All Philosophers Agree

The divine origin of the world

The Truth Strauss Hid

All philosophers agree. Strauss pretended there was a break between the Ancients and the Moderns. However, the division between the ancients and the moderns is superficial.

No one reads any of the modern philosophers today with a sense of excitement for the future. Their project is over. When Hegel stepped on the scene, anyone with sense knew “this is as far as this can go.” And with him it ended. Marx isn’t a philosopher. Nietzsche is.

Knowing this, Strauss decided to lie nobly about the moderns. “Young student, looking for action: here, you have an enemy! The world you don’t like can be attacked. Prove the inferiority of the moderns to the ancients and you will be a hero.”

But all philosophers agree. It is important to publish this fact today, because it is easy (as I’ve said) for young people to ignore philosophy, on the presupposition that there is no knowledge where disagreement is found. Further, the obsession with “the moderns” isn’t doing anyone any good. If I have to read another essay on how “this or that philosopher is the cause of homosexual marriage” or “this philosopher’s ideas are the cause of our free speech crisis”—and these, by tenured professors—I’m going to have an aneurism.

“Plato said rulers must be wise. Since husbands cannot be considered wise, or at least most of the time, there should be no ‘head of the house.’ Patriarchy is philosophically unsound. Plato is the cause of feminism! And so by extension gay sex!” That’s the level of much “academic discourse.”

What do all the philosophers agree to? All of philosophy is about definitions (“what is” questions) and internal consistency (can you answer the “what is” questions without contradicting yourself). All philosophers agree: the origin of the world, i.e., the origin of all the things, is divine. Any attempt to remain internally consistent, to define anything, requires recourse to a divine origin.

Straussians will think I’m joking. Non-Straussians will wonder about the general reputation philosophers have. These are fair reactions. But the fact cannot be surmounted: unless you understand that all things, indeed the whole world, has a divine origin, all your definitions will come to nothing. All your attempts to define things will come up short.

The Divine Origin of The World.

Pre-philosophic thought always makes a distinction between “nature and convention.” It goes so far as to posit a distinction between “what is real and what is apparent.” Philosophers know this kind of distinction is an error. All we have is what is called “the apparent world” but, since it is all we have, it is actually the real world.

Permit me this explanation: the reason the “apparent world” is interesting, is because it is the only world we have to make sense of things, i.e., it is the world in which we personify all the beings. If you do not allow yourself to personify what we call the “inanimate,” you will never understand the inanimate. Look at the stone. Try to define it without personifying it to some extent and you’ll end up with a definition that could apply to other things and doesn’t capture all that the stone is. To deal with the former problem, natural scientist will be able to produce a sort of chemical account of the stone. He cannot deal with the latter problem.

The “apparent world” is “the divine world” and the rationalist faith to have gotten outside of that world is a superstition. No man can discard the apparent world. No man can discard the divine world. All the philosophers knew this; they knew man’s divine origin.

Someone might object on behalf of the apparently atheist philosophers.

Why did Dante put all the philosophers in Limbo? It’s because they all agreed; they knew the divine origin of life. Dante didn’t put them in Heaven because they relied solely on knowledge. You cannot sit down and through reflection come to believe in Jesus or Mohamet. Reflection reveals a divine origin of the world, not this or that god.

Objections

I will answer objections in separate essays, either as they occur to me or as they are raised. Here are two off the top of my head.

• Well, if the modern philosophers know the world is divine, why do they seem to do so much to obscure this fact?

• The main point of Straussianism is the theological-political question. The secret teaching is that there is no divine origin of the world. You have it completely backwards!

Edit: Some additions.

• Why wouldn’t all philosophers tell everyone of the divine origin of the world? I mean, most actually do, but many give a strong impression against this and some deny it outright. What’s so complicated about this teaching, since you put it down so straightforwardly, that it could not be said by all philosophers as you say or close to how you say. Why all the fuss?

• You seem to deny this in other essays

• You imply that errors of an age should not be traced back to some philosophers. Isn’t that absurd? It certainly seems like there are some obvious connections! Do you deny that “Ideas have consequences”??