Article: A Classicist's Legacy: New Empire Builders, nytimes.com

"All right, so weapons of mass destruction haven't yet been found in Iraq. And no firm link has been established between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. So what was the war in Iraq about, then? According to one school of thought, our most recent military adventure turns out to have been nothing less than a defense of Western civilization — as interpreted by the late classicist and political philosopher Leo Strauss.

If this chain of events seems implausible, consider the tribute President Bush paid in February to the cohort of journalists, political philosophers and policy wonks known — primarily to themselves — as Straussians. "You are some of the best brains in our country," Mr. Bush declared in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, "and my government employs about 20 of you."


NOTE:

From the Philosophical Gourmet Email List:

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PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEWS

[Brian Leiter:] "The front page of the May 4, 2003 New York Times "Week in Review" section (http:// www.nytimes.com /2003/05/04/ weekinreview/ 04ATLA.html) continues the mainstream media's long-standing fraudulent portrayal of Leo Strauss, and his acolytes like Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama, and Harry Jaffa, as serious political philosophers and scholars. The Times calls Strauss a "classicist and political philosopher," not noting that he could not have been appointed in any serious classics or philosophy department because of the poor quality of both his scholarship and philosophical argumentation. As Myles Burnyeat (Oxford University) wrote in one of the best-known and most devastating assessments of Strauss's work by a real scholar of classical philosophy, "surrender of the critical intellect is the price of initiation into the world of Leo Strauss's ideas" (New York Review of Books, May 30, 1985). This assessment is, of course, uncontroversial outside the Straussian coterie (as Burnyeat writes: "Straussians know that the considered judgment of the scholarly non-Straussian world is that…Strauss's interpretation of the history of political thought…is a tale full of sound and fury and extraordinary inaccuracies." For further confirmation of the intellectual bankruptcy of Straussianism- as well as for its amusement value--I also recommend the pompous rejoinders to Burnyeat by Straussians like Joseph Cropsey, Harry Jaffa, and Allan Bloom, followed by Burnyeat's demolition of them all, which appeared in the New York Review of October 10, 1985.)

Despite all this, the Times quotes, without critical comment, Harvey Mansfield's assertion that, "The open agenda of Straussians is the reading of the Great Books for their own sake, not for a political purpose." In one sense, of course, this is true: the "open" agenda was the reading of
the Greak Books, and as Burnyeat and others have demonstrated, the Straussians were fairly incompetent readers Burnyeat: "Strauss's interpretation of Plato is wrong from beginning to end"; "Jaffa's understanding of Aristotle is abysmal"). But the "closet" agenda was nakedly political, which perhaps makes Straussianism's sole academic home-select political science departments- fitting.

Indeed, Straussianism has long been one of the two pathologies of "political philosophy" as practiced in U.S. political science departments (the infection has not spread to the U.K. or Australasia); the other, of course, is "postmodernism. " This "odd couple" actually has much in common, notwithstanding the unpostmodern commitment of Straussians to "the immutability of moral and social values" (as the Times put it). Straussians and postmodernists produce relatively little competent scholarship; the quality of argumentation (for or against "the immutability of moral and social values") is very low in both Straussian and postmodernist political theory; the political motivations of Straussians and postmodernists are usually transparent; and, perhaps most strikingly, Straussian and postmodernist political philosophy simply can't be found in major philosophy departments. Surely the Times might note the peculiarity of a "movement" of purported political philosophers that is universally shunned by political philosophers (not to mention scholars of classical philosophy).

Philosophers ought to be concerned when their field is misrepresented in the media: why should the public be led to believe that non- philosophers like Strauss and Fukuyama, or failed philosophers like William Bennett, represent our field? (As Burnyeat put it: "There is much talk in
Straussian writings about the nature of 'the philosopher' but no sign of any knowledge, from the inside, of what it is to be actively involved in philosophy.")

The Times ought to make clear that, whatever the influence of Strauss among intellectual lightweights and political hacks like Paul Wolfowitz and William Bennett, he is viewed by actual scholars as a politically motivated and unreliable scholar, whose philosophical competence is minimal at best. You can e-mail letters to the editor at: letters©nytimes .com."

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05/19/03 Brian Leiter has responded to someone who posted complaints regarding the above note (on a personal weblog): Brian Leiter's Response

06/01/03 If indeed the Bush administration embraces Strauss, it appears Powell is not entirely on board -- at least when it comes to "noble lies". Colin Powell was supposedly unhappy with the draft (regarding WMD) he was given to read before the UN last February. Said Powell: I'm not reading this. This is bullshit!.