/lit/ - Literature

>>23157005
A philosopher has only one aim, his own personal University and state funded ivory tower.

>>23157005
Straussians be like
>we’re gay
>we’re atheist
>we’re Jewish
>but somehow we’re still based and trad

>>23157840
Describes BAP perfectly

>>23157840
There's no such thing as trad

>>23157942
BAP is a known Straussian who did his PHD under some of the largest East Coast Straussian names (Mansfield, Smith), and I think Garsten is an ECS too.

>>23158391
>>23157840
Do people still watch or talk about BAP? His book got some minor mainstream conservative attention as well as the early podcast but bro was honestly just a meme to try and bait Mike Ma fans into his gay Nietzchean larp.

>>23158402
Not really beyond twitter neocons and actual Israelis.

>>23158402
I always associated BAP with Mike Ma back in the late 2010s. That was before BAP exposed himself as being a cringe Zionist with barely right wing opinions.

>>23158417

Both of them probably read threads like these. Less so mike but you can tell BAP is chronically online.

OP that sounds like Adorno to me...

>>23158431
Adorno liked the ancients?
>>23158425
Then he needs to respond to this guy already:
https://rmorrison.substack.com/p/a-historical-criticism-of-costin?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
It's been like half a year. There's no excuse.

>>23158431
They were both German Jews. Interesting, is it not.

>>23158437

BAP made it pretty clear from his tweets he's not interested in actual discourse. He just is an attention whore.

>>23158477
a trust fund faggot downing truvada and living off paypigs. Truly a yale thing.

I’m afraid you don’t understand Straussianism then

>>23158501
>t.

>>23158501
that's exactly what Straussians believe though lmao
>modernity bad
>we must return to the ancients
>but the ancients wrote esoterically. in reality, they were really modern thinkers at heart
so what the fuck is the point of the Straussian ancients LARP? there's nothing to return to except gatekeeping, and it's impossible to gatekeep shit when we have mass literacy and the internet.

>>23157005
Yes, the outcome of the Second World War and conceding Plato to the Bongs to the detriment of Tubingen & Milan schools interrogated the 'hidden doctrines' was as bad as French stolen Resistance valor Maoist carpetbagging of the Germans.

>>23158513
>in reality, they were really modern thinkers at heart
Nta, but what are examples of this?

>>23158538
Ultimately herr professor's vision of the poleis as "frogs around the pond" of the Mediterranean in some kind of static equilibrium is a Jewish self-conception born of centuries of experience in medieval and early modern Europe, and his attempt to identify his aristocratic philosophizing caste with an itinerant literate elite is obviously very Jewish and contemporary. he looked into all of human history, developed an entire theory of esoteric hermeneutics, and what he found was German-Jewish expats living in Chicago or New York, whispering to one another across time about how Europe can't be allowed to get the Hitler codes. It's disgusting. What makes his views especially annoying is that he is brilliant, and an extremely sensitive reader of texts, both classical and modern, but he ultimately only cares about mutilating them to serve his own interpretation.

That wasn’t what Strauss thought though. He thought Greek philosophy left a space for something that overcame it, whereas modern philosophy, which is very much rationalistic like Greek philosophy, does not. Strauss actually wants you to be more medieval than ancient.

>>23158513
How about the millenia between ancients and modern for starters…or did you not read enough of Strauss to know his thoughts on medieval philosophy?

>>23158549
>did you not read enough of Strauss to know his thoughts on medieval philosophy

>>23158548
Not an answer to what I asked for but you do you.

>>23158553
Why don't you tell me the difference nigger? The major selling point of Strauss is that there's a tradition of esoteric writing from the ancients through the early modern thinkers (who began with Machiavelli to lay everything "bare", step by step). But that is only a difference between outward and inward opinion. If the ancients preserve a sense of outward and inward opinion, then the moderns collapse it. So what exactly is the point of returning to the ancients, when the ancient philosophers believed something along the lines of what we do today?
>That wasn’t what Strauss thought though. He thought Greek philosophy left a space for something that overcame it, whereas modern philosophy, which is very much rationalistic like Greek philosophy, does not. Strauss actually wants you to be more medieval than ancient.
Didn't the main thrust of Straussian thought come from his reading of Maimonides? Where exactly are you getting this idea that there's something to be salvaged from the medievals? Even if there were brilliant philosophers from that time period (Aquinas and Avempace as lucid interpreters of Aristotle, Scotus as a logician in his own right, etc.), what exactly were they doing that was novel besides (for the most part) believing exactly in their own work? Hell, I even think that Aquinas was bullshitting in an "esoteric" way when it came to the unity of the intellect controversy, because his response to the Averroist position looks like rewriting the Averroist position in his own words. So, in a way, the medievals did not do much differently from the ancients. And if you believe Heidegger et al., then everything past Parmenides, including the medievals, were engaged in the same "metaphysics of presence" which doomed them all.

In summary, the best that Strauss has to offer is hype, a bait and switch, philosophical vaporware. That's it.

>>23158555
Exactly how I imagined him when I read that response lol. Typical coy Straussian nonsense.
>>23158582
Lower your tone when you speak to the resident /lit/ Schmittian.

>>23158610
>Lower your tone when you speak to the resident /lit/ Schmittian.
If the schtick is being an obscurantist, then you're writing pretty Jewishly.

>>23158661
what was obscure about that post? it was direct, honest, and openly confrontational. the complete opposite of Judaism in spirit. that man is a treasure of /lit/, and you will treat him as such

>>23157005

The key to understanding all Jewish philosophy and political theory is that it's just a cover for Jewish interests that they think goys will find palatable. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be marketable.

>>23159539
the weird thing about Leo Strauss and his ilk is that they've done a *ton* of metapolitics for the far right. for all of the valid criticism they receive, that's the one major boon that is difficult to explain.

>>23159536
>HE'S A SOMEBODY ON /LIT/
Embarrassing. I ask for something concrete, and I get vague pronouncements from on high and allusions "implying" as if doing exactly that wasn't part of the complaint over the Jew. Right postmodernists are just as disgusting as the Left. Be clear, give evidence, or don't waste breath complaining about conspiracies in a conspiratorial tone, just fucking spit it out and say "he says x is y in book z".

>>23160025
Bro, you're taking this way too seriously. He's just a guy I've seen who's effortposted on Schmitt and Strauss about a dozen times. Take a chill pill.

*bumps quite Jewishly*

>>23158610
Why don’t you start by actually reading you lazy bastard?

That is not even the “major selling point” of Strauss. You’ve never even read Strauss ffs.

>>23157005
I am far too retarded to fully understand Strauss, but the way he was explained to me it was more like:
>Modern philosophy is mostly good but fundamentally flawed
>We need to look back to the ancients to rediscover their faith in eternal truth and revitalize modern politics
Idk if this is actually correct, my only source is some self-described Straussians I've talked to

>>23158610
I bet you’ve barely read any Schmitt either you pseud

>>23161680
>>23161683
samefag. not an argument.

>>23161682
No. Strauss thought that modern philosophy was in short nothing more than a subversion and bastardization of ancient philosophy. It is specifically a take on Greek rationalism, whereas Greek philosophy was more than merely rationalism and allowed the opening of a space to overcome rationalism. The last time such a philosophical worldview was seen in the West was the Middle Ages. So Strauss thought we had to overcome the misconceived Greek rationalism of modern philosophy.

>>23161692
There was never an argument to be had because your replies are retarded. Try reading the author you lazy fraud.

>>23158610
Who cares what Heidegger thought? Heidegger has nothing to do with this.

>>23161700
thanks for conceding your fraud, samefag

>>23158610
Based. the fact that the barely literate polisci shitheads are chimping without rationale means you hit the mark.

>>23161694
He was very favorable towards late Husserl in his letters to Voegelin.

>>23161680
>you have a different perspective than me on the importance of Strauss's work
>therefore I'm going to accuse you of not reading him
shut the fuck up you insufferable fag lmao. come with a serious argument or just shut up and slink away.
>>23161700
That was a different anon moron.
>>23161704
Considering that Heidegger lived rent free in Strauss's mind, it's absolutely relevant.
>>23161798
I think it's just one guy who keeps returning to the thread every time something pops into his head. This is the brand of hysterical, scatter-brained philistine we're dealing with.

>>23161680
>blocks your path
never seen a Straussian seethe so hard that he disavowed The Method

>>23157005
>>modern philosophy is bad, we need to return to ancient philosophy
This is a common philosopher trick, heard it a couple of times already from other ones. Return to this return to that whatever it's just shifting of words doesn't mean anything. They just collect their leech funds like any other priest class in history.

>>23158402
Most Rightists on twitter can be divided between 3 camps. First there are normal conservatives and white nationalists, typical boomercon bullshit, very broad group but they all intersect. Then there are hardcore racists and anti-Semites who flirt with nazism. And then there is BAP and his circle of right-Nietzscheans who parade themselves as erudite intellectuals but are literally no different from mainstream conservatives. They all just shill for Israel and vote for Trump with a fake aura of elegant prestige. They present themselves as well-read men in suits reading 19th century texts yet who come to the exact same conclusion as Eugene Parker on Facebook, age 62 with profile pic of him in his truck with sunglasses and eager to vote for whichever candidate loves Jews the most. Alamariu is not only a faggot but a fraud as well.

I've never been able to read anyone jewish and not think "this is just a jew trying to justify his tribalism and combat the tribalisms of others openly or unconsciously." It always feels like you are either jewish or you're a philosopher, but if you are a jew who thinks he is "doing philosophy", what you are actually doing is jewish philosophy...which is no philosophy at all. Just like Schoenberg isn't real music, and Celan isn't real poetry.

>>23162981
He didn't disavow it, he said it's not the major selling point. Don't bother trying to read between the lines when you can't read the lines themselves

>>23163024

>>23163024
The nice thing about "reading between the lines" is that you can become a ventriloquist for any thinker who has ever written something. Then you can play a game of chicken by claiming that you have the truest understanding of said thinker, anybody who disagrees simply misunderstands the thinker (or does not even read the thinker), and then dare people to state otherwise (because it's ultimately a he-said, she-said type of subjectivity).

No wonder neurotic academics love Strauss. He gave them a philosopher's stone for a self-perpetuating grift.

>>23163271
Nigha have you ever read Porphryry's interpretation of a passage from the Odyssey, or any of allegorical readings by the Neoplatonists where they ascribe meaning to Socrates putting his feet on the floor in the Phaedo? Plus your own conspiritarding sounds a lot like willful interpretations, seeing whatever you want to see. Leibniz can say in his correspondences that infinitesimals are lies to make his calculus functional and that uses scholsstic language for his scholatic recipients and Cartesian language for Cartesians, Descartes can say in his letters that his use of scholastic terminology is intended to fool Aristotelians as he rejects them, Heine ca relate that Hegel was nervous about publicly discussing the proposition that "the rational is real", Locke can be related by a sxhoolfriend to have carried Hobbes' Levisthan everywhere and recommendng it before pretending not to be familiar with it in later life, and Nietzsche can overtly talk about reading his books like a philologist and that he wears a mask, and you'd shrug, and, in between complaints about the modern academy, gulp down the same modern consensus viewpoints. Seriously nigga, do you ever think, or do you just react and figure "good enough."

OP is absolutely right about Straussianism, all of it essentially boils down to:

>every philosopher I like had a second esoteric meaning to his work
>the secret meaning is that they would agree with all of my 20th century liberal positions and so you should agree with me too you fucking retard

Machievalli was 100% right about these retards and their imagined republics. And the dumbest part of all the esoteric reading is that it's never led to any kind of actual rethinking of a philosopher. We all understand Plato and Aristotle largely as their contemporaries did, the Romans did and the Medievals. The only thing Strauss is right about is that Xenophon deserves more attention.

>>23163342
Every grift has a little bit of truth to it. What's your point? All you have in these biographical accounts is a tantalizing glimpse into a person's mind which still leaves room for infinite mystery. And where there's infinite mystery there is infinite grift potential. For every Locke who's obsessed with Hobbes, we'll have a Leibniz who's obsessed with Spinoza. And yet we call one a closet secularist, and another a true-believing irenist. Why?

Ultimately, we're going off of hunches and reducing the complexity of soul to the best available evidence that we have, even though we know with our own experiences that the "evidence" we leave behind for other people rarely capture the depth by which we experience the world. If you think about the method for even a *fraction* of a second with any degree of precision, and look deep inside who you are as a person and see the possibility of other people sharing in that being, then you'll understand that I'm right.

I am utterly incapable of understanding Strauss. All I see from him and his followers are contradictions that make no sense to me.

>>23164415
its okay, you just dont have the phenotype

>>23163366
when you put it that way... its genius

Straussians be like

I'm Jewish... hope that's okay :-)

>>23164415
An article by G.R.F. Ferrari, a student of Myles Burnyeat, a critic of Strauss, working through examples of his interpretation of Plato.

https://library.lol/scimag/10.2307/20163672

>>23158402
Amarnaites cling to his every word.

>>23158437
Its a bad critique desu

>>23167946
It seemed pretty good to me. It's devastating desu. Kinda makes BAP look like he dropped out of college. What's so bad about it?

He never came up with anything original. He was a trained philologist, but in exile he took profession in a different field for careeristic reasons. I take every expression of enthusiasm around him as a sign of illiteracy.

bump

Returning to the ancients is gay conservative larp anyway, not remotely based. The ancients had all the problems that led to modernity. Overcome them and meet the better fate after modernity.

That's just not true. For Strauss the problem with the moderns is that they are more or less pragmatists with regard to truth, such that the guiding ideal of modern philosophy is control of nature. This extends into political philosophy, so that the problems of the ideal state and the good life are disregarded as irrelevant to political philosophy; since they do not have "effectual truth" they are not true or relevant to political philosophy at all. Early modern political philosophy's end is not human flourishing, which is disregarded as subjective, but the preservation of "natural rights", rights which exist in a state of nature; therefore the business of political philosophy is to engineer a state which preserves natural rights (namely, life and liberty to the extent compatible with the liberty of other individuals). Then, according to Strauss, Rousseau introduced the idea that human nature was not fixed, which was more consistent with the first principles of modern philosophy as whole, and that idea undermined the basis of the concept of natural rights. This led to political philosophy becoming a field of a more historical interest than a pursuit of truth, to the idea that all truth is historically contingent and all political philosophers mere children of their time, and to the predominancy of postivist social science over political philosophy.
There is nothing in Strauss to suggest that any of this criticism applied to ancient political philosophy. To the extent that the ideal state and the good life are "exoteric" rather than "esoteric" concerns, it in not because the ancient political philosophers did not believe that what they were saying about the ideal state was objectively true. Rather, Strauss stresses that ancient political philosophy wasn't guided by the ideal of effectual truth and ancient political philosophers acknowledged that fact when they wrote about the application of their political philosophy to real life. In ancient philosophy the active life is secondary to the contemplative life in the hierarchy of human flourishing. Thus the nihilistic tendency which Strauss criticizes in modern philosophy has its roots in its difference with ancient philosophy: putting practice over theory.
(1/2)

>>23168690
The main function of the idea of esoteric writing is to challenge historicist interpretations of ancient political philosophy. Strauss saw the problems of philosophy and their possible answers as eternal, but did not think acceptance of a particular answer was present in all of Western philosophy: he actually highlights the predominance of one or another of the eternal possible answers at different points in history, but for him that is not evidence of the truth of historicism.
The reason why keeping the cat in the bag is easy according to Strauss is that the vast majority of people simply do not care about philosophy. This leads to an elitist tendency on the part of ancient philosophy, but Strauss implicitly accepts that the elitist tendency is just right.

(2/2)

>>23168690
Yeah, this is the common spiel I see, but when you read between the lines, you always see Strauss interpreting Plato as an ironic pragmatist who didn't *really* mean what he wrote, at least in the sense that what initially meets the eye is far from the whole story. All the roads that Strauss travels down are the roads that lead away from the strong idealism that characterizes the consensus understanding of Platonism.

So, if Strauss is telling us to return to the ancients, and the only difference between us and the ancients is that the ancients had an exoteric stance regarding the objectivity of truth while esoterically holding a relatively modern opinion, then what the hell is the point of Strauss's return to the ancients? Aesthetics?
>>23168698
>he actually highlights the predominance of one or another of the eternal possible answers at different points in history, but for him that is not evidence of the truth of historicism.
How exactly is that not historicism?
>The reason why keeping the cat in the bag is easy according to Strauss is that the vast majority of people simply do not care about philosophy
That ignores the downstream effects of a philosophical education among the elite, who then go on to become the producers of media, education, and policy. Anarchy at the top, where people are far more likely to care and use sophistry to attain influence and achieve their ends, would be incredibly dangerous to society and nearly impossible to prevent.

bump

>>23169529
Strauss did not believe Plato was an ironic pragmatist who didn't believe in the objectivity of truth. He thought Plato was esoteric about some things but not that thing. You should tell me where in Strauss you get the idea that Plato was being esoteric about that particular issue.
>How exactly is that not historicism?
To say that different beliefs predominate in different times is not historicism, it is a commonplace. There are two corollaries necessary for historicism: 1) that the philosopher doesn't have any possible independence from the dominant thought of their time and 2) that the "truth" of all times are equally true and the Truth of the "truth" of a given time is contingent upon that given time.
>That ignores the downstream effects of a philosophical education among the elite, who then go on to become the producers of media, education, and policy.
This is the purpose of the gentleman/philosopher distinction. The common person doesn't even read the philosopher. The "gentleman", the person you're describing, is who the exoteric message is for.

>>23170489

>>23170493

>>23170454
>Strauss did not believe Plato was an ironic pragmatist who didn't believe in the objectivity of truth. He thought Plato was esoteric about some things but not that thing. You should tell me where in Strauss you get the idea that Plato was being esoteric about that particular issue.
Considering nearly everything in The Republic ends up being qualified or otherwise put into doubt by Strauss, it's hard not to see this.
>and the Truth of the "truth" of a given time is contingent upon that given time.
Isn't this basically what happens when we say that "one" of the eternal truths must predominate at a given time?
>This is the purpose of the gentleman/philosopher distinction. The common person doesn't even read the philosopher. The "gentleman", the person you're describing, is who the exoteric message is for.
You're missing the point. When the new breed of "gentlemen" disseminates the message, what happens?

bump

>>23171590
>You're missing the point. When the new breed of "gentlemen" disseminates the message, what happens?
Nta, but ideally, nothing (Socrates' rich friend Crito), and if they have an ambitious nature that falls short of philosophizing, then you get either respect for philosophy from among the elites with thought given toward moderating oneself (Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic), or more willful distortion to justify political projects (Critias). No one who's thought about human nature carefully is ever surprised that scoundrels might use anything at their disposal. The Republic's ideal city is asserted to degenerate no matter what because someone will *inevitably* forget the nuptial number, ergo, there is no political solution that permanently keeps the scoundrels out. Everyone notices and brays over Wolfowitzes while ignoring Butterworths, Kenningtons, and Benardetes, but Wolfowitzes are inevitable no matter what you actually say.

>>23173250
I guess this is more of an elite-centric analysis, but I was thinking in terms of what happens when the average person starts exercising more agency in certain unhealthy ways because they were influenced by relativist, historicist, etc. narratives growing up. Even if formal philosophy is studied only by the few, it still has rippling effects on society, especially since media is still elite-driven.

Epicureanism is based, Plato was ironic, religion is fake and gay but it's beautiful and we have to believe in it to survive.

>>23163019
Richard Spencer is the most based guy. Way better than BAP.

>>23173771
It doesn't look like it helps, the 'Exoteric Teaching' excerpt at >>23173250 reflects on that via Lessing's reflection on it. Based on today's circumstances, however, it doesn't look so different than the analysis of democracies in the Republic, so a touch and go moralism of "things don't matter if it means I get something, and suddenly things matter a lot if someone takes something from me." Ultimately, the focus on the elites/gentlemen is on account of the fact that they tend to have more willful and ambitious natures, so they tend to be more politically spirited to effect thir or that, whereas a normie doesn't have the attention span or power of memory to do much unless directed to by a gentleman/elite. In the Republic, the selection of auxiliaries, guardians, and potential philosopher-kings is grounded on their having a good memory, and what falls out of that is that the many are more or less indifferent to or forgetful of the noble lies; the noble lies are for the gentlemen so that they won't prey on the many by convincing them that they're all brothers, and justifying both their role in the hierarchy and their lack of material reward in favor of honors and pride instead. Problems today could be mitigated (but I don't say solved) if there were means to exercise or express their spiritedness in ways conducive to political health, even dumb bullshit like awards for whatever would cool their tits. The normies are only dangerous under their sway, but left alone, the normies are "just wanna grill" types, which is fine.

>>23157005
When you start reading about Leo Strauss and Straussianism, one of the great evils they mention is 'historicism'.
And the 'most compelling evidence' against historicism turns out to be naming the jews.

>>23157015
Aw sweet!

Career
After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1932, Strauss left his position at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin for Paris.

>>23174630
That's what Lawler says, but not what Strauss says. He literally gives an argument under his own name about historicism at >>23170500:

"Historicism may be said to be the view, accepted by Sabine, that 'there are presumptions implicit in what Carl Becker called the 'climate of opinion' of an age that no contemporary ever fully grasps, precisely because they are so deeply ingrained in the texture of his thinking.' In other words, even the greatest minds cannot liberate themselves from the specific opinions which rule their particular society...As regards my argument against historicism, Sabine doubts if he follows it. What I meant to say was that if one does not take seriously the intention of the great thinkers, namely, the intention to know the truth about the whole, one cannot understand them; but historicism is based on the premise that this intention is unreasonable because it is simply impossible to know the truth about the whole."

Presumably you'll accept Lawler's opinion over Strauss's own, because Lawler is a Straussian, and you'll presume he states Strauss's case better than Strauss, or less "obscurely," regardless of other Straussians differing with his interpretation. What's also peculiar about your stance is it looks like you'll therefore accept historicism as "based" and "redpilled" on account of Strauss being Jewish, even though you would otherwise accept the bolsheviks, an example of historicism according to Lawler, as also Jewish. What's more, if you accept historicism, then you accept you don't have access to the truth per se, but an historically mediated spirit of the age that will inevitably be replaced by another, and so, ergo, your views are like any other from the vantage point of the slaughter bench of history. Further, it's peculiar to see someone latch onto historicism, when it's exactly what gives postermodernism and Marxism their basic grist for the mill. But as I said above, non-philosophers will latch onto anything so long as they think what's apparently good for them is tied to it. Sounds "Jewish."

An account of Strauss freaking out one of his Jewish friends by showing him Maimonides is not strictly Jewish.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/?p=565347

>>23174435
I think the Straussian teaching is a little bit outdated. There are plenty of powerful figures who are not gentlemen in the age of democracy. And even then, there's just the character of the society in which one lives in that is important to consider. The things it values and the way its governed will impact its "microstates" as acted out by its hoi polloi. High or low crime? High or low courtesy? Clean or dirty streets? etc.

If Strauss believed in eternal truths, then why is his metaphysics so weak? He almost exclusively focuses on political philosophy. Never seen the nigga do an exegesis of Parmenides or something.

>>23174711
they selectively pick and choose, and in fact you committed historicism as well by naming strauss and lawler as two jewish writers

>>23174720
so, pilpul

bump

>>23176140
I know you can be dismissed, because I was saying the Bolsheviks would be dismissed by you as Jewish, not that Lawler is (I don't know or care about Lawler). It's not Historicism to point out someone is Jewish, or Christian, or Greek, it's Historicist to presume that their thinking is merely a product of their times. Keep doing your contrarian thing, it'll definitely get you somewhere.

>>23175259
Overly deferential to department requirements. You can see him discuss metaphysics here and there in his lectures on the Republic or his session on Phusis in his Cicero lectures, and we might see more if his notebook on the Statesman gets published. Otherwise, you have to look at his correspondences with Kojeve, Voegelin, and Kruger, and eventually with his student Benardete when that gets published. Chicago professors apparently were obligated to do "tutorials" with students, and at least Victor Gourevich took him up on doing a tutorial on Hegel's Encyclopedia Logic.

>>23175250
You might just disagree with the ancients and early moderns in their understanding of politics. There are always powerful non-gentlemen (Xenophon's non-gentleman Hiero), but in democracies and republics, you look to the gentlemen to see how healthy or ill your political life is.

>The things it values and the way its governed will impact its "microstates" as acted out by its hoi polloi. High or low crime? High or low courtesy? Clean or dirty streets? etc.
I don't think you disagree with him here. This is something he's very attentive to in his courses on the Republic and Aristotle's Politics.

>>23175259
>political philosophy.
all atheists do, because the atheist god is literally their republic; atheism is judaism where your replace ''yahweh'' and the ''torah'' by ''society'' (or ''the parliament'') and ''the constitution' or ''the law''


>capitalism developing there second after the netherlands, thus producing a bourgeoisie that would inevitably want to rebel against the monarch's power and claim it for itself, but unlike the netherlands, there was a singular monarch to rebel against rather than there being dozens of little polities
>the english reformation acting as a catalyst to all this, ironically leading to the hegemony of the parliament despite starting as an effort to centralize and reinforce royal power
>there being a resentful but extremely rich exiled minority in the netherlands who had all the money in the world to finance a revolution if it meant being allowed back on the island

The european wars of religion had a very marked class conflict aspect to them, in any case. They were the first attempts by the recently born bourgeoisie to try to convert their economical power into political power.

>>23178051
>There are always powerful non-gentlemen (Xenophon's non-gentleman Hiero),
What makes you think Hiero, at least the historical figure, wasn't a gentleman?

>>23178251
he burped and farted at will

>>23179233
sounds about right for a straussian

All I know about Strauss is that the smartest professor I ever had told me Natural Right and History or whatever is a fun read but he made a kind of cringing smirk after saying that, and then went on to say Straussians are an odd bunch. Seemed to be implying they were a wacky cult. The only self-described Straussian I ever mas a Christian conservaboomer in academia who had a Jewish wife

>>23180063
Met was*

>>23180063
Tell us more about the smartest professor. Make him vulnerable. What was his passion? Who was his favorite philosopher? What was his guiltiest academic pleasure that you knew of?

>>23178251
I have to admit that I don't understand the relevance of the question. I pointed to XENOPHON'S Hiero, and not the historical Hiero, as an example of how the ancients understood powerful non-gentlemen. Xenophon's writings as a whole provide his views of what a gentleman is and does, especially in his Oeconomicus, and his writings on horsemanship and hunting. By Xenophon's judgment, which you can by all means disagree with, Hiero was not a gentleman. But whether he in fact was is beside the point I was making.

>>23180063
>Seemed to be implying they were a wacky cult
Isn't that every jewish intellectual current? Freudianism, marxism, straussianism, boasian anthropology...it's all jews circlejerking each other over the texts of their wonderworking rabbi of choice.

>>23181445
Was Xenophon just making up a guy then, with no basis on the real dude who just happened to share the name? Was it an attempt at libel? What do you think>

>>23157840
thats ancient trad, not christfag trad

>>23182188
No, he was not making things up, Herodotus discusses his family and how they came to power, and Aristotle discusses how their regime was replaced in his Politics. Xenophon depicts him respectfully, but his point isn't historical, but to make a point about how an autocrat in power can be moderated into a beneficient ruler concerned with the public good within limits.

>>23182269
Hiero seems like a gentleman, though. He has many talents, he sponsors the arts, etc. Xenophon is not Aristotle, of course, but Hiero seems to display many of the virtues of Nicomachean Ethics. Why is he not a gentleman? Just because he's a tyrant?

>>23182280
I'll say that it's not a judgement of good or bad to Xenophon to suggest someone isn't a gentleman, just that they're a certain kind of refined aristocrat that tends to go into politics, which is why the ancients were more concerned with them. Their refinement means that they can be get away with some violence to some people, but they can't be excessively brutal. Hiero's family tended to wipe out the gentlemen of Syracuse, and under Hiero a kind of secret police were developed, suggesting an ungentlemanly but prudent wariness of his circumstances. A poet being patronized by a man with secret police might worry a bit more about their stay.

>>23182331
Being a tyrant doesn't mean they aren't refined though. What do we mean by refinement? Something to do with aesthetics and intellect, or something to do with politics and ethics? Again, Hiero was absolutely somewhat of a gentleman in the former sense by all accounts. And what would the use of violence have to do with that?

>>23182546
You're working off of an impression of gentlemanliness, and not what Xenophon says. His Oeconomicus is again the primary work on the gentleman. There's more to refinement than liking music or poetry--music and poetry were popular among all classes in Greece. The character of that refinement includes particular virtues, like modesty and polite irony, a focus on rural life spent farming with servants to be ordered, a public spiritedness in politics, and the practice of liberality--in the ancient sense of treating one's wealth like it were nothing. Hiero sets up a secret police to spy on his people, so he's not one to leave his house or city without cause, he treats his power zealously, so he's not one to be liberal, and he's overly concerned with honors, such as those he received at the Olympic games, so he's neither modest nor likely to be politely ironic. If you disagree with either Xenophon's understanding of the gentleman (and it lines up with Aristotle's discussion of the magnanimous man), or you disagree with how Hiero is said to behave or what he's said to have done, then you would disagree with the primary sources on both subjects. If this is an argument just for the sake of one, it's running its course.

>>23183136
>If you disagree with either Xenophon's understanding of the gentleman (and it lines up with Aristotle's discussion of the magnanimous man)
Fair enough. I don't disagree with either, and I think you outlined it well enough. Not trying to bust your balls here, I just wanted to have it spelled out because I was having trouble seeing if there was a certain political code implied in being a gentleman. And it seems like there is.