Straussian Piffle
by Tom Piatak
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Over at First Things, Jody Bottum at last condescends to take notice of the angry atheist tracts that have been haunting best seller lists of late. Bottum doesn’t attempt to refute them—such refutation apparently being beneath the dignity of First Things. Instead, he recommends Harvey Mansfield’s review in the Weekly Standard, a publication that regularly and proudly publishes one of those angry atheists, Christopher Hitchens.
Mansfield’s review is typical Straussian piffle. The angry atheists at least attempt to address what might be thought to be the central question: whether there is reason to believe in God. Mansfield never does, which is unsurprising, since Straussianism is atheistic, however useful Straussians may find religion in controlling the masses. Christians who go looking for friends among the Straussians will never want for enemies.
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1 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 13 August 2007:
Asking a Straussian to defend God is like asking an alligator to give you a ride across the bayou.
2 Comment by robert reavis on 13 August 2007:
There was an excellent essay about these pseudo classical Straussians by Frederick Wilhelmson in his book on Christian philosophy. He saw this whole bloody development coming years ago, of trying to export the benefits of christian culture at the point of a spear — without its heart . Of course Claude Polin of Chronicles has written the best recent commentary on these nuts.
But I do not blame them as much as I blame the little ignorant cowards who assist them like the folks over at — First Things. Or that preacher from Dallas named Hagey ? or Hagerly ? — all giving America’s better poets, like Merle Haggard, a bad name by association. Or in the case of Wiegel –who true to name, weebles and wobbles but won’t fall down. rr
3 Comment by Simon Newman on 13 August 2007:
Mansfield:
“the most advanced thinkers of our time, the postmoderns”
Well that clears that up, then. Nice to know.
4 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 13 August 2007:
Plato and Aristotle, favorites of Strauss (or so he said), had a rational and monotheist deity. Strauss had no deity at all. The real “hidden teaching”: Strauss is a crypto-Nietzschean.
5 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 13 August 2007:
(use limbaughesque intonation): He’s the The REVerend HAgee. And Darby recycled.
6 Comment by Red Phillips on 13 August 2007:
Sid, Hagee’s theology differs significantly from Darby who was an original “Plymouth Brethren” (they don’t like that term) in addition to being an originator of dispensationalism.
Hagee is no Plymouth Brethren.
7 Comment by robert reavis on 13 August 2007:
Sid,
Thank you for the name and the camp location. I am glad to see your name pop up on the blog as I always read yours with eagerness and delight. cheers rr
8 Comment by Tom Piatak on 13 August 2007:
Hagee is a kook, pure and simple.
9 Comment by robert m. peters on 13 August 2007:
The three ugly sisters, begotten by left-wing Hegelians, i.e. those who stood Hegel on his head, proclaiming that, contrary to Hegel, being precedes Consciousness, are Marxism in all of its ilks, fascism in all of its forms from Nazism to corporatism, and social democracy. Our “neocons” have to distinct lineages – Straussians and Kristols – both of which are forks of the same lying tongue, namely left-wing Hegelianism. Leo Strauss had as his intellectual mentor none other that Martin Heidegger, the Nazis academician, the current batch of apologists’ claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Irving Kristol and his sputniks boiled up out of Trotsky’s cauldron.
As to the line from Darby to Hagee, dispensationalism was an error in and at its inception; it is now of the cusp of being a heresy. Under tort law, at least in the “brave” state of Louisiana, he who by accident of bumping a bowling ball on the rack with his elbow sets it to roll out of the establishment through a door ajar and into the street in which it causes an automobile accident in which good folk are killed is responsible for the death of the innocents none the less. So it is with Darby. He bumped the bowling ball with his Bretherenesque elbow and it is now in the street in the form of Hagee doing great harm.
At least most good Marxists hate religion, particularly in the form of Christianity, and have worked to “emancipate” us from it, wrong though they are. The Straussians among the neoncons, however, are quite willing to use the religion they despise to their own ends.
I would suggest that the leaders of “engaged” dispensationalism are willing dupes. The foot soldiers of that movement are, however, I believe oblivious to the unholy ally with whom they march, perhaps because they themselves have become unholy, confusing the god of war to which they now genuflect for the Prince of Peace.
As I have stated before on these fora, I am a Southern Baptist. This link which I provide infra does a much better job than I in articulating the sad state of affairs among my brothers and sisters “in Christ.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance117.html
10 Comment by robert reavis on 13 August 2007:
Mr. Peters,
You may be a member of the Southern Baptist denomination but you write and speak like an old Roman Catholic. The ship of Peter is taking on alot of water these days and the only reason I can think of to encourage folks like yourself to consider joining her the sinking ship is to help man the bilge pumps. If you are ever looking for work in that regard, we could sure use a fellow like you on board. Otherwise just keep posting these good comments that most Catholics won’t hear very often at their local parish. Cheers rr+
11 Comment by robert m. peters on 13 August 2007:
Mr. Reavis,
While living in Austria and in Germany – for nearly 15 years – I came to consort with Old Catholics with a capital “O.” Down here in the Red River Valley of Louisiana, I am known to run with “Papists,” counting among by best friends regular as well as secular clergy. Also within my circle of friends is a renegade Episcopalian who returned to his Anglican roots because he found one tiny fault with far too many of the Episcopal clergy – he believed in God. We know our common ground and understand the profound differences among us; yet, we enjoy one another’s company and friendship. I grew up in a non-dispensationalist Southern Baptist Church. For nineteen years of my life, I had the same pastor – Moses Eli ****. With two such given names, he was foreordained to be a preacher, minister and pastor. He walked so closely with the Christ that the peace of Christ was about him at all times, even in crises. He was without pretense and had not the air of religiosity about him. I do not think that he was really aware of the impact which he had on others. As a teenager, I used to sit in a local cafe where hunters, fishermen, loggers and trappers gathered. Into the cafe, from time to time would walk the pastor, Brother Mose, as he was called. Conversations would cease or change; not because Brother Mose was judgmental or carried a pseudo-pious air, but because he was from his heart out an humble, merciful and circumspect man. Men, rough hewn and tough, wanted him to come to their table. He knew their names; he knew their families; he listened to them. I recall one logger who used curse words about every third word, just a natural expression of his character. When Brother Mose came around, he was struck dumb, almost. There would be long gaps in his sentences as he tried to talk but also attempted to avoid spoiling the goodness which had come to sit at his table in the person of Brother Mose.
Such men have become rare, even among the clergy. Such men were once the backbone of the local and particular in which real culture was produced. They are gone, and “culture” is now produced by Madison Avenue and Hollywood – a faux culture after which and according to which we are conformed, having laid aside the transforming Christ who gives us real men like Brother Mose. It is in the name of the Christ and in honor of men like Brother Mose that I man the bilge pumps, that bilge being not only full of ship-sinking water but of unthings like Straussians and neocons.
12 Comment by John Q. Public on 13 August 2007:
ditto rr above re: rmp.
AND Heidegger gets a bum rap though. Actually he was more like the gold out of which subsequent inferior, German philosophers made their less precious metals.
“I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition.” -Martin Heidegger (my addition: ‘go Martin!!! right on.)
Quote on the subject: “For Heidegger a Volk identity is consituted through history. He interprets the Athens and Jerusalem hostility not in religious terms but as an ontological split where attachment to the soil cannot accept the uncommitted wanderer.” -A. Atzmon
ditto Sid: “Mansfield:
“the most advanced thinkers of our time, the postmoderns”
qualifying what does ‘advanced’ mean? – advance to the rear?
From A. Atzmon’s Re: Athens & Jerusalem (August 7, 2007) entire ‘little-big’ piece at: http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com
“To conclude, Levinas’s idealization of the curse of wandering, turning migration into a virtue, is already foretold in the expulsion from Eden story. It is the Jewish God who says to Adam: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake…. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of your life.” This is how the odyssey of wandering, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, the free market and the globalized economy starts. The questions that should be posed are: How did it happen that the intellectual world is totally dominated by the philosophers of Jerusalem whilst the voice of Athens is silenced? Is it the fear of Fascism that causes a forgetfulness of being? Are the blind spots of Political Correctness taking us onto a treacherous trail of darkness? I shall argue that since Marx was never blamed for Stalin’s genocides, why should Heidegger be the scapegoat for Hitler’s crimes?” (My addition ‘right on! Ariella – Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin H., can you tell me where he’s gone-?-!!?’)
13 Comment by G.S. on 13 August 2007:
I still think Novak’s review of Hitchen’s book takes the layer-cake, as a demonstration of the Rich Elite Sophists’ Mutual Admiration-Club.
14 Comment by robert m. peters on 13 August 2007:
Heidegger is to be held responsible for his own intellectual crimes!
15 Comment by John Q. Public on 13 August 2007:
what were they?
16 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 14 August 2007:
John Q: ever read ol’ Martin’s Rektoratsrede?
17 Comment by robert m. peters on 14 August 2007:
Sid Cundiff,
Yes, the Rektoratsrede is an example of the weaving of the lie into the essence of truth, the abstracting of “Blut und Boden” and making it a tool of ideology. The romanticizing of the West into its “Ur” as in some notion of primeval Greek science, scholarship and knowledge, and setting up the straw man in the form of a false dichotymy- Christianity versus modern science (as opposed to Heidegger’s romanticized Greek version) – an then “doing away” with them in order to “save” Western civilization with the “the ancient” which the mind of Heidegger claims to have preserved. This new reality is handed to the Nazis of whom Heidegger is a member as the “moral” cloak behind which unspeakable evils would be concealed. He ends his speech with at least three chants of “Heil Hitler” and remains a member of the party until the end of the war. He was an intellectual mentor of one, Leo Strauss, the irony thereof notwithstanding.
18 Comment by John Q. Public on 14 August 2007:
Let’s get [more] real. Our opponents do, they’re the ultimate ‘pragmatists’ not for improving anything least of all the common weal but for ‘winning’ in the short term or the now…which one now after the other = the ongoing present. And frankly speaking unless you wish to descend to their level, ain’t much to be done about that. It’s the old story of the relative impotence of ‘good’ before such pragmatic bad behaviour or ‘evil’, at this point in time apparently in the world. The nazis are a perfect example of taking something good then attempting its implementation by utilizing their own bad behaviour or ‘evil’. My point is let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater…which our remaining enemies have consciously sought, encouraged, to the extent possible mandated that we do – for they themselves are Not the lesser of two evils, but evil’s twin. Again, not much to be done about that…but let’s at least be clear.
As a. atzmon points out: *Heidegger was the philosopher that unveiled the latent threat enclosed within the attempt to reconcile Jerusalem with Athens.*
“An academic atmosphere dominated by those who define themselves as Jewish scholars ends with an intellectual paralysis caused by an ethical double bind. Just by adding the prefix Jewish to their title (a Jewish philosopher, a Jewish writer, a Jewish sociologist) these thinkers announce their belonging to a tribal racial blood community while simultaneously they keep propagating the ideas of cosmopolitanism, universalism and internationalism.
“I argue that the political correctness vicious apparatus spreads smoke in our eyes, blinding us from seeing the devastating impacts of these ethical oxymorons created by the endless preaching about ethics. In other words, all attempts to pacify Athens and Jerusalem emerge from the sinister holes set by political correctness. The gap between Jerusalem and Athens should be portrayed also by differentiating between national identity defined as a Volk and marked by autochthony vs. a blood community which never grows roots in a homeland (or anywhere else) and thus became the symbol for Diaspora, migration and exodus.
“For Heidegger a Volk identity is constituted through history. He interprets the Athens and Jerusalem hostility not in religious terms but as an ontological split where attachment to the soil cannot accept the uncommitted wanderer.
“Since the beginning of time, human beings were destined (as individuals, groups or tribes) to wander from one place to the other. But we should not substitute the urge for survival with the desire for dwelling. Wandering and emigration should be seen as an inevitable means for striking roots in a new dwelling, it is never an aim in itself. Heidegger and other thinkers of his time strived to portray a geo-political mind-set of German rootedness and Bodenständigkeit (the eternity of the soil). What *sounds like autochthonous supremacy can be interpreted as the link of the Volk to its homeland.* For Völkisch ideologists, a homeland is a mythical space that has its roots in the soil of the native earth, as a place for the historical unfolding of the Volk [vii]. For these neo-Hellenist thinkers, Greek autochthony was inseparable from the origins of philosophy [viii]. Setting the foundations of the Graeco-German affinity left its powerful mark upon German academic life and on intellectual elite in the early 20th century till the outbreak of WWII.
“This intellectual enterprise was *banned in the aftermath of the war as it was deemed to legitimize the Nazis’ brutal acts in the name of political exclusion.
“After 1933 Heidegger became preoccupied with the idea that ‘the true revolution’ had to come from the university. He described the university as a bureaucratic vortex that turned into an institutional centre for professional research and teaching. He sought to restore the essence of the German university and bring it back to its original spirit, which had been lost. Only by returning to its origin in archaic Greek thinking could the crisis of the West be resolved. He was close to saving academic thought from its paralyzed condition, and would have done so, if only the Nazis had not diverted it away for many years afterward…*
“… Hence in the battle between Athens and Jerusalem, the present day presents us with a definite victory of Jerusalem. We can realize how in the realm of philosophy and cultural studies ‘völkisch’ aspects as distinct from nationalism are overwhelmingly *violently* dismissed. Their stress on the affinity with the Greeks as bound to the spiritual aversion to Jerusalem is eliminated from the academic discourse. In fact, cosmopolitanism and internationalism as promoted by Jerusalem philosophers from left to right (Marxist, Neo-Marxists, Frankfurt School and critical studies, to Husserlian Phenomenology and constructivism, up to Leo Strauss’s universal monism echoed by American and British Neo-Cons), are triumphant beyond any doubt. *Secular Jewish intellectuals are outsiders looking in not only as Jews among non-Jews, but also as people alienated from their own Jewish culture. This explains their success in portraying modern alienation and initiating radical paradigms of post-modernity, constructivism and critical studies. After inventing internationalism they are the advocates of globalization cosmopolitanism and a boundless free economy.*
(end quote) read complete article of august 7, 2007 if you wish at http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com
What you don’t ‘get’ necessarily is that there is a rhizome or an essence of the truth in what Heidegger was able to isolate or bottle, so to speak, which the nazis abused, or misused going as usual the ‘other’ way. What our opponents have done since then, is Not to use that ’secret’ for they are philosophically Opposed to it – but rather to adopt most of the rotten tactics of the nazis i.e. nazi lite – which they find useful in implementing their vapid, worthless agenda from which you all/we all also recoil.
We are all to some extent of course the pawns of our age – you demonize Heidegger – heil, heil, heil – so what-?- Who are the nazis not ‘then’ rather today. Wipe the clouds from your eyes. Heidegger was just Heidegger. Sid, no I haven’t read yet martin’s rektoratsrede but where are your approximately balanced recommendations to read of his that which is of genius & truth. In case you have not noticed modernity’s and post-modernity’s recent ‘other’ way of today has led directly back to the concentration camp. “Heil?” !
19 Comment by Jeff Anderson on 14 August 2007:
As a resident of the DFW metroplex, let me offer one defense for the wayward masses here in North Texas…Hagee is actually located in San Antonio.
I sometimes tell my students it is a little sad that we consider our current crop of secularists to be scholarly and skilled in language. Our bad guys aren’t that good at being bad guys…we’ve just fallen in our ability to offer contrast. Would that the other side could rise to the degeneracy of Voltaire et al. Then we would have to be better at being faithful in our Christianity and discourse.
20 Comment by Red Phillips on 14 August 2007:
After the first few paragraphs the Mansfield article degenerates into indecipherable gibberish? What exactly is he saying or not saying? I guess the indecipherable gibberish is what makes him a true disciple of Strauss. (Am I correct that Mansfield is the chief thinker of the East Coast Straussians? So he is the Jaffa of the East.)
But I think he is at least partially right when he says this: “Atheism isn’t what it was in the eighteenth century. Now, the focus of the attack is not the Church, which is no longer dominant, but religion itself. The disdain one used to hear for ‘organized religion’ extends now to the individual believer’s faith. . . . To reduce the influence of religion, it is [now] politically necessary to attack it in the private sphere as well as in the public square.”
That actually rings true to me. I have watched Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Hitchens on Book TV, and all are contemptuous of average believers.
BTW, Hagee is not your run-of-the-mill dispensationalist. I hope the people reading this realize that. All dispensationalists believe that Israel and the Church are distinct. Israel did not morph into the Church or otherwise go away after Christ. But most dispensationalists do not believe there is a current separate dispensation for Jews today. Hagee believes in a “dual covenant” theory. Meaning he believes the Old Covenant is still operational for Jews today. He believes Jews can be “saved,” to use evangelical terminology, outside of Christ. He has discouraged attempts to evangelize modern Jews. This is why he is so comparatively pro-Israel, and this is why Jewish leaders love him so much.
But his view is considered borderline heretical if not outright heretical by most orthodox (small o) evangelical scholars. (People on here throw around the word heresy a lot, but this would be potentially heretical because it deals with the fundamental issue of salvation.) The keepers of evangelical orthodoxy, such as the Christian Research Institute (the Bible Answer Man), have long denounced Hagee.
So while Hagee may be the favorite whipping boy of the anti-dispensationalist, remember he is not typical.
21 Comment by Frantz I Korfhage on 14 August 2007:
What is the best written argument for the existance of God? I want a concise apologetic that I can use when addressing the issue with my co-workers and co-horts. Who has written the best defense against the likes of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens? This thread is over-abundant with deep-thinkers – help me out.
22 Comment by G.S. on 14 August 2007:
Mr. Korfhage: The existence of a rational mind, spirit, or harmony as the foundation of the Universe is the assumption upon which all follow-on reasoning & argument depends.
If existence is founded upon an absurd chaotic Nothing as Dawkins & Hitchens believe, and there is naught but impersonal brute force governing the Cosmos, then there is no point in our talking at all — if by “talking” we mean an effort to uncover any sort of meaning imbeded in reality.
But if existence is founded upon Something, then we can all move on to wondering about what (or Who) that Something is.
So the question is one of how much faith you have that the existence you inhabit has meaning. The hypocrisy of atheists of the Dawkins sort is that they attempt to have it both ways — get on high-horses about moral issues while simultaneously denying the possibility of a meaningful morality.
I used to really be hostile toward Straussians, but now I don’t give them enough thought to get too worked up about them. They’re not as different from other modern thinkers as they’d like to believe.
It’s the Dan Brown phenomenon, everybody from the Straussian from the flaky leftist tends to view texts as a secret-code which the enlightened intellectual might decipher and thus achieve Gnostic godhood — rather than as a means by which a writer might commune, across Time, with a reader.
23 Comment by Bill Wilder on 14 August 2007:
I’m no dispensationalist (indeed, far from it), but Dr. Phillips is correct that, while it is easy to use the term “dispensationalist” (like “premillenialist”), there are so many strains of thought (and most unknown to popular media) as to defy the stereotyping that is common. And Hagee is considered a heretic for much more than his peculiar brand of dispensationalism.
GS raises a point that I have found puzzling of the atheist mind. How is it reasonable to assume a rational, reasoning mind can arise from the randomness inherent in evolutionary/atheistic theory? I suppose they claim that evolution is, despite appearances, ordered and so naturally evolved into a rational mind. It is like the faux rationalism which assumes homosexuality is “biological” in origin. A little too neat an explanation, I think.
24 Comment by John Q. Public on 15 August 2007:
“What is the best written argument for the existance of God? I want a concise apologetic that I can use when addressing the issue with my co-workers and co-horts. Who has written the best defense against the likes of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens? This thread is over-abundant with deep-thinkers – help me out.” -Franz I. Korfhage
The Privacy issue – the UNKNOWABLE cannot be known from our side of the equation by an act of our will. Otherwise everyone other than being booted out of heaven would be able to storm back in.
THUS as to whether or not the UNKNOWABLE exists is a matter of faith or BELIEF either way. You either choose to have faith and BELIEVE there is an inceptionary or original force – a supernatural existence beyond the totality of this world, in addition to all that is Here – OR conversely you choose to have faith and BELIEVE that everything Here in the microcosmic and the macrocosmic and all things inbetween = the Totality, is ALL there is.
Either way you have no choice in the matter but to have to BELIEVE one way or the other. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens – they are adolescents who want to convince themselves and anyone who will listen or ‘buy’ their jive that THEY can know the UNKNOWABLE. In this matter they are silly people who don’t ‘get’ that if they don’t know their own limitations they have ONE more. And that one more they’d also like to dump on you. But so are the people (adolescents of all ages as well) who want to tell you ‘faith’ means they Know the UNKNOWABLE (if they could – there would be no such word as ‘faith’ – no need for it) and they too have in common with the other crew they would like you to ‘buy’ their jive and dump that one more limitation of theirs on you. Ever watch the televangeli$ts?
I suspect there is an inceptionary force involved with This dimensional creation that got so to speak, the ball rolling…and that the totality itself is not merely a perpetual motion machine. There’s no such thing as nothing, ‘nothing’ doesn’t exist – it’s just a concept like the concept of zero. So we KNOW we and the totality exist because that’s KNOWABLE… we do Not know that there is also an original supernatural force involved with This creation… that is a matter of Faith. Whether you believe it or you don’t BELIEVE that, either way it’s the human condition to have to believe one thing or another most of the time. Faith or having to believe one thing or another is mankind’s primary hereditament. That’s scary to most people including scientists who want to ignore it.
_____
25 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 16 August 2007:
To Mr. Korfhage :
What I do is to ponder things such as A) stigmata (Padre Pio being the most recent example I can think of [he died in 1968]); B) bodies of saints that do not become corrupt (there are nearly a hundred probably); C) visions such as Fatima (witnessed by 70,000 people, some of whom were atheists, and yet they admitted they saw the sun dance!); D) Eucharistic miracles whereby Consecrated Hosts become human flesh and wine human blood (both were type AB) — you can see the results for yourself by studying the Miracle of Lanciano (the relics are on display in Lanciano, Italy).
Now in my opinion, a person who knows these true events, events that scientists admit do not show any sign of fraud or deception; and this person still cannot entertain the idea that there may be a transcendant deity, is beyond the point where anything other than prayer, or the personal experience of a similar miracle, can help him.
I realize this may not be what you are looking for, but this is the best way I can “help [you] out.”
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27 Comment by Klee on 2 March 2008:
“What is the best written argument for the existance of God? I want a concise apologetic that I can use when addressing the issue with my co-workers and co-horts. Who has written the best defense against the likes of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens? This thread is over-abundant with deep-thinkers – help me out.”
Korfhage,
You obviously show that yourself are a not particularly “deep-thinker.” But you do impress me by being the first person I’ve ever came across who goes on the internet in order to beg other people to come up with an argument for you to regurgitate, in your pathetic attempt at saving face in a debate you yourself were too stupid to win. If I were religious I would say shame on you: you confirm the worst caricature of the mindless religious parrot.