chapter 33 Leo Strauss’ Socrates and the Possibility of Philosophy in Our Time

Dolores Amat

One can easily receive the impression that Plato and Xenophon presented their Socrates in conscious contradiction to Aristophanes’ presentation. It is certainly impossible to say whether the Platonic-Xenophontic Socrates owes his being as much to poetry as does the Aristophanean Socrates Strauss 1980, 314 ∵

1 Introduction

Political philosophy is the central problem of Leo Strauss’ work. Its importance is evident not only in the many studies he published on the history, nature, and potential of political philosophy, but also in the titles of many of his works, such as The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (1936a), which was his first work published in English, and Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (1983), his last book, which was published after his death.1 According to Strauss, modernity has reached what it deems the resounding conclusion that political philosophy is impossible, and that conviction leads to widespread disconcertion, since the majority believes it is not possible to distinguish between the just and the unjust, or between good and evil. This in turn leads to nihilistic relativism,2 and to a moral, social, and intellectual crisis: “I had seen that the modern mind had lost its self-confidence or its certainty

1 Heinrich Meier (2007) mentions these two books as examples of the centrality of the notion of political philosophy in Strauss’ work. 2 “If our principles have no other support than our blind preference, everything a man is willing to dare will be permissible. The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism—nay, it is identical with nihilism” (Strauss 1992, 4–5).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396753_035 Leo Strauss’ Socrates and the Possibility of Philosophy 909 of having made decisive progress beyond pre-modern thought; and I saw that it was turning into nihilism, or what is in practice the same thing, fanatical obscurantism” (1936a, xv). To explore and attempt to overcome the crisis of our time, Strauss studies the roots of modern ideas and compares them with the visions in opposition to which modern thought emerged: “I concluded that the case of the moderns against the ancients must be reopened, without any regard to cherished opinions or convictions, sine ira et studio” (1936a, xv). Political philosophy is one of the most important differences between modern and ancient philosophy: according to Strauss’ view, classical philosophers, such as Plato and Xenophon, accepted the possibility and necessity of political philosophy; and they considered Socrates to be its founder and its best model. Hence Socrates’ uniqueness and centrality in Leo Strauss’ view. In his attempts at understanding the figure of Socrates, Strauss pays particular attention to the dispute between Aristophanes and Plato (which he understands as a dispute between poetry and philosophy).3 While the former offers a mocking portrait of Socrates that discredits philosophy and shows the dangers that it poses to the stability of the city, the latter produces a fictional character designed, according to Strauss, to show the value of philosophy and to prop up citizens’ morality and sense of responsibility.4 According to Strauss’ reading, Socrates’ disciples understood—pursuant to Aristophanes’ warnings and after the death of Socrates—that the questions posed by philosophy might imperil the certainties that enable life in the polis, and from the moment they realized this, they tried to temper their actions and speeches in order not to unsettle the community. In this context, thinkers like Plato reinforced the difference between esoteric and exoteric communication.

3 Although Strauss also takes into account the work of Xenophon, he prioritizes Plato; see Strauss 1996, 165. He in fact takes Plato as a model for developing his own understanding of political philosophy. In his courses on Plato’s Symposium (2003), he writes: “When we look at the present situation in the world, this side of the Iron Curtain, we see that there are two powers determining present-day thought. I call them positivism and historicism. The defect of these powers today compels us to look out for an alternative. That alternative seems to be supplied by Plato rather than anyone else” (1); and “When we look back … we see that there is only one great philosopher who somehow seems to have stood for this principle, that the questions are clearer than the answers to the important questions. That man was Plato” (2003, 3). In his Introduction to Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, Thomas L. Pangle (1983, 2) also considers Platonic political philosophy as Strauss’ model: “Each one of Strauss’ essays is a study in Platonic political philosophy inasmuch as each is an execution of, a model for, such philosophizing.” 4 Strauss suggests this idea on several occasions, though never quite explicitly. See, e.g., Strauss 1980, 3–4 (“the Platonic dialogues ‘idealize’ Socrates. Plato never vouches for the authenticity of his Socratic conversations”) and his six public lectures on the problem of Socrates (Strauss 1996, esp. 164–5).