Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 97
argument or makes an error, Strauss immediately and persistently
assumes that this simply couldn’t be and that there
must be some deep, twisted, hidden meaning to all this.
This is the Straussian method, and this is virtually the
one method of textual analysis that he uses here. He had
done similar things with Hobbes, Locke, etc., but not nearly
so virulently. Now, it is true, as Strauss points out, that in
those days, radical thinkers (i.e., thinkers against the usual
stream) were wont to be circumspect, because they were in
considerably more danger than they are today. But it is one
thing to look for circumspection and quite another to construct
a veritable architectonic of myth and conjecture based
on the assumption of Machiavelli as an omniscient Devil,
writing on a dozen different layers of “hidden meaning.”
The Straussian ratiocination is generally so absurd as to be
a kind of scholar’s version of the Great Pyramid crackpots
or of the kind of screwball historians that flourish in the
American Mercury. Strauss’s methodology is to genuine history
of political thought as astrology and numerology are to
genuine astronomy.
If this seems extreme, I shall give a couple of examples
of the almost excruciatingly crackpot nature of Strauss’s
scholarship (a crackpottiness that has to be discovered by
rather careful reasoning, it is true, because of the density of
the Straussian style.) These are two of innumerable examples.
First, Strauss’s flight into numerology. On page 48, he
remarks on what is to him the strange and wondrous fact
that Machiavelli’s Discourses have 142 chapters, the same
number of chapters of Livy’s History. To me, this is not at
all surprising, since the Discourses are proclaimed to be a
commentary on Livy’s History. But this is enough for
Strauss. This “strange fact” he says, “makes one wonder
whether the number of chapters of the Prince is not also
significant.” 46 This somehow gives Strauss the clue that
46 Ibid., p. 47.