Leo Strauss & why political philosophy is useless

Leo Strauss studied nonsense at Uni and thus was obliged to teach nonsense as a refugee in Amerika. Stuff like this-

Political philosophy is the attempt to replace our opinions about political fundamentals by knowledge about them.

No. That would be Political Science, not Philosophy. Better yet is becoming a politician or political analyst or journalist and travel about till you understand comparative politics. Our 'opinions' are corrected by experience. Our actions in the political arena may thus become more rewarding for ourselves and others.

Its first task consists therefore in making fully explicit our political ideas, so that they can be subjected to critical analysis.

Our ideas become explicit when we articulate them in a manner satisfactory to ourselves. Then somebody points out that they are stupid, ignorant and self-contradictory. Modifying our ideas- or at least what we say or do- may benefit us or others.  

 Most people understand that change is inevitable. The Environment changes, Demographics change, the Economy changes, the military balance of power changes, Technology changes, Fashions change- but there can be a lot of Political continuity despite these changes. This is because Politics is relatively autonomous from Economics, or Culture or even military alliances of a supposedly ideological type. 

The starting point of “political philosophy” is the realization that “all political action aims at either preservation or change.”

Fuck off! It's about popularity or being considered smart or really really nice or whatever. We simply don't know whether we are preserving what is good or whether our plans to change things for the better are actually feasible.

The need to preserve something stems from the “wish to prevent a change to the worse,” while the desire to change something stems from the “wish to bring about something better.” However, this also means that “all political action is then guided by some thought of better and worse” and is based on the idea “of the good life, or of the good society.”

Nope. We say we are angels and will create a Heaven on Earth. Our rivals are devils who will sodomize everybody with blazing pitchforks.  

Most of our ideas are

irrelevant. Only mimetics matters. We do what smart people are doing unless we are as stupid as shit and imitate the stupid.  

abbreviations or residues of the thought of other people, of our teachers (in the broadest sense of the term) and of our teachers' teachers ; they are abbreviations and residues of the thought of the past.

There is a story of a British soldier who gets cut off from his unit in the midst of the Burmese Jungle in 1943. All he has with him is a map of the London Underground. He uses it to find his way out of the Jungle. Our ideas are like that map.  

These thoughts were once explicit and in the center of consideration and discussion. It may even be presumed that they were once perfectly lucid. By being transmitted to later generations they have possibly been transformed, and there is no certainty that the transformation was effected consciously and with full clarity.

No. Words change their meaning over time. A Tory- like Rishi Sunak- does not think he is an Irish Catholic outlaw who lives by plundering Protestant farms. The meaning of the word 'Tory', like the meaning of the word 'Democracy' has changed over time.  

At any rate, what were once certainly explicit ideas passionately discussed, although not necessarily lucid ideas have now degenerated into mere implications and tacit presuppositions.

Strauss thinks Tories should still be plundering Protestant farms in Ireland. 

Therefore, if we want to clarify the political ideas we have inherited, we must actualize their implications,

by actually doing politics- i.e. trying to get elected, trying to form a Ministry, trying to implement our manifesto, etc. This does not involve gassing on about Plato or Machiavelli.  

which were explicit in the past, and this can be done only by means of the history of political ideas.

Which would show that they are 'essentially contested'. True, political labels solve coordination and discoordination problems and thus have longevity, but ideas are not labels. They are evanescent when they aren't wholly evil or imbecilic. 

This means that the clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.

which is indistinguishable from shit.  

To this extent the philosophic effort and the historical effort have become completely fused.

Nonsense! You can 'factorize' them or separate them out easily enough. 

To be fair, Strauss was just a pedagogue and, it may be, he was required to teach nonsense- or believed there was such a requirement- in order to get paid. In this he was like Aristotle who understood that the politics and economics and poetics of his world was wholly unrelated to the would he actually lived in. Aristotle was 52 years old when Alexander conquered Egypt. 8 years previously, Alexander had been his student. His Daddy didn't care if Alexander was teaching him nonsense just as American Senators or British Dukes didn't care if their sons were taught Plato and Aristotle even though both had shit for brains. Paideia was a 'costly signal' precisely because it was not utile. Indeed, it functioned like a Zahavi handicap. If you had put up with four years of studying nonsense, firstly you had developed high tolerance for tedium. Secondly, anything sensible you did suggested plenty of spare mental capacity rather than mother-wit. 

Now, the more we are impressed by the necessity of engaging in historical studies in order to clarify our political ideas, the more we must be struck by the observation that the political philosophers of former ages did not feel such a necessity at all.

Nor did a lot of Strauss's colleagues. They just 'phoned it in'. Jews- more particularly refugees or recent immigrants- tended to take their work seriously.  

A glance at Aristotle's Politics, e.g., suffices to convince us that Aristotle succeeded perfectly in clarifying the political ideas obtaining in his age,

like becoming a God Emperor- which is what Alexander did?  

although he never bothered about the history of those ideas.

Alexander could figure out for himself that deciding his daddy was the God Ammon would be helpful to him. His problem was that he drank too much. 

The most natural, and the most cautious, explanation of this paradoxical fact would be, that perhaps our political ideas have a character fundamentally different from that of the political ideas of former ages.

Our politics is different. Our ideas are different. Our economy is different. What doesn't change is the stupid shite spouted by useless pedagogues teaching nonsense.  

Our political ideas have the particular character that they cannot be clarified fully except by means of historical studies,

These guys can't clarify shit.  

whereas the political ideas of the past could be clarified perfectly without any recourse to their history.

No. The political ideas of the past can be reconstructed by historians and then found to be wholly inconsistent with political actions in the past. But this is self-evident in the present.  

To express this suggestion somewhat differently, we shall make a somewhat free use of the convenient terminology of Hume. According to Hume, our ideas are derived from " impressions" from what we may call first-hand experience.

Strauss had first hand-hand experience of Hume. Giving him his first handy made quite an impression on him. It isn't the case that the fool had no fucking ideas. He was just a pedagogue.  

To clarify our ideas and to distinguish between their genuine and their spurious elements (or between those elements which are in accordance with first-hand experience and those which are not), we must trace each of our ideas to the impressions from which it is derived.

No. We abandon ideas which smart peeps are abandoning. We may pretend to adopt fashionable ideas. But ideas don't matter. Actions do.  

Now it is doubtful whether all ideas are related to impressions in fundamentally the same way. The idea of the city, e.g., can be said to be derived from the impressions of cities in fundamentally the same way as the idea of the dog is derived from the impressions of dogs.

What about the idea of a fire breathing dragon

The idea of the state, on the other hand, is not derived simply from the impression of states.

We may conceive of an ideal state just as we may think fire-breathing, flying, dragons are cool. 

It emerged partly owing to the transformation, or reinterpretation, of more elementary ideas, of the idea of the city in particular.

That was one conception of the state. A different one had to tribes merging into Nations and a dynastic Monarchy being established.  

Ideas which are derived directly from impressions can be clarified without any recourse to history ; but ideas which have emerged owing to a specific transformation of more elementary ideas cannot be clarified but by means of the history of ideas.

No. Complex ideas are clarified by empirical observation. We formulate a 'Structural Causal Model' and use it to make prediction or to tinker with parameters in order to alter outcomes. We then seek empirical verification that our Model is fit for purpose. Furthermore, if we find other people are more successful then us, then we may try to adopt the Structural Causal Model they use. History is a poor guide because technology keeps changing. What was possible in the past may not be possible now. What is possible now was impossible in the past. We need to be alert to what our competitors are doing. If they make a mistake, we must avoid making that same mistake. The scientific approach militates for focusing on the present and the near future. To dwell on past glories is to bury your head in the sand.

Leo Strauss taught the history of ideas. That's why he claimed his subject was important. Had he taught basket-weaving he may have claimed that only the expert basket-weaver understands Society. Everybody should listen to him. Parents should spend a lot of money ensuring their children receive a thorough indoctrination in basket weaving.  

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