It seems ages since I was here last and for good reason; I was attempting to sort out the festering mess that is my life. Not one of the most wonderful things to do, I can assure you. Something occurred today whilst I was cleaning a client’s flat (specifically the bathroom). How it manages to grow algae and a fungus-like blob in the corner is beyond me, but I scrubbed it away. My client asked me what a copy of Plato’s Symposium and Xenophon’s Symposium doing on her coffee table next to my sling bag. I told her that the books were mine and I was reading earlier to keep myself amused while waiting for the clothes to be washed in her washing machine. She made an improper and highly illustrative gesture with a hand to demonstrate what she thought of my choice of literature and accused me of being pretentious by reading those books. I answered with a smile, “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.” 

She shrugged, made another illustrative gesture and proceeded to inspect her bathroom that I had just cleaned. When I told what had happened to me to Captain Obvious (who taught me everything I know in comparative politics and who phoned me today on some Burma related issue), he only snorted and lectured me on why my grad school reapplication attempts are doomed to failure. He then went on to say I quote, “You’re one of the nicest and smartest people I know, but you’re just weird. I think you are purposefully weird because you think it is cool. It will never help you in grad school. No one will want you, not when you fucked up at Snowy Uni.”  

Odd thing is – I don’t think I’m odd. I just think it is me. I like what I like and I do not see why I should hide the fact that I like what I like. I then asked him, “What about your oddities?’ He informs me, “I can be weird because I am better respected.”  

I am what I am – I do not seek to endear myself to others. With me, there is no two ways about it; you either think I’m amiable or you think I’m detestable. I like myself just the way I am – petite, eccentric, blind sans glasses and addicted to caffeinated teas with a dash of lemon (and no milk). Besides, I have always observed that we are all odd in our way, even those (nay, especially those) who follow a group or the prevailing fashion.

Well, there is a reason why I have been going on about all this. The basis lies in that which I answered my client whose flat I cleaned today. I told her “Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer.” It was an oversight on my part that I answered her in Latin. At times when I am very cross, I swear in French and make snide remarks under my breath in Latin. It is a very bad habit and not very ladylike but it is one of my oddities that makes me what I am. 

Anyhow – the concept of “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas” or “Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer” is a very Straussian concept. It is, n’est ce pas? Captain Obvious brought up the painful business of Snowy Uni and Herr Dr General who did not like what I wrote about Strauss’s Natural Right because I based my writing on the “Amicus Plato, sed magics amica veritas”. This in return resulted in the horrid grade in Herr Dr General’s course, which resulted in me being forced to withdraw from the programme. What is so bad about loving truth more? I do not deny that it is the curse of the political philosopher – this search for knowledge and the ultimate truth of what our existence on this earth means. It’s always the same cycle. Captain Obvious would say that my experiences are what they are because I refuse to compromise. But don’t you see, compromise very quickly becomes sacrifice because we do not get something of equal value in return. Sounds like chess doesn’t it – with gambits and what not… And that is the way life is, which is what I think was intimated in my cursory reading of Lord’s The Modern Prince and Mansfield’s Taming the Prince. I haven’t read them in detail yet as I am occupied with much ghostwriting and whatnot for clients, but I have roughly skimmed through them.

You know, Strauss’s Natural Right and History has traditionally been a favourite with me (next to What is Political Philosophy and Other Essays). And I believe it will tie in with Lord’s The Modern Prince and Mansfield’s Taming the Prince. Why? What I see as Strauss’s and his students’ contribution in the area of politics is not narrowly speaking his conservatism or his intellectual approach to conservative questions but rather the return of common sense and of a classical understanding of politics as was understood in the 19th century (oh, I love the fashions of 1880-1882 and 1897-1902) where the emphasis was on political history and not so much on models and mathematics. And given my general ineptitude with mathematics, this discussion today seems apt.  Now, Natural Right and History was very much a shot across the bow of the social science community and they never forgave Strauss for that. Why? Because in Natural Right and History, he showed, as evinced by his (in)famous Epilogue, how un-political modern political science is and how ultimately irrelevant it is for those who are truly serious about politics. Of course, the whole recovery of classical political thought that Strauss apparently started (along with Vogelin, Arendt, &ca) did provide the impetus of students of philosophy to once again take not only ancient political thought seriously again (and escaping the crude generalisations so popular in the modern age) but to force a critical re-examination of not only the very concept of natural right (or natural law or natural justice) but also the idea of the good man, prudence, and the serious man (spoudios). In fact the philosophic revaluation of prudence was an open attack at positivistic science and was seen to be understood as so, even from the early lectures of Heidegger in 1919 (I think). The whole Hurselian and Heideggerian project to get to the pre-scientific science of the whole can be understood as a project to return to phronesis, but via a modern route.

I mention the recovery of prudence as a key tie in to the rediscovery of statesmanship because the two are very much tied together. And here I think Strauss has opened many a door for others to make their own paths from his little hints and subtle suggestions. Of course, I am not too blind to see that the problem of the statesman (the person, not the Platonic text) is central to Strauss’s political thought and especially to the original contribution of his political thought.

Modern political thought tends to oscillate between extremes of hyper-legalism (the replacement of the rule of men by the rule of law or laws, the most thoroughgoing version of which is Kojeve’s Phenomenology, where we have law beyond politics altogether in the end state) and “decision-ism” (as posited by Schmitt). Liberalism seeks to hold the middle ground between these extremes (a strong executive within a constitutional democracy, ideally with true separation of powers – versions of which are sketched in Mansfield’s Taming the Prince). All very well and good, but liberalism is threatened by its tendency of forgetfulness of the underlying problems and its underestimate of the extent to which effective constitutional government, viz., liberalism’s own “middle ground”, so to speak, depends on something that the classics understood as character.  Strauss’s emphasis on the statesman is not so much a rejection of modern political thought as a necessary enrichment of it by classical reflections on the character of the ruler or executive. He discovered or recognised a theoretical dependency or need in liberalism for something was essentially pre-modern. What did he discover? He recognised a need that was perhaps taken for granted by thinkers such as Montesquieu and even the American Founding Fathers (in my limited reading of the Federalist Papers), given their bred-in-the bone classicism, even at the moment of breaking with certain decisive elements of the tradition.Whatever the importance of Strauss’s theoretical accomplishment in these regards, I don’t think he had the taste or sensibility to be a very good judge of actual statesmen. In fact, the same could be said about a lot of us political philosophers/political theorists (or in my case – a fallen political philosopher). We can criticise; we can analyse, but we cannot for the life of us be a good statesman. I mean, from the little I know of Strauss’s view of Churchill, I have the impression that he is clearly someone who never sat around a cabinet table, even as an adviser, never really breathed the world of actual “politics” (the act of politics – the actual doing of politics). Although he taught that political philosophy was political, Strauss himself was not a “political” man and to be honest, I think neither are the bulk of political philosophers/political theorists (however much Herr Dr General likes to paint himself as a “political” man). In thought, Strauss transcended his own limitations; but unlike Tocqueville, Locke, Lord Acton, Constant, Mill, and dear Machiavelli, he never got his hands dirty in real political life. But of course, he never became stupidly or cravenly political, either, like Schmitt or Heidegger. Then again, I am biased against Heidegger for his treatment of Arendt. 

Thing with Strauss, is that unlike his friend Kojeve, Strauss was not even an eminence grise. I do not believe he once ever gave a piece of advice to a government – at least in all I have read including his correspondence. The great (pre-20th century) political thinkers, ancient and modern, had direct daily or at least frequent contact with people directly or indirectly exercising political power. So perhaps this is a sign that political philosophers should not meddle with the affairs of the world, and just concentrate on the politics of academia. Oh yes, I wrote on this for a paper at Snowy Uni and the prof there didn’t like it. So it meant a bad grade and “away with thee, Lady Strange”. How Bloody ironic.