A few people have taken my post yesterday on the bioethics commission to be fanning the flames of Straussophobia. Such was certainly not my intent. I’m not a student of Strauss directly or indirectly, but I have both very fine colleagues and very fine students who are, and I have certainly learned important intellectual lessons from them. Strauss-influenced research projects in the history of political thought can be deeply illuminating.
Some people who have been influenced by Strauss and his students, in their basic understanding of politics and morality, are also highly qualified specialists in something besides the history of political thought. Paul Wolfowitz, for example, was a Wohlstetter-trained international relations scholar, not a political theorist at all. And he’s surely on a reasonable list of people highly-qualified for high government service on international and military affairs, regardless of what one thinks of either Wohlstetter or Strauss.
But it’s different when someone whose specialty is the history of political thought is asked to sit on a council that must judge highly complex and technical issues in both ethics and biomedical technology. Then, it seems to me reasonable to suspect that the criterion for selection was ‘moral and ideological precommitments shared with the council’s chairman.’ That’s nothing to do with the merits of Straussianism as an intellectual approach, or with any conspiracy. If, say, Brad Smith (whom I don’t know) were to choose, say, me to sit on a panel assessing matters of electoral law, one would have pretty good reason to suspect that it had more to do with our both being libertarians and being part of a shared professional and intellectual network than it did with my qualifications. It’d be prima facie evidence that he was looking for a knee-jerk supporter of his views rather than a qualified independent voice.
I have no reason to suspect he’d do such a thing. But it looks rather like that’s what’s being done with the bioethics commission.
See also (including some dissenting views) : Will Baude, Ramesh Ponnuru, Sara Butler, Glenn Reynolds and again, John Coleman.
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