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

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
102 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
July 4, 1960
Dr. Ivan R. Bierly
William Volker Fund
Dear Ivan:
8.
LETTER ON
ON TYRANNY BY LEO STRAUSS
In Leo Strauss’s On Tyranny, the author pursues the
same sort of historical method in discussing political
thought of the past that he later continued in his Thoughts
on Machiavelli, i.e., the tortuous—and tortured—misreading
of an author’s work. 52 Strauss’s specialty is the brusque
rejection of the work, to search for—and quickly find—all
manner of “hidden meanings” that diametrically contradict
much of the actual text, and are based on unwarranted
biases with which Strauss approaches the book. It must be
emphasized that these “hidden meanings” are not “found”
by searching the historical context in which the author
wrote; Strauss is frankly a purely textual critic who is concerned
with the text itself rather than the historical, or
archaeological, setting.
On Tyranny is an analysis of the dialogue Hiero, written
by the Greek philosopher Xenophon. In the dialogue, Hiero
first tells the wise, visiting Greek Simonides that tyranny
(Hiero is a tyrant) is a terrible thing, and then Simonides
patiently explains to Hiero that only bad tyranny is wicked;
that “good” tyranny, motivated by concern for the general
52 Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: An Interpretation of Xenophon’s
“Hiero” (New York: Political Science Classics, 1948).