THE STRAUSSIANS

Years ago, more years than subsequent achievement justifies, I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, and was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science.  There was, fortunately, something different about my schooling: I specialized (as a 'program major') in political theory, and there I met and studied under the late Jack Chapin.  Our political theory was not the pabulum, the empty 'actor analysis' that passed as political theory elsewhere in the department, but political theory as political philosophy.  Chapin was a Straussian, and through him I became acquainted with Leo Strauss, his method, and his progeny. (Like some Straussians, Chapin was reluctant to identify himself as such, but such he was.)  Although I am not, and could not reasonably be, a Straussian, the hallmark rigor of Straussian teaching gave me a solid, meaningful education.  

As they are cryptic in writings and pronouncements, there are many debates about what Strauss and his followers hold.  What does it mean to be a Straussian? There are a few basic principles fundamental to a Straussian analysis and method:  (1) emphasis on the importance of political philosophy, and the philosopher's use of the political to develop general philosophical axioms, (2) a belief that the text has meaning, both a superficial, exoteric and an underlying, esoteric meaning (and thus they reject relativism and other like ideologies in a favor of a reading of the text as meaningful and universal), (3) a recognition of the tension between knowledge from reason and knowledge from revelation.

My first course in political theory, a survey of author after author in the short space of a semester, was entirely conventional, with a professor who offered no better than a superficial reading of everything on the syllabus.  The only thing that anyone from the class was likely to remember about him was an ever-present tennis racket by his lectern.  At the end of that first semester I knew that, despite the mediocrity of the professor, the subject was irresistible.  (We heard that a new professor would be teaching the other political theory courses that the department offered, and the news was welcome for someone who had years of study ahead.)

Jack Chapin was a young Ph.D. from Harvard, having completed his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University.  He was both intelligent and socially awkward in equal, considerable measure.  He was, more important still, a Straussian.  It is possible, indeed probable, that an intelligent person may also be socially skilled, but that wasn't the case with Chapin.  He seldom looked at someone directly, preferring instead to look away, toward the nearest corner where a room's walls met the ceiling.  He taught the majority of my political theory courses over the next three years, and from him I became acquainted with Leo Strauss and Straussian method and analysis.

The great strength of the Straussians is that they believe that political philosophy has insight both for politics and for learning itself, and that the great texts of political philosophy have true, discernable meanings.  This may seem like a small matter, but the twentieth century American university was alternately indifferent and hostile to political philosophy, preferring instead the casuistry and simple, but erroneous, attraction of Marxism.  (Despite his attacks against those he saw as ideologues, there was no greater ideologue, no one farther from science and closer to chicanery, than Karl Marx was.) His adherents threw their talent away on a self-certain, certainly wrong, man.)      

One antidote to relativism, nihilism, claims of textual ambiguity, and other false uncertainties is the rigorous Straussian method.  Strauss saw meaning in the text, on two levels -- an intelligible and superficial level, and an intelligible but hidden layer.  Those who think that all meaning is in the mind of the reader, and not the mind of the philosopher (through his text), draw special -- deserved -- scorn from the Straussians.  This is the way -- perhaps the only way -- in which I hold with the Straussians: they are correctly, zealously opposed to relativism and nihilism. While so many scholars have succumbed to those tainted doctrines, the Straussians have stayed impeccably clean. 

So much of political science, of actor analysis, is just false science and nonsense.  Our program in political theory at Penn was then just a small part of the department, and we had to fight -- and Jack Chapin had to fight for us -- to keep the program alive.  To those who dominated the department, our studies were unscientific and mired in the past.  I think now about the majority of the faculty, opposed or indifferent to political philosophy as a valuable study, and it incenses me that those opponents wrote and said nothing of value.  A senior thesis written on Fred Frey's actor analysis, his superficial history of Turkey, or any other flotsam and jetsam he produced, would be a wasted education; why go to school for something that requires no real understanding, but just a mere technique?  Everything that someone like that taught is something that a clever person could parrot after a few hours' practice. 

The Straussians go wrong on some of their other notions: that there is a special esoteric meaning in many great texts, a meaning that addresses the tension between political knowledge through reason and knowledge through revelation.  Unquestionably, there are deeper meanings within many texts, but often not the meanings that the Straussians imagine.  It would irritate them to hear it, but in seeking the esoteric meaning so diligently, they make themselves look like modern day Gnostics, and ridiculously so.  

I am not a Straussian, but I having been taught by one, I find the many charges hurled against the Straussians now -- that they're part of a cabal, a plot, an insidious movement to hijack the academy -- lies, all lies.  Clever lies, I'm afraid.  They batten on the ignorance of those who don't understand Strauss or his admirers.    So few know of his work, and of those who have written in the same perspective, that a critic can say anything about the Straussians, and be sure that ninety-nine of one-hundred will not trouble themselves to consult Strauss's writings for verification. 

Contending that the Straussians, styled as neo-conservatives, have come to dominate the government, and its foreign policy, is just nonsense.  It sounds true and ominous only to the ignorant, and those who care more about a theory than a fact.  There are countless thousands who will only be published if they weave a cleaver web, and if they cannot do that, a dishonest charge against the Straussians will do.     

The Straussians, though small in numbers, are themselves divided, especially regarding America and her place in the world.  We might almost say that there are Straussians, neo-Straussians, and post-Straussians.  The first group adheres closely to the late Leo Strauss's conclusions and method.  The second group reaches somewhat different conclusions with the same method.  The final group uses the rigorous method, but comes to very different conclusions, to the point that the first two groups would not recognize the third as "Straussian."  Straussians are a small school, not a vanguard.

Jack Chapin left the University of Pennsylvania, pursued a medical degree at another school, and passed away before he was graduated from medical school.  He began teaching when he was still young, and died long before middle age. 

Chapin was supportive of my career, and he recommended me first to graduate school, and later to law school.  I last spoke with him in person when I was preparing to apply to law school.  We had lunch at a cafe along Locust Walk at Penn, and he was supportive of my decision to pursue a professional degree.  True to his nature, he outlined the challenge that others, and I would face in life -- that I might succumb to the easy temptation of a comfortable life, and that I would grow dull from American affluence.  It wasn't just a platitude, an empty warning of the kind one hears at graduation ceremonies, but his real concern.  There was skepticism and weariness in his voice, a resignation that, inevitably, no one could stay sharp enough, true enough, to political philosophy.  (At the time, I did not know that he was preparing to make a similar break from academic to professional life, and that it surely left him uneasy.)

I will always think well of Jack Chapin, political philosopher, teacher, and Straussian. He gave his students a solid education, no easy feat under any circumstances.  That he did so without the support of his colleagues, prominent but unworthy, was especially admirable.  Our last conversation on Locust Walk said much about him, and his Straussian perspective: skeptical, sometimes doubtful, but ultimately committed to making the best of circumstances.  That disposition often serves America well, as it served Chapin's students well.  It is the disposition, sometime errors aside, that best describes the Straussians.     

FRANK GILBERT 

JUNE 27, 2003