After Leo Strauss 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 1 12/21/13 9:45 AM SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss ————— Kenneth Hart Green, editor 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 2 12/21/13 9:45 AM After Leo Strauss New Directions in Platonic Political Philosophy TUcKer LANdY 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 3 12/21/13 9:45 AM Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2014 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by eileen Nizer Marketing by Michael campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Landy, Tucker, 1957– After Leo Strauss : new directions in platonic political philosophy / Tucker Landy. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-5165-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Political science—Philosophy. 2. Strauss, Leo—Political and social views. I. Title. JA71.L238 2014 320.01—dc23 2013025550 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 4 12/21/13 9:45 AM contents Acknowledgments vii chapter 1 Introduction: rethinking Leo Strauss 1 chapter 2 Modern Science and classical Natural right 25 chapter 3 Nietzsche’s Plato 55 chapter 4 Socrates, the Ideas, and a Non-esoteric reading of Plato 65 chapter 5 The Limitations of Platonic dualism 95 chapter 6 Socratic Liberalism 137 chapter 7 Philosophic Wisdom and Literary Wisdom 173 Notes 195 Bibliography 217 Index 223 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 5 12/21/13 9:45 AM 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 6 12/21/13 9:45 AM Acknowledgments I would like to thank, first, my wife, with whom I have shared all my thoughts, sometimes stretching her patience. every step forward happened with encouragement from her. She has proofread much of my prose and made several improvements. Next, my colleagues in the Whitney Young School of Honors and Liberal Studies at Kentucky State University, every one of whom have directly influenced my thinking on the questions addressed by this book. They might recognize in these pages some of their own thoughts, which I can no longer distinguish from my own. dr. ronald Mawby, in particular, has been a philosophical friend, listening often to my rants and helping me shape them into something like reasoned arguments. dr. Thomas McPartland, director of the school, has been in many ways a postdoctoral teacher to me and provided unstinting encouragement to think and write. My students, during the twenty-five years I have taught in the honors program, are the ones who most often shook me out of my old habits of reading. There is no education like the fresh perspective and startling questions of an undergraduate on the Great Books, which we professors too readily think we understand well enough. dr. Scott Lee of the Association of core Texts and courses aided me at a crucial moment in the development of the manuscript. Two anonymous reviewers for the SUNY Press were extremely helpful in correcting errors. vii 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 7 12/21/13 9:45 AM 33979_SP_LAN_FM_00i-viii.indd 8 12/21/13 9:45 AM Chapter 1 Introduction rethinking Leo Strauss The title of this book is intended to suggest that those of us who have benefited from the work of Leo Strauss should look for ways to move beyond it, but also that moving beyond it is not as simple as abandoning it. Others, of course, will wonder why we should bother with Leo Strauss at all. For those readers, let me begin by summarizing as succinctly as I can why I think Leo Strauss is so important for understanding ourselves and our world: to my knowledge, no thinker of the twentieth century has examined more deeply the best thinking on the fundamental questions of ethics and politics and the reasons for the current state of affairs, which I would characterize, following Strauss, as a lack of confidence in Western political institutions and a half-hearted moral relativism. This introduction sketches out which aspects of Strauss’s work I believe should be maintained, and also which might be respectfully reconsidered. There are undoubtedly many different paths through the issues and controversies surrounding Leo Strauss. I believe, without having done any surveys, that my own path was not exceptional. In any case, it is a path I know fairly well, and it seems the best way to explain why I urge a rethink- ing of Strauss’s thought. So I begin there. 1. Strauss, historicism, and the academy In the mid- to late-twentieth century, the gravest political issue of the time, certainly the issue with the widest global reach, was the Cold War. The 1 SP_LAN_Ch01_001-024.indd 1 12/16/13 9:43 AM