men, and submarine rescue they choose the fittest men to go first. >> where is that capsules today? >> was on display at the regional museum in the desert. and much memorabilia. >> host: the book is deep down dark, the gentle story of 33 men buried -- fertile. >> as always we appreciateour >> robert house talks about the life and career of leo strauss, considered by some to be the father of neoconservativism. it starts now on booktv,

television for serious readers. >> i'm now happy to introduce you to tonight's guest speaker. robert house has been a visiting professor at, among other institutions harvard law school, tel aviv university, the hebrew university of jerusalem and the university of paris. his books include the regulation of international trade, the wto system law, politics and legitimacy and "outline of a femmenology of rights." professor house has been a frequent consultant or adviser to agencies including the inter-american development bank. professor house is also a member of the board of advisers of the nyu center for law and philosophy. he serves on the editorial advisory boards of the london review of international law, the journal of world investment and

trade, transnational legal theory and legal issues of economic integration. he is co-founder of the new york city working group on international economic law and is a former i-house resident. please join me in welcoming him to international house. [applause] >> thanks very much. it's a pleasure to be here at the university of chicago to talk about my book, "leo strauss: man of peace." this is, obviously the university where strauss taught in his mature years and where he gave many of his most famous lectures and wrote many of his most famous books. so a week ago a man named tom cotton was elected to the united states senate in arkansas, and cotton is an unreconstructed

neo-con, and it turns out that at 19 or 20 years of age, he was quoting leo strauss in the student newspaper at harvard the writtensome. and -- the crimson. and so a week later i'm here to try and convince you today that, in fact, despite attracting latter day acolytes like tom cotton, leo strauss was, in fact, a man of peace not of war, that he believed that international law and legality more generally should restrain political violence that he was critical of imperial ambition and skeptical of any project which would impose on another society a different ideological, political or religious system. so, first of all, to give you a sense of what i am doing in the

book, i think i should give you an answer as to why i have been able to discover this about strauss despite the reputation he has which you can find very easily just by googling and you'll come up with hundreds of references to the neo-con liberal leo strauss or lee you strauss, the inspiration -- leo strauss, the inspiration of the neo-cons or the inspiration for the iraq war. why are all those people wrong to characterize strauss in that manner and how am i able to show that's a misreading of him. well, i focus on several different features of my own intellectual journey to understanding leo strauss. one advantage that i had, which is a very, very rare one in north america, much more so in europe or israel, is that i first encountered strauss'

thought before i had ever met a straussian or heard of straussianism. i was doing an independent project when i was in high school, and i came across some of strauss' writing or medieval jewish philosophy, and i was quite immediately gripped by it the sense of tension, intellectual drama the contest of reason and revelation. but i in a sense, heard strauss' voice unfiltered by either the straussians or the enemies of the straussians, and i think that over all the subsequent years something of that voice stuck with me even as i came to struggle with my experiences in studying with straussians and the kind of orthodox view of strauss and, indeed the orthodox view of

everything that they tend to want to impose on their students. so that's the first thing, coming to strauss in a different way from the way that most people do, by studying with a straussian professor first, second thirdration at college. secondly -- third generation at college. secondly, and this is a feature of the book that's been widely noted and emphasized, for example, in the wonderful review by yale political theorist stephen smith. i read extensively strauss' lectures and seminars listened to the recordings, read as many of the transcripts as i could get my hands on, and that was a remarkable entry into strauss' voice as a teacher.

and there are ways in which it differs from his voice as a writer, and i'm going to talk a bit about that because, of course transcripts of classes are a very different kind of source for interpreting a thinker than extremely carefully crafted or artificed books. but the lectures and seminars you know confirmed in many respects the interpretations of strauss that i was developing, particularly, for example through cities. strauss did not have a powerful political interpretation of -- [inaudible] but an interpretation that gives a very subtle understanding of the relationship between power and right in international relations. and, for example strauss in his reading deals with international

law much more and much more favorably than any other interpretation i know of. most interpretations place a lot of emphasis on the dialogue where there's that famous power political sometimes that the strong take what they can and the weak bear what they must. strauss, however emphasizes -- and this comes through even more in his wonderful seminar than in the very short, extremely compact or compacted essay in "the city and man," on the importance of treaties, the importance of treaty law in greece and, indeed, as he puts it the importance of treaties to any civilization and, therefore, the importance of trust that countries or powers that sign treaties will actually obey them. and you can see how far that is from the neo-con attitude toward

international law. so is, you know, the experience with the lectures and seminars was very important. and let me give you a few examples of some of the things that strauss says. that, as i say give a very different sense of his voice than the sense that you would probably get from either his disciples or his enemies. for example he says in one class on the political writer and general xenofon, a man who cannot respect himself again to go back to again to the seminar on knew sid d.c., he says it cannot be part of foreign policy, and he says the genuine wisdom always issues ingentleness. so that's the importance of lectures and seminars to my

evolving understanding of strauss. third, i have come to a particular view of how strauss wrote, and this is a great controversy because one of strauss' most important contributions to scholarship was exploring the idea that thinkers in the past who were subject to the threat of persecution wrote in a hidden or veiled manner in order to avoid repression by political authorities. and some people some of them very friendly to strauss and others very hostile to him, have suggested that strauss himself wrote in that way. and strauss' published books are, indeed, quite difficult, and some of them do have elements of obscurity.

so it's not surprising that there would be some interpreters who would realize into strauss' historical thesis a recommendation of how philosophers or thinkers ought to write today and, indeed, a clue as to his own manner of writing. now, in the book i maintain this is simply not true, that as strauss put it very famously, he believed that the service of things is the heart of things. and when strauss said that this manner of writing was intrinsically connected to persecution, he meant what he said. and it's very clear from strauss' lectures and seminars that he did not believe that he was under the threat of persecution in the united states. he referred to the united states in one lecture as a citadel of freedom. he said that in the united states there was virtually complete freedom of expression.

and so an essential condition for coming to the conclusion that a thinker is writing between the lines or in a secretive way, according to strauss, is persecution. and we know very cleary from what he -- clearly from what he taught and his statements in these classes that he did not regard himself as subject to any persecution. and, therefore, based upon strauss' own principles, it is simply an error to come to the conclusion that he himself was writing esoterically or between the lines. but his writing is unusual because, you know, if you take a book like "thoughts on machiavelli," which is one of his most famous books but also most difficult, it's very clear after reading five or ten pages of it that it's certainly not a conventional work of interpreting an author in the history of ideas. and, you know, there are some

scholars who have simply written off the book because it seems completely removed from contemporary canons of scholarship in the history of ideas. now, what is strauss really doing in these works which seem neither to be straightforward husband to haveically inform -- historically informed of the thought of the past nor, on the other hand works where he straightforwardly presents his own normative positions on different political and philosophical questions. and so what i believe he's doing, and i explain this in my book is that he's doing a new kind of philosophizing. what he's trying to do is to set up or construct intertemporal dialogues, dialogues between thinkers of different periods where, for example, aristotle gets the opportunity to reply to

or answer, you know, machiavelli's view of the limits of virtue in real political life, or plato gets to respond to the importance that nietzsche attaches to suffering cruelty in relation to human greatness. and so appreciating how strauss writes these books, you have to appreciate that he is, in fact, doing this new kind of philosophizing where we are the judges. we who construct and participate in these dialogues between thinkers of different periods and see how they disagree and try to understand those disagreements with the view ultimately, to thinking for ourselves about what are the best or the most reasonable answers to the fundamental questions. and it seems to me that strauss does explicitly actually indicate that this is exactly

what he's doing that it's a new kind of philosophical dialogue that he is constructing in these works, and i just want to read you a passage from his liberalism ancient and modern, what is liberal education. he says the greatest minds utter monologues. we must transform their monologues into a dialogue. their side by side into together. the greatest minds utter monologues even when they write dialogues. when we look at the platonic dialogues, we observe there is never a monologue among minds to have the highest order. all platonic dialogues are dialogues between a superior man and men inferior to him. plato apparently felt one could not write a dialogue between two men of the highest order. we must then do something which the greatest minds were unable to do.

since the greatest minds contradict one another regarding the most important matters, they compare us to judge of their monologues. we cannot take on trust what any one of them says. on the other hand, we cannot but notice that we are not we the tent to be -- we tent to be -- competent to be judges. so basically, this is for strauss the task of philosophy in the post-hayek era. it's really to construct a new openness a new way of understanding and appreciating the disagreements between philosophers of the first order of the past and therefore trying to illumine the human condition and trying to understand where we could perhaps, find elements of agreement but also which disagreements are likely to be permanent features of an endless

philosophical conversation. so once we understand that this was the character of strauss' writing many some of his most -- in some of his most important books, i think that we can explain elements that may seem, you know obscure or passages that may seem suspect in the sense that one might otherwise think, for example that strauss is using machiavelli or nietzsche as mouthpieces for his own view. some people have read strauss that way. instead, he's presenting this to liveny of philosophical positions, and his own judgment emerges very very subtly. as he says, in judging these detates, one must be modest as a teacher. one must lead the way in constructing the dialogues, but one must not impose on one's readers and one's students one particular view of what emerges from these constructed

conversations between thinkers of different historical periods. so that's my thesis about the mature writing of strauss, that these are really constructed conversations where strauss' voice is there but also the emphatic voices of different thinkers in the past. now, the final and perhaps most controversial -- if that's not controversial enough -- element in my reading of strauss is, has to do with, you know, understanding another feature of many of his works that has led some people to come to the conclusion that he is a warmonger or a machiavellian or a nietzschem. and this is completely ignored by michael and katherine zooker who, basically, portray strauss as having not much interest in problems of political violence after he left, but really in

focusing on a conception of the good life as theory. that strauss in many of his works actually states, you know, right-wing positions, machiavellian positions militarist positions with great force and intensity. on the other hand, this is then accompanied by a subtle critique or deconstruction of these positions that is often very very persuasive because in some cases it has the feature of an internal critique. and to give you a concrete example, i would refer to strauss' "on tyranny" which is a debate with the marxist philosopher alexander ko section ev. so strauss writes about tyranny, that what is the basis for legitimate rule? well he says, you know the best rule would probably be a

form of absolutism if you believe that the title to rule is based on wisdom. so here in a way he's indirectly responding to, you know to carl schmidt's decisionism. but then when you think through this idea of absolute rule as being justified on the basis that, you know the most wise person will know what's best for everyone in society you actually come to a critique or a reversal of the case for absolute rule because what you realize, as strauss takes you through these various steps of the argument, that the people who are likely to want to be absolute rulers are unlikely to be wise people. the traits of wise people are not the kinds of traits that produce ambition to absolute rule. so if you believe in absolute rule based upon the only

possible legitimate justification for absolute rule which is that the person ruling is wise or all knowing then you would have to have a significant rethink whether it wouldn't be better to have constitutional rule if the presumption that you are likely to get an absolute ruler who is wise turns out to be false. so we start with, you know, what seems like a case for absolutism for tyranny so that there are interpreters of strauss' position in this book that say he's favoring tyranny. because they read two or three pages, and it seems like he's setting up the case for absolute ism. but then he sets it up and demolishes it in a particularly brilliant way. now, to understand how brilliant the demolition is, you really have to understand the arguments for absolute rule or decisionism by people like carl schmidt. so why is he doing this? why is he stating with great

force what we would call all these nasty positions that get him associated with the neocons or with the extreme right in wymar and then somehow deconstructing him? here comes the controversial hypothesis. so up to the age of 30 i do think strauss was attracted to the militarist aric right in germany, a point of view that was described and in a way diagnosed by strauss in 1941 in a lecture he gave at the new school in new york called german nihilism. and it was around the age of 30 that he started turning away from this point of view when he encountered karl schmidt and had a critical engagement with schmidt that resulted in a short essay that he would describe much later in his life that he would describe as a

quote-unquote changed expression the disillusion and a realization that to really understand the crisis of wymar and the crisis of civilization one would need a point of view less empty and brutal than the point of view of what he would actually eventually german nihilism. and so this is the point where he is starting to really seriously focus on jewish and arab thought of the middle ages. but i think that, you know, and this comes a lot from the german nihilism essay, strauss was very concerned that he had been tempted by what he called german nihilism. and that by, you know, setting up these positions and then deconstructing them he was trying to provide an education to others who might have also

had these temptations. and i suggest in the book that this was a kind of philosophical form of -- [inaudible] that there is a transgression at least a transgression in thought, and then there is a move of return not through, you know piety or expressive repentance but through a philosophical purging, as it were, of this temptation. and at the previous discussions of the book i've been to two discussions, one at harvard and one at penn over the last week, we've had very good debates and exchange about whether this really counts in the full or emphatic religious sense. and possibly it doesn't, but it might be then more of a substitute for it. but it is, i think, you know, a kind of explanation of what

seems at first to be a very suspicious or offputting way of proceeding to actually state or restate forcefully these kinds of extreme positions but then engage in a very intricate often partly internal critique of them. but that's what i think strauss is actually doing. so now you would say if all this is true about strauss and he's a man of peace and he's not the nasty inspiration for the neo-cons and so on, well, fine. but maybe he's just not interesting. so why write a book just to kind of correct the misreading of a thinker who when you actually do understand what they're up to, doesn't seem to be particularly compelling or interesting? and here i have to just say to you why i think strauss is an interesting and compelling thinker for our times.

first of all, i do think that this way of doing philosophy, by setting up intertemporal dialogues, is a very promising avenue for thinking in a postmodern era. because in some ways, you know, philosophical questions and political questions come and go in importance. we are back at a period of time where the relationship between religion and polling ticks, for example -- politics, for example, has become a very very acute issue. and that issue recedes in the background in more recent thought and much anglo american thought, but it's such a crucial issue for a range of older thinkers. and by setting up these different positions and relating them to each other and understanding the disagreements about philosophers, about the relationship between religion and politics i think we can illuminate questions and dilemmas of contemporary

political life, global political life that maybe are not so illuminated if you stick with, you know the array of first rate, late 20th century/early 21st century political theorists. so that's one claim. secondly strauss is notable for the extent to which he actually exing police sitly -- explicitly addressed the question of the political and social response of think ors and intellectuals -- thinkers and intellectuals. recently we've had, for example, the release of the black notebooks, and the issue of the political responsibility or irresponsibility of philosophers and intellectuals is i think, still a very lively one for many of us. and strauss has said about nietzsche that while nietzsche

was not a nazi and would have abominated everything in a way that naziism stood for that nietzsche still indirectly paved the way for fascism because he ruthlessly attacked all responsible political options that existed at the time without showing his readers any way to a new alternative responsible of politics. also strauss' thesis about writing between the lines was an argument about the responsibilities of philosophers and thinkers in times where there were persecution but also in times of political and social instability where, you know an intellectual or philosopher would have to be worried that their thought might be misused by the wrong people. and you can see that the whole experience of wymar and what

followed must have been very much in strauss' mind. but it, to my view in this this is a very important dimension of his thought and relatively few philosophers of the late 20th century or our century really address this question directly. they often address it indirectly but rarely make it a fundamental problem for their thinking. and this is something that strauss did. now, the question is did he succeed on his own terms. in other words, you might say here's a thinker who's actually reflected a lot upon the dangers of a philosopher's or a thinker's ideas being misused in a socially and politically irresponsible way. but this whole book, you know, is premised upon a response to exactly this kind of misuse of

strauss' own ideas and writings. so it might be that strauss was not a particularly good example for his own demand about philosophers and thinkers how they should write and speak in such a way as to be socially and politically responsible which means in such a way as to at least to the extent feasible in a relatively free society prevent the misuse of their ideas by people who are political extremists or with extreme political agendas. so on that somewhat critical note, i think i'm going to end and invite what i, i'm sure will be a very lively and rich discussion with you. thank you. [applause] yes.

>> [inaudible] people have been studying this a while to rethink the position. specifically, i thought in 174 of your discussion of him, a kind of new philosopher and discussing him as kind of a genre-innovating philosopher that could be studied alongside others was insightful. what else was insightful was the fact that you studied all these things to show he wasn't attacking the european union or radical im. and the other thing i found insightful was even a -- [inaudible] of a metro sexual was insightful. i want to accept your thesis and there's part of me that's like that's satisfied with what you've portrayed here. but i think that there's this other development that i think is politically significant in the united states that i'm not sure if you discuss strauss' role in nurturing it which is i would say broadly claremont

conservativism. so specifically, the new school of strauss in, say 1948-'50 you know, what role did he have in the education of, save, harry jaffe. how do we get to 196 where you have jaffe educating barry goldwater? i think the portrait you've painted here is 2000s foreign policy by right straussianism. there's another aspect of the way claremont conservatives have been involved with say, domestic policy. and so the, the specific seed that i want to say that you haven't discussed is, i think jaffe was fighting of stetter's american political position. do you think strauss played some important role in developing an interpretation of the american political tradition

characteristic of the expression in '64 or 1980? >> well, first of all, having read now hundreds of lectures and seminar sessions of strauss i would say that he doesn't say much about the american political tradition. he praises the extent to which the discussion in america he liked the supreme court a lot. he liked the idea of judicial review, and something that seemed to haunt him was how quickly the nazis with, of course, the help of karl schmidt had been able to destroy legality and the rule of law at the end of the wymar republic. so this idea of a supreme court that's respected by the other branches of government and can be a guardian of the

constitution, that was an element of american political culture he liked a great deal. but, you know, he doesn't talk an enormous -- and also, generally, the separation of powers. but he doesn't take what i would call any particular ideological spin on, you know on american political culture or the american political tradition. he in his letters to the somewhat crazy conservative drunk kendall, he complained about the extent to which which he felt that advertising culture was starting to influence public life in america, and i think he rather unfairly, you know, considered john f. kennedy to be an example of that. not, i think a well-picked example, but he had real concerns about that aspect

relatively recent aspect of american political culture, sort of tv-oriented, sound bite-oriented and so on. but that's -- but none of this seems to me to point to anything like what you describe as claremont conservativism. and after all strauss i believe, only spent a year or two there. i'm not sure of the exact dates but -- and jaffe was merely one albeit a very peculiar and very loud, you know student of his. so i'm not sure that i find much in strauss himself that would account for that kind of view of the american polity. >> one brief follow up. you said your initial interest in strauss had to do with interest in medieval jewish philosophy where you could read that in some ways as an interest in certain conceptions of order. he was involved in dialogues with vogelin who was very

concerned with order, and i'm wondering if some people who have, who draw from this, specifically a harry jaffe, the roman catholic jurist -- [inaudible] or the neoconservative criminologist james caesar, they would say that there's something about the way strauss thinks about order that is, it's continent with the kind of claremont conservativism. do you think that there's something about the way strauss -- [inaudible] that does tip for claremont conservativism or does he have a different way of thinking about order? >> well, one of his, you know, great sound bites speaking of sound bite, is that, you know the aim of politics and political thought should be to produce a regime that, you know balances order without oppression and freedom without license. so i mean, i think that anyone who witnessed the destruction of order in the work wymar republic

and its general consequences as well as the consequences for the jewish people would not be unconcerned with order or with what happens to a society when order breaks down and politics becomes polarizedded between extreme groups who are prepared to take extraconstitutional measures if necessary to seize, to seize power. so, yes, i think order is a theme in his thought, but with order that is not oppression which means a preference for constitutionalism, separation of powers. and revealing is a letter that strauss wrote to a german law professor in the 1960s in this line i mention in the book sent strauss a copy of a book he'd written on karl schmidt. and strauss said that schmidt

might have been right about wymar democracy but not about liberal democracy as such. in other words, the concern that wymar society had exploded, that model of democracy that was very weak, that had a very weak center, very weak legitimacy of institutions like the court and so on, um, you know, later in life strauss had experienced another democracy, a liberal -- two liberal democracies that he found to be strong, to combine a measure of stability with a great deal of freedom. first of all, england. and already you could see that his view of liberal democracy was turning when he wrote -- i can't remember, i think it was to his friend jacob kline that he had attended a debate in the house of commons and that the you know, the repper today, the

exchange between baldwin and churchill was as great as the debates in the roman senate. he found something noble and ennobling in british noble democracy, and part of it was, as he liked to say in class, you know he always got these expressions slightly wrong in english, that the british never threw out the baby with the bath. of course, he meant the bath water. but i think what he meant was you know that stability and order are necessary ingredients of a political regime where people feel secure, and he agreed with montague the opinion of each person of their security. and so and, again, you could see that, you know, what he took from wymar in that respect.

but, yes, there is a concern with stability, security and order. but the example of anglo-american liberal democracy suggested to strauss that these, in fact, could be combined with freedom and, indeed, social justice. >> yes. >> so -- [inaudible] is questioning the traditional characterization of leo strauss as being a supporter of the right, could you provide a definition of the right and the left? >> yes. well, maybe i can start from strauss' own definition. or attempt to define the difference between, between right and left. and he does this in a couple of places in lectures that he gave

on two thinkers who i would describe as liberal humanists, emanuel khan and hugo -- [inaudible] well, first of all, strauss says that right and left did mean something rather different, and this is a historical meaning that's not terribly relevant in, you know, old europe. it was like an altar versus the forces of a french revolution and so on. he says that it's difficult in the american context to totally differentiate, you know conservative from progressive positions. now, one of the aspects of strauss' thought that is genuinely conservative and i do talk about this in the book, is he had a distrust in progress. not a dogmatic distrust but to put it more precisely, he questioned the dogma of progress which was so dear at least at the time -- and maybe it is

still today in perhaps a more moderate form -- to clubbals and, it's the very word, progressive. so what was the basis of that doubt about progress? it was that not every change is necessarily change for the good. so he criticized the dogmatism that just make an assumption that all change is change for the good. on the other hand, he also said that there's an equal error of conservatives to assume that change is likely to be for the bad. that's, as he said in class, equally baseless as an assumption that all change is likely to be for the good. it's just that when strauss was teaching, the dogma in favor of progress was much more of the dominant position or prejudice in the academy and so he was more remarkable for questioning that dogma than the opposite

conservative dogma which is that we should generally have a presumption against change or that change is going to make things worse or that change is going to come at exorbitant or unacceptable costs. so i think that's how he positioned himself in terms of his own views of conservativism and progressivism. and in one of his lectures he said, you know, he was not surprised to find himself mentioned, i gather in a positive way, in "the nation." it was a progressive publication back then, it's a progressive publication now. an interesting factoid is that the editor -- i have a twitter feed about leo strauss where i have close to 4000 followers and i tweet regularly things that strauss said in his lectures and seminars and in his letters because i want to show, you know, strauss' actual voice and that it's not a voice from

what we would regard as the right. well anyhow katrina van heuvel has been a follower of that twitter account actually the editor of "the nation," among many other people who are also certainly progressives. strauss said he wasn't surprised to find himself mentioned positively in "the nation," because in one matter he was with them, the progressives. now, what was that matter? was it some small little matter? no. it was justice. with justice on justice i am with the progressives. now, what did that mean? where was he with the conservatives? is he was with the conservatives because even though he was in favor of justice -- and at the time he said that that certainly meant civil rights and probably also elements of the great society social redistribution -- that he had doubts about using social engineering to achieve, you know much greater equality or justice in the short term. and this goes also to his

technological bees mitt romney, his doubts about -- pessimism. so he would say, yes, i am with you for social justice but i may not be with you to the extent that you want to, you know, change society fast using techniques of socialening -- social engineering or quasi-scientific behavioral changes in which i don't particularly have much trust or i think there might be a dehumanizing downside. yeah. >> i ask you a question about relationship as to nietzsche. if you read human rights in the history -- >> a natural right in history. >> i mean natural rights in history, he's clearly at that point not a follower of nietzsche. >> yep. >> but i think i'm not sure what you were thinking that until the

debate with karl schmidt, shah he was impressed and learned something from nietzsche and then shifted away. >> correct. >> if that is so could you tell us something about what it was in nietzsche that he was for and whether it was the same thing or something else when he shifted away from it. in other words, what was his attraction to nietzsche in the earlier years? >> my sense is that part of it was that nietzsche offered a compelling, you know diagnose diagnose -- diagnosis of what strauss at that point was persuaded of as the decline of, you know, classical intellectual culture in germany but in the european world more generally and the rise of what one could crudely call math or popular

culture with the accompanying, you know kind of degradation of society. and so that, i think he bought into to some extent. and, indeed, you know, as i say, my thesis is that when he wrote german nihilism in '41 his diagnosis of the pathology of german nihilism was in a way, kind of a semi-veiled self-diagnosis of what he was like when he was quite young. now, it's complicated because on the one hand he says he believed everything he understood of nietzsche up to the age of 30. on the other hand, if you look at his writings in the '20s, he's also struggling with different positions within the zionist movement. so it's very complex. you know, another thinker of the time to which he can be compared is walter benumine. if you look at his intellectual development after the first word war, at times he seems to be attracted to schmidt and

nietzsche, at other times going back to earlier jewish thought and the bible, at times he seems to be veering towards a new version of marxism, you know? he's -- this was a time of great intellectual disorientation but also great intensity after the first world war, and these were thinkers who were young jews in germany influenced by multiple allegiances and very different kinds and contradictory intellectual sources and temptations. and so, you know, you don't get a really coherent view of strauss from at least the published writings, you know, up to around the time he's 30. but there is a revealing statement in a letter that he writes i think to love visit

which is, to my mind, the very explicit account of his turning to classical thought away from nietzsche. and what he says is, you know what he has discovered is the great overvaluation of courage or, you know manliness in nietzsche. and why is that? because it's a reaction to the downgrading of, you know, of courage or resolve in clubbal thought -- liberal thought to the supposed easy goingness of a liberal thought. and so in order to react against that strauss says nietzsche, you know gives much too great a weight to just pure will or courage or resolve. and when you turn to plato plato acknowledges the virtue character of courage gives courage its due, but it's the

lowest virtue, and it's placed under the guardianship of moderation and of wisdom. that to my mind, that one passage in that letter almost shows the character of the reorientation if you take that passage and you read it through the lenses of what i think is strauss' self-die knowing sis of himself as -- diagnosis of himself as a young man. i'm not sure if i've answered your question. >> you spoke about how he had changed -- sorry. you spoke about how strauss had flirted with these ideas of nihilism at an early time and then changed. and you also spoke about how he thought about the duties of philosophy. so i was wondering if you could say something about what lessons public intellectuals could draw. and i realize that's not really, you know, so much the theme of your book, but what lessons one

might take from leo strauss' life and how he conducted his methodology of intertemporality and the way he was able to himself use these other thinkers in order to change. because so much emphasis today is on adhering to a position frowning on flip-flopping frowning on taking in neo-political realities and rethinking. it seems to me you're putting forth a view that suggests that for strauss that there is possibility of turning away and of achieving greater wisdom. so i was wondering if you could say something about that. >> well, there is what i've characterized what i think is a desirable and attractive kind of, you know, openness of, you know reopening questions, reopening the nature of disagreements between different thinkers about how to answer those questions and, therefore permitting the possibility of

thinking for ourselves afresh. but what about the, you know, the lessons -- i give one lesson at the end of the book, and, you know, strauss famously said philosophy including hagel philosophy should not try to be edifying but it's intrinsically edifying. so strauss was admirable in not engaging in too much explicit preaching. but i think the lesson of his own experience despite himself holding to what he viewed as a high standard of social and political responsibility for the misuse of his thought is that he perhaps was too willing to let his thought be claimed by others. and what i mean by this is that he did not himself publicly express a lot of clear political views. he was reticent if fora that

were distant from the classroom say here at chicago and therefore, in a way, you know it was not that difficult to misuse his ideas during his lifetime. now, what was that reticence about? i've often been, thought that i would write a book about the meaning of exile for different thinkers. strauss would be one ador, rno another. i think there was a resistance to assimilation. now, whether that resistance to assimilation was a sense of fidelity not at the level of simple belief, but at some other level to traditional judaism, i don't want to be misunderstood. he was not, you know, an

observant jew. but he was, he was deeply connected to judaism. whether it was just a kind of a shyness. his own daughter wrote in "the new york times" that he was not very good looking, he was a small, rather fragile man, and he was in bad health, and his wife was in bad health for much of the time after he was 50 years old. so, you know, a variety i think, of personal, psychological circumstances or considerations contributed to this reticence to become, you know a pluck figure. and -- a public figure. and, you know it's very easy to take the writings of the very complicated and difficult writings of someone who may have a lot of brilliant thoughts in those writings and then turn them into a cult figure they themselves have been, you know reticent or appear to be

speaking in different voices about different issues that lends itself to that. but if you're out there and you speak clearly and publicly about your views, then it's going to be harder for people to misuse your thought to support other views. not impossible and certainly i don't think any thinker can be 100% responsible for the abuse of their ideas after they've passed away. but, so that would be a kind of along the lines of a response and i hope that's helpful. anything else? yes. >> what is your view on strauss' view of equality? and when you discuss it i wanted you to talk also about your view that you don't think strauss wrote e soar theically because the two things, i think are very tightly related. and if there's a totem pole of

reasons strauss talked about e soar theism. at the lowest level is fear of persecution. he makes that quite clear, right? so that -- you're entirely correct to say, you know that doesn't apply to his life in america. but if strauss believes that there's fundamental inequality amongst people and their wisdom and their ability to understand and also to misunderstand, you know, because one of the topics you've talked about is how strauss has been abused and misunderstood. and that is inevitable with -- there is no thinker in the history of philosophy who has not been fundamentally misunderstood, misconstrued and misused in many, many ways. so somehow the issue of writing, you know, as soon as you become a public figure because you're writing and you're doing that in public there's the issue of being misunderstood. so i mean, part of -- i would

say maybe perhaps the most important reason for esoteric writing is to try and minimize the damage that you might do that some damage is inevitable as soon as you take, you know, a public stance whether you lecture, right when you teach, you're going to have students who misunderstand you. someone asked the question about jaffe, you know? if you're doing anything in public, you are likely to be misunderstood. so i wanted to go, like, from the question, your view of the question of equality to the question of esoteric writing. >> well, let me take up the last question first. i certainly think that strauss suggested that in any society including a free society, one should write in such a way, you know, as to min hides the possibility -- minimize the possibility that one's ideas will be misused or will have impacts that are socially and

politically irresponsible. but i, i don't think that that's what he means by esotericism. he definitely teaches that and definitely tried to practice it. but he also, you know, was very explicit about, you know, certain matters that a thinker who wanted to, you know, hide teachings that, you know, could be, you know subject to or get them subject to, you know, to persecution or even to social program would not hide. so i just don't think he practiced esotericism, but i do think he practiced restraint. and the irony is that restraint sometimes can lead to other kinds of risks of irresponsible

misuse or -- of your thought. and that's why i said that in response to the previous question that i think that speaking loudly can sometimes -- for example, how did raymond ramon not get a reputation of being an inspiration for neo-conservatives? he is what we would call a cold war liberal, and if you look at the people who like aron in the united states often these are people who are also attracted to a vision of strauss as a conservative and, you know aron gets quoted and published in translation in neo-con publications and so on. one of his leading followers in france was also a student of strauss, a catholic conservative. but yet aron it's clear that aron was a cold war liberal. that even though he was a hawk with respect to the soviet union, he believed in the

welfare state, he believed in, you know, personal freedom and so on. i think there's, there are very i few interpretations of aron that get it wrong that he was actually basically a conservative because he opposed sovietism, and he opposed french maxism. and one reason for this is -- marxism. and one reason for this is there's a huge record. aron wrote hundreds of newspaper articles for "figaro," and where he stood with respect to conservativism liberalism and marxism is very clearly defined by a large body of journalism that is of an extremely high intellectual level, but still quite accessible to people who are educated people, other journalists and so on who are the people who actually often are most influential in forming

the public reputation and constructing the public meaning of a major thinker. .. that's the contrast i would make. on the first question about equality strauss i thank believed that most forms of social equality were unjust. on the other hand social inequality, excuse me, were unjust. on the other hand he saw great difficulties in eliminating certain forms of social inequality using as i put it earlr forms of social engineering. so, there is a side of them that is conservative and there is a

side that is progressive. but the do for me with which she views the problem of any quality is really bad it is thinking that the activity is mostly for failing for human beings and therefore if that's the kind of ultimate deboer horizon in which you view the problem of the equality or inequality most ways in which people are distinguished with otters in society will be viewed as largely arbitrary and questionable. so i suppose that in no way it is basically like socrates saying his appropriate punishment should be too paid to

think and talk by the people of bathrooms so they should say his food and lodging and so on. ultimately ask luntz is about thinking about the activities that most resemble a thought and philosophical discussion. then as they say the conventional inequalities and social outcomes are something highly questionable. they are not justified because they are not a sip on an evaluation of people again what is really accelerant for human being. but again as i said there is a caution about how far you can go using the technology you of modern europe craddick and welfare state to actually corrects a lot of these conventional inequalities in any

kind of reasonable timeframe. >> so i've some questions about chapter three, which is very significant keswick seems to me what you are doing is trying to understand the grounds in which strauss is subject into a world state and distinguished that for a schmitz objection. one way of doing that is looking not expiration of the nihilism that would be characteristic of this homogenous state. this is significant in our discussions at the european union today. in light of that the thing you want to distinguish today is i was very surprised that you didn't discuss this context are even in the vote because in the

2000 world young politics in the forms he discusses there has become extraordinarily influential elsewhere. i am wondering if because you didn't discuss it in here the relationship between the objections to the universal homogenous state and those who draw from today. >> well, i was a couple of days. first of all it is fairly clear and i am saying nothing you would disagree with that an important source of his thought is a conservative catholicism and that is a route that is completely alien to the way of thinking. there is a sense in which quite explicitly a lot of this is not channeling strauss but it

different intellectual tradition. secondly and actually in the manuscript, i did have a discussion with another french student of strauss who is much more of a cosmopolitan liberal and they go in different directions and one of them is a catholic conservative firm provocative the other is a romanian jewish exile. very different people. it's just distracting. this could easily kind of blow up to 400 pages because you would be inclined to discuss all of these derivative debates. i didn't really want to write that kind of book and the editors didn't want to eat there because i think there is enough in here as i put in the

introduction, reopening the case of leo strauss. what i consider with a sensible and thoughtful and unprejudiced discussion of strauss as a thinker, but also a critical one. and the objections of the world stage and there is a dramatic turn in the argument in the statement, the final repost where he goes through all this business about there being no longer warriors who struggle and so on which sounds a lot like schmidt redux. then there's a remarkable turn where he says perhaps it is not action or struggle to conflict use what it is to be viewed in the thinking. the final pages are the crucial

pages because in the final pages, struts reveals the real fundamental grown on which she objects to the universal homogenous state, with suppressed philosophy that if you have a universal political order, the order can only survive through universal ideology and the universal ideology necessarily in tales depressing objections to that ideology and intellectual resistance to that ideology. so it means a real threat to freedom of thought. if you compare that line of argument to work off the liberal cosmopolitan and perpetual peace, it is essentially the same line of argument. i want a republican federation that has liberal democratic

constitutions, but i do not want a world state. that could result in a fearless despotism. in other words, the peoples or nations as a protection again a kind of despotism that would destroy the freedom of the human soul. to my mind there is almost no difference between the objection to a world stage and the one that strauss ultimately make sense is philosophically grounded or argued objection in the final pages of the restraint man. i see no essential difference in that line of argument. that makes sense of the fact that as you noted it comes through that he was actually sympathetic to european integration. he didn't see european union for

the european community as a kind of threat of a world stage that would suppress diversity of opinion and thought. unlike the criticisms of transnational integration by people like rocket and who assume that any project that has a cosmopolitan character that seeks to extend a governmental institution beyond the borders of a sovereign state is somehow to be regarded as undesirable based upon the kind of criticism of the world state that those people often attribute to strauss. yes. >> could you clarify the differential between right and left in terms of how the change is enacted? so from the left, the change

being through the government, from the right ian changed through probably private industry. i would hazard to take that a step further to say that from the left perhaps change would be for the poor for is the right changes for the rich if that is true, all was not that strauss has a thinker on the right? >> well, i think your question is an excellent hollow of question. it will help me to be clearer than i perhaps was in my initial to you. so in distinguishing right from last, one could distinguish ends and means. there are people who are conservative who would say no it isn't particularly just to redistribute wealth because the

market ensures that people who have the ability to and why should those people have the obligation to give part of their wealth to other people who don't have the talent or the industry to do as well. i don't want to caricature him come by coley, richard epstein is kind of a libertarian view which is often also called a form of conservatism. in other words people like that don't want necessarily more social equality. they view the inequality of wealth is somehow legitimate and something that is entirely appropriate to preserve. there's another group of people, sort of like me who are middle-of-the-road who would say actually i do want considerably more social

equality. but i am concerned that certain ways of getting there could jeopardize economic growth or could undermine other social values. i think that this is sort of way or stress is coming from. he would say yes in his comment about being quoted in the nation. you know even in making unjustified or unjust conventional inequality is not a bad thing. it is a good team. but then we have to ask that we get there. so what i think that strauss is often taken for him this goes back to the question which i might answer even more fully adjust this little elaboration that strauss is not someone who admire social hierarchy and in his lectures, this comes out very clearly. he accuses nietzsche of snob is

on end up liking the idea of rank or ordering hierarchy that there's something inherently admirable in a society that is unequal and where people know their place, whether at the top or the bottom. that is not at all strauss. in terms of the goal it is really greater social justice for equality, but with a great deal of caution about how we get there and what other values we might end up sacrificing to get there. that is a position that's very characteristic of a lot of people who would call themselves liberals today. we don't want to get rid of the market. there's some people who think we need to radically invent all the institutions of capitalism. i respect those views.

my view is that we need some of those in the two shins and therefore we need a sickly to be able to live with a certain amount of social inequality, which is the inevitable result of those institutions. i would like to reduce it to smart social policies. smart tax policies, smart redistricting policies. i don't see that as very different from the spirit of strauss' own thinking on these kinds of questions. >> twice they argue talked about other social values that would be diminished a life saved by the right. what were you referring to? give me an example of what would be diminished. >> so, for example i have then in some of these debates, you know in situations of political

you know transition. you could say that you could obtain social justice by radical redistribution of land. and this goes to the base of places like south africa where you take land away from people who are relatively privileged and give it to people who are poor, who are part of the oppressed group but now has finally achieved political power. i actually think that one has to be very cautious about this. because there is a value to the stability of property rights. it's not an absolute value. these people lived their whole life on this land. probably it is a generation that didn't necessarily contribute to

radically to court to put it differently, they might have not been the primary culprits in those social injustices. they might also be the people who have knowledge of how the new society that he don't want to necessarily force those people essentially into exile. so it is a complex set of trade-offs. you might say of course the fact that his wife who were the landholders social justice now means just reversing that. so let's kick them out and give the land away to the people who have been oppressed. again, i've been very directly in those debates, you see the complexity of how you affect third parties, some of whom might be in other ways the image of the contrary as now basing it up on the role of law.

so those are the kinds of trade-offs that you have to make. even if the goal of justice is an unquestionably desirable goal. but that is just one example. we could enter into other examples. rent stabilization is a complicated problem from the point of view of social justice are redistribution. in new york results in quite a few people who are well off living in very cheap apartments and other effects in terms of generally driving up the price of housing. but other people say there's values and obtaining makes neighborhoods and continuity of neighborhoods is no one and that has positive social externality. again if you have an abstract consumption of social justice or social equality, it ecc to say

this is reverse. when you build another kinds of human goods that might be affected by those policies, it becomes a kind of complex trade-off. i am not saying that appears some conservatives would say something like that to try and convince you to do nothing about it. it is complex. you might be getting more social justice here, but creating other kinds of social cost they are. i am not at all doing now. i am saying is complex, but we should still be advancing the cause of social justice, even though we have to be cautious and reflective about how whether values for human concerns are affected by the way in which we seek social justice. >> politics which is the purpose of politics is basically

to produce order and security of both domestically and in the world of foreign policy and that is the purpose of government. so this is a kind of limited state view and make teen censure review which sort of keeps coming back. as far as strauss is comes turned and i haven't read everything he has by any means, but i've never come across a discussion in which she would basically argue for more politics than basically security. he doesn't put the argument in terms of 19th century liberals, but a sickly he seems to argue again and again and many books that the situation of man is such and so precarious, so conditional and contingent

so open to the violence which can be released particularly if the people get involved in politics. this is most important if you have the politics which produces peace and order. that is the basic thing. am i wrong about that? >> well i think you're partly right and partly wrong in the sense that certainly when he was yelling i have a sense that strauss did admire pre-weimar germany. in other words as he put it in a sake gave here in chicago there is a certain kind of order that was created. there must've been like that

civil service that advised the rulers. they provide nice island that did not happen for a very long time in germany. so definitely he admired order when contrasted with mass violence and radical insecurity including for jewish. but his mature reflections on politics make it very clear that one reason he is very much inclined to the days is precisely because the tendency from the origins of the political philosophy is perhaps too over at the size or place almost an exclusive or overriding concern on or self preservation. when you read the chapter on national rights and national writing history, when you

alluded, you will see that strauss presents the classical view as one that tries to cope with there be two words political legitimacy. one is the coolest human perfection that political life i too support people fulfilling their highest capacities and the need for order of basic stability of society. the solutions that the political problem for strauss or at least as he articulates the class sixa natural right and history as precisely the balance being of those imperatives because there is a trade-off he recognizes in many situations. and so in a situation where he societies under great threat either of internal disorder from civil war or from a foreign enemy, they will be more than a

disservice on the order necessarily in some sacrifice of the concern with human perfection. for strauss is very clear about is the orientation of the lyrical life towards human perfection requires freedom. please freedom is a little different than some liberal conceptions of freedom. it is not all that different from alamance in john stuart mill's writings. but it is a conception of freedom connected to the perceived need for freedom in order to pursue human accelerants. strauss is often viewed as the totally critical of democracy. if you read its lecturers, there is often a praise of democracy and i remember one where he says to the democracy kill socrates?

strouse replies the fact that socrates was able to live until 70 years of age. we are at hypocrisy that would not be so possible. he thought that almost the only machine in which the highest human order the order of thinking as possible, is something like a democracy. it is true that he explored more conservative options in his writing in therapy, but the situation in the jewish and islamic middle east or in the cities had so little correspondence in modern times

that even though he articulated a kind of conservative politics that comes out of rb it doesn't ultimately determined fundamentally his judgment on liberal democracy, which is its emergence in the anglo-american world and its evolution and perhaps also in the european community towards the end of his life definitely suggest that the most satisfied to relay of combining the concern for human perfection or accelerants on the one hand with the concern were order and stability on the other. but yeah, this is where it is non-imperialistic. he doesn't believe that this would necessarily be the regimes that you would want to impose or

could legitimately impose on any other poster of society. there might be societies where for example religion would have a public role that is some kind characteristic of contemporary anglo-american liberal democracy. you might have to think a little differently about how freedom and order are balanced given the function of religion and some other society. one area where strauss is very modest or cautious is in the idea that one can ask for a machine. one can ask for general principles of politics such that one can make politics served the highest human goods to the extent possible consistent with stability. but you cannot export or should not export one formula for political regime around the world. >> i would like to thank you or this very interesting lecture

tonight. the former member of the international house. thank you for coming home. we hope that you will find books and that many of you will purchase a boat. thank you for coming tonight. >> i would just say something about the book. it turns out that cambridge has sold out in north america. so i actually had to bring a number of my author's copies here tonight for sale. so if you buy a copy, not only will it be autographed, but it is going to be back in stock soon. every printing right now. this is a small hiatus. thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> it is new years day on c-span2. 24 hours of authors of nonfiction books i had. here's some poor grandson had.

>> next googles eric schmidt and jonathan rosenberg talk about the lessons they've learned and how the website work today. during the event hosted by the computer history museum in non-view, california, the co-authors of "how google works" are interviewed by marissa mayer, president and ceo of yahoo!. this event is 75 minutes long. speed back our subject tonight