Welcome back to the new thing for you. My name is David Barn with me is always my good friend Alex, pretty Haryocs. I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Good. Yeah. Yeah. We're recording at 10 p.m.
Eastern. I was even doing jujitsu right there. That's right now. I'm in my third or yeah, third week and I missed it on Friday and yesterday because of weird teacher workdays, which is bizarre because my each kid had one, but the baby is in a daycare and I don't know why to teach her but I guess I've been grumpy because Claire was like, are you out of your nicotine?
No, no, no, it's just time I've been doing well. We have a special guest or a good friend Greg McBrayer. That's right. Yeah.
How are you Greg? Gotta be honest with you David. I'm not well. I feel like Alex is carefully cultivating the reputation as being the smartest thinker at the new thingery and in an effort to stand back you and me, he's scheduling these for 10 p.m.
when he knows that 9 p.m. is the time for someone in my geriatric condition and this is usually an hot dog phase at night. So I don't know what he's taking advantage of us. I think you feel taken advantage of it because this cuts into your beloved late night, park rendezvous time, right?
I think you were going to say this cuts into his hollenika translation hour. No, no, no, no, no. There's plenty of time for that. We should probably give a shout out to a fan of the show, like probably the only person who listens to every single minute of it.
And friend of the show and two time and I'm sure he'll be back, guest of the show, Eric Snake by Adler, who came in and pinched it on the last minute and came and gave a wonderful smashing talk here at Ashland University on what humanity should do. Not only pinched it, hit it out of the park. Hit it out of the park. It was fantastic.
He's not your run-of-the-mill classist focusing on three words and how they repeated 17 times across generations. He actually had something interesting to say and it was great. I mean, it was just fantastic. He was great.
He came by the cheese barn naturally and we had some cheese. The red restaurant. No arrest for me. None were made.
Did you post a picture of the three of you out front of the cheese barn? You him and Wayne Amber. That was great. That was great.
I mean, he gets this and he gets this and it's cool. It comes full circle. It was very great. I mean, he really did a great job.
I can all sincerity. It was fantastic. And also, David, you do such a good job of pitching your fibs at the beginning of episodes that my colleague who introduced him came up to me and said, is he really the grandson of Mortimer Adler? And I said, yes, he is.
I'll never forget Alex had the best line in that episode, because Eric, with this interpretation you've been weaving, it says, if you combine the rhythm of Stephen with wisdom or from Mortimer or something like that, it was really he has such a so much life in him, right? Yeah. It's all that acid jazz he listens to. But I spoke with Eric on the phone yesterday or two days ago.
And every time we talk, he keeps mentioning how much more he enjoys the political philosophers than even his own brethren. You mean political theorists, right? Yeah, political theorists, just in the history of political thought. Somebody else who's outside of political theory and is technically a philosophy PhD, I completely do.
It's one of those things where if you're studying Plato or Xenophon or whatever, right? He's kind of worth your stiddity. He's also really, especially this way. He's kind of, all these figures are owned by multiple disciplines, multiple artisans.
And you can go to the processes and get really good sort of analyses of the text, the grammar, good editions and all sorts of stuff. But when it comes to interpretation, and then you go over to philosophy, don't even get me started with the analytic butchery that they do to these texts. I mean, a lot of it when writing on the pre-medities. But you go to political theory, and there's a humanity there that's not found in oddly enough the actual humanities.
Right. That's right. I'm wondering what Eric's next academic piece will look like. Yes, I'm speaking of political theory, little philosophy types, maybe we should tell the folks at home what this episode is about.
Alex? We, you know, it's our episodes on Strauss have at least done extremely well. Right. So we're selling out and we're just trying to go over the straight merchants and soon because we do what we know.
I think, well, I think our Plato episodes have done really well. The one I get on the Republican introduction to the Republican has done extremely well. Right. Right.
Right. And a lot of the overview Strauss ones that we've done deep dives on Plato and we're kind of doing a deep dive on the Republic. You know, snippets probably takes like a few years for that. Right.
Right. I thought it might be a nice idea to do. And this was that, that's some suggestion of a few people on Twitter, not least Jack Guipre. Right.
Goopry. I don't know. Another friend of the show. Another friend of the show.
Yes. To do a, we thought we'd do a deep dive on Strauss's natural right in history. Not like an exceptionally close reading, but maybe a session for each chapter and then for the some chapters of those two large modern chapters. Yeah, hopefully it'll be as successful as our deep cut on Kamombare.
But I think this will be a really popular. A letter to Kamombare? Exactly. We're so letter to Kamombare.
Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, we're not just doing Strauss, we're not right history as he just said, probably his most famous, is that fair, his most famous book?
I think it's more than fair. I think it's his most famous most, the one that's had a magnum opus. I don't know about that. Okay.
But it is certainly his most popular, right? And most, oh man, most widely right? Right. I don't know if I agree with that.
I read it. I first read it when I was a junior in college, a professor who I've now friends with. So I won't put him on blast here in public. But you know, I signed this to juniors.
I had one little flossie clash prior and I'm reading like Weber and convention. I was just like, I have no idea what's going on, man. I was one of a few who are interested. I have a story from one of a professor of mine that was a student of Strauss's.
Yeah, Strauss signed that work in his own class. Did he really? Yeah, yeah. At least the class that my teacher took.
And so what they did was they divided up the chapters in special study sessions to look up the footnotes. And they're all over the place. And they're all over the place. And they're all over the languages.
And so they divided up the labor. It's just too difficult. Right. So you don't think this is his most his magnum opus?
What do you think that is? City Man? No, thoughts in Machiavelli. Maybe it's pretty advanced.
Oh, thoughts in Machia. That's a Machiavelli is pretty amazing. I mean, I don't know. I think this book is forbidding though.
I don't think this is accessible at all. I don't mean to say it's accessible. I do think it is widely read most widely. But it's not like, but then it's funny if it's most widely read book and it's at least one of his least successful ones.
Yeah. Alex isn't there. Didn't Kennington write an interesting review of this? You want to ask the on it?
Yeah. It makes it seem way more difficult than I ever suspected. Yeah. I mean, I think so one of a couple of things maybe sort of.
So one of the things that's how this I think this book is also been, when we say widely, we should also say it's also been the most formative for what we know is stressiness. Right. Okay. I mean, and especially I would say the first four chapters and then probably the Hobbes and Lock chapters as well.
But you get this kind of, if you look at the first four chapters, including the introduction, what do you get the introductions like look, we're in this crisis of faith that no longer believing in the principles of our founding and then you get this diagnosis of the cause of this or the most proximate cause in contemporary historicism and positivism, right? So Weber and Heidegger are kind of the two figures under attack here. Then you get this turn back to pre-socratic thought in chapter three and then you get the Socratic account apparently of natural right in chapter four. And so it has this sort of, you could almost say this sort of, but then you get after that some chapters on modern thought that sort of, I think detail in a way how we got to where we are, right?
So what you get is a little chapter on Berkhaki, doesn't he? Berk, yes. Okay, sorry. Berkhaki something different.
How would that ever be pronounced? It was a joke. I had it. I don't get that joke.
I'm just going to Google that word. We got the word. So anyways, I think as you read it, there's a clear Lord. The washes over you.
And little vignettes on who's so awesome. Yes. And also Hobbes on my knob is also on there. Anyway, we've lost every time.
I think you get two chapters on the contemporary sort of proximate causes of our crisis. Then you get two chapters detailing the emergence of Socratic sort of natural right teaching quote unquote. Socratic, botonic, or wistetelian, stoic natural right teaching is kind of a glom together, this kind of mess. And then you get the account of how we got to where we are.
And so there's a kind of, I think, edifying story to be told about this. In fact, if you look at the foreword that was written by Jerome Kerwin, he's the chairman of the Walgreens Foundation. The way he describes the work is he says, it presents a keen analysis of the philosophy of natural right. It is a critique of certain modern political theories and an able presentation of basic principles of the traditionalist point of view.
So it looks like what it is, is it's stating you from modernity. And I think that's often how it's been read, right, as a sort of modernity dad, Socrates, good, there's a kind of ancient moral natural right teaching that's going to say to you. And for that, somehow America, at least some trials in see America in this, of course, because you have the front to speak, but there's a quote opposite the front to speak. Well, no, the very introduction starts with the quote from the Declaration.
And this worry that America doesn't still cherish the faith of this sort of self-advented truth that I'm going to create equal, right? So in that sense, I think there is a kind of, there's a sort of powerful narrative here. It's high level, right? It's great points out, right?
It's not accessible, but it does have a kind of moralizing tendency that you don't see in say the city of man. But the historicism and positivism, those discussions, I think, are accessible. I think so too. In that way, I see the book assigned frequently to upper level undergrads, right?
Correct. Right? Right? Much smarter than I am.
I think it's... Well, I love me too. I didn't... I think it's, I think it's, I think it's deceptively accessible, but that it actually is much more, it's harder than I...
Every time I read, I think it's actually much harder to... What's wrong? I think so, I think it's the name of... No, no work of straws is like you just read it one time through and you've got it, right?
But of course. Yeah, but there is a kind of... But one could read, one could read what is political philosophy? And I think, you know, but you're talking about just for listeners who are unaware, when you refer to his book, now it's right in history, he's his own, his only book, which is not a...
Which is not a... Which is not a... Which is not a... ...is a commentary.
Yeah, so what is political philosophy for listeners who don't know? Those are a collection of essays that he, of course, places in the order that he chose, and so there's a kind of thread there, but it's a collection of essays on different... I was talking about the essay, actually, what is political philosophy? Oh, that's right.
No, that's okay. And I just think that that seems... I think that peace is written to be superficially accessible. That like you can, you get something out of it without putting too much thought into it.
But then it's much more difficult than that, obviously, upon rereading. This strikes me as in the first blush, hard to read, and the second blush and third blush and third blush. So maybe I'm wrong about that. You know, all that German, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, chase down some paper, right?
Not a hun. But no, sorry. All right. I think you're right in that regard, right?
There's... Oh, the footnotes are impossible. Oh, that's what I meant. Yeah, yeah.
Well, what he does is he will throw a footnote at the end of a paragraph or at the end of all the stuff that needs to be cited, and it'll just be a series of citations separated by like, semicolons and commas, and each are referred to a different sentence. So it's extremely difficult to work through. Now, a lot of this is just sort of what you'd expect looking there, but you never want to leave a stone unturned when looking through this sign. So you talked about the place of this text within Strauss' entire body of writing.
You've talked a little bit about this preface by Mr. Walgreen himself, Kerwin. There are a couple of epigraphs or preface of excuse me, written by Strauss himself to the 53 and 71 editions. Is there anything worth noting there?
Alex, David? The epigraphs? I thought... I'm sorry, not the epigraphs, the preface is...
Oh, yeah. Let me pick up on that, because after Kerwin says this, this is in the original preface. After Kerwin says that basic principles of the traditionalist view in the 1971 preface, so then he has a preface from the original of... 1952.
Yeah, and then in 1971, he says the following at the end of the chapter, he says the traditionalist thing, to avoid a common misunderstanding, which is to say, or one misunderstanding by common folk, such as Kerwin. I should add the remark that the appeal to a higher law, if that law is understood in terms of our tradition, as this thing is from nature, is historicistic in character. So it's almost like he's pointing to figuring that Kerwin's saying, yeah, there's a kind of threat of historicism, even in his claims like that. He didn't like his pharmacy?
That's right, yeah. Though it would be nice if you walked into a Walgreens and you could just pick up... He did. ...that's right.
...to write a history and then the other book based on the Walgreens lectures is also Machiavelli. Well, yeah, they're famous. Yeah, yeah. They were in a real case.
Alaria said that was in every Walgreens in every... And then that map company ran McNally, they put out all those other things that the Strauss seems to do later, a generation later. So get your map of... You guys know about these?
No. Seriously? I'll man up, I've got them right over here. Mansfield wrote for them, storing...
I have no idea why ran McNally published these, but they're these great little volumes of like, why US 4-8? Oh, yeah, yeah. Political parties in USA. You give me just a second on the ground when I'm...
Wait, there's an interesting story to be told there, why you're out there. That when you look at Strauss's work, when he's at the new school, he was publishing everything in social research, a journal attached to the new school. And then when he was in Chicago, he's publishing everything through the free press, which is like just a Chicago press. He's wearing like massive university presses or high level journals.
They're just like local spots and then look at what comes out of it. I mean, it's kind of like he was already on the margins of the academy, and you're still plugging away and managed to work his way up. So these are great. I actually have about half a dozen of them from an old professor, my name, Eugene Miller from University of Georgia.
But I mentioned there's like 4-8, there's like America armed and formed policy. I just grabbed the one, a nation of cities, Sites on America's urban problem. James K. Wilson, Irving Crystal, Harry Joff, a rock old one.
And this is ran McNally. Yeah, and AEI is cool stuff like that, too. Another thing about this 1971 preface, the preface to the 7th impression, is he also... Not just a few years before he's deceased, right?
Yeah, just like two years actually, right? He says the following. He situates this book within his other studies. He says, in the last 10 years, I've concentrated on the study of classic natural right in quotation marks, and in particular on Socrates in quotation marks.
I've dealt with this subject in some books published since 1964. So since 1961, he's been working on the subject. And then he first, the first book was published in 1964. That's the city of man.
And it went and titles and found Socrates, which is almost ready for publication. So starting from the city of man, leading up really almost, I guess, until his death. This would include things like, obviously, the two Xenophon books, they are Socrates and they are Stauffinies. But also, I think you'd want to include in this maybe liberalism, ancient and modern, oddly enough, even though it's not...
Don't strike you as a terribly socratic book, but it's in that time, and it's certainly a candidate. So I think what ended up happening is in the wake of this book, he focused more closely on Socrates than he does in this work. And I think that's one important detail to get out of this preface is that as we read forward, we do have to ask to what extent his portrayal of Socrates, particularly in the fourth chapter, is adequate. To what extent it does get modified, or he suggests it's inadequacy in that chapter.
Can I just mention these other books? We didn't talk about the title, natural writing history. It reminds me of so many of his other books with these double titles like City and Man, Socrates and Aristophanes. I guess my first pass of this would be that these are things that are in some tension.
Does that seem like an adequate account of these titles by Strauss, like City and Man are in some tension, Socrates and Aristophanes are in some tension, natural writing history are in some tension. I don't know what else there's to say about that. The other thing I would say, I suppose, is that it seems to also recall the title of Heidegger's most famous work. So that's this.
Yeah. We had that. We had... Don't we touch on this?
Yeah. We talked about this. I never thought about that, but it sounds like in a way, Greg, what you're saying is that all these titles point to basic problems or something like that. I mean, natural writing history explicitly in a text-to-book way.
So that's not like a secret, but to notice this sort of tendency across all this works is, I think, to notice that he's primarily pointing to problems or questions in each of his titles. And in this book, obviously, the problem of natural writing. And philosophy and law as well. Yeah.
Good point. And then in my monograph, I'm sorry. I'm done. He's not cut.
I just let that for you guys. Just make a joke. I'm sorry. I won't make a joke.
I don't know if he's Jacob. I don't know if he's Jacob. I have to lose half our listeners. We'll totally get that.
That is fantastic. No, no. Also, no. But they're not really in tension with you.
Are they David's? No, not me. So, he's doing any funny stuff with chapter counting in this book? Yes.
Yeah, I think so. So, like, I've once them all... I mean, Alex already alluded to this, but like, just look at the table of contents. I mean, it's curious.
And so far as he goes, I mean, like, if you were to go chronologically, it would be chapters three, four, five, six, one, two, or two, one. I'm not sure about one or two. I have to think about that for a moment. But it sort of begins with us, goes all the way back to the past and it leads back to us, but doesn't get to us.
And so, I don't know. There's six chapters, but there's also the introduction. So, there's seven parts. The middle would be chapter three, the origin of the idea of natural writing, even Calvian production.
But what do you do with five and six sub parts? The other chapters don't. So, five modern natural writing has hibes and Locke. Chapter six, the crisis of modern natural writing has a Rousseau and Berg.
So, there's this kind of doubling there. But I do suspect something's going on with that. Yeah. Yeah.
I think so. I mean, it obviously breaks into thirds, right? One or two are kind of three and four, right? Five and six, but it's not as five and six or each of our hops and logarithms.
Don't worry if it's a note. But in a way, he doesn't want there to be, I think, four chapters there. So, if you include the introduction, right? This ends up focusing the book on the third chapter of the origin of the idea.
I just said that, but he doesn't listen to my talks. It's okay. You said that? Yeah.
I literally just said that. Sorry. I was, you weren't paying attention. I know.
I know. I know. I know. I did any events.
I tend to take your talking as an opportunity. I think of what to say now. That seems really smart. So, where will we go from here?
Like talk about the epigraphs, like me? He just mumbled a bit. You can talk about the epigraphs. I know.
He leaves. The one more thing on Socrates in the seventh impression, the preface at the seventh impression. I think when you go to look at these, he's directing you to those works. I think when you look at those works, right?
Look at natural right. In those works, you get a very different impression. Just to look at the first book he draws her attention to in 1964, the City of Man. Natural right is more associated with one exception, as far as I can tell, with Forcemicus in the discussion of the the Republican with the millions by the Athenians in the million dialogue in two cities.
And so natural right there looks more like a kind of cynical self-assertial. I'll just say this, Strauss is less inclined to associate natural right with Socrates than those works that are in this one. It's an important disruption to keep in mind. We should probably talk about the epigraphs.
I'm surprised you haven't brought that up great. Well, funny you should mention that. Here I've got some notes to myself. The book does actually, it sort of has the two epigraphs affixed to it.
One from Second Samuel and another from First Kings, Chapter 2. And the other from Second Samuel, right? Yeah, Jesus, please. That's first one.
Yeah. And so what do you notice? I mean, the first obvious thing is that these are two epigraphs from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. It seems also oddly enough that Strauss seems to be using the King James Version.
I have no idea why. He also omits the introductory phrase in each citation. So the passage has gone from Second Samuel, Chapter 12, verses 1 through 4 and verse Kings 21 through 3. But he actually omits the first parts of the first verse in each case.
I have no idea why. The first one is a story of the prophet Nathan sort of telling a story by which I took a bunch of stuff from a poor guy and David being upset with it at the end. I could read it all, but I'm sure everyone who it's a Sunday school or a Sabbath school knows what's going on here. And the second example is Ahab would like the property of a guy named Nabos.
But he ends up taking it from him. So in both cases, it seems to be about taking property. That seems to be what's going on. The insinuation I think is that justice is about the distribution of goods.
It seems to me a couple of other small points. I think if you look at Strauss's work, Jerusalem and Athens, by the way, another pair that seems to be in some tension, Strauss notes that the Second Samuel passage is the only dialogue that we have between a prophet and a ruler. And then he talks about this Socrates' conversation with Curtis by contrast so that Nathan the prophet is able to chastise the ruler. I would note that in Socrates' case, it's a tyrant.
I wonder what Strauss is saying about the character of David in that particular instance. A little context of the first one. I think you're just so this story is told about a rich man taking a you from a poor man because Lamb that he loves very, very much. Yeah, I feel like I know where this is going.
But go ahead. I was literally going to say this is terrible told to David. Right, right. David tells him a parable David says David says I swear God, I'm going to get it.
It's awful. I'll kill that guy. He says you are that man. You the man is you.
Yes. So it's it's you are the you wait. No, you're the you. Yeah.
Yeah. So he admits that but in Jerusalem happens, I haven't read it well, but doesn't he actually include that detail? Yeah, I think that's because it is that's the dialogic part. You're like, yeah, you are the man.
Exactly. Also, you fuck sheep. That's right. I never forget that.
Good. So just a few things I'll say here. I'm not look first. It seems to be that just what is this saying these two ever graphs it in the first place we're talking about lambs and we're talking about a vineyard.
So in both cases, it's an argument over property or stuff. And so Strauss seems to be pointing to the connection between justice and what is yours, what's owned was yours. The second thing I'll say, I think that what's going on here is that these two epigraphs are pre philosophic expressions of the experience of natural right. That makes sense.
You can expand upon that if you know, then Alex is nodding. So just that there's something in the pre philosophic mind that still has an experience of something not being right by nature. If that makes sense, even though the king does it or says it or whatever, there's still a problem. If that makes sense.
So I think that's interesting because after you read the introduction, then you end with all the modern stuff and lock and then Burke and all that sort of stuff. You're inclined to look at it, I think, through that lens of property rights. But clearly one of the glaring difficulties here is that these are biblical passages. I mean, you would be, I think, you'd have to be more cautious in a way.
These are obviously loaded, carefully crafted, carefully excerpted. Oh yeah. So you're saying, and I think, but also I think we have to be cautious, right? Because he will end, is it the second chapter of natural right in history, the one on the distinction between facts and values.
And then he begins in the third chapter by discussing, you know, quite carefully, I think, this, the attention between Jerusalem and Athens, where he's here. No, but it seems like, oh yeah, the Bible confirms a lock. Oh, that's, I didn't, if I left that impression, that's not what I was trying to say. I don't think it's what you're trying to do.
But I think that's the impression you get. Okay. If you're just sort of like, yeah, he took his thought. That's not right.
Right. Right. Right. No, sir.
I just meant to say that it seems like the, the justice, the problems or justice, manifested themselves and arguments about stuff. Yes. I mean, even in the right, the education of Cyrus, it's overcoat, right? Which is a sort of comic, I think, uh, microcosm, picture of the problem of justice.
Right. Right. But in the second, it's, it's the Lord who forbids him to do this, right? So, right.
Right. Which transaction that might have been advantageous, right? Which I assume he's saying is advantageous because otherwise he'd do it at the Lord. Right.
Right. Um, but in the second example, I guess I, I'm sorry, I didn't go through these examples as, as, uh, thoroughly as I should have, I suppose. In the second example, Ahab wants Naboth's property, uh, but Naboth, Naboth refuses it, saying the Lord had forbidden it to me that I'm allowed to give it away. But what happens in this case is that Ahab's wife, Queen Jezebel, kills him and Ahab takes his vineyard.
So he's technically the, the, he hasn't violated the prohibition of giving away his inheritance because he's been, been asked. That's a work. Yeah. Good deal.
Was that helpful? Yeah. It's very helpful. Look, I, I've written a little bit on chapter that chapter you were talking about, about, um, the origin of natural right.
And I think that there is, I mean, this Jerusalem Athens businesses is central to what's going on in this text, but strangely subdued, right? As opposed to like, why not do a counter, a point counterpoint like an epigraph from Nietzsche or something like that? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And then the beginning, the, as the credit poll, I said, you mean, yeah, that's a good question. I don't have a good answer that. I mean, I would say, um, I think I suspect that one of the things that Strauss is up to here, but even in generally is trying to rehabilitate how serious the challenge of revelation is.
Oh, I, I think that's good. Okay. That makes sense. I think it's a good way.
So if you go to the page seven of introduction, because we're going to cover the introduction today. The seven of the introduction. Yeah. So paragraph seven, paragraph that begins with the problem of natural, right?
It's the paragraph that you told me to talk about in the wrong show. We're continuing with the theme. I'm like, now, but then this version of the story. Go ahead.
David, I didn't know the Lord forbade me from talking about your. I'm not. No, no, I'm not. But they're no both.
Or however you say that. I'm sure it's almost Lord acting. I just want to touch on this quote because I think this is relevant, right? Ask acting to neck.
Yes. I love that Chris Rock joke where he's talking about a bad act. I've seen better acting at a fast act and connected. That's funny.
The Lord act is he the absolute power of folk. What's that? No, no, no, not this word of these. I don't know if he's, but so anyways, he says that, look, we were forced to become students of what is called the history of ideas and then equals Lord acting in an effort to emphasize one of the problems with engaging in the certain increases.
Act is as few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions would make political disputes too violent for compromise and political alliances, too precarious for use and would in bitter politics with all the passions of social and religious strife. Strauss adds to this, we can overcome this danger only by leaving the dimension in which political restraint is the only production against the hot and blind zeal of partisanship. This is all very strange.
I mean, it seems like what he's saying is that if he's too clear, too precise in the details, according to Acton, this will only make great make for greater political division, right? He says, well, let's try to overcome this division, but how are we going to overcome it? We have to have political restraint as a protection against this partisanship. What does he mean?
What kind of restraint is he talking about? Is there restraint in articulating differences? I mean, one of the things problems I see of this book is that often the divisions are over emphasized and the commonalities are sort of, so there's a lot of, I think, false enemies and false friends to overemphasize the difference, right? There's a lot of allegiance to this and he goes on to discuss this a bit.
So I think one way to look at these initial quotations is to see a kind of recourse to Jerusalem and then this turn to America on page one of the introduction. But then you, I mean, we read Strauss and retrospect and say, oh, the theological political problem, that's the theme of his writings. You didn't write that for like, you know, another 15 years, I think, when he wrote the German preface to Hobbes's, to the Hobbes book. So I think one of, if you read this book, somebody might have read it in the 50s when they first encounter it.
This might seem like an attempt to redeem the lock in slash American sort of account of natural right over and against its sort of, um, grace with some ancient support, you could say. And the support in the eighth paragraph on page seven, I think is great. So you know, allies, I think you're right. You have these American allies and so forth and the lock in allies.
But I think you also have the Thomas allies in this eighth, right? The only people who seem to be interested in nature in the middle of the 20th century, I think we talked about this with Josh parents and that episode we did are the Catholics. And so, I mean, he's, he's picking these allies. Oh, I see.
Like, we'll talk about the ancients, uh, I'm sorry, we'll talk about the Americans because they believe, you know, the Declaration of Independence, that's why he, by the way, we should come back to that because he modifies that very quickly to Lincoln's formulation, not the Declaration's formulation. Um, he, he's sort of the, the tomes and so on and so forth. And so who are the only people who are talking about nature? Let's marginal all of the men because we're all allies of sort.
You know, it's interesting when, even if the alliance is sort of, if we are, you know, even if the alliance is built upon, some, some things aren't quite neatly actually agreed upon. And now decades later, we're seeing aspects of that alliance. Oh, yeah. But Strauss understood how important it was to get everybody under the same tent early on.
Right. I was fascinated by the fact that he, I mean, this sentence struck me. So this is the eighth paragraph where he's talking about the Catholics. And I think this is because he wants to bring them in as well.
But he says, and I think this, he says they are, they all are modern men. And I, you should correct me on this. But I think the end seat of the day are these, um, Catholics, the disciples of Thomas Aquinas. And so that even these tomes who are looking to nature as a standard, they're still modern.
So that I don't have to think about what that means, that these tomes are modern. Yeah. And I mean, he, he, this is, I think such a beautiful rhetorical touch. He's got all these metaphors and even notices how he's heeding metaphor metaphor.
Maybe we can read a little bit earlier. Sure. Go for it. He says the issue of natural, right?
After moving from the problem of natural, right? The issue of natural, right presents itself today as a matter of party legions. Looking around as we see two hostile camps. So he immediately goes into a military metaphor on the heels of this discussion about let's avoid partisanship.
Right. So, right. Um, uh, looking around as we see two hostile camps heavily fortified and strictly guarded. What is occupied by the liberals of various descriptions, the other by the Catholic and non-Catholic disciples of Thomas Aquinas.
But both armies and addition, those who prefer to sit on the fences. Where hide their heads in the sand are to heat metaphor and metaphor in the same boat. And now I think he's talking about all of these groups. The liberals and the, and the disciples of Aquinas are all modern men.
As well as the, the fence sitters and the, uh, right. It's in the sanders. They're all mounted man. And then here's a nice little touch.
We, right. So he now includes himself, right? We all are in the grip of the same difficulty and they do that. So it's, it's a highly rhetorically charged as Harrison.
This points to his difference though, right? With his allies. The difference is he is, if I were extrapolate, he's Strauss is not a modern man. And this goes with something you've been harping on the last several episodes.
He's very quick to diagnose. Like when he's arguing with someone, he's very quick to recognize that they're still gripped by a majority or something like this. And so he's not basically looking for his modern ally. He's looking for allies who believe in nature among the moderns, if that makes sense.
Maybe believe in what's the wrong verb. Yeah. This is, you know, this is many years after his, you know, confrontation with Schmittens and then also some of the moderns, right? And, and, and critique of this, the liberalism, you know, it's interesting.
When I think about like sort of contemporary critiques of, of, of liberalism, it is true that one of the most formidable and sort of, um, insurmountable groups are these sort of, these Catholic figures, right? Like you can think of somebody like Patrick De Nine or like, you know, all these fine must groups. Yeah, if you have to, but there is, there is a sort of strong and hard to break Catholic faction. I wonder if Strauss understood that, you know, there's a difference between them and these actual disciples of Thomas Aquinas, right?
There's a distinction. But it seems like Catholicism is one of the few sort of real strong holdouts. I guess that's just very, very hard to break. Maybe like this of, of, you know, the Jerusalem and Athens problem, right?
Kind of that perspective. And I'm just kidding. I love Patrick De Nine and he should come be a guest on the New Thinkery sometime. We all agree.
Everyone's shaking their head vigorously. Yes. Oh yeah. And so should that, uh, seven or roll of Harvard books his name?
Mansfield? No. No. That's him.
Where we go from here folks, and draw a connection to another part of Strauss's work. I think it's important. So he talks about the founding, the American founding, the declaration and then he talks about the, um, threat of German thought, right? Before you move on to the German stuff, I want to just elaborate real quick upon it begins with this quote from the declaration, right?
The beginning of the second paragraph and the declaration. Sometimes we'll just use the self-evident after he ends up quoting it. Strauss says the nation dedicated to this proposition has now become no doubt partly as a consequence of this dedication, the most powerful and prosperous of the nations of the earth. Proposition is the language that Lincoln uses to describe the self-evident truth that all men create equal into Gettysburg address.
So I think I suspect it's, in other words, I think Lincoln was recognizing in 1863 that this thing that was held be self-evident true in 1776 had come to be doubted in his time. And I think Strauss, by quoting Lincoln here is only amplifying the fact that this, this notion has been, like he says, it's pretty explicitly who actually believes this anymore in America. It's no longer a self-evident truth. That's a small point, but then the Germans, then the Germans come.
No, no, but I think also even the notion of identifying it as a faith, right, we had Jim Caesar, and he identified this with Madison, but really the person who underscored this as a faith was Lincoln, right? Right. And really sort of explicitly like in the Lyceum address, right? Pushing in the direction of this faith.
And Donge really helped us to see that. That's true. Yeah. Look at how many episodes were drawn together.
Here's another one, German-Thought, German-Nihilism, right? That essay by Strauss, we did an episode on. I think a lot of what he's talking about here is informed by some of his lectures and essays that he gave, but were only published posthumously from like the 30s and 40s. So German-Nihilism is what we've talked about.
We haven't talked about, but a really relevant one is the living issues of German post-war philosophy, which he touches on a lot of similar- I don't know that one. I don't know that either. Where's- That's in the back of the Meyer book on Strauss. Okay.
Well- Excellent essay. It's worth- we should probably do an episode one day down the line, but I think he sees the influence of this thought and through his stories, as many saw what happened in Germany, and it was a movement for which he was much too young to do anything about or to really think through in the act of- think through in retrospect. And here he is seeing this maybe influence coming into the US, and he thought I ought to do something about it, write something about it, while also exploring the deeper issues. So I mean, that's a way of saying that this is a very political work in a way, and in many ways a polemical work.
But if you go read- I suggest this to the listeners. If you go read German-Nihilism, you look at what he says about the closed society, about how the youth at the time really longed for just a vacation of the closed society, and then you look at how he talks about that in the fourth chapter on classic natural, right? I think you'll start to see that there's a conscious attempt to offer a competing theory about politics, one that is not stuck under the auspices of how I was in the way that Schmidt was or some of the other modern thinkers, but to get back to a pre-modern and actual sort of intellectually coherent, or at least persuasive, a kind of pre-modern thought that grounded our commitment to our closed society, not in some kind of nationalism or anything like that, but in nature, our kind of nature. And so one of the big effects you've seen of this book, I think, within this dressing school is this attempt to reassert an ancient understanding of nature, such an understanding as is conducive to healthy politics, right?
And not in the sense of these sort of liberalism that's without standards, but in a sense that actually affirms the virtues of a good citizen, right? And so you see this kind of versatility in this time. I think that's good. And we should listen to the episode on German I was in Sweden.
Since I'm sure the folks at home, if they don't already know this, will be tickled to hear this since they love my numerological fancy. This isn't quite numerology, but of course readers might be struck by the fact that the first words of the introduction are it is proper. That's the same first words as the beginning of on tyranny by Strauss. It's the same three words on tyranny begins with.
And I would contrast it as proper with the beginning of city and man, where he says Strauss says it is not self-regating and pain, loving, antiquarianism, nor self-regating and intoxicating romanticism, which induces us to turn with passionate interest to classical thought. So it is proper. It is proper. It's not X.
So there are some differences there. But the other thing I'll point out is that, and this is, I mean, I felt so silly when I first found this, but the introduction begins with it is and then chapter one, chapter two about the VV. So that's not very interesting. But then chapter three begins with two understand in all caps and chapter four in all caps as Socrates.
So it's those that sort of silly who cares. And the rest are the right. Exactly. So the point I think is that Strauss is signifying there with the all caps that the point of this book is to understand Socrates.
Now, who cares really? That's kind of small, but it does point to the possibility that Strauss was being somewhat playful, which if he's tipping off his hand that he's doing something that's sort of obvious, that would lead me to believe that there probably are sort of more examples of esoteric things going on in this text. That's just my suspicion. We're sure I know it's especially.
Yeah. And just to draw the connection back to that profession, right? There is a there's a clear turn. I think after this work and more so after thoughts on Machi Valley, there's a clear turn to take up the question of Socrates or the problem with Socrates.
Therefore, it's a draw out. The problem of natural right, it's somehow be deeply connected to understanding Socrates. Yeah. And one thing I think will come up next when we do an episode on the first chapter is we get competing accounts of Socrates between chapters one and four.
In chapter one, it is clear that the premise is necessary. There are fewer premises necessary to establish the possibility of the Socratic way of life than to establish the possibility of natural right. That's clear. Whereas in chapter four, I think they're a lie to more so.
But maybe one way to think about this, these first words, it is to understand Socrates is to focus on this right. He says we're all in the grip of the same difficulty, all of us modern men and then Strauss, who's not left with a day, right? This is a good point. Is the problem of teleology, right?
And he approaches it through the lens of Aristotle. Very good. But perhaps he's suggesting here that the Aristotelian problem is not a Socratic problem. Do you have thoughts on this problem of the of teleology and I do I have thoughts on it.
I have a lot of basically one that's the related question. So this is on page seven and the eighth paragraph. I mean, I have a question too, but I don't want to derail. No, no, it's okay.
The problem while you collect your thoughts, I'll just get the message stressed out. So which is in the Aristotelian teaching, apparently, there is a connection between or have a teleological science, a man situated within a teleological understanding of nature as a whole. The problem is that modern science has made a teleological understanding of nature possible, at least at the very least, a the non-teological science of physical nature that you find in modernity as as eroded our faith and the possibility of a theological, I'm trying to keep all options open here, right? And so we're in this odd situation, one that really I think, you know, Rousseau first articulates well, where we have a teleological understanding of man, you do have to give an account of man and their ends, right?
But then we have obviously this larger encompassing account of nature that is non-teological. And he suggests here, right, that the it is impossible really to give an account of human ends, I'm quoting here to give an adequate account of human ends by conceiving them merely as positive by desires or impulse, which is a kind of habnesian account of our ends. So he's suggesting that you do have to have the theological account of man. And so it seems like we have a fundamental duality or tension between our account of the whole.
There's part of it that's teleological man has certain ends and you need to understand what we do in light of that. And then on the other hand, you have nature is non-teological mere stuff bouncing off each So keep in mind that this account of a teleological universe is in the paragraph where he's trying to make an alliance with the tomes. And so I'll just say this, I'll assert this. I suspect that Rouss Aristotle does not actually hold that the universe is teleological.
But for some reason, he would like to keep alive the possibility that that is our aerosol's position, that the universe is teleological. So I mean, there's a simple solution to this that I think Strauss provides, there seems to provide in what his work called an epilogue where he suggests that aerosols natural science can be separated from his political science. So I would not have to worry about the problems with aerosols, teleological natural science. But if I'm right, I'm not sure that he holds that aerosols natural sciences in the last analysis, teleological, either then this problem goes away.
So keeping this problem alive somehow seems to be helpful for reviving this question of the problem of natural right. That's not as it sounded more cryptic than I meant it to sound. But I think, and I think obviously what we would have to have our eyes on is the two paragraphs, I believe on aerosol, mean three, chapter four, the end of chapter four, where this is essentially going to be flush out more. Right.
I think it's also worth thinking about this is obviously beyond Strauss, but it's in within Strauss, he on a right, balladins work on the physics for he right, right, right. And it was all it's in and I was reading through on the soul and then trying to follow the ball it's in long. Yeah, that is really causing these kinds of things in question for sure. But even the question of aerosol side, this is the basic problem, right?
They says, Oh, we can't really go into this right and adequate solutions to the problem and that's right. Can I be found before the basic, this basic problem has been solved. Needless to say the present lectures cannot deal with this problem, right? They're not dealing with this problem, at least not explicitly.
Can I ask a question? Certainly he's saying it is to understand soccer. So maybe that's the sort of a chase solution as well. So there's aerosol, with aerosol is actually moved in Socrates, with Socrates actually actual view and that we work on this.
Just real quick, like he talks about the problem of natural right. And I was just giving through the book to see like, he never says what it is. Like, what is the problem? He sort of that's the question I was going to get this episode is good, but it's operating at a high level.
And that's a little we've introduced a teleology in the conversation. No, no, no, it's good. But we're listeners who are approaching this book for the first time, you know, what's a working definition of natural right? As if you contrast to natural law, too, because I think some of our listeners may have heard of natural law, then you hear natural right, and it's confusing to people.
So I'll take what is it? I'll take a stab at this, but I want to hear your question to do this. I'm great. Greg is I think he can do it.
No, no, I know. Greg always does a good job at these definitions. So I'm going to give an unsatisfactory account of this. But the reason is unsatisfactory is because I think Strauss is being much more enigmatic than he's like, he never just says here's what the problem natural right is.
Like he just he speaks about it. Or definitions that doesn't give him. So I'm going to be only understood. Sure.
So I'll give you a basic idea of the problem of natural right. And by the way, why this problem has to be recovered, we seem to have forgotten that it's a problem. So the we should have done this at the beginning. Sorry.
So the problem natural right very simply is what's right? That sounds stupid. But the reason that we've lost that that's an actual problem is because we believe that what is right varies according to historical time and epic in place. So historicism and positivism have led us to the belief that contemporary belief that there is no answer to the question, what is justice or something like this?
So Strauss is trying to revive that question as a problem for human beings. And he's trying to show us that the question, what is justice is a question that plagues human beings as long as there have been and will be human beings. So the problem is I take it and I'm again, I'm not just one of your first pass out it is when we look around the world and we notice that there are various law codes, they all make a pretense to being the right law code. So I don't know which one's right.