The History of Political Philosophy

Political philosophy is generally understood to have 4 historical "ages" or epochs: Classical, Medieval, Enlightenment or Modern, and Contemporary. I have added for the sake of clarity two more (by breaking the Enlightenment Age into two: Early Enlightenment and Late Industrial and adding one more, the contemporary age). For the sake of inclusiveness I have added Continental political philosophy (to represent Marxist and poststructuralist thought) and non-Western political philosophy. Below I have collaborated the known ages of political philosophy [using Strauss & Cropsey (1987) The History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press] with current day scholarship [using Zuckert & Zuckert (2006) The Truth About Leo Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press]. I hope to demonstrate the ever-growing breadth of Strauss's legacy in the universal understanding of political philosophy. The history of political philosophy begins thus chronologically:

Classical Political Philosophy

• THUCYDIDES (c. 460 - c. 400 B.C.)

THE WAR OF THE PELOPONNESIANS AND THE ATHENIANS

• PLATO (427 - 347 B.C.)

THE REPUBLIC

• Translations: The Republic, translated by Allan Bloom. Published 1991, Basic Books, 487 pages.
• Studies: The City and Man, by Leo Strauss. Published 1978, University of Chicago Press, 254 pages. Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic, by Seth Benardete. Published 1989, University of Chicago Press, 248 pages. Plato's Republic: A Study, by Stanley Rosen. Published 2005, Yale University Press, 432 pages.

THE STATESMAN

THE LAWS

• XENOPHON (c. 430 - c. 354 B.C.)

CYROPAEDIA

MEMORABILIA

ANABASIS

• ARISTOTLE (384 - 322 B.C.)

POLITICS

NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

• MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO (106 - 43 B.C.)

REPUBLIC

LAWS, OFFICES

TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS

• ST. AUGUSTINE (354 - 430)

THE CITY OF GOD

Platonic scholars: Leo Strauss, Seth Benardete, Stanley Rosen, Allan Bloom, Joseph Cropsey, Christopher Bruell, Michael Davis, Ronna Burger, and Mary Nichols.

Medieval & Renaissance Political Philosophy

• ALFARABI (circa 870-950)

THE POLITICAL REGIME

THE ENUMERATION OF THE SCIENCES

PLATO'S LAWS

THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO

• MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135-1204)

GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED

TREATISE ON THE ART OF LOGIC

LETTER ON ASTROLOGY

• ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)

SUMMA THEOLOGICA

SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES

ON KINGSHIP TO THE KING OF CYPRUS

COMMENTARY ON THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

COMMENTARY ON THE POLITICS OF ARISTOTLE

• MARSILIUS OF PADUA (circa 1275 - 1342)

THE DEFENDER OF THE PEACE

• NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI (1469 - 1527)

THE PRINCE

DISCOURSES ON THE FIRST TEN BOOKS OF TITUS LIVIUS

• MARTIN LUTHER (1483 - 1546)

COMMENTARY ON PSALM 101

THE OPEN LETTER TO THE CHRISTIAN NOBILITY OF THE GERMAN NATION

SECULAR AUTHORITY

WHETHER SOLDIERS, TOO, CAN BE SAVED

• JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564)

INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

COMMENTARY ON ROMANS

COMMENTARY ON THE HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS

• RICHARD HOOKER (1553-1600)

THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY

Medieval scholars: Muhsin Mahdi, Ernest Fortin, Ralph Lerner, Joel Kraemer, Charles Butterworth, Miriam Galston, Remi Brague, Hillel Fradkin, Joshua Parens, and Christopher Colmo.

Renaissance scholars: Harvey Mansfield, Clifford Orwin, and Vickie Sullivan.

Early Modern (or Enlightenment) Political Philosophy

• FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

NEW ATLANTIS

WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS

HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

ADVERTISEMENT TOUCHING AN HOLY WAR

OF THE TRUE GREATNESS OF BRITAIN

ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

• HUGO GROTIUS (1583 - 1645)

THE LAW OF WAR AND PEACE

• THOMAS HOBBES (1588 - 1679)

LEVIATHAN

• RENE DESCARTES (1596 - 1650)

DISCOURSE ON METHOD

MEDITATIONS

• JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

THE READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH

A SECOND DEFENSE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND

AREOPAGITICA

OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND

OF EDUCATION

THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES

A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES

• BENEDICT SPINOZA (1632 - 1677)

THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL TREATISE

ETHICS

EPISTLE 50

• JOHN LOCKE (1632 - 1704)

FIRST TREATISE

SECOND TREATISE

SOME CONSIDERATIONS OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE LOWERING OF INTEREST AND RAISING THE VALUE OF MONEY

A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION

• MONTESQUIEU (1689 - 1755)

THE SPIRIT OF THE LAWS

THE PERSIAN LETTERS

CONSIDERATIONS OF GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF THE ROMANS

• DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE

ESSAYS

ENQUIRY CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS

• JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712 - 1778)

DISCOURSE ON THE SCIENCES AND ARTS

DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN AND FOUNDATIONS OF INEQUALITY AMONG MEN

SOCIAL CONTRACT

DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY

THE GOVERNMENT OF POLAND

LETTER TO M. D'ALEMBERT ON THE THEATRE

• IMMANUEL KANT (1724 - 1804)

CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON

CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT

• WILLIAM BLACKSTONE (1723 - 1780)

COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND

• ADAM SMITH (1723 - 1790)

AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

• THE FEDERALIST (1787 - 1788)

• THOMAS PAINE (1737 - 1809)

THE RIGHTS OF MAN

COMMON SENSE

AGRARIAN JUSTICE

DISSERTATION ON FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT

• EDMUND BURKE (1729 - 1797)

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

AN APPEAL FROM THE NEW TO THE OLD WHIGS

TRACTS ON THE PROPERTY LAWS IN IRELAND

THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS

SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL

SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA

LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL

SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM

SPEECH ON THE REFORM OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT

LETTER TO SIR HERCULES LANGRISHE

LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD

FOUR LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE

Early Modern scholars: Victor Gourevitch, Richard Kennington, Hilail Gildin, Hiram Caton, Roger Masters, Thomas Pangle, Pierre Manent, David Schaefer, Nathan Tarcov, Robert Faulkner, Robert Kraynak, Jerry Weinberger, Arthur Melzer, and Christopher Kelly.

Late Modern (or Industrial Age) Political Philosophy

• JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832)

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND LEGISLATION

A FRAGMENT ON GOVERNMENT

DEONTOLOGY TOGETHER WITH A TABLE OF THE SPRINGS OF ACTION AND THE ARTICLE ON UTILITARIANISM

• JAMES MILL (1773-1836)

UTILITARIAN LOGIC AND POLITICS

• GEORG W. F. HEGEL (1770-1831)

PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND

• ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859)

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

THE OLD RÉGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE EUROPEAN REVOLUTION AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH GOBINEAU

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

• JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873)

ON LIBERTY

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

UTILITARIANISM

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

A SYSTEM OF LOGIC

PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

• KARL MARX (1818-1883)

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY

THESES ON FEUERBACH

CAPITAL

• FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895)

LUDWIG FEUERBACH AND THE OUTCOME OF GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

HERR EUGEN DÜHRING'S REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE

• FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

• JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952)

THE PUBLIC AND ITS PROBLEMS

RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY

HUMAN NATURE AND CONDUCT

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL ACTION

DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

Late Modern scholars: William Galston, Michael Gillespie, Susan Shell, Richard Velkley, Steven Smith, Laurence Lampert, Gregory Smith, and Peter Berkowitz.

The Contemporary Age

• EDMUND HUSSERL (1859-1938)

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE CRISIS OF PHILOSOPHY

THE CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCES AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY

• MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)

AN INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS

BEING AND TIME

NIETZSCHE (4 VOLS.)

"A LETTER ON HUMANISM"

THE QUESTION OF TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER ESSAYS

• HANNAH ARENDT (1906-1975)

THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM

CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC: LYING IN POLITICS; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; ON VIOLENCE; THOUGHTS ON POLITICS AND REVOLUTION

• KARL POPPER (1902-1994)

THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES

THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM

• FRIEDRICH HAYEK (1899-1992)

THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY

THE FATAL CONCEIT

• LEO STRAUSS (1899-1973)

SPINOZA'S CRITIQUE OF RELIGION

PHILOSOPHY AND LAW

THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HOBBES: ITS BASIS AND GENESIS

ON TYRANNY

PERSECUTION AND THE ART OF WRITING

NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY

THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI

WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY?

HISTORY OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

THE CITY AND MAN

SOCRATES AND ARISTOPHANES

LIBERALISM ANCIENT AND MODERN

XENOPHON'S SOCRATIC DISCOURSE: AN INTERPRETATION OF THE "OECONOMICUS"

XENOPHON'S SOCRATES

THE ARGUMENT AND THE ACTION OF PLATO'S LAWS

STUDIES IN PLATONIC POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

THE REBIRTH OF POLITICAL CLASSICAL RATIONALISM

ON PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM

• ISAIAH BERLIN (1909-1997)

FOUR ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

FREEDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL: SIX ENEMIES OF HUMAN LIBERTY

THE SOVIET MIND: RUSSIAN CULTURE UNDER COMMUNISM

POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE ROMANTIC AGE: THEIR RISE AND INFLUENCE ON MODERN THOUGHT

• ALEXANDRE KOJÈVE (1902-1968)

INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF HEGEL

OUTLINE OF A PHENOMENOLOGY OF RIGHT

• ERIC VOEGELIN (1901-1985)

COLLECTED WORKS

• JUDITH SHKLAR (1928-1992)

AFTER UTOPIA: THE DECLINE OF POLITICAL FAITH

LEGALISM: LAW, MORALS, AND POLITICAL TRIALS

MEN AND CITIZENS: A STUDY OF ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORY

FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE: A STUDY OF THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF HEGEL'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND

THE FACES OF INJUSTICE

AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP: A QUEST FOR INCLUSION

• JOHN RAWLS (1921-2002)

A THEORY OF JUSTICE

POLITICAL LIBERALISM: THE JOHN DEWEY ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY

THE LAW OF PEOPLES

THE COLLECTED PAPERS

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY

JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS: A RESTATEMENT

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

• ROBERT NOZICK (1938-2002)

ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA

Continental Political Philosophy

• HERBERT MARCUSE (1898-1979)

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST LIBERALISM IN THE TOTALITARIAN VIEW OF THE STATE

REASON AND REVOLUTION

SOVIET MARXISM

• MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984)

POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE

THE POLITICS OF TRUTH

ETHICS: SUBJECTIVITY AND TRUTH

• MAX HORKHEIMER (1895-1973)

THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE

• JEAN BAUDRILLARD (1929 - )

THE CONSUMER SOCIETY

SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION

AMERICA

THE SPIRIT OF TERRORISM: AND REQUIEM FOR THE TWIN TOWERS

• JÜRGEN HABERMAS (1929- )

THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE AS IDEOLOGY

PHILOSOPHICAL-POLITICAL PROFILES

THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE OF MODERNITY

THE NEW CONSERVATISM

BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS: CONTRIBUTIONS TO A DISCOURSE THEORY OF LAW AND DEMOCRACY

THE POSTNATIONAL CONSTELLATION

THE DIVIDED WEST

Non-Western Political Philosophy

• CONFUCIUS (551-479 B.C.)

THE ANALECTS

• CHANAKYA (350-283 B.C.)

ARTHASHASTRA

NITISHASTRA

CHANAKYA NITI

• MO TZU (470-390 B.C.)

MO TZU

• MENCIUS (372-289 B.C.)

MENG FE TZU

• HAN FEI (280-233 B.C.)

HAN FEI TZU

Straussianism

Mark C. Henrie's entry in ibid.

Straussianism is the term used to denote the research methods, common concepts, theoretical presuppositions, central questions, and pedagogic style characteristic of the large number of conservatives who have been influenced by the thought and teaching of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Straussianism is particularly influential among university professors of historical political theory, but it also sometimes serves as a common intellectual framework more generally among conservative activists, think tank professionals, and public intellectuals. Currently, Straussianism is associated in the public mind with neoconservatism, but the precise nature of this relationship is controversial.

Least controversially, Straussianism is defined by its method within the academic discipline of political theory. Straussians engage in a "close reading" of the "Great Books" of political thought; they strive to understand a thinker "as he understood himself"; they are unconcerned with questions about the historical context of, or historical influences on, a given author; they seek to be open to the possibility that in any given Great Book from the past, one may come across something that is the truth, simply. Two things may at once be said about this approach, which resembles in important ways the old New Criticism in literary studies. First, the method is powerful, and the effort of intellectual discipline that it requires cultivates a particularly focused kind of discursive intelligence: Straussians, like the old New Critics, are often among the most penetrating readers of texts. Second, like the New Criticism, the Straussian method may be reproduced with relative facility. It does not require field research, extensive contextual historical investigations, technical skills such as paleography, or the acquisition of multiple foreign languages. All that is necessary is a properly trained mind and a Great Book. These two facts may help explain, on the one hand, the intellectual prestige of Straussians, and on the other hand, the widespread success of Straussianism as an academic "school."

There is a more controversial dimension to the Straussian method. Straussians make a strong distinction between the works of political thought that rise to the level of Great Books and those that do not. Great Books are those written by authors -- philosophers -- of such sovereign critical self-knowledge and intellectual power that they can in no way be reduced to the general thought of their time and place. In fact, the great minds who write such books create the general thought of later times: books by lesser writers, no matter how important, are understood as epiphenomenal to the original insights of a thinker of the first rank. With respect to writers of the first rank, this premise leads to an intensity of hermeneutic engagement that is often described as Talmudic Talmudic skills were, of course, developed in relationship to a divine text, one that could not err. In effect, the Straussian method encourages a like respect for the writings of true philosophers.

It is here that the possibility of "esoteric" writing is invoked. Given the example of Socrates' conviction and execution by Athens for the crimes of impiety and corrupting the youth, later philosophers, Straussians maintain, learned to write at two levels for two sorts of readers. On the surface, their teaching would strive to be unobjectionable to the authorities of their regime; their deepest insights -- or their real opinions -- would lie hidden, accessible only to those few with the intellectual penetration and patience to navigate the apparent lapses in argument, mistakes in citation, or peculiarities of presentation that had been made deliberately to draw the adept to the philosophical core of a work. While some Straussian writings can be marvels of hermeneutic display, the value of the resulting payoff is ambiguous. Thus, Machiavelli is shown by Straussians to be an immoralist: well, was that not the received interpretation of the readers of his time?

While there are students of Strauss who are not political conservatives, Straussianism is rightly recognized as an authentic form of conservatism. Strauss's approach to the Great Books was meant, in part, as a response to the historicist presuppositions of the mid-twentieth century, which read the history of political thought in a progressivist way, with past philosophies forever cut off from us in a superseded past. To be open to the possibility that Plato has hold of the truth -- and that more recent thinkers are therefore wrong -- is to reject the progressivist narrative radically. Moreover, one of Strauss's major themes concerned specifically the problem of modernity, and this has remained a perennial theme for his disciples. Modern political philosophers have been, Strauss argued, from the beginning engaged in a project to change the world rather than to understand it. Compared with the ancients (and the medievals), their project entails a "lowering of the sights" of political life -- from the high end of virtue to the low end of commodious self-preservation. Something genuinely human is thereby in danger of being lost.

Modernity, however, progresses for Straussians in "waves" of deepening difficulty, each new crisis of the handiwork of a philosopher-founder: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. While these waves may be distinguished, they are also logically connected. Thus, the central political problem of the twentieth century -- totalitarianism, whether national socialist or international communist -- may be understood as a radicalized form of a more deep-rooted political and intellectual problematic within modernity as such. This analysis of the crisis of the twentieth century comported well with the spiritual stance of many other conservatives during the Cold War years -- perhaps particularly with that of conservative Roman Catholics, who soon recognized in Strauss someone from outside their own faith community who nonetheless seemed to advance something very like a traditional Catholic critique of modern philosophy and the modern world.

From the beginning, Straussianism has been controversial. Being conservative, and being devoted to the Great Book, they met with often fierce opposition within complacently progressive and scientistic political science departments and had difficulties finding academic positions. But the Straussian have been a subject of controversy among otherwise well-disposed conservatives as well. To make matters still more complex, some Straussians have turned against other Straussians. These changing attitudes are the result of the changing nature of Straussianism itself -- or at least of its emphases and modes of presentation.

After Strauss's death, two prominent schools of Straussians evolved, usually described as East Coast and West Coast Straussians. The East Coast Straussians were in some sense led by Strauss's student Allan Bloom at the University of Chicago; the West Coast Straussians have been led by Strauss's student Harry Jaffa at Claremont McKenna College in California. Both schools have reflected deeply on Strauss's work in an effort to appropriate it more deeply; yet in so doing they have pushed elements of Strauss's thought in such a way as to create intellectual tensions with other varieties of American conservatism.

The East Coast Straussians have tended increasingly to emphasize philosophy as the one best way of life for man -- and to emphasize that this way of life is not open to all. They have also interpreted Strauss's account of the relationship between reason and revelation, or Athens and Jerusalem, in such a way as to become dismissive of revealed religion.

In his own work, Strauss's attempt to revive the political science of Plato and Aristotle seemed to constitute a not unsympathetic rejoinder to modern liberal democracy, emphasizing instead natural hierarchies among human beings and the advantages of the "rule of the gentlemen," who are characterized by their moral virtues and their moderation. Natural inequalities and the importance of the virtues are clearly conservative themes. But East Coast Straussians have grown less political, less interested in correcting the modern regime. They are now more relativistic about many moral and civic virtues -- which depend upon the regime and hence are conventional -- while tending to restrict natural right (or natural justice) to the philosophical virtues and the philosophical life. What had been a hierarchy of soul-types has become more of a binary distinction between philosophers and nonphilosophers. What is more, the account of the philosophical life provided by a figure such as Allan Bloom has taken on certain overtones, with the most prominent place given to the act of skeptical unmasking or of penetrating to unsettling depths. It is difficult to find in such an account any room for a contemplative "delight in the truth," which others have taken to be the summit of the philosophical life. In fact, "truth" is not a prominent word in the lexicon of East Coast Straussianism.

Similarly, Strauss was careful and coy in his descriptions of the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem. Rhetorically, he treated them more or less as equals, each unable to refute the other dialectically and each founded on a kind of faith. In the context of his time, many readers understood him to be mounting a philosophical defense of the possibility of revelation -- something quite remarkable in an age of scientific certainty and self-confidence. The East Coat Straussians, however, suggest that the respect with which Strauss treats revealed religion is an exoteric feature of his writing. Rather than a coequal, but nature Jerusalem is radically subordinate to Athens. Religion has dignity only within the limits of reason. And even if this is a doubtful interpretation of Strauss's position -- there is some evidence to the contrary -- what is certainly clear is that, for Strauss, the claims of Athens and Jerusalem can never be resolved into a "synthesis." Therefore, "Christian philosophy" is a misnomer, and the works of such thinkers as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas fall outside philosophy's Great Tradition.

Taken together, these features of the East Coast school have led some conservatives to view them as crypto-nihilists, sharing more with Nietzsche than with Plato. When such accusations are made, however, East Coast Straussians can recall that similar charges were raised against Socrates, and so they are in the best of company philosophically.

The West Coast Strussians are less philosophical and more political, concerned primarily with the American founding and America's liberal democratic regime. The West Coast school has produced excellent scholarship on the thought of the founding generation and also on Abraham Lincoln. They are, however accused by some conservatives of constructing an ideology out of the "self-evident" truths announced in the Declaration of Independence. "Truth" is very much a part of the West Coast lexicon -- in particular, the truth that "all men are created equal."

In the face of totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, Strauss deeply appreciated the moderation, security, and freedom of America. While generally critical of all modern regimes, he nonetheless treated America as the best regime under the circumstances. What was it about America that enabled this evidently -- and perhaps preeminently -- modern country to escape the ideological fanaticisms of the twentieth century? The answer given by the traditionalist Russell Kirk was that America was not as modern as its enthusiasts believed: in fact, a great deal of premodern tradition survived and flourished in the New World, both in custom and even in constitutional law. This Tocquevilleian perspective is not, however, the West Coast Straussian view. Rather, the West Coast school has held that it was America's foundation on universal natural rights that shielded it from the historicism that gave birth to the monsters of twentieth-century ideology. The natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the government by consent that is the corollary of the truth of human equality, really do constitute natural justice. America is just insofar as it cleaves to those truths, and it errs only when it diverges from them -- as has sometimes been the case, especially with slavery, and then after the Progressive Era. In his more immoderate statements, Harry Jaffa comes close to speaking of the American constitutional order (at least, as understood by Lincoln) as the Best Regime itself, the regime laid up in heaven come down to earth.

In the course of developing this position, at least two elements of Strauss's own thought have had to be modified. First, Strauss insisted on the irreconcilability of Athens and Jerusalem; the West Coast school claims that on the decisive point of equality, Athens and Jerusalem agree. Second, Strauss understood modernity in all its waves to participate in a general "lowering of the sights" of political life; America was no exception to that indictment. The West Coast school has tended to deny the modernity of America, at least in any negative sense. Consequently, whereas Strauss insisted on a strong distinction between ancient natural right, medieval natural law, and modern natural rights, the West Coast school tends to blur these distinctions.

The result of the West Coast school's efforts has been a well-developed theoretical defense of a conservatism closely identified with the Party of Lincoln. One feature of the position is its ready political utility: in effect, it provides a philosophical justification for patriotic pride in American exceptionalism. The work of the West Coast school has been influential among some California politicians and also, for example, in the jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas. The school's most heated arguments have been with traditionalist and often Southern conservatives, whom they accuse of unprincipled historicism. As recently as the 1980s, it was generally acknowledged that any possible American conservatism would have a disproportionately Southern complexion, the South being the most conservative region of the country. The West Coast school, however, has worked aggressively to render all forms of "Calhounianism" untenable within American conservatism.

This schematic account of Straussianism in two schools omits much. There are East Coast Straussians who have retained a genuinely political interest in correcting the one-sided partisanship of American liberal democracy. There are Europeans and Canadians who are deeply respectful of Strauss but who are in no way dogmatic, combining in fruitful ways what they have learned from Strauss with what they have learned from other great teachers. And there are by now indications of an emerging school of what might be called faith-based Straussians: those trained in Straussian methods and sympathetic to many Straussian concepts and lines of inquiry, but who consciously subordinate the more extreme Straussian presuppositions to revealed wisdom.

As America prepared for war against Iraq in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a great deal of journalistic commentary, particularly in Europe, centered on the malignant influence of neoconservatives within the Bush administration -- and of Straussians within neoconservatism. Numerous Straussians took to print to deny any connection between the neoconservative Bush Doctrine and the thought of Leo Strauss -- and, in fact, most of the evidence adduced by the journalists leveling the charge was quite strained. The traces of Straussianism were said to be evident in (1) the Bush administration's view that liberal democracy is the "final" form of political order toward which all socities move in history, (2) the neoconservatives' approach to politics as a search for the right "enemy," and (3) the purported mendacity of the Bush administration concerning weapons of mass destruction. This is a peculiar bill of indictment. It was Alexandre Kojève, not Leo Strauss, who introduced the "end of history" thesis: Strauss argued at length against Kojève that the universal and homogenous state could only be tyranny. It was Carl Schmitt, not Leo Strauss, who introduced the Freund/Feind (friend/enemy) distinction at the core of "the political": Strauss had a critical dialogue with Schmitt as well. And the Platonic teaching concerning the "noble lie" certainly cannot be understood as providing blanket permission for opportunistic political dissembling.

However, one plausible link between Straussianism and the neoconservatives who were prominent in advocating the Iraq War concerns the matter of "regime." The Greek word politeia had traditionally been translated into English as "constitution," but Strauss and his followers have always translated it as "regime." According to Aristotle, the regime is borth the "arrangement of offices" in a city and the "way of life" of a city: politics and culture are deeply intertwined. Among some Straussians, particularly those engaged in intraconservative disputes with traditionalists, a vulgar view emerged which held that properly understood, regime analysis implies the straightforward sovereignty of politics over culture. In contrast, traditionalists held, against the Marxists, that politics is deeper than economics, and culture deeper still than politics. It is possible that this Straussian certainty about the sovereignty of politics played a role in neoconservative expectations about the likely outcome of regime-change in Iraq.

Leo Strauss (1899-1973)

Stephen Hayward's entry in Beer, Frohnen, & Nelson (2006) American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 819-821.

Leo Strauss is credited with reviving interest in classical political philosophy because he believed the study of the classics held the key to understanding the modern "crisis of the West." Through his classical scholarship, Strauss developed powerful critiques of behaviorism and "value-free" social science, historicism, and nihilism. Although Strauss espoused no original philosophy of his own and did not seek disciples, his students have come to be known as the "Straussian school" within academic political science.

Strauss was born in Germany in 1899 and was raised as an orthodox Jew. He studied at the universities of Marburg and Hamburg, and later at Freiburg with Husserl and Heidegger. Strauss left Germany in 1932, first for France and England, and finally for the United States in 1938. He held teaching posts at the New School for Social Research, the University of Chicago, Claremont Men's College, and St. John's College in Annapolis, and he wrote more than a dozen books and scores of essays and reviews in scholarly journals.

Strauss is best known for working out an interpretation of the fundamental distinction between ancient and modern political philosophy. In this distinction, Strauss thought, lay the origin of the crisis of the West: "The most striking difference between classical political philosophy and present-day political science is that the latter is no longer concerned at all with what was the guiding question for the former: the question of the best political order." Classical political philosophy, especially that of Plato and Aristotle, was centrally concerned with the contemplation of the best regime according to nature. Hence the primacy, for the classics, of the idea of natural right, or "what is by nature right or just: is all right conventional (of human origin) or is there some right which is natural?" The contemplation of the best regime according to nature and the idea of natural right led to deliberation about ethics and individual virtue -- the practical, political fruit of regimes guided by political philosophy. Classical philosophers understood that the actualization of the best regime was impossible or extremely improbable, but the contemplative nature of political philosophy generated standards by which to judge and improve actual regimes.

Strauss identified Machiavelli as the turning point in the history of political philosophy and political science: "Machiavelli appears to have broken with all preceding political philosophers." Strauss explained the Machiavellian turn in Natural Right and History (1950): Classical political philosophy had taken its bearings by how man ought to live; for Machiavelli the correct way of answering the question of the right order of society consisted in taking one's bearings from how men actually do live. Machiavelli's "realistic" revolt against tradition led to the substitution of patriotism or merely political virtue for human excellence or, more particularly, for moral virtue and the contemplative life. It entailed a deliberate lowering of the ultimate goal. The goal was lowered in order to increase the probability of its attainment.

This reorientation of the nature of political life, according to Strauss, opened the way for the development of modern natural right by Hobbes and Locke. This version of natural right is based chiefly on comfortable self-preservation. An important corollary of Machiavelli's -- that fortune or chance can be conquered through force -- opened the way for modern physical science as an instrumental means to progress, rather than as another subject of contemplation. From here it is a short step to Francis Bacon's promise of using science "for the relief of man's estate." The modern understanding of natural right experienced several revisions at the hands of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche (among others). Rousseau turned the classical understanding of nature and civil society on its head. The classical philosophers thought imperfect human nature was improved through a well-constituted civil society; Rousseau taught that perfect or idyllic human nature was corrupted through civil society. Rousseau's teaching is the basis for modern totalitarian ideologies that seek a restoration of perfected human nature through force.

Strauss identified a second strand of modernity's rejection of classical natural right -- historicism, or the view that all thought derives from changing historical circumstances. This part of Strauss's work has always been controversial among conservatives, since Strauss identified Edmund Burke as one of the progenitors of historicism:

The historical school emerged in reaction to the French Revolution and to the [modern] natural right doctrines that had prepared that cataclysm. . . . The novel element in Burke's critique of reason reveals itself least ambiguously in its most important practical consequence: he rejects the view that constitutions can be "made" in favor of the view that they must "grow"; he therefore rejects in particular the view that the best social order can be or ought to be the work of an individual, or a wise "legislator" or founder. . . . It is only a short step from this thought of Burke to the supersession of the distinction between good and bad by the distinction between the progressive and the retrograde, or between what is and what is not in harmony with the historical process. . . .

Strauss thought Burke's reaction to Rousseau opened the way for Hegelian historicism and the radical reactions to this historicism by Nietzsche and Heidegger.

In addition to the themes of natural right versus historicism, Strauss is known also for two other controversies, one wholly substantive and one partly methodological. The substantive controversy involves Strauss's ideas about the relationship of reason and revelation; the methodological controversy involves Strauss's interpretation of secret or esoteric writing.
Reacting to the monopolistic claim to truth on the part of modern science and the ostensible philosophic refutation of revealed religion beginning most conspicuously with Spinoza, Strauss held that neither modern science nor modern philosophy could refute the possibility of divine revelation. Although Strauss thought reason and revelation were incompatible, he thought that philosophy required a premise of faith equal to the premise of faith required by revealed religion. Strauss also thought that the tension between reason and revelation -- between Athens and Jerusalem -- was the secret of the vitality of the West. Moreover, modern science and modern philosophy attacked the common moral basis of both classical rationalism and revealed religion, which is why Strauss regarded the fate of both reason and revelation as so closely bound together.

Strauss's interpretive doctrine of secret or esoteric writing, first developed in his analysis of Moses Maimonides, holds that philosophers usually write carefully to conceal the key points of their ideas from general readers. This is done for two related reasons: to avoid persecution for impiety and to avoid directly challenging the political order or legitimacy of the society in which the philosophers live. Hence philosophers write "esoterically" so that only the most perceptive readers --usually other philosophers - will grasp the essence of their teachings. Employing this hermeneutic, Strauss and his students have produced idiosyncratic interpretations of most major philosophers, both ancient and modern.

Although Strauss's writing is usually detailed and sometimes dense, readers will find throughout his writings analyses of striking clarity and judgments of aphoristic quality. Strauss's criticism of "value-free" social science and behaviorism culminated in his famous analogy to Nero, that is, social science "fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns." Another frequently recalled passage is Strauss's description of modern materialistic hedonism as "the joyless quest for joy."

Among Strauss's students are many accomplished conservative political scientists, including the late Allan Bloom, Harry Jaffa, Harvey Mansfield Jr., and Walter Berns.

Introduction -- Why A Political Philosophy?

Welcome. The purpose of this blog is to discuss the growing scholarship and interest in Leo Strauss and why I think Strauss is rightly to be considered the most important teacher of our age.

If you have never heard of Leo Strauss, there is a semi-accurate Wikipedia entry on the right column (for more accuracy, read Hadley Arkes' and Jenny Clay Strauss's introductions). If you have heard of Strauss, it's more than likely slander. However, a basic investigation of Strauss's books and the scholarship produced by his greatest students would divest one of such myths. For the most complete coverage of how Strauss became associated with the Iraq War and the Bush administration (thanks to a cabal of journalists and political extremists) and how such associations have no foundation in fact, see Catherine & Michael Zuckert's The Truth About Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy & American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

To get a good sense of Strauss, it is important to understand his thought in the context of his times in Weimar Germany. Fortunately there is new scholarship in publication that explores this in depth. Eugene R. Sheppard's Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher (New Hampshire: Brandeis University Press, 2007) concisely traces such a development in Strauss's early thought. This scholarship is much-needed. Greater minds read and understand Strauss better than me, but I have not yet seen a definitive, up-to-date website chronicling the latest scholarship on Strauss and this blog is intended to fill in that gap.

Why do I think Strauss is important? Because he has radical insights into the nature of philosophy that I admire; it is his exacting critiques of modernity, namely his undermining of historicism, relativism, and the fact-value distinction (still largely in the present-day); and his pioneering rediscovery of the classic texts which makes a life devoted to truth worth living.

There is another reason, and it has the most enduring importance for me: Strauss cuts to the immediacy and importance of philosophy itself in asking the question philosophy ought itself ask of every human being: What is the good life or, to be more exact: Quid sit deus? Is the 'good' life one devoted to faith in the commandments of God (and this question never goes away) or is it a life devoted to the love of wisdom? Which is the source of this goodness: man or God? Can man achieve his highest abilities through knowledge, that is, without God? Obversely: is a life devoted in pure faith without knowledge the best life for a man?

Such questions, Strauss maintains, are the heart and vitality of the West which is the theological-political problem presented us by the legacy of Western tradition. To be more exact, Strauss maintains that it is the friction of these two traditions Athens and Jerusalem which present to the world a force to be reckoned with. A careful reading of Strauss will show that this is also the heart and vitality of his own writings.

Critics often brand Straussians with the accusation of intellectual 'elitism.' While there may be good reasons for this, I can only add that it because they recognize that their world, or the modern world, is not the free and open (scientifically and technologically enlightened) world that expands to all ends of the earth in light and freedom and consciousness, but Swift's Lilliput of tiny people in comparison to the gigantesque and all-encompassing Brobdingnag of the ancients. Who in this modern age, after all, are capable of such a reverse Weltenschauung of perspective -- that the evolutionary notion that we are somehow superior to the ancients because of the impressive array our technological progress? This is an important philosophical question to ask: one can only reside in the realm of opinion until a more exacting investigation is made.

Thankfully, if the interested student is endowed with patience and with a phenomenological view that the philosophical texts are not only metaphorical (or pointing to some truth outside them), they can begin to appreciate that the secret the Straussians are famously trying to hide is staring us right in the face: the philosophical text itself.

Leo Strauss thus presents us with what is probably considered the most complicated aspect of philosophy, which is determining the author's intention. What is the philosophical content of a text to teach us? And is there a content to be taught, if at all? And here I illustrate the very process that makes Straussians caricatured by its critics, but which is the method that is available to all: careful reading. What is careful reading? Careful reading is reading slowly. And reading slowly begins from the assumption that the philosophers of the past have something to tell us, not just on one level, but on different levels and that what they have to say is partly expressed in the very form it is presented in. Hence, to read a philosophical text in the way that Strauss taught, we suspend our judgments and we ask questions every step of the way. We, in other words, obey the text by taking it seriously and by taking its author seriously. We do not assume we are superior to the past or that we could interject the text with our own biased, modernistic assumptions. Nor do we assume that the text is comprehensible or easy: we do not assume anything. After all, the great philosophers never lived in our age. The texts that the great philosophers passed down to us is our doorway to their minds. At the profanum, we lay our biases and become students in the primordial sense of the word.

What is the use of becoming a student of things we consider below us? Why waste my time assuming everything has a hidden meaning? How do I know that it is not going to lead me to a dead-end, and be completely useless? Of course one never knows. And neither does one know, if one is philosophically honest with oneself, whether one can know more than others. And here we learn, through Strauss, that the true student of life and existence begins radically with the Socratic credo: the only thing I know for sure is that I don't know. Not knowing, one can never be sure if they really do have the secrets to the universe. It is only in recognizing the communal, i.e. social, political (in other words) nature of philosophy.

According to Strauss (see The City and Man), Socrates, traditionally considered the founder of philosophy, brought philosophy from the wilderness assumptions (physics) of the pre-Socratics and into the city itself. Hence, philosophy as initiated by Socrates, is innately political (poly-tic, involving many), which is what Aristotle meant when he said that man is a political animal. Without a city, without even each other, man as man is nothing. The Socratic truth is that every human being has some glimpse of the Good, or how things ought to be. The Socratic method is in exploring just what that is. Political philosophy, hence, is not just the study of regimes, but the study, phenomenologically of what men consider is good for them. It is only in asking such questions that progress in any sort of political debate is to be made.

If a philosophy cannot address this socio-communal (i.e. political) aspect of our lives (i.e. matters of the city, which is the abode of man, and not the mountains, the abode of animals), it is not even philosophy or sub-philosophical. And this is the heart of the truly Socratic method that Strauss outlines. Central to Strauss's contributions also is the question of the city and the place of the city within philosophy's purview: in other words, political philosophy (as contradistinguished from political science). What is the importance of political philosopher over and above other forms of philosophy?

The question of the city's place is exactly where Strauss parted ways from the individualistic and existential philosophy of Heidegger: man is not an island. History is the witness to his fact: while Heidegger lived in the comfort of the university under the Third Reich (a regime he hoped would suit his cutting-edge philosophical views), Strauss was forced into exile. The experience, undoubtedly, was freshly political in nature and provided Strauss the truly existential fact of life: that no matter how mystical one's doctrine is, there is always the element of the political.

Strauss eventually found his home on the soil of American democracy where his legacy began to take off. Critics of Strauss, of course, often mention the sinister aspect of Strauss because he questioned as a political philosopher the limitations of a democracy. An in-depth review of Plato would reveal a similar sinister quality as well: he too explored the limitations of a democracy within his most famous dialogue The Republic. That Strauss is criticized by the uneducated (who have no time for Plato, of course) is just an indication of Strauss's very principle that too much philosophy is dangerous for society and that, while democracy is the most just regime for man (as it assumes man will make the best judgments in an election), it will never guarantee that such judgments stem from an educated or virtuous soul.

As can be witnessed by the growing scholarly output of Strauss's students, the slow and quiet pursuit of truth that is the hallmark of Strauss rapidly bore fruit. Not only had Strauss inspired many great students, but Strauss's legacy lives on in the lives he touched personally and who are at this very moment providing America's educational institutions with some of the best scholarship and translations of philosophical texts available (a list of available scholarship is forthcoming).

Now is the age to begin to appreciate Strauss as more than a mere antiquarian, or evil genius behind the Iraq War, but as the educator of our age in addressing problems which every honest philosopher of the future will have to ask. Inherent in every political question, in every scientific question, in every relativistic or historicist question, in every question related to the place of revelation and the possibilities and problems it presents to philosophy, Leo Strauss was there. He is our bridge from the obscurantist dead-ends of modern philosophy to the truly integral world of the ancients on whose shoulders this and and future ages will have no choice but to stand on whether glorious or rotten.

It is my view that if philosophy is to have life and embrace life and to have a future at all, it will have to take account of Leo Strauss and his careful study of the ancients which find their voice in our age through him. Because, perhaps the future is not after all 'our future' -- perhaps there is no future to speak of for a flat and jaded world of modernists. Perhaps our future as human beings, undeserving descendants of giants, is our past and rediscovering just how it was that humans lived lives of greatness and excellence. One has to wonder if the ancients, who addressed questions of technology (techne) before Christ fulfilled the commandments of the Jews, now look down upon us from the heights of Elysium with great laughter, that we who love technology so much with the dream of being its masters, are now its slaves -- slaving away not even in the cave that Plato spoke of, but in a cave below the cave.

Strauss on Philosophy

... to the question "What is philosophy?":

"To philosophize is to be conscious of the absolute transitoriness of all that is human, but at the same time as if one had all eternity at one's disposal, to search for the truth -- with complete calm, without any hurry -- always with urgency, but never hurried -- with the courage for a graceful venture, and constantly prepared to begin from the very beginning."

~Leo Strauss, Note from April 1, 1937