Interpretation A JOURNAL J_OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Winter 1998 Volume 26 Number 2

149 Jules Gleicher Moses Politikos

183 Tucker Landy The Limitations of Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of 's Charmides

201 Jason A. Tipton Love of Gain, Philosophy and Tyranny: A Commentary on Plato's Hipparchus

217 Larry Peterman Changing Titles: Some Suggestions about the "Prince" Use of in Machiavelli and Others

239 Catherine H. Zuckert Leadership Natural and Conventional in Melville's "Benito Cereno"

257 Jon Fennell Harry Neumann and the Political Piety of Rorty's Postmodernism

Book Reviews

275 George Anastaplo 's "Physics": A Guided Study, by Joe Sachs

285 Michael P. Zuckert Shakespeare and the Good Life, by David Lowenthal

295 Joan Stambaugh Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, by Rudiger Safranski

299 Patrick Coby Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau and the Ethics of Politics, by Ruth Grant

305 Susan Orr and the American Right, by Shadia Drury

309 Will Morrisey Public Morality and Liberal Society: Essays on Decency, Law, and Pornography, by Harry M. Clor Interpretation

Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin, Dept. of Philosophy, Queens College Executive Editor Leonard Grey General Editors Seth G. Benardete Charles E. Butterworth Hilail Gildin Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Howard B. White (d. 1974) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V. Jaffa David Lowenthal Muhsin Mahdi Harvey C. Mansfield Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) Ellis Sandoz Leo Strauss (d. 1973) Kenneth W. Thompson International Editors Terence E. Marshall Heinrich Meier Editors Wayne Ambler Maurice Auerbach Fred Baumann Amy Bonnette Patrick Coby Elizabeth C de Baca Eastman Thomas S. Engeman Edward J. Erler Maureen Feder-Marcus Pamela K. Jensen Ken Masugi Will Morrisey Susan Orr Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. Rubin Susan Meld Shell Bradford P. Wilson Michael P. Zuckert Catherine H. Zuckert Manuscript Editor Lucia B. Prochnow

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Inquiries: (Ms.) Joan Walsh, Assistant to the Editor interpretation, Queens College, Flushing, N.Y. 1 1 367- 1 597, U.S.A. (7 1 8)997-5542 Fax (7 1 8) 997-5565 E Mail: [email protected] Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), xiii + 239 pp., $35.00.

Susan Orr Reason Public Policy Institute

Shadia Drury seems intent upon making a career out of blaming Leo Strauss for everything she finds wrong with the world. In The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988), she charged him with corrupting young minds in the academy through an insidious form of atheism that cloaks itself in outward displays of piety. The echoes of the Socratic charge would not have been lost on Strauss, but he knew that serious readers would see that the modem pieties he sought to unmask were not those of religion, but rather the idols of positivism and histori cism. It is no surprise that his students have followed him in this endeavor, but Drury continues to find this incomprehensible, claiming that those influenced by Strauss scorn rational discourse, preferring instead an "unquestioning devo tion to a set of ideas that they cannot and will not defend except to those who are already convinced . . . disseminating their views in a manner that is destruc tive of intellectual life itself (p. 2). Immediately upon opening the book, one wonders why, if the man and his students are as she describes, anyone would need to write a book, much less two, on the subject. Unsatisfied with saddling Strauss with all that is wrong with the academy, Drury indicts him for all the things that she doesn't like about America. Thus, in Leo Strauss and the American Right, she now finds that Strauss's supposedly Machiavellian reach extends to all Americans who lean rightward. While her first book was simply wrong, her latest is simply silly. Her thesis, then and now, is that Strauss's philosophy is nihilistic at its core; that what he fears most is unfettered democratic rale; that his illumination of the fundamental tensions between reason and revelation only masks a contempt for the common man who needs to believe in a punitive god in order to behave well; and that for Strauss "any religion would succeed in accomplishing the political task at hand. He is therefore not too particular about which religion it

be" should (p. 11). Until this latest effort, it would have been hard to imagine one in which Drury could so misunderstand her subject. While The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss was misguided, confusing bad exegetical accounts of Strauss with his work, her latest book betrays an even deeper misunderstanding, not only of Strauss, but also of the American regime. Drury confuses and conf lates the classically liberal foundations of the American regime with the liberal politics of the last half of this century. There are many errors in the book but this is the most fundamental. In order to move the argument from the academy to the political arena,

interpretation, Winter 1999, Vol. 26, No. 2 306 Interpretation

Drury draws the outlines of a conspiratorial movement, linking Strauss and his students to the right wing of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, her strongest argument is presented in the cover art, which displays two pictures of Clarence Thomas and Newt Gingrich, both looking angry, juxtaposed with one of Leo Strauss looking sufficiently Cheshire Catlike. In the text, she pauses only briefly in the introduction to note where some of the students of Strauss have worked in the public arena, but the list must have been old even when she wrote the book. Alan Keyes is noteworthy because of his work at the United Nations with Jeane Kirkpatrick under President Reagan, not for his 1996 presi dential run, and it is a sure bet that Robert Bork would be surprised to find himself listed among the powerful Straussians in Washington. Anyone with a glancing knowledge of Strauss's students or the conservative movement would know that her account is unreliable. The only link she can make with plausibility she doesn't even try to forge: William Kristol is arguably the most politically influential of those who studied under Strauss and his students, yet he only gets a nasty dig in a footnote in the first chapter. Instead she reserves her final chapter for his father as the founder of the neoconservative movement, which until now had not been laid at the feet of Leo Strauss. But for Drury, Irving Kristol and Leo Strauss are all of a piece. She detects the hand of Strauss amidst the neoconservatives because almost all the dominant motifs of neoconservatism are the bedrock of Straussian thought: the preoccupation with religion, the conviction that nihilism is the source of the crisis of American liberalism, the depreciation of Enlightenment rationalism, the antipa thy to liberalism, the emphasis on nationalism, the concern with the role of intel lectuals in politics, and the preference for democracy over liberalism (p. 138). For one who excoriates Strauss for his supposed nihilism, it is telling that a "preoccupation," concern about the highest things becomes a but we have a hint of her opinion of religion earlier, where she notes that people who take religion seriously are largely people such as David Koresh, late of the Branch Davi- dians.

Washington" The book turns from "Straussians in in the first chapter to

Heritage" "Strauss's Jewish in the second. Here one leams that "according to Strauss, Maimonides does not even think that philosophy can prove the creation

world" as opposed to the eternity of the (p. 52). If that is her idea of a Straus sian secret, the world is relatively safe. These all-too-frequent errors make read ing the book an exercise in frustration. Having skipped along the surface of Strauss's Jewishness, she next attempts Connection" to uncover "Strauss's German by linking him to Heidegger and Schmitt. The treatment here is equally loose. It consists of her insistence that there is no resemblance between Weimar Germany and modem-day American excess. According to Drury, Strauss mistakenly conflates the two because, as she puts it, "Strauss is unable to liberate himself from the conception of the

victimized" political by which his people were so tragically (p. 91). What either Book Reviews 307

Strauss's Jewish or German heritage has to do with American public policy remains unclear, except that she has managed to conjure up lurid images of Nazism in a book about the conservative trend in American politics. It is not until the fourth chapter that she turns to what should have been her central thesis: an analysis of those who have spent their time studying the founding of America. But it is here that she fails most miserably because she has failed to master the American founding adequately. Since her focus is to understand how American politics is shaped by Strauss, it would have behooved her to compare the various Straussian accounts of the founding with her own understanding to see whether the Straussians have ma nipulated their accounts to suit their purposes. If, as she insists, feminism ought to be a tenet embraced by those who embrace the Declaration of Independence, an argument needs to be advanced. Unfortunately, the only references we get to any founding documents are slight; they come only when she is referencing Strauss's students. Her gloss on the founding consists of throwaway lines such as: "There is little indication that the Founders were very clear on these issues [of public morality]. In fact, they were often attracted to the most foolhardy aspects of liberal doctrine. I am referring to the intoxicating idea that the prolif benefits" eration of private vice contributes to the maximization of public (pp. 109-10). Drury would have done well to spend some time reading founding docu ments, the Federalist Papers or the Notes on the State of Virginia, for instance. She also could have spent some time learning from Abraham Lincoln about the place of morality in politics. Her ducking of the very question he had to con front, i.e., what to do when the popular will violates the principles of and justice, is a serious deficiency. It would have proved a far better and more intrinsically interesting account had she confronted the question of popular sov ereignty squarely. Her failure to do so suggests her most profound misunder standing not only of Strauss but also of political philosophy. Leo Strauss and the American Right will offer any serious reader of Leo Strauss little but frustration. The book is filled with sloppy mistakes that make for a wearying read. Shadia Drury has a problem with the revolution that led to the Republican takeover of the Congress in 1994. Because she likes neither this development in American politics nor the increase in number of those who study Strauss, she posits that the two are intertwined. Surely it is more than ironic that she refused to take Strauss's arguments seriously and, at the same Republicans' America" time, she reads between the lines of the "Contract with only to find Leo Strauss lurking there.