Straussians and the Bronze Age Pervert

(The Theological-Political Time Bomb)

Straussians were primary contributors to a recent regime-piece on BAP, a piece whose result—if not purpose—is providing the grounds for legal action against BAP as a sort of “terrorist guru” for white people. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but no one expects journalists to tell the truth. And I mean that: does anyone expect any journalist, even ones they like, to faithfully and accurately relate events, much less the thoughts of other men? Anyone who reads a lot of journalist writing is, I believe, more concerned with seeing how the Rhetoric of his team is doing against the Rhetoric of the other team. There is no serious interest in truth that leads a man to journalists.

The Straussian school is supposed to be above journalism and able to speak dispassionately about the questions that inspire anger in others. I’m not saying Straussians are not supposed to speak about events of the day, but I am saying they should ignore the people whose profession it is to do this day in and day out, and when the Straussian does speak about events of the day, he ought to be able to do so in a dignified or dispassionate manner.

Unfortunately, Professor Smith, the most successful Straussian quoted in the article, speaks to the journalist in order to express his indignation.

When [The Bronze Age Pervert] began submitting his doctoral work, Smith, his adviser, became enraged. “I was shocked that his family would escape Ceaușescu’s Romania only for [BAP] to undermine the principles of American democracy,” Smith told me. “I view that as a shameful act of betrayal.” He said he made his disgust known but ultimately signed off, and [BAP] received his degree. “I was his dissertation adviser, not his censor.”

There is a certain degree to which Smith may just be covering his own ass—which, for Straussians and Liberals alike, is not as shameful as the indignation he betrays here. Men like Smith have a right to protect their position. However, much of the PRESTIGE of Smith’s position, and of the positions of men like him, comes from the fact that they are supposedly allowed to say what they want as well as think and study what they want. The prestige of a university professor is that he is not someone who can be bullied by journalists or agents of the security state. The university is supposed to be the place where adults can act like adults, but Smith’s actions here give the lie to the belief that that university system is such a place. He is a tenured professor at Yale. It would be shameful for such a man to become enraged like this and to run to journalists to vent his anger and feed his vanity. On the other hand, if he is merely covering his ass, then, here is a tenured professor at Yale, who has to fear other men—not for anything he’s said but he has to fear they could cancel him because of what one of his students said. A tenured professor at Yale is either a vain apparatchik at heart or scared of nonentities. Either way: “it’s not a good look,” especially for the Straussians who have been teaching and believing that the American University was modern liberalism’s bulwark against the excesses of fanatical egalitarianism and vengeful thumos. Allan Bloom, if he were alive, would have had some choice words for Smith and other tenured professors who have spent the last 4 years caving to the mob on questions of race and “public health measures.”

So much for Smith. Another Straussian gave two comments, Dustin Sebell, whom the journalist suggests is confirming the dox that he, the journalist, is attempting to peddle (did Sebell know the journalist would use him this way? I doubt it. But this is what happens when you talk to journalists). Sebell’s two comments might have seemed and probably were intended to be innocent and merely defensive. I’ll quote the relevant passages each in turn before I discuss them.

First

[The Pervert’s] advisers were not alone in failing to take his Nietzscheanism as seriously as they might have. Dustin Sebell, a former acquaintance of [BAP’s] from that period and now a professor at Michigan State, told me that political philosophy as a whole has been one big victory parade for liberalism for several decades now. “You have a tradition of reflection that has gone on for decades largely oblivious to these radical Nietzschean critiques,” Sebell said. “When those critiques resurfaced, many professional philosophers had little to say for themselves.”

In this first quotation Sebell is trying to explain away recent successes by rightwing, specifically Nietzschean rightwing, thought. It may be true that political philosophy has been one big victory parade for liberalism but… is the regime we live under now a liberal regime? That is, Sebell suggests that Liberalism has just forgotten how to deal with this new thing, rightwing atheism or Nietzschean vitalism, and that once it remembers, the success of Nietzscheanism will be checked if not overcome.

But isn’t liberalism dead? Now that awareness has been raised regarding the “threat of Nietzscheanism,” is it going to be Liberalism and Liberals attacking Nietzscheanism and Nietzscheans or is it going to be communism and psychotic leftists attacking Nietzscheans and other white people who just happen to be normal?

Here’s how David Azzerad recently described our present-day regime:

[We live under a] forever metastasizing civil rights regime (“trans rights are the civil rights issue of our day,” to quote the president); Medicaid and Medicare (the entitlement most likely to bankrupt the country); federal regulation over the environment, our schools, and every last corner of the workplace; and untold trillions of dollars wasted in the name of ending poverty and promoting democracy.

While we’re at it, [we live under] the largest wave of foreign migration in recorded history (70 million—I would add “and counting,” but we long ago lost count); gay marriage and sex change operations on children; the feminization of society; and critical race theory’s institutionalization—in the name of antiracism—of antiwhite racism.

This is an accurate description of our regime—who can deny that this is where we are? Does Sebell think Liberalism is going to rouse itself to defeat Nietzcheanism and the present regime? Was Liberalism caught off guard by antidiscrimination, antiracism, and the chemical castration of minors and, now being aware of these things, will the liberal philosophers and Straussians form a “coalition of the moderate” to restore sanity and decency to our universities and public discourse? Liberalism has already been defeated, and it wasn’t by Nietzscheanism.

I believe that Sebell suffers from what Straussians tend to suffer: blindness to the current moment. If Liberalism were still possessed of Lockes and Jeffersons, the situation would be entirely different—but just because we can read these men does not mean their political project is still viable today. (Jefferson himself lamented that when American cities became as bad as French cities majority rule would fail by becoming despotic, because where there are too many propertyless and dependent men the majority destroys property—not transfers property, destroys it.)

Liberalism is dead. It isn’t going to rouse itself to combat Nietzscheanism. Its skin will be worn by communists hunting Nietzcheans and persecuting other people who are normal.

Sebell has misread the situation. He also misreads Bronze Age Pervert. The journalist quotes him a second time, to the effect that BAP genuinely believes in the reincarnation of the soul in a way that would comfort someone fearing death.

Here is Sebell’s quotation:

Journalist: Fixation on BAP’s monstrous qualities has, I think, led even his fervent admirers to overlook the most unexpected aspect of his philosophy, which is a literal belief in the transmigration of souls, as described in Eastern religions and the work of Arthur Schopenhauer. If this life fails, another will come. When the ironic pose drops, when the outrageous Boratism subsides, this conviction is what remains. “I believe reincarnation is fundamentally true,” he writes, in a section of his book that does not appear to be for laughs.

“I think that is the deepest layer of his outlook,” Dustin Sebell, at Michigan State, told me. “He believes in an esoteric version of metempsychosis, that our truest selves live on after death and take on different forms. He is profoundly unwilling to accept his own mortality.”

Sebell is accusing BAP of lacking the strength of soul to face up to his own mortality, that he believes in an “esoteric version” of metempsychosis out of a kind of cowardice. Is this an accurate interpretation of what he actually says? Here is the relevant passage from section 26 of BAM:

I believe reincarnation is fundamentally true, even though most of these religions taught it in a metaphorical and popular form called metempsychosis. This is the belief that the soul, the supposed (but false) unity of will and intellect, is fully reborn. This is false. The intellect is a merely physical quality like muscular strength and can’t be “reborn” any more than your muscles are literally reborn. You are not at bottom your intellect, this is impossible, although this is the assumption of almost all modern people even when they claim otherwise. They pay lip service to “supremacy of the desires,” or to biological determinism, but they still believe they are their intellects, just imprisoned by flesh and matter and genes and a biological “programming.” This is wrong! And it’s not the intellect that is reborn, I will tell you what is. Take a fruitfly, or a worker ant. This type of being is very close to plant-life in some ways. It has very primitive intellect, very primitive nervous system. There are inborn ways of behaving, of reacting to certain stimuli, inborn desires and orientations “in the blood,” and when you kill one ant, the next one over will be identical in this regard. Its rebirth is “instantaneous” because the ant has a will that is shared uniformly across its type in the hive, and is therefore persistent and enduring. Once the queen dies, the next queen is indistinguishable from it in that thing that Schopenhauer calls the will, what he says is inborn way of wanting, and is in a very literal sense a “reincarnation” of this same thing.

It’s hard to know what Sebell means when he says “esoteric version of metempsychosis.” BAP says metempsychosis is “false,” but could he believe in the “esoteric” version of it? We get a hint at what Sebell means when he says BAP is “profoundly unwilling to accept his own mortality.” He thinks BAP’s view of reincarnation is a coping mechanism or a sort of comforting lie he tells himself and others to hide the truth and finality of mortality. That is the only possible conclusion a reader can come to through this specific quotation. 

Yet from the quotation of BAM it is clear there is nothing “comforting” or personal about the kind of reincarnation BAP espouses. He teaches, and apparently believes, that there are recurring types in nature and that the death of an individual does not mean the eradication of its type: the type persists and some types, such as ants, are so simple that they are “reincarnated” “instantaneously.” BAP is teaching that “you”—the special “I”—is not so much what you are; he is not teaching an “esoteric version of metempsychosis,” because the “I” is central to, the whole point of, metempsychosis. Nowhere does BAP suggest that consciousness survives death.

When Socrates said he was learning how to die, he was saying that he was trying to become perfect, the perfect expression of the thing “human being.” What is “I” and what is “personal” are the weaknesses and diseases of this or that particular specimen. The individual “dies” when he becomes perfect because then he has ceased to be unique; the individual dies by becoming a perfect image of the type. The perfect “tree” in your mind is not unique and is not a tree.

The criticism that BAP has not understood the relationship between the good and the noble.

A Straussian would read Sebell’s comments and suspect that, behind them, was an accusation that BAP had failed to “become a philosopher” in the Straussian sense of philosopher. The unwillingness to accept one’s mortality is, in Straussianism, connected to a misunderstanding. People tend to believe they deserve and will receive great rewards if they are able to accomplish grand and noble things–when they can serve the good of others, especially the good of a great polis or people, they believe they will be rewarded with the greatest rewards, and the greatest reward is becoming a god. Likewise, they believe that men who betray their friends and their nation deserve the worst things. A lesser version of this: they believe cowards, especially cowards in physical confrontations, deserve to be punished for running away when other men stand their ground. Straussianism, especially after it was marked by Leibowitz’s interpretation of Plato’s Apology, tends to take a strict view that the promises held up are false and the punishment men reserve for traitors and cowards, when it is about revenge, is irrational. Someone who was “profoundly unwilling to accept his own mortality” would be someone who hoped that by being beautiful and doing noble things he might not die as other men die. Sebell seems to be accusing BAP of trying to avoid the fate of human beings by becoming a god.

This view is associated with the pre-Socratics, especially men like Heraclitus and Pindar.

“For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all—ever-flowing eternal fame among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.” (Heraclitus)

The Socratic view cuts against the desire for immortal glory. Likewise, the Socratic view cuts against the idea that men can do “Selfless” things, i.e., that men can successfully indebt other men to them by serving the public good. If, as Socrates suggests, everyone acts selfishly or for their own good, what distinguishes good action from bad action is not whether or not it is “selfless” or whether it does or doesn’t “hurt others”; rather, good actions are those which help a man and bad actions are those which harm him and all men will do the good who know and can do the good. Since all men who know and can do the good will do the good, what distinguishes a good man from a bad man is this knowledge and ability to act on it. Being a good person is not about having a “good will” or “freely choosing to do the right thing.” Being a good person is about “knowing what is good for you and being free to live according to that knowledge.”

Sebell suggests, and if he doesn’t other Straussians certainly have, that BAP has failed to understand this Socratic position.

Both his book and several of his Caribbean Rhythms episodes do show a serious inclination to pre-Socratic thought and the thought of the Sophists. BAP loves to denigrate Socrates and, by extension, the Straussians. So let us for the sake of argument grant Sebell’s point and the point made by other Straussians, that BAP is insufficiently attentive to the distinction between the good and noble.

First, a quick point of the moment: sure, let’s say BAP isn’t a “full political philosopher” in the Straussian sense. But, is Patrick Deneen or any of the other “postliberals”? Why don’t we hear or read any Straussian criticisms of these people? Deneen denies courage is worthwhile and does not think it should play an important role in the moral development of young people. That is worse than anything BAP teaches.

Second, what is at stake? I mean, if, for the sake of argument, we grant that BAP has made this specific error and confused the noble and the good, it doesn’t seem to matter much to the main political issues. That is, BAP’s politics are not incompatible with the Socratic position though BAP himself might be a pre-Socratic. Here is Nietzsche in BGE, stating with admirable clarity, the essential truth that exercises Straussians:

220. Now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is so popular one must—probably not without some danger—get an idea of WHAT people actually take an interest in, and what are the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men—including the cultured, even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive. The fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to the average man—if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression (perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?), instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that "disinterested" action is very interesting and "interested" action, provided that... "And love?"—What! Even an action for love's sake shall be "unegoistic"? But you fools—! "And the praise of the self-sacrificer?"—But whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained something for it—perhaps something from himself for something from himself; that he relinquished here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more." But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so much when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman; one must not use force with her.

Okay, so the noble is clearly undercut in this aphorism. Did it stop Nietzsche from formulating all the wicked ideas people are canceled and harassed for these days? Nietzsche’s clear-sightedness into the supposed “selflessness” of “the noble” didn’t drive him to liberalism and toleration. The claim that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance (which is where BGE 220 leads if thought through), if granted, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be a “racist” or an “elitist” or “intolerant”; the Socratic insight isn’t liberal or democratic or liberal-democratic. It doesn’t make you those things either.

Whether you take BAP’s pre-Socratic line or the more Straussian line, there is no reason to prefer someone like Deneen to BAP or to prefer today’s “liberal” regime to Nietzscheanism or imperialism. Furthermore, BAP has furthered Straussian discourse in a way other popular scholars have not.

How BAP has helped the Straussian “School”

One thing BAP accomplished was to help bring Straussianism to grips with its fundamental dichotomies. For several decades Straussianism, when it wasn’t concerning itself with the theological-political question, was busy with an iteration of this problem in the form of the debate regarding relativism. This debate established two sides, where the good guys were the Ancient and Medieval Philosophers who believed there was genuine truth available to man, and the bad guys were the modern philosophers who denied there was genuine truth available to man. In crass political terms, this came to mean there were political movements that were “utopian” and treated man as malleable and these movements were of modern origin, and there were good political movements in the ancient world that treated man with more dignity because the adherents of Ancient philosophy and Monotheism sought to submit to nature or obey the commands of God and in so doing admitted a limit to man’s nature, i.e., admitted there was a nature at all and that man wasn’t infinitely malleable. Thus, understanding that man wasn’t infinitely malleable, Ancients treated him with more respect than modern utopians (communists and fascists) who murdered hundreds of millions of men and did other bad things in the pursuit of never-attainable scientific and social perfection. Liberalism was ambiguous or better than communism and fascism not because it was good in the way Ancient philosophy was good, but it was good in that it was a less-bad form of the murderous utopianism of Marx and Hitler. --- I’m not saying this way of seeing things framed the thoughts of all the Straussians, but it had many adherents among the Straussians and their students.

BAP (and Nietzsche before him) broke through this kind of thinking and other off-brand versions of this kind of thinking by cutting through the dichotomy “relativism is bad; belief in human nature is good.” The real debate is between those who are “graced by nature’s grace” and those who are not, the lucky and unlucky or blessed and cursed. The bad, unlucky and cursed tend to resort to relativism because they hate “standards” or distinctions between higher and lower; this kind of thinking reached its apex in the distinction between facts and values, a distinction that cleared the ground for the advent of modern natural science. Relativism reached almost a noble form here as it was used to unfetter human ingenuity. BAP begins BAM by discussing science and the scientific method dependent on the fact-value distinction; he dispenses with this quite well in my opinion, by arguing that it is obvious that animals have an “end.” It’s just not the same “end” that was refuted by men like Bacon and Descartes, nor is it a satisfying “end” necessary to Stoicism and much of the natural law tradition; but an end it is, and it is from this kind of end, an end or completion thought of and understood on a different plane than the traditional debate between monotheism and secular science, that sets the stage for the more comprehensive and fundamental dichotomy of good and bad rather than good and evil (monotheism) or tolerant admission of no factual values and intolerant insistence that values are facts (liberalism).

These are of course big questions, and I am mostly describing things here rather than sifting through the arguments. My point is that BAP should have been welcomed by Straussians, and that his thinking has helped many in the school rethink and see more clearly Strauss’ basic dichotomies. The constant recriminations and attempts to push the Nietzschean horizon out of the realm of acceptable university discourse should never have been something Straussians indulged. In any event, this attempt of theirs has failed even though it had the support and moral force of the regime. Nietzsche is here to stay. Liberalism as it was is dead. Either a new liberalism, an imperial liberalism, needs to arise (and why not) to crush the communists while learning from the Nietzscheans, or we have to admit that the alternatives are BAP-Nietzscheanism or late-stage communism and liberation theology.