Al Geier (7 jan 1957 ano – 7 jan 1959 ano)

Descrição:

Geier was with Strass for two years after he did 2 years of military service post St John's and before PhD at Johns Hopkins.

in 2006 Al Geier wrote a non-neo-con retrospective on learning from Strauss:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/55/Leo_Strauss_Tributes_And_Reflections

"There is a contemporary phenomenon: a group of former students of Leo Strauss, and students of students of Leo Strauss, all called, sneeringly and indiscriminately, Straussians, are suspected of engaging in a political conspiracy reaching to high levels of government. Now I will not swear that there is no truth to this accusation. But part of this accusation is that Leo Strauss himself, consciously or unconsciously, is somehow the sinister mastermind behind the conspiracy. There is nothing more absurd and ridiculous than this notion. It is absolutely false.

I studied under Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago for two wonderful years and on the side received a Master’s degree in Political Science. I took six courses with Mr Strauss and would have taken more if they had let me.

Mr Strauss was a great teacher. He gave very illuminating seminars on the whole range of thinkers – classical, medieval, and modern – in political philosophy. Plato: the Republic, many times, the Gorgias, Protagoras, Statesman, Laws, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Symposium; Aristotle: the Politics, many times, the Ethics; Nietzsche, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Aristophanes, Cicero, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Marsilius of Padua, Xenophon, Spinoza, Maimonides, and so on. His expositions were brilliant, most illuminating and showed the greatest care and respect for the text.

Mr Strauss’ excellence created a difficulty for me. Mr Strauss was so good at interpreting the texts that I felt I could not continue studying with him but had to learn Greek and strive to form my own interpretations of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon before I could evaluate his, in order to see with my own eyes, as it were, and not with his. His excellence inspired me to try to develop my own. So I went to Johns Hopkins to learn Greek and get a PhD.

Mr Strauss, like Socrates, not the most handsome of men, was a very charming man nevertheless. I have never met a man with less vanity and self-importance. He was interested in people and fascinated by them. He was very witty, often playful, and even a little puckish. He was short, slight, his voice somewhat high-pitched. In appearance and demeanor he was not unlike a Cherub. The idea that anything sinister is to be attached to him is wholly ludicrous.

He had one vice, or rather obsession. He would never miss a Saturday night TV program called Gunsmoke, a western about marshall Matt Dillon in Dodge City, Kansas, and his many exploits. Strauss once said that the situation in the Old West was an excellent representation, unintentional or not, of what Hobbes meant by the state of nature.

He unvaryingly counseled prudence to his students though he himself was not always prudent, at least in his speech in classes. If he thought a thinker or a school of thought was in error, he did not refrain from being very critical. Sometimes he was quite polemical. I did not think he was at his best here, but his attacks may have been motivated by the necessity he felt to confront the Goliaths of his time. He had little interest in current political events and devoted his time and energy to understanding the whole theoretical tradition of Political Philosophy.

He was the least practical man I have ever known. One of his students, Joseph Cropsey, handled all his financial affairs. Various students, including myself, chauffeured him here and there. But we welcomed this because of the opportunity it gave us to talk with him.

One day I drove him to the dentist. We were crossing a major thoroughfare when suddenly the brakes were not working. Oh my God! There we were going down-hill, racing to our death, and Mr Strauss, as always, oblivious to that or any danger, continued to speak about natural rights and such as I saw myself going down in history as the cause of his death. Suddenly, through no effort on my part, the brakes started working. No doubt a Godsend.

One time at a party someone offered him some apple pie my wife had made for the occasion. As he was munching on the pie he came over to me and said, “Mr Geier, you are a very wise man.” I beamed, trying to recall which profound statement or statements I had recently made he must have been referring to. He then wandered off. A minute or two later it hit me. Of course he was both playfully and seriously referring to my marrying a woman who could make such delicious dishes!

I found among my fellow Strauss students some pettiness, much envy, mean-spiritedness, and the like. It has always puzzled me how little of the goodness and purity of Strauss’ character rubbed off on his students. Well, but Socrates had the same problem with respect to Critias and Alcibiades. And also like Socrates, Strauss has been blamed for the short-comings of a few of his students.

It is not Strauss who is at fault, not at all, but those Straussians whose misplaced and self-serving zeal threatens to obscure the writings of one of the most genuine and best thinkers of the 20th century. We should never allow this to happen.

Strauss himself was, purely and simply, a good and honorable man. But more than that. He was one of that rarest breed, a genuine philosopher.

There is an article by Mark Lilla in the New York Review of Books Nov. 4, 2004 issue, the second of two articles, about Leo Strauss’ reputation in Europe. I urge you all to read this article if you can. In closing, I will quote from a brief passage at the end of the article:

“It is a shame that Strauss’s rich intellectual legacy is being squandered through the short-sightedness, provincialism and ambition of some of his self-proclaimed disciples. Fortunately, his books remain and they can be studied with profit without paying the slightest attention to those disciples or their polemical adversaries in the university and the press…

“When the American press was in the middle of its Strauss fever last year a number of alarmist articles appeared in Europe as well. But there were also a few wise ones defending Strauss against Americans who would use him for their own political ends. One of the best was by an Italian scholar of Jewish thought. Her title simply ran: ‘Hands Off Leo Strauss!’”

© Alfred Geier 2006

Adicionado na linha do tempo:

Data: