Political Philosophy and Honor

The American Mind just re-posted an interesting essay by this title, by one of Leo Strauss's students, Harry V. Jaffa. Below is their introduction to the essay. Click over to read it.

This September, the American Political Science Association gave its annual Leo Strauss Award for best doctoral dissertation in political philosophy to Elena Gambino for her “‘Presence in Our Own Land:’ Second Wave Feminism and the Lesbian Body Politic.” When the award was founded, Strauss’s student and Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute Harry V. Jaffa wrote that “the prize will…discourage, rather than encourage the emulation of Leo Strauss.” Jaffa is quite roundly vindicated by this latest development, and so we reprint here his essay, originally published in Modern Age, Vol. 21, No. 4, Fall 1977 and reprinted as the appendix to How to Think About the American Revolution (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978) and again in Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).–Eds.

And it introduced me to a new word:

meliorism (n)

1. The belief that the human condition can be improved through concerted effort.

2. The belief that there is an inherent tendency toward progress or improvement in the human condition.

5 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Related to "ameliorate." See? now you'll remember it for good.

Dad29 said...

The belief that there is an inherent tendency toward progress or improvement in the human condition.

Which is NOT true. This is a derivative of Darwin's theory (also untrue) and the foundation of progressive politics. Sadly, some progressives actually believe this.

Tom said...

Thanks, AVI.

Dad29, actually, it goes back farther than Darwin, going back at least to Hegel, then from him to Karl Marx, both before Darwin published. When Darwin published his theory, meliorists adopted & adapted it to fit their philosophy. This was a disservice to Darwin's ideas, though.

Darwin's own formulation of his theory of evolution never proposed that a species would advance or become better through evolution. It is only that a species becomes a better fit for its environment through evolution, but since the environment is always changing, there is no end goal or way to improve in general.

Tom said...

A key point of the essay is, how should we honor people? Although I'm oversimplifying, the author's point was that in creating the Leo Strauss award the way it did, the organization was actually going against what Strauss believed.

I don't think he objected to the creation of an award, per se, but the rules that were created did not honor Strauss's own ideas.

It's worth reading whether you are interested in that topic, in the history of political philosophy, or just in good examples of rhetoric.

douglas said...

I've found that I prefer looking words up at Etymology Online more than dictionaries, now.
Entry for Meliorism:

meliorism (n.)
as a metaphysical concept, "belief that the world tends to become better or is capable of improvement;" in practical terms, "the improvement of society by regulated practical means;" by 1868, attributed to "George Eliot" (Mary Anne Evans), from Latin melior "better" (see meliorate) + -ism. Related: Meliorist (1835); melioristic.