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ONE OF THE IDEAS TO WHICH LEO STRAUSS drew the attention of many readers in the last century is that of a difference between exoteric and esoteric philosophical writing. These terms can refer to different kinds of philosophical teaching, one kind intended for a general and the other kind for a more restricted audience. Indeed, it seems to be the case historically that it was Aristotle who first used (perhaps coined) one of the terms in such a sense, as will be discussed below.
Alternatively, the terms can also be used to describe a single text that incorporates both levels of communication-such a text would have the capacity to address simultaneously two different kinds of readers. In this alternative case, the presence of an esoteric aspect of the text, one intended for a more restricted readership, can be indicated by hints, the structure of the text, allusions, and so forth, that most readers will not pay attention to but which some readers will ponder and assemble into an interpretation, a perspective from which to read and understand the text.
Of course any kind of text that is written with dimensions of meaning that are not immediately evident might be called "esoteric" in a broader sense, the term here suggesting that the reader does not readily see the connections, the implications of its assertions, even though the author did not intend to hide anything from most readers. I have this experience when I read some literary works: as I reread and ponder them, I come to see new implications in what the author has written. Think of reading Sophocles or Moby Dick. Some of what is being said in an undertone, so to speak, slowly becomes evident, as one makes connections.
Of course a less apparent or "esoteric" meaning may also be intended by the writer or speaker to be discovered by as many readers as possible, so that its covert character is a kind of challenge to the reader. In a work attributed to the fourth-century Athenian orator, Demetrius, we read,
not all possible points should be punctiliously and tediously elaborated, but some should be left to the comprehension and inference of the hearer, who when he perceives what you have left unsaid becomes...