"The Owl of Wisdom
flies at night," by which G W Hegel meant that we
understand what went wrong only after the sun has set on
the empire we have the misfortune to inhabit. America's
sun still bestrides the heavens, and the Owl of Wisdom
did not deposit what the Bush administration is wiping
off its face. Still, the difficulties of US policy in
Iraq should motivate a reconsideration of some of its
premises.
Worst among these is the notion that
the US can impose a rational constitution on whatever
country it pleases. This draws credibility from the myth
of Socratic statecraft as told by Leo Strauss and its
students. If Greek rationalism, not Hebrew love, informs
the American idea, then it must be America's mission to
promulgate such rationalism among the less fortunate.
War among civilizations does not erupt because
men are unreasonable, but rather because existential
fear drives them to it. The real Socrates, as opposed to
the Straussian fabrication, has something disturbing to
tell us about this.
Turning Socrates into an
apostle of rationalism seems odd, for he drank the
poison prescribed for him by an Athenian court in 399 BC
rather than escape into exile (as Leo Strauss doubtless
would have done). That was an existential rather than a
rational choice (Ask Spengler, April 6).
Although the Athenian mob condemned him, and Athens had
fallen into ignominy after its surrender to Sparta five
years earlier, Socrates preferred to die than to cease
to be Athenian. Western philosophers, though, depend so
much on Plato's Socratic dialogues that they must
portray Socrates as the incarnation of reason. His
execution, in their view, was a sacrifice at the altar
of reason by its ideal exponent.
Not so, argued
the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), who
remains a lone and cranky voice in the debate. US
policymakers would benefit from a few quiet hours with
Kierkegaard, whose 1841 doctoral dissertation showed
Socrates not as a system-builder but as a destroyer who
saw that Greek culture was a failure and set out to tear
down its premises.
Socrates, in short, was an
"ironist" for whom "the whole substantial life of Greek
culture had lost its validity". The ironist, wrote
Kierkegaard, "is prophetic, but his position and
situation are the reverse of the prophet's. The prophet
walks arm in arm with his age, and from this position he
glimpses what is coming ... The ironist, however, has
stepped out of line with his age, has turned around and
faced it. That which is coming is hidden from him, lies
behind his back, but the actuality he so
antagonistically confronts is what he must destroy; upon
this he focuses his burning gaze."
Doubtless
Kierkegaard had in mind Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's
spirit that always negates, namely Mephistopheles, who
told Faust, "Alles was entsteht/Ist wert, dass es zu
Grunde geht" (everything that comes to be goes
rightly to its ruin). Irony, said the Danish writer,
"establishes nothing, because that which is to be
established lies behind it. It is a divine madness that
rages like a Tamerlane and does not leave one stone upon
another" (quotes from The Essential Kierkegaard,
H and E Hong, Princeton 2000).
Athens' hubris
led to the city's ruin in the Peloponnesian War of
431-404 BC, which America's critics cite as an analogous
case of imperial overreach. Yet the Athenian tragedy
reveals precisely the opposite, if we read Kierkegaard
correctly. No culture founded on a restricted ethnicity
and its particular gods can help but fail. Pericles
boasted that Athens was great both in good and evil,
borne out by the massacre of the inhabitants of Melos in
416. The subtlest philosophy could not overcome Athens'
particularism. It could expand only through empire, that
is, collecting tribute by the threat of violence. In
broader war, Athenian culture failed, and Socrates "used
irony as he destroyed Greek culture" (Kierkegaard).
Three conflicting portraits of Socrates have
come down to us. Besides Plato's hagiographic report we
have the satirist Aristophanes' hostile depiction, as
well as a sympathetic account by the soldier Xenophon.
The latter paints Socrates as an avuncular source of
humdrum advice, however, whereas Plato's Socrates dwells
in the realm of ideas, unperturbed by earthly concerns.
Xenophon "has deflated his Socrates" and "Plato, like an
artist, has created his Socrates in supernatural
dimensions" (Kierkegaard). In The Clouds,
meanwhile, Aristophanes shows yet another Socrates, a
meddlesome troublemaker who leads a young man to beat
his father after hearing Socrates' critique of
traditional authority.
"But what was Socrates
actually like?" asks Kierkegaard. "The answer is:
Socrates' existence is irony ... Along with Xenophon,
one can certainly assume that Socrates was fond of
walking around and talking with all sorts of people
because every external thing or event is an occasion for
the ever quick-witted ironist; along with Plato, one can
certainly let Socrates touch on the idea."
Like
Kierkegaard, Leo Strauss hoped to stitch together a
single picture of Socrates from three divergent reports.
Strauss, however, assumed that hidden among the
contradictions was an esoteric science of statecraft
discernible only to an elite of adepts. His students
have spent the 30 years since Strauss's death bickering
about what the great man really meant to say. That does
not speak well for his argument. Rather than an occult
Straussian conspiracy, as some have suggested, I suspect
that Strauss worked himself into a maze of infinite
regress (The secret that
Leo Strauss never revealed, May 13, 2003).
Those who wish to delve further into the Straussian
labyrinth may consult his "Lectures on Socrates" in
Thomas Pangles' collection, The Rebirth of Classic
Political Rationalism (Chicago 1989).
I
hasten to add that treasures for students of statecraft
are to be found in Greek philosophy, above all in the
History of the Peloponnesian War of Thucydides
and the Politics of Aristotle. The fault lies not
in the Athenians but in Strauss's idolatry at the altar
of Socrates.
Merry good humor pervades
Kierkegaard's writing on the subject, while Strauss ties
knots into every sentence. The Danish theologian's view
illumines both the material and the historical context,
which raises a question as to why Strauss remains so
influential. The answer, I believe, is that
Kierkegaard's understanding of Socrates leads to
disturbing conclusions. If all the effervescence of
Platonic reasoning does not lead to positive
conclusions, what hope does reason give us? Philosophy
(in Franz Rosenzweig's phrase) is a small child stuffing
his fingers in his ears and shouting, "I can't hear
you!" in face of the fear of death. Kierkegaard requires
not a deduction, but a leap of faith.
Kierkegaard, that is, betrayed the philosophers
and went over to the camp of the theologians, and the
philosophers give him the cold shoulder. Rationalists as
well as anti-rationalists fought over a straw man,
namely Socrates the supposed Apostle of Reason.
Friedrich Nietzsche despised both faith and reason, and
chose Socrates as the whipping-boy for reason.
Rationalists such as Leo Strauss rose up to defend
Socrates, without ever getting quite clear which
Socrates they proposed to save. Both rationalists and
anti-rationalists got it wrong. The general disregard
for Kierkegaard is understandable, for it is a most
uncomfortable thing to conclude that philosophy has
deposited us at the edge of the precipice of faith.
Disturbing as Kierkegaard's conclusion may be,
his case is most convincing that Socrates was an
ironist, a "revolutionary", the destroyer of the invalid
old. Only in that sense is the United States Socratic:
it is the embodiment of creative destruction,
reinventing itself to the ruin of the remnants of
history. Kierkegaard's Socrates - the ironist, not the
system builder - yet may serve as an inspiration to US
policy.
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