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Mar 17, 2025
Editor: The Telegraph’s Headline and Sub-headline frame this execercise in political hysteria.
Headline: Mahmoud Khalil is a test case for the survival of Western civilisation
Sub-headline: Europe seems resigned to not deport foreigners with hostile views. The United States should be different.
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Editor: Simon Hankinson is a Neo-Con, in fact, a defacto Straussian. What does that mean? Leo Strauss re-wrote the History Of Philosphy, that just didn’t advocate The Noble Lie, but inshrined it as an execise of Elite Power : a methodolody of the control of the lesser beings, by that self-appointed Elite! Reader Peter Thiel offers his ‘The Straussian Moment’!
https://lite.evernote.com/note/46c636b6-b404-45df-ab0a-1f84c6fdc8c2
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Summary
THE POLITICS OF LYING
Socrates’ introduction of the Republic‘s notorious “noble lie” comes near the end of Book 3 (414b-c). “We want one single, grand lie,” he says, “which will be believed by everybody – including the rulers, ideally, but failing that the rest of the city.” Grand lie? Noble lie? G. R. F. Ferrari has a good note on the issue: “The lie is grand or noble (gennaios) by virtue of its civic purpose, but the Greek word can also be used colloquially, giving the meaning ‘a true-blue lie,’ i.e. a massive, no-doubt-about-it lie (compare the term ‘grand larceny’).” This is not the only point on which there might be argument about the translation. Some prefer to “lie” the more neutral “falsehood” (which need not imply deliberate deception), others “fiction ” (perhaps trying to prescind from questions of truth and falsehood altogether). Cornford had “bold flight of invention.” I think “lie” is exactly right. But the argument for that will emerge later, in section II.
The noble lie is to serve as charter myth for Plato’s good city: a myth of national or civic identity – or rather, two related myths, one grounding that identity in the natural brotherhood of the entire indigenous population (they are all autochthonous, literally born from the earth), the other making the city’s differentiated class structure a matter of divine dispensation (the god who molds them puts different metals in their souls). If people can be made to believe it, they will be strongly motivated to care for the city and for each other.
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Editor: M.F. Burnyeat offers isights on the Straussian Methodology:
Strauss, of course, wants his “gentlemen” readers to form the opposite conviction, about the Republic and about politics in general. What persuasions can he muster? There is the frail comparison with Shakespeare. There is the consideration that Socrates is a master of irony and “irony is a kind of dissimulation, or of untruthfulness.”
But to show in detail that Plato means the opposite of what Socrates says, Strauss resorts to a peculiar mode of paraphrase which he evidently learned from the tenth-century Islamic philosopher, Farabi.
The technique is as follows. You paraphrase the text in tedious detail—or so it appears to the uninitiated reader. Occasionally you remark that a certain statement is not clear; you note that the text is silent about a certain matter; you wonder whether such and such can really be the case. With a series of scarcely perceptible nudges you gradually insinuate that the text is insinuating something quite different from what the words say. Strauss’s description of Farabi describes himself: “There is a great divergence between what Farabi explicitly says and what Plato explicitly says; it is frequently impossible to say where Farabi’s alleged report of Plato’s views ends and his own exposition begins.”
The drawback with this mode of commenting on a Platonic dialogue is that it presupposes what it seeks to prove, that the dialogue form is designed to convey different meanings to different kinds of readers.
Ifthere is a secret meaning, one might concede that Maimonides’ instructions show us how to find it and that Farabi’s mode of commentary is the properly cautious way to pass it on to a new generation of initiates. But Strauss has not yet shown that Plato does conceal his opinions, let alone that they are the opposite of what Socrates explicitly says. Hence his use of techniques adapted from Maimonides and Farabi is a vicious circularity.
It would be tedious to follow up all the perversities, both literary and philosophical, of Strauss’s reading of the Republic. I shall pick on one central statement Strauss makes about the Republic: “The philosophers cannot be persuaded, they can only be compelled to rule the cities.”
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Editor: Mr. Hankinson opening paragraphs!
There’s an old joke among US immigration officers: “the case ain’t over ‘til the alien wins”.
It long reflected the truth: that absurd interpretations of the law and endless appeals made it rare for non-citizens (“aliens”) to ever be deported, even if they had committed fraud or other crimes.
But the United States now has a president committed not only to securing the country’s borders, but to enforcing the law and deporting those ordered to be removed. Trump has said that those “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” will be held to account.
Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of New York City’s Columbia University, is a test case: can the United States remove non-citizens with views that appear to be antithetical to its very existence, or will the courts force us into pathological levels of tolerance?
Khalil was arrested on March 8 by immigration agents. He is reportedly of Palestinian heritage and from Syria, arrived on a student visa, and then, apparently based on marriage to an American citizen, obtained lawful permanent residence status, aka a “green card”.
There is much evidence that Khalil has been at the centre of anti-Israel protests on campus – perhaps even organising them. He has been described as belonging to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and reportedly led students from its campus Gaza Solidarity Encampment in negotiations with administrators.
Under leaders who are at best feckless and at worst sympathetic to the protesters, Columbia has endured two years of disgraceful events, including assaults on Jewish students, sequestering staff, occupying buildings, pro-Hamas propaganda, blocking classes, and vandalism.
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Editor: Mr. Hankinson last paragraph offers Trump as the final arbiter. What Hankinson offers the reader is incomplete: The Executive, The Legislative and The Judicial share the powers as civic equals! Though the vexing question remaines how far will Trump go?
In Europe, defiant, possibly unassimilable immigrants seem to have the upper hand. In the US, the Trump administration has not only declared them unwelcome, but taken action to send them packing.
Newspaper Reader.
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