Roundtable Discussion of Leo Strauss' Natural Right and History

Hi and welcome back to the new thingery. If you're hearing my voice, David's not with us, because we're our speaker. We're in Austin, Texas, a hub of innovation, industry, and we're here at the University of New University of Austin, U-A-T-X. And they're hosting this great conference on Leo Strauss, natural writing history.

And there's a lot of distinguished faculty. And also us. Yeah, there's a lot of distinguished faculty. We figured since we're here talking about natural writing, history might be doing a sort of general discussion about the book as a whole, sort of our reactions to it first reading it, and later on questions and all that.

So yeah, I guess we should just thank you. Absolutely. They generously post out in the same hotel room, which is lovely. It's nice to be here with you again.

It's like for four grad students all over against you. They were out of the just a big thing. Oh, so I guess you know, it's very much the thing. Let's introduce our guest.

Sure, happen to introduce. Yeah, please. Devin Stofford, I've been on the New Thinkery before, so this is a second time for me. Thank you very much.

And I teach the University of Texas. I'm Mark Witt. I haven't been on the New Thinkery before. Welcome to the past, will not be again.

I've been on the YouTube channel. And I teach at Clarener Organic College. Nice. I'm Chris Lynch, YouTube 30 State University.

Yeah, I'm in the chat with my guest. I guess I did screw it up to that. No, I'm sorry. Can we tell before we move on to the meat of the show?

Can we talk about, you always make one of my little workups? Oh, yeah, you did your workup. Yeah, but Chris joined me this morning. We met with some folks here in Austin.

We did F3. It's a nice mixture of calisthenics and bodyweight stuff. And they call them a nickname. We all have our little silly nicknames.

I'm hesitant. We're in this talk. What's your question? Mine is, so you go around at the end, and it's really nice, sort of humbling.

It's nice to be a little bit pejorative. But they don't want anybody to take themselves to a series of the calm. And of course, when I'm there, and they say, what do you do for living nice about teachable deposit? What do I do for that?

So I play that when I hear something like, oh, play it. So mine is going to be playing on the show. Which they thought was insulting, but actually that was going to go back. So Chris, I have a name now.

Down in Derta. Down in Derta. Because they heard about Machiavellian, 30 tricks. But our 45-year-old over there is sitting there and very relaxed.

It's six-year-old. And that's his back support. Well, mine is even my gym. It's the old man.

The old man. No, I don't have a name. We once went to a place which we had a retreat, a parent can retreat. And there was a minor bird.

And my wife and my wife went to the last. And we all passed the bird and said, well, who's the more important they do our arms to all? And the bird said, like, oh. So that's not the same.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That sounds about the reality. That's right. So yeah, let's get jump in the now.

Sure, I guess. I thought we could start with what it was like meeting us for the first time. And I think we should start with Martin. I think we'd be interested to go with a order of age from all this to youngest.

I think it's nice. I think it's nice. I just needed more weight here. But I think you're a little bit un-sake-sleech.

Riliter. So I think the impression of the book does change the better. Wouldn't it, rather? Can you mention you read it first in 1964 or something?

Yeah, so I see nobody was trying to think about it, which is sort of the scale. I don't think that was very rude. That was it. You mentioned in 1964.

You were a baby. You were very advanced. I was a baby. I was a bad baby.

I was 17. I entered college at 16. And so you really worry about it. Yeah, I really was.

Oh, wow. So I became part of the Army and Mansfield, sophomore and we read a bunch of things. And I became interested in Strauss. And he said, well, why don't you read After Writing History?

So I went out curbsayers. I was in the place called Elliott and I asked you to walk up in stairs. And I pulled out After Writing History. And I said, in a moment, this is dense.

I said, yes, it's very dense. So my first impression of After Writing History is that it was this dense and complex book. And over time, I understand it better than I did then. But I also said, you know, set the people back then.

We understood After Writing History not just intellectually but politically. Right. It was really difficult to work. And it looks as if Strauss had something to say about depending on the actual right, which then meant something about natural rights, which meant something about Google democracy and why it would better than the communists.

So it had a political meaning as well as a kind of intellectual meaning. But it was a difficult book, even though it's in some sense, less difficult than some of the other books. But it was difficult enough. So that's my first impression.

And that was your first impression of Strauss as well. First impression is the first thing we read of Strauss. In that software seminar, we looked at the symposium, the Persian letters, among other things, we looked at some material from the social contract and developers' travels. So we concentrated on the books.

No, Strauss and Strauss hadn't written anything on a lot of things. So that was your first impression. What was your second impression? I do have a question of the seventh impression of the book itself.

It's not what this is. It's interesting because you read it before the seventh impression. I think when you read the premise of the seventh impression, it kind of pushes against maybe some of our first readings such. Also, I'm just curious.

Did you ever get to be stressed? Almost. No. There were two times.

And once he came to give a lecture at Wellesley, but I wanted to know when I didn't see my girlfriend. I didn't see my wife. It's a poor guy. Right.

And that's a lot more to do with nature, if not natural right. And that's a second time. It's an interesting story. I was teaching University of Pennsylvania, and a friend of mine, somebody who all know David Shafer, was teaching at a temple university.

And the Rangers, Strauss, would come and do the talk. So they're all sitting in the faculty club of a temple. And David had arranged that I would be sitting next to Strauss, maybe you sit across from Strauss. And Strauss never showed up.

And it turned out that that was the weekend up to his fatal heart attack. So it seems a little bit of extreme things to do just not to meet me. But I really wanted to see him. I'm not going to ask you.

Thank you for that story then. So I never actually got to meet Strauss. You probably can prove it. You should have survived.

It's way out. I can't do it. Surely you could prove that. Right.

At least at a certain age. We'll be all gay. So everyone will want to write it up. Chris Lynch, what about you?

When did you first encounter him? That's right. Mr. I can remember.

Fair enough. I like the contrast between Mark. Do you notice that Mark remembered the syllabus from the first class? Yeah.

When he was 16 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I came from him.

I made him when he got over. He'll be 60 and got a little older. And he'll be coming back. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, for me, I came to Strauss not by a disco or a violin shot. Actually, I was tripped into into Strauss by Henry Garrett. I'm St.

John's conference room. You know, Henry, but he's very he's just the most applicable kindest, generous person. He also has like a pursuing intellect. But he tripped me into going to the command social doc, which he made me think was basically St.

John's ready kids. And I got there and he was in a couple of weeks on sitting here considering things like, maybe chairing really, he's so bad. He says, why not quite sure why it against that? So it was really kind of getting into it.

I got into it a little bit. I got it certain, so on and so on. So when I finally opened natural right, I do remember that. I didn't like it at all.

So I was left winged. For me actually, it was a political reaction too. The beginning is a certain part. To me, all the things people say about Straussians, it's going to be cranky, right by conservative declaration of penance.

I don't care about that. Do I ever know if you get long hair and like supposed to grab something like this? Yeah, I'll let it crack it. That's what you're saying.

So it's not like, you know, it sounds like this would be a 1973 right by that was 10. I guess it was 80. Wow, right by. Oh wait, no, so before closing came out?

So it was right. Yeah, so it was the other day. It was the other day. So it was, but I had not even read closing, but I kind of opened up the past.

It was like I didn't. I didn't have to smoke, correct. So yeah, I didn't, it just was to me, I don't know. And then I read it much as well.

It was a long individual text like, bought something like that. Like, ah, there's a, instead I came around to this. So it was better. The discussion of the ancient book.

You said you were like, this is a crazy book. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, three years later. Was it closing your favorite?

Yeah, I think that was the great one. What was your reaction to it? I did not like it. So I got into the social thought and I was driving back to the US from Annapolis.

And I figured I'd have to look at this book that just came out. I'm keeping the best seller. And I remember, I didn't throw it out the window, but when I got to the Rock and Roll stuff, I never just, I didn't even get to the good stuff. And it was only after I saw it, when I was in the last night of the back.

But that book started getting worse. Done. Huh. Yeah.

Well even though, like Chris, I was a lefty when I was young, and I had a very stiff room to be able to be able to be. Yeah, but yeah. But I guess I broke with that a little more quickly than Chris did. And Bloom was also very instrumental for me, but I had a very different initial reaction.

I think at last time I was on your podcast, during the lightning round, you're asking about my trajectory. And closing American mind was a turn point in my life, reading that book. So I encountered Bloom before I encountered Scraut on your own. Or had a professor.

Well, I know actually I mentioned to say, I guess last time you had my father, a little sociologist, gave me the closing American mind to read before he read it himself. I wonder if he could play it too. Had me read it himself. But there was a kind of confluence of things.

Reading the closing American mind, the good fortune of studying at Kenyon with the number which I just walked into unknowingly these great classrooms with terrific strategy and professors. And then Chris Bloom gave a lecture at Kenyon my senior year. And so all of those things came together. That's on YouTube.

Yes, that's an excellent one. Yeah, so those things came together. So it was either my senior year at Kenyon or more likely the summer after, as I was preparing to go to BC for graduate school, that I read, started gifted to the stratosphere for the first time. And that's where I did this is the place where I dipped in.

And I remember my main reaction was two things. I was troubled by relativism at the time. I didn't like relativism, but I was kind of worried that it was true. And so my first thought was Strauss is going to give us a way out of that.

And so I was attracted to it as a counter, a serious counter argument to relativism. And then at a more personal level, I liked the critique of Vaymer because Vaymer was a hero of my sociologist father. But hey, that, you know, I'm going to read this critique. It's devastating.

And that happened to the couple of times. Yes, yes. And so my father and I went, I sort of moved also a little bit politically. We loved, my father was on the left, but he loved to argue.

And so we had many, many friendly arguments. And Strauss's critique of Vaymer was one of the, so we used Strauss to be good. Yes, exactly. It was about a hundred minutes.

I was literally used to the book. We've been a ten-year-old. Yeah, I know that we're not guests, but I just thought, I just, and it's like, I studied with Bob Bartlett, who's a six-year-old. I was like, he doesn't have any personal insight, anything about Strauss or anything.

I was like, I heard him, I think I found Bloom closing just because I was the reader public. And I was like, oh, this guy, he wrote a book. I remember walking to library, shipping up. But my introduction to Strauss, Robert, was my professor, John Owen, Michael My Love.

And he was a great man, but he was very early in his academic career. And my senior year, Bob, was unspatable. And so I had an old and just class, who was very first-year. And we did favor, and then that's right.

And I sort of came to this later, I think I have an up on the bottom of my junior year. And so here it is, I have one little three class. And then I'm in this class where we're reading papers, and I was like, hey, I have no idea what's going on. I was just thrown off in the divan, I don't think I made any heads or tails of what was going on, but in retrospect, it was nice.

So I should say that was really what Jut was doing in class. Because we did like fish, fish, and we got a lot of sort of content, and they did fish, and these guys, and I did sense at the time, I didn't know Jut didn't teach at like Strauss at the right answer here. But he kind of just kind of lay in receipts, and I remember thinking, oh, this is because I went to a school, every university was extremely the relativism of the dominance, if I shall leave there. And so obviously the fact that this was the only book that we had in ours, like this guy's challenging.

That was very cute. I was struck by also, we talked about some of the industrial. I was struck by how, like, if you'd like thoughts on that, it's very cryptic, it's difficult to get through. You read this, it's difficult, but it's like steam, it's like, like, friction, pushing you, or you can brew, historicist, and brew, those products, the agents.

And there's like, I was just struck by power, you know, for some. In my generation, everyone had to read, Weber and Floyd and Marx. And so, oh, the critique of Weber was bizarre, because we actually had heard a lot about Weber, heard a lot of Weber, everybody had. So it made sense that Weber would be the target, and that one would have to study it.

Yeah, but that's true about natural, and this way, the other first thing I really looked at was the title I say, a monosyllic philosophy. And about a year or so before, it'd be 63, I guess, city and man that come out. And those were all books which were, in a certain sense, comprehensible. But then the next one was Socrates and Aristotle.

That's funny, man. What is this? That was the different kind of thing, from the actual idea. So you were thinking this out last week.

Yes, at that point, I was thinking about, as they came out and the man decided a little bit. Yeah, the Socrates and Aristotle is a different kind of thing, in various ways, obviously, from Eden, city and man. I remember, I remember, I think that the, my opinion about the best way to introduce this rouse is, the book that he says is an introduction which is not true. Yeah, that for me, I think, really cool.

Yeah. What do you think he's telling us? What's the real? How to read?

How to read? I mean, it's in this book. It isn't good for that. No, it's, I mean, you can, as a teacher, I think the way we're teaching it at this symposium, I think helps with the how to read.

But if you're just reading it yourself, rouse isn't giving me clues on how to read. You gotta kind of figure that whereas in tyranny, it's, you know, at the same time that it's doing political philosophy, you're saying, okay, guys, this is how it's done. And as he said, you know, that all the eyes and bras, all the teeth, you know, so you gotta do some work that you, yeah, it's more genuine. You think that's the most, like a due to ratio between most tactics?

The on the text, exactly. Yeah, like the text, it seems to be like it's expanded. It's, I think that's really good. I thought you were gonna say something that I'm gonna say, I think it's the most open sources in any of its conanteries.

And I don't think it is. I think it's, it's actually on the machine of light mode, actually. No. But that was the first, you know, his kind of pieces I need to thought after he kind of really, his turn, what's the start of these, right?

And then the, and not tyranny, that was the first book playing. So yeah, I do think he, in those pieces, he may have been a little more open and in some of his later more cryptic writings on classical thought. Neon, Chris Neon is also, he's also, he's, he has an article on the spirit of his, he's been upon the city. Good article.

So I mean, maybe we'll kind of dance in on this way, what is goals? What do you think he's out? I mean, I get started by saying, I think it's a new go. It starts with, I think those first two chapters are really crucial for kind of reasons that at least two of you have mentioned.

People are best by the sources, and they still want to not just, you know, since I think they create social, the sources and the general of this are these next things. So I think the idea is, go ahead and engage kind of the intellectual gods of our era. And then, you know, it's not completely clearing the ground, but at least open people's minds to the possibility of, oh, wow, maybe there is an approach to a social science, and a fair quote, sir, that is evaluative that does make judgments about better and worse. And I can maybe provide answers to the question, what is natural right, what is justice by nature?

And that open is then, you know, that the first two chapters provide is then occupied by the next couple chapters that bring you back to the ancient thought, but through this really weird chapter, which is going to be taught today, I don't know if it's you or correct. For instance, it's doing three and then I'm doing four. So three and four, so it's the entire three, the title of the story. So that's the origin of the idea of natural right.

So it's not a super heavily, there are footnotes, but it's not super heavily typed. It's not here's the author I'm writing about. It brings you in through a sort of natural consciousness, common sense understanding of a pre-scientific understanding and you can kind of just read it. Right, and the interesting things about the ideas.

And then the chapter that I'm just going to be doing is, and then you get the author's, the classic author's entry, that's in the order, that's not so much right. Yeah, the way it's chapter four. And then you get the modern reaction to that and then the reaction to that reaction. And it really does, by the end of the YouTube bar, open to the study of political philosophy.

You haven't really quite done it yet, but you're really open to the two of the by the end. Yeah, can I just add a, I suspect me, you know, that it's things to be the book written most obviously for an American audience. It starts by speaking to American audience. It seems to me as a book that sort of starts where at least fairly well educated Americans are like, and then tries to find a pathway to Strauss's own most important theme.

So you could say, I mean, this would be a very, if you had made a list of Strauss's central questions, not everybody would agree with the list, but my list would be the theological question, reason and revelation, the divide between the ancients and the moderns and the recovery of classical thought and those three things intersect in complicated ways. And all of those are in natural right in history, but he doesn't lead with it. So he tries to, it seems to me, he tries to find a pathway from the more contemporary questions back to those, shows that deep enough engagement, even with the contemporary debates, will ultimately should lead one back in the direction of those themes. So those aren't just idiosyncratic things that he pulled out of his own interest.

And it also seems to me, I mentioned that my first reaction to the book was to see it as a counter-arguing to relativism. I think my second reaction was to be really struck by the presentation of the reason, revelation question at the end of chapter two that I was talking about. Is he, I mean, he was talking to people, among others like I was, when I first encountered the book, people who didn't take that question very seriously, growing up and who were, as he puts it about, you're religious because fate forced them to be your religious and saying, look, there's a very important question here that you're neglecting. Let me add a couple of things to that.

I think there's also some degree of reference to a confrontation with the American conservatism of the time, the servant, yes, because of the emphasis on birth and the emphasis on historicism, this is a term we didn't know, we've all mentioned relativism, but, you know, it's found in many ways just introduced that term and way of thinking to a lot of an American audience, right? I mean, the Germans thought about it, wrote about it, 30 years before that as well. But the connection between the stories isn't conservative, isn't relativism and so on. That's part of it as well.

But they're also, I think, and not to be underestimated, the serious look at central thinkers of modern political thought or modern political philosophy and who else was actually treating Locke for himself in serious or Hobbes with that kind of seriousness. I think very, very think people work when he puts oneself back to when he's writing this book, as opposed to what we all see later. You know, there were such deep discussions, especially compared to everything else that was there, which wasn't all that much, but such as it was, it wasn't very deep, that he made the whole subject come alive with modern thinkers as well as classic and his own basic themes, I think. He really ruffles and feathers, especially in England, I think, where there was a little bit more of a kind of Locke and Hobbes discussion that he was recently vindicated by this discovery.

Right, that letter. Yeah, this letter, which one of the main objections in natural art history was this. Count of Locke as rooted in Hobbes was dismissed with a kind of thought, by especially as an initial letter to sing more about the letter. Oh, this is the recent letter that was discovered by a memoir reporting a remark that Hobbes made to a, I mean, yes, that Locke made to a friend about how he always had a copy of Hobbes on his desk and recommended the reading, but intended to deny that he would really have it with the guy.

So we had a little later, he, yeah, it's a print saying, it's weird, I've seen Locke, he used to, and then later he says, I never read that. Yeah, I never had that. There was this completely strange. Yeah, I never read that.

I never read that. That's a lot of the time Peter Lasle, but he was the editor of the two pieces. Really just like New York and it's, that's a lot of it was the fact that, you know, scraps needed to walk as so much connect with the halls and the rest of them didn't. So that was very controversial.

But, you know, when you look at Lasle, it can treat them seriously, but not in a truly serious way. And so, you know, there was, you know, there was a whole lot about just the basic modern, modern filters by looking at it. So who do you get to the, you know, I have a very questioning. Oh, no, no, no.

So, I then mentioned that I think that this is right. And this talk about this yesterday in seminar, that this book seems to be principally for the Maronotis, that it's got this political reaction that I think it's trying to get actually. And so, now that I was talking about this, it's always the only thing. So I sort of always thought back in the head that this sort of Strauss was magnumovis, that this is the thing that Peter wants to study sometime.

But Alex gave you some pause and thought, well, if this is painted in a Maronotis, is that right? Maybe thoughts on the Capelli is actually his magnumovis. Where do you think, I guess the question I'm asking is, where do you think this book stands along his works? So what do you think he thought this story among this works?

I think it's in some ways an introduction of sorts. I mean, I don't mean that could apply, not that not that serious, I don't mean that, but it's much more of an overview than most of this works. It's much more wide ranging. And inevitable consequences of that is it can't go into the same depth of detail as it does in other.

So I would say in a certain respect, vis-a-vis the rest of this work is it points beyond itself. You know, so for instance, just a clear example, there's a very brief statement on Mac development in there, which obviously you would say, see us this 300 page, what I wrote about you up. And so I think in many of these, I mean, not in every part, but the number of the thinkers that you treat in that right history is much more in depth detailed studies that I think compliment and deepen what he does here. And it kind of goes with what you were saying before that sort of key elements, I mean, not the exoteric esoteric esoteric, that's not made in the magick here, that's one of the things that Strauss brought, but the key sort of teachings and distinction in the Stations versus Modern, the reason for this revelation laid out in, you know, a somewhat introductory fashion.

I think it does serve and did serve. This is kind of echoing, kind of Myers take on this book, serve the function of helping to create a school of spoolle of spoolle of spoolle. I mean, you sort of do need to have kind of some positive doctrines that people can kind of see and take stands on and this book does that. I think successfully, without, as as Devin just said, without being super visual and making stuff up.

So I think a couple of things, I think it's addressed of course, yes, I think primarily in American audience, but also to a journey of audience. I think the focus discussion of his sources and rap of his sources and some of the discussion of German legalism, what a reference is to that. It's addressed to also, I think his home audience and his contemporaries, many of them are German contemporary. So I don't think it's only addressed to an American audience.

I sort of mean, I don't know, like he would have thought to a bit as most important book, but I guess I would say they would be the material on Santa Fean of Machiavelli, because those are two thinkers who do a lot of commonness, much beyond what anyone thought at the time. As they're from Harvey Mansfield, I think this is not to say it's no important to best, but that his favorite book was his Aristophanes book. He has a letter that, he has a letter that particularly really is sort of something. Yeah, I'm finishing up this book on Aristotle, but it's really amazing.

But the real thing I want to get is Aristophanes. But he also has a similar letter about, I think to, I don't know, it's the, and the faith and philosophy of response. Yeah, he has a very, yeah, he says he really wants to raise a precious, I think it was a precious chapter, the middle of the nation, really. It seems to me that those later pieces, in a way you could say, he earned the right to write them by writing a book like this, a broader, more synoptic thing that gives people a whole raw picture, because if you had just written stuff like the late works he wrote at ancient thought, I think it would have been very hard for him to get much of an audience at all, it would have just seen strength.

But by writing pieces like natural writing history, and yesterday we're gonna be talking about what is political philosophy. He kind of gave an overarching framework that made people see where those, where those more cryptic words fit in. In observations about those, more cryptic words. I mentioned this in class the other day, I think it's important to divide stress as books are sort of trying to think of the corpus overall.

And I think a key division is between those looks that name in the title and author or a book, from those that do not name themes or questions that you manage with history and book and Socrates, and your stock names and the other. If you look at those six books that are, have names and titles, which I think are the more serious books, they all are about, and this is in putting the laws with either Machiavelli or Socrates or other. All of them. Interesting.

That's not counting the early fobs. Yeah, that's the last one. That's the last one. That's the last one.

That's the last one. Well, why everything that needs to be said though, more or less at the same time in the National League History has published persecution in the art of writing. It's published. The persecution in the art of writing has contained within itself some very detailed, very, very, very, for an American audience and probably every other audience as well.

Obscure discussions about the pure thinkers. So, I have to remember that as well. And persecution, the title essay, is the essay that many people focused on thinking about what was then just folk, esoteric system, no one thought that to use the term exotens, that would be the other way around. That's not what it was.

But then all the discussion with people thinkers is so important to stress, of course, was very obscure, I think, in digital. So, at the same time, he's publishing something like natural art history. He's, again, bringing to the surface the importance of thinkers not considered important by an American audience or by very many other audiences at that time. And one of the three awesomeies for me, not for industry now, wouldn't occur to me in my first or second or fifth reading, but that you're remarks just reminded me.

This is moving to our classical rationalist Socrates, but his own roots to class was through the meetings. And so, it's a strange story, also whether there's no mention of the meetings here. It means it's just because it's obscure. He's just that one paragraph in classic, actually, right, where he's talking about our difference between Christian, the other two in this event, it's a lot of Jewishness in the meeting, which contains at the end the footnote.

He did it out, so these are the ones that they're not being charged. He did. It's a straight up episode, by the way. He did it out.

Those stories, we don't forget to go right on that. He's never going to be fighting out. He's fighting out. And again, for the rest of the discussion.

He's going to do it to the Qasari. Yeah, it's a reference to the whole of the Christian, the reason to read, especially in the last couple of pages. He has this one sentence racist. I say, it has given you an account of the basis of esotericists and why perclusivity.

But it is actually, also, when you think about the axoteric esoteric distinction, which is so associated with structs, it's really you need to not even mention, there's no mention of esotericists in the city. And you would expect it in the account of how to be late, right? If he's going to, I think purposefully, holds back from using it. I mean, now, so it's more controversial than anything.

I just don't think it's better for the people's people. And it's where it's like more of a literary. But I mean, he does the same thing. But here, if you have to say, where's the discussion of esotericism, it's in the blockchain.

That's what I'm just going to say. The lock is the place where he really builds into it. I mean, I don't know if he used it, call it the view to the words. No.

I don't think he does. But he, and that's what caused such a kerfuffle with the other lock scholars was the suggestion that lock was a hexo-soteric, right? We talked against it with the office, but we were thinking about it. I mean, Christian was talking to Elvie earlier.

I was surprised at some of the answers. Is there a different chapter or a favorite part? Well, my favorite part, I mean, they're all, they're all like, of course, since we're asking the answer these questions. And listeners, and that's right.

They are all one audience. That's like the origin of a right chapter. And then, even my side of interest, the historicism chapter. The chapter went extremely, you know.

So for me, I guess I say a couple things. The end of the paper chapter, the statement on the bird's eye view of the recent revelation, it was just a, it remains a favorite part because it was an event in my own life to read it and encounter it. And it really kind of woke me up. I mean, I now see that statement in a somewhat different life than when I, as I maybe not, this last word on the matter.

But at the time, it really woke me up to a question that I hadn't been ignoring. And then, and then I've always loved the classic natural right chapter. And I also think the first 10 pages or so of the hops chapter is a very deep and interesting statement. Should we read this paragraph?

I mean, some of them have to do it a big time. Yeah, I mean, we have a little. Oh, you're great. Oh, you know, that's why he's not asking me.

I was like, oh, I'm on the elevator. No, I'm not. Or did he get the idea of the paraphrase? I just, I think it's so bad.

It's a pretty good. That's just why. We've got to create some tension for the audience. Why?

It's completely hypothetical. It's injectural. Like, what does it actually look like? I mean, I like the way that, although I mentioned before, you know, he goes to the answers.

I like the way Annapers way by the way that he depicts the coming into being a philosophy of the idea from what one can reason about how human beings are and how things would have to have on to discover the concept of nature, have that be the deliberate object of their inquiries and how that relate to, well, how should we live? Is there some way to live as a part of nature? The way that it is derived out of plausible explanations or explication of human questioning and human being, it's just, I love that. It's not.

I'm interpreting this text a bit out of it. You know, it's interesting. It's caused all of these passages. You look at chapter one as well as chapter one.

As well as chapter one. And then when he gets to the reconstruction of the conventional argument of fragments, to the words IQ section, and I would ask this list, paragraph four through seven, the classic contour I'd make use is on account of the secretations within it. It's efficient and in relationship to where they've been. All of these are where Strauss kind of sets aside books to a certain degree or where he's really doing his own thing with the text rather than, as you say, the sort of post-textual mouse.

But these are very powerful. But I think you really do get a sense of the power of stress as an independent thinker. And you start to realize this, I think, that he really belongs to a bit of thinkers that he's talking about, that he and his own writers doing something big to send to the people. You know, I've got to go into that in the water sort of philosophy.

I say, oh, it's important to face that sort of out as well. In addition to what you would expect in terms of his discussion of other thinkers, that there are a couple of times in which Strauss analyzes politics, political ideas, political thinking, in the broadest sense, independently. And of course, it's this kind of cosmological discussion of heterogeneity, the homogeneity, the kind of thing you don't see other places. So you see some of that natural identity, some of that in the broadest philosophy, I say, which is, I think, the other essay which had, at least again, from my generation, a similar impact to the man from my history.

And that was a good idea. I was just going to add, I also think the reason that Third Chapter is so powerful is it brings out another point that made a big impact on me that philosophy, at least as the classics, can see that it really meant something. I mean, in other words, it makes it clear that philosophy doesn't just mean deep thinking or questioning, but it really stands for something. And it stands in a way for the discovery of nature and then all that's applied.

And that becomes very, very problematic. Like connecting the very meaning of philosophy with the discovery of nature seems to be a very important. And part of what gives that chapter its highly, like philosophy is not just an interesting human activity. It's not just thinking hard about stuff.

It's not just questioning. But it has certain premises of resuppositions to it. There is even in that first paragraph, there's this like shaking up of traditional life. First paragraph of that third chapter.

This is what it was like to start thinking about. And it also becomes a very dramatic moment in the book because the book you think, we're gonna get a defensive natural right, we're gonna get a defensive natural right, we're gonna get a defensive natural right, we're gonna get a defensive natural right. Then you get the discovery of nature. And then instead of getting a defensive natural right, the first thing you get hit with is the conventional aspect of the chapter.

Now that's not the last word you have before is you get the response. But still, suddenly the question of natural right becomes really problematic in the second half of the third chapter because prior to the classic right because rather powerful, critique by the conventionalists laid out in the last part of that chapter. So maybe a good thing to do would be transition. We guys have more thoughts about the text itself.

But I'd like to hear a little more about the history of the program. We're here at the University of Austin where they sort of revived this symposium. But you guys have been a part of this kind of thing that passed. So maybe even just talk about this a little bit.

I was asking that. Yeah, I didn't want to remark about nature and trees. I'm not gonna do that. You know, trees are things we don't make.

And that is the fundamental part of what nature means in the more basic sense as well. So it's not as if there's no connection. With the everyday understanding of the natural. We started this program at Clareman, but basically I did a little bit of a personal aid on.

We have gathered some funding to do a series of seminars to largely involving scholars, but then we started with the group's name. We could do some of the funding for a chat on this kind of summer session right at the end of Sfreez Investor to bring some excellent undergraduates and graduate students selected by people who we would actually realize to really have a deep discussion of stress. And that's the origin of the program. And that is with many programs, funding ends.

But then funding can be restored. And it's being restored. And we thought that this would be a good venue as well. Maybe you can speak about that.

Yeah, I would get restored. Yeah, we still have a basic loopy cause. Chris made on that discussion with Lord and Dr. Connected them to the school here.

And we thought, well, let's try. So we tried for the funding and we have the funding again. And that's why. And of course, this enterprise here is an enterprise that's trying to restore basic thinking about basic fundamental issues.

So it seemed to be a sense of a place to return to their other places. Also, obviously, the program, not a program such as this. So basically, that's the origin of the program. And when did it start doing it?

We did it for, I'd say, three years or so. And maybe 10 years ago, we did it when I was the head of the Sound Jewelry Center, which is one of the research institutes at Claremont, Canada. And then they stopped doing it when I was no longer head of the Sound Jewelry Center. And they made a commitment a year, at least, it's made as much three years.

And the funding is three years. So we'll see how it goes. But we did it for three or four years. And we were able to save some funding as well.

So it would be a good thing to continue for sure, into quick agility. You want to go back to the nature. No, no, that's enough. Things I said when I was doing that.

The whole notion of nature is not something that floats from nowhere. But they're a common sense of understanding of what nature is. Just reading better, Daddy's, I guess, is UOG for Strauss? No.

It's a UOG for Strauss. It's a UOG for Strauss. Yeah, it ends by Al-Brit. But he ends by 40 Strauss saying, not a moment passes without me thinking about dogs, and horses, and doggies, and the old-fashioned others.

Yeah, yeah. Which I find very general. You know what? You know what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally imagine that. And that's saying, yeah. But they're commoner every day, I'm saying.

What's an actual thing to make the trees. And there's a sense of which, when you talk about someone's nature or anything's nature, you have in mind something general, or universal or a role to that. So as with other things, you can start with an everyday understanding and then work your way forward as you need to work your way forward. But it's not as if this current comes from nowhere.

It was curious that he thought, I mean, by the better days, he's kind of a stress about himself, he thought about these things all the time. But it didn't write about them. It sounds almost like the Senate and Socrates, who's always writing about more little things. Or you wrote about them in a very extreme way.

OK. But I didn't manage to talk about mules. Yeah, I got that. I want that.

I want that. The mule, I got a couple of new mules. Well, while we're on nature, it's a narrow convention, the sense of political philosophy, which is also going to be taught at the symposium. I just want to point out that the ending of this passage that Mark referred to, it's the homogeneity, heterogeneity.

Right. Passipit at the end, it's, I think, for the end of that paragraph, it's the most beautiful things. Right. Something you would say, the only beautiful thing.

But it's a beautiful passage. And it ends with the phrase, and it grays by nature. It's great. So that, I think it's quite appropriate that we're doing that, let's say, along with it.

Can you briefly, since you mentioned it, speak about neurogenetics, that's the place where you should talk about this, to some degree. Or maybe a nice and all-chum. Such an easy subject to the nail in five minutes. But yeah, I think, you know, Strauss puts forward, what you would want to have if philosophy couldn't really do what it wants to do, and just combine, you know, sort of mathematical technology of absolutely everything that you could give a circuit count for.

And it would be comforting. And on the other hand, on the other hand, the different kinds of things that come to light when you're in the real world making real decisions, like A states and it meets the meaning about what's good and bad and wrong. You want to be able to have both of them. And it doesn't seem, as he says, that that combination is worth coming.

But the two different parts are there, because I get the things are there. So the question, the invitation is to pursue both of them without getting an entirely so one. I mean, there are different ways in which things are poles and things are parts, human beings, trees. They have their independence, which one needs to think through, as far as one can think them through, and as high as one can think them through, one has to think through as well.

Their connections, while they still have their independence, the political world was a good example of that. But at the same time, of course, there's the way in which everything seems to be the same or identical, not not because it's the obvious example of that, or the way in which one can understand or try to understand everything at that level. So it's particularly not just the difficulty of understanding parts and their connections, though, as parts, even the poles, but in much common in that sense. But also then connecting that in some way or other to this basic uniformity in which everything seems to be the same, marin motion, as we would say now.

And to put that together is, let's say, a task, which doesn't admit of an obvious solution to that. I mean, for me, thinking about this, I always think it was the second public. The first deduction is an attempt to understand pure unity, and a conclusion, racist. I mean, I know you cannot speak about this thing.

It is not this. It is not anything. It cannot be. And that's a pure unity of being.

And it ends up being a really helpful place of return to be a very difficult. It's got some useful arguments. But then it turns out the other way to a picture is as a whole, or it's, which is its contradiction. It's not that it isn't any of these things.

It's all a contradiction. And then as you get to the leader part, an use from a purex, obviously. It seems like the letter of humanity, which is just to say, and you're saying, is what have to be the case if you're going to get acknowledged through it? Right?

And the opinion is going to have, within it, some kind of connection forward. The way you put it in, chapter four. Well, if you can also, to say the phenomenon, if you can't simply, if you're saying a phenomenon, trying to understand them, you can't simply reduce them to a blanket, your opponent. And you want us to deal with the fact that, to some large degree, there is that kind of uniformity, different, even from the great difficulty of saving parts within meaningful holes.

So it's a difficult question. Yeah, the poematities is a tough enough dialogue to look at that issue. And to bring us back to natural history for a moment, there is a kind of statement on this issue. I guess I'll tell you what maybe about the journey, I didn't get it.

I was going to get 125. Where he speaks is Plato. Yeah, I was actually just a few pages before. Where he speaks.

Well, it's too long to read the whole passage. Well, I'll say that there's a statement that's the fourth paragraph in that chapter, which is, most direct statement he ever makes on theoretical thoughts involved in the Socratic term. Abandoned into the pre-Socratic attempt to get at the roots of things. And he doesn't use the phrase, noetic heterogeneity there.

But I think the thought is lurking throughout that passage. And then extends into the one you were about to mention. So maybe you should. Let me read one line from that.

I think it's all he says. Where I am so much. This is obviously one is 23 paragraph, the lowering three. He says this is the long one.

He says to understand the whole and then he eventually comes to the is to perceive the unity which is hidden behind the variety of things or appearances. It's not that sorry. But to understand the unity that is revealed in the manifest articulation of the completed old, which he then goes on to say that the distinction in the various sciences corresponds to the natural articulation. So there's a manifest articulation, the natural articulation.

And then obviously he's 125 toward the end of paragraph six. When he speaks as Plato as it were said. To any opinion about right now, however, fantastic or primitive that he leads, you can be certain prior to having investigated. Which I'm going to talk about this in my paper later.

But that's such an odd issue. Thanks. You can be certain prior to having investigated that it points beyond itself. That there are people who cherish the opinion in question and contradict that very people somehow.

And thus are forced to go beyond it in the direction of the one true view of justice provided for us. That's the kind of promise of a manifest articulation moving onto a natural that has to end. That is somehow at the heart of the way. Plato is saying what needs to be a straws to put into it.

I'm hoping that when you talk about this later today, you'll pause at least after discussion. On this phrase, the completed whole. And especially in my introduction, they have access to the completed whole. So one other thing to say, I haven't touched on is part of the fact that he was stressed, was to see that and teach us that philosophy is a way of life.

And that it deals with these more and deeper than global questions, especially in my generation. Philosophy had largely become analytic philosophy, which dealt with some important questions, but it varies in very narrow ways. Certainly wasn't a way of life and certainly didn't deal with a fundamental question. So part of the attraction of this way of thinking and looking at things is that it really brought one to the most fundamental issues in the broadest ways.

And therefore it made sense to spend one's time on one's life on these issues. Absolutely. Without that, when you just articulated I would never go into the field myself. That's what we mean.

I didn't have a prior interest in not a lot. It was that, what exactly would you just say? I think a final thing on that, I think the passage I was read, starting from opinions, I mean, that's what philosophy, the opinions are key. You have to pay an opinion seriously.

And as you go from then to what you can't just mean to find the question, what's true and stuff. You gotta pay attention to the opinions and see what they want. In that passage, there's a very interesting, very brief but interesting, I think implicit comparison of that approach with a modern approach, especially they talked to the university. When I was when I was before, he says, he makes a statement, Socrates implied that disregarding opinions about the nature of things would amount to abandoning the most important access to reality which we have, or the most important vestigence of the truth, which are within our region, implied that the universal doubt of all opinions will lead us not into the heart of the truth, but into a whole.

I think it's a kind of, he doesn't say much about big heart in his writings, but I think that's a brief commentary. Yeah, it's very interesting, because if you read the beginning of the first meditation, the card I think makes, I don't know if stress has this message in mind, but the card makes the decision how he's going to go. He says, I could go, each of my opinions one by one. That would take them.

When he talks in the passage of the soul about how wondering, he just leads you astray and grab him. He's clear I think that he has in mind, so the credit guy is making your conscious decision to have a more sensory based rather than the opinion based kind of guy. I wonder whether he's stressed or sent out. I'm doing the same sort of comparison about, but it's not going to be a decision in the other.

So it's almost like, I think that's maybe why the card comes out there. He's recognized that they card me the decision. And now he's going to make the reverse decision. So maybe in lieu of a sort of typical leg and round, I'll just ask a few questions about Sros and Loretta Tate and one other question.

Let's pace it. I always agree with you. I'm going to go left or right. I'm going to go to the post developer who can't see what's going on with Devin Mark and Chris.

Favorite work of Strauss? It's become Thothamakie Belli, but it was originally this, but it was originally met during this week. Mark, the essay by the school of philosophy. Anyway, Lancer was positive.

That's what I'm going to do. What's the hardest work of Strauss? I think the one that I've had the hardest time finding meat on the bone, so to speak, is just going down the walls. I mean, a stock is there something.

Yeah, I'm very good. Oh, you touched it. Oh, I would say either of the Xenophon books. Other Strauss, we're out.

You have a question? Favorite paragraph. Oh, I have a question. What's the middle?

The Strauss-out number? This is the size of Strauss-out. All those things that I find I feel like I don't find it. I can see that it's there, that it doesn't, but I myself have no taste for it.

I want to name the number of four. I know it's going to be the same number. 17. Okay, it's got to be 17.

I don't have a number, but I do have a paragraph which is the one we just discussed on how much an alien character he's having. He actually does the number thing in the chapter of the time, the origin of that. You have a number of nature. It's 17.

We actually talked about this reading up. There's 340 paragraphs in books. Which is in 34 paragraphs in the first chapter. So Alex and I were talking, I sort of, so it's a 17-gentle too.

And so the notion might be that because we're in the cave and he's okay. It's doubly hard to get to know something like this. I don't know. I think one of my favorites is all the thing.

Yeah. The trick is to knock it off. Also knock it out. That's where it pleases.

Oh, yeah. I think it's the ghost of Stephen Lenz. Fair enough. It's a clear.

No, but it's ghost of Stephen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I have an answer on the same question. Maybe it takes out. We frequently have guests on usually ask them what their favorite literature is. And we've been getting actually a handful of the same answers.

So I thought I'd ask a slightly different question. Can you recommend to our listeners a work of literature that they might otherwise not have known? You take that and where do we live? Oh, St.

Daliels Grumola. It is the single best introduction to the milieu that Monte de la Litt. He's a bit of title. Rolomola and our bill, M.O.L.A.