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Modern Views of Platos Silence Pt 9
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This Nietzschean critique is imprecise. If Strauss's observation of the "ne­cessity" of the sort of conflict that he envisages—a war between philoso­phers and hopeless troglodytes—is "correct," his ideas about accommo­dation seem more strategically apt than Nietzsche's defiance. Rosen must mean that there is always and necessarily a tension between philosophy and polities of malleable people, the variability of human nature being the relevant condition under which a demand for "adjusting to audiences" would be intelligible. The conflict that Rosen supposes is necessary must have to do with the gods' need for worshipers, both before and after the cre­ation of the new world. If this is the matter about which Strauss has erred, then does it make sense to claim that his rhetoric is cowardly? Is it right to say accusingly that "were we to enact a 'city' rooted in Strauss's version of the 'noble reserve' and the 'calm grandeur' of the classical thinkers, the results would be restrictive and demeaning to the human spirit, and hence base rather than noble"? ¹²⁴  

 

Rosen reaches the same result with regard to Strauss's procurement of worshipers. Strauss finds disciples who adore him, but he relegates them to the degraded status of "a special race of academic administrators, them­selves acting under the impression that they are wise men." With respect to the task of bringing freedom into balance with enforced purification, Strauss's rhetoric takes the form of "a generalized philosophical thesis ac­cording to which the gentleman, i.e., the rural aristocrat, is the practical imitation of, and points toward, the philosopher." Rosen asserts that this "is philosophically mistaken, and it has bad political consequences for phi­losophy." The flaw in the philosophic reasoning is Strauss's suppression of "the Platonic teaching that philosophy is divine madness." The political folly lies in the irrelevance of Strauss's vision of gentlemanly rule to our time, which wants freedom. ¹²⁵  

 

What do Rosen's disagreements with Strauss have to do with Platonic si­lence? Exactly this: We have already seen that Rosen attributes divinity to Plato. Rosen informs us further that "Plato practices esotericism ... in the sense that he seeks to persuade us that philosophy has won, or can win, its quarrel with poetry." However, "the principles of Socrates', and of Plato's, conceptions of philosophy are indeed to be found within the dialogues." At a "deeper level" of Platonic esotericism, which is nevertheless percepti­ble because it rises up to the surfaces of the dialogues, it is suggested that "there is no quarrel between philosophy and poetry."

 

So, Plato's exoteric separation of theoria and poiesis is merely provisional, weak irony. Further, in the context of the choice between cautious and bold rhetoric, it "should never be forgotten that the publication by Plato of his dialogues, given the political circumstances of his day, was a revolutionary act of extreme fearlessness." Thus, to understand Plato's esotericism better than Kant or Strauss do, one must realize that Plato "was in fact a Kantian." That is, "Plato was a 'modern,' not an 'ancient.' " ¹²⁶