Given the justified lack of popularity of the neo-cons (and Leo Strauss' purported influence on them), I suspect many of our readers will say 'yes.' Moreover, many of the best historians of philosophy have a deservedly visceral, negative response to Straussians who substitute numerological obsessions and evidence-free arguments about hidden meanings (in which everything is reduced to will to power) for serious scholarship. Let's call what's being rejected "vulgar Straussianism."
Even so, esoteric readings of our philosophical past crop up in surprising places. For example, consider two recent books emanating at the time from Vancouver. First, in her important book, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (Oxford), Catherine Wilson writes (purportedly quoting Malebranche): "that the crux of a philosopher’s doctrine is to be found in those passages where he defends an unpopular thesis; his defense of accepted theses has no informational value." (p. 148) Let's call this "Wilson's Dictum." In context Wilson is commenting on Walter Charleton's use of the dialogue format; a genre that lends itself to multiple readings and, thus, esotericism.
Note that Wilson's is not evidence-free reading; you only get to attribute an unpopular thesis to an author if s/he asserts it once and would have motive not to call repeated attention to it. Primed by Wilson's focus on Epicureanism, I noticed that Adam Smith states very clearly in his own voice: “Fortune, which governs the world” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments 2.3.1, [p. 104 in the Glasgow edition]) in a chapter which according to its (perhaps now ironic) title describes the "final cause" of our psychological constitution. Of course, a sentence fragment does not settle the matter against a Providentialist interpretation of Smith, but if one takes Wilson's dictum seriously, merely piling on the Providentialist and Deist passages fails to undermine the credibility of the (shall we say) more neo-Epicurean reading of Smith, which was, by the way, Reid's (see this nice paper by David Fate Norton J.C. Stewart-Robertson, although Reid's argument is different).
Now, consider this claim by John Toland (offered in the context of his genealogy of the immortality of the soul [recall my post here]):
But in all sects there never wanted particular persons who really opposed the soul's immortality, tho they might accommodate their ordinary language to the belief of the people: for most of the philosophers (as we read) had two sorts of doctrines, the one internal and the other external, or the one private and the other public; the latter to be indifferently communicated to all the world, and teh former only very cautiously to their best friends, or to some few others capable of receiving it, and that would not make any ill use of the same. Pythagoras himself did not believe the transmigration which has made him so famous to posterity, for in the internal or secret doctrine he meant no more than the eternal revolution of forms in matters, those ceaseless vicissitudes and alternations, which turns every thing into all things and all things into any thing, as vegetables and animals become part of us, we become part of them, and both become parts of a thousand other things in the universe..." (Letters to Serena, II. 56-7 [I have modernized Toland's spelling].
Now, in context, Toland bases his claim about Pythagoras on an interpretation of Timaeus Locrus. But the significance of the passage does not reside in the first instance of the particular interpretation of Pythagoras. Rather, Toland makes a general claim about "most philosophers;" these are said to have two doctrines and this certainly raises the possibility that Toland considers himself as one of these. Now from that it does not follow that Toland puts forward an esoteric doctrine on the immortality of the soul or some other topic. But given that Toland clearly signals that he is aware of the existence of "secret" doctrines and the need to hide them (a need still very much alive in Toland's time--his first book, Christianity not Mysterious (1696), received plenty of unwanted attention from the law), one cannot rule out the possibility of such esotericism in Toland merely on grounds of charity or hermeneutic fiat. Luckily for us no professional philosopher today is really invested in what Toland has to say, so we need not pursue the interpretation of Toland here.
But the Toland passage may have other significance. The jewel of Adam Smith's posthumously (1795) published Essays on Philosophical Subjects, is his "History of Astronomy," which -- not unlike Toland's genealogy -- considers "all the different systems of nature, which...have successively been adopted by the learned and ingenious; and, without regarding their absurdity or probability, their agreement or inconsistency with truth and reality, let us ... content ourselves with inquiring how far each of them was fitted to sooth the imagination, and to render the theatre of nature a more coherent, and therefore a more magnificent spectacle, than otherwise it would have appeared to be." (here) In his account of the "systems of nature," Smith remarks in passing, "The same notion, of the spontaneous origin of the world, was embraced, too, as the same author tells us, by the early Pythagoreans, a sect, which, in the antient world, was never regarded as irreligious." (Astronomy; in context Smith is citing Aristotle.)
So, regardless if Smith has read Toland (Smith is notoriously ungenerous in his citations), he is aware of the existence of a Toland-like claim about the Pythagoras, and a few lines down Smith also cites Toland's source, Timaeus Locrus. Now, one might think from these lines that Smith thinks that Pythagorean esotericism is a modern invention (of, say, Toland), to be rejected by more careful readings. But in his own voice Smith affirms that "in Ancient times some philosophers of the "Italian School" taught their doctrines to pupils only "under the seal of the most sacred secrecy, that they might avoid the fury of the people, and not incur the imputation of impiety." (‘Astronomy’ IV.4, 55–6; according to Smith, in addition to Pythagoras, the major figures in the school consist of "Empedocles, of Archytas, of Timaeus, and of Ocellus the Lucanian.")
Smith, thus, explicitly accepts that at least some philosophers taught esoteric doctrines. We may not accept such readings about the Pythagorean school, but we cannot ignore that it seems to be a trope in the eighteenth century. Such tropes are not inventions of the eighteenth century. We find the attribution of an esoteric doctrine explicitly in Cicero's dialogue, On the Nature of the Gods; there one of the speakers says, "undoubtedly closer to truth is the claim made the fifth book of his Nature of the Gods by Posidonius, whose friendship we all share: that Epicurus does not believe in any gods, and that the statements which he made affirming the immortal gods were made to avert popular odium." (Cicero De Natura Deorum 1.123)
From this one may not infer that Smith's (or Cicero's) texts contain esoteric doctrines, but given that he explicitly (albeit more cautiously than Toland) raises the issue of secret doctrines, the dangers of the "fury of the people," and the desire to avoid "the imputation of impiety," one cannot rule out the possibility that Smith engaged in esoteric practices.
To conclude: if an author calls attention to esoteric doctrines in the past and uses techniques associated with these (e.g., Wilson's Dictum, Epigrams, Dialogues, Posthumous Publication, etc.) then we may say that an author invites an esoteric reading. Of course, one cannot settle a priori to what degree such a reading is fruitful. If that makes me seem to advocate Straussianism (as distinct from being a Straussian), then hopefully it's taken as the more refined kind.
Some other time we'll have to talk about numerology. <grin>
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