Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Strauss’s philosophy is his distinction between the ‘esoteric’ and the ‘exoteric’. For Strauss, the very possibility of political science lies in this distinction. What was of great importance was this distinction between what was said or written for public consumption and what was implied or meant for the discerning hearer or reader. Here Strauss appears to be deeply influenced by Nietzsche and his style of masking what he meant and his claim that only what is masked is profound. Steven Smith, a noted defender of Strauss who insists that “Strauss was not a Nietzschean” (Smith, 2006, 9), writes of Strauss, “…he did carry with him something of Nietzsche’s love of masking others and his desire to hide behind masks of his own making. No one can claim to have read Strauss seriously without attaining an appreciation for the immense sense of playfulness, of hide and seek, that attends to his manner of reading and writing” (Smith, 2006, 10).
Indeed in his book, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, Laurence Lampert, a respected Nietzschean scholar, argues for the decisive influence that Nietzsche has on Strauss. In commenting on an essay on Nietzsche written by Strauss entitled “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”, Lampert says: “Leo Strauss’s Nietzsche is the best Nietzsche yet, the one nearest to the still almost secret Nietzsche of Nietzsche’s great books. I believe that it is not too much to say that Strauss’s essay is the most comprehensive and profound study ever published on Nietzsche” (Lampert, 1996, 1,2).
It has been suggested that there are three important areas where Strauss is influenced by Nietzsche (Drury, 1997; Lampert, 1996):
- As already mentioned, the distinction between the ‘esoteric’ and the ‘exoteric’, where Nietzsche seeks to convey his message to particular people while covering up or disguising his meaning to others. Strauss is said to have an esoteric teaching and an exoteric one.
- The relationship of truth or knowledge to power. To Nietzsche, the ‘will to power’ is fundamental. ‘Truth’, if it can be called that, is a product of the will to power. Various truths serve the interests of particular groups’ ‘will to power’. Thus for Nietzsche, liberalism, socialism, Christianity were all ideologies that served the interests of the weak; they were the result of the ‘ressentiment’ of the weak against the strong. The outcome of this is that morality is linked to the will to power, and it establishes an ethics that is “beyond good and evil”. For Drury and others, Strauss’s philosopher is beyond good and evil.
- The idea of ‘radical elitism’ or ‘aristocratic egoism’. For Nietzsche there is a hierarchy of values based on a natural aristocracy. Nobles create values that are good by virtue of the fact that they emanate from the noble. What is good and healthy for society is then that which serves the interests of the healthy and the strong. Nietzsche thus proposes that the ‘philosophers of the future’ will engage in a ‘transvaluation of values’. Strauss emphasizes the hierarchical aspect of nature.
In Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss argues that philosophers have to mask their ideas so as not to be persecuted by society. The philosopher guides and leads in secret; hidden behind his esoteric writings, he guides the masses by appearing to promote the conventional values of society but in reality is advancing his hidden agenda (Strauss, 1977). Strauss, according to Lampert, wishes to advance Nietzsche’s rule of philosophy through the ‘transvaluation of values’, with which Nietzsche declared that the ‘philosophers of the future’ will be concerned.
The philosophy of Darryl Naranjit 