What Is Tyranny?
Studying Strauss' “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”
Today I began to read (again) chapter four (“Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”) of Leo Strauss’ What Is Political Philosophy? While the topic is still fresh in my mind, I would like to record a few notes.
As a student at Hillsdale College many years ago, before reading this chapter along with Strauss’ more extensive commentary in his book On Tyranny, I conducted an experiment. I read an English translation of Xenophon’s Hiero before reading Strauss’ commentary. I wanted to see what I could glean from Xenophon’s work on my own and then compare what I learned to what Strauss could teach me. It was a sobering and enlightening experiment.
At the beginning of his “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” Strauss critiques modern social science and raises a simple question: “What is tyranny?” Strauss asserts that in order to adequately answer this simple question, we must take our bearings from classical political philosophy:
Once we have learned again from the classics what tyranny is we shall be enabled and compelled to diagnose as tyrannies a number of contemporary regimes which appear in the guise of dictatorships. This diagnosis can only be the first step toward an exact analysis of present day tyranny, for present day tyranny is fundamentally different from the tyranny analyzed by the classics. (p. 95)
Strauss argues that the classical frame of reference still has everything to teach us about tyranny:
The fact that there is a fundamental difference between classical tyranny and present day tyranny, or that the classics did not even dream of present day tyranny, is not a good or sufficient reason for abandoning the classical frame of reference. For that fact is perfectly compatible with the possibility that present day tyranny finds its place within the classical framework, i.e., that it cannot be understood adequately except within the classical framework. The difference between present day tyranny and classical tyranny has its root in the difference between the modern notion of philosophy or science and the classical notion of philosophy or science. Present day tyranny, in contradistinction to classical tyranny, is based on the unlimited progress in the “conquest of nature” which is made possible by modern science, as well as on the popularization or diffusion of philosophic or scientific knowledge. Both possibilities - the possibility of a science that issues in the conquest of nature and the possibility of the popularization of philosophy or science - were known to the classics. (Compare Xenophon, Memorabilia I 1.15 with Empedocles, fr. 111; Plato, Theaetetus 180c7-d5.) But the classics rejected them as “unnatural,” i.e., as destructive of humanity. They did not dream of present day tyranny because they regarded its basic presuppositions as so preposterous that they turned their imagination in entirely different directions.”
That from which classical political philosophers turned their imaginations in entirely different directions, statesman such as Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill (e.g. “Fifty Years Hence”), and authors such as Martin Heidegger (e.g. “The Question Concerning Technology”), Yevgeny Zamyatin (e.g. We), C.S. Lewis (e.g. “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” The Abolition of Man, and That Hideous Strength), Aldous Huxley (e.g. Brave New World), and George Orwell (e.g. 1984 and Animal Farm), and many others addressed directly. Contemporary political philosopher Waller R. Newell has also written extensively and well on the topic of tyranny.
In a class at Hillsdale on Aristotle with Dr. John Grant I wrote a paper entitled “Archetypal Tyranny” in which I examined Aristotle’s depictions of tyranny alongside Xenophon’s Hiero and Strauss On Tyranny. I can review my paper to recall what I once thought I knew.
In his chapter four (“Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”) of What Is Political Philosophy?, Strauss dialogues with and politely refutes the arguments of philosophers Eric Voegelin and Alexandre Kojève on the topic of tyranny. In the midst of this dialogue, Strauss makes the following delightful observation:
And even if it were true that we could understand the classics better than they understood themselves, we would become certain of our superiority only after understanding them exactly as they understood themselves. Otherwise we might mistake our superiority to our notion of the classics for superiority to the classics. (p. 101)
Later Strauss writes:
We are in need of a second education in order to accustom our eyes to the noble reserve and the quiet grandeur of the classics. (p. 104)
Strauss weaves commentary on Cyrus, Machiavelli, Savonarola, and many others into his answer to the simple question “What is tyranny?” and he suggests why modern readers who naturally prefer Jane Austen over Dostoyevsky are fortunate.
All of this sets the stage for understanding the relationship between Simonides and Hiero, Strauss’ debates with Kojève, and the phenomenon of tyranny, subjects for a future post.
Xenophon’s Hiero is not long. We can read it along with chapter four of Strauss’ What is Political Philosophy?