If you're interested in Strauss I recommend Stanley Rosen's Hermeneutics as Politics (blurbed by John Coetzee!). Rosen was (according to Kojève!) Strauss's smartest student.
I think that for a long time people didn't understand Strauss. They reacted mostly to his students who are relatively normal American conservatives, and not to Strauss. You understand why mainstream liberal political scientists found the Strauss-cult annoying, but his American critics tended not to be interested in why he thought the way he did, why figures like Gadamer and Walter Benjamin admired him etc. Now even the Cambridge School historians of political thought (who were the most anti-Straussian scholars of all in the 70s and 80s) understand Weimar-era philosophy and have started learning from Strauss, which I hope is a sign he's becoming a more ecumenical figure: https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/intellectualhistory/items/show/324#lg=1&slide=0
Thanks for the comment! A lot of my impression of Strauss’s possible deeper teaching(s) is informed by the account Rosen gave of his philosophy and project toward the end of his own life, but I haven’t looked into the book, thanks for the recommendation! And yes, it feels like we’ve turned some sort of corner with him, though where it leads who knows.
That Istvan Hont thing that I linked to isn't mind-blowing (it wasn't meant for publication but Hont's seminars seem to be getting the Strauss treatment). Still, Hont and his colleagues know what they are talking about in a way that none of the Cambridge people did in the 1990s when it came to Strauss. It is a better summary than you'd get from most Straussians.
I didn't know him unfortunately! He wrote some reminisces of his education in the last half decade or so of his life that have some imo pretty insightful criticisms of Strauss in and of themselves. Yes, agreed on the Hont!
The two memoirs of Strauss and Kojève are fascinating but towards the end of his life he became very eccentric. Some of what he says there seems exaggerated or at least stands in need of an editor.
Rosen wanted to be this combination of a philosopher and a modernist poet and he was genuinely brilliant, maybe more brilliant than Sontag or Rorty, who were teenagers with him in the bizarre hothouse environment that was UChicago in the 50s. He never met his own absurdly high standards and his work suffered from the compulsion to produce masterpieces. Rosen not only thought he was smarter than Rorty and Sontag, he at least aspired to outdo Wittgenstein. Rosen's student Robert Pippin just writes like a normal academic and ultimately has more lasting things to say about both Hegel and Leo Strauss.
Nihilism and Hermeneutics as Politics remain real philosophical/literary achievements, their audience will always be tiny but it is distinguished (it includes Coetzee and Wendy Brown) & will last.
Regarding those critical smackdowns it seems like a good way to build a literary reputation is to be the one to start the preference cascade, the first one to say in public about a book what people already say behind closed doors. You don’t even have to be a great writer, just 10% more willing to gamble your reputation than your peers. The bummer is when these writers get popular they become the objects of critical consensus rather than the puncturers of it and thus lose anything that made them interesting in the first place. Then the cycle begins anew. Lauren Oyler is another good example of this.
I’m also a habitual book starter but I hope you make it through Mason and Dixon, the last 100 pages are the best I think, some of Pynchon’s most beautiful writing which is really saying something.
If you're interested in Strauss I recommend Stanley Rosen's Hermeneutics as Politics (blurbed by John Coetzee!). Rosen was (according to Kojève!) Strauss's smartest student.
I think that for a long time people didn't understand Strauss. They reacted mostly to his students who are relatively normal American conservatives, and not to Strauss. You understand why mainstream liberal political scientists found the Strauss-cult annoying, but his American critics tended not to be interested in why he thought the way he did, why figures like Gadamer and Walter Benjamin admired him etc. Now even the Cambridge School historians of political thought (who were the most anti-Straussian scholars of all in the 70s and 80s) understand Weimar-era philosophy and have started learning from Strauss, which I hope is a sign he's becoming a more ecumenical figure: https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/intellectualhistory/items/show/324#lg=1&slide=0
Thanks for the comment! A lot of my impression of Strauss’s possible deeper teaching(s) is informed by the account Rosen gave of his philosophy and project toward the end of his own life, but I haven’t looked into the book, thanks for the recommendation! And yes, it feels like we’ve turned some sort of corner with him, though where it leads who knows.
Oh neat, did you know him?
That Istvan Hont thing that I linked to isn't mind-blowing (it wasn't meant for publication but Hont's seminars seem to be getting the Strauss treatment). Still, Hont and his colleagues know what they are talking about in a way that none of the Cambridge people did in the 1990s when it came to Strauss. It is a better summary than you'd get from most Straussians.
I didn't know him unfortunately! He wrote some reminisces of his education in the last half decade or so of his life that have some imo pretty insightful criticisms of Strauss in and of themselves. Yes, agreed on the Hont!
The two memoirs of Strauss and Kojève are fascinating but towards the end of his life he became very eccentric. Some of what he says there seems exaggerated or at least stands in need of an editor.
Rosen wanted to be this combination of a philosopher and a modernist poet and he was genuinely brilliant, maybe more brilliant than Sontag or Rorty, who were teenagers with him in the bizarre hothouse environment that was UChicago in the 50s. He never met his own absurdly high standards and his work suffered from the compulsion to produce masterpieces. Rosen not only thought he was smarter than Rorty and Sontag, he at least aspired to outdo Wittgenstein. Rosen's student Robert Pippin just writes like a normal academic and ultimately has more lasting things to say about both Hegel and Leo Strauss.
Nihilism and Hermeneutics as Politics remain real philosophical/literary achievements, their audience will always be tiny but it is distinguished (it includes Coetzee and Wendy Brown) & will last.
Regarding those critical smackdowns it seems like a good way to build a literary reputation is to be the one to start the preference cascade, the first one to say in public about a book what people already say behind closed doors. You don’t even have to be a great writer, just 10% more willing to gamble your reputation than your peers. The bummer is when these writers get popular they become the objects of critical consensus rather than the puncturers of it and thus lose anything that made them interesting in the first place. Then the cycle begins anew. Lauren Oyler is another good example of this.
I’m also a habitual book starter but I hope you make it through Mason and Dixon, the last 100 pages are the best I think, some of Pynchon’s most beautiful writing which is really saying something.
I’m about halfway through and loving it! I’m sure you’re right about literary reputations.