Friday, 12 December, 2003

On Tyranny I picked up the Washington City Paper yesterday. These City Papers, and I presume every city has one, are a Boston Pheonix like thing. When I got to the last page, the syndicated colum theStraightDope (aka Cecil Adams) which is usually a good read I see that the topic for mockery of the day is "Leo Strauss, lunatic". Well, I think to myself, I didn't see that one coming. Cranky Political Philosophy is not generally a topic for the tabloids. By strange coincidence it has been my topic tangentally for the past three or so days. The professor I mentioned, did study under Strauss at Chicago, we read Plato in his classes using Bloom's translation of the Republic, Al Farabi using Mahdi. Heck, as I look across the room I see Strauss-Cropsey's History of Political Philosophy sitting over on a chair. One of those books I read on weekends. Tomorrow I will take a brief stab at how I interpreted calls for close, but non historicist readings of political philosophy. Hint, no differently than I was asked to read anything else closely. I suppose that undergraduate education in America is a brutal, thickly grained and lumpen type of thing, and that I should not make claims that I believe (or ever believed) otherwise. Later on, perhaps, I will take this on at greater detail. I recall I went a round on this back in May as well. I feel a need to defend what little education I've. had. First I think I'll pick up a copy of Saul Bellow's novel Ravelstein. 10:41:31 AM    comment [];trackback [];

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