Book Summer 2006.Qxd

Memoir by Stanley Rosen Leo Strauss in Chicago Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/3/104/1829109/daed.2006.135.3.104.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 I ½rst met Leo Strauss when I was nine- the graduate of a Swiss private lycée teen years old and a student in the Col- accomplished this some years after my lege of the University of Chicago. It was departure. In 1949, though, the record the spring of 1949–this was during the was one year, which was matched by epoch of the presidency of Robert May- eighteen members of my class, including nard Hutchins, when the University was myself and my classmate and friend Seth at the height of its glory. At that time, Benardete. the College was famous for the eccen- Another peculiarity of the College was tricity and precociousness of many of that one could enter it at any age, and its students, and also for its highly un- among my classmates were a number of usual custom of allowing entering stu- virtual children. I still remember a par- dents to take examinations on the basis ty given by some of the older students. of which they were assigned course re- There, I entered into conversation with quirements. The intention of this pro- a man who seemed to be in his mid-thir- gram was to extend the time we spent ties, a guess that his thick glasses and ad- in graduate school, provided that we al- vanced baldness only strengthened. He ready possessed the necessary founda- informed me that he had broken with tion. It was therefore possible to gradu- Catholicism and, thanks to a recent visit ate with a B.A. from the College in less to Europe, with existentialism as well. I than a month of residence. Apparently, ½rst inquired whether he was an instruc- tor at the University, and then a gradu- Stanley Rosen is University Professor and Borden ate student. He replied in the negative Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston to both queries and informed me that University. He is the author of numerous books, he was an undergraduate. “How old are including “Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay” you?” I asked. “Thirteen,” he replied. I (1969), “The Limits of Analysis” (1985), “The should add that when I arrived in 1948, Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Moderni- I was, relatively speaking, an old man. ty” (1989), “The Elusiveness of the Ordinary” I had been admitted to the College fol- (2002), and, most recently, “Plato’s Republic: lowing graduation from high school in A Study” (2005). He is currently at work on a 1947, but I had chosen to live in New memoir of Alexandre Kojève and Leo Strauss. York for a semester, under the mistaken impression that I was a burgeoning nov- © 2006 by Stanley Rosen elist. 104 Dædalus Summer 2006 By the time I arrived in Chicago, my he was widely ignored by the orthodox Leo Strauss vocation had shifted from ½ction to po- classical establishment, with some im- in Chicago etry. If I am not mistaken, I was the only portant exceptions, including Pierre one of Leo Strauss’s long-term students Vidal-Naquet. who came to him from poetry. I was al- In 1949 he was for me a formidable so virtually uninterested at the time in exotic. I remember vividly to this day politics, unlike the majority of Strauss’s a long conversation we had one night students. Instead, I was an avowed meta- in his dormitory room during which physician, who had elaborated a philo- Benardete informed me that he regarded sophical position partly influenced by it immoral to love a human being. As a T. S. Eliot, one of whose main tenets was youth with a certain proclivity to this Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/3/104/1829109/daed.2006.135.3.104.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 that philosophy and poetry are two dif- form of immorality, I was incredulous ferent languages about the same world. and asked him what we should love. He In addition to these intellectual propen- replied in a magisterial tone: “Greek sities, which most of Strauss’s students vases.” This struck me as the most so- regarded as de½ciencies, I was undisci- phisticated view I had ever heard, but a plined in the academic sense and spent view with one flaw: it was nonsensical. most of my time writing poetry, with My friendship with Benardete, whom some professional success and with rea- I saw virtually every day during that ½rst sonable hopes for future progress. These year in Chicago, was my only real prep- hopes were sustained by Hayden Car- aration for my ½rst meeting with Leo ruth, who was then the editor of Poetry Strauss. I was a poet, a romantic, and a Magazine, and Henry Rago, who was metaphysician, who had somehow wan- about to assume that position, but also dered into the lair of the philosopher, by Allen Tate, who taught in the College the classicist, and the historian. There for a year. was for me no quarrel between philos- High on my list of things that I had no ophy and poetry, as there apparently intention of doing was to become a pro- was (albeit in a subtle form) for Benar- fessor of philosophy. To my adolescent dete and for Strauss, who both followed vision, being a philosopher and a pro- Plato. The atmosphere around Benardete fessor were incompatible, and besides, was redolent of Socratic irony and con- I regarded myself as already a philoso- tinental sophistication, whereas I repre- pher. Needless to say, this was about to sented something quite different. One of be changed by my encounter with Leo the entering examinations in the College Strauss. required us to write an essay describing I had a number of unusual classmates our philosophical position. Afterwards, during my year in the College. Perhaps a member of the philosophy department the most interesting was Seth Benardete, told me that my views were Fichtean, who went on to become Strauss’s favor- something of which I had never heard. A ite student. Benardete stands out in my poet of Fichtean leanings was not in the memory as a spirit of genuine distinc- best position to meet either the young tion and, even at that early age, of rare Benardete or the middle-aged Strauss, scholarship. At the time my friends and to say nothing of my distinct deviation I assumed that Benardete would go on from the paradigm of the Aristotelian to a distinguished career as a classical gentleman. philologist, as in a sense he did. But he I should say at once that Strauss was wrote his books in so oblique a style that not at all a snob, and that his conception Dædalus Summer 2006 105 Memoir by of decorum was quite reasonable. He ton. He was a rather short man with a Stanley Rosen was quite right to note in the margin of thin, high-pitched voice. His initial de- a ½rst draft of my doctoral dissertation meanor was polite but understandably that I liked to épater le bourgeois. His as- reserved. He opened the conversation tringent follow-up–“I could wish that by asking me what I did. I replied, “I am the entire dissertation had been written a poet.” Strauss immediately inquired in the style of paragraph 2 on page 153” whether I knew what Plato says about –taught me more about scholarly writ- poets. To this I answered something like, ing than a dozen texts on hermeneutics. “I don’t care what Plato says about poet- Strauss’s own style, at its best, comes ry. I am a poet, and I understand it better Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/3/104/1829109/daed.2006.135.3.104.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 very close to the appropriate blend of than he does.” the daring of thought veiled by the web This drove Strauss like an uncoiled of prudence. He was nevertheless capa- spring from the easy chair in which he ble of flexibility in selecting his students. had been sitting, and he paced up and Many years after I had left Chicago, I en- down the room, gesticulating with his countered an old professor and former cigarette holder, as if trying desperately colleague of Strauss’s who was noted to bring an unruly orchestra back to or- for his elegance and aristocratic tastes. derly response. I will not attempt to re- This colleague, a minor Latvian baron, produce the entire conversation, which told me that he used to complain to lasted for at least two hours. At the end Strauss about my youthful uncouthness, of it, he invited me to become his stu- to which Strauss would reply each time: dent. “He’s getting better.” I owe my educa- I respectfully declined, as I was plan- tion to this willingness to overlook baro- ning to return to New York for anoth- nial standards. er go at the literary life. When I told Strauss had recently arrived in Chica- Strauss that I intended to study at the go from New York and was, at the time, New School for Social Research, he unknown to most of the Chicago stu- suggested that I mention his name. I dent community. This may help to ex- did and was promptly awarded a schol- plain his charitable reception of so un- arship, so great was Strauss’s reputation promising a potential student.

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