A young man wishing to study philosophy today is confronted with a staggering variety of philosophers and philosophies; he is even told that a single philosopher sometimes had several philosophies. Unlike Philosophy there is one Science; wherever there is wide or universal agreement based on demonstration, you find Science. Some scientists studying new things often disagree, but everyone is confident that agreement will be reached if it can be reached, and if agreement can’t be reached the wrong question is being asked. If agreement cannot be reached it need not be reached. Science looks far superior to philosophy, even to those philosophies that gave Science its initial push. Consider men like Bacon, Descartes and Locke: they all promoted a materialistic investigation into the world, by providing materialistic accounts of it and the things in it. But it’s obvious that Science during their day was not very advanced. There are men today who know much more about the advances of Science who disagree with the early philosophers’ accounts of how our minds work (and other things). It’s safe to assume that the newer thinkers, having more knowledge of Science’s discoveries, are more trustworthy; or, it’s safe to say, that because there is inevitable disagreement about things like “the understanding” or “justice” or even “what are our fundamental passions,” that questions like these are unimportant; such questions don’t really contribute to the march of science and we don’t need to answer them to enjoy the fruits of life and technology.[1]
Two philosophers sought to deal with this problem: Nietzsche and Strauss. Nietzsche sought to deal with it by explaining why all philosophy before him was a failure—every philosophy is personal. All philosophy, even Nietzsche’s philosophy, is a failure by the old standard of pre-Nietzschean philosophy, namely, “truth.” All the older philosophers wanted truth when all they could have was their personal interpretation of the world. Nietzschean philosophy, being at peace with the “Will to Power” and therefore being at peace with the variety of philosophies it produces, is a final philosophy for man. A student of philosophy need not be dismayed by the old variety; he now has an explanation for it and way of disregarding it.
Strauss, very reasonably in my opinion, gave a more honest explanation than Nietzsche’s self-aggrandizing one, and that was: there is not a great variety of philosophies. There are only two varieties, the ancient and modern. There is no real variety in the ancient, outside of some cosmetic differences, and the variety found in the moderns is due to the fact that the moderns are not genuine philosophers; the moderns all agree on an error and that error leads to successively radical revisions of philosophy over time until you get to someone like Marx and his imitators.
Strauss’ project would be worth sticking to if it were either (a) genuinely true or (b) a successful philosophic strategy. It’s neither. I leave it to everyone’s common sense to figure out that Straussianism has lost the battle for America’s universities. It has even lost the battle for tenure track jobs in Political Theory. I’ll discuss why it isn’t genuinely true in another essay. This essay is an intro to that coming essay.
This much suffices to describe the pitiable position of philosophy today. The successes of Nietzsche and Strauss are immense and shouldn’t be under-rated, but the great variety of philosophies still depresses philosophic inquiry because the two men who sought to put an end to the belief in that variety have, practically, been overcome.
It might be objected: “Nietzsche has not failed. He was under-appreciated for a time but is making a comeback.” That is true, but: aside from the revival’s leaders and a few others, the revivalists are not inclined to philosophic inquiry. In their case, there might be one single philosophy, but the truth is incredibly simple and not worth much inquiry, namely, “be as close to a tyrant as you can be. Don’t make pretty excuses if you aren’t cut out for tyranny or some approximation to tyranny.” This tyranny might be good as an antidote to our suicidal democracy, but the leaders of the movement have their work cut out for them. The need for philosophy will be felt once the reigning stupidity is defeated. A stupid and powerful enemy makes self-justification easy.
What happens once our Clown World is exploded?
[1] I leave aside the question of Artificial Intelligence in this essay, though arguably it is currently the greatest distraction and temptation away from philosophical inquiry by the young. How painful it would be to spend a decade of your life trying to figure out how to live properly (i.e., to benefit yourself) when a machine will be able to do it in a split second for you. Best to refrain from all investigations for the moment (including scientific ones), aside from learning how to manipulate the AI machines for your benefit.