http://www.nhinet.org/hum.htm

Of course Prof. Ryn is familiar with Strauss. The charge that he must know nothing about it because he has not come to the Straussians’ conclusion about the maestro isn’t very convincing. Naturally, we would have to be interested in how the Good is manifested in life, in real, particular things. Otherwise, of what real value or meaning is it? To put it in theological terms, we must incarnate the Word to transform our lives.

As a previous student of Dr. Ryn, I’m confident that he would have little quarrel with giving Strauss proper recognition and his due. In fact, I recall that Strauss’s Natural Right and History was required reading in a Ryn course. He dutifully presented Strauss’s thesis, and then quite ably rescued Edmund Burke and the importance of history from Strauss’s ahistorical caricature of same.

Peterson second point seems tenuous at best. Chalk it up to Ryn’s influence may be, but I believe it is more accurate to state that the ancient and Christian traditional political philosophy focused on the good, the true, and the beautiful as they manifested themselves in life, which possesses ancestral and cultural dimensions - protestations of many of Strauss’s disciples and some Neo-Thomist to the contrary notwithstanding. I gather this is why I find Prof. Lukacs’s historical philosophy more interesting than Maritain’s philosophy of history.

Basically, Strauss thinks that revelation can’t be reasoned about but also he doesn’t want to reject revelation completely. Essentially, that is the modern mistake. You’re quite right to link Strauss’ ideas with Averroism, since Strauss studied medieval Islamic philosophy quite intensively, along with Maimonides.

The twist that Jaffa introduces is to say that although revelation can’t be reasoned about, the two do agree on essential moral duties. So, despite all his idiocies about America being the “best regime,” Jaffa would also criticize people who say that there is no truth but most people can’t understand this so they need to be kept in their place with lies. Apparently, Jaffa detested Allan Bloom, because he thought Bloom believed that philosophy and morality were ultimately incompatible.

FYI, there is an excellent critique of Strauss and Jaffa’s treatment of Aquinas by a student of Macintyre: Pamela Hall, “Narrative and the Natural Law.”

Your comments on Strauss confirm what I was guessing to be the case. He does not think reason can disprove revelation, because he thinks revelation is not something to be reasoned about at all. In which case theology as a whole is pointless, which doesn’t leave much room for Aquinas, Jacobite (I’m still laughing about that one) or not. From what you’re telling me, Strauss seems almost to be taking up a position where truth is not one: reason talks about some things, revelation about others, and never the twain shall meet. Averroism, anyone?

This isn’t intended as a racial remark but their ignorance of their own tradition shows up nicely in the comments of Matthew Peterson about Aquinas. For Strauss, the paradigmatic example of the nature of Revelation is the Jewish Old Testament and the idea of a law simply dictated by God that really has nothing to do with human reason (it can’t be refuted by reason but it can’t be understood by reason either). Strauss abandons modern rationalism and returns to the rationalism of Maimonides (and, via him, Plato) as more moderate alternative to modern rationalism (i.e., because it treats the limits of reason in the face of revelation more gingerly and doesn’t attempt to fully resolve the disputes). This is when Strauss gets into “esoteric teaching,” etc. Aquinas had a much different understanding of the interplay between reason and revelation and it wasn’t “Jacobinical” of Aquinas to apply reason to truths of the faith. Unlike Strauss, Aquinas held to the analogy of being, so that we affirm that, e.g., God is love, even though we do not mean it in the way that human beings understand love. Thus, for Aquinas there just isn’t the ultimate division between the two that there is for Strauss.

Straussians are a frustrating bunch. As Mark Lilla pointed out in October 2004, most present day Straussians (especially of the Claremont variety) really bear little relation to Strauss himself. He engaged in his reconsideration of Maimonides and Plato in the context of debates about the fate of Jews in the Weimar republic. These writings set the stage for much of his later work on esoteric writing, Plato, etc. and is quite interesting. Strauss is interesting but Straussians are simply not.

The biggest problem for conservatives when engaging with Straussians (especially the Claremont variety) is that they refuse to acknowledge or even engage Macintyre’s idea of the rationality of traditions and simply force everything into the dichotomy of natural right or historicism (nihilism).