Straussed out - philosopher, intellectual and political scientist Leo Strauss

Reason, Nov, 1998 by Loren E. Lomasky

The critics' zeal is itself excessive. Yet they have a point. Eros is a jealous passion, pushing away the unlike as ardently as it cleaves to the like. Straussians and Randians are both notorious for their cabals, for scornful rejection of the possibility of actually learning something from those who affirm opposite views, for endlessly repeating mantras that satisfy those within the circle but sound like so much gobbledygook to those outside. And both periodically break off into sub-cults anathematizing and waging internecine war against wayward brethren. (Again, the comparison to early Christianity is revealing.)

Drury is surely correct in this regard: Strauss and the Straussians can be infuriating. Nonetheless, they may have latched onto important insights that are completely invisible to intemperate critics. The same, mutatis mutandis, can be said for Rand and the Randians. Extremes of partisanship one way or the other explain why treatments of either rarely strike the mean between slavish devotion and hectoring denunciation. Leo Strauss and the American Right is, unfortunately, no exception.

Contributing Editor Loren E. Lomasky (llomask@opie.bgsu.edu) teaches philosophy at Bowling Green State University and is the author of Persons, Rights, and Moral Community (Oxford).