Things Read and Written
February 2022
Since I haven’t posted anything in awhile, I thought I’d put together some notes on some pieces I’ve read recently, along with links to a couple of things I’ve written. If this is of interest, let me know, and I’ll do posts like this more frequently (monthly?).
Things Read: Leo Strauss on Farabi and Two Pieces on Strauss and the Medievals
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I. Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato”
I’ve been meaning to read Rémi Brague’s “Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss’s ‘Muslim’ Understanding of Greek Philosophy” for some time now. The reasons have to do with some of the aspects of Farabi’s reading of Plato that Strauss stresses. I’ll briefly survey those aspects, before commenting on Brague’s essay.
At the end of the introductory section of “Farabi’s Plato,” Strauss says:
Farabi’s exposition of Plato’s philosophy claims to be a complete survey of its main topics: Platonic topics which are not mentioned in it, are considered by him either unimportant or merely exoteric. (360)
Much later in the essay, Strauss specifies:
Farabi’s silence about the ideas and about the immortality of the soul shows certainly that he does not hesitate to deviate from the letter of Plato’s teaching if he considers that literal teaching erroneous. He may have believed that Plato himself considered the doctrines in question merely exoteric. (376; compare What is Political Philosophy? 138–39)
On the contrary, Farabi’s Plato is decidedly political. Strauss writes:
It is evident at first sight—and close investigation merely confirms the first impression—that this view of Plato’s philosophy cannot be traced to Neoplatonism. The apparent identification of philosophy with the royal art, the apparent subordination of the subject of the Timaeus to the political theme of the Republic, the implicit rejection of the “metaphysical” interpretation of the Philebus, the Parmenides, the Phaedo and the Phaedrus might lead one to suspect that, according to Farabi, Plato’s philosophy is essentially political. Since Farabi considered the Platonic view of philosophy the true view, we would thus be driven to believe that Farabi himself attributed to philosophy an essentially political meaning.
I want to draw your attention to the sentence that follows, which is quite strongly worded and seems absolutely essential:
This belief would be so paradoxical, it would be so much opposed to all opinions which we have inherited, that we cannot but feel very hesitant to accept it. (362)
Farabi’s interpretation of Plato, in being contrary to Neoplatonism, is not just decidedly political, it is also uniquely such. The uniqueness Strauss attributes to Farabi’s Plato suggests that Farabi offered Strauss an interpretation of Plato that could endure the modern critique of ancient idealism. That is, one could not say of Farabi’s interpretation of Plato what Nietzsche said of Plato toward the end of Twilight of the Idols:
Courage before reality distinguished in the end such natures as Thucydides and Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, – consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has himself in his control, consequently he also holds things in his control...
Rather, as Strauss later remarks, what characterized Farabi was “his refusal, amounting to a flagrant deviation from the letter of Plato’s teaching, to succumb to Plato’s charms”—the charms, in particular, of “the belief in a happiness different from the happiness of this life, or the belief in the other life” (374–75; see, also, 377–78). With respect to resisting this charm, though not to say in all other respects, Farabi and Nietzsche would appear quite close (see 392–93).
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II. Rémi Brague, “Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca”
So, the title of Brague’s essay intrigued me. I was curious to see how he understood the role Farabi played in Strauss’s recovery of a non-idealist Plato as a response to the modern critique, how Farabi showed Strauss that another way was open to us, apart from that taken by his contemporaries. As I think you’ll see, though, I went in with the wrong expectations.
After a brief intellectual biography of Strauss, Brague presents his thesis:
the pattern of reading [that] Strauss applied to the Greeks is neither ancient nor modern, but medieval—to be precise, Islamic—in origin.
Note the focus on “the pattern of reading.” This very much determines the scope of his remarks. Most of the essay is an explication of esotericism, with some interesting remarks on the differences between the Jewish and Muslim varieties. Less is said about the connections between Farabi’s reading of Plato and Strauss’s. There is a helpful paragraph early on, however:
Be that as it may, the general thrust of Strauss’s reading of the Republic reminds one of Farabi’s utterances.…The very way Strauss puts Thrasymachus at the center of his interpretation, bringing into relief the importance of the friendship that finally arises between him and Socrates, is borrowed from Farabi….On the other hand, the combination of “Socratic” bold philosophizing and “Thrasymachean” cautious speech characterizes Strauss’s own art of writing.
Brague does observe the connection to Nietzsche, though he does not develop that connection as much as I’d have liked. Strauss was, as Brague notes, under the sway of Nietzsche as a youth; yet Strauss also traced aspects of the vulgar Nietzscheanism of his contemporaries to Nietzsche himself, in particular the special emphasis on courage (see “German Nihilism” 371 and 372). The appeal of Farabi was in part—I emphasize in part—owed to Strauss’s search for an answer to the crisis of the West. It showed that pre-modern thought could withstand the modern critique of the ideal as imaginary, initiated by Machiavelli but stated most recently and forcefully by Nietzsche. If so, then the nihilism of his contemporaries would be a symptom not of the failings of the tradition in toto but of modernity in particular.
Another helpful bit was a footnote reference to §496 of Nietzsche’s Morgenröte, the text of which I’ll include here (trans. Hollingdale):
The evil principle.—Plato has given us a splendid description of how the philosophical thinker must within every existing society count as the paragon of all wickedness: for as critic of all customs he is the antithesis of the moral man, and if he does not succeed in becoming the lawgiver of new customs he remains in the memory of men as ‘the evil principle’. From this we may gather what the city of Athens, tolerably freeminded and avid for innovation though it was, did with the reputation of Plato during his lifetime: is it any wonder if, filled with the ‘political drive’ as he himself says he was, he attempted three times to settle in Sicily, where at that time a Pan-Hellenic Mediterranean city seemed to be in process of formation? In this city, and with its help, Plato intended to do for all the Greeks what Mohammed later did for his Arabs: to determine customs in things great and small and especially to regulate everyone’s day-to-day mode of life. His ideas were as surely practical as those of Mohammed were practical: after all, far more incredible ideas, those of Christianity, have proved practical! A couple of accidents more and a couple of other accidents fewer—and the world would have seen the Platonisation of the European south; and if this state of things still persisted, we should presumably be honouring in Plato the ‘good principle’. But success eluded him: and he was thus left with the reputation of being a fantasist and utopian—the more opprobrious epithets perished with ancient Athens.
Not evil but a utopian, an idealist—that’s the remnant of Plato’s project that the accidents of history have left us, the remnant that the early moderns rejected. What else was he up to? (I look forward to Ariel Helfer’s translation and interpretation of Plato’s Letters to shed light on this question.)
To return to Brague, his piece has much to recommend it, but again I think I went in with the wrong expectations. I’m mostly interested in a treatment of Strauss’s turn to the medievals in light of his specific diagnosis of the crisis of the West. Do send your recommendations along these lines.
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III. Georges Tamer, Islamic Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity
More promising is a book by Georges Tamer, Islamic Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Leo Strauss’ Relationship to Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. It’s very expensive—CU’s Interlibrary Loan is working on getting me a copy—but I happened to find a typescript of a brief talk by the author. Check it out here. Below, I’ll include a couple quotes from that typescript, along with some thoughts.
An important observation early on:
The failure of reason to abolish faith [in Spinoza and modernity generally] leads to the self-destruction of modern rationality. The self-destruction of modern rationality brings forth a crisis of modernity, diagnosed by Strauss….
Tamer is rather critical of Strauss’s reading of Farabi. Many of the objections he raises are far beyond my knowledge to begin to adjudicate, though some of them seem rather uncharitable to Farabi. I do think he gets a few things wrong about Strauss, however. To give just one example, he says the following:
Through interpretation Strauss claimed to understand past authors as they understood themselves. For this purpose he improved the technique of reading between the lines, claiming the ability to decipher exoteric writings which conceal truth that should remain esoteric. But such an approach reduces philosophic interpretation mainly to discovery of intentions, to intentional interpretation, that cannot distinguish between truth and untruth according to historical criteria, but only on the basis of intentions.
Certainly Strauss sought to understand past authors as they understood themselves, but did he claim to have done so, definitely? Perhaps in the case of Max Weber (“author” is a broader category than “philosopher”). More importantly, though, it seems erroneous to say that Strauss’s hermeneutics “reduces philosophic interpretation mainly to discovery of intentions.” Strauss of course pays much closer attention to authorial intent than those readers who take what Strauss would call an exoteric teaching for the author’s actual view. And, as a result, Strauss necessarily devotes a great deal of space in his writings to working out those intentions. But it would be a mistake to think Strauss was not attempting to understand the truth of things. Quite the contrary: Strauss attributes the techniques such authors use in their writing to their conflicting relationships to the political community, on the one hand, and the whole, on the other. The question of authorial intent is, on this account, inseparable from the question of being.
(As for the remark about “distinguish[ing] truth and untruth according to historical criteria,” I’m not sure how Tamer means “historical,” though I wonder how far he engages with Strauss’s critique of historicism.)
If you look at the typescript, you’ll see it’s somewhat rough. I imagine he puts things far more precisely in his book. Normally, I would be hesitant to comment publicly on a writing like this, but his book was published in 2001 and the typescript is dated 2004, so it seems like fair game, with the appropriate caveats.
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IV. Next month?
In light of the above, I might reread Daniel Tanguay’s Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, in which he writes about Strauss’s “Farabian turn.” But I’m also hoping to read Heinrich Meier’s “Why Leo Strauss?: Four Answers and One Consideration concerning the Uses and Disadvantages of the School for the Philosophical Life” and/or the final chapter of Thomas Pangle’s Leo Strauss: An Introduction to his Thought and Intellectual Legacy. Also of interest is Rodrigo Chacón’s “Between Conservatism and Utopia, Or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation of the Political.” I’ll likely put together some notes on at least one of these next month. Thoughts?
Things Written
I’ve also had two non-academic pieces published recently.
The first was “The Knights-Errant of the Culture War,” part of a symposium for the National Association of Scholars’s publication, Academic Questions. It’s a response to the symposium’s centerpiece, David Bolotin’s “Liberal Education and Politics.” There’s an introduction by Keith Whitaker, as well as responses by Stephen Eide, Helen Andrews, and David Acevedo, followed by Bolotin’s response to these pieces. Read the symposium here. Thanks to Keith for inviting me to contribute.
Second, I wrote a Machiavellian analysis of Biden’s looming electoral woes for The Constitutionalist. Read it here.