Everyone who makes arguments, political, philosophical, religious, understands that there is the text

and there's the context, that there are propositions and reasons put forward, and there are ambient conditions in which that argument is made.

It's easy to sing the praises of the American way of life when you're sitting in the United States,

but you'd perhaps express yourself differently if you were explaining your views in Soviet Russia.

Well, everyone, even young children, learn by intuition that the environment in which

you speak affects the manner of your expression. Now, please, please, note carefully that the

environment does not determine the truth or falsehood of what you have to say. For only a dishonorable

person would claim as the truth what he knows to be untrue.

But only a solipsistic fool would believe that context is irrelevant.

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

Today, our subject is a classic essay by the scholar of political philosophy, Leo Strauss.

The essay is called Persecution and the Art of Writing, and it was

published in a book by the same name in 1952. In the essay, Strauss applies this idea that the

context influences the way that a writer expresses himself to the realms of politics and religion.

And what he has in mind is a political condition that rests upon an idea,

say that the laws are ordained by the gods,

or that civil authority devolves from religious authority,

or that all men are created equal.

And what would happen if a philosopher would come to conclude

that the basic idea of a

society is, upon reflection, open to interrogation? So the philosopher questions, and his questioning

is seen as impertinent, as disloyal, as unpatriotic. And so a gulf opens up between the philosopher

...