Ahh...am I Straussian?; on the Political Theory and Political Philosophy divide

Maybe it's because Digressions lacks a category for 'political theory' and I am halfway through my first semester as an analytically trained philosopher employed as a political theorist in a political science department, but the other day I read (perhaps re-read) Jacob Levy's entertaining and illuminating essay on the distinction between political theory and political philosophy. Levy's essay is just about to become dated because (i) within analytical political philosophy the strangle-hold of Rawlsianism is being broken by what I have called analytical ideology studies (and here, too) associated with recent work by Haslanger, Saul, Stanley, Maitra, etc.;(ii) within political theory there has been an upsurge of what one may call applied continental philosophy drawing on Foucault and Deleuze and the enduringly relevant Arendt, especially, in work on bio-power, neo-liberalism, terrorism studies, migration studies, post-humanist ecological thinking, etc.

While Levy does a very fine job in calling attention to genuine, different methodological and practical commitments between the two 'fields,' ultimately his essay very much reads as describing two families capturing their own territory in closely related institutions. This may not be the main point of Levy's essay, but this conclusion follows from the way the piece is structured ("What is it that differentiates John Rawls, Christine Korsgaard, Thomas Scanlon, Brian Barry, Thomas Nagel, G.A. Cohen, and Joseph Raz, and their students and admirers, from Michael Walzer, Judith Shklar, George Kateb, Sheldon Wolin, and their students and admirers?") Even the group (or school) that is the exception to the fairly robust generalizations is identified in terms of genealogical attributes (e.g., "Students of Leo Strauss...Those influenced by Strauss").*

 

Even so I was personally startled by Levy's piece. Let me explain. While I have Rawlsian teachers (Norm Daniels, Dan Brudney) and studied with those that engaged closely with Rawls (Larmore, Nussbaum), I didn't come from political philosophy to political theory. I came from history and philosophy of science (HPS) with an emphasis on early modern and philosophy of economics. But in reflecting on Levy's essay, I noticed that by his standards I am a Straussian!** Consider the following eight criteria (these are almost all direct quotes):

1. An emphasis on Francis Bacon and Maimonides that is pretty alien to the rest of political theory. 
2. Straussians place great weight on a practice they identify as "philosophy," but mostly they study others who have engaged in that practice rather than engaging in it themselves.
3. Straussians are strongly pro-philosophy (as they understand it) .
4. Straussians are serious critics of social science.
5. Yet almost without exception Straussians are located in political science rather than philosophy departments.
6. Despite 3, contemporary philosophers do not identify Strausians as philosophy.
7. Straussians tend to reach whole books with attention to close readings and eye for details.
8. Straussians ignore Benjamin Constant.

Of these eight, I fit five or six criteria naturally. (Of course, I am pro-philosophy!)  I have not published much on Bacon, but I teach him nearly every year. (And while I don't teach Maimonides, I am teaching Al-Farabi twice this academic year.) Moreover, while I am not a student of Strauss, at Chicago I took classes with some Straussians, and I have repeatedly written warmly of Cropsey and, my former colleague, Jose Benardete (who was clearly influenced by Strauss, but who does not fit Levy's characterization because Benardete is also a philosopher's philosopher who spent a life-time in a very analytic philosophy department).

What do I make of this? Four observations: first, Straussian themes clearly rubbed off on me at Chicago. I don't think this was primarily work of the faculty there; but rather the cumulative impact of my fellow graduate students (whom I encountered not just in classes but in the famous Chicago workshops [where I also first met Levy!] as well as on the basketball court). It's very hard to take the endless vilification of a whole school of thought seriously when on a daily basis you encounter smart, erudite, and interesting characters doing fascinating research. (Since I have also encountered the kind of Straussian that is easily to caricature.) Second, in the 1990s at Chicago, where Lewis-style metaphysics was not taken seriously, it was by no means obvious that analytical philosophy would endure as a living tradition. It seemed exhausted and focused on narrow (and by no means promising) lines of inquiry. (The most interesting work was in the philosophy of the special sciences.) Third, the eight characteristics are not exclusive to Straussianism. (After all, Putnam is as critical of the fact-value distinction as is Strauss. At Chicago, even philosophy of space-time physics was taugh, in part, by way of close readings of classical texts. [I learned close reading from Ian Mueller and Howard Stein, both far removed from Strauss in lots of ways.]) Finally, I'd like to think that the eight criteria neither exhaust nor track the essential characteristics of my philosophical personality (there is a neo-Heideggerian strain in Straussianism that I am decidedly lukewarm about), but I recognize I am not the right judge.

Luckily, I am about to revisit my interest in Benjamin Constant (recall).

 

 

*Oddly, the Straussians are not distinguished by Levy in terms of their (annoying to other schools') distinctive practice of esoteric readings. I have put in print that I do not reject this practice (although undoubtedly there are lots of bad examples of it).

**This will please my former colleague, Charles Wolfe, who is very erudite and astute; he would often out me a Straussian in public company; this was always amusing -- apologies for explaining a running gag -- because he did so in company in which the term 'Straussian' had no valence at all. (Charles is a graduate of BU so he learned how to spot the type.)

Comments

[Joseph Schear]

Would you characterise your defensive style on the court as Straussian? By "Lewis-style metaphysics" did you mean "Lewish-style metaphysics", referring to the great Harry Lewish?

[Remy]

Straussians place an emphasis on Francis Bacon? He's not really in the Straussian canon...

And surely Bacon is only mentioned with derision by Straussians, all that domination of nature stuff.

[Remy Davies]

For Strauss's own definition of the distinction between political theory and political philosophy his lecture "What Can We Learn From Political Theory?" is available online at the Archive website.

"I have some misgivings as regards these two connotations of the term
theory, which are, to repeat, (1) the implication that a purely theoretical dis-
cussion of political questions is possible, and (2) the view that political knowl-
edge as a whole consists of observation of "data" and hypothetical
explanation of these "data"; I prefer therefore the term political philosophy
which does not imply these assumptions. By political philosophy, we under-
stand the coherent reflection carried on by politically minded people, con-
cerning the essentials of political life as such, and the attempt to establish,
on the basis of such reflection, the right standards of judgment concerning
political institutions and actions; political philosophy is the attempt to dis-
cover the political truth."