Esoteric Writing vs Sophrosyne

In his essay Persecution and the Art of Writing (1941), the political philosopher Leo Strauss painted a picture of intellectual life. Strauss proposed that a practice he called ‘esoteric writing’ has endured throughout the history of philosophy, as philosophers hid their most important teachings behind ‘exoteric’ ones. They wrote ‘between the lines’, using intentional slips and mistakes as trail blazes that intelligent readers might follow to reach their deeper, and more dangerous, points. The nature of philosophy, he thought, made this necessary. 

Philosophical questions tended to challenge the authority of the "gods" of the city. Without esoteric writing, philosophers might face persecution for asking difficult and inconvenient questions, questions that seemed subversive by virtue of their sceptical spirit. In what sense are the Bible’s teachings true, if at all? [beyond depictions of human psychology, not at all] What legitimates the rule of kings? How do we know that we’re in the world at all, and aren’t brains floating in vats? The philosophical few appreciate such questions, but the un-philosophical many do not. Strauss turned his historical observation into a normative conclusion: philosophers should wall off philosophical investigation from public life, including public political life.

Late in his life, in a public conversation with the philosopher Jacob Klein before an audience at St John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, Strauss said:

Philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion by knowledge; but opinion is the element of the city, hence philosophy is subversive, hence the philosopher must write in such a way that he will improve rather than subvert the city. In other words, the virtue of the philosopher’s thought is a certain kind of mania, while the virtue of the philosopher’s public speech is sophrosyne.