An Apologia: Conquering Vengeance, Creating a Better—Not Ideal—World

Jeffrey Neuzil

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An Apologia: Conquering Vengeance, Creating a Better—Not Ideal—World

In attempting to justify all I have said and done so far (which basically means what I have written—my attempt to provide an interpretation of Western Political Philosophy, and, more deeply still, an interpretation of Philosophy simply), comes essentially down to this: trying to provide both a personal narrative as to how I have come to be a philosopher—or lover of wisdom, more modestly. For I reserve the honorific title "Philosopher" to such giants as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, Strauss, Kojeve, Schmidt, and Voegelin—to mention just several of my favorites.
Most importantly of all, secondly,—for this has the greatest impact ultimately on the political horizon of America's future—I have tried to indicate what the forces are that have shaped the political horizon of modern America, and indeed, on my analysis, the entire geopolitical structure of the world—considering, for instance, the net which the global, putatively capitalistic, economics spawned by the University of Chicago, by Friedrich Hayak and Milton Friedman have had on shaping our moral and political life.
In order to consider these connections at a deeper level, however, one has to read and struggle—for it will be, I predict, one of the toughest books you will ever read: it was for me—to understand Leo Strauss' "Natural Right and History," not to say all his other works. As Richard Weaver argued "Ideas Have Consequences," and Philosophy today is not just thought—but it is the "Thought," which Nietzsche said is the substance of the "greatest deeds of an age" ("Beyond Good and Evil"). So I have taken the not very popular stance that philosophy is political, not just purely or ideally thought: But a world-transforming thought whose consequences have not been fully worked out yet.
I have made connections—although not direct to the degree that one cannot, ultimately, prove such things—between an anti-idealistic or reactionary movement that was culminated in the 1960's and which has its origin at the University of Chicago—to deny such is, in my view, facile—even while I am forced to admit that I cannot subtantiate any allegations in a court of law: I only invite the reader to look at the patterns that I have shown and make that the basis of a starting point for a critical investigation of politics and philosophy.
I admit that, if the University of Chicago does not already have a manifestly formidable impact on the world, then one has not paid any attention to the work that it has "spawned" in the past century, for it suffices alone to refer to the "economists" I mention to vindicate my "weaker" claims about the University of Chicago, and, if those alone are true, the impact that they portend has already been "revolutionary," even if a full blown Right-wing Nietzsche /Heidegger/ Strauss/Kojeve/ Schmidt revolution never manifests itself, even if our regime has not been "socially engineered" to collapse as its predecessor—and I believe model for the social scientists of the Political Science department at the University of Chicago, not to mention the New School for Social Thought—did, namely, the Weimer regime of Germany (if one considers carefully what Strauss writes in his preface to his masterful, Faustian (Cf. Oswald Spengler) "Spinoza's Critique of Religion," then one sees that he is not sanguine about the prospects of Liberal democracy to protect itself from subversion from within, let alone the kind of serpentine subversion that works both from within, while uniting with forces from without—as may have indeed happened when the United states, perhaps unwisely, invited a veritable "Trojan Horse" of scholars to come to the United States during and prior to World War II: Rockefeller funding made this possible in the case of Leo Strauss et al, and this subject has been masterfully treated in a book called, "Intellectuals in Exile," which deals mostly with the "New School for Social Research," located in New york City—a school where Dr. Strauss got his start as a professor and where he taught until 1948, the date on which he published his "On Tyranny,"— the 100th anniversary of a publication of another revolutionary tract, Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto."
As to what I have said about Dr, Maimon: When I met him as a young boy, as his patient, I was monumentally impressed by him;he, unlike my parents, was the first truly educated man of science I met, and I had the highest respect for him, even though I could not always understand what he said. He was something of a role model for me; his professionalism, his wisdom, his aesthetic sense—all of this was more than a little influential on a young man who did not often meet such people; above all this, he helped me when I was sick—after going to him, I got better, for I suffered as a young boy from severe bronchitus, and was many times hospitalized for this; I will always remember fondly how intimidated I was when Dr, Maimon shook hands with me, for he always emphasized that you must look into the eye of another when shaking his hand—you could say that he emphasized the need for a "face-to-face" encounter—Cf. Strauss' similar remark in "ON Tyranny," where he says that, when the social scientists of the 20th century came "Face to face" with the boldest tyranny, with a tyranny which surpassed the boldest imagination of the classics, they failed to recognize it as what it was—a cancer on the "body politic."!— Strauss, I later came to believe was saying that when German social science conquered America—as Bloom also argues in his book "The Closing of the American Mind," cowardice or ignorance—probably both prevailed: Nobody had the courage to see the writing on the wall, and those who did stood on the wrong side;nobody had the courage to see the writing—see "Of Gramatology," Jacques Derrida—the wall of the "body politic," if not on the body of the citizens themselves, and nobody could see that they were merely being introduced to a "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future,"—where were the social scientists, apparently liberal, when an emphatically anti-value free social science boldly co-opted the universities and then brazenly poured the poison of this anesthetizing Germanic social science into the ear of the members of Camelot:—
It transformed politics in Washington, replacing substantive political decision making—what used to be called in an age more virtuous and dedicated to the realization of virtue—statesmanship, with "Public Administration," which allowed for all of the substance of public policy to emanate from the universities, not from the minds of cogitating, reasoning politicians. In so doing, it met the condition that Nietzsche said must be established to consolidate tyranny: Pacify through money and the satisfaction of bodily passion in the same way the Caesars corrupted Rome in its downfall;.
Strauss practically rubs our nose in **** with his Macaulay quotation at the head of "ON Tyranny," a musing on how the press has been transmogrified into a bidable entity devoid of the power of critical analysis: He tells us you are cowards and we—German thought—triumphed on your soil, despite the fact that your boys returned home from world war II "thinking" they won (See the opening pages of "Natural Right and History," where Strauss says, it would be too bad, if the victor (he means us post world war II!) were deprived of the subliemist fruit of its victory, by the seemingly vanquished triumphing by conquering the victor with the form of its thought reigning supreme—America, as Allan Bloom argued, that's what happened to you, when you became what Bloom called trenchantly, "A disney land version of the Weimar regime, fun for the whole family,"—with that one, Bloom rubbed **** in our face too!
America what are you now? What do you stand for, if anything? What are your ideals, if not the things we thought our constitution gave—and gaurenteed us?
Your silence—and our modern campaigns are not other than the most clamorous of silences—is the most damning indictment of all: it rings in my ears, like the imagined Laws of Athens with which Socrates of Plato's "Crito" had to create a dialogue with, demonstrating to Crito why he refused to escape, though he could have: it is no different today!
 
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"Strauss taught his students that Philosophy has not begun yet."—Stanley Rosen

I urge every citizen of the United States to read—critically (see Plato's "Critias" and Strauss" "Spinoza's Critique of Religion: which I believe may be a philosophy of the past and future), not with hostility, the works of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Alaxander Kojeve (note the relationship to the greatest conquerer of the ancient world, and, perhaps, not accidentally, a student of Aristotle: But we do not traditionally think of Aristotle as prone to such anti-conservative political projects, but we may have to reconsider that, unless the relationship of Alexander's political immoderation was as accidental as the political immoderation of Alcibiades was to Socrates (which may not have been accidental, after all—for Socrates was a teacher of Plato and, more importantly in this connection Xenophon (in my view the political man of antiquity par exellance—though I believe he may have cut down Thucydides[in mid sentence: since Thuycidedes' narrative ends with a "fragmentary sentence. . . then is taken up by the heroic Xenophon?), Plato a teacher of Aristotle, the latter a teacher of Alexander: Who is the modern counterpart to socrates?—these works are more than academic, they are the most potent productions of "philosophical-Theological politics today—and Eric Voegelin, Carl Schmidt, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt are equally important: So give them a read, and you will possibly begin to think of philosophy as more world wise and less muddle-headed, after all!
 
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