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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Full of silly conclusions and false dichotomies but succeeds in making Strauss sound interesting. When you read Thiel, the mystique falls away but 1) he seems smarter than Musk and 2) I appreciate some of the Dimes Square works of art he has funded - if the right-wing is to hang around, they should at least have the decency to be avant-garde about it.
Knowledge of man and knowledge of the political are not opposed at all. There will always be a degree to which study of our nature will be subject to bias (be it self-serving or self-disparaging) but the acknowledgement of that isn't to give up on the idea of human nature. The moment where he noted instances where the upper classes idealised the lower classes as innately good was bizarre - as if deification can't go hand in hand with justifications for dehumanisation? He also seems to idealise this idea of there always being an enemy in society inherently despite acknowledging that it is impossible in our modern day - but this is fundamentally unsustainable even in the recent past as internal conflict over the racial element has often plagued fascist states. I don't know about the idea of an innate/inherent human nature but it is clear that environment has a massive effect on how our flaws manifest.
Knowledge of man and knowledge of the political are not opposed at all. There will always be a degree to which study of our nature will be subject to bias (be it self-serving or self-disparaging) but the acknowledgement of that isn't to give up on the idea of human nature. The moment where he noted instances where the upper classes idealised the lower classes as innately good was bizarre - as if deification can't go hand in hand with justifications for dehumanisation? He also seems to idealise this idea of there always being an enemy in society inherently despite acknowledging that it is impossible in our modern day - but this is fundamentally unsustainable even in the recent past as internal conflict over the racial element has often plagued fascist states. I don't know about the idea of an innate/inherent human nature but it is clear that environment has a massive effect on how our flaws manifest.
"The few who understood something of mens heart and mind, who were foolish enough not to restrain their full heart but to reveal their feeling and their vision to the vulgar, have ever been crucified and burned"
I stumbled upon this while studying Strauss; extremely surprised at how insightful and succinct Thiel's analysis of counter-enlightenment thinkers Schmitt, Strauss and Girard is. The primordial violence of Girard, mixed in with Strauss' philosophical (and political) reticence is a great contrast to Schmitt's oppositional political theology and Locke's necessity of ambiguity. However, I don't think the great threat to the US is Islam, but rather the US itself. Nonetheless, a great read on how to (not) fight the enemy.