Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Torie
I know. I have most of his books (and those of his students) on my shelves and had two professors who were his students.

What I meant was, Why is his name brought up frequently as though he was some kind of Dr. Strangelove?

27 posted on 08/14/2003 10:47:46 PM PDT by pierrem15
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]


To: pierrem15
Cropsey was your professor too?
33 posted on 08/14/2003 10:56:34 PM PDT by Torie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies ]

To: pierrem15
I know. I have most of his books (and those of his students) on my shelves and had two professors who were his students.

What I meant was, Why is his name brought up frequently as though he was some kind of Dr. Strangelove?

During the 1980s, I saw lefties do this, in the case of Alan Bloom. They cited the influence of Strauss as a knock on Bloom, but it was clear they had never read Strauss.

Personally, though I think Strauss was a very good scholar, and I think that his criticisms of historicism in Natural Rights and History apply exactly to multiculturalism (most of whose adherents probably never even HEARD of historicism), I can't help believing that much of his influence in America derives from his having spoken with a German accent, and exuded that Lehrstuhlinhaber air of authority that many American academics, who suffer from the same feelings of cultural inferiority vis-a-vis the Gerries that the Gerries themselves feel toward the French, love to kowtow to. (How's that for a Teutonic sentence?! It took years of German grammar lessons to build that hulk!) As a German speaker, my only concern with German accents is aesthetic. And that Germanic air of authority crap cuts no ice with me, whatsoever. The best German teachers I knew didn't need to put on that show.

If there is one phrase that told me that Strauss was not a great philosopher, it was "Platonic-Aristotelian" worldview. To me, it makes all the sense of "Judaeo-Christian." No one who takes Plato seriously, would ever meld the first two, anymore than anyone who took Judaism seriously would meld the second pair.

40 posted on 08/15/2003 12:50:18 AM PDT by mrustow (no tag)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson