We have recently been discussing the question of the appropriate attitude to take towards the greatest minds: whether someone who is not a great mind can call them to account, or judge them, or ask them to explain themselves; and indeed how vast is the chasm separating the great minds from the rest of humanity. There have been a number of arguments on both sides, and so I thought it would be interesting to see what Strauss had to say on the subject.

I started by looking at a passage which describes the nature and powers of the philosopher. This passage is found in the address "What Is Liberal Education?" reprinted in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (LAM). The specific quote is found at the top of p. 7 of LAM, and it is in some ways very frightening: Strauss writes about the philosopher as "the only true king" who has "all the excellences of which man's mind is capable, to the highest degree." This is an awe-inspiring picture, and so it comes as no surprise when later on Strauss admonishes us that "we are not competent to be judges" of such men.

But when I looked a little closer, I noticed that Strauss does not paint this picture in his own name. The description is part of an account of Plato's thought, and Strauss takes some pains to distance himself from it. Let me back up and quote the full description, emphasizing those words which Strauss uses to underline that he does not speak here on his own responsibility. (I start near the bottom of p. 6, and all emphasis is mine.)

"We have heard Plato's suggestion that education in the highest sense is philosophy. Philosophy is quest for wisdom or quest for knowledge regarding the most important, the highest, or the most comprehensive things; such knowledge, he suggested, is virtue and is happiness. But wisdom is inaccessible to man, and hence virtue and happiness will always be imperfect. In spite of this, the philosopher, who, as such, is not simply wise, is declared to be the only true king; he is declared to possess all the excellences of which man's mind is capable, to the highest degree."

In four sentences, Strauss summarizes a part of Plato's teaching on the philosopher. In three of those four sentences, he inserts some kind of disclaimer ("he suggested", "is declared"), to make sure we understand that he is speaking about Plato's teachings and not his own. To anyone familiar with Strauss's writing, this in itself is remarkable. We all know that Strauss is capable of summarizing someone else's opinions for pages at a time without once inserting a disclaimer to make it clear that he is not speaking in his own voice. That he inserts such disclaimers here in three sentences out of four should therefore make us a little suspicious that Strauss may be trying to put some distance between himself and these teachings. Perhaps he may believe that the teachings are not true, or at any rate not simply true. And it may be significant that the only sentence in which he does NOT insert a disclaimer -- that is, the only sentence where he is willing to allow us to misunderstand the teaching as his and not Plato's -- is the sentence which denies the possibility of wisdom, that is, of perfect knowledge of "the most important, the highest, or the most comprehensive things." It looks like Strauss may be more skeptical than Plato appears to be regarding the powers of even the greatest human intellect. But for now all this is guesswork. Let us see what comes next.

In the next sentence, Strauss finally speaks in his own name. Up till now he has been explaining to us what Plato thought; now he tells us what we -- here and now -- are to make of it. He writes:

"From this we must draw the conclusion that we cannot be philosophers -- that we cannot acquire the highest form of education."

Well that's plain enough. It looks like we are right back where we started; while philosophers serenely contemplate the empyrean, we wretched mortals below cannot ever aspire to their level. And of course if we cannot aspire to their level, we cannot presume to question them. Or is that really where we are?

Strauss says "we cannot be philosophers". Who is this "we"? Well, in the first place, "we" must mean Strauss and his audience when he first gave the address. The Acknowledgements (LAM, p. 273) indicate that this address was first delivered at the tenth annual graduation exercises of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University College, the University of Chicago, on June 6, 1959. In the second place, "we" must also include anyone who reads the address once printed. Now, it is unreasonable to assume that Strauss knew personally everyone who heard his address when he first delivered it. And of course he could not possibly know who would read it later. So he would have no way of knowing whether his audience -- his "we" -- might not include some very fine minds, or even the finest of minds. Such people would not have to be famous; there have been fine minds in the past who have preferred a quiet, private life to a life involving fame and public recognition. In fact, Strauss's audience might have included a fine mind -- one of the very finest -- whom Strauss himself had never heard of. Such things are possible. The point is that he had no way of knowing for sure that his "we" would always exclude the supreme human intellects; they might have been there, or they might read the essay later. And yet, notwithstanding that he could not have known that, Strauss -- that most careful of writers -- did not write "we should probably draw the conclusion" or "most of us will likely draw the conclusion." He wrote "From this we must draw the conclusion that we cannot be philosophers." And the only way that he could write this in confidence, knowing that his audience might include the finest of minds, is if he was quite certain that the rank of "philosopher" as defined in the previous four sentences is a rank that is impossible for humans to attain. The implication is clear and inescapable: Strauss here conveys his own teaching that it is impossible for any man to possess "all the excellences of which man's mind is capable, to the highest degree."

But if there are no godlike philosophers, then there is no chasm separating the best thinkers from the rest of us. And if there is no chasm, if the range of thinkers is a continuum, then it is more reasonable to suppose that we can call the great thinkers to account. This appears to be Strauss's teaching; is it borne out later in the essay?

Remarkably, it is. Strauss maintains the veneer of respectful awe for the great thinkers, as a ploy to counter a kind of modern egotism that refuses to take anyone seriously outside oneself. It is for this reason that he must convey his true teaching more quietly: not that he expected to be persecuted, but that it is all too easy today for any ignorant undergraduate, without expending the slightest mental energy, to set himself up as a judge of the deepest of thinkers. In this context, the sight of a mature professor showing elaborate respect to these thinkers cannot but be salutary. But for those who can see past the show, for those who actually read what he wrote, Strauss is quite plain that we must think for ourselves in this regard and that we can require the deepest thinkers to speak to us. About two thirds of the way down p.7, Strauss writes:

"Since the greatest minds contradict one another regarding the most important matters, they compel us to judge of their monologues; we cannot take on trust what any one of them says."

It is true that he goes on to say that "we cannot but notice that we are not competent to be judges," but a paragraph later he repeats his insistence that "Each of us here is compelled to find his bearings by his own powers, however defective they may be."

It is true that Strauss warns of dangers in this, but they are not dangers of incompetence. The only dangers he mentions -- he calls them "facile delusions" at the bottom of p.7 -- are excuses for not thinking. They are, literally, prejudices -- that is, opinions which pre-judge the state of things, arriving at a conclusion before opening the book. In other words, the only dangers he warns of are moral dangers, dangers of having the wrong attitude towards the thinkers one studies. Nowhere does he warn of intellectual dangers, of stupidity or incompetence. Instead, he repeats that "however defective [our own powers] may be," we are "compelled" to find our way by them alone.

There is one other reference in this section which bears closely on the accountability of great thinkers. Back up in the first half of p. 7, shortly after declaring that we cannot be philosophers, Strauss repeats the point in a very distinctive way. He writes,

"We cannot be philosophers, but we can love philosophy; we can try to philosophize."

In the context of discussing philosophy, this phrase is obviously a reference to one of the most famous passages of Plato, the passage where Socrates coins the term "philosopher." At the end of the Phaedrus (around the middle of Stephanus 278), Socrates says that we cannot be wise but we can love wisdom. This is where the word "philosophy" comes from -- a philo-sophos is one who loves wisdom. For Strauss to use exactly the same wording directs us to the original. And here, at the very origin of philosophy, we find that this exact passage in the Phaedrus bears on this question of whether we can interrogate the greatest minds; here at the source we see how Socrates teaches Phaedrus to treat philosophers. The passage runs as follows:

Socr: Then I think we may be content with the literary discussion with which we have been amusing ourselves. Go and tell Lysias that we two went down to the stream and shrine of the Nymphs and there received the following message which we are charged to deliver to Lysias and other speech writers, to Homer and other poets, whether they compose for accompaniment or not, and finally to Solon and anyone who has written treatises in the form of political utterances, which he calls laws. If any of them had knowledge of the truth when he wrote, and can defend what he has written by submitting to an interrogation on the subject, and make it evident as soon as he speaks how comparatively inferior are his writings, such a one should take his title not from what he has written but from what has been the object of his serious pursuit.

Phaed: What is the title you have in mind for him?

Socr: To call him wise, Phaedrus, would, I think, be excessive; God alone deserves to be so described. But to call him a lover of wisdom [philosophos] or something of the sort would be more appropriate and at the same time more modest.