Originally posted on Goodreads.
What animated in me the desire to persevere through the (frankly) unforgivingly obscure and punishingly erudite writing of Leo Strauss was the fact that the world has spent the better half of the year (and perhaps much, much longer) in lockdown, and mired in, to put it lightly, a series of political crises. The specter of nuclear escalation with Iran that kicked the year off in January was quickly overshadowed by a plague which shut down the global economy for the better part of three months and sparked widespread skepticism in our political institutions. As if this weren’t enough, protests against racial injustice erupted across the nation mid-year in response to a senseless slaying at the hands of the state, precipitating widespread looting and rioting. To top it all off, it’s just July.
All of this is to say that for me, the question of politics – and in particular, politics as conceived by the original thinkers of political philosophy and science – was brought to the fore. For how can we understand the crises of modernity without first understanding the causes and conditions that led up to them? To this end, Strauss’s unique and painstakingly thorough (albeit a bit eccentric) readings of authors “as they thought of themselves” (as opposed to using a chauvinistic modern lens) is refreshing, especially in an age where anyone with a Twitter account (but who hasn’t picked up a serious book or actually taken the time to understand historical ideology) thinks that they have something unique or important to say.
Strauss, then, with his exceedingly fastidious deconstructions of historical political thought, could be counted on to provide exactly what I was looking for.
“Natural Right and History” is concerned with the fundamental questions of political philosophy: of justice and right, state and individual, and truth and deception. Simply, what is the best political regime, and how can we attain it? For Strauss, these all boil down to: what is a sound and proper conception of Right, and can we practically structure a society around it?
To begin answering these questions (Strauss, characteristically, does not explicitly offer his own thoughts – you must work hard to infer them), Strauss engages in careful exegeses of a number of political traditions, primarily contrasting classical conceptions of Right (illustrated by the thought of Socrates / Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Thomas Aquinas) with modern conceptions (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Burke, Weber, and to a lesser extent, Machiavelli).
In large part, the question of Right must boil down to the question of human nature. For the primary distinction between classical and modern/postmodern conceptions of Right lies in their belief and disbelief, respectively, in the essential characteristics of human nature. Classical thinkers saw the purpose of human life as the cultivation of virtue and human excellence, as guided by what is “naturally” true or good. In this way, classic Right was much less about entitlements (as it is with modern Right) and more about obligations and duties. The purpose of a human life is to actualize an essence, and to bring its full philosophic and creative potential to bear. Moreover, because “man is a social animal”, virtues can only be realized, expressed, and developed in the context of a city-state. But, “since the classics viewed moral and political matters in light of man’s perfection, they were not egalitarians. Not all men are equally equipped by nature for progress toward perfection, or not all ‘natures’ are ‘good natures’.” Accordingly, the best (Socratic) regime is one ruled by the wise, in accordance with Nature. There is some discussion around whether or not such a society – governed by and living in accordance with what is Naturally Right – is now, or ever was possible, and what regimes constitute less-than-ideal, but still legitimate political orders. In particular, Strauss is known for influencing a rather pragmatist sort of politician, with the understanding that such an ideal regime can, at best, only be approximated. But that is beyond my understanding, and in any case neither here nor there…
On the other hand, modern Enlightment thinkers (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Burke) began their inquiries with a radical skepticism that rejected all classical conceptions of human nature. Perhaps with an (un)healthy dose of physics / mathematics envy, the Enlightenment sought to derive robust conceptions of Right with mathematical simplicity. By approaching the question with pyrrhonic rigor, the hope was that what emerged could be certain knowledge. To them, the only thing that could be said about human “nature” was that humans fear death. Accordingly, the individual’s first and primary prerogative is a rather antisocial self-preservation – what one might call a “negative freedom”. So much for being a social animal. In protecting this basic, axiomatic right from the war of all-against-all (where one man’s self-preservation may encroach on another’s), Enlightenment thinkers had to fabricate a number of theories and theorems to support it, such as the social contract, and to construct the essential characteristics of State, such as its egalitarian commitment to the supposed freedom and equality of all humans with respect to the fundamental right of self-preservation. Egalitarian right, then, could be seen as antithetical to natural right.
There could be many distinctions drawn between these two conceptions of Right, but perhaps the most salient one is that Right shifted from a concept rooted in Nature, and what is “naturally” true and right about human psychology and capabilities, to the Conventional, or the construction of law and human rules. Strauss, it could be said, prefers a conception based on nature (“Nature is older than any tradition; hence it is more venerable than any tradition”), though he doesn’t seem to harbor any delusions that we could ever return to a society based on the classical conception of natural right.
Yet it is neither the classical nor the modern view which animates society today. Ours could be called “post-modern”. And Strauss assigns Max Weber, the father of social science, the title of spokesperson of the postmodern view – which, taking its cue from the natural sciences and attempting to be a neutral commentator on human affairs (i.e., a science), could be said to lack any concept of Right whatsoever. The multitude of conflicting views of justice throughout history is, so they claim, evidence enough that the question is unresolvable. Instead, what has emerged as modern-day dogma is historicism, which views the whole of human thought as being historically constituted, with no plausible appeal to Right or Wrong as such. If there can be no way of resolving principles of justice in a universally valid manner, then the possibility of natural right is hopeless.
But perhaps this is an approach characteristic of a certain Procrustes. Strauss saw such relativism, and the corresponding contradictions in the liberal, Enlightenment thought that helped bring it about, as inevitably devolving into one or both of nihilism and totalitarianism. But he does not, in response, as do Nietzsche or Sartre, take a page from the existentialist playbook and exhort us to create our own brand of authenticity. Instead, invoking the Allegory of the Cave:
Both the obvious dependence of the philosophic life on the city and the natural affection which men have for men, and especially for their kin, regardless of whether or not these men have “good natures” or are potential philosophers, make it necessary for the philosopher to descend again into the cave, i.e., to take care of the affairs of the city, whether in a direct or more remote manner. In descending into the cave, the philosopher admits that what is intrinsically or by nature the highest is not the most urgent for man, who is essentially an “in-between” being—between the brutes and the gods.