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I've blogged here before about my book project on Leo Strauss's ideas on war, peace, and law.  One of the steps forward in this project came when the literary executor of Strauss provided me with a transcript of Strauss's course on Hugo Grotius's Rights of War and Peace.   Strauss's lectures confirmed my view, based especially on a reading of his Thucydides essay, that he took international law very seriously.  

Now many of Strauss's courses and seminars are being made available on the website of the Leo Strauss Center at the University of Chicago.   A common misunderstanding of Strauss, based upon an inadequate reading of his idea of esoteric/exoteric teaching is that Strauss reserved the blunt expression of the inner meaning of his thought for oral instruction of disciples (often suspected to be a militantly anti-liberal ubermensch type philosophy).   In my first published work on Strauss, "Between the Lines," which appeared in Philosophy and Rhetoric over a decade ago, I sought to correct this misunderstanding through an interpretation of Strauss's introductory essay in Persecution and the Art of Writing, arguing that for Strauss writings are more authoritative articulations of philosophical truth than oral teachings.

Well, now it is possible to listen to a wide variety of Strauss's classes, and while I've only started to mine the tapes, those seeking to present Strauss as teacher of would-be tyrants (or at least Wolfowitzs) will have a lot to answer for. 

Strauss's manner of teaching is modest, straightforward, preoccupied by trying to understand for himself, and communicate his understanding to the students.  He is frequently tentative, often corrects himself, and allows himself to be corrected and improved by comments of the students.  He is probing and provocative in his confrontations with the texts he analyses but he is never preachy or polemical.  To borrow from Marx's famous line, one comes away from listening to these classes with the clear impression that Strauss was teaching students to interpret the world, not to change it (except perhaps only very indirectly, through thinking and arguing about the basic problems of the human condition). 

This isn't surprising to me, however, given Strauss's own written account of his ideal of  pedagogy:  "Always assume there is one silent student in your class who is by far superior to you in head and in heart....[D]o not have too high an opinion of your importance, and have the highest opinion of your duty, your responsibility."  These are words that I've tried to have in my head every time I've entered the class room for the last 20 years.   

The tapes can be found here. I know that there are some conspiracy theorists who will not be satisfied-maybe Strauss was prepping the neocons in midnight seances with the tape recorder shut off, or in office hours?  Also, those who hope that listening to these classes is a shortcut to grappling with the immense complexity of Strauss's written engagements with thinkers such as Machiavelli and Maimonides will probably be disappointed.   But there is much here of genuine philosophical value.  And all but the most close-minded will come away with a clearer portrait of the kind of teacher and human being that Strauss was. 

Finally, the Strauss Center is running a conference on April 22 and 23 to celebrate this project, focusing on Strauss as a teacher.  The link, with registration information is here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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