Esotericism Ancient And Modern

Frazer / Theory PoliticalEsotericism Ancient 10.1177/0090591705277770 and Modern

Esotericism Ancient and Modern
Strauss Contra Straussianism on the Art of Political-Philosophical Writing
Michael L. Frazer
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Political Theory Volume 34 Number 1 February 2006 33-61 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/0090591705277770 http://ptx.sagepub.com hosted athttp://online.sagepub.com

Leo Strauss presents at least two distinct accounts of the idea that the authors in the political-philosophical canon have often masked their true teachings. A weaker account of esotericism, dependent on the contingent fact of persecution, is attributed to the moderns, while a stronger account, stemming from a necessary conflict between philosophy and society, isattributed to the ancients. Although most interpreters agree that Strauss here sides with the ancients, this view fails to consider the possibility that Strauss’s writings on esotericism may themselves be composed esoterically. A reevaluation of Straussian hermeneutics in light of this possibility suggests that the elitism and secrecy often associated with “Straussianism” may stem, not from Strauss’strue account of esotericism, but instead from an exoteric doctrine designed to seduce students into a life of philosophy. Keywords: Leo Strauss; esoteric; persecution; writing; hermeneutics

All I know is that I am not a Marxist. —Karl Marx1 Perhaps the only indisputably true statement that one can make about the thought of Leo Strauss is that there is remarkably little agreement on what
Author’sNote: This essay builds on work that I began under the supervision of Steven B. Smith as an undergraduate at Yale University; he has been my primary guide to the thought of Leo Strauss ever since. I would also like to thank Jonathan Allen, Leora Batnitzky, Coral Celeste, Patrick Deneen, George Kateb, Stephen Macedo, Wilson Carey McWilliams, Josiah Ober, Jeffrey Stout, Ian Ward, Micah Watson,Stephen White, Alex Zakaras, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable help. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, and I would like to thank my fellow panelists—Shadia Drury, Michael Kochin, Steven Lenzner, Arthur Melzer, and Michael Moses—for their participation.

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Leo Strauss trulythought; Strauss has been described as everything from an apolitical scholar of the classics to the secret mastermind behind a cabal of neoconservative neoimperialists, as everything from a liberal democrat (or at least a “friend” of liberal democracy) to a “Jewish Nazi.”2 This disagreement is understandable, for there can be few interpretive tasks more challenging than that of uncovering Strauss’strue teachings. Even if one is able to parse Strauss’s dense and enigmatic prose, one is still plagued by the fact that Strauss, far more often than not, availed himself of what he called “the immunity of the commentator.”3 It is thus difficult, if not impossible, to separate Strauss’s doctrines from those he attributes to Plato and Xenophon, to 4 Maimonides and Farabi, perhaps even toMachiavelli and Nietzsche. One of the few subjects which Strauss discusses in his own name, and not only as an interpreter of others, is the subject of interpretation itself. Central to Strauss’s writings on the proper interpretation of canonical politicalphilosophical texts is the phenomenon of esotericism, the idea that the authors of these texts have often masked their true teachings.5 Strauss’s writingson secret teachings, most famously the titular essay in Persecution and the Art of Writing (hereafter cited in text as PAW), are thus commonly seen as possible keys to Strauss’s own secrets. Those who seize on these writings, however, usually fail to consider the possibility that the Straussian doctrine of esotericism as it is most commonly understood—the ancient doctrine that esoteric writing...