Nicholas Xenos and
the Rhetoric of the War on Leo Strauss
Dear Editor:
I thought I had read enough of the recent
commentary on the thought and influence of Leo Strauss. The
recent commentary in Logos by Nicholas Xenos seemed
to be different, however, due to the fact that Xenos (unlike
the rest of the bandwagon) seems to have read Strauss for
himself rather than relying on secondary sources or simply
quoting from other likeminded articles. In this respect, and
this respect only, his original effort is to be commended.
Two brief criticisms: 1) Arguing that Strauss
and “Straussians” (whatever that means) rely on a rhetoric
of right and wrong is a good starting point, but by itself
is pure sophistry. Xenos fails to reflect on his own thesis,
which also takes advantage of moral categories. Is it “evil”
to speak of good and evil? Xenos implies that it is and thus
puts himself in the same category as his Strauss. Is it
“bad” to distrust the excesses of democracy? Xenos implies
that it is and therefore indicts his Strauss for reading
Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, James Madison, Tocqueville, Mill
and a host of other influential thinkers. It adds nothing to
a discussion of Strauss in particular – it is a merely a way
of using democracy as a “good” white and everything else as
an “evil” black.
2) The suggestion that Straussians all read
the same books is tenable. To go on and suggest that they
all speak the same way (use the same words) and dress the
same way goes much too far. I imagine the same sort of
rhetoric was used in Salem during similar hunts for teachers
of dark secrets.
The writings of Leo Strauss comprise a vast
body of thought. To select individual passages as
fundamentalists are prone to do with the Bible proves
nothing about the work as a whole. As Dr. Xenos well
knows, even the devil can cite scripture for his purpose …
or was that Shakespeare.
Rafael Major
1121 Adelaide
Ft. Smith, AR 72901
Nicholas Xenos Responds:
If I understand Mr.
Major’s complaint correctly, he charges that I implicitly
invoke absolute categories of good and evil while
criticizing Strauss and Straussians (and I suspect he knows
who they are) for doing the same thing. Apparently, my
rejection of this distinction is itself one example of it,
and my insistence upon emphasizing Strauss’s (and much of
contemporary liberalism’s) antidemocratic nature is
another. However, my point was to show how the rhetoric of
absolutes is deployed in a reactionary and antidemocratic
manner by Strauss and others while professing to advance
so-called liberal democracy. It is Strauss’s thesis, not
mine, that modernity is characterized by an ungrounded
relativism. Typically, Mr. Major refers to “the excesses of
democracy” as if they are so obvious as not to need
demonstration. His comment regarding the canonical authors
is apparently in reference to their individual and
collective “distrust” of those excesses. Far from indicting
Strauss for reading these authors I would merely question
the way he and his school read them and offer different
readings. But these issues go well beyond the narrower
purpose of my article.
It is also symptomatic
that Mr. Major invokes the image of a witch-hunt to
characterize my characterization of the language and
appearance of Straussians. I plead guilty to trivialization
on the fashion front but not on the linguistic. However,
all of these similarities reinforce the popular notion that
Straussians form a sort of sect or cult. While denied on
the one hand, this perception proves useful when Straussians
wish to portray themselves as a persecuted group.
Meanwhile, Mr. Major seems to be more chagrined by the idea
that I think Straussians all dress like Young Republicans
than by the fact that Leo Strauss professed fascist and
authoritarian sentiments in 1933 as a proper reaction to the
newly installed Nazi regime and that I claim that these
sentiments subsequently were subsequently submerged in his
esoteric “teaching” but were never relinquished. Whose
excesses are really at issue here?
Nicholas Xenos
Dept. Political Science
University of
Massachusetts, Amherst
