SUBALTERN STUDIES
October 31, 2006 at 8:44 pm | In Asia, Books, Globalization, History, Literary | Leave a Comment
Subaltern Studies
The Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) or Subaltern Studies Collective
are a group of South Asian scholars interested in the postcolonial and post-imperial
societies of South Asia in particular and the developing world in general. The term Subaltern Studies is sometimes also applied
more broadly to others who share many of their views. Their approach is one of history from below, focused more on what happens among
the masses at the base levels of society than among the elite.
The term "subaltern"
in this context is an implied reference to an essay by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci
(1881–1937). Literally, it refers to any person or group of inferior rank and
station, whether because of race, class,
gender, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, or religion.
The SSG arose in the 1980s, to attempt to formulate a new
narrative of the history of India and South Asia. This narrative strategy most clearly
inspired by the writings of Gramsci was explicated in the writings of their "mentor" Ranajit Guha, most clearly in his
"manifesto" in Subaltern Studies I and also in his classic monograph ‘The Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency.’
Although they are, in a sense, on the left, they
are very critical of the traditional Marxist narrative of Indian history, in which semi-feudal India was colonized by the British,
became politicized, and earned its independence. In
particular, they are critical of the focus of this narrative on the political
consciousness of elites, who in turn inspire the masses to resistance and rebellion
against the British.
Instead, they focus on non-elites — subalterns — as agents of political and social change. They have had a particular
interest in the discourses and rhetoric of emerging political and social movements, as
against only highly visible actions like demonstrations
and uprisings.
People associated with Subaltern Studies
The Subaltern Studies group
was founded by Ranajit Guha.
In more recent times, many have been disillusioned with the post-modern turn that the
group has taken (notably Sumit Sarkar who left the group).
Other scholars associated with Subaltern Studies include:
- Gyan
Prakash - Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak - Partha Chatterjee
- Ranajit Guha
- Shahid
Amin - David
Arnold - David
Hardiman - Sumit Sarkar (later
dissented) - Gyanendra Pandey
- Dipesh Chakrabarty
- Gautam
Bhadra
External links
-
Tim Spurgin’s
notes on Subaltern Studies and other topics in postcolonialism
Further reading
- Young, Robert, White Mythologies. Routledge, 1990, reissued 2004. Several
associated ISBNs, including ISBN 0-415-31181-0, ISBN 0-415-31180-2. - Ludden, David, ed., Reading Subaltern Studies. Critical History, Contested Meaning
and the Globalization of South Asia, London 2001. - Chaturvedi, Vinayak, ed., Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. London
and New York 2000.
CLIMATE POLICY JOURNAL & EDITOR MICHAEL GRUBB
October 31, 2006 at 3:57 pm | In Earth, Economics, Financial, Globalization, History, Research, Science & Technology | Leave a Comment
Michael Grubb
Professor Michael Grubb is a leading international researcher on the policy responses to climate change and energy policy issues including renewable energy sources. He is now Associated Director of Policy at the UK Carbon Trust and a Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London. He has been a Lead Author for several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) addressing the economic, technological and social aspects of limiting greenhouse gas emissions and has advised a number of governments, companies and international studies on climate change policy. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Policy and is on the editorial board of Energy Policy.
PA at Carbon Trust: Rita Conway:
rita.conway@thecarbontrust.co.uk
Research Assistant at Cambridge: Misato Sato, m.sato@econ.cam.ac.uk
For press enquiries please contact
Carbon Trust Press Office
020 75443100
http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/faculty/grubb/contact.html
Michael Grubb Home Page
Faculty of Economics,
Sidgwick Avenue,
Cambridge,CB3 9DD
Tel: 44-(0) 1223-335288
Email: mjg7@econ.cam.ac.uk
http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/faculty/grubb/index.html
Centre for Environmental Policy
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Professor
Michael Grubb
Visiting Professor of Climate Change & Energy Policy
Summary Biography for Conference Abstracts
Professor Michael Grubb is a leading international researcher on the policy
responses to climate change and energy policy issues including renewable energy sources.
He is now Associated Director of Policy at the UK Carbon Trust and
a Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London. He has been a Lead Author for several
reports of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) addressing the
economic, technological and social aspects of limiting greenhouse gas emissions and has
advised a number of governments, companies and international studies on climate change
policy. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Policy and is
on the editorial board of Energy
Policy.
Institutional Positions
- Associate Director of Policy, The Carbon Trust, London (half time) www.thecarbontrust.co.uk
- Visiting Professor of Climate Change and Energy Policy, Imperial College, London
- Senior Research Affiliate, Department of Applied Economics, Cambridge University,
Cambridge UK www.econ.cam.ac.uk
- Associate Fellow, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London www.riia.org
Other associations and activities
- Editor in Chief, Climate Policy (www.climatepolicy.com)
- Coordinator, System Evolution component of SuperGen networks research programme
(2003-6) on future of UK electricity system - Chair, Advisory Group to Carbon Vision (Carbon Trust / EPSRC / ESRC industry-academic
joint R&D venture) - Member, UK Green Globe Network (advisory group to UK government on international
environment policy) - Member of Editorial Board, Energy Policy ( www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol )
Publications – Click here to view Professor Michael Grubb’s publications
page
Previous employment positions
- April 1993 to August 1998 Head of the Energy and Environmental Programme at the Royal
Institute of International Affairs, London - October 1988 to March 1993 Research Fellow (Senior Fellow from April 1992) at the Energy
and Environmental Programme, Royal Institute of International Afffairs - October 1986 to October 1988 Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Imperial College
Selected previous affiliations and activities
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC):
- Member of writing team for Policymakers Summary and Technical Summary of the Third
Assessment Report, Mitigation (WG-III) (2000-2001) - Convening lead author for IPCC Special Report on Technology Transfer (1997-99)
- Lead author for IPCC Technical Paper on Atmospheric Stabilization (1996-7)
- Lead Author for IPCC Second Assessment Report, Working Group III (1994-95: 3 chapters,
leading input on Equity chapter) - Member of President’s Advisory Council, International Association for Energy
Economics (1997-98) - Council Member, British Institute of Energy Economics (1995-1998 )
Contact details:
http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/faculty/grubb/contact.html
Climate Policy
The leading international, peer-reviewed journal on responses to climate change
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/defaultCLIMATE_POLICY.asp/
Climate Policy is a leading journal of analysis and debate on
responses to climate change. It addresses both the mitigation of, and adaptation to,
climate change. It also provides a forum for the communication of research, analysis,
review and discussion of responses to climate change, including issues related to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change,
the Kyoto Protocol and the negotiation of associated policy instruments.
The journal makes complex, policy-related analysis of climate change issues accessible
to a wide policy audience and facilitates debate between the diverse constituencies now
involved in the development of climate policy. Topics include:
- Analysis of mitigation or adaptation policies
- Studies of implementation and prospects in different countries and/or sectors
- Applications of integrated assessment to specific policy issues
- Policy and quantitative aspects of land-use and forestry
- Design of the Kyoto mechanisms
- Analysis of corporate strategies for climate change Socio-political analysis of
prospects for the UNFCCC regime Economic and political
aspects of developing country action and involvement - Social studies of climate change, including public perception, where policy implications
are derived
Climate Policy is of direct and vital relevance to academic,
industrial and government researchers, consultants and negotiators, industrial and
non-government lobby organizations, and to all those involved in making, developing and
implementing climate change policy at the national, regional or global level.
Contributions to the journal are welcomed, eg formal review articles, research articles
and commentaries. Notes for contributors are available from Earthscan or follow the link
below. The journal includes Book Reviews, Conference Reports and other items of interest.
Click here to view a
sample online issue.
Index & Abstract: ISI social sciences citation index, Geobase, Scopus, Econlit,
JEL, CC/Social and Behavioural Sciences, International Political Science Abstracts
Impact Factor 2004: 0.776
GOVERNMENT OF IRAN: TWO AMUZEGARS
October 31, 2006 at 6:02 am | In Economics, Financial, Globalization, History, Middle East, Oil & Gas | Leave a Comment
JAMSHID AMUZEGAR & JAHANGIR AMUZEGAR
Dr. Jamshid Amuzegar (also Amouzegar), (1923 – ) is a former Prime Minister of Iran.
Born in Tehran in 1923, he first climbed his way into
college graduating with degrees in Law and Engineering from Tehran University. While World
War II was brewing, he was able to enroll in Cornell
University with the help of Colonel Crawford, an
American friend in Iran at the time. After finishing his PhD at Cornell University, he returned to Iran and became
deputy minister in Iran’s ministry of Health, under Dr Jahanshah Saleh in 1955. Dr.
Amuzegar was among the first of Iran’s politicians schooled and
trained in the United States. Prior to that time, Iran’s
elite were almost entirely trained in France, among other
European states.
Dr. Amuzegar then soon became Minister of Labour and then Minister of Health in the
cabinet of prime minister Hasan-ali Mansour. He then
became Minister of Finance in
the cabinet of Amir Abbas Hoveida after the
assassination of Prime minister Mansour in 1964, remaining in
that post for nine years.
In 1971, he and Sheikh Ahmed
Zaki Yamani of Saudi Arabia were instrumental in implementing the series of price hikes that
quadrupled the price of oil and provided the resources for Iran to modernize its
infrastructure, agriculture, and defense. For this accomplishment, Amuzegar was awarded
the Taj-e Iran, first class, an honor normally reserved for only the prime minister and
former prime ministers. He was appointed Minister of the Interior in 1974.
In December 1975 he was taken hostage by the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal during an OPEC meeting. Carlos
was ordered to execute him, but did not do so, and Amouzger was released along with the
other hostages after a few days.
In 1976 he became chairman of the Rastakhiz party, having
led the Progressive faction against Finance Minister Hushang
Ansary’s Constructionist faction. Soon after Jimmy Carter
became president of the United States, Dr. Amuzegar was
finally appointed prime minister of Iran in August 1977,
succeeding his rival Amir Abbas Hoveyda.
However, he rapidly became
unpopular as he attempted to slow the overheated economy with measures that, although
generally thought necessary, triggered a downturn in employment and private sector profits that would later compound the government’s problems. Hence in the wake of Khomeini’s revolution, he soon resigned and was replaced by Jafar Sharif-Emami.
Dr. Amuzegar today resides in the United States. A
memorable quote by Dr. Amuzegar:
"We [Iranians] were invaded by Greeks, Arabs, Mongols, and Turks,
but we never lost our identity because foreign invaders would find a richer culture in
Persians than that of their own."
Jamshid Amuzegar is not to be confused with Jahangir Amuzegar,
PhD UCLA, former Executive Director of the IMF.
See also
Source used for this article
- Iran in the last 3 centuries . Alireza Avsati. Vol 2. ISBN 964-93406-4-5
- Qajar (Kadjar) Orders and Decorations. http://www.qajarpages.org/qajorders.html
JAHANGIR AMUZEGAR
Jamshid Amuzegar is not to be confused with Jahangir
Amuzegar, PhD UCLA, former Executive Director of the IMF.
Trouble in Tehran
Jahangir Amuzegar
January 27, 2004
Iran’s
Crumbling Revolution
Jahangir Amuzegar
January/February 2003
read
summary & 500-word preview | purchase
full article
OPEC as Omen
Jahangir Amuzegar
Adjusting
to Sanctions
Jahangir Amuzegar
May/ June 1997
Oil
Wealth: A Very Mixed Blessing
Jahangir Amuzegar
Spring 1982
OPEC
and the Dollar Dilemma
Jahangir Amuzegar
July 1978
A
Requiem for the North-South Conference
Jahangir Amuzegar
October 1977
The
North-South Dialogue: From Conflict to Compromise
Jahangir Amuzegar
April 1976
Iran’s
Economy under the Islamic Republic.
Jahangir Amuzegar.
New York: I. B. Tauris, 1993.
July/August 1994
Iran: An
Economic Profile.
Jahangir Amuzegar.
Washington: Middle East Institute, 1977.
October 1977
MONETARY AUTHORITY OF SINGAPORE
October 31, 2006 at 5:33 am | In Asia, Economics, Financial, Globalization, History | Leave a Comment
Monetary Authority of Singapore
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
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Strategy Department, Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Lyxor ETF Launch, Singapore Recreation Club, Singapore
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Oct 2006 Monetary Policy Statement
21
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Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Public Lender
& Insurer Infrastructure Finance Summit 2006
19
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Deputy Managing Director Shane Tregillis at Launch of Securities and Investment Institute
Regional Centre at Fullerton Hotel at 5.15 pm
18
Sep 2006 “Sharing Some Perspectives on Growth” – Speech by Mr Goh Chok Tong,
Senior Minister and Chairman of Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Group of Thirty(G-30) International Banking Seminar and Lunch, at Marina Mandarin Hotel
[Click
here for previous Policy Statements/Speeches]
30
Oct 2006 Changes to MAS Board of Directors
12
Oct 2006 New 20-Year SGS to Further Develop Singapore’s Debt Market
12
Oct 2006 MAS Invites Comments on Proposed Regulatory
Framework for Mortgage Insurance Business
05
Oct 2006 Civil Penalty Enforcement Action For Insider Trading
25
Sep 2006 Securities Industry Council (“SIC”) Public Statement on Thakral
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27
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28
Sep 2006 Consultation Paper ‘ Returns on Retail Payment Statistics’
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Aug 2006 Draft Guidelines to Notices on Prevention of Money Laundering and Countering
the Financing of Terrorism
22
Aug 2006 Recent Economic Developments in
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Oct 2006 3-mth Treasury Bill Auction Result
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Assets of Former President of Liberia and Connected Persons) (Amendment) Reglations 2006
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Assets of Persons – Democratic Republic of the Congo) Regulations 2006
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Assets of Persons – Cote D’Ivoire) Regulations 2006
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AMERICAN MUSLIM ALLIANCE: PAC
October 31, 2006 at 1:34 am | In Globalization, History, Islam, Middle East, USA | Leave a Comment
American Muslim Alliance – PAC
39675 Cedar Blvd, Suite 220-E, Newark, CA. 94560
Ph: (510) 252 – 9858 Fax: (510) 252 – 9863
E-mail: civilrightsforall@sbcglobal.net
URL: www.civilrightsforall.netsbcglobal.net
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OFFICE OF NET ASSESSMENT: PENTAGON
October 30, 2006 at 10:39 pm | In Globalization, History, Military, Philosophy, Research, Science & Technology, USA | Leave a Comment
Office of Net Assessment
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment was created in 1973. It operates as an internal think tank for the Department. Andrew Marshall was named its
first director, a position he still holds.
Staff members have included:
- David S. Yost
- John Milam, strategic analyst.
- Donald Henry, “special assistant to the director of net assessment in the Office of Net Assessment within OSD”
- Stephen Michael Meyer
- Andrew
May - Andrew F.
Krepinevich, Jr., currently the director of the Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
Andrew Marshall (foreign policy strategist)
Andrew Marshall is the director of the United States Department of Defense’s
Office of Net Assessment. Appointed to the
position in 1973 by United
States President Richard Nixon, Marshall has been
re-appointed by every president that followed.
External links
Andrew Marshall
Andrew W. Marshall, “the Pentagon’s 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, fiddles with his
security badge, squints, looks away, smiles, and finally speaks in a voice that sounds
like Gene Hackman trying not to wake anybody. Known as Yoda in defense circles, Marshall
doesn’t need to shout to be heard. Named director of the Office of Net Assessment (“the
Pentagon’s internal think tank“[1]) by
Richard M. Nixon and reappointed by
every president since, the DOD’s most elusive official has become one of its most
influential. Today, Marshall – along with his star protégés Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz – is drafting President Bush’s
plan to upgrade the military.” “The Marshall
Plan” by Douglas McGray, Wired, February 2003.
“Put in charge of the Bush
administration’s proposed major military overhaul by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, he has sharply polarized the defense community. Marshall’s allies and proteges
revere him, calling the Office of Net Assessment ‘St. Andrew’s Prep.’ His enemies despise
him, deriding his acolytes as ‘Jedi Knights’.”[2]
(See Andrew Marshall
Acolytes / Jedi Knights for a listing.)
“Marshall played a major role in, among other things, the conceptualization of the
‘revolution
in military affairs‘ (RMA) and is currently
playing a major role in the Bush administration’s defense review (Quadrennial Defense
Review). Much of the work of ONA is highly
classified, and it has been difficult to understand just what is involved in ‘net
assessment’.” Autumn
2001.
Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest identify Marshall as a neoconservative.[3]
The February 10, 2001, Washington Post article “Bush
Review Of Pentagon Sets Stage for a Shake-Up” by Thomas E. Ricks states that
“The military’s opposition to Mr. Marshall’s recommendations is ‘likely to be
fierce,’ predicted a person involved in the review. … But Mr. Marshall holds two aces.
He has a decades-long relationship with Mr. Rumsfeld. And the Bush campaign’s defense
stance, laid out in a speech at the Citadel in South Carolina in September 1999, relied
heavily on ideas nurtured by Mr. Marshall over the years.
“The publicity-shy Mr. Marshall is something of a legend in national security
circles, both for his longevity and for his far-reaching network of acolytes across the
government, academia and the defense industry. At 79, he is said to be the only current
Pentagon official who participated in virtually the entire Cold War, beginning in 1949 as
a nuclear strategist for Rand Corp., then moving to the Pentagon as a civilian official in
1973. He has been kept in his current job by every president since Richard M. Nixon.
“Despite his age and experience, Mr. Marshall’s views are hardly conservative. In
recent years, he has gained a reputation as a radical reformer and has antagonized many
top officers.”
“‘Today, our military is still more organized for Cold War threats than for the
challenges of a new century – for Industrial Age operations, rather than for Information Age battles,’ Mr. Bush said
then. It was a line that could have been taken from any number of reports produced by Mr.
Marshall’s office, formally known as ‘the Adviser to
the Secretary of Defense for Net Assessment.’”
Jason Vest, “The
Dubious Genius of Andrew Marshall, American Prospect, February 15, 2001:
“…according to [author] Ken
Silverstein, if there’s a good description of Marshall it’s that he’s, ‘one of the
most effective pork-seeking missiles ever deployed by the military brass.’ While this may
be overstating matters a bit, given Marshall’s desire to gut a slew of conventional
weapons programs, it seems to ring true if you’re interested in national missile defense.
As a key witness before Donald Rumsfeld’s Commission to Assess the
Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, Marshall played no small role in
convincing the commission — whose findings have been cogently criticized by numerous
analysts — that a real threat is imminent.
“‘Though Rumsfeld’s commission made no recommendation whatsoever on National
Missile Defense, it dealt with the issue very artfully,’ says Jonathan Pollack. ‘In fact, if that
commission had a methodology, it was a very Marshallian methodology — you can posit these
circumstances, and if you posit the following it’s feasible this next thing could happen.’
National Missile Defense deployment should, Pollack adds, be looked at under the larger
rubric on the — currently in vogue — doctrine of ‘homeland defense,’ which focuses on
protection from ballistic missiles and terrorism, and offers a lot of moneymaking
potential to defense contractors. ‘This
is going to be a gravy train,’ he says.”
From “Inside the
Ring”, April 6, 2001:
“If you want to research the writings of Andrew
Marshall to see where his Pentagon strategy review is likely headed,
a security clearance is mandatory. Mr. Marshall, director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net
Assessment, rarely publishes his thinking in unclassified forms.
“The key, associates say, is to read the writings of his disciples. Or, as one
Marshall friend framed it in a ‘Star Wars‘
analogy, study the Jedis to learn the teachings of Yoda.
“One Jedi is Andrew F.
Krepinevich, a former Army officer who worked with Mr. Marshall
in the Net Assessment Office, a bastion of futuristic brainstorming.
“Mr. Krepinevich, who directs the private Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has taken on added importance. He is working on
the Pentagon’s future strategy study group headed by Mr. Marshall. It is one of about 12
panels assembled by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to plot a new course for the U.S.
military.
“When Mr. Krepinevich writes, as he did recently, that four Trident submarines
should be converted to land-attack missile platforms, it’s a good guess that Mr. Marshall
endorses the idea.
“Marshall watchers say his ideas show up in the writings of other proteges, such
as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and James
G. Roche, a retired Navy officer who is in line to be the next Air Force secretary.
“‘There’s this whole network of Marshallites out there and that’s how his work
gets out,’ says John Hillen, who has
participated in Mr. Marshall’s yearly military study program at the Naval War College in
Newport, R.I.”
“The Illusion of a Grand
Strategy” by James Der Derian, New York Times, May 25, 2001:
“Andrew Marshall … was handpicked by Mr. Rumsfeld to guide
the strategic review. Yet Mr. Marshall and his views remain enigmatic. Well-known if not
adored by a tight circle of civilian and military strategists — the so-called church
of St. Andrew — Mr. Marshall has been nearly invisible outside the defense
establishment. A RAND Corporation nuclear
expert beginning in 1949, he was brought by Henry
Kissinger onto the National
Security Council then appointed by President Nixon to direct the
Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment.
“He has been there ever since, despite efforts by some defense secretaries to get
rid of him. His innocuous-sounding office comes with a big brief: to assess
regional and global military balances and to determine long-term trends and threats.
“Insiders say Mr. Marshall was behind some of the key strategic decisions of the
Reagan years. His strategy for a protracted nuclear war — based on weapons modernization,
protection of governmental leaders from a first strike and an early version of Star Wars
– effectively beggared the Soviet war machine. He advocated
providing Afghan resistance fighters with the highly effective Stinger missiles. He
tagged AIDS as a national security issue.
“Supporters call Mr. Marshall iconoclastic and delphic; his
detractors prefer paranoiac or worse. No one has ever called him prolix. At a
future-war seminar that he sponsored, Mr. Marshall mumbled a few introductory words and
then sat in silence, eyebrows arched, arms folded, for the remaining two days. His only
intervention came at the end. He suggested that when it came to the future, it would be
better to err on the side of being unimaginative. After that experience, I better
understood why he has been called the Pentagon’s Yoda.”
Nicholas Lehman, in “Dreaming
About War” published in The New Yorker, July 16, 2001, writes:
“The most important promoter of the R.M.A. in America has been Andrew W. Marshall,
the head of the Pentagon’s obscure Office of Net Assessment, a cult figure in his own
right, and one of the most curious and interesting figures in the defense world. People
with decoder rings knew that Bush’s speech at the Citadel had been drafted by Marshall’s
corps of allies and that it endorsed Marshall’s main ideas.
“Bush promised that, as President, he would order up ‘an immediate, comprehensive
review of our military’ and give the Secretary of Defense ‘a broad mandate to challenge
the status quo.’ Sure enough, this February, only a couple of weeks into the Bush
Administration, newspaper stories reported that the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,
would be conducting a broad review of the military–or, rather, that Andrew Marshall would
be conducting it on his behalf. During the Clinton Administration, William Sebastian Cohen, as the
Secretary of Defense, tried, without success, to exile the Office of Net Assessment and
Marshall, who is seventy-nine, to the National Defense University. Now,
in 2001, it looked as if Andy Marshall was back–emphatically so, in a position of higher
influence than at any other point in his long career.
“Marshall is the last active member in government of a cadre of strategic thinkers
that took form more than fifty years ago at the original think tank, the RAND Corporation,
in Santa Monica, California. The best-known member of the group, and still a hero to
conservatives, was Albert Wohlstetter;
other members were Daniel Ellsberg, who
leaked the Pentagon Papers; Herman Kahn, a model for Dr. Strangelove; and James Schlesinger,
later the Secretary of Defense and the man who, in 1973, created the Office of Net
Assessment and installed Marshall as its head. All these people were
involved in what Kahn liked to
call ‘thinking the unthinkable’; that is, working through precise scenarios, based on game
theory and statistics, for what would happen in the event of a nuclear war with the Soviet
Union. There was particular emphasis on how the United States might survive a first strike
and still be able to launch a second strike.
“In his early years at the Pentagon, Marshall concerned himself with other
matters. In the eighties, he performed studies concluding that the Soviet Union had become
much weaker than most people imagined it to be. For the past decade and a half, every July
at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, he has conducted his celebrated
’summer studies,’ in which invited experts spend a week pondering a question posed by him.
“Marshall, a small, bald man with wire-rimmed spectacles who dresses in the manner
of an unreconstructed nineteen-fifties organization man, has a peculiarly strong mystique.
For a defense intellectual, he hasn’t published much, and in public settings he doesn’t
say much, either, often mumbling in a low voice, or questioning but not answering, or
simply saying he has nothing to add to the discussion. The medium through which he works
is his protégés, who are extremely loyal. These days, the people he knows in high places
include Rumsfeld; the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz; the Deputy Secretary of
State, Richard Armitage (a principal
author of Bush’s speech at the Citadel); and the Secretary of the Air Force, James Roche,
who worked for Marshall in the seventies.
“The Revolution in Military Affairs, Marshall’s main cause for the past ten years,
can be seen as a return to his RAND roots. There is a substantial R.M.A. literature, and
one should be cautious about attributing all its main points to Marshall, but most of it
posits a version of conventional war that would be waged in much the same way as nuclear
war, with strategists at remote computer screens targeting precision missile strikes. The
R.M.A. has been up and running–in seminar rooms, at least–for long enough now that it
has a language all its own (such as ‘deep-strike architecture,’ ’systems of systems,’
‘info dominance,’ and ‘asymmetric competitors’), which, like all insider jargon, has the
effect of pushing non-members away.”
From “Missile defence is about money and it’s here to stay” by Elaine Lafferty, Irish Times, July 25, 2001.
Andrew Marshall “was part of a group formed nearly 50 years ago at the Rand
Institute in Santa Monica, California, whose job it was, in the words of a member named Herman Kahn, a model for Dr. Strangelove, to ‘think the unthinkable’. In other
words, they played war games and imagined horrifying scenarios.
“Since the 1980s Mr Marshall has been a promoter of an idea first posited in 1982
by Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, then chief of the Soviet general staff, called RMA, or
‘Revolution in Military Affairs’. The RMA, in general terms, opines that technological
advances have changed the very nature of conventional war. Rather
than conflict conducted by ground troops, the new conventional war will be conducted
almost like a nuclear war, managed by strategic defence and computers at remote locations
targeting missiles at enemies.
“The ‘battlefield’, as it once was known, would no longer exist. War, in the RMA
lexicon, would be conducted by spy satellites and long-range missiles, by computer viruses
that would disable the enemies’ offensive and defensive systems, and by a ‘layered’
defence system that would make the US impenetrable.
“For most of the last decade, and certainly under the Clinton administration, Mr Marshall and
his protégés, who include both Mr Wolfowitz and the Secretary of Defence, Donald
Rumsfeld, and secretary of the air force James Roche, languished in various hinterlands,
including a stint for Mr Rumsfeld in the pharmaceutical industry. Mr Marshall
ran seminars at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. Neither technological advances nor
the political climate existed to make the RMA feasible.
“What a difference a vote in Florida can make. During the campaign Mr Bush had
promised an ‘immediate, comprehensive review of our military’. And just weeks into the new
administration, Mr Rumsfeld ordered exactly that, to be carried out by . . . Mr
Marshall!”
“The ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ Has An Enemy: Politics” by Michael
Cantanzaro, American Enterprise
Institute, October 2001:
“Perhaps the most renowned theorist of a revolution in military affairs is Andrew Marshall. Director of the Pentagon’s internal think tank
known as the Office of Net Assessment, and the intellectual leader of Rumsfeld’s review, Marshall has at times been treated as a pariah by the Pentagon establishment. He
is a survivor, though, and at age 79, having worked on military strategy, for a period
longer than the entire Cold War, has become a cult figure around whom reformers rally.
‘Marshall is something of a revered figure among those who know him and worked for him,’
said D. Robert Worley, a Marshall protege,
and now a senior researcher at the Potomac Institute for Policy
Studies, a defense think tank.
“Marshall’s career began in 1949 at the California-based RAND Corporation. For
over 20 years, he, along with like-minded thinkers such as Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, and James R. Schlesinger (Nixon’s defense
secretary), used elaborate war-gaming, incorporating advanced new concepts in statistics
and game theory, to test the best strategies for corralling the Soviet Union. According to Eliot Cohen, another Marshall acolyte,
Marshall and a team of researchers pushed development of weapons systems that ‘would
render obsolete large portions of the Soviet arsenal, or which would impose
disproportionate costs’ on Soviet military budgets.”
“During the Clinton administration, Defense Secretary William Cohen and others
tried to ostracize Marshall and the Office of Net Assessment. Now, having caught
Rumsfeld’s ear, Marshall is a central figure in setting future Pentagon priorities.”
Andrew Marshall “grew up in Detroit and received a graduate
degree in economics from the University
of Chicago. He took a job at the RAND Corporation in 1949 and worked with nuclear
intellectuals such as Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter. While there, Marshall and several colleagues played an
important if hidden role in the 1960 presidential election when they served as advisers to
John F. Kennedy and devised the bogus
‘missile gap,’ which JFK used to pillory Richard Nixon.”[4]
“At the broadest level of national policy, discussions of US strategy for
competing with the Soviet Union began in the late 1940s, when our relations with the
Soviets began to change fundamentally for the worse and there was little or no prospect of
a favorable turn of events in the foreseeable future. Studied interest in systematic planning for competing with the Soviets
over the long term waned until 1968, when Andrew W. Marshall replaced James Schlesinger as
director of strategic studies at RAND. Marshall’s quest for a
framework for structuring and giving direction to RAND’s program of strategic studies led
to his report Long Term Competition with the Soviets:
A Framework for Strategic Analysis, published in 1972. This document was a seminal contribution to US strategic
thinking in the post-World War II era. It reflects the strong influence of Marshall’s
interest, beginning in the early 1960s, in the subject of organizational behavior and in
the efforts at the Harvard Business School to develop the field of business policy and
strategy” [5]
From Fortune
Magazine, January 26, 2004, by David Stipp:
- What would abrupt climate change really be like? Scientists generally refuse to say much
about that, citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner
Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A
Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department’s “Yoda”–a
balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized
influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role
is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of Defense’s push
on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military
“transformation,” the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.
Note: “Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to
envision future threats to national security.” One could
wonder what this group was thinking about during the first eight months of 2001, while
they had access to the extensive Hart-Rudman Task Force
on Homeland Security report.
External Links
- Net Book: Zalmay Khalilzad, John White, Andrew Marshall, “Strategic Appraisal:
The Changing Role of Information in Warfare” (full report), RAND Corporation,
1999. “Explores the opportunities and vulnerabilities inherent in the increasing
reliance on information technology.”
The Definition of - Thomas Parker, High-Tech to the Rescue in
the Persian Gulf, Middle East Quarterly/Middle East Forum, June 1999: “Defense
intellectuals tend to support the revolution in military affairs and its quest for a new
generation of weapons systems; in contrast, those with vested interests to protect are
skeptical. RMA advocates include senior Reagan and Bush officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, - Ken Silverstein, The Man
From ONA, The Nation, October 25, 1999. - Bill Keller, The Fighting
Next Time, Why War?, March 10, 2002: “But Marshall’s real public face is
the legion of prolific R.M.A. proteges in policy institutes and universities whose work he has sponsored. His consistent - Bruce Berkowitz, War in the
Information Age, Hoover Institution,
Spring, 2002: “These technologies are turning over many traditional notions about how
to wage war. Much of this new thinking can be traced to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and its director, Andrew Marshall. Although little known to the general public, the office has often been much more - George Lewis, Pentagon Defense
Strategist Previews Future Warfare, University of Kentucky Public Relations, July 11,
2002. - Amrish Sehgal, China
and the Doctrine of Asymmetrical Warfare, BHARAT RAKSHAK MONITOR, July/August
2003: “That some of Andrew Marshall’s worst fears are coming true is already evident.
Japan’s economy has been in the doldrums for the last 7 years. Its biggest market, USA, is
itself locked in the throes of a recession. Given the major onslaught of Korean companies,
perhaps the only large markets left to Japan are India and China. India’s market for range
of products that Japan makes, unfortunately for Japan, is already highly competitive,
consumer oriented and service-intensive. China on the other hand is still somewhat of a
command economy and is as large, if not larger, a market than India. Moreover, political
considerations in China allow a better deal to be given to Japan than to South Korea.
Indeed, China is going all out to woo Japan Inc. The day is not too far away when China
emerges as Japan’s largest investment market and trading partner. Chinese political
pressure upon Japan to distance itself from USA can certainly be envisioned at such a
juncture.” - James G. Roche, Serving
the Patriots of America’s Air Force. Remarks at the Order of the Sword Induction
Ceremony, Andrews Air Force Base, Md. September 13, 2003: “I also want to point out
that one of my most important mentors is here tonight. He is my mentor, Bill Bodie’s mentor, General Lance Lord’s mentor, and he is
Brigadier General Rich Hassan’s
mentor — Andrew Marshall, one of the finest men in the Department of Defense. Andy was
the head of the Office of Net Assessment when Admiral Farragut was around and was appointed to the job by General George
Strategic Assessment. In particular, scroll down to the section on “Department of
Defense Net Assessments.” Past
Revolution, Future Transformations, RAND
Corporation, 1999. Complete book online. Also see Bibliography for
names and article related to ONA and Andrew Marshall.
Richard Perle (both now advising Governor George W. Bush), Richard Armitage (author of a
recent Congressionally-mandated study on the subject), Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins
University, and Zalmay Khalilzad of RAND. Andrew Marshall, the head of the Department of
Defense’s Office of Net Assessment,
an in-house think tank, has pushed hard for the RMA; while he had a close relationship
with former secretaries of defense Cheney and Perry, his office was almost moved outside
of the Pentagon under Secretary Cohen.”
theme (and theirs) for at least a decade has been that the nature of warfare is in for one
of its periodic upheavals as nations adjust to two major developments. … One is the
perfection of long-range precision strike weapons that enable armies to fight from great
distances and that make massive, conspicuous platforms like carriers and air bases more
vulnerable. As our adversaries acquire more accurate missiles, Marshall argues, wars will
probably be fought either from long range or by quick and comparatively small units that
get in and out quickly. The other change is the emergence of information warfare, in which the most
valuable assets are more powerful sensors–satellites, airborne cameras, handheld global
positioning system equipment, robotic snoopers–that give the advantage to the side that
can better read the battlefield and more quickly disseminate information to its
commanders.”
influential than its obscure title suggests. It is an in-house think tank for DOD charged
with looking 10 or 20 years into the future, sizing up the threats the United States will
face, and analyzing how we will match them. … In
the early 1990s, Marshall began to speak about a ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA). This revolution was driven mainly by the great changes that were under way in
information technology. As a result of these changes, military forces would be able to
have a better picture of the adversary and would be able to strike at him with precision
weapons from great distance. The military would also need to become more mobile because
large, stationary forces would be too vulnerable. … Over the course of three decades,
many promising majors, lieutenant commanders, and GS-13 civilians have done a tour through
the Office of Net Assessment.
These officers are now generals, admirals, and members of the Pentagon’s
Senior Executive Service and have considerable influence in drafting war plans and
designing new weapons programs.”
Washington just before he relinquished command of the Continental Army. He celebrated his
50th wedding anniversary last night. And ladies and gentlemen, tonight is his 82nd
birthday. He is still working full time at our Pentagon. General John Jumper and I have often
relied on one of his many sayings to help you cope with tough times. He once said to me,
‘There simply are limits to the stupidity any one may can prevent.’ General Jumper and I
call upon that time after time.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Andrew_Marshall
GLOBAL EMPIRE
October 30, 2006 at 5:02 pm | In Globalization, History, Military, Science & Technology | Leave a Comment
Global Empire
A global empire involves the extension of a state’s sovereignty over territories all around the world. The essential
criterion demands that, when navigating around the world, the longest trip between the empire’s
possessions be half of the circumference of the planet. "Global" is therefore a function of longitude,
not of latitude. For example, because of the Spanish Empire’s territories around the
globe, it was often said in the 16th
century that " the sun never sets on
the Spanish Empire." This phrase was later
applied to the Russian Empire and British
Empire.
History
Early empires
Earlier empires were largely confined to the American or African and Eurasian continents.
Nations such as ancient Egypt, the Aztec
Empire, the Roman Empire, the Incan
Empire, India and China could in one
sense be considered early superpowers, but not Global
Empires.
Some of these early superpowers which spread across different continents include:
- The Persian Empire under the Achaemenids once controlled all of Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, the Caucasus, and parts of India, Central Asia, and Greece.
- The short-lived Macedonian Empire under Alexander the Great became one after replacing
Persian power. - The Sassanid Persians who took
power after overthrowing the Persian Parthians, ruled all of
Persia, reaching up to Egypt, India and Africa. - The Roman Empire covered most of Europe,
North Africa, Asia Minor, the Levant
and Mesopotamia. - The Umayyad Caliphate ruled
from Persia to Spain. - The Mongol Empire stretched across Asia to Central Europe. It was
the largest contiguous and second largest empire in world history, five times greater than
that of Alexander and much larger than the Roman Empire, the
Persian Empire or any previous empire.
Only after the circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition (1519-1522) could
states begin to achieve a global presence.
European contenders
The first global empires were a product of the European Age of Exploration
that began with a race of exploration between the then most advanced maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, in the late 1400s. The initial impulse behind these dispersed maritime empires
and those that followed was trade; driven by the new ideas and of the capitalism that grew
out of the European Renaissance.
Portugal began establishing the first global trade network
and empire under the leadership of prince Henry the Navigator.
During its Siglo de Oro, the Spanish Empire had
possession of the Netherlands, Luxembourg,
Belgium, Portugal, most of Italy, parts of Germany, parts of France, and many colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. With
the conquest of inland Mexico, Peru,
and the Philippines in the 16th century, Spain established overseas dominions on a scale and world
distribution that had never been approached by its predecessors (the Mongol had been
larger but was restricted to Eurasia). Possessions in Europe, Africa, the Atlantic, the Americas, the Pacific, and the Far East qualified the Spanish
Empire as attaining a global presence in this sense.
It is a little known fact that, for a few brief years in the 1650s, the tiny Duchy of Courland, located in what is now Latvia, simultaneously maintained overseas colonies within the
territories of modern-day Gambia and Trinidad and Tobago. Thus, going by the above
definition, this unlikely Latvia-Gambia-Tobago combination was, strictly speaking, a
"Global Empire", although its total acreage was relatively small. (See Courland colonization.)
Subsequent global empires included the French, Dutch, and British
empires. The latter, consolidated during the period of British maritime hegemony in the 19th century, became the largest empire in history by virtue
of the improved transportation technologies of the time (nominal claims to huge tracts of
uninhabited and uninhabitable land in the Arctic and in Australia, for instance, went uncontested). At its height, the British Empire covered a quarter of the Earth’s land area and comprised a quarter of its population. By the
1860s, the Russian Empire- and it’s heir the Soviet Union- became the largest contiguous state in the
world, and the latter’s main successor continues to be so to this day. The present-day Russian Federation, despite having "lost"
its Soviet periphery, has 12 time zones, stretching
slightly over half the world’s longitude.
Global Empires
- The Mongol Empire
- The Portuguese Empire
- The Spanish Empire
- The Dutch Empire
- The French Empire
- The British Empire
- The Russian Empire
- The American Empire
- The German Colonial Empire
- The Ottoman Empire
Related links
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_empire"
WORLD STATE
October 30, 2006 at 2:40 pm | In Books, Globalization, History, Literary | Leave a Comment
The World State
The World State is the primary setting of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian
novel Brave New World. In the novel, The World State is a unified government which administers the entire planet, with a few isolated exceptions.
The motto of The World State is Community, Identity, Stability.
History
The citizens of The World State use a calendar which takes the year 1908 as its
starting point, as this was the first year in which the Model T automobile was produced by the Ford Motor Company.
According to the novel, the "Nine Years’ War" broke out in Year 141, or the
year 2049 of our calendar. Very little is revealed of The Nine Years’ War, but it
can be inferred that the conflict broke out in Europe, affected most of the planet, and
caused massive physical damage. It is repeatedly stated that chemical and biological
weapons were heavily used during the war, particularly in mass air-raids against cities.
Following the war, which seems to have petered out rather than been ended by a decisive
victory, the global economy
collapsed and created an unprecedented
worldwide economic crisis. To deal with the two catastrophes of the Nine Years’ War and
the Great Economic Collapse, the new world leaders tried to forcibly impose their new
ideologies on Earth’s populations.
This met with widespread resistance, including large-scale riots at Golders Green and a massacre at the British Museum. Realising that they could not force people
to adopt the new lifestyle, the World Controllers instead united the planet into the One World State and began a peaceful
campaign of change. This campaign included the closing of museums, the suppression of
almost all literature published before 2058, and the destruction of the few historical
world monuments that had survived the Nine Years’ War. By the time the novel is set, The World State is fully established and
almost all citizens of Earth are under its full control.
Political geography
At the time of the novel, the entire planet is united as The One World State, governed
by ten World Controllers, headquartered in various key cities. A few
isolated areas have been left as "savage reservations", including parts of New Mexico, Samoa, and a small group
of islands off the coast of New Guinea. Toward the end of
the novel, a conversation between John and Western Europe’s World Controller, Mustapha Mond, reveals further details of the World State’s political geography. Mond
explains that areas which have very few resources or languish in unpleasant climates are
not "civilised" by the government, as it would be uneconomical. Subsequently,
these areas are left as reservations, and local life continues. Small islands across the
planet, such as the Falkland Islands and the Marquesas Islands, are reserved for citizens of the World State who do not wish to live in, or
do not fit into the normal society.
Population
The two billion inhabitants of the World State are rigidly divided into five classes or castes. Society is controlled by Alphas
and their subordinates, Betas. Below them, in descending order of intelligence and
physique, are Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Each caste is further subdivided into Plus and
Minus, and are distinguished by colour-coded work clothes. Epsilons are dressed in black,
Deltas in khaki, Gammas in green, Betas in mulberry, and Alphas in grey. At the very
pinnacle of society sit Alpha Double-Plus, who are destined to be the future scientists
and top administrators of the world. People in different castes are conditioned to be
happy in their own way – they do not feel resentment towards other castes, but rather
feel a slight contempt for people not members of their own caste. At the same time,
however, all members of society are repeatedly taught that everyone is equally important
to society.
Citizens of the World State
enjoy racial harmony across the planet. Although England is seen to be mostly populated
with Caucasians, the population also contains substantial ethnic proportions, and across
the planet, people of different racial heritage live alongside one another in harmony.
When visiting an electrical products factory in London, John
witnesses Caucasians and black Senegalese working together. The only "feely"
(see below) in the novel features a black hero with a white heroine. An official at the
Central London Hatchery explains that Negro fetuses are easier to grow than Caucasians, as
they are said to be hardier. In the first pages of the novel, the Director of Hatcheries
describes how babies are grown regardless of ethnic group, and that Caucasians, Negroes,
and Chinese are all produced in the Central London Hatchery alone.
In addition to racial harmony, gender disparities appear to have been eliminated in The World State. Both men and women are equals in society.
However, a third pseudo-gender has been engineered: freemartins,
an hermaphrodidic group of humans who appear to have
been grown as females, but have been sterilised and exhibit traits of both the male and
female genders. While freemartins appear female, they exhibit some male characteristics,
including the growth of facial hair.
Ageism is a thing of the past in The World State. Biological engineering has
eliminated the impact of old age upon the human body; using blood transfusions, chemical enhancements, and hormone replacement therapy, as well as the
standard devotion to physical sports, people maintain young, strong bodies for the
duration of their lives, and do not exhibit any physical indications of old age, even
appearing young when they eventually expire from natural causes. Without these physical
signs, it is virtually impossible to gauge a person’s age based on appearance, and as a
result, ageism is non-existent.
Economy
The World State operates a command
economy, in which prices, production, and trade are all regulated by the state.
Furthermore, the economy is based on the principles of mass
production and mass consumerism. Citizens of the World
State have access to a vast array of very high-quality foods, goods, and services, whilst
the manufacture and provision of these goods and services creates jobs for all members of
society. In order to enhance consumerism and so keep the economy strong, people are
encouraged to throw away old or damaged possessions and buy new ones. In this way, every
citizen of the World State is kept happy, with a plentiful supply of creature comforts and
a permanent job. Later in the novel, World Controller Mustapha
Mond explains that approximately one third of the global population is employed
permanently in agricultural occupations, a surprisingly
high proportion for such a high-tech, industrialised society.
Culture
Culture in the World State
is homogenous and appears to be fairly similar across the entire planet. Music is very popular, and makes use of the latest gadgets to
enhance listening pleasure by adding light shows and pleasant aromas. Television and "feelies" (see below) are widespread
throughout the World State. Sport is a cornerstone of culture
and is very popular, consisting of various bizarre games played using a bewildering array
of high-tech gadgets, in order to keep factories busy. Games such as "Centrifugal
Bumble-Puppy", "Riemann Surface Tennis", "Escalator Squash", and "Electro-Magnetic
Golf" are major distractions for all levels of society,
alongside more recognisable sports, including wrestling and swimming. Citizens of the World State enjoy many frequent holidays, and global travel allows
people to journey across the planet for relaxation. Advertisements in Western Europe are seen promoting holidays to "the
gorgeous East". One surprising holiday destination
is a large (but apparently unimpressive) hotel complex at the North
Pole. It is possible that holidays to the moon are available,
but as such trips are only given one vague, passing reference in the novel, lunar
recreation can neither be confirmed nor denied.
Technology
Life in the World State in (anno Ford or After Ford) A.F. 632 is
dominated by very advanced technology, which influences all aspects of life. Sport is a
pillar of the World State,
consisting of various games and activities which use very high-tech equipment. Another key
aspect of entertainment are the "feelies" – the World
State’s high-tech version of "movies". In the
later part of the novel, Lenina takes John to a feely, where the concept is explained.
Users rest their hands on metal knobs protruding from the arms of their chair, allowing
them to feel the physical sensations of the actors on-screen (these seem to be used almost
exclusively for sexual films). Various other high-tech entertainment devices feature
heavily in the book, including Synthetic Music Boxes, Scent Organs (musical instruments
which combine music with pleasant aromas), Colour Organs (combining music with a dazzling
light show), and televisions.
Transport technology is also highly advanced. The main form of urban transport is the helicopter, with variations including "taxicopters"
and expensive, long-range "sporticopters". For the lower castes, high-speed monorails are used to travel around the countryside. Global
travel is conducted using rocket planes, which are colour-coded according to their
destinations.
In the Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, advanced technology is used in the creation
of new embryos. In addition to high-tech laboratory equipment, the Hatcheries rely on
machines to condition bottled embryos to heat, sudden motion, and disease, allowing the
embryos to fulfill their predestined jobs in specific climates. Newly hatched children in
the Conditioning Centres are exposed to a variety of technologically advanced devices
which help to mould them into their predetermined roles. In one early scene, Delta
children are trained to hate the countryside and books through operant conditioning involving klaxons and
electrocution. Hypnopædia is conducted using speakers
built into the beds. The speakers themselves are fed by machines which convert printed
material into softly spoken words.
Other aspects of life are greatly influenced by advanced technology. Most clothes are
made from fine synthetic materials such as acetate
and viscose. Architecture is dominated by
"vitra-glass" and "ferroconcrete"
skyscrapers. Men shave using electrolytic
razors and consume sex-hormone chewing gum. Citizens
can relax using "vibro-vac" massage machines and the
ever-present soma (the novel reveals that although this is ingested in tablet form,
it can also be vaporised to form an anaesthetic cloud).
The novel repeatedly explains that the reason for such advanced technology is to keep
workers busy manufacturing products. Interestingly though, the citizens of the World State could enjoy significantly
better devices. In a conversation towards the end of the novel, World Controller Mustapha Mond explains to John that countless plans and
designs for more advanced technologies already exist. The World State could, he explains, synthetically
manufacture all of its food products and use highly efficient labour-saving machines.
However, more advanced technology is not developed, as the World Controllers fear that
high-tech machines would result in people having too much time on their hands. This,
explains Mond, is not in the World State’s best interests, following a previous experiment in Ireland,
which revealed that more advanced technology simply led to widespread boredom and
increased use of soma . Although the citizens
of Brave New World enjoy very advanced gadgets, they
are unaware that human technology has in fact reached an artificial peak.
LEO STRAUSS
October 30, 2006 at 1:42 pm | In Books, Globalization, History, Judaica, Literary, Philosophy | Leave a Comment
Leo Strauss
September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973
Since his death, he has come to be regarded as an intellectual source of neoconservatism in the United States.
Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973), was a German-born American political philosopher who specialized in the study
of classical philosophy. He spent most of his
career as a Political Science Professor at the University
of Chicago, where he taught several generations of devoted students, as well as
publishing fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded as an intellectual
source of neoconservatism in the United States.
Biography
Leo Strauss was born in the small town of Kirchhain, Hessen, Germany, on September 20, 1899,
to Hugo and Jennie Strauss née David. According to Allan
Bloom’s 1974 obituary in Political Theory, Strauss "was raised as an
Orthodox Jew", but in fact the family’s relationship to Orthodox practice was
not completely faithful, and may be categorized as conservative in light of the German
language study Mittelhessen- eine Heimat für Juden? Das Schicksal der Familie Strauss
aus Kirchhain or Central Hessen- a homeland for Jews? The fate of the Strauss
Family from Kirchhain by Joachim Lüders and Ariane Wehner, 1989. In "A Giving of
Accounts", published in The College 22(1) and later reprinted in Jewish
Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, Strauss noted he had come from a
"conservative, even orthodox Jewish home", but one in which there was little
Jewish knowledge beyond a strict adherence to ceremonial laws. His father and uncle
operated a farming supply and livestock business that they inherited from their father,
Meyer (1835-1919), a prominent and outspoken leader of the Jewish community. Leo Strauss
would dedicate his second book to his father.
After attending the Kirchhain Volksschule and the private, Protestant Rektoratsschule,
Leo Strauss was enrolled at the famous Gymnasium Philippinum
in nearby Marburg (from which Johannes Althusius and Carl J. Friedrich also
graduated) in 1912, graduating in 1917.
During that time, he boarded with the Marburg Cantor Strauss
(no relation); the Cantor’s residence served as a meeting place for followers of the
neo-Kantian philosopher, Hermann Cohen. Strauss served
in the German army during World War One from July 5,
1917 to December 1918.
Strauss subsequently enrolled in the University of Hamburg,
where he received his doctorate in 1921, his thesis "On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical
Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi" supervised by Ernst Cassirer. He also attended courses at the
Universities of Freiburg and Marburg,
including some by Edmund Husserl and his pupil Martin Heidegger. Strauss kept some distance from Heidegger. Strauss’s closest friend was Jacob Klein but he also was friendly and intellectually
engaged with Karl Löwith, Gerhard Krüger, Julius Guttman, Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Franz Rosenzweig (to whom Strauss
dedicated his first book), Gershom Scholem, Alexander Altmann, and the
great Arabist Paul Kraus, who
married Strauss’s sister Bettina (Strauss and his wife later adopted their child, when
both parents perished in the Middle East). With several of these old friends, Strauss
carried on vigorous epistolary exchanges later in life; many of these letters are now
being published in the Gesammelte Schriften as well as elsewhere, some in
translation from the German. Strauss had also been engaged in an important discourse with Carl Schmitt, who was instrumental in Strauss’ receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship; when Strauss left Germany,
he reportedly ceased communication with Schmitt and failed to reply to his overtures.
After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1932, Strauss left
his position at the Academy of Jewish Research in Berlin for
Paris. He returned to Germany only once, for a few short days 20 years later. In Paris he
married Marie (Miriam) Bernsohn, a widow with a young child whom he had known previously
in Germany. He adopted his wife’s son. At his death he was survived by his son Thomas, his
daughter Jenny Strauss Clay and three grandchildren. Strauss became a lifelong friend of Alexandre Kojeve, and was on friendly terms with Raymond Aron, Alexandre
Koyre, and Etienne Gilson. Because of the Nazi rise
to power, he refused to return to his native country. Strauss found shelter, after some
vicissitudes, in England, where in 1935 he gained temporary
employment at University of Cambridge. While
in England, he became a close friend of R. H. Tawney.
Unable to find permanent employment in England, Strauss moved in 1937 to the United States, under the patronage of Harold Laski, who generously bestowed upon Strauss a brief
lectureship. After a short and precarious stint as Research Fellow in the Department of
History at Columbia University, Strauss secured a
tenuous position at the New School for
Social Research in New York City, where, between 1938 and 1948, he eked out a
hand-to-mouth living on the political science faculty. He became a US citizen in 1944, and
in 1949 he became a professor of political science
at the University of Chicago and received for the first time in his life a decent living
wage. Strauss held
the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professorship there until 1969 when
he moved to Claremont Graduate School in
California for a year, and then to St. John’s
College in 1970, where he was the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence
until his death in 1973.
Philosophy
For Strauss, politics and philosophy were necessarily intertwined at their roots. He
regarded the trial and death of Socrates as the moment in
which political philosophy, as understood by Strauss, came to light. Until Socrates’ life
and death in Athens, philosophers were relatively free to pursue the study of nature and
politics. Strauss mentions in The City and Man that Aristotle
traces the first philosopher concerned with politics to have been a city planner many
generations before Socrates. Yet Socrates was not a political philosopher in the modern
sense, Socrates did not philosophically study political phenomena; rather, Socrates was
the first philosopher forced by the polis to treat philosophy politically. Thus Strauss
considered one of the most important moments in the history
of philosophy to be the argument by Socrates and his
students that philosophers or scientists could not study nature
without considering their own human nature, which, in the
famous phrase of Aristotle, is "political." The trial of Socrates was the first
act of "political" philosophy, and Plato’s
dialogues were the purest form of the political treatment of philosophy, their sole
comprehensive theme being the life and death of Socrates, the philosopher par
excellence for Strauss and many of his students.
Strauss carefully distinguished "scholars" from "philosophers",
identifying himself as a scholar. He wrote that today, most self-described philosophers
are in actuality scholars, cautious and methodical rather than bold. He contended that
great thinkers are bold but wary of pitfalls, whereas scholars benefit from sure ground.
Strauss concluded that scholars exist because great thinkers disagree on fundamental
points, and these fundamental disagreements enable scholars to reason.
In Natural Right and History Strauss begins with a critique of the epistemology of Max Weber,
follows with a brief engagement with the relativism of Martin Heidegger (who goes unnamed), and continues with
a discussion of the evolution of Natural Right in analyzing the
thought of Thomas Hobbes and John
Locke. He concludes by critiquing Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Edmund Burke. At the heart of the book
are excerpts of classical political philosophy, such as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. A selection of
Strauss’s essays published under the title, The Rebirth of Classical Political
Rationalism offers an introduction to his thinking: "Social Science and
Humanism", "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism", "On
Classical Political Philosophy", "Thucydides and the Meaning of Political
History", and "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy" are among his
topics. Much of his philosophy is a reaction to the works of Heidegger. Indeed, Strauss wrote that Heidegger’s thinking must be understood and
confronted before any complete formulation of modern political theory is possible. For
Strauss, Plato was the philosopher who could match Heidegger.
Strauss partially approached the ideas of Friedrich
Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard through his
understanding of Heidegger
which he placed under the general rubric of "existentialism",
a movement with a "flabby periphery" but a "hard center" (see his 1961
essay, Relativism and the Study of Man). He wrote that Nietzsche was the first
philosopher to properly understand relativism, an idea
grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian historicism. Yet Martin Heidegger sanitized and politicized Nietzsche.
Whereas Nietzsche believed "our own principles, including the belief in progress,
will become as relative as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be" and
"the only way out seems to be… that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion
instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth", Heidegger himself believed that
the tragic nihilism of Nietzsche was itself a
"myth" formed by mankind, not guided by the defective Western conception of Being Heidegger traced to Plato. For Strauss, as evidenced in his
published correspondence with Alexandre Kojève, the
possibility that Hegel was correct when he postulated an end of
history meant an end to philosophy, and an end to nature as understood by classical
political philosophy. Strauss was much more sympathetic to Nietzsche’s idea of tragedy in
this prospect compared to Heidegger’s belief that nihilism, properly understood, contained the possibility of
mankind’s salvation.
Strauss on reading
In 1952 Strauss published Persecution and the Art of
Writing; a work that advanced the possibility that philosophers wrote esoterically to
avoid persecution by the state or religious authority, while also being able to reach
potential philosophers within the pious faithful. From this point on in his scholarship,
Strauss deepened his conception of this means of communication between philosophers and
"potential knowers". Stemming from his study of Maimonides
and Al Farabi, and then extended to his reading of Plato (he
mentions particularly the discussion of writing in the Phaedrus)
Strauss thought that an esoteric text was the proper type for philosophic learning. Rather
than simply outlining the philosopher’s thoughts, the esoteric text forces readers to do
their own thinking and learning. As Socrates says in the Phaedrus, writing does not
respond when questioned but this type of writing invites a kind of dialogue with the
reader, thereby reducing the problems of the written word. It was therefore also a
teaching tool, and even a filter to help prevent the creation of Alcibiades-like students. One of the political dangers Strauss
pointed to was the danger of students’ too quickly accepting dangerous ideas. This was
indeed also relevant in the trial of Socrates, where his relationship with Alcibiades was
used against him.
Ultimately, Strauss believed that philosophers offered both an "exoteric" or
salutary teaching, and an "esoteric" or true teaching, which was concealed from
the general reader. By maintaining this distinction, Strauss is often accused of having
written esoterically himself. This opinion is perhaps encouraged because many of Strauss’
works are difficult and sometimes mysterious. Moreover, a careful reading of Strauss will
show that he also emphasized that writers using this lost form of writing often left
contradictions and other excuses to examine the writing more carefully. There are many
examples of this in Strauss own published works, and thus is a source for much debate
surrounding Strauss.
Therefore a controversy exists surrounding Strauss’ interpretation of the existing
philosophical canon. Strauss believed that the
writings of many philosophers contained both an exoteric and esoteric teaching which is
often not perceived by modern academics. Most famously, he believed that Plato’s Republic should never have been read as a proposal for a real
regime (as it is in the works of Karl Popper for example).
But, according to Strauss, generally this kind of exoteric/esoteric dichotomy became
unused by the time of Kant. Similarly well known are his
espousals of the philosophical credentials of Machiavelli
and Xenophon.
Strauss on politics
According to Strauss, modern Social Science was
flawed. It claimed the ground by which truth could be discovered on an unexamined
acceptance of the fact-value distinction.
Strauss doubted the fact-value distinction was a fundamental category of the mind and
studied the evolution of the concept from its roots in Enlightenment philosophy to Max Weber, a thinker Strauss credited with a "serious and
noble mind". Weber wanted to separate values from science, but according to Strauss
was really a derivative thinker, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s relativism. Therefore, Strauss treated politics not as
something that could be studied from afar. A political scientist examining politics with a
value-free scientific eye, for Strauss, was impossible, not just a tragic self-delusion. Positivism, the heir to the traditions of both Auguste Comte and Max Weber, in making purportedly
value-free judgments, failed the ultimate test of justifying its own existence, which
would require a value-judgment.
While modern liberalism had stressed the pursuit
of individual liberty as its highest goal, Strauss felt that there should be a greater
interest in the problem of human excellence and political virtue. Through his writings,
Strauss constantly raised the question of how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence
can coexist. Without deciding this issue, Strauss refused to make do with any simplistic
or one-sided resolutions of the Socratic question: What is the good for the city and man?
Liberalism and nihilism
Strauss taught that liberalism in its modern form
contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards relativism, which in turn led to two
types of nihilism. [citation
needed] The first was a "brutal" nihilism, expressed in Nazi and Marxist regimes. These ideologies, both descendants of Enlightenment thought, tried
to destroy all traditions, history, ethics and moral standards and replace it by force
with a supreme authority from which nature and mankind are subjugated and conquered. [citation needed] The second type- the
‘gentle’ nihilism expressed in Western liberal democracies- was a kind of
value-free aimlessness and hedonism, which he saw permeating
the fabric of contemporary American society. [citation
needed] In the belief that 20th century relativism, scientism,
historicism, and nihilism were all implicated in the
deterioration of modern society and philosophy, Strauss
sought to uncover the philosophical pathways that had led to this state. The resultant
study lead him to revive classical political philosophy as a source by which political
action could be judged.
Noble lies and deadly truths
Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the
problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still
achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to
consider whether "noble lies" have any role at all to play in uniting and guiding the polis. Are
"myths" needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable
society? Or can men and women dedicated to relentlessly examining, in Nietzsche’s
language, those "deadly truths", flourish freely? Thus, is there a limit to the
political, and what can be known absolutely? In The City and Man, Strauss discusses
the myths outlined in Plato’s Republic that are
required for all governments. These include a belief that the state’s land belongs to it
even though it was likely acquired illegitimately, and that citizenship is rooted in
something more than the accidents of birth. Strauss has been interpreted as endorsing "noble lies," myths used by
political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society. [1] [2] [3]
According to Strauss, Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies had
mistaken the city-in-speech described in Plato’s Republic
for a blueprint for regime reform–which it was not. Strauss quotes Cicero,
"The Republic does not bring to light the best possible regime but rather the
nature of political things- the nature of the city." (History of Political
Philosophy, p.68). Strauss himself argued in many publications that the city-in-speech
was unnatural, precisely because "it is rendered possible by the abstraction from eros
(Strauss’ italics). (HPP, p.60). The city-in-speech abstracted from eros, or
bodily needs, thus it could never guide politics in the manner Popper claimed. Though very
skeptical of "progress," Strauss was equally skeptical about political agendas
of "return" (which is the term he used in contrast to progress). In fact, he was
consistently suspicious of anything claiming to be a solution to an old political or
philosophical problem. He spoke of the danger in trying to ever finally resolve the debate
between rationalism and traditionalism
in politics. In particular, along with many in the pre-World
War II German Right, he feared people trying to force a "world state" to come into being in the future, thinking
that it would inevitably become a tyranny.
Ancients and Moderns
Strauss constantly stressed the importance of two dichotomies in political philosophy: Athens and Jerusalem (Reason vs. Revelation) and Ancient
versus Modern political philosophy. The "Ancients" were the Socratic
philosophers and their intellectual heirs, and the "Moderns" start with Niccolo Machiavelli. The contrast between Ancients
and Moderns was understood to be related to the public presentation of the possibly
unresolvable tension between Reason and Revelation. The Socratics, reacting to the first Greek philosophers, brought philosophy back to earth, and
hence back to the marketplace, making it more political. The Moderns reacted to the
dominance of revelation in medieval society by promoting the
possibilities of Reason very strongly — which in turn leads to problems in modern
politics and society. In particular, Thomas Hobbes,
under the influence of Bacon, re-oriented political science to what was most solid, but
most low in man, setting a precedent for John Locke, and the later economic approach to
political thought, such as initially in David Hume, and Adam Smith.
Not unlike Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Thomas Jefferson, Strauss believed that the vices of a
democratic regime must be known (and not left unquestioned) so that its virtues might
triumph. However, insofar as his teaching suggested that the argument for the pre-eminence
of democracy is not an apodictic principle (i.e. not self
evident or beyond contradiction), he has gained the reputation for being an enemy to
democracy.
Strauss in the Public View
Strauss is a controversial figure,[1] not only for his political
views, but because some of his students and their followers are themselves controversial
public figures. Allan Bloom, best known for his critique
of higher education The Closing of the
American Mind, was very close to Strauss (their relationship is lampooned in Saul Bellow’s quasi-biographical novel Ravelstein, where the minor character Davarr represents
Strauss and the central character Ravelstein represents Bloom). Harry V. Jaffa, another student of Strauss, served as a
speechwriter for 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater and is a proponent of Declarationism
constitutional theory. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary
of Defense during the United States
invasion of Iraq and later President of the World Bank,
was briefly a student of Strauss; Wolfowitz attended two courses which Strauss taught on
Plato and Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. James Mann claims that Wolfowitz chose the University of
Chicago because Strauss taught there and believed him to be "a unique figure, an
irreplaceable asset," recommended to him by teacher Allan Bloom who taught at Cornell
when Wolfowitz was an undergraduate there. Wolfowitz himself has claimed to be more of a
student of Albert Wohlstetter. The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which worked under
Wolfowitz to gather intelligence for the Iraq War, was headed
by Abram Shulsky, another of Strauss’s students.[4] Harvey C. Mansfield, though never a student of
Strauss, is a noted Straussian (as followers of Strauss frequently identify themselves)
and prominent neoconservative whose notable students
include Andrew Sullivan, Elliott Abrams, Alan Keyes,
and Bill Kristol.
Critics of Strauss also accuse him of elitism and anti-democratic sentiment. Shadia Drury, author of 1999’s Leo Strauss and the
American Right, argues that Strauss taught different things to different students, and
inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders that is linked to imperialist
militarism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury accuses Strauss of teaching that
"perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need
to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them." Drury
adds, "The Weimar Republic was his model of liberal democracy… liberalism in Weimar, in Strauss’s
view, led ultimately to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews."
In 2004 Adam Curtis produced a
three-part documentary for the BBC on the threat from organised terrorism called the Power
of Nightmares. This television documentary claimed that Strauss’ teachings, among
others, influenced neo-conservative and thus, United
States foreign policy, especially following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Two students of
Strauss, Wolfowitz and William Kristol, are cited, and
Kristol discusses Strauss’s influence in the film. Since they were students of Strauss,
the documentary claims that their later political views and actions are a result of
Strauss’ philosophy and teaching. The central theme of the documentary is that the
neoconservatives created myths to make the Soviet Union
and terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda appear to be
better organized and coordinated, as well as more threatening than they actually were, and
that such "nightmares" enabled the neoconservatives to gain disproportionate
power in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.
Others, such as Steven Smith, question[5] the link between
Strauss and neoconservative thought, arguing that
Strauss was never personally active in politics, never endorsed imperialism, and
questioned the utility of political philosophy for the practice of politics.[6]
Those who do make such a link, Smith argues, misread Strauss’s published writings.
Quotations
The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.
—Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, , U. Chicago Press, 1958, page 30
The most superficial fact regarding the Discourses, the fact that the number of
its chapters equals the number of books of Livy’s History, compelled us to start a
chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New
Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli’s two books and with an enormous
blasphemy.
—Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, , U. Chicago Press, 1958, page 49
[W]e believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific.
—Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, , U. Chicago Press, 1958, page 50
…no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil
in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence
there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint.
—Leo Strauss, The City and Man, page 5
It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the
light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing
the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what
it is.
—Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, page 225
Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes
peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli’s teaching was
graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless
one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused
by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.
—Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, page 223
At the time and in the country in which the present study was written, it was granted
by everyone except backward people that the Jewish faith had not been refuted by science
or by history… [O]ne could grant to science and history everything they seem to teach
regarding the age of the world, the origin of man, the impossibility of miracles, the
impossibility of the immortality of the soul, and of the resurrection of the body, the
Jahvist, the Elohist, the third Isaah, and so on, without abandoning one iota of the
substance of the Jewish faith.
—Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (ISBN 0-226-77689-1),
U. Chicago Press, 1968, page 231; from the Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion
Liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the
notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands
happiness; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance.
—Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 6.
Bibliography (of Published texts)
- Gesammelte Schriften , ed. Heinrich Meier, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996-present; 3
- Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921-1932), trans. Michael Zank, from the
preceding, Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. - La Critique de la religion chez Hobbes: une contribution a la comprehension des Lumieres
(1933-34), Paris: Presses universitaires de France; a translation, by Corine
Pelluchon, of an unpublished and unfinished manuscript of a book on Hobbes, written
1933-34, and first published in the Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3. - Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu
Spinozas Theologisch-politischen Traktat, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1930. - Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, New York: Schocken, 1965; a translation of the
preceding, by Elsa M. Sinclair. - Philosophie und Gesetz: Beitraege zum Verstandnis Maimunis und seiner Vorlaeufer,
Berlin: Schocken, 1935. - Philosophy and Law, Albany: SUNY Press, 1995; a translation of the preceding, by Eve
Adler. - Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis, Neuweid am Rhein: Hermann
Luchterland, 1965 (the published version of a book completed in 1936 but for political
reasons unpublishable at that time). - The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1936; a translation, with some notable modifications, of the preceding, by Elsa M.
Sinclair. - "The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon," Social Research 6
(1939) 502-36. - "On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy," Social
Research 13 (1946) 326-67. - "On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History," Review of Metaphysics 5
(June, 1952) 559-86. - "On the Intention of Rousseau," Social Research 14 (1947) 455-87.
- On Tyranny: An Interpretation of Xenophon’s Hiero in On Tyranny, Rev ed. New
York: Free Press (orig. publ. 1948).
Persecution - Natural Right and History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
- Thoughts on Machiavelli, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958.
- What is Political Philosophy?, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959. History
- The City and Man, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964.
- Socrates and Aristophanes, New York: Basic Books, 1966.
- Liberalism Ancient and Modern, New York: Basic Books, 1968.
- Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the "Oeconomicus",
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970. - Xenophon’s Socrates, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972.
- The Argument and the Action of Plato’s LAWS, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975. - Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, with an introduction by Thomas L. Pangle,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. - The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo
Strauss—Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989. - On Plato’s Symposium, ed. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2001. - Faith and Political Philosophy: the Correspondence Between Leo Strauss and Eric
Voegelin, 1934-1964, ed. Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper, University Park, PA: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
volumes thus far, as follows: vol. 1, Die Religionskritik Spinozas und zugehoerige
Schriften; vol. 2, Philosophie und Gesetz, Fruehe Schriften; vol. 3, Hobbes’
politische Wissenschaft und zugehoerige Schriften-Briefe.
and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1952.
of Political Philosophy, co-editor with Joseph Cropsey, 3rd. ed., Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Writings about Maimonides and Jewish philosophy
- Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity : Essays and Lectures in Modern
- Spinoza’s Critique of Religion
- Philosophy and Law
- "Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maimonide et de Farabi," Revue
des Etudes juives 100 bis (1937) 1-37. - "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis," Monatschrift fuer
Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 (1937) 448-56. - "Maimonides’ Statement on Political Science," Proceedings of the American
Academy for Jewish Research 22 (1953) 115-30. - "Notes on Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge,’ in Studies in Mysticism and Religion
Presented to G. G. Scholem, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967, pages 269-83. - "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed," in The Guide of the
Perplexed, Volume One, translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1963. - "The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed" in Persecution and
the Art of Writing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952, 38-94. - Maimonide, ed. Remi Brague, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1988.
Jewish Thought, ed. Kenneth Hart Green, Albany: State University Press, 1997.
Bibliography on Leo Strauss
- "A Giving of Accounts," Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity
– Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Kenneth H. Green. Albany:
SUNY Press, 1997. - Benardete, Seth, Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 229 pages, 2002. - Bloom, Allan, "Leo Strauss," in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990, 235-56. - Brague, Rémi, "Leo Strauss and Maimonides," in Leo Strauss’s Thought,
ed. Alan Udoff, Boulder: Lynne Reiner, 1991, 93-114. - Bruell, Christopher, "A Return to Classical Political Philosophy and the
Understanding of the American Founding," Review of Politics 53 (1991) 173-186. - Drury, Shadia B., The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 256 pages, 1988.
Drury, Shadia B., Leo - Green, Kenneth, Jew and Philosopher – The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish
Thought of Leo Strauss. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. - Holmes, Stephen, Anatomy
of Antiliberalism Harvard University
Press 1996, ISBN
0-674-03185-7. - Ivry, Alfred L., "Leo Strauss on Maimonides" in Leo Strauss’s Thought,
ed. Alan Udoff. Boulder: Lynne Reiner, 1991, 75-91. - Kinzel, Till, Platonische Kulturkritik in Amerika. Studien zu Allan Blooms The Closing
of the American Mind. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2002. - Kochin, Michael S., "Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss’s Persecution
and the Art of Writing." The Review of Politics 64 (Spring 2002): 261-283. - Lampert, Laurence, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 229 pages, 1996. - Macpherson, C. B., "Hobbes’s Bourgeois Man," in Democratic Theory:
Essays in Retrieval, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. - McAllister, Ted V. Revolt Against Modernity : Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin & the
Search for Postliberal Order. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 1996. - McWilliams, Wilson Carey, "Leo Strauss and the Dignity of American Political
Thought," Review of Politics 60 (1998) 231-46. - Meier, Heinrich, "How Strauss Became Strauss," in Enlightening Revolutions:
Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2006, pp. 363-82. - Meier, Heinrich, "Editor’s Introduction" to each of the volumes of the Gesammelte
Schriften, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996-present (three volumes thus far). - Meier, Heinrich, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 183 pages, 2006. - Meier, Heinrich, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 136 pages, 1995. - Melzer, Arthur. "Esotericism and the Critique of Historicism." American
Political Science Review. 100, (2006) 279-295. - Minowitz, Peter, "Machiavellianism Come of Age? Leo Strauss on Modernity and
Economics," The Political Science Reviewer 22 (1993) 157-97. - Momigliano, Arnaldo, "Hermeneutics and Classical Political Thought in Leo
Strauss," in Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994, 178-89. - Neumann, Harry, Liberalism, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 336 pages, 1991.
- Norton, Anne, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, New Haven &
London, Yale University Press, 2004. - Pangle, Thomas L., Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual
Legacy, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 182 pages, 2006. - Pangle, Thomas L., "Leo Strauss’s Perspective on Modern Politics," Perspectives
on Political Science 33:4 (Fall, 2004), 197-203. - Pangle, Thomas L., "The Epistolary Dialogue Between Leo Strauss and Eric
Voegelin," Review of Politics 53:1 (1991), 100-125. - Pelluchon, Corine, Leo Strauss: une autre raison d’autres Lumieres; Essai sur la
crise de la rationalite contemporaine, Paris: J. Vrin, 2005. - Smith, Steven, Reading Leo Strauss, University of Chicago Press, 256 pages, 2006.
ISBN 0-226-76402-8 - Sullivan, Andrew. Unknown Titles. Andrew Sullivan an
English-American journalist, blogger and former editor of The New Republic has
published on Strauss and Neoconservatism. - Rosen, Stanley, "Hermeneutics as Politics" in Hermeneutics as Politics,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, 87-140. - Tanguay, Daniel, Leo Strauss: une biographie intellectuelle. Paris, 2005. 408
pages. ISBN
2-253-13067-2. - Tarcov, Nathan, "Philosophy and History: Tradition and Interpretation in the Work
of Leo Strauss," Polity 16 (1983), 5-29. - Tarcov, Nathan, "On a Certain Critique of ‘Straussianism,’" Review
of Politics 53 (1991), 3-18. - Tarcov, Nathan and Thomas L. Pangle, "Epilogue: Leo Strauss and the History of
Political Philosophy", in: Strauss, Leo and Joseph Cropsey (eds.), History of
Political Philosophy (1963), Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 1987
(Third Edition), pp. 907-938. - Verskin, Alan, "Reading Strauss on Maimonides: A New Approach,", Journal of
Textual Reasoning Vol. 3, No. 1 (June 2004) http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/volume3/verskin.html - West, Thomas G. Perspectives on Political Science. "Jaffa Versus Mansfield
Does America Have A Constitutional or A "Declaration of Independence"
Soul?" 31 (Fall 2002), 235-46 - Zuckert, Catherine H., Postmodern Platos, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
351 pages, 1996
Strauss and the American Right. Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
Bibliography on Strauss Family
- Lüders, Joachim and Ariane Wehner (1989). Mittelhessen – eine Heimat für Juden? Das
Schicksal der Familie Strauss aus Kirchhain. Marburg: Gymnasium Philippinum. (Title
translates to English as Middle Hesse – a Homeland for Jews? The fate of the Strauss
Family from Kirchhain.)
References
- M.F. Burnyeat, "Sphinx Without a Secret," New York Review of Books, May
30, 1985.
See also
External links
- Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, Leo
Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous), 1998 - Al Cronkrite. Judeo-Christian
Decadence At The Fount Of Power, Ether Zone,
May 15, 2003 - Alain Franchon. The
Strategist & the Philosopher: Leo Strauss & Albert Wohlstetter, CounterPunch,
June 2, 2003. - David McBryde. Leo Strauss
- Gary Leupp. The Philosopher
Kings: Leo Strauss and the Neocons, CounterPunch, May 24, 2003. - Gregory Bruce Smith. Leo
Strauss and the Straussians: An Anti-Democratic Cult?, Political Science and
Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2, Jun, 1997 - Jim Silva. Strauss
and the neocon takeover, The Lompoc Record. February 6, 2006. - Matthew Rothschild. Shadia Drury
interview: Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Progressive Radio, 2005. - Jan Allen Straussism:
The Philosophy Directing The Age Of Tyranny, Age Of Tyranny News, May 16 2006. - Jan Allen Leo Bush,
Age Of Tyranny News, May 14 2006. - Jan Allen The
Philosophy Of Leo Strauss Is The Foundation Of The North American Union, Age Of
Tyranny News, June 16 2006. - Claremont Insitute [7]
- Michael Doliner. Book Review:
Leo Strauss and the American Right, Swans.com, October 10, 2005. - Neil G. Robertson. The Closing
of the Early Modern Mind: Leo Strauss and Early Modern Political Thought, Animus, 1998 - Nicholas Xenos Leo Strauss and
the Rhetoric of the War on Terror, Logos,
Issue 3.2, Spring 2004 - Norman Madarasz. Behind the
Neocon Curtain: Plato, Leo Strauss & Allan Bloom, CounterPunch, June 2,
2003. - Peter Levine, A
"Right" Nietzschean: Leo Strauss and his Followers, 1995 - Remi Brague. Athens,
Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss’s "Muslim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy, Poetics
Today, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer, 1998 - Robert Pippin, The
Modern World of Leo Strauss, Political Theory, Vol. 20 No. 3, August 1992 - Thom Hartmann. Book: Leo
Strauss and the American Right, by Shadia Drury, Buzz Flash, August 4, 2005. - Thomas Woods. Leo Strauss and
the Politics of American Empire, Lew Rockwell,
September 28, 2004. - William Pfaff. The Long Reach
of Leo Strauss, International Herald
Tribune, May 15, 2003. - Yoni Goldstein. A Platonic Love
Affair: Strauss in the White House, Critical
Moment, January-February 2004
Jim Lobe. Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception, Alternet, May 19, 2003.
Justin Raimondo. Trotsky, Strauss, and the Neocons, Antiwar.com, June 13, 2003.
SourceWatch profile - West, Thomas G. Perspectives on Political Science. "Jaffa Versus Mansfield
Does America Have A Constitutional or A "Declaration of Independence"
Soul?" 31 (Fall 2002), Online
"Why Strauss, Why
of Leo Strauss "Mr. Strauss Goes to
Washington?" the introduction to The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political
Philosophy and American Democracy by Catherine and Michael Zuckert. The
New Machiavelli: Leo Strauss and the Politics of Fear, CBC, April 27, 2005. Noble lies and perpetual
war: Leo Strauss and Neocons Profile
of Leo Strauss, Notable Names DataBase. Peter Berkowitz. What
Hath Strauss Wrought?, Weekly Standard, June 2,
2003 Power
of Nightmares Part 1 official page Power
of Nightmares Part 2 official page Power
of Nightmares Part 3 official page Seymour M. Hersh, Selective Intelligence,
May 5, 2003 Shadia Drury: Leo
Strauss and the American Right, On Point radio show. May 15, 2003. Shadia Drury. Leo Strauss and the
neoconservatives, Evatt Foundation, September 11, 2004. Shadia Drury. The
Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss, Political Theory, Vol. 13, No. 3, Aug, 1985 Shadia Drury. Leo
Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor, Free Inquiry magazine, June 2004. Shadia Drury. Leo
Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor, Free Inquiry,
Volume 24, Number 4. Shadia Drury. Prof. Drury is a well known and controversial
scholar on Straussians and Neocons Tom Barry. Leo Strauss and
Intelligence Strategy, International Relations Center, February 12, 2004. http://www.straussian.net http://www.tcpc.org/resources/constellation/fall_03/taylor.htm Shadia Drury. A Profile Of Leo Strauss Edward Skidelsky. "No More
Heroes", Prospect Magazine, March 2006 http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/letter_16.html
Now?" the introduction to Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy,
Judaism by Steven B. Smith.
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