9 - Being, Time, and Politics: The Strauss–Kojève Debate

Summary

When Leo Strauss's study of Xenophon's dialogue Hiero, or Tyrannicus was republished in English in 1963, together with a review by Alexander Kojeve and a “Restatement” by Strauss, the resulting “book” had already become a curious stack of Chinese boxes. At the center seemed to be some Xenophonic teaching about the limitations and attractions of the tyrannical life, itself a variation on the central Socratic question: the best human life. But Strauss showed, in commonsensical, detailed remarks about the dramatic setting, the two personalities (the tyrant Hiero and the visiting poet, Simonides), and Xenophon's other works, that the text provided no clear access to that teaching, and certainly no justification for identifying what Xenophon wanted to say with Simonides' praise of beneficent tyranny. In fact, Strauss argued, once inside the dramatic setting, even once inside the implied assessment of the tyrannical and the private life, we come upon some of the most comprehensive and important issues in classical political thought.

In two important passages, Strauss went so far as to assert that the dialogue's treatment of the issue makes clear by contrast the great poverty of the modern or social scientific understanding of political affairs. The modern attempt to understand political matters is a disaster; even tyranny cannot be recognized as such by “our modern sciences.” If this result is, as Strauss often implies it is, the “inevitable result” of modern philosophy itself, then we are “forced” to consider a “restoration of classical social science” (177).