Empty Esotericisms: Doctrines of Secret Writing and the Politics of a Platonic Code

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-82
Author(s):  
Sean Noah Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
History Of

The aim of this article is to address the recently renewed debate pertaining to esotericism, secret messages encoded within writings from antiquity, especially in the writings of Plato. The question of esotericism has assumed a prominent role within debates concerning the history of political thought. Ever since Leo Strauss offered his suspicion that there were secrets ‘buried in the writings of the rhetoricians of antiquity’, the idea that philosophers deliberately concealed their true beliefs in a way that few could detect has been fiercely debated. More recently, the research of J.B. Kennedy has made international headlines for discovering a musical pattern embedded within Platonic writings, a pattern that Kennedy insists is evidence of Plato’s Pythagorean allegiance. The theses proffered by Strauss and Kennedy are empty doctrines of esotericism, or empty esotericisms. These doctrines insinuate the presence of secret or coded writing within Platonic dialogues but reveal no actual secret. These theses of esotericism falsely represent Plato as hyper-cryptic.Without actually providing substantive content, these notions of esotericism compel the reader to merely negate the exoteric writings of Plato, which actually render his already heterodox writings as commonplace and orthodox.

“ ’What’s Gone and What’s Past Help...’: Oakeshott and Strauss on Historical Explanation”

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-101
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Contemporary Practice

AbstractBecause of the public identification of both Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss as conservative political philosophers, there have been numerous comparisons of their political thought. Whatever similarities or differences that do exist between them, it is certainly true that they shared a keen interest in the history of political thought. However, they understood the character of history in widely divergent ways. In the following paper, I examine the way in which each writer understood the logic of historical explanation, and there are two primary reasons for wanting to do so. First, there have been few examinations of either writer’s arguments concerning historical understanding, despite the stature of both as historians of political theory. Second, the differences between Oakeshott and Strauss on history are central to two fundamentally opposed ways of understanding the past, each of which has manifested itself in the contemporary practice of the history of political thought. I will argue that Strauss’s approach to the past is primarily a practical one and yields a concern with a legendary or mythical past constructed primarily to address contemporary political problems, and that his specific methodological propositions are either irrelevant to a specifically historical understanding of the past or inadequately argued and unconvincing. Conversely, I will suggest that Oakeshott offers a coherent and compelling account of the logic of historical understanding, which involves both a defense of the autonomy of historical explanation and an elaboration of the character of historical contextualism.

Strauss, Leo (1899–1973)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shadia B. Drury
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
German Jewish

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish émigré political philosopher and historian of political thought, who wrote some fifteen books and eighty articles on the history of political thought from Socrates to Nietzsche. Strauss was no ordinary historian of ideas; he used the history of thought as a vehicle for expressing his own ideas. In his writings, he contrasted the wisdom of ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the foolhardiness of modern philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke. He thought that the loss of ancient wisdom was the reason for the ‘crisis of the West’ – an expression that was in part a reference to the barbarities of the Holocaust. He therefore sought to recover the lost wisdom. He studied the classics and was a great devotee of Plato and Aristotle. However, he developed unusual interpretations of classical texts.

8. Globality, morality, and the future

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Proletarian Revolution ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Actions ◽  
Cambridge School

‘Globality, morality, and the future’ recounts the 1960s research in the history of political thought, which was inspired by the writings of Leo Strauss, Michel Foucault, Reinhart Koselleck, and the Cambridge School authors. The reconstruction of the meaning of texts can be seen through the scholars’ ideological contexts and perspectives. Despite the rejection of Marxist categories for interrogating history and proletarian revolution, the world created by capitalism continues to be attacked for its endemic war and fanatical politics. Aspects of the history of political thought trained scholars to see the problems of contemporary society. The history of political thought allowed political actions to be charted and evaluated for success.

The History of Political Thought: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cambridge School

‘A History of Political Thought: A Very Short Introduction’ explores the core concerns and questions in the history of political thought, considering the field as a branch of political philosophy and political science. The approaches of core theorists, such as Reinhart Koselleck, Leo Strauss, Michel Foucault, and the so-called Cambridge School of Quentin Skinner and John Pocock are important to this topic. There is ongoing relevance for current politics which can be seen by assessing the current relationship between political history, theory, and action. There are some areas of political thinking that tend to draw on history because of the comparisons and contrasts that the past can offer to contemporary dilemmas.

Postmodern Approaches to the History of Political Thought

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Foa Dienstag
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S

This article describes the postmodern approach to the history of political thought that has evolved through the practices of a variety of theorists in both Europe and the United States since the 1950s. It maintains that Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is the originating point of this movement, although neither he nor any of the other theorists it mentions left any canonical statements of methods to compare with the works of Quentin Skinner or Leo Strauss. Terms such as “deconstruction,” “genealogy,” and “radical hermeneutics” are often used to describe these methods. At the broadest level, the postmodern approach displays an acute sensitivity to the role of language in politics, and in political theory itself, that originates in the work of Nietzsche. While postmodernism is nothing if not a congeries of method, this article argues that these diverse approaches have, if not a unity, than at least common sources and overlapping themes.

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