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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Lane3 who wrote (6679)12/12/2005 2:20:45 PM
From: TigerPaw  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 542108
 
The 'noble lie'

Strauss believed that allowing citizens to govern themselves will lead, inevitably, to terror and tyranny, as the Weimar Republic succumbed to the Nazis in the 1930s. A ruling elite of political philosophers must make those decisions because it is the only group smart enough. It must resort to deception -- Strauss's "noble lie" -- to protect citizens from themselves. The elite must hide the truth from the public by writing in code. "Using metaphors and cryptic language," philosophers communicated one message for the elite, and another message for "the unsophisticated general population," philosopher Jeet Heer recently wrote in the Globe and Mail. "For Strauss, the art of concealment and secrecy was among the greatest legacies of antiquity."

thetyee.ca

Actually, it's a bit harder to find factual information on Strauss Teaching now that he has become more known. That is because the internet is now flooded with opinion pieces on the subject.