Esotericism (Agnes Callard & Robin Hanson, with Oliver Traldi)

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[00:00:00]Welcome Oliver to Mind's Almost Meeting podcast with Robin Hansen and Agnes Kard here. This is Oliver Tread Traldi.

[00:00:10]>> Yes, Traldy. Yeah.

[00:00:14]>> Well, we liked two essays of yours, but uh one of them we were going to start with is on esotericism.

[00:00:21]>> Yes. Uh should I describe what's in the essay?

[00:00:26]>> Yeah. So uh this essay is about the esoteric reading approach of the Straians. Um uh but what I take issue with is not that approach but what people tend to do with it. Um so one thing uh we often do uh as let's say bad readers in analytic philosophy is we read something perhaps not esoterically and then we think really hard about uh whether it's true or false, whether the arguments are good or bad, um what some of the important ideas in it are, uh whether they can be extended, things like that. So we tend to think of that as the as most of our intellectual work, right? Um the reading is only a small part of our intellectual work. Now what I find is the esotericists uh most of the objections to esotericism which is roughly uh looking for secret messages or secret teachings or reading between the lines uh in great texts. Uh most esotericists who employ this method of reading think that their job is done uh once they've found the secret teaching or the the secret message. Um their job once they've found it uh is simply to believe it. Uh but I don't really see why we should be any more credulous towards uh secret messages than superficial messages. So uh my main objection to this approach is uh that most of the intellectual work uh is still still to be done. So that's the position that I take in the essay roughly.

[00:02:07]>> Okay. So I wanted to start from the point of view of somebody who was in a pretty substantive sense raised by Straussiums. Uh I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and my teachers you know many of my teachers people like Leon Cass Joseph Cropsy Nathan Tarov etc were you know some descend some level of descended from Strauss or Alam and um so I I wonder if you have a theory about the following thing that I've noticed which is they they were the best teachers on campus um they I mean they were universally beloved um but they were it was not just that it was not just that they were engaging or committed or whatever. They were like good in a really deep way. And um uh they really seemed to like people really felt like their point of view was deeply changed by the class in ways that people didn't as much feel about other classes, right? Um uh the classes felt really like something important was happening in them. Um like this is the moment in which real thinking is happening. There was a kind of seriousness and intensity.

[00:03:14]Um and um that's on the one hand, okay, this is one of the two phenomena that I want to explain. On the other hand, like I find almost all Sprrowian writing uh to be like kind of dull and like um the views that are teased out of the text with great um sophistication, the views themselves don't end up being that interesting >> as you brought out uh in your piece, right? Um there's a slight exception of like maybe Strauss himself, maybe Jacob Klene. Um so uh uh you know I I like to read um some of Klein's like Klein stuff makes me think of other stuff. It's not that I'm convinced by him, but he like it's kind of fertile. So So I feel a little bit less this way about Klein and Strauss, but I like I you know there was a period of my life where I was sort of reading this stuff and being like >> I'm not getting a lot out of it. Yet I was getting a lot out of the classes being taught by the Strauss. So I don't know. Do you have a theory about that? I well I am going to profer one but it's just in response to this I don't want to I don't want to you know put all my the little money I have on it. Um but I think one thing that Straussians take seriously um you know one of the goals of Straians as I understand it is to recover some parts of what they think of as the ancient way of doing philosophy or the ancient mindset of philosophers. Um they to my mind perhaps a little bit too extremely uh see there as being a massive difference between ancient ways of doing philosophy and modern ways of doing philosophy. And one aspect of the ancient ways of doing philosophy was that um in the words of many a recent grant proposal uh that I think has been successful. They saw philosophy as a way of life. U many many people have gotten money for grants entitled philosophy as a way of life. Um, and I think this makes for good teaching uh because I think that students are likely genuinely invested uh at the undergraduate age in the question of what sort of life should I be building? What sort of life counts as a good life? How does what I'm doing in this odd institution called college, how does that relate to my life? Am I just getting a credential here? Am I figuring out how to live? am I actually living yet? Um, and I think that taking seriously the notion that philosophy is tied up with life, that it's a big part of life, that maybe it's part of how to live well doing philosophy. Um, I think there's a certain vitality to this. um that I imagine uh leads to very good teaching. Whereas we analytics are often accused of, you know, making all of our distinctions and all of our arguments, but in a very bloodless way that somehow doesn't quite get to people's hearts, right? Um so this >> almost Sorry, can I interrupt you? Yeah.

[00:06:17]I think what you're saying is almost the opposite of the truth.

[00:06:21]These people were really skeptical of philosophy. Um, and they really worried that like >> it corrupts you. And there was like kind of Athens versus Jerusalem thing where like they were all secretly on the side of Jerusalem or explicitly on the side of Jerusalem. And there was, you know, this thought that like um there might have been a pretty good reason to kill Socrates. And like so that that was part of my that and so that made it super sexy and exciting. This was like forbidden wisdom, right? That like might be dangerous. It might be bad. It might screw up your life. It might not. it might not be a way of life at all. Like a lot of that philosophy is a way of life stuff and I say this as somebody who just wrote a book about philosophy as a way of life can just be super dull and pious and uh like not excite anyone.

[00:07:04]Um so so I I kind of feel like there was like there was definitely we were taking these ancient thinkers seriously but we were also taking seriously the possibility that they were evil.

[00:07:16]>> Yeah. But I think that's part of the I mean I think in a way that's part of the same project, right? Like the question of how to live is up for grabs.

[00:07:29]>> The question of whether philosophy should be part of how to live is up for grabs. Um there's not there's not a set of sort of disciplinary guard rails. Um, and I think it my guess is that it leads to a kind of greater personal investment.

[00:07:51]Um, greater sense of like I said, vitality, but that's that's just my guess. Um, I've taught and studied now in a a bunch of different kinds of settings. Um, you probably know a little bit about where I taught last year, the honors college at Tulsa, which had an odd fate. Um that was a place where I think people felt this this vitality as well. Um I think there is something about the great books approach that lends itself to it. Um maybe maybe it is this idea of things being up for grabs that the the forbidden wisdom leads to. Um but I think you know for the question of you know maybe the question maybe philosophy is not the right way to live. I think people need to go in with certain commitments to even take that you know like I think most students come in thinking philosophy is not the right way to live right um and so you need maybe it's something about East Chicago right which I've heard is a very unique place with very unique students. Um but I think you need to go in with a with a unique mindset to begin with to think that philosophy might not be the way to good to lead a good life um is news to begin with. Um >> could I step in with um a a puzzle framing? Uh so I may come mainly from STEM and in STEM we find it puzzling that anybody would spend so much time interpreting people from the past which is a common thing in the humanities and in philosophy. We figure well if you're going to talk about the good life whatever it is just start talking about it. Lay out possibilities and evidence and and get into it. And so that makes us puzzles when we see this deep immersion in particular thinkers in the past and trying to figure out what they meant by things. We figure, well, if you if it's not obvious what they meant, who cares what they meant, let's just talk about the subject. But clearly, many people are in fact motivated and energized by interpreting people from the past. But in that framework, you might think, well, look, they're giving you a structure. You don't have to think everything for yourself. You can start with some arguments and maybe critique those rather than making everything up yourself. It gives you a sort of way to come into the subject with a little more structure.

[00:10:12]But if people in the past were writing esoterically, that would seem on the surface to make it just much harder to interpret them.

[00:10:20]The task of interpreting will just be so much harder and they would seem to make them less valuable as a source of arguments you could build on and follow because uh they're just going to be less coherent and less able to understand.

[00:10:33]That makes it puzzling to see people all the more motivated and engaged by not only interpreting people instead of just talking about the subject, but interpreting people who they think weren't being very direct and finding that more interesting and engaging even than just interpreting someone who's very direct.

[00:10:52]Uh that seems to me raising a puzzle about well what exactly is it that's so engaging about interpretation?

[00:11:00]And you had a different theory that occurred to me while you were I was listening to you which is just >> well what's fun is instead of just giving an argument on a subject yourself with your own authority what's fun is to draw from the authority of these famous people and maybe present yourself as merely giving their argument which then lends their weight to whatever you say.

[00:11:20]And the more esoteric they were the more freedom you'll have with that. The more different ways you could present an argument and claim it was really theirs.

[00:11:27]And now you get to draw from their power and authority all the more when you are presenting what are basically your arguments but saying it's really theirs.

[00:11:37]Can I before I let you answer Oliver um I want to give a a contraose uh and uncynical like pro esot I'm going to try be trying to defend esotericism here because I figure someone's got to Robin's not going to you're not going to um how the esoteric person would take some of the facts that Robin was aducing and say this is actually an argument for esotericism so um you know you started with this like um like I think there is a question hanging at the back of your piece like well um you know if um we're standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to like Uklid or Newton or Einstein or whatever like and that explains why contemporary scientists don't do much of reading old science like why doesn't the same argument go for philosophy and the little handwavy thing Robin said about maybe it gives you some structure it's like we can get structure in other ways we can get structure more easily more directly than by reading like a platonic dialogue or like a treatise or whatever and so I feel like there's this Why read all these old books? Like why not do philosophy the way we do science if it's just a matter of like producing good arguments? Um and um uh and I think the esotericists would say that um it's really really hard to get outside of your point of view. That is when you produce good arguments and you test those arguments and you test claims against each other. All of that is you're stuck in your little bubble of your little world of how the people around you talk and how they have influenced you to talk. And in fact, and many parts of history, you were stuck not only um in, you know, just in because everyone's conformist, but there was like sort of political domination on top of that that was making people in very to be be in very deep ways stuck in a bad way of seeing things. the elaboration of which would only be the elaboration of a bad way of seeing things. And what these books offer us is like a window into another world. Uh the possibility of thinking about things on different terms than the terms that we're used to thinking about them. And um um but that that like thinking about something on different terms than the terms that you're used to thinking about them might be internally tied to esotericism. Here's why.

[00:13:53]Suppose I'm like um suppose I'm like, "Hey, I've got an idea for you." Um maybe there's this like immaterial realm of intangible like objects um called like the beautiful itself and the just itself and actually those are the real things and none of the things around you are real. You'd be like, "You're crazy.

[00:14:09]That's crazy talk." Um and but suppose that I didn't do it that way, right? I suppose I led you there step by step by starting to talk about like well I mean you think these two things are equal in size or whatever but like are any two things but they're not quite equal right they're not perfectly equal and like are any two things in the world really equal and um so I might like lead you not tell you where I'm going I'm not telling you that I'm going to the theory of the forms um uh and it's important that I don't tell you that um but I can kind of um um lead you step by step and you can end up somewhere you didn't expect. And that that's part of why we read these texts. And we want to preserve the text's ability to do that to us, to change us in ways we didn't expect and couldn't foresee. Because otherwise, we're stuck working out logical arguments inside of a system that's bad in the first place.

[00:15:04]>> Is it May I jump in?

[00:15:06]>> No, you can jump. Yes.

[00:15:07]>> Okay. I have about 10 things to say. I'm gonna try to I'm gonna try to remember which is which. So first of all, I completely agree with you in terms of the the teaching or didactic value of engaging with great text. This is what I've experienced. I'm a big defender of analytic philosophy at the research level. But if you if you put up a PowerPoint and say here in first order logic are the the leading theories of how to lead a good life, your students fall asleep and they don't actually think about what it would mean to lead a good life. This is just a psychological fact about college students. um this is the experience I've had you know teaching and taing both sorts of classes. However, I don't see what you're saying as a defense of esotericism as I understand it because here is I mean even talking about the forms which as you said are very radically different than the way many people think actually one of the most common esotericist readings of Plato on the forms is that Plato doesn't believe that there were forms and that actually Plato is much more like us than we think. Um, and this is this is so this is I think just something that we have to be aware of about what actually comes out of esotericist readings. A very common thing a very common thing you hear from esotericists is something like all real philosophers have had basically the same thoughts. Um, they've had the thought that justice isn't real.

[00:16:34]Whoa, spooky, right? Um, turns out you can get that in a meta ethics class the same way you can get it anywhere else.

[00:16:42]Right. Um, so I'm a little skeptical about what you said that that that the esot that the actually existing esotericists as you might call them are going to provide this experience of look how many interesting things are out there. Let's get outside our comfort zone. Um, I think there is a real esotericist com comfort zone. There's a real Straussian comfort zone. Um, and you know it involves a lot of the moves that I tried to critique in my piece. A lot of this comes out of this experience that I had in a kind of reading group seminar uh over the summer where you know we read heed the theogy and the works and days. Somebody pointed out there's sort of two different types of arguments about justice uh in in the works and days that he gives and they might be in a certain kind of tension.

[00:17:26]What was the first thing you know the strains of the room said? They said oh for the intelligent among us heid is actually trying to show that there is no justice. How would this work? How would this come from the I don't know but it's you know at a certain point once you hear this enough it's actually boring you actually want to hear that there is justice right um and I think that's that's true uh you know for a lot of our our modern world um so you know to to Robin's question let me try and remember what I was going to say about this um so there's a cynical answer about the great books one is that uh if it's hard to interpret uh it's a fountain of publishable papers for people who are trying to get tenure right I don't think we should underestimate this as part of the world of humanities research um and uh you know you can go line by line I know you know Straussians have written books on like one line from Zenapon uh who many philosophers don't even read right um and uh you know if you do that for every line you've got a lot of employed strians right so that's a that's a cynical reading at the research level for returning to the great text. Um >> but Agnes was talking about the students were more engaged.

[00:18:40]>> Yeah. So the student the students being more engaged um I think is a I think is a bit different. I think it has to do with this question of what seems dry to them and what seems alive to them and about motivation and these more psychological aspects. Um even for me you know teaching in Tulsa you know like take Botheus. Botheus is one that I talk about a lot. Like do I think Botheus really gave good arguments in in the consolation of philosophy? No.

[00:19:08]I think they're they're really weird arguments. And you know it seems like at the end he's sort of like things work out no matter what happens it would be good. Which as an economist you know it's just a very silly way to think because it can't both be the best possible thing if X happens and the best possible thing if not X happens. Right?

[00:19:26]It's a very very strange way to think.

[00:19:28]But he thinks if you have good fortune it's good and if you have bad fortune that's actually good too. There's a problem of definitions there, right?

[00:19:34]Maybe we've actually lost our sense of what counts as good. But there is something gripping to me about the fact that Botheus wrote this book in prison.

[00:19:44]Uh I believe when he was about to be executed and the fact that he was dealing with the the fact that he was about to be executed. I look back on hard times in my own life when frankly I'm usually pretty whiny and complainy and helpless when things go wrong and I think well gee botheist gives this me this model of I can actually use my philosophy so to speak um when when these difficulties happen and I can think about what does this mean for me about the good and the bad and the difficult and the easy and the sort of life I leave. Um, and this is, you know, I think this is something that attracts people to the exact sorts of texts that the Straussians are interested, you know, in the ones that are written under the most extreme situations of political pressure of of political censorship. Um, and I do think there's something compelling in thinking about how did real people uh deal with these tough circumstances.

[00:20:50]Um, how did real people uh still try to live the life of the mind uh when you know there was no tenure? Your tenure was you know getting shot in the head or whatever, right? Um so that suggests that that um people are more engaged by writings that were in the context of conflict where we can see the author as engaging in a conflict because there you know stories are have to be about conflict. People like conflict but that raises a question like yeah but why a Straussian reading? Why would that be more engaging? And you might think because there the Straussian author is engaging with this conflict between the people who he has to hide from in talking. And that conflict itself is engaging in the sense that we like to hear about and look at and engage conflict.

[00:21:39]Yeah.

[00:21:40]You know, I think I'm tempted by that. What do you think, Agnes? I'm tempted by this that that the that there's something, you know, if if you're in the class where they say, "Here's the first order logic of the the four theories of the good life, you don't actually get the sense that that there's anything conflictual in life between these theories. It's sort of picking from a menu." Um, and there's also, and I think this goes to what Agnes said about the radical difference that comes from actually reading the texts, not just formulating them in the same kind of contemporary analytic philosophy language. When you pick one of these lives as as described in analytic philosophy talk, they actually all kind of feel the same. Even though, you know, once you once you pull out the consequences, they can be very very different. But there's actually a sense in which because they're described in the same language and come from the same philosophic culture, maybe they actually feel very much the same to students. You know, saying, well, am I a utilitarian or a deontologist or a virtue ethicist or a contractualist? Might start to have this sort of bloodless liberalism feel of like, well, am I getting a burger or a chicken sandwich? You know, it might have this menu feel which I think um is not very gripping. Yeah. So I think that to the question like I think it's a really interesting question. Why do students find it more engaging to read um you know a philosophical text even it doesn't have to be Plato it could even be even Kant even reading Kant like let's say Kant's groundwork easy Kant okay is going to be better than just putting the things on the board right and and and and I I think there are going to be many cases Robin where you're not going to be able to pick out much conflict and yet still students are more engaged um with the interpretive to um uh so first of all on the Straussian view there's like puzzles right there's like secrets and you have to decode it and that's fun um uh and um I think that is an intellectual activity that like you know in intellectual skills that you're developing they may not be relevant ones um but I think that there is also setting Strassianism aside here and just addressing the question of you know why not just have the positions on the forward.

[00:24:05]I think that um kind of all of us respond more to a position that is espoused by a person than a position that's coming out of nowhere. And what does it mean for a position to be espoused by a person? I think it get that it's connected up with a set of other things and there and it's not immediately obvious how all those things are connected, right? So that um um like you might think part of what it is to sort of you know read these old texts is to like enter into somebody else's mind space um where a bunch of thoughts are connected that are not necessarily connected for you. So like inhabiting a different mind and in contrast to that if it's just a proposition that you're entertaining that's just very flat. Um, and so the alternative, the non-extual alternative is an alternative where there sort of they're not all these like like ghost minds present that you can be like inhabiting or engaging with. They're just these propositions. Um, and uh I think not just students, especially students, but not just students, kind of everyone prefers to engage with minds rather than propositions.

[00:25:21]>> There's a puzzle here. Everybody else in academia isn't doing this interpreting the old thinkers thing. They seem to be motivated and find it more interesting to more directly engage the claims that issue in physics and chemistry and geology and computer science and engineering and and all the other disciplines even >> nonhumanities. You just picked out the part of academia that doesn't do this.

[00:25:42]Even linguistics say uh you know we're going to more talk about language rather than >> linguistics does quite a lot of like here's a bunch of utterances and let's pull them apart like a kind of interpretive work of a certain kind um they have text you know >> but but if >> they're sure >> if reading people you know reading about a topic through the voice of someone who integrates it with their life is so compelling why doesn't everybody else do it >> well what do you think of I mean take a physics class I You know I was not that great at physics but one thing I remember is that if there were every now and then if we were learning some physics concept we might do something like let's do the experiment that originally that originally put say Galileo you know everybody drops a few things and then proves Galileo right right they have to do it so there is I actually think there's there is something of so there there's immediacy Um there's a link to a creator. I also think you know I mean so the one I always tell is the story of Galwa. You guys probably know the story of Everest Galwa, but he he died at 21 and and much of much of abstract algebra was contained in a letter he wrote to his friend the night before or something like that, right? Um, and uh, I decided to learn some abstract algebra after I heard this story. I think, you know, just because I was like, this is a very cool story. And he >> died in a duel. You have to say that part.

[00:27:19]>> He died in a duel. He died in a duel that was sort of partly over politics and partly over a woman. I believe it's sort of there's a few things going on.

[00:27:27]>> Connecting ideas to a context of the person who originated them and their life and etc. That's still different than going to their words and their description of those ideas as they saw them integrated in their life. That's an extra step that STEM etc doesn't do.

[00:27:44]Yes, STEM very much tries to highlight the people associated with things and their heroic nature and you know the conflicts they had whenever they if they were oppressed. But again, we don't go to their original words.

[00:27:57]>> Yeah, I think that's right. And we certainly if they did do it other words if it was esoteric I don't think that would engage.

[00:28:04]>> Yeah.

[00:28:04]>> If Einstein had some essay about the future of you know relativity where he was speaking you know in a hidden way or in a vague way about the future of relativity. I don't think that a lot of physicists would go let's go through this essay and like try to interpret it different ways.

[00:28:19]>> No. Although the philosophers probably would and the historians might. Um, I think one thing I'll say about this, so I definitely, you know, I've been defending this as a method of teaching, but it's also not what I do as as research. And I think it is, you know, there's always, whether people are esoteric or not, there's always this question of, okay, you came up with a new interpretation of Plato on which he's X or Y or Z. Um, you know, say I think there's this debate about the credo, for instance, does it express a social contract theory or not? you know, this doesn't really resolve the question of whether we should be social contract theorists. In fact, I understated it. It doesn't at all, it doesn't even it doesn't even really bear intellectually on the question of whether we should be social contract theorists, right? Um, but I think part of the, you know, philosophy to begin with is rather an odd discipline in that, uh, or maybe not. Some people tell me that this is not that rare but uh many parts of philosophy sort of think that the other parts of philosophy shouldn't be done or shouldn't exist right so so for example you know a certain type of metaethicist thinks first order ethics is very silly and there are plenty of people who think metaphysics is all nonsense um and there are certainly parts of political philosophy that take this or that you know intuition for granted uh or this or that premise for granted.

[00:29:46]Um so I think the the question of there are people elsewhere in the academy who think what you're doing is not really very productive. Um although I am on the side of the more researchbased analytic stuff. Uh I think we face that question too because a lot of people will look at our writings and say what are you doing?

[00:30:07]You're just intuition mongering. You don't really have a method. You're talking about things that hardly exist.

[00:30:12]Um, and so I think this is sort of a problem for all of us. So we can't we can't necessarily single out the historians of philosophy for having that problem.

[00:30:21]>> Do you think that it is like um an accidental or somehow an essential feature of philosophy that the parts of it think the other parts shouldn't exist? It occurs to me that this would be a one way of giving sense to the idea that philosophy is inherently political.

[00:30:39]>> Yeah. I mean, I don't know who first came up with the idea that once philosophers actually figure out what to do in some regard, it just becomes another it it gets its own name and becomes another discipline, >> right?

[00:30:54]>> Um uh well, I think there there's definitely something to that. Um and one defensive philosophy is well, you know, you get rid of us, you won't have any new discipline. You know, this that won't happen again, right? Um, so much as we're fumbling around in the dark, sometimes we find a new door and open up to an entire new room. Um, >> go ahead.

[00:31:21]>> Um, let me bring back the authority theory.

[00:31:25]uh so in say economics or physics or even or computer science what happens when we introduce a famous person and we describe their life and how important and heroic they were what they tend to do is connect that to some concrete statement like you know Einstein's equations or thermodynamic equations and then that's the anchor for the authority that equation in our mind is associated with that authority who lends their weight to it through their heroic story and it makes that equation more engaging and memorable to us it's not just an equation it came from someone with a history and philosophers these famous philosophers less have a claim that you say oh we believe that because of Aristotle we believe that because of Spinosa or something what you believe is there's a whole set of things they said relatedly that are interesting and provocative about the topic but there's not a particular claim that you will cite as being just clearly true and the person we learned it from was this famous person and that's why in a sense you have to do do the interpretation thing. That's the way to bring their authority into your beliefs and and practice is by taking a set of their things that they say and going through them in your mind and discussing them so that those topics are connected to that authority through that broader package without there isn't the particular equation that you can say came from Kant or even uh that that's not how it works.

[00:32:52]It works through their larger body of of associated works having the gravitas of authority that we all believe that something in that is good valuable and then we don't agree on a particular sentence as the sentence we agree on because they showed it to us.

[00:33:09]I guess I feel like there just are such sentences. Um like you know I just click on Socrates so I can list you some.

[00:33:17]Everyone desires the good. There's no such thing as weakness of well uh flattering.

[00:33:22]>> But do we all believe all all those are true or do we believe they're thoughtful and things we are worth discussing? Are they axioms we're willing to use for other analysis or are they just >> we're glad we heard it.

[00:33:32]>> So there's definitely a set of sentences we can associate with Socrates. Let's put it that way. And then there's also a set of arguments for those sentences, right, that we can find in the Socratic corpus. Um and um right, I think that um um you're right that in a way what's interesting about the sentences is that in the case of many of them, most people don't believe that they're true. Like doing injustice is worse than suffering it for the person who's doing it, right?

[00:34:01]Let's take that one, right? Um uh so right um uh they're not they're not like generally accepted. Um and so maybe in the case of science unless your thing became generally accepted, we just we just didn't preserve you, >> right?

[00:34:24]We're not so interested in thoughtful commentators about issues a long time ago. We we we just want the summary results that we now accept and use for other things.

[00:34:32]>> Yeah. Yeah. But I think you know an argument is a bit like a right like I mean mathematicians come up with arguments just like philosophers. And in fact a mathematician can like proving a new result is one way to have progress in mathematics. But actually a mathematician can also generate progress by proving an old result in a new way. Um uh and I think there there's something philosophical about that. Um but yeah, I mean I think you know philosophers definitely come up with novel arguments. I you know I would say like the youth of road dilemma for instance is a you know one that I like to teach to undergrads. It's pretty easy to get. Um and that constitutes a kind of progress uh even if it turns out that there's a good response to the dilemma. Um there's also in philosophy more so than in it just happens to be the case that in math you know if we say well it it's very rare in math to say to understand this claim you have to understand a whole constellation of related claims and I think this is what you were saying before right so one thing Agnes mentioned the the idea that uh doing injustice is worse than suffering injustice um to even understand how this claim occurred to you know Socrates and Plato as because you know in the modern imagination we have this is something Starians I don't think talk about very much but to me it's actually one of the signal differences between the modern and the ancient and medievals we just think of there as being different types of normativity different types of rationality so that there's doing the right thing and then there's doing the right thing by oneself, what we might call economic rationality, right? And um so it's actually very difficult I think once you have that mindset to even understand how the question of doing versus suffering injustice can even be made sense of because one of them seems to be talking about what is the right thing to do and the other one seems to be talking about what counts as good by me. Um and uh so the question sort of opens up this other question about are there actually different types of normativity?

[00:36:59]Are there actually different types of rationality? Um which is a much deeper question which might and investigating this question might involve investigating something um that we very much take for granted. Now in other areas we also investigate things that we very much take for granted but we don't think about it quite the same way right.

[00:37:17]So, you know, there are these fun games involving like, oh, what if we were working in a different number system than base 10? What would what would our what would our symbols look like? What would our And it just turns out, you know, this is not people say, okay, we could have a different number system.

[00:37:34]Um, but it's sort of okay that we have this number system. It's okay if it's a little arbitrary. Um but we sort of feel in philosophy no if we just have it's it's not okay if like our ethical system is arbitrary right that itself would be a deep philosophical claim. Um so that I think is a is a difference um that actually in a way speaks well of philosophy a and uh speaks well to the to the interest of of philosophy. Um the arbitrariness is sort of, you know, something that I think we can't take for granted in philosophy. We can't just pick some system and say we're going to see what we can prove within that system. We have to think about did we actually pick the right system to begin with.

[00:38:20]>> Can I bring >> I just wanted to say one thing. You're definitely right that the the authority status of philosophers is part of what makes interpretation so interesting to people. But I just I just want to say that for me that is like the problem, right? Like the idea that once I've done the interpretation, I'm done. That is the whole problem. That is what esotericists really ought to get away from.

[00:38:45]>> So Arthur Meltzer had a book from 2014 called Philosophy Between the Lines where he persuaded me at least that in fact many ancients were esoteric. Uh that's not so much Straussian, but that raises the question. He says in the last few centuries we've dropped that habit to become much more open but as in the last decade or so many people have been more concerned about being open and the retaliation they could fear. So for example your other essay that I was intrigued by about the male mystique. Um many of my colleagues have said don't talk about that in public because you could be in trouble.

[00:39:22]So then the question is, is the world different now in terms of esotericism?

[00:39:27]Are we more accepting of letting people say things directly than people used to be? Or is that just a style that happened for a while, but we're still just as much at risk? Uh will the world become more of intellectuals become more esoteric in the future as we become more defensive about these things? Uh those possibilities make esoterism to me much more of a live topic. If yeah that's our future then yes let's take seriously what people learned in the past about how to be effectively esoteric and try to re re recover those skills.

[00:39:59]>> Yeah. So there's definitely there's a sort of reverse reverse is probably the wrong word but it'll be clear what I mean when I say it. There's a kind of reverse esotericism in a lot of theories of language having to do with like dog whistles and code switching coded language things like that. Um, and this was actually very popular uh around when I started thinking about this stuff about 10 years ago. Um, was a very funny exchange uh the formerly of Yale philosopher Jason Stanley now I think at the University of Toronto wrote a book called How Propaganda Works. Um and it had you know his idea which you know maybe was a little bit hammer meets nail type thing but his idea was that propaganda involves a lot of you know highly technical aspects of the philosophy of language that he happens to understand better than almost anybody. Um so it was a little convenient. Uh and Brian Lighter uh of the famous blog um the famous philosophy blog uh wrote a review uh which said among other things um uh if you actually you know the whole moment that Stanley was writing in the Trump moment he was like it's all actually out on the on the surface right like this is actually the moment the moment of the least code right the moment of the least dog whistling the moment of the least esotericism right Um that's what you know probably the most famous living Strowy and Bronze Age Pervert um you know in his writing he says I I sort of turn my back on the Straussians because they don't understand you actually shouldn't be esoteric. You should just kind of say whatever. Um, I do think that I mean there's there's a difference between people saying things privately, for instance, or using back channels or only being willing to say things one-on-one, which I think you saw a ton of in academia, probably still do, but certainly when I was starting in academia, there were a lot of issues that you would never hear bro publicly.

[00:42:04]um including as you mentioned issues about sex and gender and relationships and romance uh like the ones I discussed in my piece. Um but it's a little bit different than esotericism because I I also think people were unwilling to even hint at them. Um, so I actually I mean what's interesting is the process of hinting at them um or or putting in the these these ways of um for a really really skilled reader to to come up with the interpretation um rather than uh simply not talking about them at all.

[00:42:44]>> I will say your article hinted at things it didn't say that you were being somewhat esoteric in that article. Uh yeah. So that's uh I'm happy to talk about them more esoterically. Which which sorts of things did you have in mind?

[00:42:58]>> Well, you you pulled back about the conclusions we could draw from your analysis. You you you gave an analysis but uh which has pregnant with implications, but you you chose not to go there. That that is a kind of esotericism.

[00:43:12]>> Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's right. Um, one thing part of this was just a a question of uh how it was edited and what the audience was and which I guess those can be questions of esotericism as well. Editors can be censored. Um, I went into that article with a you know there were a bunch of references to kind of an evolutionary psych way of thinking um about romance. Um, and uh, I think uh, magazine editors I think are are more interested in sort of what are the cultural, you know, what's going on in the cultural moment. So, some of the evolutionary stuff was paired down a little bit and some of the cultural stuff was more highlighted. The postme too mo moment uh, was a phrase that was bandied about in some of our emails. Um, and so it's true that there could be coming from that a sort of esoteric effect. Um, I think that this is it's interesting because I never would have I never would have thought of this this this is very provoking. Um, I never would have thought of this as myself employing an esoteric writing method. um simply because there there was no moment at which I thought to myself what do I really want to say and what do I want my readers to get and what are my options available for saying it and what sorts of codes can I use um but it's true that through the sort of patterns of negotiation um and compromise uh that lead to anything being written some of which are internal but many of which are social. Um, a product emerges which as you say may have implications uh or may suggest things uh to the reader um that I that I didn't say outright. So that's certainly that's certainly true.

[00:45:17]Um I just want to you know note about the piece. I don't deny that this happens just that you know who the mere fact that I write this that I perhaps am able to write this way which I didn't realize doesn't mean anything about whether anybody should trust me. Um but I do think there's something and I think Agnes was talking about this before.

[00:45:36]I think there may be part of the appeal of esotericism is if you think of the reader's role in a piece like that, it also just is more there's a level at which it's obviously more engaging, right? Because they have to they have to draw out these implications and they can conceive of themsel as a little detective, right? Um there's it's sort of like a murder mystery. who actually killed the true meaning of the text and how can I sniff out how can I find all the clues and things like that? Um, you know, I love detective sto, you know, it's the that's the story where you feel most engaged in the plot of what's going on because you have something to figure out, right? Um, and I think a lot of the best stories have some detection to do.

[00:46:20]Yeah. At the, you know, at least of, you know, in a romance predicting who's going to get together or something like that, we're always making predictions.

[00:46:27]We're always making guesses, right? Um, >> and why why were we so little esoteric for a century or two? But why are we are we returning to escortism because people have noticed the the dramatic rhetorical benefits of being a little evasive or >> I think we should distinguish between like let's say very intentional esotericism and it's like Oliver was noticing wait maybe I was being kind of esoteric even though I didn't have a plan a plan to be esoteric right and it might be that um the esoteric plan had you know a particular historical moment or something. But when I if I just think about like very roughly the difference between analytic and continental philosophy, I feel like well continental philosophy, you never quite know what they're saying. Um, and it's pretty confusing and you have to do a lot of work. I'm reading a bunch of it right now. I'm teaching it class >> and it's like I feel like I got a big job of like saying what is actually going on here? What is what is actually being said? And as a reader, I feel like that job is on me. And it made me realize that an analytic philosophy, like any analytic philosophy essay, it's kind of like the essay is telling you just shut up and listen. I've got everything covered.

[00:47:40]>> Um like and like I've got the like, oh, you think you're supposed to respond to the arguments. No, I'm going to anticipate your counter arguments. Those are going to be in here, too. There's nothing for you to do except be totally passive and just listen.

[00:47:51]>> And of course, you're going to come up with rebuttals in so far as the piece fails, right? But you only have any agency. You only have any thinking to do. there's only any place for you in so far as the piece fails to be perfectly clear and perfectly um kind of capacious and yeah >> debating your objections and whatever and in a so in a way it really made me sort of warm to the continental philosophers who were like >> reader you know te tell me what I'm thinking I don't really know what it is >> yeah so I'm I'm going through a moment where I'm thinking about a lot of these things so I wrote another essay recently well I actually wrote it a while ago but it finally got published um which is actually true of the other essays we were talking about today as well. um on subtlety and one one thing I note it's actually an oddly underdisussed topic but everybody thinks of subtlety and the ability to be subtle as a virtue obviously it's a little bit different than being esoteric but in the word subtle right subtle means below the whatever is the tell right which I think is like um text I think it comes from the same words as text or texture um so you could call that esoteric You could call that deep I guess. Um and one thing I note there is that you know analytic philosophy and maybe other parts of our culture have like we prize clarity really really highly. Um we have a sort of legalistic notion. You know what analytic philosophers often talk about what am I committed to right? You know, it's sort of like starting, oh, I don't want to commit quite yet, right?

[00:49:26]Um, and what you're committed to is some like abstru theory about how justification relates to rationality or something like that is, oh, I better not commit myself. Nobody's going to there will be no effects of you committing yourself, but you don't want to be wrong, which is a very virtuous thing.

[00:49:40]You don't want to commit yourself to something false. Um, but this notion of I'm going to be super clear about my commitments, which I think partly comes from modeling analytic philosophy on on science, um, in many ways and maybe on law in other ways, I don't know. Um, is very different than, you know, in subtle communication, the whole point is not to commit yourself, right? Um, Pinker, I think I've heard that Pinker likes this example of um, you know, you're on a date and you want to invite somebody up and you say like, "Do you want to see my stamp collection?" Right?

[00:50:14]Um, obviously nobody wants to see your freaking stamp collection, but they can agree to see the stamp collection and then maybe if they change their mind, you'll actually look at the stamp collection and nobody nobody feels, you know, like they've been imposed on in any way. And and you also have this option of doing whatever other stuff you might actually want to do. Um, and uh, it's just obvious that many of our types of communication require this subtlety. Um, and it makes them much more pleasant and it makes people feel much more connected to one another and much more engaged with one another and it makes feel people feel safer. Um, and uh, I'm starting to think that maybe I can see why it's good for philosophy to have the capacity um, for subtlety as well. um even though it's not on the model of the sciences, right? Um I don't think most, you know, it's not good for a physics paper to be subtle, I don't think. Well, that was the point I was going to bring up, which is we have this whole other world where you can read most papers and presume that you're going to agree with the paper when you're done, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing for you to do.

[00:51:15]The thing to do is to think about the implications, where to go from there.

[00:51:19]Rather than finding the error in the paper, we're more engaged by uh building on it. So we tend to make smaller, weaker claims that you can more expect that you will agree with at the end. Uh and that's just a different world. But people do there find themselves engaged.

[00:51:35]>> Yeah.

[00:51:36]>> But again the the highest level question I I think about is esotericism on the return. Will Strauss be more right about the future or not? that is we have this rare historical exception of the last century or two of being more direct and clear, but should we expect that to last?

[00:51:58]>> I this I'm not going to answer your question. Um I know Robin, you always want to know what's happening next. Um and I don't always care. Um like we can't figure out whether it's good now.

[00:52:07]Do we care what's going to happen in the future? Um but that but but but something that's a relevant thing in connection with it that I wanted to bring up earlier about context um that in some way what um you know what some forms of public speech are is sort of contextless speech. I mean, especially let's say a tweet or something um where you're just kind of talking to everyone and it's short enough um that um you know, sometimes it'll invoke a specific context like a specific political moment or whatever, but we're doing a lot of just kind of like putting words out there. Um, and um, you might think that some of what this kind of esoteric mode of speech does is it sets up a context. It sets up like a communicative frame. It's almost like like Robin, you know, you were saying your colleagues were saying, don't talk about this in mixed company outside.

[00:53:08]Don't talk about it publicly in a contextfree space. You could talk about it here with us. We have a safe space here and we can talk to each other about gender, the truth about gender relations, right? But um uh and now the what if you were speaking esoterically about that in effect it would be like the thing where you're speaking to your colleagues only your interlocutors would be people you don't know um who might not even exist yet if you're Plato right they might be in the future or something and so one way to think about esotericism and I mean I take Oliver's earlier point that I never responded to which is like I'm a little bit doing the the true esotericism has never been tried move where it's like look in concept like I agree with you about the Straussian writing, right? I agree there's just not that much that's interesting that they pull out of these tests. Um uh but but in principle in principle, you know, you might think what's happening is that the esoteric writer is creating a little safe space um uh just like you have with your colleagues. Um only the safe space is not limited to people who are physically proximate. And there's a suggestion I I I'm you know Straussians I think make much of this passage in the federus where Socrates says you shouldn't write and where he gives is one of the reasons why um writing is not a I mean he hasn't generally uh he thinks there are good uses of writing but that most of the uses of it are not good because one of the reasons he says is that the writing does not know to whom it should speak and to whom it should be silent that is it indiscriminately talks to everyone in a kind of contextfree way by contrast with Socrates who knows which person to approach and he knows what to say to them. Um, and so that does seem to me to be one way of defending esotericism. And then the thought about the future, this is how it relates to your question, Robin, is like the question is, will we be wanting more of these separate contexts and will be wanting more tools for setting them up in the future or fewer?

[00:55:10]I'm inclined to think fewer, but um uh but that's just the prediction game.

[00:55:18]>> An observation about social media is in fact that people are more energized and engaged by writings that appears to have maybe multiple levels to it where dog whizzling is at least a possibility.

[00:55:30]Most of the most popular writers are giving the impression that they're implying things they're not saying and that engages people on both sides about them. So in that sense we are having more esotericism uh through social media >> really I feel like when I think about like tweets that go viral I like there there definitely are multiple interpretations of them because everyone's interpreting but I don't know that most of those people think the other interpretations are possible.

[00:56:00]I kind of think it's something that can be interpreted in multiple ways, but everyone thinks their way is the right way, which is different from the >> where people learn to write so that multiple interpretations will become possible. That that is a skill that people are developing.

[00:56:16]Merely being clear and direct where everybody understands you is not very popular.

[00:56:20]>> No, I think that I think that's right.

[00:56:24]Um, I think that's right.

[00:56:31]I mean, I think it's I don't know. So when I think about was there a moment of of strainism you know I think about some of the political pressures in the academy and I don't know if I can think of like an enormous number of texts that were produced in say the past 15 or 20 years where I can say here's somebody who it got past the sensors because they think it meant X but I as a problematic person and an intelligent person know that it actually meant why, right? Um, I definitely think people write with multiple meanings and people avoid certain questions and people allow implications to be drawn out, but there's no like major work um that I think has quite the character that Straussians attribute. I mean the the the character that Straussians attribute to to these writings is like Plato says in the republic that justice is the best thing but actually he thinks it doesn't exist right like that that's the type of reading that is a stressing reading so you would need to find it would need to be like Ibram Kendi actually thinks racism is good or right like you you would need you need to have something that is like that is like a truly extreme reversal to actually match the like the the level of hiding that the esoterist thing tends to go on.

[00:57:55]>> So cancellations often involve somebody accused of saying something with an interpretation different than what the accused person claims is the interpretation. So there are many cases like that I guess.

[00:58:07]>> And then many people claim that the accused person even though what they literally said wasn't this other thing that they were implying it.

[00:58:16]>> Yeah. It wasn't an accident that they could be accused of the thing they're accused of. So in that sense people are suspecting esotericism maybe where it's not actually there.

[00:58:25]>> Yeah. I think in the cases I've seen I think it that's usually not true. So one of the mo the most famous one in philosophy Rebecca Tuvel wrote this paper one of my closest friends um arguing that if you respect transgender identity you should respect transracial identity. This happened in 2017 and she was mobbed for it and so forth. You probably remember the Hipatia scandal. Um, and many people said, "Well, it's just so obvious that we shouldn't accept transracial identity that she must be doing this esoteric thing of trying to attack transgender identity." But actually, if you talk to her about it, she simply and straightforwardly thinks that we should be more respectful of transracial people, right? And has no problem with transgender people at all. Um, and even to the extent that she entertains this is because she's been like sort of forced into the corner, you know, so to speak, politically with the transexclusionary feminists and so forth. Um, I do think that one thing that sometimes happens is maybe people don't predict pe maybe individuals think I'm going to keep believing what I believe now. And others maybe are good at saying, well, if you believe this this year, maybe you'll go down, you know, if you're willing to change your view this much, maybe you change it in this way, and maybe there's going to be so maybe if you're sort of against affirmative action this year, in five years, you'll be a full-fledged racist or something like that. Um, and uh, but that's sort of almost like internal esoter, right? Like that's sort of like something that we're actually hiding from ourselves, which I do think is, you know, this is a philosophical question. to what extent can we deceive ourselves and like to what end? But I do think we can deceive ourselves about things like this. Um and so so so but I think that's a separate issue. Um do people actually end up down the line holding the problematic view that they were accused of having but actually didn't to begin with. Um that I think does happen but it's a little bit different than than hiding a message about what you currently believe as well. We're gonna have to stop in a minute and you guys can each have a last word, but I want to say my last word is I came up with an answer to my original question about like why is it that these Straussians were good teachers but not good writers?

[01:00:39]And I think it's that they were not Straussians in their writing and they were in their teaching. That is when they were teaching class you did not know what they thought. They did not reveal their views and you were always kind of looking for signs. You were always like when they like nodded when you said something, oh maybe this is their real view or whatever. But they really did not like put their cards on the table. I had this sense that they thought philosophy was dangerous and maybe bad and whatever, but that was never like a thing that was explicitly said, right? So you were constantly kind of hunting. It was an esoteric mode of teaching where really it was the students who talked and the professor kind of receded a bit but drew the best out of them. Whereas the thing that always bothered me about the Straussian writing is like if you're such a strain, why are you telling me straight up what Plato thinks? Like shouldn't you be making it all tricky and then making me having to jump through a bunch of hoops?

[01:01:23]And like maybe Klein is doing a little bit of that and maybe stress is doing a little bit of that. But mostly I think they're just trying to like say it how it is. And uh that's just like it's just boring because it's not esoteric.

[01:01:41]My last word would be to say that I I'm struck I guess I'm coming to believe that maintaining a norm where we treat people's words at the literal level and assume that they are being direct and clear is actually a hard norm to maintain and that we may be losing that norm.

[01:01:57]That is once you have the presumption that we can interpret you according to what we think you probably intended even though you don't say it. uh that just our conversation changes in a lot of big ways and it'll be harder to say some things and uh maybe I'll miss the world where we presumed you said and only meant exactly what you said even if we privately believed you might think something else. There's a way in which our conversation can go straight forward in that world that it can't when we're all going to jump to presumptions about what you really meant.

[01:02:28]>> Yeah, I think something like this happens in a lot of arenas. So I I think about this a lot that like take photography. There was this I feel like there was a kind of grace period where where it was much easier to create uh something that looked like a photograph that actually represented reality um than it was to to fake it. And then it became easier to fake it. And it was sort of you know there are these periods of blessed truthfulness. I think that maybe there might be something similar with AI. I don't know exactly what the analog would be, but maybe something where, you know, the AI is at a level where it can sort of give you good advice, but it'll get to a level where it actually you can't trust it and it's manipulating you for some other end or something like that. Um, so I'm actually very into this notion of a a grace period where technologies can produce the true things much more easily than false things which then inevitably ends.

[01:03:24]Um I just mostly wanted to say uh you know despite writing this essay I had not really thought of myself as a Strasy and so now I have this whole new way this negotiated way of being esoteric.

[01:03:36]Um I think one cool thing that came out of our conversation was the multiple ways of doing something like esoter esoteric writing. So you could deceive yourself. Um you could write as a group.

[01:03:47]Certain things could be left out. There could be compromises with editors. There could be negotiations. Um, and those things, uh, those things certainly happen. Um, uh, and, uh, I think it's, uh, I think it's super interesting. I mean, one thing, one thing though that I think, um, you know, Agnes, you started out by talking about the forbidden nature of uh, of some of the Stratian teachings.

[01:04:12]And I just want to I want to say something in favor of philosophy and justice that actually I think in some ways in our current moment uh it's actually much you know much less popular to say we should do philosophy. We should sit and think we should believe in right and wrong you know um I think that's actually those are less popular than our the alternatives in our very specific cultural moment. Um so that'll be my last several words. I apologize for taking too long. Thank you for being on our show.

[01:04:43]>> Thank you guys so much for having me.