Sometime during the dark abyss of the
Bush Administration, Leo Stratus's name became attached to the
doctrines of the Neocons. Whether Strauss actually advocated the
regime these doctrines describe no one will ever know, for Strauss
was careful not to let the wrong people know what he was thinking. In
any case the doctrines were not his brainchild. The regime it
outlines is the philosophical solution Plato offers in the Republic
to the problem of protecting philosophers from Socrates's fate. The
doctrine is this: the best government is one run by philosophers and
fronted by aristocrats. It's purpose is to allow real human life, the
life of the philosopher, to flourish. It flourishes in a soil of
slaves, sometimes called “the people.” The aristocrats have a
talent for commanding authority and, if the philosophers so direct,
are warriors who control the slaves through force. But otherwise they
exert control through culture, the shadows on the cave wall, which is
one thing for the people and quite another for the aristocrats in
their business-class cave. "The people" are children mesmerized by flashing lights. The philosophers carefully control the
flow of culture so that it serves to make “the people” docile and
the warriors ferocious and hypocritical. Low culture and high each does its job.
Niceties require that the philosophers pretend the aristocrats are in
charge.
Kings have always had advisors chosen
for their cleverness. From the time of Plato, philosophers have
advised rulers, as Plato did, with nearly disastrous results, in
Syracuse. Though the king seems to rule, he does, if he knows what's
good for him, what he is advised to do. For life at court does not
really prepare him to think about international affairs. Courts are
stages upon which dramas of personal ambition play out, and personal
ambition distorts all information through the prism of self interest.
Someone smart, without the possibility of such ambition, is needed.
Enter the philosopher. Besides, the job of king leaves no time to
think. It's a busy life. Though the king might develop a good ear for
intrigue, he has no time to calculate and judge the mood of either
the mass of people whom he rarely sees or that of his neighbor king
and potential enemy. He needs advisors who have spies. So the
Platonic politics Strauss was blamed for was commonplace. That others
can use adherence to this doctrine as an accusation shows that a
newer alternative challenges it.
The political content of the
Enlightenment, the doctrine of universal human equality, exploded
the European mind and with it the Platonic political structure. The
doctrine of universal human equality contains no idea of enemies. It
breaks up traditional hierarchies and brings rulers down to a level.
At least in theory, the former rulers are not the foe, for we are now
all equal. Of course as soon as the rulers move to retain their
position, they become the foe, first of all in their own eyes. It is
interesting to speculate what might have happened had the defenders
of the enlightenment refused to recognize the foe and continued
simply to insist on equality in day to day commerce. What would the
Duke have done when a peasant came by and said, “ Hi, Joe?” The
storming of the Bastille was, in fact, superfluous. The entire
revolution had already been completed when people decided they were
“equal human beings.” People suddenly discovered that they had
been in chains, and that those chains were chains of the mind. They
stood up, and the ancien regime
was over. The “people” were in the strange position of having
suddenly discovered, with human equality, that throughout their
entire lives until that point they had been in chains without knowing
it. That this strange idea did not trouble them (or many of us) shows
that equality is intoxicating. Citoyen!
Universal human equality gave birth to a new man, the freed prisoner,
and soon, a new woman. But, by condemning all previous experience as
“mentally chained,” it also left judgment up the creek without a
paddle.
Plato
thought his Republic fair to everyone, for the craftsmen, the people,
are craftsmen by nature, not mentally chained to it as the
Enlightenment doctrine insisted. Except for the actual slaves, he did
not think anyone was exploiting anyone else, and he specifically
allowed for the talented offspring of the demos to rise. The
Enlightenment negated all prior experience and caused people to see
everything through the tinted glasses of “equality.” But what
were they equal to? Of what had the chains deprived them? Apparently,
of being treated as an equal, that is, like one of the aristocrats,
whatever that meant.
The philosophers of the Enlightenment
had trouble with the exploded hierarchy. Where does the political
structure come from? Rousseau's General Will and Locke's Social
Contract didn't work, for they require a community before there is
one. With the old hierarchy gone where was the new one to come from?
Nobody thought of the possibility that there wouldn't be one, that
day to day life might provide structure quickly at times of need
through all manner of human interaction including the use of force.
Of course no single person could possibly muster the force to
overcome even three other people, even people considerably weaker
than he. So only speech could really dominate, as it should. The only
way to use force to dominate, say, a government, is to have others
willing to obey, that is, people who are not equal. Were people
simply to refuse to give up their equality, hierarchies would come
into being only through a willing choice to embrace them. And this
would happen only in the face of an emergency. But, Enlightenment
Revolutions always foundered when they tried to create new
institutions, for universal human equality supplied none and
undermined leaders who did.
The Straussian philosophers, those who
wanted to retain the Platonic political structure, devised ideas to
combat universal human equality and re-enslave the demos. We need not
assume they were in bad faith. They believed their system was best.
Burke countered with the “rights of Englishmen.” The Rights of
Man, equating everybody, Burke said, were an airy nothing. What was
solid was the rights of Englishmen, their habits, customs, and in
particular, their having a king. This idea seemed to restore
equilibrium to the English aristocracy, some of whom had obviously
listened to the wrong philosophers, even though this idea was roughly
equivalent to saying, “ the shacks and sheds on this land are real.
Your plan for a new building is merely a plan.” Herder invented
nationalism, a state that was home for a Volk, an
appeal to us against the awful them, and not much different from
Burke's idea. The main point was to restore obedience and by so doing
end equality. The trick was to make the slaves willingly slip back
into chains.
Nationalism insists upon something,
almost anything, that distinguishes us from them. Since the idea of
universal human equality, life without hierarchy, requires universal
trust that there is no us and them, it was only natural that many
would fail to retain this trust. Fear creeps in from we know not
where. We mistrust. The fearful first fear they are alone and
powerless against the unknown. “Us against them” allows them to
retain the fear they could in any case not escape, and at the same
time feel that they are not alone, that they have allies. So who the
“us” is matters little as long as I am one of them. For then I am
not alone.
And the one who describes the nature
of the “us,” a philosopher, will rule. But anyone who first
embraced universal human equality and then nationalism out of fear,
embarked upon a trackless journey into criminality where we, because
we are we, are good and they, because they are they, are not. Since
the distinguishing characteristic of the “we,” that you are
American, German, Basque, or what not, does not confer goodness,
especially to one who had once embraced universal equality, the
justification is practical, and honesty remains the best policy only
until it isn't, when it becomes more practical to become a crook. But
since the “we” fluctuates, at times being a country, at others no
more than ones own family, one's loyalty is eventually only to
oneself, which is the recipe for petty crime. Since falling away from
universal human equality is cowardly, done out of fear, honor, and
therefore all principle, is sacrificed. Nationalism scooped up many
of the fallen who, as a result had become stupid as Socrates
predicted they would.
Fear, of course, rules slaves and so
anyone who has succumbed to it is slavish. The slave chooses life
over honor. Since honor depends upon acting correctly without being
influenced by “necessity” (hunger, tiredness, fear, pleasure), to
act from fear is to act slavishly. Honor, freeing oneself from
necessity, is a prerequisite for human life, since to act from
necessity is to act like a stone. And once someone has cut himself
free of honor, and plunged into life for “survival,” committing
atrocities is like aggravating a toothache with one's tongue. Of
course to act for survival is to choose life over everything else,
like a slave. If survival of the fittest is the law of life then life
is the life of slaves. Not surprising that Europe embraced Darwin,
proving Nietzsche right. Nation states with their hierarchies scooped
up the loyalties of the Enlightenment's freed slaves because these
people retained their slavishness. Though they had stood up and
demanded to be treated equally, this was more or less a hollow
posture as long as they retained their fears and joined “us”
against “them,” and acted from necessity. They needed only to be
told they were free and they would remain slaves in a new upright
posture.
The Founding Fathers, that is to say,
Alexander Hamilton, the philosopher behind the Constitution,
employed a different idea. Hamilton wanted a central government that
could supply an army that could conquer an empire. He dreamed of
being a new Caesar, and said as much to Jefferson in a famous
exchange. The culture that would control the slaves was not
nationalism, but “the system.” an idea that was in the air during
those heady Enlightenment days. Made plausible by the
Enlightenment's fascination with rules, which no doubt come from the
Enlightenment fascination with and belief in science, the
Constitution's checks and balances would protect freedom. Although Hamilton, who had declared to Jefferson that only force and interest could control men, had no belief in "the system," he used Madison to argue for it in the Federalist Papers to push through the Constitution. Those
checks and balances would protect against the constitutional tyranny
that Patrick Henry and the other antifederlsits feared. Madison went along for he wanted that
army to repress uprisings like Shay's Rebellion. He tried to calm
his friend Patrick Henry's fears with assurances that the spider web
of checks and balances would control the army and protect the
freedoms they had fought for. Almost immediately, seeing Hamilton's machinations in creating the Federalist party, and fearing he had been
wrong, Madison broke with Hamilton and pushed through the “Bill of
Rights,” designed to offer protections against the tyrannizing
structure of the Constitution bare of them. But this came to nothing when the Supreme Court arrogated to itself the right to
interpret the Constitution ( Bill of Rights). For then they were were put under the structure of
the original constitution which they were meant to amend and protect
against. The checks and balances, ostensibly to protect freedom,
offer an incredible maze to anyone who might want to change anything.
Since the regime the Constitution sets up is oligarchic, in practice
the Constitution served primarily to thwart those seeking more
equality. It is a bulwark against freedom. as Patrick Henry saw, rather than a protection of it.
“The system” stood in the way of
those who actually wanted universal equality. For the system only
allowed one to object to this or that manifestation of inequality and
then made the path of cure arduous. Two party system, congressional
committees, a Senate of gentry, presidential vetoes, and the Supreme
Court made victory difficult and Pyrrhic. Later, the Supreme Court
could reverse themselves and chip away at any gains, as they have
with civil rights. The new notions of “jurisdiction” and
“standing” made it possible for the courts to turn their backs on
injustice with equanimity. One needed constant vigilance to prevent
Supreme Court reinterpretation. New legislation could circumvent, for
example, labor laws, with new concepts, for example, “independent
contractor.” But universal human equality, which had already won
socially, was so powerful, that these countermeasures had to be taken
in its name.
The two devices, nationalism and "the
system" mixed on both sides of the Atlantic, and Western post
Enlightenment regimes used elements of both to thwart the desire for
universal human equality, which, in any case, was more a feeling than
anything that might consist of a policy, but no less powerful for
that. The terror associated with the French Revolution was a Godsend
to the Platonic rulers. This terror, and the Napoleonic Wars, they
blame upon the idea of universal human equality. There was some
justice in these accusations, for surely a huge country couldn't run
without hierarchy and the revolutions could not supply it. People
would fight and squabble. Perhaps true, perhaps not, but so what?
What's wrong with fighting and squabbling other than it doesn't
support legalistic hierarchies?
Because the Enlightenment idea was so
powerful, these countermeasures, nationalism and “the system,”
both had to be justified as protecting enlightenment freedoms rather
than limiting and even extinguishing them. The philosophers went to
work and wove from words not the robes of truth, that these were
measures opposed to equality, but a cloak of propaganda extolling
nationalism and “the system” as supporters of enlightenment
freedom. However, reality kept showing through this threadbare
garment. Revolutions popped up throughout the nineteenth century.
When nation states launched imperialist ventures they contradicted
their own justification as protection for an “English” or
“French” way of life. How justify the nation of England ruling India? Minds not yet
fully clouded wondered. The Dreyfus case exposed the legal system as
Kafkesque wheels turning within a penal colony of torture without
rhyme or reason. Behind it other forces determined the outcome
in the courts. The case revealed that rules on rails were no
protection against anything. The American claim that the Constitution
protected freedoms came crashing down in the civil war that exposed
the United States for what it was, a growing and unlimited repressive
army hiding behind a charade of procedure, just as Patrick Henry, in
his anti-federalist speeches in the Virginia legislature, foretold
that it would become. The sovereign states were sovereign no more.
Since the real revolution was in what
a human being was, how he carried himself, how he addressed others,
and how he expected to be treated, imperial ventures with their
enlightened soldiers themselves infected with the idea of universal
equality and now serving in far off lands, spread the virus of the
idea of universal human equality far and wide. Thus each imperial
venture carried within it the seeds of third world revolution in the
name of freedom and its own defeat. Ghandi's nonviolence could not
have worked without the idea of universal human equality. The
ancients thought nothing of slaughtering everybody. The Melian
dialogue, an essential piece of elitist education, ends with the
Athenians declaring that the powerful will do what they will and the
weak suffer what they must. Then the Athenians killed all the Melian
men and sold the women and children into slavery. Though the English
were ready to slaughter many, they needed a moral vacuum to do so. When slaves refuse to be slaves it is game over. Since “we,“ the “us,” expands and contracts as needed, from
oneself to one's family, tribe, race, nation or what have you, rule
based upon it is a shape shifter, a “drunken boat” in Rimbaud's
poem.
The history of Europe (and the United
States) since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century, has
been the history of this war between the Enlightenment and the
counter-Enlightenment masquerading as the Enlightenment. Today the
justice of the claim of universal human equality is deep in our
blood, and most of us take its truth as a matter of course whenever
we look into one another's eyes. Most of us do, but certainly not
all. The philosophers and aristocrats retain the idea of their
superiority, even if they hide it in public. Their actual masked
loyalties allowed them to be ruthless. No one aided them more than
Karl Marx, whose persuasive argument in the Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Napoleon convinced everybody that the original French
Revolution, that for human equality, was but a preliminary revolution
to be followed by the real revolution that was a class war. This gave
the bourgeoisie free rein without moral compunction. For all is fair
in love and war. Prior to that the doctrine of universal human
equality, in which there is no foe, weighed upon them, and their
obvious inability to become aristocrats however rich they were,
embarrassed them. Marx, the loudest, though not the only, voice of
class war, allowed them to turn with clear consciences to this
struggle. When at war nothing else matters.
The tools of the counterrevolution
were themselves ideas, “nationalism” and “checks and balances”
which were, somehow, supposed to protect freedom. Through bogus
identification with the idea of universal human equality, these ideas
hitched a ride on that idea and drew on its energy to support
nationalist and systematic regimes. The mentally unchained demos,
the freed mental slave, whose prior experience was now all false,
were no match for the philosophers, so democracy, to the extent that
the philosophers could pour propaganda into the public ear, supported
the anti-Enlightenment regimes. Behind the professed embrace of equality is the real embrace of class warfare, Marx's gift to the bourgeoisie. Only when some harsh reality breaks
through the ideology does anyone see the class war clearly. But that the world seen in terms of class war favors the bourgeoisie revolutionaries cannot see.
So the philosophers, betraying their
own God of truth, wove a web of ideology attributing freedom to
nationalism and “the rule of law.” Since this cotton candy of
ideas had to conceal what nationalism and law really were, the
philosophers had to constantly spin more of it whenever some sharp
fact tore through the threadbare fabric.
Prior to the Enlightenment, political
regimes did not need to go anywhere. They could be stable ways of
life. But nationalist and systematic regimes had to profess adherence
to freedom, which was not yet realized, and so had pretend to
“progress” towards the goal of true freedom while working in
reality to thwart this goal. Political regimes donned the motley of
movements. To justify themselves these regimes had to be forging
ahead, not merely wandering along like hobos. They had to be
advancing the cause of freedom. Markers along the way— women's
suffrage, civil rights acts promoting racial equality, social
security, and the like, lent plausibility to claims for these
advances. Equally important were material improvements that
Enlightenment science could provide like nothing else. For wasn't
freedom simply having money and things? And weren't we all having
more and more? That was progress. A running battle to protect the
freedoms in the Bill or Rights was a good distraction. Any grinding
away of the system was a plus. We all know the fight for freedom is
long and arduous and for every two steps forward there is one step
back. Since freedom, for most people, meant freedom to be like the
aristocrats, and in general people saw that as freedom to make money,
freedom meaning freedom to get rich had a lot of plausibility.
Behind it all, the Platonic political structure remained intact if
held together with a tissue of ideology.
But, while all this was going on, the
Enlightenment, over and above the political revolutions it sparked,
changed the world picture itself. The world became scientific.
Nihilism, here in the form of the scientific world picture, is, if
not an Enlightenment baby, one the Enlightenment adopted. Science is
an engine to power the ride on the highway of progress to nowhere.
Industrial production, using scientific methods, creates a cornucopia
that will make every proletarian into a patrician. It's geared to
turn out the newest thing. While the philosophers were trying to
drape dame equality with lies to protect the rule of the aristocrats,
the industrial revolution was undermining them far more decisively
than universal equality managed to do. Science, that cookbook of
repeatable procedures, created industry that generated wealth and
broke down aristocratic authority within the new bourgeois industrial
state.
Within the new world picture mankind
traveled along, acquiring more and more labor saving devices, but
traveled towards what? Science and the scientific world picture has,
as an axiom, purposelessness. We never ask why the planets do what
they do, just what they do. Science throws out the question of why
from the start. Science supplies procedures for generating
predictable results, that is all. It's theories are, in the end,
proposals for new procedures. Nietzsche saw nihilism as growing from
something far deeper than the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment
was a perfect expression of it. Science's content, a catalog of
repeatable simple procedures, fit perfectly with the abilities of the
confused, mentally-liberated, slave. They could be made to repeat
mindless actions again and again. The union of the politics of the
enlightenment with its scientific world picture sold production line
work life as a step on the road to freedom. Resistance to industrial
production, strong at the beginning, faded into a steady incoherent
rumbling discontent. Progress towards real human life, conceived as
having a lot of stuff or the power money could impart, justified this
mindless work. The children will have it better. Freedom meant
freedom to be an Horatio Alger character, or the mythic Abe Lincoln
in his log cabin. Everyone was free to choose— between
production-line misery with a distant, next-generation, cotton-candy,
hope of escape, and starvation. The Enlightenment revolution, in part
because of the counterrevolutions, but only in part because of them,
had enslaved rather than ennobled human beings. In addition it had
unleashed the philosopher's engine of deception to hide the
pointlessness of the activity. Instead of truth he worked away at
propaganda, justifying himself by his need to support the rich to
protect himself against “the many” who killed Socrates.
Since the scientific world picture
claimed to be a description of what was real, not just a catalog of
repeatable procedures, its purposeless was a purposelessness of the
whole. It was an explanation of the whole as a mechanism without
purpose. Thus nihilism. Whereas the philosophers might be able to
recognize their own political deceptions, as Alexander Hamilton
surely did, they were less able to resist the scientific world
picture. Its power was undeniable, and it soon became apparent that
science determined the outcome of war. No one could afford propaganda
in science. It had to really work.
Purposelessness was not a
philosophical pose. Overcome by the scientific world picture,
philosophers embraced it. The
imperialism of the nation states punctured the balloon of
nationalism; the Dreyfus case punctured the notion of the rule of
law; the US civil war shattered the notion of a social contract; and
the devastating depressions deflated Horatio-Algerism. When
industrial production burst into the conflagration of imperialist
war, a world without purpose marched people without purpose into wars
without purpose in the name of a progress towards nowhere.
The
philosophers, now intellectually bankrupt, could do nothing but
continue to chatter. Only the very stupid believed them. Huge chunks
of reality falling on people's heads had woken many of them up. The
ritual of elections, the speeches of politicians, the rigmarole of
law are all, as Kafka saw so well in his story In
the Penal Colony,
the workings of machines without purpose, wheels turning aimlessly
and grinding up people. In the story, the machine's now obscure
workings, contrived by a previous generation to give justice, only
torture with a thousand needles and then kill. Like Kafka's foreign
visitor, more and more people could see this empty murderous ritual
for what it was. But what of it? The empty machine of civilization
grinds on and the aristocrats or gentry, or those who made a lot of
money, continue in control. The Enlightenment has been turned into
porridge, but, for the philosophers, that is all to the good. So what
if the machine of government grinds away chewing up people to no
purpose? Those who should rule do.
The
Platonic philosopher's loyalty was first to the aristocrats. Burke
and Friedrich von Gentz, both of this social philosopher class,
blunted the first revolutionary impulses to protect the rule of the
English and Germanic princes they admired and lived with. But the
industrial revolution, rather than the political one, toppled them.
When the bourgeoisie gained control they had philosophers advising
them. The philosophers just needed someone to extract wealth from the
slaves and give some of it to them. The cared not who ruled, as long
as they could rule. When Marx justified the class war he lent purpose
to the bourgeois progress to nowhere. The regime's purpose was to
fight the class war.
The
fight to determine which system was better, or really just which
would win, was on. A class war of “us against them” supplies more
than enough purpose for a lifetime. This was, of course, a civil war
between the rulers and the ruled, and could go on forever thus
lending purpose to purposelessness. And since all is fair in love
and war, unspeakable practices were justified. But these practices
were justified only for the rulers. For the slaves fought in the name
of universal human equality even as they fought the class war. Their
justification for fighting the class war, and demanding what,
according to the rules of property belonged to others, was
unfairness. But to the extent that the freed slaves fought a class
war, they too could engage in ruthless butchery to eliminate “class
enemies.” Such butchery was not a new thing, except for scale.
The
philosophers rode the rich, the rich the system, and the system the
slaves. The bourgeoisie were able to create, manage, and guide giant
industrial and legal systems that harnessed the procedures of science
and law. Rulers held offices law created that gave them specific
powers they relinquished when they left office. Wealth also bestowed
power that disappeared when wealth did. None of it was personal; all
was system. Industrialists mechanized and routinized as much of their
operation as they could, including their own parts in it. Even at the
highest levels of industry the officers did procedures that others
might just as easily do. CEO's came and went. They were as
replaceable as the workers. The rulers were not so much people as
offices in both politics and the economy. Inevitably, philosophers
found new loyalties to the system itself, to the offices rather than
the people. Max Weber argues that this is the essence of the modern
state. The system, rather than any particular person, supplied
philosophers with the protected leisure they so craved. Their loyalty
was to the offices and their advice was about how to win them. Plato
had metamorphosized into Karl Rove. People were, indeed, the infamous
cogs in the machine.
Universal
human equality had lost, but the scientific world picture had won.
Humankind busied itself in building a structure out of repeatable
procedures in which human beings, since many could do the procedures,
were replaceable parts. Procedures went round and round. There was
the political cycle and the business cycle.
The
rich seem to rule, but actually, the system does. The rich merely
voice system's command for more system, for a world of system as the
scientific world picture demands. The money they extract builds
system, and destroys all outside system in “environmental”
degradation, whose very name denotes something outside. For if system
is what is real, the environment is outside what is real. The rich
no longer work in their own interest. How does making the planet
unlivable benefit them? Do they think the radioactivity spewing from
Fukushima won't get into their air? Where will the food they will
need in their protected enclaves come from? Everyone clings to the
hollow jabber and empty offices of the system, for it promises life
and strange pleasures as it's endless procedures gut and poison
everything. Having chosen life in system over honor, all can pretend
they are fighting the good fight-- within the system.
The
final irony for the philosophers is that Socrates did not think his
trial was a disaster. On the contrary, he welcomed it. If one reads
Plato's Crito
carefully,
one reads this:
...that
the really important thing is not to live but to live well.
Crito:
Why, yes.
Socrates:
And that to live well means the same thing as to live honorably and
rightly...If it becomes clear that such conduct is wrong, I cannot
help thinking that the question whether we are sure to die, or to
suffer any other ill effect for that matter...ought not to weigh with
us at all in comparison with the risk of doing what is wrong. [48
b-d]
And
in the Apology:
No
one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest
blessing that can happen to man. [29a]
I
am quite clear that the time had come when it was better for me to
die and be released from my distractions. [41d]
So
if western political practice was a philosophical enterprise to
protect Socrates from his fate, it was misguided. For Socrates wanted
no such protection, and would not have accepted it.