The City and Man [Paperback]

Strauss, who was during his life an obscure professor at the University of Chicago, has recently achieved posthumous fame because a number of his alleged disciples, so-called "Straussians," were among the neoconservatives who conceived and implemented the recent disastrous American conquest of Iraq.

His writings have therefore acquired new interest because of the insight they may provide into the thinking of those who have attempted to create a new American imperium.

Strauss is renowned for his verbosity, for a bizarre numerological fixation on the ancient texts he studied, and for a belief in "esotericism" -- i.e., that the classic authors hid their real teachings in cryptic subtexts discernible only by the most probing of readers.

"The City and Man" definitely exhibits Strauss' verbosity -- it is appropriate bedtime reading only if one needs a cure for insomnia. There is, however, little evidence of Strauss' numerological fetish -- he does at one point allude to a certain numerical symmetry in the structure of Plato's "Republic" based on a two-one-two pattern in the number of Socrates' "interlocutors," but the point is of the sort that any literary critic might make.

And to the degree that Strauss attributes "esoteric" doctrines to his authors in this book, it is again such as any literary critic might suggest -- e.g., he repeatedly suggests that certain characters are intended to illustrate certain ideal types or that the presentation is structured so as to emphasize certain key themes.

The primary conclusion reached in Strauss's first and briefest essay, on Aristotle's "Politics," is uncontroversial: the "guiding question of Aristotle's 'Politics' is the question of the best regime." Aristotle was a "partisan of excellence." However, Strauss further adds, a "difficulty arises from the fact that the highest end of the individual is contemplation." Because the mass of men, unlike Aristotle, are incapable of a fully contemplative life, Strauss claims "that there are examples of men of the highest excellence whereas there are no examples of cities of the highest excellence..." This introduces a theme, which occurs throughout Strauss' work, of the conflict between a life devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and the demands of civil and political life.

Strauss sharpens this point in his longer essay on Plato's "Republic." After explaining in detail Plato's ideal of the philosopher-king, Strauss reveals that the deepest impracticality in Plato's scheme is "the philosophers' unwillingness to rule...Why are the philosophers unwilling to rule? Being dominated by the desire...for knowledge as the one thing needful...the philosophers have no desire for looking down at human affairs, let alone for taking care of them."

It is Strauss' longest and final essay, on Thucydides' history of the brutal war which ended the classical period in Greece, which speaks most directly to our own current condition. Strauss declares that in wartime "manners become altogether depraved...The decay in speech and in deed of moderation is accompanied by the decay of respect for law...a good regime...is averse to war and will avoid every war which can be avoided."

Unfortunately, Strauss argues, democracy leads to imperialism and war: "empire...is not possible without the full participation of the demos [i.e., the democratic mass electorate, what is now called "the people"] in political life; the demos is enthusiastically in favor of the grandest imperial enterprise..."

In the end Strauss condemns "Athenian imperialism," the ultimate cause of the horrifying war, not for its narrow and self-seeking side (which he shows did exist) but rather for its "fantastic political universalism." The Athenians were gripped by a naive utopian belief that culture, enlightenment, and democracy could be exported via military might.

Strauss argues that, rather than "sham universalism" based on military conquest, the only proper form of universalism is "the universalism of thought," the peaceful and non-violent spread of enlightenment through cultural interaction.

In light of Strauss' own arguments, what are we to make of the neoconservative "Straussians" who have brought about the American military conquest of Iraq in order to "liberate" the Iraqi people?

Far from being wise men who wished to avoid the demands of political power, they have struggled and schemed to gain power. They have certainly not, in Strauss' words, avoided "every war which can be avoided"; indeed, they fabricated false stories of "weapons of mass destruction" in order to engineer a preemptive attack. As Strauss predicted, "The decay in speech and in deed of moderation is accompanied by the decay of respect for law..." The decay of respect for law has resulted in grotesque violations of the American Constitution -- the arbitrary denial of habeas corpus, the USA Patriot Act, etc. And there is no secret that all of this is motivated by, as Strauss says, a "fantastic political universalism," the belief that America can and should impose, by force of arms, its own system of "democratic capitalism" not only on the Iraqi people but on the entire world, whether the rest of the world wants it or not.

In short, the neoconservative "Straussians" are the people Strauss warned us about in "The City and Man." They are "Straussians" in name only. In fact, they are the cruel idealists, the humanitarians with a guillotine, who destroy civilization in the name of advancing it. We saw their kind in ancient Athens, in revolutionary France, in Bolshevik Russia, in Maoist China, and, now, in contemporary America.

As Leo Strauss so ably demonstrates in "The City and Man," they are not conservatives; they are nihilists.

Because of Strauss' Teutonic style, his pedantic focus on detail, and his sheer verbosity, "The City and Man" is not easy reading. But, in "The City and Man," Strauss does offer us a timely warning of the horrifying abyss towards which we ourselves are now hurtling.

In this sense, in this book Strauss related us the answers to that's questions. He teaches us three different, but complementary, views of the city: the political, the philosophic and the historical perspective of the city.

He gives us numerous clues that it's must take us to value the risks of the single natural human association. He pushes us to think, in the last part of the book, about the risks of overcoming the natural limits of the city. So,he invites us to share his discussion as regards the world state.

As it's common in their books, it is an excellent index from the problems to those faces the political philosophy. I recommend it to you.
edsallent@eresmas.com