Cropsey on natural slavery Cropsey wore street clothes and changed into a blue pinstripe suit in his office before giving his lectures.  He kept his socks in the bottom drawer of his desk.  On top of his steel filing cabinet , which contained Leo Strauss' private papers,  was an 18th Century leather bound folio volume from Pierre Bayle's  Dictionary , which contained Leo Strauss' private papers.  I don't think these smelled of socks.  The Bayle volume contained Bayle's article on Spinoza.  Cropsey espoused his own brand of scepticism, so the Bayle was not surprising, nor was his reluctance to let non-Straussians peruse Strauss' correspondence.  Cropsey had us read Aristotle's  Politics , Plato's  Meno , and  Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology . The translation we used for Aristotle's  Politics  was translated by Straussian Carnes Lord--we called it the Lord edition.  One of the essay questions Cropsey set ...

I know a man who is the grandson of a barrel maker, the son of a a boiler maker, the father of a flint knapper, the grandfather of a mixed martial arts fighter, and the great-grandfather of a precious little thing whose name means "so be it". I'll give you a hint.  His name is not Bojangles, although his eldest son has a name that resembles the famous tap dancer's. For those familiar with my blog (see Islands in the Stream), it may be of interest to note that people riding on the fame of Bojangles also got into fried chicken.  It wasn't just Kenny Rogers. But back to the man I know.  He stoked his Bucket a Day with anthracite coal, and inhaled lead dust from the local paint factories. He keeps a whiskey barrel made of oak staves in his garage. He also has a moving barrel (ex Philadelphia Quartz), with an address in married student housing that used to contain industrial chemicals and now houses cast iron toys (a red ice wagon and yellow fire engine...