Leo Strauss is regarded as an extremely profound thinker in the 20th century. His careful reading and interpretation of classic texts constitutes an important development of hermeneutics in the 20th century: all his political philosophy studies are devoted to reviewing the whole process of western civilization, emphasizing reopening the dispute between ancient and modern times, thus examining various contemporary ideological trends. His controversy is manifested in the asymmetry of academic and political influence between him and the Strauss school he founded. Until the end of the 20th century, the Strauss school has been the most isolated, marginal, unrecognized and even excluded school in western academic circles. Although it is recognized that Strauss founded a school of political philosophy and compiled a history of political philosophy with his disciples, we can notice that most contemporary western political philosophy monographs or political philosophy textbooks and reference books have never mentioned his name. In the field of contemporary mainstream western political philosophy, whether it is the debate within liberalism or the debate between liberalism and communitarianism or postmodern philosophy, Strauss's name is almost completely absent.
Strauss himself almost never quoted any contemporary western academic achievements. In fact, in his eyes, almost all contemporary western academic achievements have long gone astray and are hard to return. From Strauss's point of view, all kinds of contemporary liberalism and all kinds of contemporary left-wing academic schools belong to the same camp, that is, they all firmly believe that modernity is bound to be superior to ancient times, and that the future is bound to be superior to modern people or progressive people. They all belong to what Strauss called "the official high priest of modern democracy", so it is impossible to really cut into the most important issues of the times, namely "the crisis of modernity" and "western civilization". What is unusual about Strauss is that For this reason, for a long time, the mainstream academic circles in the west basically regarded Strauss and his disciples as academic freaks and never paid serious attention to them.
Incredibly, from the end of 1980s, Strauss, the political philosophy that criticized the western modernity and liberal tradition most thoroughly, was suddenly called the official political philosophy of Washington by the mainstream media in the United States, especially the political philosophy of the United States. In particular, 1994, the * * * party ended the 60-year-old pattern in which the US Congress was dominated by the Democratic Party, and achieved a historic victory in which both the Senate and the House of Representatives became majority parties. The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, New Weekly, Weekly and The New York Times all claimed that they were dead when they exclaimed the political earthquake in the United States. Leo strauss was born in a rural town in Germany on September 20th, 1989. He was a so-called "German Jew" with hannah arendt, Benjamin, Gerschom Ike Shoronmu and lovett. For their generation of Jews, youth first witnessed the outbreak of World War I and the impact of Bingler's Decline of the West, followed by the strong shock of Heidegger's philosophical revolution, but it was followed by the outbreak of World War II, the genocide of Jews by Nazi Germany, and their personal exile as Jews. 1938 Strauss was forced into exile in the United States at the age of forty.
1949, he was appointed as a professor of political philosophy at the university of Chicago and was invited to give a speech at the walgreen lecture that year. The result of the speech was his later published masterpiece Natural Justice and History (1953). His speech at the University of Chicago deeply influenced the young students of the University of Chicago.
In the 14 year after arriving in Chicago, Strauss and his first disciples published the History of Collective Achievements of Political Philosophy (1963), which successfully eliminated Sabin's History of Political Theory, which was popular before, and also marked the initial formation of the so-called Strauss school of political philosophy. The following year (1964), on Strauss's sixty-fifth birthday, his disciples specially published his birthday anthology, entitled "Ancient People and Modern People: Traditional Anthology of Political Philosophy", which typically reflected the basic concern of the Strauss School: reopening the "dispute between the ancient and the modern" and trying to examine the issue of "western modernity" from the perspective of "classical West", including strongly criticizing contemporary mainstream American academics. The basic orientation of the whole school can be summarized by two famous sayings of Strauss:
"The case-solving of the dispute between modern people and the ancients must be reopened; In other words, we must learn to consider this possibility seriously and without prejudice: Swift is right to compare the modern world to a lilliputian country and the classical world to a giant country. "
"Thoroughly questioning the thoughts and theories of the West in the past three or four hundred years is the starting point for all wisdom pursuits." The return of modernity to classical political philosophy is a main thread running through Strauss' thought.
In thinking about modernity, Strauss pointed out in 1960s that the essence of modernity is the "youth rebel movement", and its root lies in the rebellion of western modernity against western classicism, which started with Machiavelli, so Strauss called Machiavelli the originator of all the "youth movements" in modern times. Before Strauss, Nietzsche pointed out in his famous exposition on "master morality and slave morality" that the whole foundation of "master morality" or "aristocratic morality" lies in "respecting the old times and traditions with the greatest respect, because all laws are based on this double respect for the old times and traditions", so aristocratic morality must "respect ancestors and restrain the younger generation"; However, western modernity subverts this moral foundation and shows less and less respect for ancestors and the elderly, because the "modern concept" instinctively only believes in the so-called "progress" and "future". Nietzsche believes that this is because western modernity originated from the movement of "slaves" against "masters", that is, "meanness against nobility", so modernity should deliberately cancel the difference between "nobility" and "meanness" and use the so-called "meanness". Strauss's views are in the same strain as Nietzsche's. He believes that western modernity has brought a brand-new concept to mankind, that is, the discovery of the so-called "historical concept". The great consequence of this discovery is that human beings began to replace the difference between "good and bad" with the difference between "progress and reaction". Because this "historical concept" has been so deeply rooted in people's hearts, Strauss thinks that modern people often forget that the standard of "good and bad" should logically precede the standard of "progress and retrogression", because only with the standard of "good and bad" can it be judged whether a historical change is human progress or human corruption. This is the core content of Strauss's masterpiece Natural Justice and History published in 1953.
In Strauss's view, a common problem in contemporary times is often to attribute the dark side of modernity to some individual thinkers, and then it seems that modernity is no longer a problem. He stressed that it is important not to condemn individual thinkers, but to thoroughly understand the basic character and direction of "modernity", so as to truly understand why the game of modernity advances from the "first wave" (Macchia Verily, Hobbes, Locke, etc. ) to the "second wave" (Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx) and from the second wave to the "third wave" (Nietzsche and Heidegger). Especially the second wave and the third wave of modernity are also two great crises of modernity, among which Rousseau, Nietzsche and Heidegger all tried to return to the "classical" world with their best efforts to criticize modernity (for example, Nietzsche praised Greek tragedy and Heidegger tried to return to "pre-Socrates thought"), but Strauss believed that because they all worked hard in the direction of modern "historical concept", they not only failed to return to the classical natural world, but were better than anyone else. The book Natural Justice and History attempts to outline this direction of modernity and compare it with the "classical" thought. The focus of the Strauss school is to re-study the classics. The "classical study" of the Strauss school is by no means an academic study for the sake of classicism, but is based on a strong contemporary political concern: the fundamental purpose of in-depth study of western classicism is to deeply understand western modernity and its crisis. Conversely, Strauss believes that only by deeply understanding modernity can we truly understand the good intentions of classical thought.
The difference between Strauss's political philosophy and almost all other political philosophies is that he insists that the primary and central issue of political philosophy is to examine the relationship between philosophy and political society, so he first calls his "political philosophy" a kind of "philosophy sociology" research. It is from this problem consciousness that he returned to Socrates and Plato in ancient times, that is, to the source of western philosophy, in order to re-examine what kind of activity philosophy is and why political philosophy is necessary. But first of all, it needs to be emphasized that the so-called "Socrates problem" is not the original starting point of Strauss, just as the "pre-Socrates problem" is not Heidegger's original problem consciousness. They all go back to the past from some transcendental problem and re-examine the tradition, and this starting point is the problem of modernity. This can be seen very clearly from Strauss's ideological writing process, that is, his retrogression from modern to classical. His early and middle works mainly involve modern traditions (Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Macchia Verily), and even his research on Jewish traditions is from the contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher Cohen to Spinoza in early modern times, and then to the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonide and Arab philosopher Farabbi. In fact, it was in the last decade of his life that he really devoted himself to Socrates' research. In recent ten years, the city-state and people (1964), Socrates and aristophanes (1966), Socrates' Xenophon Discourse: An Interpretation of Home Economics (1970) and Socrates of Xenophon (/kloc-0) have been published successively.
The whole starting point of Strauss's political philosophy can be said to be the hope of finding a way to restrain the obsession of "philosophy" and thus prevent the obsession of "politics". This way out is to return to the starting point of classical political philosophy initiated by Socrates. The origin of classical "political philosophy" was originally to restrain the obsession with "philosophy" and maintain the stability of political society. In his view, this is the real significance of the so-called "pre-Socratic philosophy" to "Socratic political philosophy".
"Philosophy aims to replace opinions with knowledge, but opinions are the elements of political society or polis, so philosophy is subversive, so philosophers must write: improve rather than subvert political society. In other words, the virtue of philosopher's thought lies in madness, but the virtue of philosopher's public speech lies in gentleness. Philosophy itself is super-political, super-religious and super-moral, but political society will always be and should be a moral religion. "
Strauss once expressed all his thoughts or "classical political philosophy" in the most concise way as follows:
1, "a universally integrated country" is impossible;
2. Therefore, any political society is special and is a "closed society", that is, a natural cave in Plato's sense;
3. Any political society that once existed or any future "political society" must be based on a set of special and fundamental "opinions" in that society, which is irreplaceable by "knowledge", so any political society must be special and special.
4. The political society based on "opinions" therefore imposes a responsibility on the public speech and writing of "philosophers" (if a universal rational society is possible, this responsibility is unnecessary);
5. Philosophers' writing therefore needs a specific writing art (vulgar and taboo writing).
It is not difficult to see how reactionary Strauss is and how incompatible he is with "modern society" and "modern thought". But in Strauss' view, this shows that the so-called "universal society" and "open society" are the opinions of modern people, sacred and unquestionable. Anyone who touches this "modern authoritative opinion" will be suddenly tolerated in the "modern society" and "civilized world" and regarded as "reactionary", "heresy" and "heresy". In Strauss's view, this "sacred opinion" of modern people permeates all contemporary academics. If it is said that in early modern philosophy, such as Kant, it still needs a concept of "historical philosophy" and a long process to reach the "beautiful new world" of this universal society, then after the bankruptcy of "historical philosophy", this so-called "scientific understanding of politics" has adopted a more popular so-called social science method. The so-called "distinction between facts and values": Social scientists believe that modern society must use the so-called "scientific understanding of politics" to replace ordinary citizens' understanding of politics, that is, "opinions", so that the value orientation and prejudice that citizens must have must be replaced by the so-called impartial and worthless social science. In Strauss's view, this so-called "scientific understanding of politics" from modern western philosophy and political philosophy to modern social science is actually a "depoliticized" understanding of politics, that is, a distortion of politics, because this so-called "scientific understanding" implies a break with the "pre-scientific understanding". Strauss emphasized that classical political philosophy is based on "pre-scientific" political understanding, that is, the understanding of politics by citizens and politicians, which is the fundamental difference between classical political philosophy and modern political philosophy. Therefore, the first step to return to "classical political philosophy" is to look at politics from the perspective of "pre-science", that is, citizens and politicians, like classical political philosophers Plato and Aristotle, instead of observing politics from the perspective of so-called "neutral observer politics" like modern philosophy and social science. Strauss repeatedly stressed that political philosophy must first be reduced to "the political world of pre-philosophy, pre-science and pre-theory" in a phenomenological way, instead of starting from the so-called "philosophical, scientific and theoretical political understanding" constructed since modern times, which means returning to the naked political world first.
Strauss and his school is a rather strange phenomenon. Compared with his criticism of modernity, other modern western criticisms of modernity basically criticize modernity in the direction of western modernity. Strauss takes the revival of "classical political philosophy" as his own responsibility, and its firmness and thoroughness are really admirable. Spinoza's Religious Criticism
Hobbes' Political Philosophy: Foundation and Origin
Persecution and writing art
Philosophy and law
On tyranny: Xenophon
Natural rights and history
Reflections on Machiavelli
Socrates and aristophanes.
Xenophon's Socratic words: Yi Shu
Socrates of Xenophon: Yi Shu
What is political philosophy? 》
City-state and man
A Study of Plato's Political Philosophy
The History of Political Philosophy is co-edited with Croposi.
Six lectures by Socrates
Spinoza's Religious Criticism
Ancient and modern liberalism
Mendelssohn and Lessing
Plato's debates and intrigues "