/lit/ - Literature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz

>>7185658
Everything about the Greeks is worth reading. Specially the Greeks.

>>7185663
This.

Here's a lecture of his from 1966.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpZKKmVZ1DY

>>7185662
>Wolfowitz did graduate work at the University of Chicago in political science, where he took two courses with Leo Strauss.
>two courses
>two

>>7185662
Also, wasn't Strauss friends with Irving Kristol?

>>7185839
>Irving Kristol, identified Strauss as one of his two chief influences.

>>7185849
Still doesn't show which ideas of Strauss were the so-called "backbone" of the neocons.

>>7185942
the noble lie and left-wing alex joneses

>>7185964
Power of Nightmares was shit. Strauss' daughter and several of Strauss' former students have said he never endorsed noble lies nor was he anti-democratic.

>>7185974
yeah, he out-liberals most liberals

>>7185974
some evil philosopher in the shadows behind and influencing everything is appealing to dumb people
instead of arguing about the actual issue you find a lightning rod for evil and connect the person to that evil thing and say see look he's evil and wrong didn't even have to think about it
sort of like what i'm doing now

i can't wait until the neo-conservatives are back in power

>>7185984
>instead of arguing about the actual issue you find a lightning rod for evil and connect the person to that evil thing and say see look he's evil and wrong didn't even have to think about it
>sort of like what i'm doing now
Okaaay.

>>7185658
>How and why did the conspiracies surrounding his alleged influence on the Bush Administration originate?
Same way all the conspiracy theories about the Frankfurt School originated.

>>7185658
>How and why did the conspiracies surrounding his alleged influence on the Bush Administration originate?

That's just bizarre nonsense, ignore it.

He's an exceptional reader with fantastic insights, he's definitely worth reading and he will highly influence on how you approach texts. You'll start seeing esotericism everywhere.

Start with City and Man, Persecution and the Art of Writing.

>>7186115
>Start with City and Man
This. I'm currently going through it.

Such ignorance. Read Leo Strauss and the Conservative Moment in America by Paul Gottfried.

>>7186312
>Strauss's followers continue to view themselves as stalwart Truman-Kennedy Democrats and liberal internationalists.
ha ha ha yeah right was this book published by the council on foreign relations

Reminder that Paleoconservatism is the true school of Strauss and not the invaders of the City called neo-conservatives.

>Paleoconservatism
hank hill's political philosophy is only acceptable when you're standing around a bonfire drunk with your friends and family

I was lucky enough to happen upon this volume and I recommend you do the same.

He's like a rightwing version of the Frankfurt school. You know how people say communism never works because of human nature, imagine that but with everything else too.

He helped found St. John's

>not a conspiracy

>>7186454
I've heard that school is an academic boot camp.

>>7186456
>the far right and jewish mysticism

Just WHY is the far right obsessed with magic and fairytales?

Not that it doesn't make sense given the average mental capabilities of these people, but for fucks sake

>>7186626
The Right pulls the same shit with the Frankfurt School too.

>>7186417
>13. Do not use avatars or attach signatures to your posts.

"Neoconservatism" probably doesn't mean what you think it does.

>>7185942
See "Neoconservatism: Obituary Of An Idea"

>>7186626
Because every single idea in the world is connected with them. Read some Derrida.

>>7188115
Let me guess: it uses Drury's godawful scholarship on the topic, no?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2811019

>>7188345
Connected with fairy tales, or with Jews?

>>7186115
>>7185658
> an exceptional reader with fantastic insights
>esotericism

He just gives very close hermeneutic readings. Basically,"esoteric", is code for intent, and an esoteric reading is just a close reading around that.

The Straussians make excellent translators for this reason. They stick as close to the original as they can.

They also make good politicians, bureaucrats, etc, because he trained them to actually be Philosophically minded in their approach to Politics, with all the cunning and understatement that entails.

>>7188976
>The Straussians make excellent translators for this reason. They stick as close to the original as they can.
This.

Harvey Manfield's Tocqueville translation is damn good.

>>7185942
There aren't any; all of that comes from Myles Burnyeat and Shadia Drury, two scholars who shit on Strauss in the 80s, a decade after he died, partly because a few of his students worked in government advisory roles or in think tanks, and partly because his esoteric/exoteric thesis sounds incredible to scholars who haven't looked at any of the evidence for it.

>>7185658
His books are eminently worth reading. He's such a magnificent close reader that it'll be the case that you'll learn something from his texts, and what's nice about his close readings is that it's a manner of engagement with the texts that you're perfectly qualified to evaluate.

You can find the most thorough (and entertaining) refutation of a lot of the Strauss memes in "Straussophobia" by Peter Minowitz, available here:

http://en.bookfi.org/book/1123931

>>7186454
No he didn't; his friend Jacob Klein did, and when Strauss retired, he moved to Annapolis to spend his last years with Klein, and was made a "Scholar in Residence" who got to lead a few seminars.

He does have a number of students who've become professors there, but he ultimately had no hand in the design of the program.

>>7189118
The same people propagating the "Straussian neocon" conspiracy are the same people propagating the Frankfurt School-Cultural Marxism-Kabbalist-Talmudic-Sabbatean-Frankist-Illuminati-Satanist conspiracy.

>>7189146
Eh, kinda; Lyndon Larouche did put out a lot of pamphlets on Strauss during the Bush administration, but most of the people propagating it are liberals who encountered some editorials during the Iraq war debacle that used Shadia Drury as a source, claiming to find the problems of the Bush administration in Strauss's teachings. Those people take the editorials as truth, and don't bother with looking into his large corpus of published work wherein one would think they'd find all of these supposed teachings that he apparently openly advocated. The dumber truth is that those liberals would either sympathize with some of his work, or they'd find him merely boring, having invested all of his time into the study of texts by "dead white men".

>>7189146
>>7189311
To be fair, most German professors that escaped during that time period are Talmudic-Alchemist-Illuminati-Satanist Magicians.

You can safely assume that anybody who learned under Heidegger was.

>>7189394

the idea behind st john's college is admirable.

>>7189394
Pic related. Granted, he didn't make it, but you'd be hard put to find a humanities department without him.

>>7189403
I'm just being honest. I mean come on, Hegel, Kant...Weber, Niebuhr, Voegelin, Jaspers. They've all got a little magic in them.

>>7189407
There is nothing actually wrong with it, people are just superstitious. Starting with Plato, you would have a problem finding any major name that wasn't mystical or magical in some way.

>>7189407
>>7189426
But what I got from that text is that Benjamin was interested in the Cabala (and what literate person isn't at some point) and that the reason for his interest was fuckin' exegetical. Meaning, he was using it to teach himself how to interpret texts in new and interesting ways. Doesn't seem that superstitious.

>>7189394
>>7189409
What do you mean by "magical"? If you're referring to Kabalah, then that doesn't seem true of Strauss and Klein, both of whom come to their interpretations through Phenomenological "de-sedimentation", and in Strauss's case from medieval authors that demonstrably use an esoteric/exoteric manner of writing that people without an interest in magic are perfectly capable of noticing.

>>7189446
The subtext of this is that his study of Kabbalah imparted an improvement to his exegesis, that it left it's mark on him, that he is Kabbalist.

>>7189583
I don't know what I actually mean by magical, something between the rhetoric and style of mystical traditions, and the traditions themselves. You sure that "de-sedimentation" isn't an obfuscation of a mystical concept? The whole "esoteric" thing, and hermeneutics in general are "magical", whether or not the reader realizes it or not. Strauss most certainly does reference and "utilize" "magical" concepts, look at his book on Hobbes and Machiavelli.

Like I was saying, the whole tradition of Philosophy is mystical.

>>7189583
>>7189446
Dr. Ellis Sandoz wrote a wonderful paper on mystical Philosophy and how it is simply Philosophy if you two are interested. Just google his name and mystical philosophy and I am sure you will find it.

>>7185658
>How and why did the conspiracies surrounding his alleged influence on the Bush Administration originate?
The conspiracies began in the 90s when a handful of his former students (Wolfowitz, etc.) began making a name for themselves in Washington. After Bush Jr. invaded Iraq all the rumors began circulating that Strauss' ideas were behind the neocon/PNAC push for war. There really is no evidence to support these claims. Strauss was definitely elitist but he didn't advocate "noble lies" as his critics like to claim. In fact, he emphasized the elitism in Plato and Aristotle partially so his students could recognize deception from political elites.

>Also, is his stuff on the Greeks worth reading?
Absolutely. The City and Man is a very good place to start.

>>7189615
>I don't know what I actually mean by magical, something between the rhetoric and style of mystical traditions, and the traditions themselves
So the outward appearance or presentation? Do you distinguish between content?

>You sure that "de-sedimentation" isn't an obfuscation of a mystical concept?
If it were, it's not any mystical concept I've heard of. But I don't believe it is, and I've never seen anything in Husserl's writings to suggest it's anything other than one of the goals of phenomenology with respect to making sense of concepts in older or ancient philosophy. Why would I assume that it's an obfuscation of a mystical concept at all? And do you distinguish between mysticism and science in any meaningful way (science broadly encompassing what we call modern science, but also the kind of comprehensive unifying account of causes and phenomena that Aristotle inaugurated)?

>Strauss most certainly does reference and "utilize" "magical" concepts, look at his book on Hobbes and Machiavelli
What do you have in mind? I've read those, and while I'd admit seeing content of a rhetorical nature, I don't see why I'd conflate that with "magic" or "mysticism".

>>7189624
Taking a look now.

>>7189781
>In fact, he emphasized the elitism in Plato and Aristotle partially so his students could recognize deception from political elites.
Heh, I'm not so sure about that! I don't think he advocated elitism the way morons like Drury argue, but I don't think he spoke against it in the context of discussing Plato, who he seems to make a great effort to show had deep philosophical reasons for taking a (very qualified) elitist stance.

Though he does pick on Nietzsche for his particular kind of elitist language.

>>7188808
Jews are fairytales.

>>7189624
Eh, I'm not persuaded. If he wanted to argue this, he'd have to do so on the basis of the Greeks, but instead argues from Voegelin, who, while an interesting interpreter and philosopher in his own right, should not be the primary source of this kind of inquiry.

But thank you anyway for offering something on the subject.

>>7189815
Thank you, these are all very good questions.
>So the outward appearance or presentation? Do you distinguish between content?

It can be all of the above. Presentation/ appearance, with no content, is magical in a manipulative way. Content, indirectly presented or appearing in a way that suggests it is something else is magical in a good way.

>If it were, it's not any mystical concept I've heard of.

It is. Are you familiar with the concept of beyond-being? It is essentially the "metaphysical" barrier of hermeneutics, misinterpretations accumulate over time, and de-sedimentation is the process of removing these. It relies on this barrier, and thus only works on mystical authors.

>What do you have in mind? I've read those, and while I'd admit seeing content of a rhetorical nature, I don't see why I'd conflate that with "magic" or "mysticism".

In the book on Hobbes, he makes a few references to Paracelsus in the footnotes. I don't have the time at the moment to find these, but I promise you they are there. As far as the Machiavelli work, the numerology, despite being a reference to something else entirely, is still "magical" or "mystic"

>>7189859
Arguing from Voegelin is a way of attributing the observation. Voegelin and his students rarely refer back to the text itself, because that opens fact, which believe it or not, is what Voegelin,despite his rhetoric, deals in, to argumentation from common interpretation(Derailment/Sedimentation). He and Strauss essentially have the same motive, just different perspectives.

>>7185673
>that voice

Worth noting that a handful of transcripts of his lectures are up online:

http://leostrausstranscripts.uchicago.edu/

The Plato and Nietzsche lectures are especially interesting.

Plus, there's no better evidence of how full of shit the Drury-led crowd is than to see what he says off the cuff and informally.

>>7189830
I see, I see.

>>7192355
Taking a look through the published lectures in the link above, I note that Strauss only speaks of Callicles as an elitist.

A search for "noble lie" brings out explicit references to the Republic, including the following interesting lines, which are an explication of Plato rather than his own views:

"What else can we do? Is anything else possible? What does the noble lie in the Republic mean? It means that all societies rest ultimately on certain convictions which cannot be evident truth for all members of society. This is a simple premise which Plato states very forcefully and provocatively."