/straussian/ general

[Anonymous No.13563114]

Let's discuss the writings of Leo Strauss, and like socrates, ask ourselves what is the meaning and duty of the western tradition and western political philosophy in an age of ''safe spaces'' and ''trigger warnings'', in which judeochristian values, scientific inquiry, individual freedom and liberal democracy are both under attack by nietszchean and heideggerean anti enlightenment extremists, antisemites of all kinds, nazis, jihadis and the radical left? Any good books on American History from a neoconservative perspective? I have already read Henry Jaffa on Lincoln, a few if's and but's otherwise definitely a major work.

[Anonymous No.13563117]

>>13563114
fuck this kike and fuck you

[Anonymous No.13563208]

>>13563114
the coming of the UHS(universal homogenous state) is inevitable, so why not assume your world historical responsability as Spirit?Fighting and Work, man makes himself through as Hegel once said. History ended with the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen in 1789. Everybody knows Fukuyama was right about absolutely everything, but nobody wants to admit it, the leftists most of all. the end of history is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, a few stubborn holdouts remain. But with the explosion of cyberspace, interdependent of the global financial markets, and G-d willing- overwhelming american israeli defense superiority, we will be able to make this planet earth into a safe planet for democracy and universal human rights by 2030.

[Anonymous No.13563235]

>>13563114
Why is 20th century political writing so based?

This guy can mention Kant, Hegel and Marx in one paragraph without it being nonsense.

[Anonymous No.13563255]

>>13563114
Jordan B Peterson is a straussian, just instead of political science he does Jung and evopsych. any straussian readings of the pronoun incident?

the whole of the (((intellectual dark web))) for that matter, Sam Harris does straussianism with neuroscience, see his ''debate'' vs Chomsky, they just can't do fact value distinctions, muh objective facts, bemoaning 'relativism' and double standards,

https://samharris.org/the-limits-of-discourse/

[Anonymous No.13563273]

>>13563114
Just read our boy Mansfield, the west coast straussians are an overrated circlejerk.

[Anonymous No.13563317]

>>13563114
>Any good books on American History from a neoconservative perspective
I've got a document here which might be of extreme interest to you:

https://docdro.id/BEisaGq

[Anonymous No.13563405]

>>13563114
Worth noting that Strauss and Jaffa aren't neoconservatives; whatever influence Strauss had on Irving and Bill Kristol, the latter has been explicit in stating that Strauss doesn't inform his politics (for that, you should look more towards Bloom and Fukuyama who are indebted to Kojeve for those elements). Jaffa was also pretty loud about his displeasure for the neoconservative argument for the invasion of Iraq.

For what it's worth, I don't think Strauss is quite the figure you want to defend your interests by; for good looks at what he was really up to, cf. Richard Kennington's review of Natural Right and History, Seth Benardete's sporadic writings on Strauss in The Argument of the Action and The Archaeology of the Soul, Svetozar Minkov's Leo Strauss on Science, Heinrich Meier's books on Strauss, Richard Velkley's book on Strauss and Heidegger, and Laurence Lampert's The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss.

At the very least look at what he has to say about Burke in Natura Right and History and how he responds to Kojeve in On Tyranny to see what he thinks of political conservatism (as we now tend to understand it) and neoconservatism.

>>13563255
psh naw

[Anonymous No.13563560]

>>13563235
>Aesthetic Strategist: Albert Wohlstetter, the Cold War, and a Theory of Mid-Century Modernism

cold war think tanks and ''defense intellectuals'' were also known to be ''based af''.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41417904?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[Anonymous No.13563585]

>>13563114
>attack by nietszchean and heideggerean
wasn´t strauss a nietszchean and heideggerean too?

[Anonymous No.13563855]

>>13563585
Nietzschean, probably, but in a very qualified sense; Heideggerian, no.

[Anonymous No.13564840]

Gottfried's book on Strauss is good. It's basically a "be spooky and elitist but don't be a fascist" conservatism, massively monopolized by Jews and run as a private club, designed to prevent potential fascists from drifting rightward. You're supposed to be conservative enough that you enjoy being a spooky shadow manipulator of the plebs, but not conservative enough that you want to save the plebs by giving them values worth fighting for again.

[Anonymous No.13564871]

>>13564840
Paul Gottfried is up there in the all time pantheon of based jews along with Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon and Karl Kraus.

>Patrol 36 (Hebrew: פטרול 36, [paˈtrol ʃloˈʃim ve ˈʃeʃ], Russian: Пaтpyль 36, [pɐˈtrʊlʲ ˈtrJjt͡sɐtʲ ˈʂɛstʲ]) was an Israeli neo-Nazi organization, consisting of 8 teenagers, led by Eli Bonite (born Erik Bunyatov in 1988), alias "Ely the Nazi" (Hebrew: אלי הנאצי Eli ha-Natsi, Russian: Haциcт Эли Natsist Eli). The group's members were Russian immigrants aged 16 to 21. According to The Daily Telegraph, the men's families were allowed to settle in Israel under the Law of Return, meaning that they all had at least one grandparent with a Jewish mother, although none of them were Jewish according to the Jewish law.

>The group desecrated buildings, especially synagogues, with swastikas and graffiti, and carried out attacks on migrant workers from Africa and Asia, drug addicts, gays, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and elderly people. Patrol 36's members reportedly had tattoos with the number 88 (a reference to the phrase "Heil Hitler") and were stockpiling guns, TNT, knives and portraits of Adolf Hitler. The group produced videos of their own attacks, which were found on computers seized by police.[1][2][3] [4][5] [6] One of the group's members, Ivan Kuzmin, said that in "Russia they called me Dirty Jew, and here they called me Stinking Russian". He said that the racism he experienced turned him into a racist

[Anonymous No.13564873]

You're my favorite poster on this board, I hope you know that.

Also - Fukuyama was right about everything, despite what people think.

[Anonymous No.13564883]

>>13564871
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u5Z0GZ1WsE

[Anonymous No.13565091]

>>13563317
What is this PDF from?

[Anonymous No.13565289]

>>13564873
im afraid you're an idiot. authoritarianism is our inevitable future, and I don't mean China. freedom is only growing costlier

[Anonymous No.13565309]

>>13564873
>Fukuyama was right about everything
Go to bed Francis we all know it's you!

[Anonymous No.13565332]

>>13565289
>>13565309
It takes a particularly neurotic, damaged mind to think that Fukuyama's idea of the market as "the ultimate producer" – which he also calls "the ultimate buyer" – is no longer plausible. The market does not produce goods and services, but rather the desires and hopes of people who find them. In effect, the market is a collective entity, and individual acts, while important, cannot replace collective action. But, if it fails to give men a sense of individual ownership of their own lives, how can it ever fulfill its "role of facilitating human flourishing" as Fukuyama says?

[Anonymous No.13566316]

>>13564871
Wtf Pat Buchanan with Richard?

[Anonymous No.13566344]

>>13563114
I am doing a College Thesis on Machiavelli and why he is wrong about him and why Machiavelli wasn't a "teacher of evil", as Strauss likes to call him. However, I picked up his book to attack him but found myself actually agreeing on some of his points. On the other hand, I need to advance my argument further that Strauss was wrong fundamentally about Machiavelli. How do I do it?

[Anonymous No.13566357]

What do I need to have read before I read strauss?

[Anonymous No.13566434]

>>13566357
Unironically the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.13566450]

>>13566344
Pocock and Skinner both have interesting perspectives on Machiavelli which consciously challenge Strauss', though their theory of 'Neo-Roman' republicanism is tainted by the fact that they (with Pettit) are engaged in a political project which, to some extent, perverts their understanding of Reublicanism. The following is an interesting academic article on the controversy between Pocock and the Straussians:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01916599.2016.1198072

[Anonymous No.13566465]

>>13563114
A general is a thread meant to collect the discussion of a subject in order to have it in one location.

A thread about straussianism is extremely rare, and discussion about it is also very infrequent. Stop calling things "general" if they are not, this is simply a thread about straussianism.

[Anonymous No.13567826]

>>13566357
Not really anything. His works are based on such close readings of the texts he comments on that he can be profitably used as an introduction for a number of authors. It's usually best to read whatever work he's commenting on alongside his text.

But if you're asking about Strauss's own thought, Nietzsche, Weber, Husserl, Heidegger, Jacobi, Lessing, and Maimonides are the big figures. (One would think his big loves, Plato, Xenophon, Al-Farabi, would be included in the list, but these other figures were the preconditions for his becoming fascinated by these latter greats.)

[Anonymous No.13567843]

>>13566344
Why would you force your argument to be right? If Strauss is right, then he's right. No need to show him up just because.

A question you would need to address is why Strauss refers to M. as a "teacher of evil", i.e., you have to ask about the rhetorical weight of that phrase and inspect whether Strauss actually argues on behalf of that position or whether he's referring to a popular perception of Machiavelli.

[Anonymous No.13567940]

>>13566450
First names? B.F. Skinner?

[Anonymous No.13567970]

>>13567940
Not that anon but J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner

[Anonymous No.13567973]

Also if anyone ITT wants a quick inside scoop on whether Strauss' esoteric/exoteric hermeneutic thing was a deep insight or just a case of him being a kook, the best place to look for it is in systematic reviews of his book on Machiavelli, in particular. That's where he definitely gets weirdest with it. I think Pocock actually has a review like that.

[Anonymous No.13568007]

>>13566450
Good article

[Anonymous No.13568011]

>>13567973
I'm inclined to agree that the number codes in Thoughts On Machiavelli are ridiculous, but I don't think disagreement with that approach undermines his writings on exoteric writing/esoteric teachings. For what it's worth, the grounds for his discovery of it are in Lessing's writings on Leibnitz, the Jacobi-Lessing controversy, and Maimonides's expicit use of exoteric writing.

A good rundown of bitesized historic references about exoteric writing can be found in this pdf put together by Melzer: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/sites/melzer/melzer_appendix.pdf

[Anonymous No.13568027]

Lessig? Melzer ? Again full names please.

[Anonymous No.13568054]

>>13568027
stop using a phone and expecting everyone to do legwork for you

nobody is going to write lessing's full name in a context where 95% of the people interested in discussion know who lessing is, some pressure is on you to read between lines and learn how to google

[Anonymous No.13568063]

>>13568054
I'm on the computer and my search engine doesn't give me answers of specific people as a response to generic fucking last names. Most people would take the extra few seconds to type out something they know in hopes of getting some else more interested in the topic being discussed you twit.

[Anonymous No.13568071]

>>13568063

[Anonymous No.13568095]

>>13568071
I'm not a Google slave. Just keeping doing what they tell you to do though goy.

[Anonymous No.13568107]

>>13568095
explain more what you mean i don't want to interpret it myself go go go hurry

[Anonymous No.13568125]

>>13568027
>>13568063
Don't be such a fucking autist. Melzer's name is attached to a link that makes clear that he's the author of a book who put together the pdf, and Lessing is a famous 18th century philosopher. When one the "generic" names is that of a famous philosopher, and the other's name is explained in the link attached, it's not super necessary to spell everything out like I'm teaching children.

[Anonymous No.13568777]

>>13564873
Can you say more about why you think Fukuyama was right?

What do you think of Fukuyama's more recent reflections on his own work?

[Anonymous No.13568900]

>>13564840
How true is this? I've heard this before and it just sounds like horribly poor and childish character to view the common man in such a way.

[Anonymous No.13569343]

>>13568007
Thanks! I'm not the Anon who was talking about his thesis earlier (otherwise I wouldn't have replied to him) but I'm writing my thesis on Classical Republicanism as well, and Strauss' quite novel perspective has been invaluable.

[Anonymous No.13569432]

>>13568900
Hard to say, since the students of Strauss disagree strongly with each other over this.

I think a safe characterization of Strauss is that he's an elitist of the Socratic variety, i.e., he recognizes how hard it is to know things, that he doesn't suppose to know the things he doesn't know, but that he's also not satisfied with opinions. A related element of that is that the question of human differences comes up, albeit in the form of questions like "why isn't everyone like Socrates? Why aren't Socrates's close friends even like him? Are there natural differences between the type Socrates represents and other types? Or are those differences conventional? What is the difference between the morality of the philosophers and that of everyone else?" Etc., etc. At bottom, I think Strauss is more interested in philosophy than politics per se, but politics is relevant as a precondition for philosophizing rigorously and safely. His "conservativism" is neither the kind of Buckley nor Burke (too arbitrary for a philosopher and too grounded in historicism), but is something more like caution and prudence that come from an awareness of how fragile the philosophical way of life is. Exoteric writings are often protective of both author and audience, and the real targets of noble lies are the elites with the power to wipe out philosophy/philosophers.

The students on the other hand can be pretty lousy. Wolfowitz owes more to Wohlstetter than Strauss, but Anram Shulsky is a simple cretin.

[Anonymous No.13570339]

bump

[Anonymous No.13570509]

>>13569343
What about Strauss's work has been helpful for you?