There is a splendid parody of Strauss in the comments section at Crooked Timber on the Strauss thread noted here.
The poster of the parody is responding to one "Robert Schwartz," who, singlehandedly, is a powerful argument for not having a Comments section on any blog (his repeated "the less they know, the less they know it" postings on Crooked Timber have led Timberite Henry Farrell to hurl at him the blogosphere's worst insult: "troll"! Professor Farrell has even singled him out for banishment from the Comments section, which seems unjust given the competition.)
Schwartz objects to Farrell's critique of Strauss (and apparently hasn't gotten over my dissing of the master either) as follows:
"Wow! Alas poor Leo Strauss, z’tl, who is not alive to defend himself and I have not the learning to do it adequately myself.
"Unlike the learned on this site, I have the disadvatage of having attended the University of Chicago in the late 1960’s, and while I was unable to take a course from Strauss, who left for Claremont during my first year, I did take one from his long time colleague and co-author, Joseph Cropsey. And all I can tell you is that Henry’s posting is a caricature what I remember having learned at that time. Although I am sure that Henry will improve in Brian Leiter’s estimation.
"If you wish to learn more about Leo Strauss from a truly learned source, I would suggest looking at Arnaldo Momigliano, Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, Ch. 17 “Hermeneutics and Classical Political Thought in Leo Strauss” (UChicago 1994).
"Rightly or wrongly, I detect in Henry, DeLong and Leiter a jealousy that leads them to deride that which they cannot equal or surpass. Strauss belongs to your grandfathers’ generation. Anthony Grafton wrote about them when he wrote this:
"'Every one of them benefited from an education unimaginably more rigorous than ours, read the forgotten classics of literatures whose existence is hardly known to us, burned with rage at the pamphlets of forgotten radical sects—and then used the shining, drop-forged tools that they had mastered in Gymnasium and liceo and yeshiva to break every rule and to transgress every boundary. Their mental and moral qualities challenge comprehension now—as they often did in their own day. Gullivers in a variety of Lilliputs, the exiles discovered before they even left Europe that they had the right and the duty to embark on unconventional intellectual careers, in the teeth of family opposition, anti-Semitism, inflation, Fascism, Nazism. How did they know? How did they dare? And how will we convey whatever we can learn of their accomplishments intelligibly and attractively to readers to whom the traditions of Jewish and European learning are an unknown country?'
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=grafton030303
"In my estimation you all have a long way to go before the rocks you like to throw reach the vicinity of their marks."
Thus spake Schwartz.
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Redeeming the whole comments thread single-handedly, one "Leo S." replies, capturing exquisitely the tortured hermeneutic methods that make Strauss and Straussians such hopeless readers of texts:
"If we are to study Robert Schwartz’s writings, we must first direct ourselves to the problem of how to understand such writing. We cannot, contrary to historicist assumptions, really understand his comments here within the framework of his times; that would be tantamount to understanding his work better than he understood it himself before he has understood it exactly as it understood itself. In this, we realize the problematic character of historicism, because it is evident that the historicist approach of our times is contrary to the non-historicist approach of the past, and so if we are to do justice to a proper historical understanding of his comments, we must reject the horizon offered by the historicist approach and instead realize that he is an able writer and therefore can give all the information required to understand his comments in his comments. Therfore, we can restrict ourselves to only what he says, directly or indirectly, with the goal of understanding him as he understood himself.
"Schwartz appears first in this comment thread at the twentieth entry. But before that, we must realize that is inadequate to characterize the moment of his posting, since the comment thread itself follows upon a lengthy and ill-informed polemic against Leo Strauss. So we have to consider first the relationship of the comment thread to the post that engendered it before we can understand the significance of his entry at the moment he chose.
"As noted, the post was a lengthy and ill-informed polemic against Leo Strauss. The word polemic comes from the Greek polemos, meaning war, so we should expect that such a post was meant to inspire a combative discussion, one in which two disputants defend their respective views and attack the opposing ones. The comments that follow are anything but; rather than dispute the views put forward in the post, the comments all express assent with the remarks of the poster, with only varying degrees of wit to distinguish them. So despite the numerous commentators—fewer than 19, since some repeat themselves—only one side of the polemos has been heard. To enter at the twentieth post then is indicative of both the missing second party to this dispute and of the ten-fold strength it has. To enter at this point is therefore a kairos, the right time for action.
"Note that even with his first word, Robert Schwartz distinguishes himself:
Wow!
"So far, the comments have not been a disputatious, but instead continuous assent. Where there is such assent, no variety or surprise is possible and therefore no amazement. Schwartz thus ironically announces himself to be amazed—thaumazein—at the lack of amazement and, through this ironic reversal, doubles the force of his critique. His next words are no less striking:
Alas poor Leo Strauss, z’tl
"z”tl," Hebrew for "zecher tzaddik livrocho," is said of a known scholar or religious leader. So Schwartz literally places Strauss between Greek amazement, thaumazein and Hebrew religion, illustrating the tension that informs all his writings, and the burden he took on to restore the ideas of natural right and ethics to philosophy."
A shame that the poster of this splendid send-up of the obscurantist master is anonymous. S/he deserves recognition for this great piece of work. Bravo!
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