The Classics and the Moderns

Description: Plato and Aristotle take on Leo Strauss.

Question: What inspires you?

Transcript: What most inspires me is Plato and Aristotle I have to say, and the notion of the possibility of returning to their thought. They were classical philosophers, classical political philosophers.  Classical means “original”.  And it also means “best”.  Those two somehow go together.  The original is best because philosophy and political philosophy after Plato and Aristotle become more academic . . . more covered over with received opinion, with schools of thought.  But if you go back to Plato and Aristotle, you’ll see philosophy as it was getting going.  And as it was getting going, it somehow got to be better than it’s ever been since.

Question: What modern philosophers inspire your work?

Transcript: Oh I’m certainly a Straussian.  I have to plead guilty to that.  This happened to me when I was an undergraduate and just getting started as a graduate student – about 1953.  That was the year that Strauss brought out his book “Natural Right and History”, which I read and was overwhelmed by.  Later on I met Strauss and he was by far the most intelligent human being I’ve ever encountered.  And that impressed me.  And I think that he’s right on the substance.  He made two great points in his thinking.  The first, the difference between the moderns and the ancients.  And the second was the discovery . . . or the rediscovery of esoteric thinking – that all philosophers speak to each other on one level and to their own times on another level.  So you will always have to read between the lines to see . . . to try to see what a philosopher is saying to other philosophers at his level of competence as opposed to – but also as connected to – what he’s saying to the people of his time.

Question: What is the difference between the moderns and the ancients?

Transcript: The ancients began political philosophy.  And they thought that political philosophy was essentially centered on the best regime.  That would be the best regime of the common good that we spoke of earlier.  The best regime, however, is not necessarily actual or even possible.  In fact it’s utopian.  It either is very unlikely or impossible to take place.  But still it’s the guiding light for the understanding of politics.  The moderns accepted the idea of political philosophy – that this is a necessary subject, perhaps even a crucial subject for a philosopher.  But they disagreed on the best regime.  They wanted the best regime that was actual.  And if it’s actual, then the philosopher becomes a kind of revolutionary.  So the modern political philosophers – even those like say John Locke – who look rather conservative to us today were all fundamentally revolutionaries.

Recorded on: 6/13/07