For those who take a bit of Plato with their politics, over at the University Bookman today I review Philosophy Between the Lines, Arthur Melzer’s compelling new study — part intellectual history, part philosophical tome itself — of “the lost history of esoteric writing.” An excerpt:
According to Melzer, a professor of political science at Michigan State University, until about 1800 it was the worst-kept secret among philosophers that their colleagues throughout the ages had made a regular practice of concealing their true, “esoteric” beliefs underneath a surface of orthodox, “exoteric” pieties. This “double doctrine” would simultaneously appease the masses, to whom the writer would appear to uphold contemporary conventions, while remaining accessible to a few careful, worthy readers. As the Enlightenment pressed on, however, esoteric writing ceased, and with it esoteric reading—so much so that, by the mid-twentieth century, the whole idea was pronounced a myth.
Melzer is well aware that it sounds like he has read too many Dan Brown novels—which is why what follows is a sober, methodical marshaling of several kinds of evidence, meticulously organized to leave little doubt that, for nearly two centuries, philosophers have been blind to a pivotal element of their own subject.
Read the whole review here.