| | Hi Scott,
Scott writes,
Which shows my earlier point, that just because someone is influenced by an intellectual doesn't mean they accept everything that intellectual believes in.
Yes you are correct here.... as I said....
In all truthfullness, we can only speculate about Wolfowitz. Is he telling the truth? Who knows.
Scott writes,
I thought one of the main attributes of Straussians is that they were anti-relativist.
I wouldn't say they are. Or Strauss was. Exoterically,yes. Esoterically no. This was the job of the special few to be able to see. He admired the exoteric moral writing of past philosophers to ground society with strong values, beliefs, and goals. But the ruling few knew it was a part of the cave. They cannot acknowledge this when making decisions politically, because it doesn't exist, and because it may actually harm the city itself if they did follow it. They must make decisions beyond it.
Quote Allan Bloom from Plato’s Republic, Interpretative Essay:
"Socrates can go naked where others go clothed; he is not afraid of ridicule. He can also contemplate sexual intercourse where others are stricken with terror; he is not afraid of moral indignation. In other words he treats the comic seriously and the tragic lightly. He can smile where others cry and remaim earnest where others laugh. In the symposium he says that the true poet must be both tragedian and comedian, implying that the true poet is the philosopher. Here he shows that the man who has both gifts must use them to oppose the ways of the vulgar tragic and comic poets use them; he must treat the tragic lightly and the comic seriously, hence reversing their usual roles. The man who is able to do this is already the philosopher. In both cases, it is shame that must be opposed; for shame is the wall built by convention that STANDS BETWEEN THE MIND AND LIGHT. The oridinary poetry appeals to that shame, accepting it edicts as law, while philosophic poetry OVERCOMES IT"
The good is the strong. The good are the lovers of the harsh, unadulterated truth. They are capable of looking into the abyss without fear and trembling. Now, it is true people cannot make a decision in life without making some sort of value judgement. Life and value cannot be seperated, as the quote below shows, even Nietzsche himself aims at some form of the good...
Nietzsche from the Antichrist:
What is good?— Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.
What is bad?— Everything that is born of weakness.
What is happiness?— The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
Not contentedness but more power; not peace but war; not virtue but fitness (Renaissance-style virtue, virtù, moraline-free virtue).
Shane
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