NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

 

SEEMING AND BEING:

THE APPEARANCE OF PHILOSOPHY,

AND THE APPEARANCE OF TYRANNY

 

A THESIS SUBMITTED

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF ARTS

 

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

FIELD OF POLITICAL THEORY

PAUL E. GERMANOS

 

Copyright 2005 Paul E. Germanos

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

JUNE 2005

 

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CHAPTER 1

SETTING THE STAGE

Introduction

 

[1]             Speaking or acting, especially in an immoderate fashion, has been said, by many, to be very costly, on occasion.[1]  So too, failing to speak or act forthrightly, in order to appear to be moderate, has been said, by a few, to be more costly still.[2]  Having found myself required to give some account of what I thought that I had learned, notwithstanding the fact that I knew very little of which I was certain, the choice of appearance was removed from me: “adventavit asinus.”[3]  Parading my ignorance, bare, before my makers, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”[4]

 

Appearance versus Reality

 

[2]        It is a humbling experience to be confronted by something greater than one’s self – so that one is forced to turn a measured gaze inward, and admit the limits of one’s own wisdom.  In a like manner, Aristophanes, as he presented a Socrates[5] so consumed with the cosmos that he engaged in farsighted buffoonery, should have reminded us of the other bound of our practice: the most poignant human experiences – the tragic, the comic, the romantic, and the absurd – seem to lie inaccessible to our logos.  Philosophers, under the tyranny of reason, have not been remarkable for their grasp of the erotic.[6]  And so it is good to make, like the Socrates[7] of Plato, a sort of profession of ignorance, and some show of deference towards the divine things and poetry.  Though I fear, sometimes, that sophists, writing for actors, are better at creating myths about the things that they wish to remain unknown, than they are at knowing things.  And in the hope of pleasing their teacher, many who are said to practice philosophy seem to have become nothing more than adept tellers of such stories.

 

[3]        I propose an honest paragraph: I have been convinced that everything, ultimately, is a question of valuation.  And I suppose, in this matter at least, that I may have been told, and believed, a lie, or two, or three.  Like all living things, my voluntary movement is towards that which I consider to be good.  Aristotle began his Politics and his Ethics with statements of a similar sort.[8]  But where did my idea of the good originate?  That was the most terrible question that Friedrich Nietzsche put to me.  Realizing that I exist for only a little while, and in an imperfect state, it has become a somewhat urgent matter to see these things with the greatest possible clarity.  How?[9]  It’s not my eyes that are in question, but rather my faculty of knowing – whatever that may be, and wherever it may lie.  A higher man than myself will debate the existence of such a faculty.[10]  I have only to know which end to pursue with my own being.  And so I have only to know what to call good.  And so I have only to comprehend the whole, knowing each being, and being, as it is, establishing a hierarchy through my own valuation.  How?  I would suppose that is why I have turned to philosophy.[11]  But if I then criticize the blind faith that a religious man puts in his god’s revelation, isn’t it the case that I too have faith in my reason’s ability to lead me to my truth?  If I knew the end to which reason would lead me, I wouldn’t need reason.  And, not knowing the end, how do I know that reason will lead me there?  It’s unreasonable.  We are all sinners against the things in which we believe.  And it seems to me to be utter foolishness to discount religion or poetry, or to dogmatically insist that they occupy a position subordinate to reason – without knowing the end, and the whole.  Who will claim to know such things? no philosopher who speaks honestly.  The really serious problem, as I understand it, is not only that I face the possibility of pursuing some bad end, but also that all of my efforts to determine the good end are vain.

 

[4]        While reading the history of political philosophy I have mistaken many an author’s teaching.  My slowness of mind is laughable, now, but it was only after a nearly two decade long struggle with Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil that I was made to see what he had hidden in plain sight: Plato’s dialogues were probably not what they appeared to be.  Had I understood Niccolo Machiavelli sooner, and better, I would have already seen the same charge made against the works of Antiquity more generally.[12]  I shall not shock anyone, I will merely expose myself to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if I profess myself inclined to the opinion according to which there is a tremendous prejudice in regard to Machiavelli – both within and without philosophy.[13] Perhaps, someone finds it useful to maintain that prejudice.  But, certainly, he provoked his careful readers to consider the distinction between appearance and reality.[14]  He was a gadfly.  And so, having learned from the two examples of Nietzsche and Machiavelli, I was well prepared to receive from Leo Strauss and his students the suggestion that certain old books required a very careful reading.[15] 

 

[5]        But it did occur to me that if Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Strauss had been kind enough to hint at the deception practiced by philosophers, it was necessary to turn and consider the deception that each might have practiced.[16]  Thinking of Aristotle, again, I was reminded of the unique capacity for speech that my species possessed.[17]  Speech allows us to debate about what is best.  But, it seemed, to me, to be a bit hasty to accept that all men participated in that debate – or to accept that all men were equally successful in asserting their own valuations.[18]  Another enduring feature of human society has been the struggle for rank.[19]  Perhaps, the capacity to employ symbols, such as speech or writing, was not a thing that was good in itself; rather, it was needful to determine for what purpose those symbols were employed.  It might be possible to create a deliberately malicious semantics in which associations were made between signs, like the word “good,” and beings, or modes and orders, that were not – in the true sense – good.

 

[6]        Some ethicists, grounded in biology, have raised questions about the practices of footbinding and female circumcision.  [20] The strongest arguments against such practices seem, to me, to be rooted in teleology: the female feet and genitals have a certain potentiality by virtue of their being; those things that assist them in achieving the ends towards which they are naturally directed, are good; those things that frustrate them in achieving the ends towards which they are naturally directed, are bad.[21]  Good and bad, in the previous example, are knowable universally because of our common genetic inheritance.  While, conversely, footbinding and female circumcision must be seen as human conventions.  At issue in the two previous examples are growth, form and utility – in the physical sense.  The assumption is that if particular organs are allowed to grow into their natural form, the individual who possesses them will enjoy the maximum possible benefit from their use.  That healthy bodies are good should be obvious to everyone, everywhere and always.

 

[7]             Thinking of another part of the female anatomy, because I am a philosopher and not a biologist, I have considered her brain: even as movement has tended to depend upon feet, and reproduction has tended to depend upon the genitals, so too thinking has tended to depend upon the brain.  If feet and genitals, in certain places and at certain times, were subject to a type of human intervention that prevented them from attaining the end towards which they were naturally directed, I thought it prudent to consider that attempts might have been made to interfere with the growth, form, and utility of the human mind.  I have deliberately substituted the word “mind” for the word “brain” at this point.  It is not that I am playing fast and loose with the argument, or that I am attempting to practice some deception, but rather that while I acknowledge that mechanical, radiological or chemical treatment of the physical organ of the brain might affect its capacity, so too I recognize that, unlike feet or genitals, human minds depend upon something in addition to physical care in order to become what they have the potential to be.  To impress upon a healthy mind concepts that one knows to be false, for the purpose of obtaining some benefit for one’s self, is no different than footbinding or genital mutilation, in a teleological sense.  That humans differ in their intellect seems completely irrelevant: Would one argue that footbinding was any better a practice if one began with a woman who already had small feet?  To make of another man or woman a means to an end of my own, without regard for that which they had the potential to be, is a tyrannical thing.[22]  Maybe it’s possible, there, to say something good on Kant’s behalf.   

 

[8]        In The Prince [in the only real lesson in neurobiology that I’ve had] Machiavelli proposed the existence of three types of brains: (1) the most excellent brain; (2) the excellent brain; and (3) the useless brain.  He explained his categorization as follows: “one understands on its own, the other discerns that which others understand, and the third neither understands on its own nor through others.”[23]  The remarkable quality possessed by the most excellent brain is called, in Italian, “invenzione,” it is capable of discovery and creation – specifically – in regard to “good and evil,” or, “el bene o il male.”[24]  A parallel account exists in Book VII of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates is made to share the allegory of a cave in which: there are (1) “founders” who journey upwards towards true knowledge – specifically knowledge of the good – independently; (2) the individuals freed, taught and sent back to the cave; and (3) the cave dwellers who receive the teaching of the founders’ students.[25]  While Machiavelli has received an infamous reputation, and Plato a virtuous one, I remain confused about the distinction between the two men – as a result, of course, of my own stupidity.  But, maybe if I put the question out, some better man will enlighten me.  What is at issue is just that: Enlightenment.  Plato’s Socrates teaches that it will be necessary for founders to lie.[26]  Strauss follows this line.[27]  As do students of Strauss, like Allan Bloom.[28]  Instead of allowing all men to reach their natural potential, the argument seems to be that it is needful, through the presentation of falsehoods, to restrict the intellectual growth of all but the most superior minds.  And it is at this point that I begin to wonder how different a society constituted according to such principles is from a society that practices footbinding or female circumcision.         

 

[9]        And so it was also necessary to consider that some clever individuals who understood that all things moved towards that which they desired, and away from that which they considered to be undesirable, might have chosen to direct the movement of large numbers of their fellows through the promulgation of certain laws and religion.  That words and concepts like “founders,” and “founding,” exist in our language is evidence that such a thing is not only possible, but also a historical reality.  Men are difficult to rule; animals are easy to rule.[29]  But, of course, one could never make of man a lower animal.  We, the American people, hold it to be a self-evident truth that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights.  And it is comical to imagine a place in which men relinquished pursuit of the knowledge of the “real” or “true” good: ceasing to employ their full mental capacities, becoming, willingly, simpler creatures, like rats or crows, seeking nothing more than sustenance, access to mates, and shiny objects to carry back to the nest.[30]    

 

[10]      I thought, then, about two things: first, the difference between what things seemed to be and what they were; and second, the reasons for which one might deliberately confuse the distinction between seeming and being.  I had some clue that philosophy was originally supposed to be concerned with the whole of nature, and also that that was the same everywhere and always.  But I was, alas, a man of mean state; exposure to the Great Minds[31] had taught me that much.  And given my unfortunate position, low things were easier for me to reach than high things; philosophy seemed as far above me as the stars.[32]  Thinking of the basest thing in my study, the thing most opposed to philosophy, I supposed that it was generally regarded to be tyranny.  Therefore, I, Mr. Rash and Curious, purposed to consider tyranny in opposition to philosophy as a most reasonable first step upward in the progress towards any superior truth – remembering that those damnable characters who practiced philosophy and exegesis had confused everything.[33]  Maybe they had made the low things look high, and the high things look low?

 

[11]             Already, I had presupposed many things; I was a presumptuous fellow.  But, did I understand my own perspective, and how it affected my theory?  Did I appreciate the relationship between philosophy and tyranny?  Was there some “truth” for me to apprehend?  Did the use of my reason alone suffice to make my study both possible and also prudent?  Being compelled, I continued as best I could in the way of others before me. 

 

Socrates’ Drama

 

[12]      It has been believed to be good to remember the example of Socrates.  Yet, the example of Socrates, as presented in Plato’s text of the Republic, at least, should lead one to call into question the definition of “good” in which one believes.  A sort of circle, a serpent consuming its tail, appears: Considering the meaning of the Platonic Socrates, one must turn, and with well-founded suspicion put questions to Plato and Socrates. 

“Writing is essentially bad, external to memory, productive not of science but of belief, not of truth but of appearances,” Jacques Derrida reminds the reader.[34]  And one sees why Derrida attempted to move beyond a simple meaning in the text, having understood Plato’s use of oppositions to include not only good and evil, but also writing and philosophy, generally.[35]

For though the voice of Socrates was heard only in his city, the call to philosophy is eternal, i.e., addressed to all potential philosophers, regardless of the time and place into which they have come into being.  And each person hearing that call is thought to be required by it to free himself from the illusions of certainty provided to him by the society of which he is a member. 

Reflecting upon Dissemination, one might begin to treat all philosophic texts as representations, or appearances, of philosophy, and not philosophy itself.  Is not Plato, when read in the worst way, treated as a founder: creating the myths that provide the vocabulary that structure the subsequent debate – all the while unquestioned by the believers, because he, like a prophet, had heard the voice? 

If we do, truly, have the highest regard for rational inquiry, then such a question will not be regarded as impious.  Indeed, without such questions, knowledge is not possible.  And it follows that if I would have agreed, without question, to accept classical philosophy and Socrates, as a result of having been taught by the students of Leo Strauss, then I would have agreed to do nothing more than maintain the expressed faith of the Straussians – an anti-philosophic stance.  But, understanding classical philosophy generally, and the importance of Socrates specifically, I must struggle to free myself from the bonds of the Straussian community too, questioning the Straussian values that have been presented to me. 

So it might be possible, given what has been written, for one to judge, roughly, an individual’s capacity for philosophy not by how quickly he agreed to repeat that which he was taught, but rather by how reluctant he was to do so.  Alternately, one might posit that an individual displayed ineptitude for politics via an outright refusal to concern himself with at least – the appearance – of the conventions of the community to which he belonged.  But, banishment was not unknown among Greek men.  And the example of Socrates encourages the acceptance of the poison.

 

[13]             Socrates is said to have been the first natural philosopher, or scientific observer of nature, to turn his attention to human things.  Having done so, he is supposed to have initiated the practice of political philosophy in the West.  But according to tradition, Socrates refused to commit his teaching to text.  What it is possible to know about Socrates depends primarily upon three sources: two of his students (1) Plato and (2) Xenophon, in addition to (3) the poet Aristophanes.  Socrates appears as a character in the works of all three men, speaking the words that they give to him to say.  But their treatments are not in perfect accord with one another.[36]  Aristophanes’ comedy Clouds was supposed to have been first presented in Athens, in 423; Socrates was supposed to have been put to death roughly 24 years later, in Athens, in 399.  And Plato even goes so far as to have his Socrates suggest that Aristophanes’ treatment might have been connected to the criminal charges brought against him.[37]  That Socrates was in conflict with those who held political power in Athens, in 399, is self-evident.  But what exactly Socrates stood for is very difficult to say.  Our progenitor has become a little stooge, bouncing on the knee of those who survived him.  Socrates is no mean problem. 

 

[14]      In Aristophanes’ Clouds, a character by the name of Socrates heads a place of study called the Thinkery.  Socrates is presented, here, as being quite impious: he denies the existence of the traditional gods of Athens, such as Zeus.  And he introduces new gods: the Clouds.  While at his Thinkery, Socrates practices astronomy; doing so, he elevates himself to the height of his new gods.  The Thinkery also houses the Better Argument, which relies upon conventional notions of justice, and the Worse Argument, which relies upon novelty.  It is an interest in the Worse Argument that motivates a patriarch of little virtue, Strepsiades, to call upon Socrates at the Thinkery.  Strepsiades has a son, Phidippides, who, because of his debts, is a burden to him.  Therefore Strepsiades enrolls himself, hoping to learn the art of rhetoric from the arguments, in order to escape his bills; but he fails to complete the education.  Subsequently, Phidippides enrolls.  While Phidippides does succeed in his education at the Thinkery, he employs the Worse Argument more extensively than his father had foreseen: not only does he outwit the creditors who troubled his father on his account, but his father, Strepsiades, suffers at his son's hands too.  Enraged, Strepsiades takes revenge upon Socrates, burning the Thinkery to the ground.

 

[15]      Absent in the synopsis above is any reference to the type of sexuality that fills Aristophanes’ comedy; such things as pederasty, sodomy, masturbation, and object insertion are referred to.  Yet it is still proper to call Clouds a virtuous play.  In their libidinous expressions Aristophanes’ characters are no different than their gods; it is impiety and an effort to escape justice that brings ruin.[38]  That impiety ends in ruin satisfies the expectation of the members of the polis, providing cover for Aristophanes.  But, did Aristophanes believe?  Or, was he simply more prudent – at least concerning human things – than Socrates?  Strauss has wished to suggest the possibility that Aristophanes portrayed a Socrates prior to “his conversion from a youthful contempt for the political or moral things, for the human things or human beings, to a mature concern with them.”[39]  Which is in no way to claim that Socrates adopted conventional views of any sort – but rather to say that he, at least, grew to have an appreciation of the appearance of such things.  It is also necessary to consider the possibility that no such “conversion” took place, but rather that one, or both, of Socrates’ students Plato and Xenophon made a deliberate effort to rehabilitate the reputation of Socrates.  And, following that example, one might question whether Strauss and Bloom fancied themselves conspirators in the project.[40]

 

[16]      The poet Aristophanes’ audience formed its opinion by seeing: the Athenians were seated, looking at the action on the stage before them.[41]  Public spectacle shaped their judgment of Socrates – and philosophy.[42]  And Xenophon had his poet, Simonides, receive an affirmation of the corollary in regard to tyrants and tyranny:

I do not wonder at all that the multitude of human beings are utterly deceived by tyranny, Simonides.  For the crowd seems to me to form the opinion that some men are happy and wretched by seeing.  Now tyranny displays openly, evident for all to see, the possessions which are held to be of much value.[43]

 

Whether suggesting that philosophy, or tyranny, has been misunderstood, the principle is the same: seeming and being are not necessarily identical, and the ground of most understanding is appearance.  Having received that lesson, late, I wondered how others before me might have already applied it.

 

Machiavelli’s Xenophon

 

[17]      And after reading several treatments of tyranny, or what I supposed tyranny to be, looking especially at the appearance thereof, an unusual pattern became evident: several prominent figures in the history of political philosophy had offered advice – in their own names, or through the mouths of their characters – to men who sought to secure their tyrannical rule.  I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone who was purported to be wise would assist an actual, or potential, tyrant in his enterprise.  Yet the advice in question seemed good – in the sense that it seemed practicable.  Further, the advice seemed to me to remain constant – though it was given at various places, and in various times.

 

[18]      In what seems to be the earliest written work in the Great Tradition to deal with the subject outright, Xenophon’s Hiero presents a dialogue between the poet Simonides and the tyrant Hiero.  Of its eleven chapters, the last four are dedicated to a teaching that has been said to be aimed at moderating Hiero’s tyranny.  Simonides suggests: in Chapter 8, that the tyrant ought himself to distribute: (1) favors, (2) praise, (3) honors, and (4) gifts; in Chapter 9 that the tyrant’s mercenaries ought to: (1) rebuke, (2) coerce, (3) punish, and (4) correct; in Chapter 10, while in the performance of their duties, the tyrant’s mercenaries ought to:

(1) “do no harm at all to one who commits no injustice,” (2) “restrain those who wish to do evil,” (3) “come to the aid of those who are unjustly wronged,” and (4) “incur danger in behalf of the citizen;” and in Chapter 11 the tyrant is told not to: (1) “shrink from spending from your private possessions for the common good,”  and finally, (2) “compete against private men.”  Note that Simonides recommends particular acts – not simply the appearance of having acted.  The explicit distinction between seeming and being that is made within the Hiero relates to what tyranny is thought to be, and what it is.  Further, Xenophon is careful to elaborate the sensual means by which judgments of the nature of things are made.

 

[19]             Meditating upon the instruction of Xenophon’s Simonides, I considered that Xenophon’s Cyrus was made to practice a form of rule that appeared to resemble the moderated tyranny prescribed to Hiero.  Though, Strauss challenged such a comparison when Eric Voegelin made it: Cyropaedia, asserted Strauss, chronicled the achievement of a legitimate ruler, a king.[44]  But, I have questioned, is it possible that a king would have been able to claim as the source of his legitimacy the thing, i.e., traditional right, which he destroyed with his rule?[45]  If not willing to stipulate to the example of The Education of Cyrus, openly, Strauss did recognize the application of the teaching of Simonides in other places:

The greatest man who ever imitated the Hiero was Machiavelli.  I should not be surprised if a sufficiently attentive study of Machiavelli’s work would lead to the conclusion that it is precisely Machiavelli’s perfect understanding of Xenophon’s chief pedagogic lesson which accounts for the most shocking sentences in the Prince.[46]

 

Is “Xenophon’s chief pedagogic lesson” taken to be the Hiero?  Or, did Machiavelli imitate the Hiero as a result of having understood, so well, Cyropaedia?  Or, ignoring the clue in the word “pedagogic,” is “Xenophon’s chief pedagogic lesson” to be found outside a particular text?   Strauss was a man who chose his words carefully.  I turned, as Strauss suggested, towards Machiavelli.

 

[20]             Machiavelli’s first use, in The Prince, of some form of the word “appearance” is in chapter 18; his last use of some form of the word “appearance” is in chapter 18.  In that chapter, entitled In What Mode Princes Ought To Keep The Faith, I count the word, parere/parendo/parere/paia/pare, five times, in the company of the list of five qualities: pieta, fede, integrita, umanita, religione, that the prince ought to appear to possess:

It is not necessary, then, for a prince to have in fact all of the qualities written above, but it is indeed necessary to appear to have them.  I shall dare say this: that having them and observing them always, they are harmful, but in appearing to have them, they are useful – so as to appear to be full of pity, faithful, human, open, religious […][47]

A prince, then, ought to take great care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of the five qualities written above, and that he appears to be, when ones sees and hears him, all pity, all faith, all integrity, all humanity, and all religion.  Nothing is more necessary than to have this last quality.  For men, universally, judge more by the eyes than by the hands, because it is given to everyone to see, but to few that they can touch. […][48]

The vulgar are always taken in by the appearance and outcome of a thing, and in this world there is no one but the vulgar.[49]

 

While there is, above, confirmation of the means – the eyes – by which most men tend to form their judgment of political things, there is also great discrepancy between Machiavelli’s list of appearances and Simonides’ list of actions.[50]  In fact, religion, that thing that Machiavelli called most important, is simply not mentioned at any point in the dialogue of the Hiero.  Perhaps I have not seen the truth?  Strauss has preferred to look forward to chapter 19, Of Avoiding Contempt and Hatred, describing it “as the peak of the whole.”[51]  In chapter 19, we read:

The prince should think, as has in part been said above, of avoiding those things which make him hateful and contemptible; and when he avoids this, he will have done his part and he will find no danger in the other vices.  What makes him hated above all, as I said, is rapaciousness and the usurpation of the goods and the women of his subjects […] He is made contemptible by being by being held to be changeable, light, effeminate, pusillanimous, irresolute.[52]

 

But this too seems not to lead back to Xenophon, but rather to Aristotle:

There are two causes that lead men to attack tyranny, hatred and contempt; the former, hatred, attaches to tyranny always, but is being despised that causes their downfall in many cases.[53]

 

And Strauss acknowledges the connection between Aristotle and Machiavelli and the origin of at least half of the “hatred and contempt teaching” in endnote 192, on page 343, of Thoughts on Machiavelli:

It is in this context and only there that Machiavelli refers explicitly to Aristotle: it seems at first glance that the only teaching of Aristotle with which Machiavelli agrees is the teaching that tyrants ought to avoid hurting their subjects in connection with women; but even regarding this teaching, and precisely this teaching, there is subtle disagreement.

 

[21]      In paying careful attention to lists, vocabulary, and the ordering of things, I have imitated the appearance of the method of study recommended by the Straussians.  In fact I have not found a close study of lists to further my understanding of any author’s purpose.  Lists have seemed to me like reefs upon which many small vessels have been caught – lacking some chart in unfamiliar waters.  But there is another emphasis in Strauss’ method: paying attention to what is not said.  And that has proven to be most helpful, indeed.  Machiavelli declared, in chapter 15, his own motive:

But since it is my intention to write a thing for him who understands, it seemed to me more profitable to go behind to the effectual truth of the thing, than to the imagination thereof.  And many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to be in truth; because there is such a distance between how one lives and how one should live that he who lets go that which is done for that which ought to be done learns to his ruin rather than his preservation.[54]

 

In endnote 10, after chapter 14, on page 92, the translator of my English edition of The Prince, Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, proposes “one may therefore perhaps understand Machiavelli’s attraction to Xenophon because the latter seems far more concerned than either Plato or Aristotle with the ‘effectual truth’ of things as opposed to the ‘ineffectual truth’.”  Alvarez continues, in endnote 1, on page 94, after chapter 15, to explain that the “effectual truth” is that which “may be put into practice.”  Oh?

 

[22]            Thinking about what ought to be apparent, but is not, I question: Why is Aristotle not the model for Machiavelli?  Xenophon’s account of Cyrus was imagined; yet Machiavelli refers to Cyrus.  Xenophon’s dialogue between Simonides and Hiero was imagined; yet Machiavelli refers to Heiro.  Aristotle’s connection to Alexander the Great was real; Plato too was connected to real tyrants.  But Machiavelli appears to ignore both Plato and Aristotle, in favor of Xenophon.  Why?  Given this confusion it is needful to consider that Machiavelli did not write for princes, but rather that is only the appearance of his address.  Who are the potential knowers of what is true, as opposed to what is imagined to be true?  Remembering what he has written above, in a list, in regard to the existence of three types of brains: “one understands on its own, the other discerns that which others understand, and the third neither understands on its own nor through others,”[55] and in regard to his audience: “it is my intention to write a thing for him who understands,”[56] I must consider that The Prince, at its deepest levels, is not for the person taught, i.e., the prince, but rather The Prince is for the prince’s teachers or counselors, i.e., philosophers.  If I then look again at the Hiero I might observe that Simonides is the teacher, who, when considered, provides an example for other teachers of tyrants.  Simonides’ advice is for Hiero; Xenophon’s advice is for those who stand in the place of Simonides, e.g. Machiavelli and his imitators.  Xenophon’s Cyrus too was not so different in his effect from philosophy: undermining traditional, or conventional, teachings of right, giving to the people a new definition of what was good: gain.  Philosophy may not be ineffectual.  Having found some connection between Machiavelli, Xenophon and Aristotle, I have wondered if it is it still proper to set Plato against Machiavelli – the former having been described as being concerned with the “ineffectual truth” while the “effectual truth” was professed to be the concern of the later.

 

 

 

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CHAPTER 2

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Actors

 

[23]            Standing in the place of Simonides: Nietzsche claimed, in the opening pages of Beyond Good and Evil, to know of, “nothing more venomous than the joke Epicurus allowed himself to make against Plato and the Platonists: he called them Dionysiokolakes.”[57] Then, explaining the double entendre, Nietzsche contrasted the “literal and foreground meaning” of that Greek word to its hidden meaning: on the one hand, one of the Dionysiokolakes might be a “flatterer of Dionysus […] a tyrant’s hanger on” and on the other hand he might be an “actor.”[58]  Most obviously, the “joke” implies that Plato and his disciples were not what they appeared to be.  But it is also good to notice the association between philosophy and philosophers, and tyranny and tyrants – an association that Nietzsche will make, repeatedly.  And most important, but least obvious, is the significance of the connection to the god Dionysus: it is not until the closing pages of Beyond Good and Evil that Nietzsche reveals himself to be “the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus.”[59] 

Nietzsche is as Plato was; Plato was as Nietzsche is.  And if there are no gods – no God, no Dionysus – then they, the philosophers, are the creators of the worlds of their choice.  “Mandarins with Chinese brushes”,[60] the commanders of the language produce representations of philosophy, hiding metaphysical reality with those same words. 

Again, Nietzsche wrote, plainly, that he had questioned, “Plato’s concealment and Sphinx nature,”[61] as a result of the tradition that reported the finding of a copy of the works of Aristophanes under Plato’s pillow at his death.[62]  I would suggest a fundamental agreement between Aristophanes and Plato in regard to the being Socrates, and a difference in appearance between the Socrates represented in Clouds and the Socrates represented in the Republic.  And following that, Nietzsche’s expressed preference for Aristophanes[63] and disdain for Plato[64] is a function of the manner, the style, in which they handled the same truth.  Truth?  The grammar, even the real architecture[65] of the Egyptians, Jews, Platonists and Christians[66] owes itself to their preference for the stage.  Nietzsche is possessed a different aesthetic spirit.

 

[24]      Running parallel to the pages from Beyond Good and Evil cited above is Laurence Lampert’s account of a group of actors in Leo Strauss and Nietzsche: “Strauss could not show his followers any way toward political responsibility except perpetuating a supposedly noble lying on behalf of views rendered both incredible and unpalatable by modern experience.”[67]  Agreeing with that statement, one might suggest a comparison of Strauss and his followers to Plato and his followers – having chosen to emulate the strategy of the Dionysiokolakes.  But, Lampert doesn’t do that.  Rather, Lampert makes at least three attempts to connect Strauss with Epicurus.[68]  “Is he [Strauss] the observer who watches from behind the protection of his own garden wall?” Lampert asks.[69]  Further, Lampert proposes that Strauss took “the politic speech” of Xenophon and Thucydides as a remedy “for the excesses of Plato and Nietzsche.”[70]  Lampert makes a Strauss even meeker in practice than Strauss made himself appear to be in theory.  One must wonder.

            I do not fault Lampert.  But in order for his analysis to be taken as true we must suppose that he has understood the whole of Thucydides, Epicurus, Xenophon, Plato, Nietzsche and Strauss – as each thinker wished himself to be understood.  There is too the scholarly, and philosophic, problem of what appears to be Lampert’s erotic attachment to Nietzsche.  Lampert seems indignant that Strauss deigned to refer to the chimera’s face worn by Nietzsche, while leaving Plato’s mask intact.  And Lampert jabs subtly at Strauss: The quote, above, from page 173 of Lampert’s text, mirrors, neatly, the passage on Nietzsche from Strauss’ What is Political Philosophy? that Lampert cites on page 8 of his text:

After having taken upon himself this great political responsibility, he could not show his readers a way to political responsibility.  He left them no choice except that between irresponsible indifference to politics and irresponsible political options.  He thus prepared a regime which, as long as it lasted, made discredited democracy look again like the golden age.[71]

 

And it is difficult to maintain one’s closeness to Nietzsche, in polite company, unless one distances Nietzsche from the intellectual ground of Nazi Germany.  Lampert attempts to do just that, and he characterizes Strauss’ statement from What is Political Philosophy? as “irresponsible and damaging” immediately afterwards.[72]  Strauss’ covert elevation of Nietzsche to a rank equal to Plato pleases Lampert;[73] but Lampert is correspondingly opposed to Strauss’ public tactics.[74]  Lampert’s partisanship is exposed: “Nietzsche’s case is entirely persuasive,” and, “viewed from a long historical perspective, Nietzsche is Strauss’ superior as a strategist for philosophy.”[75]  So, ultimately, Lampert seems interested in Strauss to the degree that Strauss is useful to Nietzsche.

            Yet if it is taken as given that Plato and Nietzsche are true philosophers, and that true philosophers are distinguished by their creation of values, then anyone who accepts the values that they have created has made himself not a true philosopher.  Accepting Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s followers have proven themselves unworthy of him.  It is well and good for a Nietzschean to scoff at Platonism.  But to accept any of Nietzsche’s assertions as articles of faith is to make of his philosophic provocations a religion.  Perhaps that is the unspoken aim: to supplant one God with another god, one tyranny with another tyranny.  In any case, it is bad philosophy, absent a perfect knowledge of the whole, to assume that one has found “the answer” in any text.  And if there is nothing but the will, ought not any noble man to act upon his own will, and not the will of Nietzsche?

Why didn’t Lampert direct his reader to Beyond Good and Evil, in order to compare aphorism 7 to aphorism 295?  Perhaps, if Nietzsche was seen to suggest that he was like unto Plato, then it would be difficult to take too seriously his criticisms of Plato – and it would become equally difficult to embrace the inversion of Platonism that Nietzsche proposed.

It is a little joke for Nietzsche to have made God the Devil, and the Devil, God – as Machiavelli did before him.  But the “feud,” if you will, between Plato and Nietzsche, or Strauss and Lampert, is better represented three-dimensionally: it is not a simple reversal of a hierarchy, but rather a shifting of the entire contents of the inside to an outside position.[76]  Nietzsche would agree, I think, that it is not God who is exoteric and the Devil who is esoteric; it is the duality, the opposition of God and the Devil that constitutes the exoteric.  The philosopher of the future would understand the semantics of conventional morality.

I would make Lampert the imitator of Epicurus.  And where Nietzsche referred to the copy of Aristophanes found with Plato at his end, I find that Lampert has devoted his attention to “the Champion Wiremaster spiral notebook in which Strauss copied out his last essay,”[77] i.e., Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.  What was under Strauss’ pillow?

Looking again at the last page of Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, I quote Lampert again, at greater length:

[…] In the end it seems altogether fitting that in his final months Leo Strauss should turn from Nietzsche and Plato, those two greatest, most sublime, most commanding philosophers, that he should turn from the clangor of these great clashing armies, and take up Thucydides again, and take up Xenophon again, and compose his final quiet and beautiful essays on their politic speech, their observations on the gods and on what the gods they no longer believed in required of them.  These two men were, perhaps, his cure too for the excesses of Plato and Nietzsche.[78]

 

And then turning to Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, I quote:

My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides.  Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli’s Principe are most closely related to myself by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality […] One must follow him [Thucydides] line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines […] In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal.[79]

 

SEEING PLATO

 

[25]      The first action depicted in Plato’s Republic is that of Socrates going down to see the introduction of a novelty in regard to the divine things; and in so doing, comparing the conventions – specifically, the religious practices – of his own people to those of foreigners.[80]  The first conflict stems from the order issued to Socrates by means of the slave of Polemarchus.[81]  The first definitions of the just and the good are the opinions provided by Cephalus, informed by religion, poetry, and habit.[82]  The first, "city in speech," that comes into being, through the activity of Thrasymachus, Glaucon, and Adiemantus is a perfect tyranny.[83]

 

[26]             Thinking of Aristophanes’ Clouds, one might say that it is the Better Argument that directs Cephalus; Cephalus in turn directs his son Polemarchus; Polemarchus directs his slave boy; the slave boy finally seizes the cloak of Socrates, and proceeds to direct Socrates.  Socrates is subject to force: the political force of his city, if he wishes to maintain his appearance.  Note: the slave boy takes hold not of Socrates, but of Socrates’ covering; that is the point of contact between the two.  Tracing the force in question, in reverse, through the action of the slave boy, to Polemarchus, and then to Cephalus, we are led back to the regime.  The true adversary of Socrates would seem to be the source of the conventional notion of justice that informs the polis of which he is a part.  One might assume that if Socrates were in a position to found a city, it would be friendlier to him.[84]  In the meantime, if he wishes to preserve himself, he must practice fraud, and feign some degree of obedience to convention.  It has been suggested that Plato employed the same strategy in order to preserve philosophy.  Was this the lesson of Socrates?  If so, why did he choose death?[85] 

 

[27]      It is curious that Cephalus chooses to leave his son Polemarchus with Socrates, for the expressed purpose of receiving an education.  Cephalus did bear the Better Argument when he was questioned about the just and the good, by Socrates.  And Socrates did bring the Worse Argument against him, with rhetorical success, undermining the conventional notions of the just and the good in the process.  Cephalus begins to look a bit like Strepsiades leaving Phidippides at the Thinkery.  One begins to wonder about Plato’s own presentation. 

 

[28]      Plato’s presentation relies, frequently, upon a contrast between things that are commonly recognized as opposites.  It is for the expressed purpose of considering justice that injustice is described.  But it is suggested, quickly, that justice is not what it seems to be.  In Book I of the Republic Plato gives a familiar saying through Thrasymachus: what is called justice, "is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger."[86]  Whether Thrasymachus is meant to have believed that, or subsequently argued on behalf of that position to the best of his ability, we find, in Book II, that two other characters, Glaucon and his brother Adeimantus, carry on where Thrasymachus was unwilling or unable to continue.

 

[29]             Glaucon has the many [that great part of mankind tending to be governed by unexamined opinion, habituation, and passions] say that: "doing injustice is naturally good," he also has them say, "suffering injustice [is] bad," and the, "suffering of injustice far exceeds the good in doing it."[87]  Men, therefore, "who are not able to escape the one and choose the other,"[88] accept a "mean between what is best – doing injustice without paying the penalty – and what is worst – suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself."[89]  So, justice is ultimately defined as, “incapacity to do injustice."[90]  What men truly desire is "license,"[91] and what they lack are the means to achieve it.

 

[30]             Glaucon would seem to argue that if any man came into possession of an art or product of artifice [in Glaucon’s example: a shepherd who finds a ring of invisibility] that would prevent his injustice from being seen, he would be inclined to use such a thing to avoid the obligation to justice that his less advantaged companions were required to observe.[92]  How does one become unseen?

 

[31]            Attempting to distinguish between seeming and being is a philosophic act.  The knowledge of appearances – what I would suggest has been called in metaphor the Trojan horse or ring of Gyges – is necessarily a part of philosophy.  But, choosing to apply that knowledge in order to confuse the distinction between seeming and being, e.g., cloaking one’s self, or parading misleading images before another person, is a political act.  It is true that all formal human communication employs symbols that are by definition representations, or appearances of things, and not the things in themselves.  That is not to say that all language is deceit.  I imagine two maps of the same area: (1) a map in which a conscious effort was made by the mapmaker to properly name the objects represented and also to accurately reflect the relationship between the objects as they existed in real space, for the purpose of correctly leading the map’s reader; and (2) a map in which a conscious effort was made by the mapmaker to misname the objects represented and also to skew the relationships between those objects, for the purpose of misleading the map’s reader.  The maker of the first map might offer any one of a number of reasonable motives for his work.  What might the second mapmaker say? 

Substitute values as follows: let map equal what is said to be philosophy; let mapmaker equal one who is said to be a philosopher; let the destination equal what is supposed to be the perfect good; let the actual positions of the objects mapped equal a metaphysical reality; let the journey equal the acquisition of knowledge.

Whether I have received map (1), or map (2), or even if I am in possession of both maps, I will not know the worth of either map until I begin the journey and compare the representation of what is said to be, to what is.

So too it is not enough for a man to have received a philosophy, and to have learned to repeat it.  All philosophy, relying of necessity upon some formal communication, will be a representation of what is, an appearance, and not the thing in itself.  And without an effort to compare what is said to be, with what is, there is no knowledge. 

To forbid, calling unjust, the questioning of the standard provided by philosophy would be to forbid philosophy – calling "wrong" the very thing from which the understanding of "right" was thought to have been derived, and contradicting any claim to its legitimacy as a governing principle. 

A community of philosophers, or a community in which philosophy was included, would be different from other communities in this respect: after hearing what was said to be good, and before accepting what was said to be good, a philosopher would question the definition he was provided.  That thing supplanting the question, i.e., philosophic inquiry, would rightly be called an assertion – a product of the will.  And by means of a stronger assertion, i.e., a redefinition of values, one would, remembering Aristotle’s teleology, be able to direct the movement of an entire political community.  So that the knowledge of real and apparent goods, and the art by which one might confuse the distinction between to two, would be the prerequisite for any successful tyrannical practice.

Therefore, when one prevents, through the use of force or fraud, a theoretical inquiry into being, philosophy ends and tyranny begins.

 

NIETZSCHE’S JUSTICE

 

[32]            Xenophon remembered a Socrates who was “always visible” while conducting his discourse.[93]  Nietzsche, too, set himself, openly, against what he called “Platonism” and Christianity: the “dogmas” that he identified as dominating European thought in his age.  What daimon guided Nietzsche?  After reading the preface of Beyond Good and Evil one might suppose that Nietzsche was moved by the widespread acceptance of the postulation in the Republic, by Plato’s character Socrates, that there is an objective and transcendent good that is knowable, to a degree, through the faculty of reason;[94] and, subsequently, that various philosophic and political orders are more or less perfect depending upon their relationship to this idea of the good.[95]  A Christian, in that scheme, would name the good, “God’s will.”[96]  One must wonder: Are there universal standards – constants of any sort – by means of which a philosopher might, through comparison, make judgments about the conventions of a political community?  Or, is it the case that all such standards are nothing more than assertions, i.e., the products of the will of their creators, so that, ultimately, everything is conventional?

Having had the question put to me, I would suppose three possibilities: (1) a realm of the divine that, thought it was inaccessible by means of my reason, supplied knowledge through revelation, or some other mystical experience; (2) a realm of nature that was accessible by means of my reason, through the study of which some universal standards might be identified; (3) that there was nothing beyond the physical – or, being beyond the physical therefore being inaccessible to me, a cosmos that was essentially meaningless, lacking any comprehensible end, so that what was taken to be “ethics” was, essentially, a collection of false concepts originating in nothing other than the human mind.

The third possibility seems to most closely match the worldview articulated by Nietzsche.  And it becomes very problematic to suggest any morality in such an environment – other than a sort of Epicurean Stoicism.  Even Saint Augustine, that Father of the Church, harmonized: “supposing we […] could live in perpetual enjoyment of the body without any fear of loss, why should we not then be happy, or what else should we seek.”[97]  But for his faith in the Christian teaching of the Judgment, Augustine claimed that he too would have preferred to follow Epicurus.[98]  Is immediate pleasure forestalled for the sole purpose of obtaining a greater pleasure at some future moment?  Philosophy and tyranny seem not so far apart, as the chief questions in any thinking person’s mind become: (1) What is the greatest pleasure?  (2) How might I best obtain that pleasure?

 

[33]      In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche provides his own account of the origin of justice: a strong man intimidates those who are weaker, and draws them into a position subject to himself; he is a founder.  Over time, obedience to the stronger man, or state, becomes custom and is recognized as a type of virtue, i.e., just behavior, or lawfulness.[99]  Nietzsche might instruct that if one was able to identify something like the idea of the good, as put forth by Plato’s Socrates, it would only be because one had subscribed to the product of the will of another man, i.e., Plato, or, possibly, Socrates, created the idea of the good and did not discover it.  And any talk of the orders of one state being more “good” than another would be rubbish.  Given that, the presence of Moses in Machiavelli’s list of “most excellent” princes seems not so unusual.[100]  In place of the former valuations, and beyond Epicurus, Nietzsche gives to us the concept of the noble: the proper name for the being of the highest type.  But in his inversion of values, and redefinition of the language, a “low” path is appointed to the highest man.

 

[34]      It might be possible to resolve Nietzsche’s seeming paradox of “ennoblement through degeneration”[101] as follows: Assuming that it is more noble to create than it is to maintain, those who discover and introduce “new orders and modes”[102] must themselves lack what their political, or intellectual, community would perceive as good moral fiber: innovators are necessarily degenerate, standing outside the orthodoxy of thought and behavior embraced by the members of the society in which they exist.  The greater part of all people simply imitates that which has “always” been done, manifesting “the gradually increasing inherited stupidity such as haunts all stability like a shadow.”[103]  Again, in seeming paradox, that which a community calls strong – character – is derived from being bound by the community’s orders.[104]  How else can one be strong, and fettered, simultaneously?  Weak, sick and degenerate are the adjectives reserved for the philosopher.  Yet he, the philosopher, is also called noble, and free.  That “free spirit” might “wound” the community, inflicting some sickness upon it – and in so doing to “inoculate” it.[105]  But that is only the case when the wounding is proportionate to the community’s strength, resulting in a healthier, more resistant, whole.  It is good to remember, again, Xenophon’s Cyrus – as does Machiavelli in Chapter VI of The Prince: “It was needful,” wrote Machiavelli, “that Cyrus find the Persians malcontented with the imperium of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate from long peace.”[106]  Indeed, it was needful for Cyrus to have learned the tyrannical art from the Medes, and found philosophy wanting among the Persians, in order to accomplish his own purpose.  So it is good to acknowledge that the same type that might strengthen his community might also destroy it. 

 

[35]      To create conventions, i.e., to be a founder, or to respect existing conventions: that is the issue.  “Philosophy is this tyrannical itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the ‘creation of the world,’ to the causa prima.”[107]  If there is no objective reality, if any man’s attempt to present some explanation of the sensual realm is nothing more than a manifestation of his will, then in examining these things we learn more about what he values, rather than what is?  What is – in the true sense – is only that which we make or maintain?  Nietzsche has accused those who have practiced philosophy before him of the very thing of which Nietzsche himself has been accused: seducing by means of his presentation.  Nietzsche’s lyrical charm, “his unsurpassable and inexhaustible power of passionate and fascinating speech,”[108] and the former philosophers’ logic and dialectic both serve to convince the reader of the veracity of the things that they assert.

 

[36]      It is not possible to assert that Nietzsche’s philosophic teachings have no political implications, unless one presents his text in a most selective manner.  In aphorism 257 of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche purports that the order of rank in society facilitates one’s own spiritual growth – even that one’s own spiritual growth is contingent upon recognition of the rank between beings: “Without the pathos of distance such as develops from the incarnate differences of classes […] that other, more mysterious pathos could not have developed either, that longing for an ever-increasing widening of distance within the soul itself […] the ‘continual self-overcoming of man’.”[109] 

It has been said by some of Nietzsche’s apologists that terms such as class, or race, were meant to be read, metaphorically, as parts of one’s self.  If that is so, I wonder why Nietzsche would have compared the external distance between the classes, and the internal distance between parts of the soul – in the same sentence.[110]  And in a careful reading of Nietzsche’s whole body of work one is confronted, repeatedly, with a problem of sorts: the relationship of the extraordinary individual to his fellow beings.  Nietzsche’s teachings, in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals especially, resonate with the teachings of Plato’s Socrates in the Republic: The end result of the process of self-overcoming, or self-freeing, appears to be the right to claim a sort of tyranny – spiritual, i.e., philosophic, as above, or otherwise.  Neither Plato nor Nietzsche seems content to leave the potential knower of the truth in the theoretical realm; in the aforementioned texts values are not only defined – but a right to define them for a larger community is also suggested.  One remembers Machiavelli, again.  Strauss offers an explanation of the twofold character of Nietzsche’s politics, hearkening back to, I think it is proper to suggest, Plato’s philosopher-kings, and supporting my position:

He [Nietzsche] taught that all human life and human thought ultimately rests on horizon-forming creations which are not susceptible of rational legitimization.  The creators are great individuals [...] Nietzsche's creative call to creativity was addressed to individuals who should revolutionize their own lives, not to society or to his nation.  But he expected or hoped that his call, at once stern and imploring, questioning and desirous to be questioned, would tempt the best men of the generations after him to become true selves and thus to form a new nobility which would be able to rule the planet.  He opposed the possibility of a planetary aristocracy to the alleged necessity of a universal classless and stateless society.[111]

 

To argue for actual, as opposed to apparent, selflessness, humility and forgiveness is, from Nietzsche's expressed perspective, to participate in the "slave revolt in morals,"[112] i.e., a turning upside down the values of the Pre-Platonic Greeks, and by extension, all Europeans,[113] in order to embrace, rather, the values of the Jews: "a people ‘born for slavery’."[114] 

It is a short distance from Nietzsche’s expressions, here, to Adolf Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf: “The most unbeautiful thing there can be in human life is and remains the yoke of slavery […] Certainly we don’t have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume.”[115]  How fitting that Hitler chose to share that sentiment in chapter six: War Propaganda.  Hitler does not argue for genocide in the context of that chapter, but rather explains how to rule, i.e., assert values, through the presentation of appearances.  His first war was against his own people: exploiting their ignorance, fear, and prejudice. 

My own unscholarly and no-longer secret wish is that it was possible to argue, as Lampert, that “the Nietzsche of general rumor” bears no relation to Nietzsche as he was.[116]  I am German; I am Semitic; I am a reader of Nietzsche.  It is necessary to make the admission that I have been drawn to something dark and mysterious in Nietzsche’s writing – something that while very useful, is also very dangerous.  That is probably the surest sign that he was a philosopher.  I do suspect that Nietzsche has been misread – more accurately, thought about too little – by his audience.  An example: Nietzsche’s reaction to “the faith in antithetical values,”[117] has become a faith in the opposition of the noble to the slavish.  Why not then suppose that Nietzsche’s faith too is based upon a nonexistent “antithesis,” or that it is “merely provisional,” and correctable by the adoption of a “higher and more fundamental”[118] perspective?  How “high” shall we go?  It’s ridiculous – as ridiculous as the idea of the good.

How might one employ Nietzsche against Hitler?  In aphorisms 197, 199, and 200, Nietzsche expresses a preference for Alcibiades, Caesar, Cesare Borgia and Napoleon.  Again, one might remember Machiavelli’s list of four “most excellent” princes from Chapter VI of The Prince: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus.[119]  It is good to continue to read below Machiavelli’s list and notice the attention that he pays to self-overcoming: “It was fitting that Romulus not remain in Alba, that he be exposed at birth, so that he might want to become king of Rome and founder of that fatherland.”[120]  So too Machiavelli’s concept of “virtue” seems not so different from Nietzsche’s concept of “noble,” even as both men also paid attention to the importance of fortune.  Why was Hitler not a Machiavellian prince?

In aphorisms 11, 20, 28, 32, 39, 46, 48, 61, 189, 240, 244, 252, 254, and 294, at least, race and language are connected to an individual’s consciousness, and subsequently the formation of a people’s philosophic or religious worldview.[121]  In aphorisms 4, 61, 213, 242, 251, and 262, at least, “breeding,” literally the manipulation of genetic inheritance, is made to incline one towards a particular position in society.[122]  And it seems to be the case that Semitic people, in particular, catalyzed Nietzsche’s efforts to provoke another [spiritual?] European renaissance in a twofold manner: (1) the so-called decadent spiritual condition of Europeans that resulted from the spread of Judeo-Christian religion prepared them to receive a tyrant;[123] (2) racial mixing, while tending to produce weaker types, facilitated in some special circumstances the generation of the highest types.[124]  I simply cannot interpret Nietzsche in such a way as to find any sort of “moral” objections to the activity of any tyrant – including Hitler.  Hitler claimed his right to create values; a significant percentage of the German people accepted those values.  Attempting to oppose the horrors that were legitimized by the Nazi Regime – from a Nietzschean perspective – one would be unable to rely upon an appeal to a law or religion or philosophy that the Nazis rejected; one would need, rather, to employ superior will and power to impose one’s own values.  Nietzsche could be employed to support Zionism.

 

[37]      That men often have acted contrary to the principles that they have professed is a thing well documented in our history.  Contemporary to our oldest evidence of the foundational – for Western political philosophy – thought of Socrates, is the writing of Thucydides.  In the so-called Melian Dialogue, in what may be the most familiar passage in the account of the Peloponnesian War, one that has been called "terrible" by the Devil himself,[125] Thucydides' Athenians – though nominally democrats – admit, via speech and action, that democracy is a ruse, and rights are contingent upon one's ability to exercise power,[126] confirming the more public presentation made by Thucydides' Pericles to the twice-defeated Athenians, earlier in the text.[127]

 

[38]             Claiming an understanding of justice in concord with what he supposed Thucydides to have understood – though offering no proof of that supposition, or evidence of contrary interpretations, but only a reference – Nietzsche provides an account of the origin of our moral valuations,[128] replying, at least in part, to his own questions, posed in the early pages of Beyond Good and Evil.[129]  Accepting Nietzsche at his word, one might refer to the slaughter and enslavement of the Melians[130] as an example of virtue.[131]  To call cruelty, virtue[132] or to call bad, good[133] is not a thing unprecedented.[134]  So that one is forced to consider that all associations made between such words, and particular acts, are dependent upon the individual who makes them:

Whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate, and Aversion, Evill; And of his Contempt, Vile and Inconsiderable. For these words of Good, Evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them.[135]

 

Having thought of these most difficult things, I turn again to Leo Strauss.

 

CONCLUSION

 

[39]            Derrida, in Dissemination, plays a good game with the Greek word pharmakon and the dual purposes for which a thing might be applied.[136]  “The beneficial essence or virtue of a pharmakon does not prevent it from hurting […] it partakes of both good and ill, of the agreeable and the disagreeable.  Or rather, it is within its mass that the oppositions are able to sketch themselves out.”[137]  Philosophy, or dialectic, might be a danger; it might be the only hope for avoiding a yet greater danger.  Following Derrida: if one hides the poison, one hides the cure.

I worry over the purpose of that supposedly Platonic covering that Strauss sought to restore to philosophy, seeing the act but not the intention, and knowing that it was said to be nakedness in which Nietzsche reveled.[138]  A man of faith might describe it is as Ham and Shem with their father: The Dionysian truth of wine having been revealed, does one respond impiously, or in a manner more politic?  Was Strauss, in regression Plato, a pious man moved by faith in some “higher” good?  How would one reconcile the pursuit of philosophy with such a faith?  Appearing to be good, in the conventional sense, while conducting an exercise – philosophy – that is essentially subversive in regard to convention, makes of one’s self a “great hypocrite and deceiver.”[139]

            If I acknowledge that an “exposed” philosophy might produce the greatest dangers, will it also be acknowledged that an “exposed” philosophy might produce the greatest goods?  If philosophy should not be considered to be good – remembering Aristotle – why should we desire it?  But, perhaps, I will be told that it is not a thing good for everyone.  And if I then acknowledge that cloaking philosophy through “Platonizing” might be good, will it also be acknowledged that disguising philosophy might be also be a thing fraught with danger?  For to accept a definition of what is good, and to repeat it without question, is to allow one’s self to be directed towards the end chosen by the definer of the term.  Tyrants and philosophers know this to be true.

Enter Plato’s character: “Then shall we so easily let the children hear just any tales fashioned by just anyone and take into their souls opinions for the most part opposite to those we’ll suppose they must have when they are grown up?”[140]  And Strauss harmonizes: 

Socratic wisdom is needed, not for the sake of Socrates, but for the sake of the simple souls or souls of the people.  The true philosophers fulfill the absolutely necessary function of being the guardians of virtue or of the free society.  Being the teachers of the human race, they, and they alone, can enlighten the people as to their duties and as to the precise character of the good society.  In order to fulfill this function, Socratic wisdom requires as its basis the whole of theoretical science; Socratic wisdom is the end and crown of theoretical science.  Theoretical science, which is not intrinsically in the service of virtue and is therefore bad, must be put into the service of virtue in order to become good.  It can become good, however, only if its study remains the preserve of the few who are by nature destined to guide the peoples; only an esoteric theoretical science can become good.[141]

Who are those “few who are by nature destined to guide the peoples,” and whither are they leading us?  How long shall I be treated as a child, and told fanciful tales?  To destroy one bedtime story: there are, in fact, no structural safeguards in politics.  And likewise there is no best form for the philosophic practice.  Oh?

Enter Strauss’ character:

Xenophon’s Socrates makes it clear that there is only one sufficient title to rule: only knowledge, and not force and fraud or election, or, we may add, inheritance makes a man a king or a ruler.  If this is the case, “constitutional” rule, rule derived from election in particular, is not essentially more legitimate than tyrannical rule, rule derived from force or fraud.  Tyrannical rule as well as “constitutional” rule will only be legitimate to the extent to which the tyrant or the “constitutional” rulers will listen to the counsels of him who “speaks well” because he “thinks well.”[142]

 

Is thinking ability the only criteria to be employed when determining who ought to rule?  What about feeling well?  Are there emotional capacities that a good ruler ought to have in abundance – or at least not lack?  Plato’s Socrates, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and ultimately Strauss, all seem to have little use for what is low, common, and ultimately – human.

A philosopher who, in speech or in text, openly called into question the most fundamental beliefs of his community or “city” would rightly be regarded with suspicion.  But, maybe, the more dangerous man would be the one who asked his questions in secret – in the confidence of his fellow conspirators.  And, maybe, the most dangerous man of all would be the one who attempted to prevent questions from being asked, for fear of having his valuations contested. Having been told a story about the gods, by someone who believes that the gods do not exist, what ought I to think?  Further, having been told a lie, by someone who values knowledge of the truth of things above all else, what ought I to think?  And then, when it is claimed that these stories have been told for my own good, by someone who judges that there is no common good, what ought I to think?  Absent a perfect knowledge of the whole, it is good to remember that blinding loyalty to any person, or cause, is likely to lead us astray.

“For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute.  As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by fools or criminals.”[143]

 

 

 

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