Mr. Strauss needs a much better lawyer! Mr. Rosen, opening his essay on Strauss, with his long and ennui inducing comments on Mr. Bellow’s novel Ravelstein was cunning literary padding. Mr. Bellow wrote the same novel many times, Ravelstein being one of the many iterations of his literary practice. Call Ravelstein by it’s rightful name, the fictional biography of a arch manipulator/propagandist. With a guest appearance by a fictionalized Strauss. But a much more aggressive defense should be mounted: because Mr. Rosen leaves out of his collection of book titles the work of German scholar Heinrich Mieir , a Strauss specialist and editor of his collected works.
Carl Schmitt and Leo StraussThe Hidden Dialogue:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3637206.html
Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem:
These two books don’t deal specifically with Mr. Strauss’ politics per say but offer insights into the esoteric/exoteric reading of the philosophical tradition: a reader might see this as intellectual permission to ‘read’ that tradition ideologically? and his defense/advocacy of the authoritarian Plato’s Noble Lie ( The City and Man). Perhaps the crux of the Strauss debate situated in it’s American context, rather than in philosophical/theological milieu of the Strauss/Schmitt rapprochement: although both had decided authoritarian political sympathies/allegiances. Enter stage Right the Neo-Cons, more than willing to exploit the concept of the Noble Lie in positions to wield influence on the powerful.
Almost Marx
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/athens-the-midway-defending-leo-strauss-11859?page=show
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