To the Editors:
From the outpouring of Straussian venom [NYR, October 10, 1985] on Burnyeat’s review of the guru’s book [NYR, May 30, 1985] readers who are not abreast of the relevant scholarship might get a decidedly unjust idea of the review’s merit. May I then submit another opinion. In my judgment, that of a lifelong student of Plato, it was not merely a good review, but a superb one. It would do honor to any journal in the world. Its Platonic scholarship is impeccable. Its critique of Straussian vagaries is penetrating and just. Its diagnosis of the attractiveness of the Straussian line to a coterie is most illuminating. The review is on a par with that marvelous essay Burnyeat wrote for you in 1982 (review of Charles Kahn [NYR, May 13, 1982], The Art and Thought of Heraclitus).
Another journal had sent me the Strauss book for review in 1984. I read it, saw it was inferior work—not up to Strauss’s best or even to his second best—and declined. Diverting effort to produce a dismissive review would not be cost-effective when one is at work, late in life, on a major project that demands every ounce of energy one has, and then some. Reading now Burnyeat’s review I am relieved to see that the job has been done after all, and so much better. His reading takes him far beyond that single book. He alludes to ten other books by Strauss, to several essays of his as well, and to work by Straussians. He seems to have read even those incredibly tedious products of Strass’s declining years—tendentious rehashes of Xenophon’s Socratic writings and of Plato’s Laws in muddy English. And he confronts directly that bizarre, uniquely American, phenomenon, the Straussian personality cult. I do not think Strauss’s influence is as great in this country as some of Burnyeat’s remarks might suggest. It is no more “discernible” in our mainstream scholarship than in that of Britain. (Three good books on Socrates’ political thought have appeared during the last six years, one of them in the UK, two in the US; all three ignore Strauss completely: his name does not appear in their index.) And my critique of Strauss’s exegesis of Plato would not duplicate Burnyeat’s. But all of his main points I would endorse with conviction, including his explanation of the cult’s appeal to neoconservative yuppies.
Not least of the merits of his review is that he keeps his cool. This enables him to give credit to the Strauss to whom high credit is due. An early work of his published in 1936 (English translation from the German: The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, Oxford University Press) ranks with the finest work on Hobbes produced in my lifetime. Its scholarship is solid from beginning to end, daring and provocative, but never eccentric. There is no sign here of the delusion that the classics of political philosophy were meant to be read as palimpsests—strange aberration in a noble mind. I trust that Burnyeat’s mention of this first, powerful and eminently sane contribution to the history of ideas, not yet distracted by the search for concealed meanings, may win for it many readers both in and outside the ranks of true believers.
Gregory Vlastos
University of California
Berkeley, California
To the Editors:
On May 30, 1985, NYR readers were introduced to the work of the late Leo Strauss, “arguably one of the most influential thinkers in the US” (p. 30), by a dismissive and hostile reviewer, M.F. Burnyeat. “I submit in all seriousness that surrender of the critical intellect is the price of initiation into the world of Leo Strauss’s ideas” (p. 31). The charge Burnyeat’s review seeks to prove is as damaging a one as could be made against a serious thinker. Certainly then it is only fair that his case against Strauss be carefully scrutinized in these pages. After an exchange of letters (October 10, 1985), Burnyeat has added to his attack. But the fundamental question remains clear: has he provided readers with sufficient evidence to dismiss Strauss? Now that Werner Dannhauser has cleared the record of the slander against Strauss as a teacher (October 24, 1985), it remains to clear it concerning Strauss’s scholarship. As Burnyeat says in his review, “my task here is to tell readers…what happens in the thought-world that Strauss’s writings fashion from his favorite old books” (p. 31).
Strauss’s corpus consists principally of textual studies of the major political and social philosophers of the past. Even Burnyeat acknowledges that Strauss’s “minute scrutiny of each text establishes an aura of reverence for its author” (p. 30). Yet Burnyeat claims Strauss’s purpose was not to understand the wisdom of the past, but to warn about the dangers of contemporary political idealism. As his review concludes, “the real issue is Strauss’s ruthless determination to use these old books to ‘moderate’ [the] idealistic longing for justice” (p. 36). Even if, however, this determination motivated everything Strauss wrote, that would hardly mean surrender of the critical intellect is required to appreciate his thought. Like many philosophers across the political spectrum, for example, Marx and Nietzsche, Strauss developed his own world view, and, having done so, argued for it with exceptional focus and determination. Content, not motivation, is the issue here. And the content of Strauss’s warning as described by Burnyeat is hardly unreasonable. It is obviously appropriate for a scholar to teach about the problems of the present through the study of old books. In light of the events of this century alone, it makes sense for someone to devote himself to moderating political idealism, fearing its future and perhaps unintended effects. It is especially sensible in the light of the principle Burnyeat himself defends: that even the greatest philosophers who are not politically inclined have major political obligations.
It may be then that Burnyeat’s attack on Strauss is based on a disagreement with Strauss’s politics, in which case Burnyeat might have better concentrated on substantive contemporary political questions.
In his endeavor to discredit Strauss’s scholarship, Burnyeat reduces the corpus to a single interpretation of a single author: “Let us be clear that if Strauss’s interpretation of Plato is wrong, the entire edifice falls to dust” (p. 35). (Strauss wrote fourteen books only two of which are explicitly about Plato.) Burnyeat then bases his case against Strauss’s reading of Plato on the discussion of a single, arbitrarily selected statement: “I shall pick on one central statement Strauss makes about the Republic” (p. 36) (a paraphrase of, among other passages, Republic 520a). This is the only time Burnyeat confronts Strauss on a specific textual point. Strauss’s reading of this passage, Burnyeat alleges, is an “insult to the critical intellect” (p. 36). As one letter points out, Burnyeat’s case “hinges on the elucidation of a single critical passage (Republic 520a)” (p. 42), and in his reply Burnyeat does not deny this.
Instead, he sticks to his guns in his reply to two letters (October 10, p. 42) showing that Burnyeat’s discussion of this statement actually confirmed Strauss’s reading. And, remarkably, Burnyeat actually cites the disputed passage which at face value again confirms Strauss’s reading!
Here is the statement Burnyeat originally “picks on” in his review: “The philosophers cannot be persuaded, they can only be compelled to rule the cities.” Burnyeat goes on to say that “the passages that Strauss is paraphrasing…do not contrast persuasion and compulsion…. [The] argument is that the philosophers owe a debt to the ideal city for providing the liberal education in mathematics and philosophy that teaches them to know and love justice,” and Burnyeat cites Republic 520a (p. 36).
Then, in his subsequent reply to the letters (October 10), Burnyeat writes: “The truth is that to discover what principle of justice motivates the philosophers to rule it is necessary to read Plato rather than Strauss” (p. 44). He next cites the controversial Platonic passage:
It’s not the concern of law that any one class in the city fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring this about in the entire city, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit which each person is able to bring to the community. And it produces such men in the city not in order to let them turn whichever way each wants, but in order that it may use them in binding the city together. [Republic 519e–520a]
The principle of justice at issue here resides in the “concern of law” for what benefits the society as a whole, and not, for example, that “any one class,” like philosophers, “fare exceptionally well.” To this end, law employs “persuasion and compulsion” to “make” individuals, such as philosophers, contribute to the community. And this is no accident. Law “produces” men not so they may live as they want, but “in order that it may use them” for the community. The principle of justice alluded to here then justifies “compelling” philosophers to rule precisely as Strauss suggested. It certainly does not—by any straight-forward reading—make Burnyeat’s case that philosophers rule because they owe a debt to society for the education it gave them. Once again the argument which Burnyeat relies on actually confirms Strauss’s interpretation.
One might summarize the overarching theme of Strauss’s work as the inadequacy of modernity—that modernity has a built-in tendency toward self-destruction because it rests on shaky foundations. This thesis does not stand or fall on an interpretation of Plato. It rests on an assessment of modern thought and modern history. Strauss devoted much of his work to the Greeks because he believed that they are the greatest educators of mankind and that their fundamental lessons are in danger of being forgotten. One lesson is that for the health of philosophy and politics alike philosophers should make it clear that wisdom is a greater good than justice. In his scholarship Strauss shows that philosophers are distinguished by their knowledge about the big questions of life, as well as by their attention to detail.
Paul Sunstein
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
To the Editors:
While Professor Burnyeat in his reply to my letter [NYR, October 10, 1985] accepts my observation on the reconciliation of religion and science in Maimonides, he “pleads guilty” to maintaining the view that the Guide to the Perplexed is an example of ” ‘esoteric literature’…whose message is written ‘between the lines’ ” in spite of the considerations I advanced in my letter rebutting Strauss’s position. He cites a passage from Maimonides’ Introduction to the Guide which he suggests offers a measure of support for this view.
This passage must be put into perspective if its true meaning is to become clear.
In his Introduction Maimonides is engaged in a pedagogical enterprise—he is instructing his disciple Joseph ibn Aknin with regard to pitfalls to be found in “any book or compilation” (Pines translation, p. 17). Maimonides then proceeds to list seven possible sources of misunderstanding and adds that causes five and seven may be found in his own treatise, as well as in other works.
