French philosophes turned esotericism into an exoteric or public doctrine

Uncovering the Meaning 

of Covering Meanings

by PETER LAWLER

The most important book published in political philosophy in years is Arthur M. Melzer’s Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing. It first of all establishes, beyond all reasonable doubt, that philosophers (and poets, and other writers) routinely deployed “a double doctrine.” One was “exoteric” or “external” and “public.” The other was “esoteric” or “internal” and “secret.”

The intention of the French philosophes—or enlightening, publicizing philosophers— was that the truth about these two contradictory doctrines become public knowledge. They turned esotericism into an exoteric or public doctrine. And Melzer, a professor of political science at Michigan State University, explains why the Enlightenment thinkers did this. It was part of their attempt to bring about a world in which esoteric writing would no longer be necessary, where philosophers would no longer be persecuted for telling inconvenient truths.

In their ideal society, there would be no conflict between justice and human excellence. The residual esotericism that they themselves used was, in their minds, a temporary tool to purge the world of superstition and prejudice. This “political esotericism” of the authors of the Encyclopédie was in the service of an open society with perfect freedom of thought.

We could also describe their ideal world as a place without irony and double meanings, where esotericism would be remembered as that device which good men, such as Plato and Aristotle, had used to protect themselves from political and religious oppression.

The Encyclopédie authors outed esotericism as one way of making it a past-tense phenomenon. Soon, the kinds of things Plato and Aristotle said secretly could now be said plainly: for example, that religion is nothing but a political tool. Or that the risky virtues are for suckers. Or that there’s no other reason to obey the law than enlightened self-interest. We could add: Love is an illusion. Philosophy is basically the most intense and enduring form of hedonism. Suffering is meaningless. And death is personal extinction.

The ancient philosophers thought that society couldn’t handle anywhere near that much truth; social stability depended upon a veil of ignorance when it came to God, love, death, virtue, and civic attachment. The Enlightenment, the political project of modern philosophers, proved the ancients wrong. All those shocking truths are now the common sense of literary sophisticates, from Woody Allen to the author of the children’s book and movie The Fault Is in Our Stars. And the popular adoption of these truths does seem compatible enough with the stable family lives of our “cognitive elite” today.

Our “new atheism” is nothing but an off-the-shelf version of the old or esoteric atheism. Enlightenment’s result has been that religious and political cruelty continue to fade; we continue to purge ourselves of the residual illusions that hamper achievement of the reasonable goal of keeping the people around right now secure and free for as long as possible.

Melzer proves that the intellectual history of esotericism wasn’t the perverse invention of Leo Strauss and his arrogantly deceptive Straussians. Any scholar who doesn’t acknowledge the fact of esoteric writing is literally cut off from the deep wisdom of the past. But Strauss is a very significant figure in this history. He, even more than the 18th century Enlightenment authors, made a big deal of the esoteric/exoteric distinction. He wrote to restore it as a fairly public doctrine, a doctrine that would orient public intellectuals and even beginning undergraduates. He, too, wanted the awareness of esotericism to be a mood or attitude that wouldn’t just be for potential philosophers anymore.

Strauss, Melzer shows, was somewhat—but not mainly—drawn to esotericism as a political tool. It’s true that Strauss did encourage his students to ally with American conservatism and defend American law and morality against various forms of corrosive, even if somewhat truthful, dogmatic skepticism and progressivism. So some Straussians insist that Americans must believe in the absolute truth of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, even if the privately Epicurean Mr. Jefferson was somewhat ironic about them.

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