Is Mansfield at Harvard the heir to the house of Strauss?
What is the best department to do Straussian school PT?
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Is Mansfield at Harvard the heir to the house of Strauss?
Mansfield is currently 84 years old. You might try asking him whether he has any heirs of his own.
If you were really interested in theory, you'd be obsessively reading Strauss's books and articles, Mansfield's books on Machiavelli, Bloom's books on Plato and Shakespeare, Kagan's books (conservative but not Straussian) on Thucydides, everything by Robert Nisbet, everything for and against Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger, and everything by Herbert Marcuse, the now-forgotten prophet of the New Left.
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Does it make sense to speak about "Straussians" anymore? What I mean is that Strauss's work has started being studied in its own right. He's just another political theorist. How many Straussians - i.e., people that studied with Strauss - are even left?
I was educated by his students. But I don't call myself a Straussian ("of course! That's the proof that he's a Straussian!")
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Does it make sense to speak about "Straussians" anymore?
Yes. Some (like you, and the post you're responding to) sometimes like to pretend otherwise in public forums for some reason, but it's a tribe with pretty clear and defined boundaries, well understood by all insiders.
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Does it make sense to speak about "Straussians" anymore?
Yes. Some (like you, and the post you're responding to) sometimes like to pretend otherwise in public forums for some reason, but it's a tribe with pretty clear and defined boundaries, well understood by all insiders.
"Of course! That's the proof that he's a Straussian!"
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Does it make sense to speak about "Straussians" anymore? What I mean is that Strauss's work has started being studied in its own right. He's just another political theorist. How many Straussians - i.e., people that studied with Strauss - are even left?
I was educated by his students. But I don't call myself a Straussian ("of course! That's the proof that he's a Straussian!")All those people who were students of Strauss you say trained you? Those of the people who studied with Strauss who are still around. And they are legion.
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The advice about NIU isn't bad, especially as they also have Radasanu. Avoid U of Toronto. Orwin is about to retire, and Balot is NOT in any way an equal replacement.
UT-Austin is solid, but they have trouble placing their PT students more recent. Even their "star" students like AH who the Pangle's love barely nabbed a VAP. The Pangle's are extremely cliquish, so you have about a semester to prove whether you get into their private reading groups or not. Idk if you have talked with T. Pangle lately, but now, as compared with say, 10 years ago, is far less capable of being persuaded that anything can be different than the way he understands it. He used to buy into the idea that you could learn from your students, but that is not the case now. If you mention a buzzword like history or liberalism, the conversation is already over, because he will give you a 45 minute lecture about the exact moment in a book where this idea was born, then how it became misunderstood, and how you as a student don't have a clue where you moral presuppositions come from.
Baylor is getting much stronger. TB is publishing like a monster and MN is still heading up dissertations as well.
Michigan State is another possibility, but the department is deeply fragmented. Melzer's book on esotericism was very well received but Kautz hasn't done anything significant in years.
Notre Dame is good, but the Zuckerts are old. They have recruiting replacements over the years, so they will stay strong.
Claremont and Hillsdale are a joke, even among Straussians. They torture readings of the ancients to show how smart the founders are. And then from their, critique all of modernity as if Jefferson is Aristotle.
U Dallas does surprisingly well for itself. It takes very small cohorts which helps, and they have a strong network of Christian liberal arts schools that like hiring their students. And if you are more great booksy than political, this a great fit. They have made a lot of young hires the last couple of years, so we will have to see how they turn out.