk on anything. So I just curious for your thoughts. He didn't have to put himself in a position where he gets close to something terribly arresting for some of the audience members if they understood the real import and then stop short.
You wouldn't have to be in that position. He didn't have to discuss any theme and believe it. He just got the courage. Anything that he wanted.
So why does he do that? Now that we've gotten to this third part, why do you think he does this? Is he talking to a future leader of Israel? Future intellectual leaders that should understand these things?
I got to say, you have a funny report. So go on. No, no, no, you got to think. Strauss is sitting there.
He's in his 50s. He's been thinking about Jerusalem and Athens for decades. And somebody says, and he's a classical political philosophy, reviving that. That's the lion's share of his energies and his life seems to go in that.
And then he gets a letter from the university of Jerusalem or whatever. And they're like, do you want to come give a talk? Maybe on political philosophy? He's like, oh my gosh, this is the perfect framework.
What would it be like if Socrates gave a lecture at him? Hebrew University. For goodness. Hebrew University.
Yeah. That's a good point. How could he turn it down? What would he turn down for a job at Hebrew University actually?
When he was trying to get out of Germany and I remember having read somewhere. He was being considered for a job, but then his heterodoxy, let's just say, prohibited him from getting a job there. He was not a good candidate. So really on.
I heard a story. I don't know if this is true. So you guys can take it for us. But apparently he inclined when he was a young man and he would just help God is dead just to get a rise out of Klein.
You young Nietzsche. Oh, Nietzsche? Why would get embarrassed? Right.
Right. Oh, so not got his dead. Nietzsche. They would apparently embarrass Klein.
He would just pick up. So I wonder if it wasn't a kind of fun challenge to do something. Hey, I mean, if it's true that he was sort of passed over for a job there that, but then the second thing I wonder if it's just sort of a challenge of so terrorism, I mean, to put it kind of flatly to be able to go into the den of the lions like Daniel and emerge unscathed. I mean, then it would sound like what we're really thinking is this is something like Strauss's apology or the apology of Strauss.
Yeah. Maybe in a way, I mean, it feels like that. I mean, he's got three parts. He's got three parts just like the apology.
It's increasingly radical. I guess, but it begins with this sort of very, what seems to me, I'll see my final real quick. The first paragraph seems very apologetic, like defensive in the classical sense, right? I'm not used to speaking in a place like this, forgive me, this sort of thing.
It is a kind of, but he is kind of before a council of elders. Yeah. It's a very new country. I mean, these are an intellectual crowd of less than a decade old.
That's a really palagentia. So it's a really good point. And when you think about it like that, and you go back to the first paragraph, you can feel the irony, epic, right? He starts with, it is a great honor at the same time, a challenge to accept a task of particular difficulty to be asked to speak about political philosophy in Jerusalem, right?
And then he goes on to explain in this city and in this land, the theme of political philosophy, the city of righteousness, the faithful city has been taken more seriously than anywhere else on earth. That might not be a compliment, right? To say it's been taken. And then he goes on to say, nowhere else has the longing for justice and the justice and the just city build the purest hearts and loftiest souls with such zeal is on the sacred soil.
So the sacred is tied to a kind of, and the purest is tied to a kind of zealotry, right? And that's what is meant by this seriousness. And then you get this line, I know all too well that I'm utterly unable to convey to you what in the best possible case, in the case of any man, would be no more than a faint reproduction or a weak imitation of our prophet's vision, right? So I mean, it's remarkable.
Like there's a comparison of the vision that appeals to zeal, to the faintness of human wisdom, right? And then he can't convey this to them to them. They're somehow not receptive. Why can't he convey it?
Sorry, I missed that. It seems like the zeal. Oh, that would be good. The security, the zealousness, the righteousness and the faith, as a result of being filled up by the prophet's vision, renders human wisdom look like a faint reproduction or weak imitation.
Yeah. And then what happens? So you start reading it, it's like it's showering with praise, but when you look at the praise, it might seem quite qualified, which you realize that what the challenge really is, which is you're speaking about a radically opposed enterprise in the belly of the beast. Yeah.
You would also expect if I was in the audience, first generation, generation Israeli, a learned person, I'd say, Oh, great, we're going to be treated to an exegesis. At least a few paragraphs on my monadies, you know, first medieval cited as Aquinas. I don't know what that's about. In Latin, I didn't chase that down.
So I'm not exactly sure what he was doing, but the medieval's in general aren't touched upon in my monadies in particular. There's no great exploration of any of the tensions he dealt with, which would have been terminated to this talk. I take that. I mean, just like he doesn't cover all the moderns, I actually take that to be an implication of medieval's or a continuation of classical thought.
It might also that that might be wasn't a break. Like the moderns broke the medieval's an outbreak. Yeah. And he says that elsewhere.
Right. But I wonder if that's one of the reasons another reason why he stays away from Aristotelianism. Say more. Well, you'd have to get you would have implications if he rejects Aristotelianism, it would have implications about the effectiveness of Machiavelli's proof in the guide.
Oh, I remember this. I remember this Aquinas quote by the way, this is about a page 11. Like it's my monadies. This is Aquinas quote at the bottom.
Sorry, you're correcting me or him. I was correcting now what he said. Oh, got you know, the quote. The Aquinas quotes at the bottom of page 11.
And there's no little about the high things that a lot about below, which would fit really well with the Machiavellianism of the modern solutions. So Alex, why not pay lip service to this? Why not underscore the continuity between the ancients and the medieval's, right? You could have brought the differences probably.
He could have spent a little bit of time. I mean, to rescue the classics, he's forced to show that Socrates was not committed to a specific cosmology. He does not trace this thought through Plato and Aristotle. He does show Machiavell's rejection of Aristotelianism, right?
So basically he tables a lot, the whole issue of cosmology from Socrates up until Machiavellian Baker, right? And, and so the status of Platonism, Aristotelianism and my monies as well is I think if he would have bring out that continuity, he would bring out the discontinuity between that and the socratic side of things. And that would put him on the back foot. Instead, he can sort of gut that whole middle part and just leave it aside.
Yeah. I just have one final question. I know what it's political philosophy. What is political philosophy?
Is that philosophy? Well, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like Ray Bruce, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, and see you. We talked about the very end. Fine.
Let's hurry it on up out. Tell me about the end. Money again. You want to talk about Nietzsche?
Oh, I see what's going on here. I know, I know, I know. I know, I know. I just wanted to say the stuff about.
We didn't talk about Nietzsche, so that seems fair, actually. We should probably talk. It's only one paragraph, but no, come on. But I think he's a positive.
No, he's a positive. He says, the oblivion of eternity, or in other words, estrangement, demands deepest desire. And there with from the primary issues, right, the eternal God or the eternity of the universe, if he's in a revelation, right, the Mahadeem problem, say, if that's one of the primary issues, that's the price modern man had to pay from the very beginning for attempting to be absolutely sovereign, to become the master and owner of nature to conquer chance. You have to reject the eternal or the superhuman in any form, right?
And in that sense, Strauss is in alliance, right? With his audience. But that's a decently secondary sense. If indeed the primary issue is what is the eternal, right?
Or what is the super human? Right? Is it a creator God? Room anything as possible?
is there some sort of fixed standard or fixed nature, even if it's the standard of something like a fundamental problem or question, right? If that's the primary issue, then he's effectively used the problem of modernity as a sort of target to create a alliance that he can then sort of avoid. It's definitely what we were saying when we, this was so long ago, when we discussed my monodies letter on astrology. Episode A2?
Yeah, was that? Yeah, episode A2. I'm going to look at that afterwards. With onishment?
Yeah, was it A2? Yeah. You just remember the one that Ottawa was on? I remember the ending.
Oh, wait, that was a... Yeah, anyways, go list everybody. I have a serious point when you are at least my monodies, forms an alliance over against astrology, right? He's allowed to sort of...
Right. Yeah. Anyways. I'm a serious point, I'm going to reiterate that lesson.
It's, Strauss says, for a Bolivian of eternity, in other words, estrangement or man's deepest desire in their with from the primary issues is the price which modern men had to pay from the very beginning for attempting to be absolutely sovereign, to become a master and owner of nature, to conquer chance. I wonder if Strauss isn't saying that was a bad deal. The price wasn't worth it. Or it wasn't worth the price you had to pay, but maybe there was some other price that is worth it.
Well, same with your second. I was just thinking about the way that the symposium seems to a strange man from his deepest desires, to make clear to you that some of your deepest desires may be rational or something like this. Yeah, I wonder if estrangement would be the right word that? Sure.
Because estrangement... Yeah, fair enough. Becoming stranger to yourself, right? You could become a stranger to the deep desires.
If you think that... Let's say that I had desires to make a lot of money, I've become a strange to those desires once I realized that money making wasn't the best end or something like this. I don't know. Maybe this is semantic, but just to throw out the other...
I think you're right. I mean, would you become most familiar with that desire and most aware of that desire? Maybe more than people who are driven by their lives? Fine, but let me say that a little more clearly than that.
I think that in the... And this connects to our earlier conversation about Aristotle's teleology and teleological natural science. It's not clear to me on the basis of reading Plato's symposium that one arrives at eternity. That's some elliptical sh...
All right, let's end it on that. I mean, go listen to those episodes. I think Greg's being elliptical about something he was perfectly transparent about in another episode. We're connecting dots between other episodes.
That was episode 97. He stopped lying. You were close with my mommy's one. I was 80.
Well, that depends on your counting. The episode released twice for Christmas and the... Remember that one little Thanksgiving? Hello, happy Thanksgiving?
He's run the numbers, man. It depends on how you count. Yeah. All right, everybody, I'm counting on.
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