Reading Leo Strauss in China
Though there's been some grim news coming out of China recently, I came upon this must-read article that offers a trace of hope about the country. Writing in The New Republic, professor and essayist Mark Lilla alerts American readers to a fascinating conversation occurring within China's intellectual circles: what can the teachings of political philosopher Leo Strauss offer to China's political future?
Though the New Yorker has implied that these Chinese readers of Strauss are "the new generation's neocon nationalists," Lilla offers a different take on them:
Strauss and Schmitt are at the center of intellectual debate, but they are being read by everyone, whatever their partisan leanings; as a liberal journalist in Shanghai told me as we took a stroll one day, “no one will take you seriously if you have nothing to say about these two men and their ideas.” And the interest has little to do with nationalism in the nineteenth-century sense of the term. It is a response to crisis—a widely shared belief that the millennia-long continuity of Chinese history has been broken and that everything, politically and intellectually, is now up for grabs.
To Lilla, Strauss is appealing to the Chinese because he lays out the "grand tapestry of Western political theory" before them while providing "a bridge between their ancient tradition and our own."
Over twenty years ago, the intellectuals of another country, Poland, were also reading Strauss at a critical moment in their nation's history. Lilla writes:
I don’t remember if my Polish friends were reading Schmitt at that time, but they did rely on Strauss as a guide to the political-philosophical tradition they were rediscovering outside the confines of the Communist university system. In a sense, they were retracing Strauss’s own steps. Faced with the “crisis of the West” he saw in the weak response to Nazism before World War II, and to Communism after it, Strauss set out to recover and reformulate the original questions at the heart of the Western political tradition, which he did by leading his students and readers on a methodical march back in time, from Nietzsche to Hobbes, then to medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy (he avoided Christianity), and finally to Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Thucydides. Faced with the poverty, incompetence, and weak tyranny that real, existing socialism had delivered, many Poles I knew had begun a similar intellectual journey. And today, it’s the turn of some young Chinese, who are witnessing not the collapse of Communism but its metamorphoses into a form of despotic state capitalism. Their response has been to learn Greek, Latin, and German.
My conversations in China reminded me of political discussions I used to have in Communist Poland in the mid-’80s, after the coup and while Solidarity’s power was at its nadir. To my surprise, the people I met then—academics, journalists, artists, writers—were more anxious to talk about Plato and Hegel than about contemporary affairs, and not as a means of escape. For them, the classics were just what dark times demanded.
What can this mean for the political future of China? Will the Chinese internalize some of the teachings of Western Political Thought? Lilla offers some hope:
Everyone I spoke with [in China], across the political spectrum, agrees that China needs a stronger state, not a weaker one--a state that follows the rule of law, is less capricious, can control local corruption, and can perform and carry out long-term planning.
If a "stronger state" means one that follows the rule of law and reigns in corruption, then that's a relatively good start, isn't it? As for carrying out "long-term planning"--well, let's hope that the next item on their reading list is this.
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Re: Reading Leo Strauss in China
I didn't read that as optimistically as you did, Emily. I'm pretty sure the emphasis there is not so much on rule of law and corruption-control as on "strong state" and "planning." NB: "I tried to explain the Tea Party movement’s goal of “getting government off our backs,” I was met with blank stares and ironic smiles."
Sep '10
Re: Reading Leo Strauss in China
Leo had some less than kind things to say about China's views in Natural Rights and History; it would be nice to hear their reaction to reading him now.
Re: Reading Leo Strauss in China
My sense was that the interest in Strauss derived from the vacuum left by Confucianism. Aristotle, as interpreted by Strauss, specifies a role for the kalos k'agathos -- the gentleman -- not unlike what Confucianism specifies for the official. The Chinese interest in Carl Schmitt is more disturbing.
Oct '10
Re: Reading Leo Strauss in China
It seems that Strauss is playing Locke to Schmitt's Rousseau. Either way it is a recipe for a reformulation of the general will. We should hope that they lean toward Locke.
Edited on Dec 17, 2010 at 10:43amSep '10
Re: Reading Leo Strauss in China
I just got two books by Strauss and have started my sojourn through the first - Natural Law and History. I am relishing every word.