| I have read a lot of Bellow, but not "Ravelstein". On the other hand, Bellow has been around the Straussians (at the University of Chicago) for a long time, and knows something of the type. As far as Machiavelli goes, as I said earlier, it is primarily the Machiavelli of the "Discources on Livy", full of admiration for republican virtue, rather than the one of the "Prince", making the best of a bad situation, that attracts the Straussians. Allan Bloom, in any event, is one of the acolytes offering his version of Straussianism. As I understand Bloom, it is a pretty conservative version, where things started to go wrong with Descartes, and tends to syncretistically blend elements that are Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic into a "philosophia perennialis", much like Boethius did in "The Consolations of Philosophy". But it is possible that my acquaintance with the Bloom version is to superficial to be accurate......... |
