Wreckoning

a) The Aristocratic Principle as Distinct from the Primitive “Fundamental Democracy”; Historical Origins in the Greek World.

The polis--what Nietzsche calls “the aristocratic commonwealth” of breeding--is unique because of how it was able to accommodate and elevate what has been in this chapter called the “aristocratic” or “pastoral” way of life within the bounds of static, settled life; it represents a compromise between a “lower” and a “higher” that are of alien origin to each other.

Philosophy, as Strauss notes, can only be born once the concept of nature appears. But it appears that the concept of nature itself can only appear after the rather late institutions of sacral and divine kingship exist

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nature-- the “source” simultaneously of both philosophy and tyranny, as argued in this thesis--really appears not as a rational concept, or by rational analogy to abstractions, but rather as a manifestation or, one could go so far as to say, a revelation. Its appearance, it must be emphasized, is late, it is rare, and only follows the emergence of a certain kind of early kingship and indeed the emergence of a certain kind of aristocracy that, unlike the early sacral king, manages to free itself entirely from the absolute “rule of the ancestral.”

Law or nomos retained this character for the city even to the end of the Classical period, and was understood to have an all-pervading power to determine daily life and thought; and even during the convulsions of the Peloponnesian War, with its murderous civil strife between factions, it was understood--at least for the purposes of lip service--that nomos as an original constitutive act was something that lay quite outside the self- interest of parties, let alone that of the individual--a permanent “convention” constitutive of the citizen as such, and therefore outside the vagaries of day-to-day political let alone economic interests.

According to Strauss... Nietzsche and Hume agree that the experience of fear or terror is the “original” primitive experience, they differ substantially on how early man responded to this experience. The matter of prephilosophic mind and religion is straightforward for Hume and in general for “English psychologists” because it has a basis in a rational, preservationist, utilitarian morality; but it is a complicated matter for Nietzsche... believes they on one hand do not go far enough in revealing the shameful, irrational, and even violent origins of morality.

a) that the Greek world is, from as early as we can tell, stratified into a conquering and a conquered people, an aristocratic element and a “banausic” or serf-like element...

b) that these two features of Greek life, namely the top-down imposition of order by a conquering elite and the separate and independent status of the warrior class, is likely what allows for a principle different from the fundamental democracy or fundamental collectivism to emerge...

c) that this principle consists, not in the preservation of a people or a collective, but in the struggle for individual superiority, understood as a matter of the supremacy of one’s “blood,” with direct analogy to the animal world, and which is manifested through physical supremacy, vitality, and battle prowess, and in the consequent acquisition of an “undying fame.”

This thesis is an attempt to show that the aristocratic regime, and aristocratic morality, is the origin of the idea of nature; that, at the point at which a historical aristocracy starts to decline, its defenders, in abstracting and radicalizing the case for aristocracy in the face of its critics, come upon the teaching of nature and the standard of nature in politics. It is precisely this teaching of nature, so corrosive of all convention and all morality, that is politically explosive, and that explains the deep connection between philosophy--the criminal study of nature outside the city and outside the myths and pieties of the regime--and tyranny--the criminal and feral regime of rule outside and above all law and all convention.

The “classic” modern case for why totalitarianism is a new phenomenon may be found in the work of Hannah Arendt. Totalitarianism is perceived as a novel form of regime based on the twin application of ideology and terror

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in the study of “tyranny” it is impossible to reduce human agency to an impersonal force or to the milieu; the study of “tyranny,” more so than any other political phenomenon perhaps, is not separable from the human actor, in this case the person or persona of the tyrant.

This book will hopefully serve as a correction to this deliberate “hole” in our knowledge of the classics. It is also a beginning attempt to engage the new biological sciences from the point of view of the tradition of Western philosophy.

The discussion of the natural inequality of human groups is strictly forbidden. Being suspected of holding a belief that some individuals are superior is likely to get one called an elitist, or an eccentric. Saying the same about a group, with regard even to a limited quality, is going to get one called a racist and destroy one’s career. Therefore, those few who do question modern egalitarianism, who talk about virtue, and who even dare to bring up the natural inequality of individuals, always “politely” stop at the question of human groups.

The social and political meaning of breeding... is a question almost identical to the question of human superiority and inferiority.