Fascinating series. These names were very much in the air when I studied with the Straussians as an undergraduate. I haven't heard them much since graduating (and going down a very different route, obviously) but, like Alan Horn's late Victorian occultists, it's an extremely interesting intellectual network.
Yeah I didn’t study with Straussians at all (in fact, I’m not sure I ever discussed them with my advisor, which is interesting because he was a mideast foreign policy guy, and one of the subjects of my thesis (Irving kristol) was a Strauss admirer.) and I’ve been pretty consistently surprised throughout this project just how much ground you can cover only reading members of that school.
Stanley Rosen a fascinating character. His first ambition was to be a poet; he studied creative writing with Allen Tate, while the latter had some gig at Chicago. (This was also, obviously, where he became Strauss's student.) For his fellow Straussians, this would, of course, have been a telling avocation. (You are not the first to observe a certain arrogance in him. Myself, of course, I look admiringly on all divine madness.)
Yeah that arrogance is pretty tied into the things I like about him! It doesn't seem coincidental that he's the only major Strauss student I'm aware of who developed much of an identity that wasn't dependent on being a Straussian.
I agree. Though I think Benardete also achieved an eminence independent of the teacher, by opposite means—focusing exclusively on classics and burrowing into the topic with extreme profundity. (In a sense, could be thought of as a kind of hyper-Straussian, though that is probably misleading.) He has his own school of Americans, who took after him (Ronna Burger and company), though also achieved international renown. The French Structuralist classicists (Vidal-Naquet, Vernant, etc.), held him in high esteem, for reasons having nothing to do with any interest in Strauss (that I am aware of).
This is a very silly example, but I was talking to my friend recently about how much the evangelical right has fallen off bc I remember controversies about Harry Potter in my childhood yet you never hear any hysteria about this guy who has ensorcelled millions of children whose name is literally "Mr. Beast".
Fascinating series. These names were very much in the air when I studied with the Straussians as an undergraduate. I haven't heard them much since graduating (and going down a very different route, obviously) but, like Alan Horn's late Victorian occultists, it's an extremely interesting intellectual network.
Yeah I didn’t study with Straussians at all (in fact, I’m not sure I ever discussed them with my advisor, which is interesting because he was a mideast foreign policy guy, and one of the subjects of my thesis (Irving kristol) was a Strauss admirer.) and I’ve been pretty consistently surprised throughout this project just how much ground you can cover only reading members of that school.
The New Atheism vibe you describe is right on--I was in college in the early Aughts and that was everywhere.
Stanley Rosen a fascinating character. His first ambition was to be a poet; he studied creative writing with Allen Tate, while the latter had some gig at Chicago. (This was also, obviously, where he became Strauss's student.) For his fellow Straussians, this would, of course, have been a telling avocation. (You are not the first to observe a certain arrogance in him. Myself, of course, I look admiringly on all divine madness.)
Yeah that arrogance is pretty tied into the things I like about him! It doesn't seem coincidental that he's the only major Strauss student I'm aware of who developed much of an identity that wasn't dependent on being a Straussian.
I agree. Though I think Benardete also achieved an eminence independent of the teacher, by opposite means—focusing exclusively on classics and burrowing into the topic with extreme profundity. (In a sense, could be thought of as a kind of hyper-Straussian, though that is probably misleading.) He has his own school of Americans, who took after him (Ronna Burger and company), though also achieved international renown. The French Structuralist classicists (Vidal-Naquet, Vernant, etc.), held him in high esteem, for reasons having nothing to do with any interest in Strauss (that I am aware of).
This is a very silly example, but I was talking to my friend recently about how much the evangelical right has fallen off bc I remember controversies about Harry Potter in my childhood yet you never hear any hysteria about this guy who has ensorcelled millions of children whose name is literally "Mr. Beast".