starring NATHAN WIND as COCHESE

Paul Gottfried has some interesting things to say about how one should approach Straussians at the American Conservative HERE.

One should probably always take it with a grain of salt when someone's complaint is partly based on the fact that their own work is not cited, but Gottfried's description of his own book is pretty interesting. After citing the common critiques that Straussian's read canonical texts in "utterly arbitrary" ways and that they function as a cult that only read and discuss one another and approved books, Gottfried writes of his own book:

I was interested in examining the internal logic of the Straussian hermeneutic and trying to decide whether anyone could possibly believe this interpretive approach independently of a political engagement. I asked myself (perhaps being more indulgent in this regard than my own interpreter, Professor McIntyre) whether the Straussian interpretive method is plausible for someone who, like me, doesn’t buy the full package of political concerns. I was also fascinated by the singular public-relations success achieved by a movement that featured a bizarre way of reading texts while ignoring or inventing historical frameworks. The question that kept returning to my mind is whether anyone could find the method of reading text so persuasive as to accept the politics of the group that taught it. My answer in the end was “absolutely not.”

I don't know how fair any of this, or the extent to which the New York Times really is a vehicle for "insular puff pieces" by Straussians, but I think the problem space of the book is important.

To what extent can politics serve as a partial and defeasible modus tollens against a hermeneutics? I don't know. I do find the rehabilitation of Carl Schmitt (e.g. Derrida's late political writings, though the rehabilitation long predates Derrida) to be extraordinarily problematic, and have a pretty strong a priori distate of philosophical texts which cite his authority. But this might be confusing the politics and philosophy in an unacceptable way.