What Is Political Philosophy?

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0:00 The first question uh the main question what is political philosophy? So the title of this essay and the title of this book um and what we're starting with talking about today is um this idea that I thought was really interesting. So I'll read the quote then I'll say a little bit about it and then pass it over to Michael. Um so from the uh second page of the book page 10 um all political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve we wish to prevent a change to the worse. When desiring to change we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better and worse. But thought of better or worse implies thought of the good. The awareness of the good which guides all our actions has a character of opinion. It is no longer questioned but on reflection it proves to be questionable. The very fact that we can question it directs us towards such a thought of the good as is no longer questionable towards a thought which is

1:06 no longer opinion but knowledge. All political action has then in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good of the good life or the good society. For the good society, it is a complete political good. If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges. So I I thought that this quote was really interesting where it's not like polit political philosophy is some esoteric topic that people are just studying at university. It's almost that this idea of the good is embedded in implicitly in all of our political actions. So even if we don't try to bring this to our minds of like what is the good, what is a good political order, when we try to change a law, we implicitly have that idea. So um I guess your first question is is that an accurate representation of what Strauss means and this like centrality of political philosophy? Yeah. So I would

2:06 say that that is a a very beautifully crafted statement about the nature of political philosophy and I think that you should ask yourselves isn't it true at each stage of his elaboration. In other words, isn't it true that political action aims at preservation or change? you know, we need to continue doing things the way that we're doing in this area or we need to change them. That's pretty standard. And you could imagine the forces that are at work for preservation and the forces that are at work for change in any given issue area. And it does seem to be the case that behind your desire to preserve something or change it is an evaluation of it. You're going to change it for the better or you're going to keep it from getting worse. So, I find that to be pretty um indisputable. You have to see for yourselves whether you agree. And then the idea that better or worse is against the standard of the good. That's probably slightly less obvious. Although if you state it to people, maybe it is like, yeah, I guess so, right? I don't know whether I'm, you know, I don't know whether I'm going in the in the right direction unless I know what my destination is. So, so far so good. But really, the deep insight in Strauss's formulation here is that because all of

3:13 our political action is guided by a notion of the good. And that notion of the good has the character of opinion. It's in principle questionable. And now that's something that again may seem trivial, may seem obvious, may seem self-evident or not. It could come as a complete, I think, shock or surprise once you begin to reflect on it in some cases. And you guys are for the most part, as I understand, already engaged in the study of fundamental texts around the problems of political life, the American founding and so on. So you know that there are these deep issues at stake. And um I'm just checking is there something about the volume that you can or can't hear just to make sure. Um okay good. So, so the the idea that reflection on the nature of the good itself could actually uh could actually command our full attention and that that represents a kind of a different orientation in the world, a different way of thinking, a different way of living, a different final goal. So, for example, it's not

4:15 self-evidently equivalent to patriotism because patriotism may say that the original way that we do it here is is the best way, you know, but of course the best way in the eyes of political philosophy demands sort of an account or a reflection against the alternative ways. So, those of you who read Strauss's essay, one of the beautiful things about it that kind of dramatically brings out this tension as opposed to just stating it in an argument uh form is that Strauss happens to be speaking in Jerusalem. And throughout the course of his essay, he indicates the fact that in the biblical tradition, you don't first and foremost have this inquiry into the nature of good. You first and foremost have a law that lays down for you the nature of the good. Within the study of that law, there are of course schools of interpretation. But the schools of interpretation are guided by the law. The law is the central point of reference. And there's a long-standing contrast in Strauss's work. Not

5:20 necessarily a uh how could you put it? an exclusion full there is not that these two things fully exclude another but how exactly they're related is a very interesting question for Strauss between philosophy and law between the life that inquires into the nature of the good through unassisted human reason and the life that is based on obedience to ultimately divine revelation because law in the most profound cases is a divine law uh I believe that he mentions that um in the reading that some of you did or in the reading that was suggested for today so political ical philosophy you should also know I think like a take-home message for Strauss is that there are some thinkers who try to elevate a concept or a notion to their center it's like a keyword that unlocks the center of their project and it is the case for Strauss that political philosophy is that keyword and therefore you see that in this essay he's at pains to distinguish it from all the things that you might sort of collapse it into political science,

6:26 political theory, sociology, social theory. He has to be very clear that this is not all those other things that you think it might be. It has its own proper character. And Strauss elevates political philosophy as a term in the titles of several of his books. Okay, here very conspicuously you have the Socratic formulation. What is, right? What is courage? What is justice? What is beauty? And Strauss very aware of the Socratic formulation only in two instances uses it as a title. This book what is political philosophy and an essay what is liberal education? Um education being a core notion for Strauss and somehow philosophy culminating in uh in education. So um those are the preliminary reflections you should know again political philosophy is a key theme for Strauss. It's not just like Nick said it's not it's not just an academic topic. It's not one among a number of other themes. It's like for Strauss, if you can uh meditate so to speak on the nature of what political philosophy is with the help of his

7:27 exposition, you will have privileged insight into the nature of political and human life. And if you lack the specific perspective offered by political philosophy, you will have an impoverished perspective on the nature of human and political life. And therefore we want to take stress claim very very seriously because presumably we do not want to be left with an impoverished view of human and political life. I I have a question. So this idea of the good h has come up and it's like you know a fundamental tenant of of this idea that we're exploring. How have certain civilizations endeavored to define or pursue that? Uh yes there are complexities here. I don't want to get into them right away although they are uh they are important for understanding Strauss's perspective. So if we just stick to the essay for a moment we stick within the western world. So we're not going to go yet into uh exotica or into the foreign we're going to stay within the trajectory of the west. So for Strauss there are really two fundamental

8:27 roots. The two fundamental roots are Greek philosophy and the Bible. Each of which have some answer on what is good, how should the human being live, and how should political societies be organized, what should we strive for, what is our end, in other words, our fulfillment, our tilos. And so in the original, you know, the classical solution as Strauss outlines in the essay has something to do with the perfection of man's nature with an orientation towards human virtue and you know the culmination of that in wisdom but also in political prudence, justice, moderation, courage and um what Strauss is interested to show is how that has shifted over the course of the history of western civilization or over the course of the history of the So that for instance at some point what becomes good is avoiding death. That's very different. You know the idea that what's good is to survive comfortably

9:27 for as long as you can is different from the view that what's good is to die a noble death and that what's horrible is to run away from a noble death like a coward even though it allows you to live longer. So that's a fundamental dispute over the nature of how a person should live and over what defines the essence of not only humanity but of the good human being and of the good citizen. So one of the nice things about Strauss's essay and one of the nicest things one of the nice things about Strauss's thought in general is that within our tradition at least it provides a series of phases each of which answers this question in a different but related way. So in Strauss's view the answer that the good is you know a secure existence. First of all, the beautiful thing is that he provides the arguments around this whether in the case of Machavelli Hobs lock or Rouso, but he also shows how they're related to the Platonic and the Aeristilian answer and how each one of them is slightly different, you know. So maybe a good is the accumulation of private property. Maybe the good is the poetic life of the sentiment of existence. Maybe the good is to be a

10:31 great states. Maybe only the very few people can truly realize what it is to be a good human being because what it requires is not available to everybody else. And on the flip side of that, as those of you who read the essay saw and those of you who will read it will see. Um if you think that the you know if suddenly you believe that the good should be universally available to everybody, then this gives you a new task. For example, the democratization of access to education, a question that implies certain developments in technology and certain overcoming of scarcity and the like. So there are these different answers. Now Strauss about non-western civilizations, he has said we need to take everything seriously. It's very possible that there are absolutely brilliant thinkers in these other places that we don't know about. But we have the following limitations. Number one, to seriously study the books of other civilizations in the best case scenario means to learn their languages. And not everybody does that, can do that, has the time to do that. Plus there are many resources within our own civilization that require

11:32 our full attention and hard work. So you know Strauss himself um encouraged as often as possible that people study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic. You know that's a lifetime of work right there uh independently of having to learn Sanskrit and anything else like that. So he himself was not opposed to the study of other civilizations but took so seriously the task of the study of the west that he thought to do that well is is really a lifetime's work um in itself. But these different notions again this the simplest tensions in a way over Strauss's work if we were to just get those um kind of like the moments of the greatest tension. So the ancients and the moderns for him have two different attitudes towards the nature of political life and human life. You could say that in a in a word you know the goal of the ancients is virtue. In a word the goal of the moderns is freedom. And virtue and freedom may not be compatible. uh the political regimes that they require may not be compatible, the things that they sanction and um and

12:32 don't sanction may not be compatible and so on. So that's a very fundamental one. And then within the ancient world to repeat uh the Greek philosophy model and the biblical science or the Bible model, those are also two two different things that aren't necessarily easily reconcilable even if they have a lot in common. And uh I would also say for those of you who are interested in this that Strauss does differentiate let's say between Plato and Aristotle between Aristotle and the Stoics you know between these things but as I said the simplest version of the tension ancient and modern and then within that you start to get certain divisions within modernity you have maki valley hobs lock rouso na um within the classics you have those different phases but in all cases Strauss is very interested to see what their most thoughtful thinkers had to say about what what Strauss regards as the fundamental questions of human and political life. Now I do want to say something here very quickly which is that um Strauss did not just posit that there are fundamental questions that recur in every place and at every time because in the essay one of the

13:38 things he says is that political philosophy today has fallen into whatever he said decay or putrifaction and it's at you know it's just about disappeared. So that too by the way is very not obvious. So we said political philosophy is reflection on the nature of the good which normally has the character of opinion but which can become questionable. Okay. I also said political philosophy is a central project for Strauss. It's a key word. It's kind of like a um it's kind of like an abracadabra for understanding or an open sesame for understanding the nature of Strauss's concerns. But the idea that political philosophy is like the most important thing and it has practically disappeared from the world that that again is like that tells you that there is in Strauss's view a serious crisis and many of the things that we're worried about crisis of higher education crisis of masculinity okay crisis of political competence crisis of legitimacy it may be that all of these crises or many of these crises are related to the disappearance of political philosophy in our time and therefore Strauss's evalu valuation of the nature of that disappearance is very important. So, you know, he said not to um um not to have this response go on

14:42 for too long, but he discusses that positivism, this idea that we only have access to facts, facts need to be distinguished from values. So, I can't scientifically see courage in the laboratory. So, therefore, I can't really talk about courage as a scientist. I can only say, you know, stimulus response, but I can't provide the evaluation. Or historicism, which says, look, you know, this has been popular, especially under the last regime. Now, we do it here like this, they do it there like that. There's no standard, right? They're just these different different cultural ways. So, Strauss made another very beautiful argument in another writing which is the which is the following. I'll state it quickly okay so that we can discuss more. He said and this relates to the question the following way. He said look we may want to know what other civilizations thought and we may want to know what other societies thought but strictly speaking we have a bit of a problem which is that we want to know how they thought about themselves. We don't just want to impose ourselves on them. We want to discover them as they are. Here's the difficulty though. When we treat them as civilizations or when we treat them as societies, we're using

15:43 an interpretive framework that for all we know is completely foreign to them. So, we want to discover their interpretive framework. And the only way to do that really is by studying their books carefully. Okay? And what he says, again, this we can discuss any part of this argument if you want or omit it, but here's the insight. Strauss says the more you seriously study the thoughtful works across time and space of those people who reflected on the human condition, the human situation, the more you will discover the permanence of the underlying fundamental questions. How should society be ordered? Are there or are there not gods? If there is a god, does he care or not care about human life? What's the nature between our an between the ancestral and the good? Is everything old or automatically better? What about the relationship between innovation and tradition? So all of these questions he says they arrive the their fundamental character besides we may just think like they're fundamental for us but their fundamental character

16:44 somehow for humanity as such is discovered through a serious study of the key sources of the key books of the key writings provided you read them seriously and not just you know through a bad translation and a secondhand interpretation that hasn't actually um encountered the intention of the writing. Uh so that's what I would say about that within the west many answers to the question of the good but they they fundamentally as as I say if we need a simp simplest possible formulation uh virtue for the classics freedom for the moderns all kinds of tension that arises from those different answers and um a loyal obedience to the god is always a a recurring possibility. something that was discussed uh with the use of the Bible there there's also seems to be a complete lack of um I don't know superstition's a bad word but maybe metaphysics within Strauss and I was curious where that where that tie

17:46 comes in and and is that not a way that we complete you know our human experience with that um yeah let me just say one thing quickly about the previous one because I mentioned, you know, virtue, freedom, and so on. Even in the political realm, you know, should we be organized as a monarchy, as a republic, as a democracy, as an aristocracy, as a tyranny, you know, when is it when when is it proper for a regime to be overthrown? Okay, all of those kinds of things. So, I I talked about sort of, you know, virtue freedom at a general level, but the specific organization of institutions in regimes, those are also pretty basic questions. So, on the metaphysics side, okay, superstition, let me tell you how Strauss would begin to think about superstition, then I'll say about metaphysics. So something I learned from Strauss that was extremely powerful. This is in in a book of his called Philosophy and Law was where I first encountered it. He says in the book Philosophy and Law that he wants to um reawaken a prejudice in favor of the preoderns or in favor of the of the medieval thinkers. Okay, reawaken a prejudice. That sounds like a weird thing to want to do in a book. I want to reawaken a prejudice for the medieval

18:50 thinkers or for the ancient thinkers. What does he say? He says that we live so much under the dominant victory of modernity of the modern political philosophers of the modern thinkers that we don't even see the extent to which what they said was a reply to the world that preceded them. Okay, to the ancients to the classics to the um medievals to the preoderns. And he says one of the things that the modern thinkers did as sort of a propaganda victory was that they labeled all kinds of religious beliefs as superstition. So in other words, I would put it this way. Uh again, there's there's many details to this argument in many stages, so I want to I want to just cut cut to the chase as often as possible. In a way, Strauss would say, hey, even thinking in terms of superstition is already thinking in too much of a modern way. Now you might normally reply to that let's say in other contexts right before I'd ever read Strauss how might I reply to that can say oh what so you want me to like imagine that you know trees can talk and you know that like I just going to go I'm going to go look at a stone

19:54 and it's going to communicate with my soul like what do you mean right you want me to abandon all rationality no that's not what Strauss means Strauss's view is that certain terms reflect a propaganda victory of modern political philosophers over their most thoughtful most serious and still viable medieval alternatives. Now, it's very important this still viable part because Strauss's view is that the modern thinkers and modern we don't just mean here those who happen to be contemporary. He means those who deliberately laid down the pattern for breaking with antiquity and medieval thought to inaugurate a new political and human project. So, it's a deliberate act of the political philosophers that he has in mind. um they did never refute in Strauss's view the model that they rejected. They just scorned it into oblivion. So about superstition it becomes a big question and the the sort of the Straussian spirit of it is hey let's try to get back to that moment where there was a break between the moderns and the

20:55 medievals and see if we can make sense of what was even called superstition what was even called prejudice what was the attitude taken towards religion why did scientific rationality get the upper hand in the way that it did were there any arguments on the side of the people that we have now relegated to the dustpin of history and were those arguments actually valid and that is like Stout. This is an example of how Strauss can enrich any sort of uh legitimate interest because before you know it, you're reading about Spinosza's response to mymonities about the nature of imagination and revelation. And it's not obvious how you'd go from, you know, superstition to a medieval debate over the nature of imagination and revelation. But it's it's not arbitrary. It's not trivial. It's the most serious version of the kind of interest that's behind our first formulation of the questions. So that's on superstition. So it's true that Strauss doesn't have what we would call quoteunquote superstition, but Strauss has a very deep and thoughtful analysis of the nature of belief, of God, of revelation, of the souls, of the possibility of quote

21:57 unquote higher experiences. Uh I will say now zooming out, okay, I made my case in favor of Stro's formulation of these questions. I will say zooming out that um in a simplified statement all things considered Strauss does tend to be a rationalist although he's not a modern rationalist I think his model is preodern rationalism and even to know what that means we need Strauss's help okay to understand what's the difference between modern and premodern rationalism there are other thinkers who are worth studying who are slightly more mystical let's say whose interest is in like uh peak human experiences that are not first and foremost rational uh and you know who write about that in their own way and whose criticism of modernity includes something like that uh but that's you know Strauss is true does not quite go there he does talk about um he does talk as I say about revelation about God the gods and about the soul and he has to because in classical political philosophy you are automatically directed to those questions when you

22:58 read the books Plato's laws says that politics is the art of caring for souls Aristotle, you start reading Aristotle, he has a work, very important work for the history of Western thought and an important work in itself called on the soul. The soul is the most wonderful thing to try to understand, you know, and so you're you're inevitably directed to topics like that, but again, they're a little bit different from uh like oult esotericism or spiritualism or like Swedenborgian mysticism and stuff like that. Okay. Now on the metaphysics side, this also a very important question. Strauss is not non-metaphysical. So I got the sense from your question that there that maybe Strauss is non-metaphysical or there's a lack of metaphysics. If you want, you could clarify so my answer could be even more on point. Is that approximately what uh I saw it as more against superstition than against metaphysics? And it may maybe metaphysics fits in the gap that he kind of leaves open. Yeah. So that's fair to say in some way that metaphysics feels like that because look here we're directed back to what we said at the beginning about political

24:03 philosophy. So political philosophy in the first presentation starts with the political which is familiar to us as Strauss himself says everybody has some opinion about police courts taxes right like you don't need to have any exposure to philosophy to Aristotle Socrates you know Plato in order to have an opinion about politics laws police taxes militaries and all the rest of it those of you who are online maybe today you were keeping up with Elon Musk versus Donald Trump. You don't have to be a political philosopher to enjoy that fight and to take a position on it and to comment on it and all the rest of it. So, uh, politics is like a starting point that we all have in common. Okay. Metaphysics is an inquiry that is is for the few and for the rare. You know, not everybody has in common a metaphysical interest, whereas you could say for the most part everybody does have in common some political opinion or interest. So the question is you know how do you what's the journey from an interest in politics to an interest in metaphysics

25:06 and if philos if political philosophy is reflection on the nature of the good and if reflection on the nature of the good does force you into certain questions like what is the soul what is god if there is a god does he care about the human being what is the world is the world eternal or created then suddenly you're on your way to metaphysics so there's a link between metaphysics and politics that not not everybody climbs you know Jacob's ladder to get from one to the other but some people do and they are connected and then there's also an independent interest that a philosopher uh separately from reflection on the nature of political life could have in metaphysical questions so in Aristotle's metaphysics it's not directly linked to political reflection but in for example Aris in for example in Plato's republic the the allegory of the cave the nature of the ideas the you know knowledge that's purified from the world of opinion that takes place in the context of a political discussion and in Plato's laws the conversation about the nature of the soul believe it or not is embedded in the uh you know the criminal code of a law that's being articulated

26:09 in that particular dramatic setting uh because they have to deal with the law for impiiety or the law for atheism and in order to do that they have to articulate arguments to prove to the atheists that there is a god and they do that by virtue of proving that there's a soul I'll I won't spoil it for you but uh but that is to say that you can get to metaphysics through politics. You can get to metaphysics independently. Strauss is interested in both of those. But there's a very crucial thing that I have to add here that you may be familiar with if you know the general impression of what a Straussian is. Somehow the general impression of a Straussian. I don't mean the you know Straussians are neocons who wanted blood for oil and all the rest. So I mean somehow and more intell more intelligently. Straussianism is like I have a secret message or I read books as though they have secret messages. Okay. Okay, astraian reading is a reading that is like on alert for secret messages. Okay, a Straussian writing is somehow a writing that embeds secret messages. I'm talking at a general level here. So why do I bring it up now? Because for

27:09 Strauss, there are certain high themes of philosophy, let's call them metaphysics for now, that even though they may be both independently interesting and related to politics, it's highly questionable whether they should be publicized. So there may be metaphysical speculations that are best not publicized, that are best kept out of public consideration. That's a whole separate conversation away. Like if most people are not equipped to deal with metaphysical argumentation and yet you publicize metaphysical argumentation, you may be doing more harm than good. So one element of Strauss's teaching is that there's certain things about philosophy that may be have to be modified when it comes to their public presentation, public discussion. And obviously a writing is a public document because it can fall into anybody's hands. And therefore, writing has to the art of writing must be able to

28:10 conceal those messages that ought not to be revealed publicly. But it should do both. It should conceal them from the people who don't need them and it should reveal them to the people who do need them. And it should do that with some sense of um beneficence and um responsibility. So that's that's also related to the metaphysics question. Uh it's esoteric or exoteric aspect in writings that have something to do with politics. Uh, so that's what I would say about uh that's what I'd say about that. Thank you. Oh, let me very very very very super super super quickly. Let me just say one other thing. Okay. Um, one of Strauss's criticisms of people in academic political science and social science. One of his general criticisms is that in many cases they start with a theory and they sort of project that theory onto social and political life and that can be distorting. They can fail to see some very obvious things. Simple example, the what is a woman documentary, right? People who started with such elaborate theories that they

29:12 couldn't even answer a very basic question. So you would think that in politics you don't want to start with such elaborate theories that they blind you to things that every little child should know, right? Then that's that's seems like the opposite. That seems like you've basically loized yourself. If you can't answer the things that every child should know and everybody should know, then somehow you can see that you've really done damage to yourself by starting with an elaborate theory. So Strauss sometimes guarded against that and he said what we need is to see political life clearly. one that one one way that you see political life clearly is by removing the theories that stand between you and the clear perception of political life. So it's like a subtraction operation. This is akin this is like this is a part of the phenomenological tradition more broadly. You could say that Strauss does like a political phenomenology here. Phenomenology was concerned with seeing things as they are and part of that means subtracting whatever gets in the way. Constructed theories get in the way. Therefore they need to be subtracted. We need to see things clearly. Strauss thought that our are the documents that represent the

30:12 clearest perception of political life are Plato and Aristotle. So the study of Plato and Aristotle is not just like oh we need to read old books because we want to be you know old-fashioned. It's like no this this serves a specific purpose in the phenomenology of political life because after Plato and Aristotle political vision was distorted by theories that got in the way. The reason I mentioned this connection is because metaphysics could could also serve as like a theory that we put first into our field of vision and then look at politics through metaphysics. That would be kind of like a not not Strauss's preferred way. Strauss's preferred way remove the theory, see politics as it is and then understand that within itself it has a directionality or an orientation towards these more fundamental questions. Just like in the passage Nick read, everybody's aware of politics. Act action um you know to uh preserve or change, right? Preserve or change for the better means opinion of the good means a questionable opinion of good. Suddenly within political reflection as such we're oriented into these

31:12 metaphysical questions. We didn't start with them. You know they arise from the subject matter. So uh I wanted to say that as well. Um he does not like starting with a theory. By the way, one one last thing. There's a within you know you guys have to study if I never see you again and you never see me again I hope that at at the very least I've encouraged some of you to read Strauss or to continue reading Strauss okay because through Strauss you get access to so many brilliant thinkers and he just helps you get more deeply into them and to see how they're related and so on. I wanted to mention a quick image from this book. So I'm teaching this in another context. This is a medieval Jewish thinker who's very important for Strauss and for others like he's important for Aquinas for example. uh Moses my monities is god of the perplexed and this was about again can some truths be dangerous for others it's sort of like some people you know egalitarians or democrats can find that to be an insulting thought to elitist and so on I'm sure that you guys don't think that but my monities has a nice image where he says you know um imagine there's a imagine there's a pearl at the bottom of a deep lake you know if you know how to swim it's very valuable for

32:15 you to go and to get that pearl but if you don't know how to swim it may be fatal so the you know the pearl is the pearl but somehow you know you have to learn how to swim and And if if you try to you know if you try to get the pearl before you know how to swim then uh you have a problem. So um this is attested to you know this difficulty in getting to the metaphysical pearl is attested to but in modern egalitarian democratic enlightenment uh perspectives it's it's usually um let's say downplayed or ignored rejected or scorned um and Strauss is concerned about the effects of that. Um I I this may be departing from the essay, but I was curious if you could um talk more specifically about the uh the transition of the of political thought from antiquity to the modern and I think I've heard you talk about uh um Makavelli before and in particular maybe his effect on that. I'm just curious about what happened in the intervening

33:16 millennia that got us to to a place where we totally discount where virtue is not really in the equation anymore like so between let's say Plato and Mchavelli or starting with Mchaveli uh I guess starting with Mchavelli okay so again Strauss is extremely helpful here because in several writings including this one he provides a a I don't know how would you say a schema that allows us to see uh you know schematically independently of extremely serious study of the text which he also did a kind of highle uh yeah scheme of this relationship. So I'll say Makaveli for Strauss Makaveli is the founder of modernity. Now by the way I should tell you that this already is like a uniquely Straussian thesis because other people have other accounts of the founding of modernity. They see it as a process. they see it as you know uh they have like um you know Protestant type reading or some other type reading or what's happening in the economy for Strauss it's very deliberately an a deliberate act of a political

34:18 um brilliant outstanding founder figure and Maki thought of himself that way as the founder of new modes and orders he said he discovered undiscovered continent as Strauss asks the only question is whether that continent is fit for um human uh habilitation and so on so okay this first thesis is found Makaveli is the founder of modernity. All right. So what do we have couple of different elements of the argument? First one is that the for the ancients as I said virtue is the highest good and they have a model of the best regime. The best regime is kind of like a it's not an ideal but you could say it's a very high bar and all political judgment should be measured against that high bar. So you have somehow the perfection of the human soul in virtue and the perfection of politics in the best regime. They set the standard for judgment and evaluation and aspiration. In other words, the classics orient themselves by the standard of perfection. Now what's the problem? The problem is that perfection is extremely

35:22 rare. That was almost part of the definition. It's extremely rare and also it's a product of chance to use a formulation here. The chance coincidence of philosophy and power or of wisdom and power. The best regime depends on something that can't be forced and that is extremely rare. So Monkey Valley for Strauss says, "Well, why don't we lower the bar to something that is less exalted but also more likely and that is within the realm of human valition?" You see? So if the chance coincidence of wisdom and power is outside of our hands, well, how can we put politics in our hands so completely that it can properly speaking be like a um something that we make and can account for? You see what I mean? So number one, he he lowers the standard from virtue to something else. He goes from the almost unattainable, you know, highest perfection to the way that people actually are. not imagined

36:26 republics in the way that we ought to be but you know let's deal with people the way they are and let's lean into that so to speak and see what we can do manipulate what levers can we use and what strings can we push and pull given the way that people actually are and so one of the uh one of the arguments here is that Makavelli thought well I need to find the self-interested passion that people have passion here meaning like the you know emotion or desire as opposed to a understanding type thought. So what's the self-interested passion if there is one that people have that I can use as a lever for a political teaching for a political science for um you know for a political outcome and in a word again formulaically Strauss's view is that it's the glory of the founder so the glory of the founder it's self-interested I want to have everlasting glory that's not altruistic that's not that's not selfless that's I I want to have glory that's self-interested Mchaveli can convince the person who's able to do it that to be the founder of

37:34 a great and stable political order is the greatest glory because you don't want to build something transient because then your glory disappears you know when you die your glory dies with you you we still glorify the ancient political figures and founders you know Moses uh Romulus and the like so Mchaveli builds his teaching on a lower standard glory that appeals to the self-interest of a specific type of figure, the founder. And he no longer is taking his orientation by, let's say, the goal for wisdom, you know, by trans political speculation, by philosophy, pure and simple in the uh older view. Okay? Because man, in the older view, man's virtue, the peak of man's virtue is the possibility of let's say let's call it metaphysical uh speculation, metaphing the cosmos, not just understanding politics. So Mchaveli kind of narrows the horizon makes politics the center of our attention within that makes the glory of the founder the eternal perpetual you know everlasting glory of the founder the goal and in

38:35 doing so he has to teach the founder you know to be wicked whereas previously in the mirror of princes genre you know you would only teach the founder to be virtuous here for machavelli you know you have to be learned to be virtuous and vicious uh we're all familiar in each in our own way with the consequences of mchavelianism but yeah so lowers the bar to make it more effective, to make it more likely, to make it more predictable, takes it out of the realm of chance, out of the realm of the rare, out of the realm of the perfect and appeals to something lower in man than the ancients did. And now in the telling, for example, in the, you know, in this book, what is political philosophy? In the chapter, what is political philosophy is that that set that had like a domino effect because here's Strauss calls it for example, three waves of modernity and so on. So after Mchavel, you have Hobbes. Hobbes instead of appealing to the self um you know to the glorification of the founder he appeals to another very uh another thing that we all feel which is the fear of violent death. So not everybody feels the desire for metaphysical

39:37 understanding but pretty much everybody feels the fear of violent death and so therefore it's a much more powerful lever than the perfection of your intellect. So Hobbes's politics uh in some sense the the pillar of Hobbes' politics for Strauss is the fear of violent death. So once again you have something that is like highly reliable because commonly shared and low as opposed to unreliable because very perfect rare and difficult. You see so you have the glory of the founder in Makaveli being the lynchpin of politics. You have fear of violent death and avoiding the fear of violent death in Hobbes where for example even courage is re-evaluated. So I think uh Strauss writes somewhere that you know Hobbes was the first person in the history of political philosophy really to say like it's okay to be a coward like in a war to throw down your arms and run away because the preservation of your life is the highest value. The preservation of your life is the is at the root of political society. It trumps every consideration. Okay. So the fear of violent death and therefore the preservation of life in lock again and

40:38 giving you Strauss schematism in lock this gets further softened to comfortable self-preservation. So somehow you move from the life is solitary, nasty, poor, brutish and short in the state of nature which you have in hobbs to you know the nature is beneficent and what we need is actually to mix our labor with nature to have property and to have comfortable self-preservation. So for Strauss lock liberates acquisitiveness property capital and um you know pleasant like I'm I have a fan here within arms reach. That's in some sense that's lock in for Strauss. Okay. It's the the commodious living. You know, everybody wants a Tesla robot or is going to want a Tesla robot. Why? Because comfortable self-preservation. You know, you want to be comfortable and you want to be alive. Think about all the biohackers today. They want to live for live forever. Um, so this is all of this is non-class and it's related. So again, Makaveli lowers the bar. Hobbs sort of lowers it further. Lock puts a smiley face on it. you know, property and self um comfortable self-preservation. Then there are other

41:43 figures. I won't go into each of the each of them unless you'd like me to, but you know, Rouso changes certain things. He historicizes the model a little bit further. Ultimately, this all this movement leads to Nietzsche and deniialism for Strauss because we broke off our roots with the classical tradition and are left kind of uh with no guidance. Um but yeah, so Mchaveli's significance I I'll give you a form I'll give you another formula for this. Okay, I think Strauss can be helpful. Stress is helpful in many different ways. Uh sometimes he provides useful shorthand formulas even though his most valuable contribution is like detailed booklength studies. So here's a short um shortorthhand. Okay. M Strauss writes that for Mchaveli the most important classical thinker is Xenophon. Okay. So I'm just going to make this little chain of argumentation. For Mchaveli the most important classical thinker is Xenophon. But Xenophon has two fundamental kinds of writing. his military writings and his Socratic writings. So Xenophon wrote dialogue Socratic dialogues like dialogues about Socrates's life where Socrates is a

42:46 character. Okay. So Xenophon this famous military general knew Socrates loved Socrates and depicted Socrates in writing. So Mchaveli is indebted to Xenophon. Xenophon has these two components, the military and the Socratic. And Mchaveli entirely omits the Socratic. So that's a little schema that shows you Mchaveli's contribution in Strauss's perspective. It's a limitation. It cuts something out of the picture. It cuts the Socratic out in order to narrow and sharpen our focus on the strictly speaking political. In doing so, maybe it puts things in a new perspective and helps us to see something new. But at what price? At the price that everything represented by quoteunquote Socrates, by the Socratic interest, by the you know, even Xenophon, this figure who was so important for Mchaveli, had Socrates included in his life, but Mchaveli excludes that part of it. Okay, so that's another as I say schematic way of seeing what Mchaveli did and how in some way for Strauss he led to the

43:48 impoverishment of our understanding of life because he cut off such an important part of uh human understanding and all the more so the tradition that Makaveli inaugurated took us further and further away from that that Socratic Platonic classical ancient philosophically speaking you know properly speaking philosophical dimension and left us with just this more narrow narrow interest in politics. Um, let me add one thing. This left us with this narrow interest in politics up to and including the view. Okay, I have to say this guys. Give me one give me one extra minute here. Okay, because I know there are other things you may want to talk about. Give me one extra minute. So related to this thought that he left us just with the with an interest oversized overemphasized interest in politics. Okay. Now I'm going to say another thing that I learned from Strauss in his conversations with other people that I think is very nice. There's a view about the nature of truth that it unfolds in time that it is temporal. Okay, let's call that progressivism. Progressivism, okay,

44:52 we're naming it. So there are many things progressivism might mean but in the you know in the context of this conversation, let's call progressivism the view that truth reveals itself progressively in time or through time or even as time. Okay, there's a temporal dimension to the disclosure of truth in history as opposed to the view that truth is an eternal always in principle accessible realm, domain, state, okay, however you want to think about it. So one is that it unfolds in time. One is that it is at trtemporal in some fundamental sense. So Strauss in uh in his debate with in his discussion with Kojv in the book called on tyranny, he says amazing things about this topic. He says that the view that truth unfolds in history is partly a consequence of our exaggerated evaluation of politics because for any serious person in some sense history is political history. History is the history of political life. You know somehow that's the most important thing. So if you think if you have erased Socrates,

45:56 erased the concern with the eternal, you know, you've erased certain uh you've amputated that part of our soul, you're left with just a concern with politics. Politics acquires an exaggerated importance. That exaggerated importance leads to the mistaken view that truth unfolds in the sequence of political events. Because if that's what you think then you suddenly think that political actors are imbued with special importance you know not just special political importance but special historical importance so that's just I mentioned that in passing because it's another way of seeing wow we started with something like simplishish and then through through the help of Strauss as a teacher or guide we see that there's something very deep and amazing related to this simpish starting point that perhaps we have never formulated in that way for ourselves. I certainly had never formulated that way for myself, but when I saw it in Strauss, I thought, "Wow, that's uh that merits in my time and attention is worth thinking about a little bit." So um it's possible that historicism or this interest in the historical is like a down the road

47:01 consequence of Mchaveli's break with contemplating the eternal order of things which is crazy but not not like crazy like outlandish but crazy like um eye opening. Dr. Milleman, it's a great honor and pleasure to have you here as the Thank you. the guest of honor at our Socratic symposium, even if it is a primitive metaverse format in your semi virtual avatar. Um, we have uh been acquainted a bit through the mind control platform known as X now. Uh, Joe Allen, uh, you actually have a copy of my book, Darkon, hidden around somewhere. Oh, nice to nice to meet you. Nice to meet you in person, Joe Allen. I've never I've never seen you, I think, in this format uh video format before. So, it's uh it's uh great to see you. Next time it'll be uh over ice wine in the frozen Canadian tundra. So, um, I I do want to, you know, jump off

48:09 of I as best as I can tie this to the the anchoring statements or quote that we got from Leo Strauss about preservation and change and the concept of a a a semi- relative effort to either preserve what is better or to change towards what is better or to reserve to uh stave off the worst uh or to change what has always been bad. And also to tie that to what you had just mentioned a moment ago with the biohackers and this uh revulsion towards death and this embracing of technology as the primary means by which we can approach truth. by which we can approach what is good, by which we can maybe enhance and preserve what is beautiful. I oftentimes label

49:10 that transhumanism. That's is maybe a bit over broad, but I I know you know what I mean. And if I could also just add, I mean, it's strange I'm here kind of by happen stance. I wasn't supposed to be here today, supposed to be off. Um I but I just came from DC where I was at the uh a gathering of uh militarized AI makers and speaking also with people who are not exactly effective altruists but are very much in favor of regulating artificial intelligence in some fashion like more so than uh what it is today. So my question then I I know you are wellversed in the kind of ideologies of transhumanism and posthumanism. I know you are well acquainted with the ideas and the differences in the ideas between say Peter Teal and Elon Musk and Sam Alman so on and so forth. And I know

50:10 you're well aware of the the push to, as you mentioned a moment ago, history and politics basically revealing truth in a progressive fashion that that that progress is the revelation of truths that were simply unknown before and artificial intelligence being the key to that. So the question then is if we can weave it all together and if you just want to break away and riff uh I it would be to all of our our our joy in this idea of preservation versus change. This idea of eternal truths versus progressive truths. The idea that politics can in fact aid in the improvement of people's lives. What the are we going to do when the wealthiest men on earth, the most powerful corporations on earth that are bolstered by the most powerful and prominent governments on earth are

51:16 pushing the idea that artificial intelligence will be in fact that god that never existed. Yeah. So I'll say a bunch of different things. It's uh it is a I do think that AI and related uh technological developments today do represent a serious philosophical question. They do represent a domain for serious political philosophizing. So that I think uh because some people may think you know philosophy and AI, philosophy and transhumanism, philosophy in Bitcoin. I have Bitcoiners who talk to me about the political implications of Bitcoin technologies. All of these new things they do they do merit our full uh attention. we do need to reflect on them. They clearly are raising all kinds of questions and putting all kinds of things at stake. So, um I'll say a few maybe disconnected um as you said riffs, okay, on this topic. So, the first one I had some students uh bring this up to me over the years, a book called The Sovereign Individual. I don't know who who knows it, who's read it. There's this book called The Sovereign

52:17 Individual. Okay, I think from the 80s or something like that. Peter Teal wrote the uh the preface for the 2000's version of it. And you know there's some things there about you know Bitcoin being a libertarian, AI being communistic and so on. But what I found interesting about the sovereign individual which you know has some predictions about how all these new technologies are going to liberate the individual from the from state control from the state monopoly of violence and so on. Um, one of the interesting things to me about that book is that towards the very end, last 10 pages or so, the authors say that although technology is progressing very quickly, all the more so now compared to then although technology is progressing very quickly, our moral understanding has not progressed beyond Moses, Buddha and Confucious, I think maybe he mentioned also Plato. So you have here that something is progressing and something is not. And he the the two authors if I say if I refer to them as one it's just for shortand okay the authors of the sovereign individual they didn't claim that morality should be progressing as

53:21 fast as technology they stated what may be the fact that unlike the domain of technology which progresses the domain of basic moral principles remains what it is and what it was. Now the difficulty is that the he says the people who are the authors of sovereign individuals say that the people in the tech in the progressing tech development side of things are moral idiots. They're completely unfamiliar with the basic moral structure of political and human life. They don't read Moses, Confucious, um you know and Plato and Socrates. And therefore they have a very incomplete understanding of social and political and human life because they've only taken technological progress and they've completely left behind this set of texts that deal with call it moral instruction but you could also call it you know political order the nature of law the importance of stability and the nature of the human being. So that's an

54:21 indictment against the accelerationists in some sense against these tech people that they've let even according to their own very important source the sovereign individual they're moral idiots who are leaving behind something absolutely central to understanding the human condition. So one one thing is that you know if they take their own source seriously then they really have to pay attention to the classical fundamental models because those apparently let's say in the argument of these authors are persistent and not progressive. That's one one little version. But then that means we also have a a difficulty in the nature of things which is you have one thing that is stable let's say or one thing that needs to be stable some sort of moral order or sense of uh a moral identity or of uh I'll give you the arisatilian formulation of it this is from Aristotle's politics innovation rewards novelty and change innovation means you're bringing something new into the picture whereas law depends on a habit of obedience to law. If the law is

55:24 always changing, there might as well be no law. The the law depends on a habit of obedience to the law. Let's consider the law to be a very important political phenomenon. Okay? Obviously, it's complicated, right? We talk about million different laws. What about laws that make no sense? But still, at a general level, law is the great educator of the political community. A law is the kind of mediator between the philosophers and the people. Okay? Law encompasses a set of useful um prejudices for the people and orientations for for the people. Law is a very important phenomenon for all of these great thinkers. Okay. Again, for many of them uh law is the great God reveals himself by means of a law. So law is very important. But law is undermined by constant innovation. That that Aristotle considers the case. He said, should should we have a law or a principle that rewards people who innovate new laws? In other words, should we re reward should we reward constant innovation, even

56:24 legal innovation? His answer is no. Even when a new law may be an improvement, because if you're always undermining the stability of the existing law, you, you know, it's like the perfect is the enemy of the good. You think you're doing a good thing. By the way, I believe that Musk, whatever else people may think about Musk and whatever other criticisms or uh or um compliments may be made about him, if we just zero in on his spat with Trump uh today, public spat with Trump today, he's like completely completely completely breaking every wellestablished principle of classical political philosophy. You know, this idea that if you can't have it all, you have to have nothing. That you have to make a public break. All all of these things is like moral idiocy, you know, to the tea in my opinion. Again, whatever else you may think about him, good or bad. So, this idea that innovation undermines the stability of society because it destroys the habit of obedience to law is a very, very serious accusation. Okay. Now, now I've seen videos of Peter Teal where he's talking about PayPal and he specifically says, "We knew the technology was ahead of the law and our goal was just to stay ahead of the law." Like, as long as the law as

57:30 long as the legislators and lawmakers couldn't keep up with us, we were we were in the clear. And technology has the advantage of the first mover there compared to the legislators because it it requires expert knowledge and it moves faster. And you know it might seem like if you legislate against technology and you know as as I say as a general formulation because you might say in a specific instance what does it mean to legislate against technology? you're like anti-progress. But again in all basically in these classical sources uh the idea and Strauss mentions it uh the idea that you can separate technology from moral concern or moral control but that you can have technology run a muk that that is like that is that has the potential to be socially and politically a catastrophe. And the ancients didn't think that because they saw nuclear bombs. They didn't see nuclear bombs. They saw it because they understood the relationship between innovation and preservation, between change and stability. They understood the nature of law and the place of law in a political commonwealth or political society. And they understood that if you're constantly innovating, you're going to destroy the fabric of society because you're going to destroy anything that

58:33 holds people together. Technology is sort of like the f, you know, the faster it moves, the more it rips people apart. So yes, now we're in a very serious stage where the ripping apart is up to and including the the destruction of the human essence. So this that here there are all kinds of questions where at times I find as valuable as I find Strauss and I find him so valuable that I named my first son after him. Okay. So Strausses for me is a very important person. Um there are other thinkers that also cast the light on this question. So Alexander Dugan is somebody who for me is also useful at times in assessing this question. uh he goes into much weirder domains than Strauss ever went into um in assessing the threat of transhumanism, posthumanism, uh the destruction of the human essence, uh the replace the replacement, I know Joelen as you have wrote written about the greater replacement, the replacement of humans by machines and all of this. So on one hand we do seem to have been brought to a unprecedented historical moment where the human essence is challenged by technological progress whereas in the past it was just let's

59:34 say the stability of society that was threatened by technological progress. So somehow things seem to have come to a head. uh and that that apparently lends some credence to the view that history does matter in some essential way because if we're at an unprecedented historical point then there is such a thing as an unprecedented historical point that discloses a dimension of risk previously unknown and therefore you know not eternally knowable. Um so that all of that needs to be taken extremely seriously. In no way do I recommend like just a dogmatic aping of Straussian concerns. Strauss is an extremely useful guide. teaches us so much but in the best case scenario he should help us to articulate these questions uh and alternatives to questions and analysis of the question so I'll say something very quickly you know when Strauss has said things about technology that I find extremely valuable uh I'll give you one example okay just one example of how you know how thinking about an older writer can help us understand something here an older writer in the history of political philosophy can help us think about something in politics so when Strauss

1:00:35 wrote about Hobbes Thomas Hobbes now we mentioned Mchavelli made the initial break but Then it led to Hobbes. Strauss says something about Hobbes. He says the following again I will give it to you in a summary schematic version. Okay. He says for Hobbes the cosmos the whole okay the the entirety the whole of things cosmos in that sense is fundamentally unknowable either because we cannot know it because of a limitation in ourselves or because in and of itself it lacks knowability. But it's fundamentally unknowable. And yet we have models of things that are like uh they seem to represent models of knowledge like perfect models of knowledge. For example, in geometry, a geometrical construction seems like you like it like a like a pinnacle example of what it means to know something. You know the premise. You know you've constructed a proof from start to finish and therefore your knowledge at the outcome is guaranteed. So again I'm telling you what Stro said about Hobbes that relates to this question to my mind. So on one hand the whole is fundamentally unknowable. On the other hand we have an

1:01:39 example of knowledge and Hobbes preserves the goal or like the you know the goal of knowledge. He hasn't abandoned the aspiration to know. So what does Hobbes do? Hobbes says fine what we need to do is we need to create artificial islands of knowability. We know the world we make. So we must no longer care about the world that we didn't make because it's not amendable to it can't be known. So we need to refocus our attention to the world that we have made cuz that's a world that can preserve the ideal of knowledge on geometric you know on the analogy of geometry since we constructed the premise the proof and therefore the outcome is guaranteed. So this idea of artificial islands of knowability and that man only knows the world he makes and ignores the cosmos in which he's embedded and therefore doesn't understand his true nature. To my mind there there's only like a dot dot dot before you get to, you know, a world that is completely constructed, completely artificial, completely uprooted, completely blind to its own nature. You know, worse than an amputated soul, just a a deformity that

1:02:43 you can no longer call human. But where did the first domino fall? Okay, different people have different accounts of where the first domino fell, but this this particular version that you know it makes some sense. You want to preserve the goal of knowledge. You don't think the cosmos can be known. You have this model of geometry. You have artificial islands of knowability. We only know the world we make. And suddenly that's it. Now, now you have made the made world, the artificial world as opposed to the natural world, the given world, the embedded world, the world of cosmos into our, you know, it it has occupied the center of our attention and transformed our outlook. So in some way you could say maybe a response to this you know to this obsession with uh transforming ourselves by becoming the makers of a world that ignores the world in which that making is embedded is by reacquainting ourselves with the older model according to which there's not just the world we make you know that the the made world is embedded in the given world that the given world deser stands higher than the made world it deserves more attention it's more exalted you

1:03:46 know if If man only knows the world he makes, man becomes the measure of all things. But you know, man becomes the most important. And even the destruction of man proves the accomplishment of man because AI is something that we create. So we if we created a god that's greater than ourselves, then somehow we're greater than the god we created because we made, you know, we made it. So you still preserve some last shred of dignity even as you create your own downfall because you created it. So somehow reorientation away from you know man as the maker of his world could be valuable. But then you're like, "Wow, Hobbes, weirdly enough, right?" Like Strauss is able to provide us with resources for thinking that through within the history of political philosophy, which again, I think is completely surprising, not self-evident, and nevertheless, you know, quite uh quite helpful. And that's not the only helpful thing. It's obviously it's only one of a million things we could say about AI, the threat of AI, the nature of AI, the you know, the benefits of AI, like where do we draw the line for what we accept and deny and all the rest of it. But I have found I personally have found Strauss's analysis of political philosophy to be useful in thinking

1:04:48 about even like you know um large language models the censorship that's built into them you know the nature I'll give you another example and then obviously I know I'm say saying too much but even like Musk's view that you know tr AI should be maximally truth seeking I compare that to Plato's view in the republic on page one pretty much that truth and justice don't always go hand in hand so that you know so a familiarity with the classical sources helps us to formulate certain questions about the contemporary sources that we maybe would not have been able to think about in the same way uh without the benefit of the knowledge of the classical sources. So, but all of that said, for sure, uh, in my view, um, all of these debates around these figures and everything that's implied by the possibility of AI both, you know, on the geopolitical level, on the political level, economic level, energy level, but all the way up to and including the spiritual level, the human level, the philosophical level, it does uh it does require us to uh to think hard and to figure out, you know, how to make sense of that. um everybody's gonna land where they

1:05:48 land uh and draw the line where they draw it. But hopefully I have shown that Strauss can at least be somewhat helpful even though he knew nothing about you know our contemporary situation strictly speaking. That was absolutely fantastic. And I just want to say as Tennessans, we don't accept James Lindsay as a Tennessian and we look forward to the day that you get the opportunity to put him in a rear naked coat, if not physically, intellectually. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Yeah, I I I second that sentiment. Um anyway so when you talk about a world the given world in this kind of like lack of concern for it isn't like do you know the French philosopher Bernard Stigler his books tech technics and time I know I don't so you know his he posited that what makes man man is the ability to create technology whether that technology is language whether that technology is capital whether that technology is machinic um and that These

1:06:52 things operate on a level beyond human agency. They're operating on us. Um so like the world in which we are given is a world in which man is a technical being. So I struggle with this question a lot. Like you know maybe the destiny of man is to liberate intelligence from the body. And I have no say, like even if that scares me, I have no say in whether that progression takes place because it's operating according to forces that are far beyond my ability to act in the world as a political being, as you know, whatever. Um, and I'm curious what you think of that because like, you know, you distinguish between this world that we are given and this and this desire to remake the world. Yes. But like what if the world we are given is one in which our agency is challenged by these emergent technologies and like that is our destiny that is our fate. Yeah. So that's a very good question and that let's say that's a very real possibility. So a couple of things that I would focus on. Number one you said uh

1:07:56 technology for steiger is what makes man man, right? It is what makes us who we are. So that orients us again to the question well what does make man man? What are the other answers to the question who is man? Can we give them each their full articulation? And how would we adjudicate among them? Because there are some people for whom man is primarily his labor. Man is primarily his thought. Man is primarily this. Man is primarily that. Right? So let's say man is primarily his techn you know man is primarily um the doer or the maker. let's say as opposed to you know the thinker or the comprehender not that the think not that the makers don't think and so on but you know what I mean right other answers to the question who's man sorry go ahead even if you're thinking and comprehending your thinking using language which is a technology yeah so again what I think let's say a straussian approach not here in this in the sense that I mentioned earlier of esoteric writing and esoteric reading but rather like Strauss's intention in dealing with these fundamental questions I would say you turn we turn a statement into to a

1:08:58 question. So the statement is language is a technology and the question is what is language? What is technology? And here not only is Strauss helpful but you know this can orient us towards Haidiger who has reflections on both language and technology and who I think would contest the claim that language is essentially technology. So um as we read it's kind of like again in that opening um in the opening remarks that Nick made when he read from the book there we we take something that is questionable and we question it. So the statement that language is fundamentally a technology, it's possible. It may even be persuasive. It may even be what we think and yet it's questionable and it forces us into the question, what is the nature of language? What is the nature of technology about language? I'll say not to be trivial or anything about it and certainly not to get us down this path but you know um all of the great thinkers have had to reflect on what is language and even the n even again not to be betrayed or anything like that but you know in the beginning was the word does language precede man is language um eternal or created there's a sense in which we're

1:10:01 forced to think about language as a tool as a technology as something variable contingent and conventional but there's also a sense in which language seems to be very essential. It seems to be very fundamental and it seems to be something more than just convention and so it forces us into that uh path of thinking about the nature of language and technology. So that's the first thing I would say. Another thing uh one of the reasons why I love you know reading the people who gave us the deepest expositions is because we get different formulations about these key questions. Again the key question is what is man? What makes man who he is right? One answer is technology and that answer guides these other things like okay so language is a technology maybe love is a technology maybe art is a technology maybe politics is a technology right so the answer that what makes man what he is is technology ends up guiding an an account of the rest of the human concerns so there's a I'll give you an example of one of the books I teach in the school I'm not pitching the school I'm just telling you about this person and how he fits into the question okay

1:11:01 so there's a guy and again keep in mind there are many sources more than the ones that I'm interested in as long as we take them seriously, we can learn some stand to learn something. So this person, he's a rabbi, his name is Rabbi Joseph B. Salvich. He has a short book called the lonely man of faith. And in the lonely man of faith, he he has an answer to the question or let's say a guiding thought to the question, what is man? That uh relates to what you said. So I want to just say it very quickly. He says um man consists primarily of two fundamental but somehow irreconcilable tendencies each of which is for him divinely sanctioned. One of those is the technological tendency meaning um you know invention, discovery, creation, conquest, space flight is for him the the perfect image of this. Okay. So man conquering space by by exploring the furthest reaches of the universe is a genuinely human impulse that is divinely sanctioned. However, there's another genuinely human impulse that is divinely sanctioned. An

1:12:04 impulse of inwardness, quietude, reflection, redemption, prayer separately from a technological. It's a not a technology. Okay? It's something else. It's like I say receptivity let's say as opposed to construction. And that's another genuinely human and divinely sanctioned root uh in us. And and his view is that we live in a time where the technological impulse has basically uh drowned out this other side of ourselves. Now why I like that model is because number one, it shows you here's somebody who's taking seriously the question, what is man? What are the fundamental roots of man? What does it mean to be man? What are our tendencies? The other thing I like about it is that there are a lot of anti-modern thinkers who are anti-technology because for them the equation is simple. Modernity means technology. Anti-modernity means antiology. That's basically how it lines up. Okay, for them whereas he allows for the divine and human significance of our capacity to invent, create and discover. I find that appealing because to me

1:13:13 personally there is something special about the human ability to create to invent and to discover and at the same time there's something it seems like dehumanizing when you elevate that tendency to the only thing that is important about man. So okay that so suddenly we have another model you know another answer and another account one that includes the technological but also this other side and he does not say they can be perfectly reconciled he says there sort of you know maybe in any given era one of them will have the upper hand and one of them won't but we need to remind ourselves that they are that there are two roots so you can imagine in a society that's overly quietistic and contemplative you'd have to remind them that hey invention creativity and discovery is also an important human activity you know in our time where technology dominates we have to remind them hey receptivity uh contemplation redemption and prayer is also an important human um modality or whatever so uh that's what I would say in other words starting from the possible thesis that man is fundamentally characterized by technology and that therefore our

1:14:19 language our society our you know relationships our everything is technological that is a plausible thesis but but um but we're forced to reflect on the alternatives as well and the only way we can really understand the alternatives is by studying their most thoughtful expositors and that's why one of the beautiful things about again a Straussian approach generally speaking um to education is that it always it always broadens the scope of our interest without making it superficial. It broadens and deepens our interest because it directs us to the most thoughtful expositions of the most relevant and and plausible alternatives to the most fundamental questions. You know that culminates really an education because how else are you going to know unless you study it? How else are you going to know the alter? You know what I mean? Who gave you the best exposition of the nature of man? Yes, we could go privately reflect all by ourselves on a mountain or in the forest or something. But you know the somehow by reflecting

1:15:21 with the help of teachers, in other words, through a process of genuine philosophical education, we combine comprehension and depth and that allows us, you know, if not if it doesn't lead us immediately to an answer, at least it's it gives us all the joy and pleasure of the question. There's a presupposition in that that the creations of man are his own. Um well okay I think I know what you're saying something quick about it not necessarily okay not necessarily I'll tell you what I mean I'll tell you what I mean by that there maybe in what I said somewhere there was that presupposition but in the study in in the course of action that I recommended in other words studying the various alternatives for somebody the creation is the product of man and for somebody it's the channeling of a higher force the channeling of a higher form where man makes himself a portal or a vassel or a medium. So, I've always thought um I don't want to embarrass myself here, but I'll put it this way. Okay, there there are different ways of articulating and making the point, thinking about it. So, one way is

1:16:24 through symbols, okay? And each of you has your own symbol set that you think is valuable here. I'll give you a quick example in there tarot cards. I'm sure you guys all know what tarot cards is, what tarot cards are. Okay? So in in one version of the illustrated tarot there are um there are two cards that follow one another zero and one okay which is also uh has very powerful you know zero and one in and of themselves are very powerful symbols for reflection like heal zero to one uh to mention just the most obvious thing so there's a version where the one card is the magician and the magician has his the tools you know the elements laid out at a table before him and he's sort of like I've always thought of him as the source is creation as creation as an act of man's will. So for the purposes of what I'm saying, he symbolizes creation as an act of man's will. There are other cards that symbolize again man as the realm for um as a medium of higher forces working through him. Okay, let's just put it that way. I guess forget about the

1:17:25 terror side, right? So these are again two different models and maybe they coexist, right? Maybe in um maybe in a man's life there are certain things that we are the origin of in our making and there are certain like again I consider this common knowledge it was even common knowledge for Socrates when he writes about it in uh in one of the hippiest dialogues or Plato when he writes about it in one of the hippiest dialogues pretty much for everybody I think more or less um artistic creations are regarded as coming from a muse you know genuinely like a beautiful piece of music all the Great songwriters say I don't know where this song came from. They don't say I I am the maker of this song. They say I don't know where this song came from. It just came to me from god knows where. You know. So there are many creators, artists, poets, musicians, visionaries who attribute their act of uh working something as a reworking of a gift from above themselves. And there are those who see themselves as the origin, the starting point. I think those are two different ways of looking at the world. And maybe they're related to, you know,

1:18:29 one how I I'll spare you my speculations on this question, but uh but yeah, so in some cases, uh you're just off the screen, but whatever. You know I'm talking to you, right? In some ca in some cases, there's a in some cases there's yes, the presupposition that man is the origin. In other cases, there's the presupposition that man is the passageway. And in some of these thinkers, there's a model of how those two things interrelate to one another. Haidiger, for example, is for me a very important figure for whom man is a uh a medium or as he puts it a throne projection. You know, we're an in between. Uh we put something out but only because we're sort of uh in the embrace of being itself, which in the best case scenario works through us, speaks through us, and uh uh there's a Christian phrase that I like in this regard, which is I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me. So now you say like who's the you know you've you're you're dead to yourself in a way and you're a version of something's working through you. So it's this interplay of like I'm doing it but I'm only doing it because I'm working in concert with something that's doing it in me and through me. Um you know so all all of

1:19:32 that is uh all of that is in play. Um for any thinker who limits his view of creativity that it's uh that it's our creation I would direct him you know to to a broader perspective on that question as a possibility worth considering. And it kind of ties back to what you were saying earlier with um the fear of death to to remove the fear of death is an actual transcendence. Yet to desire to live forever is a false transcendence. And that's where we find ourselves with this whole AI and things like that. Yeah, there's a lot here that's interesting too. Again, longevity, death, you know, in a high degree, what is the significance of death? What's the nature of those? what's the meaning of death? Um, you know, is eternal life possible even because there are reflections in Kojv on a Hegelian basis that you know an eternal life doesn't even make that doesn't even make sense philosophically in some way. So there are all these different things um to bring it to bring it down for a minute to let's say prosaic political reflection that's nevertheless insightful on the fear of death. So I want to tell you really

1:20:35 quickly a couple of other things for Strauss that follow from Hobbs's orientation. Remember Hobbes is looking for a low bar on which to base his political teaching. Low means commonly held. High means rare. Right? So low commonly held view, fear of death. Fine. So one of the interesting things here um some people do not fear death because they believe in an afterlife. Those people are obstacles to Hobbes's political project. So it follows for Hobbes that if you want to base a polit if you want your political science to be like highly predictable, in other words, not to depend on chance. And you're going to rest it on fear of violent death as your lever. You need to deal with those people who do not have that fear because let's say they have faith in an afterlife. You know, they're fearless because they believe in an afterlife. And in order to do that, you have to attack their belief in an afterlife. So that's another interesting thing like here a war on religion follows from a political project of making the secularized fear of death a reliable lever. You see so that's pretty interesting I think. Then another thing

1:21:38 I want to say very quickly that again leave it if I never saw any of you ever again which I hope I do. I want to just leave you with these nuggets that you may find interesting. One other one related to hobbs as well. So our natural state in Hobbes, in other words, our pre-political state is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It's the state that we want to get away from because it's where every man is at risk. We get away from it by entering a, you know, civil society, the Leviathan, and so on. We give up our right to kill each other. We, you know, relegate that right to the state and so on. But that's because the natural condition is dangerous and bad. solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So for Hobbes, we're trying to get away from the beginning. We're trying to get away from our natural state. We're trying to reject nature. Nature's bad. This is for Strauss extremely important because the meaning of what nature is shifts drastically. The older view was that virtue is the

1:22:38 perfection of our nature, the fulfillment of our nature. That the natural is higher than the conventional. That nature properly speaking is something we aspire to. To call something natural is to complement it, not to insult it. And that that that to live naturally somehow and to fulfill our nature is a tilos. It's an aspiration. It's the towards which. So in other words to give it to you form formulaically for Strauss modernity hobbs in this case it's fundamentally what we want to get away from but it doesn't tell us what we want to go towards therefore it is really is culmination it's a it's culminates its goal is like a gradual liberation from natural constraint so that's also that also has implications for AI it has no clear tilos besides liberating itself from natural constraint That's I find that to be interesting. And you have that in hobbs. Nature is bad. We want to get away from it. I'm not telling you what you want to go towards. I'm only telling you what you want to get away from. You want to get away from what's bad. And what what's bad is the risk that you're in under a

1:23:39 natural state. So therefore, you want an artificial world because the natural one is bad. And you know, and you've fulfilled your goal so far as you've liberated yourself from what's natural. That's another to my mind that sounds like another way of stating one of many. I'm not saying it's the only one, right? one of many ways of stating boy what the first domino may have been as we lead towards gradual liberation of man from his nature by means of technological and artificial um constructions so I think that's pretty amazing too whereas the classical model it gave you a towards which a tilos the modern model only gives you an away from the classical model saw that the natural as high and praiseworthy the modern model sees the natural as bad and uh you know something that we need to replace get away and uh create something on top of or instead of. So I I I don't think most people if again without the benefit of these little um these little bits of insight from Strauss I don't think any of us you know for sure not me and not anybody that I know would ever have thought that Hobbes is like you know you would never just think well in order to

1:24:44 think in order to think clearly about the problem of technology it would be helpful to have read Thomas Hobbs it's like yeah I you know I don't think so I doubt it and yet as I hope to have shown with these comments you know Strauss is and by the way we may not have seen this by just reading Hobbs. Really the the uh the alpha or whatever. The added advantage here is that Strauss as a teacher is able to point these things out and we may not never have even seen them if we read HOBS all on our own, but once Strauss points them out, you're like, "Wow, holy smokes." You know, there's probably something there. And political, another way of putting this is that the few people that Strauss is willing to call political philosophers, you know, there's not a million of them. They're like, "You're lucky if you get one in a generation." um they dug deep enough into the nature of things that they whether they're right or wrong and however there are right however they are right or wrong they really cast a light on all the things that concern us that deepens it deepens our understanding of it and helps us to see more than we would see without their benefit so again that's my pitch for Strauss um so there you have it Dr. Dr. Miller, this has been an incredible time and I

1:25:48 know that we've taken up a lot of years. I was thinking maybe just on a closing note, you know, you discussed, you know, the value of of diligently reading these these works. Uh, you know, as a group of men here who are is seeking wisdom. I'd love to hear from you just your thoughts on like that the habits of the philosopher, the things that we can do every day to help cultivate virtue and wisdom in our lives and then maybe at at the tail end of that thought uh you could discuss your school as maybe being one of those vehicles for becoming wiser ourselves and then you know on that note uh we can uh bid you ad do okay thank you so habits of the philosophers I mean in the context of what we're discussing and I I think even more generally um it a philosophical life even for Socrates you know is he says um this is in Xenophon's one of Xenophon Socratic dialogues that you get together with your friends you

1:26:49 go through the good books you find the things in them that are praiseworthy and you discuss them and that's a huge part of the philosophical life so you guys are already well on the way to that I mean there books conversation discussion and friendship those are integral components of the philosophy ophical life. There's actually a very nice argument, we won't go into it now, about, well, why can't the philosophical life be completely solitary? Why do you need friends? Why do you need conversation? Is it just to add enjoyment? And no, there's more to it. It's because there's something that comes out in discussion and in dialogue um that that doesn't come out if you're just thinking alone or, you know, reflecting by yourself. So a community of friends who are oriented towards as you guys are as you just said the acquisition of wisdom or the pursuit of wisdom and reading and discussing you know books that contribute to that that's that is that's the heart of the philosophical life. Um it's the right orientation and doing those things that you know that facilitate that. So I don't want to pretend that everybody who

1:27:49 has been interested in philosophy has been a saint you know. So there's not there's not a view here that like you know you don't have the Socrates and Strauss are not recommending that as I say you go you know like a Buddhist monk out into you know 30 years on a mountain or something like Zarusra did or whoever else has done um it's thought you know you be thoughtful the books help with thoughtfulness conversation discussion helps with thoughtfulness and it's um it's participating in the philosophical education which is really as I say so people may not like the fact that it's based so much around books but they give us. They're the lifeblood, you know, of these questions and of the conversations that we have about them. Um they're the touchston. So that's the that's you know the philosophical life is to my mind again it's the books, the friends, the conversations and taking seriously under deepening our understanding of these things. There's no there's no other magic wand. um you know I have thought before so now that's like the first thing there are you know there's some initiatory aspect to philosophy there it is generally helpful to undergo some

1:28:55 sort of like I call it moral hygiene you know or like some sort of moral regimen this moral regimen doesn't mean that you have to be like uh who's that guy who runs all the time gogggins or whatever you know it doesn't mean that you have to break yourself apart it's not like so it's moral regimen in the sense that you gradually you know in Plato's Republic it's the turning around of the soul from the shadows to the source of light you know each of us in our own way is implicated in the shadows each of us in our own way stands in the light but really a philosophical education amounts to a turning around of the soul means turning our attention turning our intention right turning what we're first and foremost directed to now I mentioned another philosopher Haidiger you know Haidiger when he talks about being u you know being authentically let's spare the details on that even he recognizes look we sometimes have modes where we are really dialed into the questions that concern us and other times we have our everyday modes so it's not like the

1:29:56 philosopher is constantly always in a state of full illumination or something like that so in other words you know don't be harsh on yourselves if in your philosophical aspiration you come up against your mere humanity is what I'm trying to say okay Um but the the general intention is you know take the philosophical models. I think Socrates Plato has given us the great gift. By the way Plato who could have done anything right Plato who could have done anything if you think about it. He chose to use his brilliance and his genius and his ability largely to leave us with the model of a philosophical life using Socrates dramatized. Okay. to whatever extent. So we have a model of a philosophical life you can emulate to whatever extent is important to you whichever you know philosopher most appeals to you or something like that. But um but it's the orientation of the soul that matters first and foremost and

1:30:56 uh you know in Plato it's the turning turning of the soul from the you know from the things that come and go to the things that truly are. So as long as somehow in your study, in your life, in your thought, in your intention, you are in the process of doing that um then you're involved in you know a philosophical life. But by the way, I'll add one other thing. Okay, again there's always something to add but I also have to um stop at some point. But even the statement by Strauss for example towards the end. So I have to say this there's a book of Strauss is called on tyranny. In that book on tyranny there's a dialogue by xenophon strauss's interpretation a letter by co a response by cojavv and strauss's response to kojv. Okay the the response that strauss makes to kojv is called the restatement. So if you were to find a single if you were to look up this document Strauss restatement you'd find that that's what its place in the book in Strauss's restatement towards the end of it he discusses the meaning of a philosophical life from the Socratic perspective it's so beautiful it's so moving it's so touching it's so

1:32:02 humanizing it's so profound it's not something you'll see everywhere it's really that it's you know in this case we have a pearl that it's not going to kill us because we don't have to dive to the bottom of a lake for it I tell you where to find it without you know drowning find it in the end of Strauss's restatement of enty the the statement of a Socratic philosophical life is has the potential to be life-changing so that's what a philosophical life is Socrates is our great model stress is someone who can lead us to that great model my school okay you guys know I have I went through an academic cancellation I wanted to continue teaching so I made video courses and thank god I've been able to continue teaching that way uh I also teach on YouTube for free I don't want to force anybody to spend any money the school is where I put booklength courses Private tutoring is where you have my time one-on-one. I go all into it. I try to balance what I make available publicly and what I make available privately. The school has a curriculum now of I think it's 20 courses. Plato's Republic cover to cover. Aristotle's politics cover to cover. Mchaveli, excuse me, not Mchavelli. Um uh uh Haidiger, I was going to have a course on Mchavelli. A

1:33:05 great person was going to teach it, but then he went into the Trump administration. Doesn't have the time now. Um so, uh course, several courses on Haidiger because he's absolutely important. several courses on Strauss because he's absolutely important. Okay. Course on Plato's laws. So I've tried to make that a great curriculum. The courses are available individually. They're available as a bundle. Um my YouTube channel. I have many uh free resources including on Strauss. I have books. I have my Substack. I try to put out material as often as I feel I have something valuable to contribute. Um recently I become interested in the possibility of licensing the school courses. If any of you know somebody who may be interested institutionally in that sort of thing, let me know. But um but it's all you know without Strauss there would be no Miller school and I would never have read Alexander Dugan the way I did. I would never have read H Highiger the way I did because Strauss is the one who directed me to take these questions seriously to read the books seriously to give them their full attention and full do to try to get to the bottom of all of these questions and to connect them to the political level. So that's what the school is that's what

1:34:05 I do and um and hopefully you found this to be interesting and valuable. Thank you, Dr. Millman. Thank you for your time. Thank you guys. Great seeing you. Appreciate it. Okay, take care. Enjoy the rest of your time together. And uh I'll talk to uh some of you soon and all of you eventually hopefully.