Shadi Bartsch Zimmer | Strauss in Beijing

Описание: Lecture delivered by Prof. Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer (University of Chicago) at gloknos on 15 April 2021.

Introduction by gloknos Founding Director Dr. Inanna Hamati-Ataya

Abstract: he popularity of the political philosopher Leo Strauss among a group of Chinese public-facing academics has been noted with bemusement in the West. This lecture takes a deeper look at just why it had to be Strauss. Part of the answer is that his relationship to antiquity resonated with a China no longer seeking to imitate the West; another part lies in his reading of Plato. The Chinese Straussians claim that their readings of western texts are not ideological because Strauss’s views cannot be boiled down to an 'ism', but of course their use of Strauss’s methodologies and political views would suggest otherwise. In keeping so high a public profile, however, these neo-Straussians undermine the very tensions they claim to expose, suggesting that the overarching rationale for their writings is pro-Xi nationalism.

Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer is the Director of the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago, the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and the Program in Gender Studies. She received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992 and specializes in Neronian literature, Seneca the Younger, History of Classical Rhetoric, the Ancient Novel, and the Classics in Modern China. Her recent books include: Persius: A Study in Food, Philosophy, and the Figural (2015), for which she received the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit in 2016, Cambridge Companion to Seneca, ed. with A. Schiesaro (2015), and The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire (2006).

In 2015, Prof. Bartsch-Zimmer was appointed the Founding Director of the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. In this role, she is responsible for setting and running its academic program, which stretches across divisions and supports the research of faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students. The Director’s vision is key to organizing the many innovative interests and questions of the Institute’s scholarly community. It is also her responsibility to further the fundamental goals of the Institute, such as encouraging the porosity of disciplinary and divisional boundaries and conducting research with the potential to impact the world outside the academy.