When Gnats Collide

A Kerfuffle with a Straussian and Thoughts on Intellectual Purity

Should this be my first entry? Do we save our… Well, let me drop “entry.” Do we save our first post for someone special? I’m afraid I won’t. But who has free access to those who are special in some intellectual sense? In so far as one’s not squeamish among the dead, the answer is everyone. In the world of thinking all-stars, it’s simply going to be the case that most everyone is dead. But thinking is also a living activity, and you take what you get on this score. One wants (needs?) interlocutors. It’s especially lovely, I’d say, necessary, many worth hearing would say, to have interlocutors who aren’t your intellectual clones. It’s good to have an opponent.

A Hard ‘K’ Kerfuffle

This thing, whatever I’m meant to call the venue for the observations I let out, is named for a phenomenon that Jean-Jacques Rousseau teased, sparsely defined, and seemingly lived: “the vapors.” More on the wherefore and why another time. I mention Rousseau now, because he, too, once had a public conflict with a friend. That friend was David Hume. My situation is different in key ways. You’ll notice that I’m not a genius, for instance. And I’ll notice, for you, that neither are my friends. But as I said, one takes what he gets. Rousseau’s conflict with Hume, which you can read about elsewhere–from the sources themselves to those who’ve spent 259 years dwelling on it–was public, too, in a way that mine was not. And yet, so small and silly as it is, a dispute on a social media platform is a dispute. The difference here, and it’s a burning embarrassment to note it, is that my public thing is public because one could see it, but there’s no indication that anyone, aside from my interlocutor, did see it. I do find it instructive, but I don’t for a minute want anyone to think I find it grand. I call it a “kerfuffle,” not a “conflict,” or “confrontation.” Each has a hard ‘k’ sound at the start, but only “kerfuffle” sounds funny. It was a kerfuffle and the players were gnats.

I don’t need to name names–we have no names, so to speak–but I do note that I’m dealing with a Straussian. And now options and obligations emerge. Any number of ways to go. Whatever this ends up being (I do give you “The Vapors” no labyrinthine argument guarantee upfront), I want to say from the start that my Straussian isn’t meant simply to be representative of a school. I’m not saying this guy’s guilt necessarily speaks to the school, in so far as one can speak to a school here. But I will draw out general tendencies that I think are hard to dispute.

I truly believe it all to be timely. I think it timely because our time is one of a kind of noxious ideological containment that creeps on all corners of the world that claims to think. I think it fortunate that my friend was Straussian, because I think Straussians, as a rule, believe themselves intellectually pure. A conversation became a kerfuffle when I suggested that no one is pure. I then, or so I thought, offered a quick and compelling demonstration. As I offered myself congratulations on the inside for a pretty good thought, I didn’t think it was even a riposte, on the outside, my friend announced to the public my animus for Strauss and then blocked me. So what did I do?

What I did was suggest that we all operate through devices in our efforts to understand the world. A good device, like, say a founding moment, can orient a mind and let it describe a universe. So we have origin stories. We have a Garden of Eden, for instance, and we have a device with a much wider semantic range, the state of nature. Whatever. There are others. The device that lost me a more or less steady interlocutor was the famous Straussian “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.” I said the thing was crafted. “Crafted,” the Straussian asked, “how?”

Have we all heard of the “quarrel” the Straussians use to understand the world of political philosophy? I want to do this without being obnoxiously alien, speaking about a thing in too inside a way, presuming too much background knowledge on the one hand, or condescending by hand-holding, on the other. I mean to strike a balance, as I really want to get to delusions of purity and the state of things.

Contextualizing a Kerfuffle and a School

Let me set this up with quick and ready background and context, then. And let me say first that there’s variety. A big Straussian rainbow in the sky. You can name at least three types: a West Coast, a Midwestern, and an East Coast. I like to believe that East and West represent extremes, while the Midwestern Straussian calls his comrades (that’s a troll, don’t call them “comrades”) back to a bit of sensibility. Let me offer a bit of high-Straussian gossip around my exchanges and experience with two very fine thinkers who studied with Strauss, himself. One, representing the Midwest, said to me of the other, the East Coast Straussian, something almost exactly like this: “I worry that he’s become a cold atheist. He thinks he’s reason’s knight in shining armor. But he needs to get back to the synagogue.” I always liked that. Never mind the West Coast for now. Please. I’ll do a more deliberate read on Straussianism elsewhere.

Now. Where was I? While there’s a Straussian rainbow, some items are non-negotiable. Science and history are enemies of reason and proper thought. Each denies, or can’t manage to arrive at on its own terms, something like universal standards discoverable in nature (itself said to be discovered by philosophy). History is an enemy of meaning, and a Straussian wants to lock that down. So there’s a rejection of history, but an insistence on a “history of political philosophy.” Huh? A Straussian performs a sort of de-historicized history that keeps him (I’m afraid it’s still a sausage party) safe from the notion that context matters. I’ll be told that it’s really all about a confrontation with Heideggerian historicism and that I’m dangerously close to building up straw men to knock down. To that, I’d say, stop it, now. But I’d also say it’s a matter worthy of it’s own discussion.

This brings me back (finally) to the device that lost me a buddy, the “quarrel between the ancients and moderns” that I say was an invention. How so, again he asked before deciding I was driven by animus and blocking me? I find that exceedingly easy to answer.

Here’s the recipe for the Straussian “quarrel between the ancients and moderns.” You take a 17th century boutique quarrel around literary things in France and England, called the “quarrel between the ancients and moderns,” revive it, delete the literary things, plug in what you find essential (philosophy, nature, etc.), universalize it, and proceed to treat the new quarrel, said now to be old and true, as the fulcrum of western history. That’s it. Tell me it’s not.

Now you have yourselves a battle to imagine. It takes place across a limited syllabus whose dramatis personae are either “ancient” or “modern.” “Ancients did that, while we moderns do this.” We moderns became moderns when Machiavelli wrote a long job application to a Medici. That was the founding of modernity for a Straussian. I believe that, too, is non-negotiable. The latest expression of this mode of thinking seems to suggest the mode is alive and well. It comes from a high Straussian authority–a term I now deliberately introduce–who confirms that this is how we do things. I’m referring to Harvey Mansfield’s Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World.

Are Straussians Pure? Ideological Containment among the Philosophers

My fellow gnat just couldn’t see it, this business about the device. No, sir. All that he had found were people seeking to attain truth as far as that attainment is possible. Who needs a straw man when someone is just going to pants himself for you? Stunning in a person, and a school, with pretensions to thinking.

What my friend put forth in childlike innocence might be a charming human tendency. That tendency says that my tribe is on good terms with the god and nature, while the world is subject to impurity. Charming or not as a human tendency, it’s nauseous in one who claims something like access to sound reason and its operations. One should immediately be skeptical of a school that contains so many such members. But, come on, are the Straussians ideologically captured?

I’m afraid that’s actually complicated, and I now see that I’d like to explore and explain these things further, but in another entry. For now I can say that Straussianism is more than susceptible to ideological containment, that, truly, it’s a perfect tool for it. In so far as it is reducible to an -ism (and do, please, note what I’m saying), Straussianism provides just what an ideologue is looking for: someone confidently convinced that his team is pure, while other teams are not. Again in so far as it’s an -ism, do notice the orc army it has attracted around the edges. I don’t think it’s difficult to show how and why. I think I’ll do that soon.

For now, let my weepy warning suffice. There’s something in the woodpile, and I hope Straussians spook it out before so much that is good is spoiled. I’ve learned much from Straussians who are and were scholars of the highest order and, indeed, personally good to me. I’ve met others recently. Many remain fabulous readers of essential texts. I consult them and benefit from it. They’re expert (that’s praise) at putting great thinkers in imaginary conversation with each other. In that, I might say they’ve taught me an important way to read. I’m not here doubting the quality of work and personalities. What I do doubt, with evidence, is that anyone is intellectually pure.

I reckon most are trying to get at the same basic things. They’re all coming up with ways to do it. I find it disappointing to see Straussians believe they’ve managed not to suffer the limitations experienced by millennia of the brightest minds. So let me leave the ideological question for a deeper exploration and just note the absurdity. I do think there’s a danger built-in to Straussianism that puts one always at risk of being an ideology’s useful idiots, yes. But let me close in a spirit closer to my entry’s title and come back around to the ridiculousness of it all. This has been about the asinine.

And so I think when gnats collide something might be gathered in the wee aftermath. A kerfuffle has brought into focus a few things: ideological containment, the ubiquity of intellectual devices, and the goofy lengths we’ll go if we let a school think for us.

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