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Strauss follows them by inveighing against the "heterodox philosophers" who "believed that suppression of free inquiry, and of publication of the results of free inquiry, was accidental, an outcome of the faulty construction of the body politic, and that the kingdom of general darkness could be replaced by the republic of universal light." In keeping with this notion, the apostates practiced weak irony: "[T]hey concealed their views only far enough to protect themselves as well as possible from persecution," and otherwise revealed their truths openly in order to "enlighten an ever-increasing number of people who were not potential philosophers."
On Rosen's account, Kant was one of Strauss's worst heretics. He planned to "counter the pre-Enlightenment rhetoric of caution with a rhetoric of daring, that is to say, of frankness." In this, he meant "to produce a new kind of human being, one who is mature rather than immature." Further, Rosen stresses that Kant's transition from prudence to frankness is "produced not simply by historical circumstances but by Kant's will to change those circumstances," 120 One must ask whether a god is a being who acknowledges the necessity of strong esotericism or who opts for the weak variety. When the question is stated thus, it immediately becomes clear to Rosen that Strauss's intentions, or at least his means of realizing them, are fatally defective. To admit the necessity of strong esotericism is to accept nature as a limitation on the divine will. It is to wish to be a god without affirming one's own omnipotence. Hence, it is to abandon the project of being causa sui.
Similarly, to separate theoria (seeing) and poiesis (making) is to confess publicly that nature constrains the divine will. Strauss wants to be a god but does not believe in the possibility of his divinity. Rosen must repudiate him and does so by proclaiming himself a postmodernist, that is, one who openly unifies theoria and poiesis. (Rosen might be too hasty in rejecting Strauss for this reason; the possibility that Strauss only pretends to practice the strong irony while actually engaging in the weak might complicate the analysis.)
