Hello, everyone, I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this. Thank you to the kind people on Patria on that help make the show possible. Today's episode is on the work of LEO Strauss. I hope you love the show today so pick it up from where we left off last episode. There's a strong contingency of philosophers living in the early twentieth century that have grown increasingly dissatisfied with rationality as a guide for arriving at certainty about things. They feel this way for a number of different reasons, but it should be emphasised that their critique of rationality is not the only side of the story here, like any good philosophical critique. Sometimes questioning something can offer a sense of clarity for any length of time. Sometimes when the critique is good enough, when we asked questions, it just leads us to more questions. This was deafening,

be the case in the early twentieth century. You know speaking a strong contingencies, there's also gotta, be a strong contingency of people. Listen to the last episode of the show in living as the beneficiaries of the last hundred years of human thought, who found themselves a little frustrated with the whole critique of rational analysis. Overall, one is there must be some people out there who are willing to ask the extremely valid question. What are we supposed to do with any of this information is person might say, look a hero, your criticisms of rationality, ok and and lets say for the sake, the conversation with. Let's say everything I have to say as some amazing point that needs to be taken into consideration, but don't we still me? to have some working arrangement with the reality we live and don't? We still need some method of determining. What's going on verses? What's not going on, I mean, what's the plan You know in order to throw out rationality entirely,

we want a magic, eight ball star chicken everybody. I mean, what's the ultimate plan here, not to mention- and this is no small point, but let's look at the whole basis of your critique of rationality for a second got a few problems. I mean for one you're, using rational analysis to critique rational analysis. How you gonna reconcile that, because that's the thing look, maybe we You run into problems the minute we try to use rationality as a tool to arrive at certainty, but none of these criticisms as adequately made a case that reason isn't the best thing we have gone for us and they certainly haven't made a case for some alter. And that's better see if rationality is a tool that we have in our tool box. The early twentieth century the show us. That is not the only tool we have, and it's not a universal tool, We should try to use for every task we have, but none of that is to say that there are specific area,

is we're rational analysis, isn't the best type of analysis. For example, some thinkers would come to say that may be the most effective setting for the usage of rational analysis is at the of Macro level, of navigating the world but in the same way, in the quantum world, there's a different set of rules that things seem to play by in response to that? We need a different set of assumptions. We proceed from. Our analysis of it may be. The societal level or in our internal experience of things. You know, Kierkegaard that's where rational analysis is less useful, but its by far the best tool we have in the middle territory between those two extremes: here's the point. We can't do it, hey with reason entirely its proven far too effective at producing something, that's extremely useful to us. The question is: what exactly is that something that is producing and how does its production fit into discourse at large? Another problem someone might have with this whole critique is that

unintended. Flip side of critiquing reason is that the enemy of my enemy unintentionally becomes my foot. And what I mean is showing the limitations of reason was for these philosophers in the early twentieth century. An attempt to dispel dogma. But, as you can imagine, these arguments can easily. Become ammunition for any extremist group to drum up support for their cause, all the while now having to conform to the bounds of reason when thinkers and the early twentieth century were faced with all these questions. There were a lot of different responses, but it's important to note that virtually none of these responses had anything to do with throwing out reason in its entirety when someone says something like ill rational analysis, doesn't produce certainty, satellites, throw it out find something to replace it. With that person

is making the same mistake. The thinkers did at the beginning of the enlightenment when they were placed faith based certainty with rational certainty. Remember these early twentieth century thinkers, weren't, opponents of reason, their opponents of dogma and nothing showcases that fact better than cats during how hard these thinkers worked to preserve reason. Moving forward and there may be no philosopher more emblematic of that approach than the early twentieth century thinker, LEO Strauss, LEO Strauss, was a huge fan of rational analysis. So it may seem contradictory to say that he also thought that the entire project of modernity was doomed to failure from the start. This may seem contradictory, but let me explain why it's not in the story begins with his response to one of those critiques of rational analysis that we talked about last episode. The cultural

tendency of reason when people say that reason is relative to the culture. That's doing the reasoning in a limited to cultural biases, cultural limitations, the perspective of the observer, etc. When people are making that case, a common thing, they'll say is well look at ancient Greece. What was called unquote reasonable in ancient Greece is massively different than what we call reasonable today, their point being that clearly, rationality is not some a historical, a cultural tool for arriving at the objective truth about things but was rational in ancient, Greece was relative to their own biases and limitations as a culture, their ultimate point being where no different. Now as a fan of rational analysis Strauss doesn't reject that point. Instead, he accepts it and he asked the further question. Will then? What does that?

mean for how we should be using reason and our societies moving forward, so a concise way to sum up Strauss. His answer to this question is the fact that reason is relative to the culture it was produced and is not a weakness of reason at all. It's actually a strength his eyes. Strauss thinks rationality is not a lost cause just because it doesn't produce certainty. What we should be doing, he thinks. Is using the limitations of reason to the benefit of our societies. Because here's the thing he There are many many different elements to building and maintaining a society and single approach to rationality, may not be able to deal with all of them. Different societies have different strengths and weaknesses. The rational approach of one society is gonna, be good at some things, and bad at others, and other societies approach. Might be good and bad at other things, he thinks our rationality. The rationality of the enlightenment did a lot of good, but it also is pretty

a lot of problems that are proving very difficult to solve, simply with our version of rationality and here's an idea. What if we use the societies of the past as a guide and returned to a different type of rationality, that can help us solve the problems that enlightenment rationality is produced to start building his case. What do you want us to do? We consider the fact that there is a lot of people in our modern world that carry some pretty oversimplified views when it comes to the idea of progress throughout history is very popular idea that the entire history of the Western world has been some sort of linear, constant progression and all culminates in this moment right here. Societies have all built on the mistakes of all the societies before them, and we are living in the pinnacle of what humanity has ever achieved now Strauss would say that is absolutely true when you look at it in terms of a few specific narrow markers, for instance, and for the sake of the argument mom,

Medicine is just far more advanced than the medicine developed during the time of the ancient Greeks. The technology we have today is just far more advanced the level to which we can help Miss and manipulate the natural world to our benefit is just more advanced than back then, but Strauss would say if you only looked at the idea of progress based on these criteria, then you're putting a very charitable model by us on what the word progress really means. Progress he's going to say is a far more complex idea than just whether you got rocket ships and stem cells at your disposal stress what asked Do you think there are any areas of society where the rationality of ancient Greece produce better was I'll. Send our modern rationality, we'll just to throw a possibility other to get the conversation started. How about the fact that ancient Greece producers, society, where there weren't masses of people desperately trying to I'd meaning in the world is anywhere it wasn't downright impossible for a reasonable person,

believe that their life had any sort of natural purpose that belong to them, to feel any sort of connection to the universe or some grand design. Think of the tragic ways that people often cope with this alienation of modernity and instructive, wants to consider that progress is not something that can be quantified by looking at just a few points. A flourishing progress may be something with thousands of different components: cultures throughout the years ebbing and flowing progressing in regressing, indifferent ways based on what each individual culture decided to focus. Their efforts on the question Strauss would want to ask: is what has modernity focused its efforts upon? What areas are we great at? What areas are we lacking in? How did you get this way and how might the cultures of the past help us understand ourselves better? This whole line of investigation we're talking about by the way Strauss often referred to it, is thinking of history in terms of a contrast between the different approaches utilized by the ancients versus the moderns ancients versus moderns, or another way of thinking about that

seem distinction that can be very useful. For this episode is at the ancients versus the Moderns can be thought of also as the ideal versus the real. Let me explain what Strauss means here when the project of modernity began, our scientific method assumed value neutrality, in other words, we assumed nothing about things like the origins of the universe, the purposes of things you know why a volcano what it is doesn't really matter when you're conducting modern science. The job of me science is to observe and describe what there is not why it's there now contrast that with the ancient Greeks who use the aristotelian scientific method, a scientific method that assumes the existence of final causes, in other words, when conducting science and doing Any sort of rational analysis for that matter, the ancient Greeks proceeded from the assumption that there are purposes to things in the universe and

they must fit together in some sort of orderly way. Another way of putting this would be to say that the scientific method of modernity concerns itself with the real It tries to assume no values and try to get to the bottom of the true nature of reality, whereas the scientific method of the ancient Greeks concerns itself with accessing the ideal or finding different categories of existence and how they relate to teleology that exist in a larger, ordered universe. Moderns focused on the real the ancients on the ideal. Let's look at another example of this whole ancients. Moderns, ideal reels to awaken her. This time will start with the ancient Greeks, when the ancient Greeks applied their cultures version of rationality to the task of building a state living in universe that assumes the existence of final causes and teleology. Be rational thing to assume at that point becomes that there must be some sort of ideal version of a state that we can arrive at

Only we reason about it long enough from their its reasonable to assume. There must be some sort of ideal structure to that state. From there there's an ideal way to be a ruler. A government official a warrior and artisan from their there ideal way to be a citizen of a state? More generally, there's an ideal way to be a friend to be a partner to be a sister there's, an ideal way to be a person beyond if only we use rational analysis and look at it closely and carefully enough, not one was born into one of these societies when they grow. Up and learn about the way the universe is. They instantly have a couple dozen ideals of purpose that they can be striving towards an ideal. The Greeks didn't mean, like some transcendent thing, going to reach it start glowing in walking around everywhere. Know, you're, never going to reach these ideals, and that's not the point anyway. The point of these ideals to serve as moral sages for people and societies to strive towards. So, even though they talked about things like ideals,

societies are rulers or even something like being an ideal friend. Nobody really thought they were ever going to achieve the ideal state one day. The point was that society itself was structured around virtue. That's the point: we have these ideals that we're never gonna actually reach, but we will nonetheless try our best every day to get as close as we possibly can to them. The point of these ideals stress tells us was the process, and this process was in many ways a governing influence for ancient Greece. Now contrast this with the value neutrality of modernity when the project of modernity begins and they got but of the enlightenment is thrown down. We start structuring our, societies around the idea of rational individual self interest, in other words, once Madonna, becomes around. We are no longer going to be structuring our societies around virtue.

We are no longer aiming for some ideal society or some ideal citizen of that society. We don't believe in final causes anymore. So, instead of trying to construct some ideal state, we decide. What we want to create is something you could call a real state real in the sense that it something we can actually design and implement and then put systems in place to ensure it will stay that way. But when you have people constantly striving to be the best ruler or citizen, they pay simply can things can sometimes just take care of themselves, but modernity didn't have that luxury when you assume no values written into the universe and then build your political system for mare, you need to construct certain safeguards. Safeguards like a legal system. Safeguards like a con petition things that ensure that, even when you don't have a virtuous ruler or citizenry, that society will still exist at a certain standard for our long. It can but to create things like a legal system or a constitution without assuming.

Values required modernity debased these new political traditions on the rational self interest of the individual. So in this new world, people no longer fall into a clear role or ideal within the structure of a society. No people are individuals. Now when I decide to participate as a citizen and a society, I'm not doing that cause Man is a political animal at the level of the universe. When I decide to be in coalition with other individuals, I do so solely because it benefits me to it is in my rational self interest to be a part of society. Now, Strauss would say that this political strategy of modernity has proven to be a giant mistake for western obligation, because the problem with assuming value neutrality and then Billy. An entire political tradition? On top of it is that the political realm

needs values to be able to make decisions about things things like. How should our society be? How should we treat our citizens, whereas our society headed Strauss, thinks the enlightenment leaves us with no real answers to these questions and what eventually happens is were left with no values and the entire project of modernity begins to consume itself. The modern political tradition cannot work the way it was designed to work if its left to play outlawed Left to play out to its natural Linz, modernity will always and unavoidably led us to this Strauss's collections of a bunch, a really bad isms that we hold. We need to look for our values when we don't have any modernity event Chile always leads us either to relativism or meaning something that's entirely relative which doesn't get political institutions, much guidance, historic system

or meaning being derived from whatever historical context. We happened to be in scientists, m or meaning being deferred to the sciences, economists or meaning coming from economic matters or, lastly, nihilism, which, in casual conversation may look like someone drinkin themselves to sleep every night. But in this context it just goes one step further if there is no intrinsic meaning to anything in the universe. Then things still to have meaning to us in the world right. So where does that meaning come from power dynamics for nihilism, when you control the discourse, rounding a topic. You control the meaning that surrounds out topic, and you can do that militarily. You can do cultural. You can do it in a million different ways. So these five things relativism historicity, signed as an economist nihilism, are the end game.

Four modernity, every single time for Strauss. When you try to build a political tradition on top of a foundation, we ve tried to be entirely value neutral. The enlightenment, political tradition eventually has to consume itself which can make you wonder why this new political tradition has lasted as long as it has without devolving into tourism all the way back in the eighteen hundreds stir, Since the only reason it's lasted this long it because we, She carried over an enormous amount of baggage from the days when we believed in teleology and final causes. From that when values were actually possible in a political tradition, but if you leave modernity to its own devices, given enough time to play out these five isms All the political turmoil that spawned out of them in the early twentieth century was always going to be the outcome. Seat distress

things that masquerade around as enlightenment political values always lead to this outcome. Take enlightenment era, liberalism, for instance Strauss, would say it is no good incidents that modern liberalism has this ethos where it aims towards multiculturalism and acceptance of all? I He is no matter how outside of the box, they are in the fact that relativism, what's the ultimate destination for the modern political process. The liberalism of the enlightenment to Strauss inextricably leads to relativism, which then leads to different forms of nihilism. Not the least of which may in some extreme cases led to tyranny. He makes a case that the agenda of the Third Reich Nazi. Germany is in many ways the ultimate expression of the thought of the enlightenment, because similar to the enlightenment. Their chief aim was to do away with the existing decisions and values and replace them. Instead, with a power structure under which the universe could be controlled or at least seem controlled, the ultimate point,

political institutions, need values in order to make decisions, and because of this fact to Strauss, be relativism of modernity cannot ever last for very long or else that relativistic void where there are no values, will come to be replaced by something and whether that something is Nazi Germany or a value system that we decide to implement is really up to us. This is why Strauss thinks a solution is to return to a political process that more resembles the one devised by the ancient Greeks, a political process embedded with values that can actually inform us as to how society should be structured, how citizens should fit in that society- this is an example Strauss thinks of how be rational approach of the ancients, did something a lot more effectively than the rational approach. The Moderns. Maybe it's time we start look.

Other forms of rationality to find solutions to the problems. Our version of rationality has caused Yelp trust talks at one point about how, in one reading you know the Greek seem to have been fully aware of the possibility of this experiment of the enlightenment and they seem to Fully aware as to how it would all play out, he says at one point: Plato seriously considers implementing something extremely similar to our modern scientific method, but ultimately decides against it, because he thought the end result would be that it would rob

human beings of their identity and values that trade off just wasn't worth it to play to at the time. But the most important question we need to answer at the beginning of the twentieth century is: what are we base the values of our political system upon what LEO Strauss's ultimately gonna say is when you pay attention to the answers. Modernity is actually giving us to that question. The silence is deafening. Look. We may have made tons of progress in agricultural science so that far fewer people need to go hungry, but we should stand by satisfied with scientific progress while the entire western world lives through the greatest famines, when it comes to meaning and values more generally than that, though, what good is having on the bombs, tanks and artillery in the world? If you have no values to direct how they should be used,

waiting around for a third party to step in and impose its values and use that destructive power, however, they didn't fit Strauss would say this political landscape at the beginning of the twentieth century. These situation, modernity is created for us is primed for nationalism. I guess we'll see other plays out on the rest of the series and in the world we live in today, but anyway, at the centre of this whole discussion. Is this classic Strauss divide between the ancients and them Modern societies focused on the ideal for society's focused on the real, and you may wonder why someone so interested in the political well spent so much of his time, engaging in philosophy or if he asked Strauss what the value of philosophy was like a lot of his worldview. He wouldn't be satisfied by the answers that have been given to us by modernity, you think, there's a lot of clarity to be found by going back and seeing how the ancients would have answered that exact, same question philosophy during the time of the ancients was not seeing as an academic institutions.

There were no multi volumes sets to be read. There were no term to memorize philosophy. All the way back, then, was a way of life. Philosophy was an attitude towards her disposition, as a human being, being a philosopher wasn't about the degrees hanging on your wall or sounding smart at parties. Being a philosopher was about a quest that you were on Strauss wants us to consider. What exactly was that quest philosophers used to be on and what were they tried to accomplish by conducting philosophy? The answer Strauss gives us that, during the time of the ancients, philosophers used to be on a quest to discover knowledge of the whole as opposed to knowledge of individual particular things. Philosophers don't care much about the particulars they care about categories of things and how those categories relate to the whole. Now ass, we talked about the Greeks where.

Extremely skeptical of humanity's ability to ever be able to arrive at knowledge of the whole knowledge of the whole is the ideal that they're striving towards that they're never going to get to know. Modern science, on the other hand, will know, saying that we're for sure ever gonna get there. The ambition of modern science requires and believes that a certain level that knowledge of the whole is something we just might arrive at some day This difference is in many ways the difference between the ancient focus on the ideal and the modern focus on the real value of philosophy. Distrust is in the pursuit towards an ideal. In the same way, other professions may strive for perfection, but have to come to accept that there never actually going to reach it. Philosophers have to live their lives in pursuit of knowledge of the whole. But to Strauss, but they're gonna have to come to accept is the understanding of the universe that they seek, that that clarity, that they want so badly.

It's just always going to elude them, but that shouldn't matter says Strauss. The value of philosophy doesn't lie in the results it produces, but in the process, you're engaging in philosophy is valuable as a way of life, because, unlike every other way of life out there, it requires you to resist that all too human tendency to oversimplify wider yourself make excuses. Whatever you gotta do to convince yourself that you ve arrived at a solution about things. Solutions don't exist, except in the minds of people that are hungry for them philosophy as a way of life doesn't allow for that level of dishonesty and distress. It's a big part of why it so valuable, he says, be a philosopher, lived philosophy as a way of life, but understand that when it comes down to it, all that really mean

to live life is a philosopher is to have a genuine awareness of the problems that surround you, but then, what's gonna happen, he says is once you're aware of all the problems. Your naturally gonna be inclined towards finding a solution to those problems, but, beware of being in this place, he would say because the moment you decide that your solutions to the problems become more real Do you think your awareness of how problematic the idea of a solution really is? That is when you cease to be a philosopher and that's when this happens, as he puts it, yet, as long as there was no wisdom but only a quest for wisdom, the evidence of all solutions, is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. Therefore, the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the subjective certainty of a saloon

and become stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution. At that moment, the sectarian is born. End quote: thank you for listening I'll talk to you next time,