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So: What is a Straussian?

The philosopher and blogger Brian Leiter recently wrote summarily, "Straussians are incapable of reading Nietzsche."

For some of us in the peanut gallery, this raises the question: what the heck is a Straussian?

LeoStrauss.jpg

The term arose in political philosophy and was in use back in the early 1970s, around the time Leo Strauss co-edited a textbook on the history of political philosophy with Joseph Cropsey.

The term "Straussian" suggests several things. First, it is an approach to the classic texts of political philosophy that presumes that nearly every important philosopher in the canon was hiding something. Thus, texts must be read for their esoteric meaning.

Second, related to this, the esoteric meaning was often irreligious. Political philosophy is full of thinkers who are in fact atheists but who have to hide the fact.

Third, related to this in turn, Straussians suggest that these thinkers were right to hide the fact. Their own premise is that there is no God, but that the belief that there is a God is a socially useful one, cartilage for the body politic.  They seem to make the presumption that they are members of an elite who don't need to believe in God but that since the masses do need this, the elite have to talk with one another in code so as not to tear up that cartilage.

Further, the history of political philosophy is a long-running macrocosm of precisely that coded discussion.

This is probably why Leiter believes Straussians can't understand Nietzsche. Nietzsche wore his atheism on his sleeve, there is no point to try to decode his language to FIND his atheistic core.  That throws them off their game!
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