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State University of New York Press - Svetozar Y. Minkov

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144 pages

English

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Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, Leo Strauss on Science brings to light the thoughts of Leo Strauss on the problem of science. Introducing us to Strauss's reflections on the meaning and perplexities of the scientific adventure, Svetozar Y. Minkov explores questions such as: Is there a human wisdom independent of science? What is the relation between poetry and mathematics, or between self-knowledge and theoretical physics? And how necessary is it for the human species to exist immutably in order for the classical analysis of human life to be correct? In pursuing these questions, Minkov aims to change the conversation about Strauss, one of the great thinkers of the past century.
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Relation between Political Philosophy and Natural Science

Part I. Political and Psychological Preconditions for Recovering Socratic Science

1. The Rediscovery of Socratic Dialectic: Strauss on Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political

2. The “Fundamental Political Predicament”: Strauss on Plato’s Laws, Book III

Part II. The Origin and Nature of Philosophy

3. The Natural Frame of Reference and the Possibility of a Comprehensive Science

4. Natural Right and History (ch. 3) on the Origin and Nature of Philosophy

Part III. Divine Revelation and the Possibility of Science

5. Strauss’s Introduction to “Platonic Studies” in Modern Times

6. Revelation and the Problem of Knowledge

Part IV. The Foundations and Directions of Modern Philosophy and Science

7. Science and Politics in Strauss’s Course on Natural Right (1962)

8. “An Irony Beyond Machiavelli’s Irony”: A Reading of the Concluding Six Paragraphs of Thoughts on Machiavelli

Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Philosophie générale

Philosophie

Philosophy of science

History of philosophy

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	23 novembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438463131
Langue	English

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Leo Strauss on Science
SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss

Kenneth Hart Green, editor
Leo Strauss on Science
Thoughts on the Relation between Natural Science and Political Philosophy
SVETOZAR Y. MINKOV
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Minkov, Svetozar Y., 1975– author.
Title: Leo Strauss on science : thoughts on the relation between natural science and political philosophy / Svetozar Y. Minkov.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series:SUNY series in the thought and legacy of Leo Strauss | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016009116 (print) | LCCN 2016031747 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463117 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463131 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Strauss, Leo. | Natural history. | Political science—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC B945.S84 M48 2016 (print) | LCC B945.S84 (ebook) | DDC 181/.06—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009116
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
… Philosophy as improvement of the soul is not a partial pursuit—as it would seem to be if it had been understood only as medicine of the mind—because the soul, the human soul, while being a part of the whole is yet in a way the whole.
—Session 15 of Strauss’s course on Plato’s Gorgias , March 10, 1957
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Relation between Political Philosophy and Natural Science
P ART I
P OLITICAL AND P SYCHOLOGICAL P RECONDITIONS FOR R ECOVERING S OCRATIC S CIENCE
1. The Rediscovery of Socratic Dialectic: Strauss on Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political
2. The “Fundamental Political Predicament”: Strauss on Plato’s Laws , Book III
P ART II
T HE O RIGIN AND N ATURE OF P HILOSOPHY
3. The Natural Frame of Reference and the Possibility of a Comprehensive Science
4. Natural Right and History (ch. 3) on the Origin and Nature of Philosophy
P ART III
D IVINE R EVELATION AND THE P OSSIBILITY OF S CIENCE
5. Strauss’s Introduction to “Platonic Studies” in Modern Times
6. Revelation and the Problem of Knowledge
P ART IV
T HE F OUNDATIONS AND D IRECTIONS OF M ODERN P HILOSOPHY AND S CIENCE
7. Science and Politics in Strauss’s Course on Natural Right (1962)
8. “An Irony Beyond Machiavelli’s Irony”: A Reading of the Concluding Six Paragraphs of Thoughts on Machiavelli
Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Strauss’s Apparent Silence on Science
Even though modern science has enormous practical and intellectual power, not every great modern thinker discusses it or its presuppositions. But as I argue in this study, Leo Strauss, contrary to first appearances, did. While it is understandable that Strauss is not known as a thinker who focused on modern natural science, a survey of his published and unpublished works shows a persistent concern with the philosophical preconditions of science, “even in the narrow sense of the term.” To uncover and interpret the views on science by one of the great thinkers of the last century—to let that thinker speak about the character of modern science, about the presuppositions of science as such, about the relation between human life, human nature, and the universe—is the aim of this book. I hope that work on Strauss’s understanding of science, of which my book can only be a small fragment, may stimulate to a rethinking of natural science, political philosophy, and their relation—a rethinking similar in richness, if not in substance, to that initiated by Nietzsche’s, Husserl’s, and Heidegger’s reflections on science. 1
Strauss studied modern natural science seriously in some respects and less seriously in others. He studied it not in its specialized details, as would a modern physicist, but in its fundamental premises, or as a philosopher would and as a modern physicist might not. He studied as well its implications for human life, as a social scientist should. Even if there was little chance that Strauss would write a new equation regarding the behavior of protons, there is every reason to expect that we can learn from him how to begin to assess the science that has so shaped the way we moderns seek the truth and the way we live our lives. Can the new science, for example, boast an absolute understanding of the natural world, or does it rest on hypotheses 2 that are beyond its purview? Can it prove that miracles—and a God of miracles—are impossible, or does it rest on the assumption that they are impossible? Surely the project associated with modern natural science has helped make our lives longer and more comfortable, but how should we rank these contributions as compared to other human aspirations, and how, should we weigh these contributions against the increasingly obvious risks that accompany them? Finally, if we assume or know that the science introduced by Bacon, Descartes, and Newton is the correct one for studying nature, how should we study human beings? On these questions, which are as much questions of modern science as questions about it, Strauss has much to offer.
Strauss made the most sustained and profound case in recent centuries for the return to the notion of philosophy as the attempt to acquire knowledge of the whole 3 and yet, perhaps paradoxically, he did not leave much of a legacy by way of interpretations of Newton or Einstein, or Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides . 4 He wrote a commentary on Plato’s Laws and on its political-philosophic prequel the Minos , but not on the cosmological sequel, the Epinomis . 5 But it is implausible to suggest that Strauss’s lack of overt attention to the classics of modern science or its latest achievements was due to a deficiency in intellectual power, though he did playfully call his friend Peter von Blanckenhagen a “mechanical genius” for successfully switching off a fan. 6 One can mention, for example, that Strauss taught a private seminar on Hegel’s Science of Logic and on Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics? , the rigorous severity of which is testified to by Harry Jaffa and Victor Gourevitch. 7 And even if Strauss’s occasional statements that he is a mere scholar, and not a philosopher, are to be taken seriously, this still does not explain why Strauss did not point more directly to the greatest scientists—nor to the greatest metaphysicians. Why might this be?
One reason may be that Strauss did not regard modern science as wise or even as in pursuit of wisdom. Science “has acquired supremacy” and “is the only authority in our age of which one can say that it enjoys universal recognition.” Yet this “science has no longer any essential connection with wisdom. It is a mere accident if a scientist, even a great scientist, happens to be a wise man politically or privately” (LAM 20). Therefore, “[a]s matters stand, we can expect more immediate help from the humanities rightly understood than from the sciences, from the spirit of perceptivity and delicacy than from the spirit of geometry” (LAM 24). But perhaps there is a more prosaic explanation. One could wonder whether Strauss and his life-long friend Jacob Klein had a kind of division of labor between them: Strauss would do the history of political philosophy and Klein would do the history of natural science. 8 Yet Strauss seems to have disagreed with Klein about the true foundations of modernity: not Vieta or Descartes, but Machiavelli was the ultimate founder of modern philosophy. 9 Certainly, if Strauss studied carefully the founding and the foundations of modern philosophy, may not one say that Strauss did study modern science in its deepest foundations? As one looks a little more closely at Strauss’s biography, one notes that while at the New School, Strauss taught consistently courses on the foundations of modern science, as well as more scientific and metaphysical topics: Hobbes’s and Descartes writing on science, Hume, Kant, 10 not to mention courses on Aristotle’s cosmological psychology in De Anima and Plato’s ontological epistemology in the Theaetetus . 11 (It is then not surprising that two of Strauss’s students from the New School, Richard Kennington and Howard White, studied intensively the founding and the foundations of modern science, Bacon, and Descartes. 12 ) Moreover, while Strauss does not discuss modern science in its technical details, one could characterize much of his work as an engagement with modern social science, which is the attempted application of modern natural science to the human things. He showed that this application was unsuccessful. This is of course not enough of an argument since the application of modern science to the human things may have been a misapplication. But Strauss also had as one of his “specialties” the fundamental moral and metaphysical premises of modern science. He understood the deepest premises of Newton (and hence of Einstein) through a study of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In addition, he studied Einstein and Infeld on their own terms and identified the source of their fatal wavering between the belief that they were unlocking the secrets of the universe and their modest view that they were merely constructing some heuristic mechanisms. 13 Perhaps, then, one can make a good case that Strauss saw the foundations, and perplexities, of moder