PANEL 3: McAllister on Strauss and Voegelin: A30-Year Head Start on the Post-Liberal Era

On March 16, 2024 the School of Public Policy was honored to host “Coming Home: Exploring the Work of Ted McAllister,” a conference which discussed the scholarship of the late Ted McAllister, Edward L. Gaylord Chair and Professor of Public Policy, Pepperdine University School of Public Policy (SPP).
It was regularly remarked that the School of Public Policy was the only graduate policy program where Ted's distinctive approach to teaching and scholarship could thrive, impacting the lives and careers of hundreds of his students. A cultural historian himself, McAllister taught our graduate students how to "think historically" in making policy decisions in contexts ranging from the local to the international.
Through panels and roundtable conversations, fellow scholars and friends explored McAllister's influence both inside and outside the classroom, highlighting particular books and essays of his, as well as the classes he taught here at SPP.
PANEL 3: McAllister on Strauss and Voegelin: A30-Year Head Start on the Post-Liberal Era
PRESENTER
Steven Hayward,
Edward L. Gaylord Visiting Professor of
Public Policy, Pepperdine School of
Public Policy
DISCUSSANTS
Mark Blitz,
Fletcher Jones Professor of Political
Philosophy, Claremont McKenna
College
Alex Priou
, Teaching Assistant Professor,
University of Colorado Boulder
Lee Trepanier
, Chair and Professor of Political Science,
Samford University

[@satyricusm]

It is not clear how if at all Mark Blitz's Strauss is not a Spinozist. Blitz speaks of a conservative defense of a common sense beyond which, however, the philosophers seeks (true) knowledge; he also speaks of "the possibility" of natural right. Where, however is the Platonic sacredness of common sense? Where the *actuality* of natural right? For a parallel presentation of Strauss, see Hilail Gildin's Chicago conference intervention on YT.

[@satyricusm]

Lee Trepanier suggests (or meant to suggest) that for Strauss you cannot be both a philosopher and a believer. While S does note that in a modern context you cannot be at once a philosopher and a theologian, he does not at all dismiss the classical notion of fides quaerens intellectum: man believes for the sake of understanding via reflection. The problem S addresses is one of *priorities*. For S's Platonic classics (both ancient and medieval), the philosopher-as-philosopher does not believe, BUT this does not mean that he rejects the content of belief. Quite to the contrary: he seeks to understand it. That is the work of natural reason, which illuminates human certainties from within, exposing them to a reality transcending them (qua human certainties). A divine reality. __ps On Strauss as both philosopher and (religious) Jew, see Kenneth Hart Green's _Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss_