Liberalism Ancient and Modern

"Very much so. Until 2003 or so that hatred was mostly confined to university professors who taught political science and philosophy. While I was immersed in the academy, I think it’s fair to say that he was the most hated academic. But in 2003, with the run-up to the Iraq War, he became more generally hated, because articles in The New York Times , The New York Review of Books and The Boston Globe asserted that Leo Strauss – who spent most of his life studying and teaching the history of political philosophy [and who died in 1973] – was somehow the architect of operation Iraqi Freedom, the Bush administration policy in Iraq. Yes, this is a book of essays, but it is characteristic. Most of the essays represent interpretations of classic works of political philosophy – of a Platonic dialogue, of Lucretius. There’s an essay on the liberalism of ancient political philosophy. What I was especially interested in for this conversation, though, were the essays on religion and his two essays on the importance of liberal education to liberal democracy. I’m glad you mentioned those lines. There is much more to it, but let’s start with the important lines that you’ve selected. What does he mean by those lines, and what are the implications? He means that the history of literature, the history of philosophy and so on is really a debate. Differences of opinion about what constitutes human flourishing and how we should live our lives, what is justice, what is injustice, what are the virtues that constitute a good life and so on; studying that conversation is the essence of the highest form of education that our civilisation offers. In other words, the education that he recommends is anything but dogmatic. It’s sometimes mistaken for a canonical education but the canon he is interested in is a canon that is constituted by disagreement over these important questions. Great books have often been rejected by the universities, so that’s the first answer: the truism is rejected. Secondly, setting aside the Iraq War controversy, which made him nationally unpopular and gave him widespread infamy, he was unpopular in the academy because he was a critic of the left liberal orthodoxy taught in the universities. In the departments I’m familiar with, especially political science, there is often an emphasis on teaching differences of opinion. But when teaching the correct opinion, usually it’s the correct progressive opinion about this political matter or that political matter and most people don’t like to have their opinions challenged. You would think that the universities would select people who do, who live for the challenge of ideas, but that turns out not to be the case. I have to add to this that while Strauss became hated because of the way he challenged liberal orthodoxy, a crucial aspect of his thought was to bolster liberal democracy, to strengthen our understanding of what the foundations of liberal democracy are and to provide inside instruction on how to make the case for liberal democracy better. He was a critic but his criticism was designed to strengthen, not to undermine. It’s an excellent place to begin. I would begin with his introduction in which he says a number of fascinating and accessible things about liberalism, conservatism, communism, and then the two essays on liberal education, chapters one and two."