Leo Strauss and Socratism After Nietzsche and Heidegger

McIlwain, David

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_8

David McIlwain⁴

Part of the book series: Recovering Political Philosophy ((REPOPH))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the little heralded but profound philosophical insights that Leo Strauss achieved in the wake of Heidegger’s vision of the arrival of a global technological society as the result of the failure of Nietzsche’s call for a new Western nobility. Separating Nietzsche and Heidegger from their polemical elevation of courage against Hobbesian fear of death, Strauss emphasized their commitment to the higher nobility of philosophy. McIlwain reveals how Strauss developed his own contributions to philosophy in contemplating Nietzsche and Heidegger’s insights into the problem of thinking and the origin and ultimate ground of Western rationalism. This would involve a renewed confrontation with the poetic conception of the gods and a reencounter with the Bible understood trans-culturally as “the East within us, Western men.”

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Notes

1.
Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return?” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 270.
2.
Richard L. Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 121.
3.
A phrase used by Socrates in the Theaetetus to refer to those who argue that all is in flux. See Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Republic: A Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 361.
4.
Cited in Richard L. Velkley, Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 138.
5.
Leo Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 33.
6.
Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 10.
7.
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001), 426.
8.
Leo Strauss, “Seminar in Political Philosophy: Hegel’s The Philosophy of History,” delivered March 9, 1965 at the University of Chicago. Leo Strauss Center, University of Chicago.
9.
Leo Strauss, “Natural Law,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 144.
10.
Waller R. Newell, “Kojève’s Hegel, Hegel’s Hegel, and Strauss’s Hegel: A Middle Range Approach to the Debate about Tyranny and Totalitarianism,” Philosophy, History, and Tyranny: Reexamining the Debate between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève, ed. Timothy W. Burns and Bryan-Paul Frost (New York: SUNY Press, 2016), 247.
11.
Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H. Nichols and ed. Allan Bloom (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 47–48.
12.
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 454.
13.
Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (HarperCollins: New York, 2008), 106.
14.
Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 41.
15.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 83–84.
16.
Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 148.
17.
Cited in Leo Strauss, “Review of J. L. Talmon The Nature of Jewish History—Its Universal Significance,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 232.
18.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman and ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 163–164.
19.
Ibid., 65.
20.
Cf. William H. F. Altman, The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011), 213 n. 97.
21.
Leo Strauss, “Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 46.
22.
Nietzsche, Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, 162.
23.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 97–99.
24.
Strauss, “Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito,” 51–54.
25.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 75.
26.
Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Corrected and Expanded Edition, Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 207.
27.
Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 49.
28.
Leo Strauss, “The Living Issues in German Postwar Philosophy,” in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 137–138.
29.
Cf. Ricardo Duchesne, The Uniqueness of the West (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 441–442, 456–457 n. 31.
30.
Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” The College 25, no. 2 (April 1970): 3.
31.
Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (New York: Free Press, 1959), 172.
32.
Leo Strauss, letter to Gershom Scholem, January 27, 1973, cited in Werner J. Dannhauser, “Leo Strauss in His Letters,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006), 358.
33.
Leo Strauss, Letter to Gershom Scholem, July 7, 1973, cited in Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 178–179 n. 38.
34.
See Karl Löwith, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, trans. Gary Steiner, ed. Richard Wolin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 215–216.
35.
Leo Strauss, letter to Karl Löwith, December 21, 1951, cited in Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 56.
36.
Velkley, Being after Rousseau, 140.
37.
Leo Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 41–42.
38.
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 152.
39.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 34.
40.
Altman, German Stranger, 182.
41.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 213.
42.
Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth, introduction to On Tyranny, xxii.
43.
Altman, German Stranger, 421.
44.
Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 43 n. 10.
45.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 34.
46.
Martin Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word: ‘God is Dead,’” in Off the Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 186.
47.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 34.
48.
Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 34.
49.
Leo Strauss, letter to Karl Löwith, December 21, 1951, cited in Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 56.
50.
Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism,” ed. David Janssens and Daniel Tanguay, Interpretation 26, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 360.
51.
Leo Strauss, letter to Karl Löwith, December 21, 1951, cited in Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 56.
52.
Thomas L. Pangle, introduction to Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 25.
53.
Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 161.
54.
Stanley Rosen, The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2002), 285, 293.
55.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 210.
56.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 33–34.
57.
Altman, German Stranger, 182.
58.
Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy, 139.
59.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 80.
60.
Thomas L. Pangle, introduction to The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, xxviii.
61.
Thomas L. Pangle, “Preface to the Chinese edition of The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism.” https://www.academia.edu/14554942/Preface_to_the_Chinese_Edition_of_The_Rebirth_of_Classical_Political_Rationalism_An_Introduction_to_the_Thought_of_Leo_Strauss (accessed November 8, 2016).
62.
Leo Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 44.
63.
Altman, German Stranger, 191 n. 43.
64.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 34 n. 3.
65.
Michael Oakeshott, “The Universities,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 133–134.
66.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 38.
67.
Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, cited in Altman, German Stranger, 186–187.
68.
Ibid., 187.
69.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 34.
70.
Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 153 n. 2.
71.
Ibid., 76, 153. Wohlstetter may be closer to the kind of éminence grise that a number of Leftist critics have imagined Leo Strauss to be in linking him with all the wars of the “neocons” and Wilsonian internationalists. Altman, in complete contrast, wants to persuade us of Strauss’s connection to Carl Schmitt and Heidegger, men who were tireless in pointing to the hypocrisies of Wilsonian wars “to end all war.” Clearly, it is not possible that both lines of criticism could be accurate. Of course it is more than possible that both are wide of the mark.
72.
Martin Heidegger, “On the Question of Being,” in Pathmarks, trans. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 321. Cf. Altman, German Stranger, 190 n. 39.
73.
Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 41.
74.
Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 184.
75.
Laurence Lampert, The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 246–247.
76.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 84.
77.
Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 40–44.
78.
Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 33.
79.
David McIlwain, “‘The East within Us’: Leo Strauss’s Reinterpretation of Heidegger,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2018), 233–253.
80.
Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 44.
81.
Ibid., 43.
82.
Michael Oakeshott, “Introduction to Leviathan,” in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 18–19.
83.
Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 152.
84.
Altman, German Stranger, 192–193.
85.
Ibid., 191 n. 43.
86.
Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 42–44.
87.
Although the biblical tradition may also be seen as representing the discovery of a universal standard (and thus a breaking free from parochial or ancestral standards), its universal standard belongs to the realm of practice or morality (“right acting”) rather than theory (“right seeing and thinking”). For an alternative argument, going explicitly against Strauss in claiming to reveal the philosophical nature of the Bible, see Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
88.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 86.
89.
Strauss, “Review of J. L. Talmon,” 232.
90.
Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 46.
91.
Ibid., 43.
92.
Leo Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 175.
93.
Ibid., 181.
94.
Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 57.
95.
Lampert, Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, 295.
96.
Ibid., 293.

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Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia
David McIlwain

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McIlwain, D. (2019). Leo Strauss and Socratism After Nietzsche and Heidegger. In: Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_8
Published: 15 March 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13380-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13381-8
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