This book is taken from a series of lectures Strauss gave for a class at the University of Chicago in the winter of 1965. Each chapter transcribes Strauss pontificating for about an hour on the ideas of history’s great philosophers, judiciously interjecting his own opinions, and then being grilled by a small group of students for clarifications and insights into his esoteric ways. Strauss begins with the positivism espoused by Auguste Comte. He points out that Comte brings a religious righteousness to his idea of scientism. “Comte doesn’t hesitate to draw the conclusion… that there cannot be toleration. Universal toleration for every opinion is defensible as a transitional thing, for the pulling down of the untenable old views and institutions so that room is created for the emergence of the new and final…. [In Comte’s program] systematic tolerance cannot exist, and never really has existed, except regarding opinions regarded as indifferent or questionable.” Comte’s science explicitly leaves no room for the opinions of the masses. “Comte overestimates the power of reason or of ideas…. Comte is clearly antidemocratic…. His antidemocratic stand is based on his belief in the incompetence of the masses, and he puts his trust in the men at the top, the captains of banks and industry, controlled in a way by the men of science.”
Strauss explains the difference in the accumulation of knowledge in the fields of philosophy and the natural sciences. He begins by stating that Rousseau was not so special. “Rousseau implies that his political philosophy differs more or less from the teaching of all his predecessors…. In fact, every great political philosopher did this—that is, he said: Here I present the political truth…. Many great political philosophers teach very different things about the just order. One can say we have no political philosophy, but only political philosophies. There is not one edifice impressing us by its unanimity, so to say, or quasi-unanimity, as modern science in a way does…. Here we have anarchy…. In Hegel’s words, the individual—and he meant by that not only thoughtless individuals, but the most thoughtful men, the philosophers—is the son of his time, and not in the way in which he shaves or wears clothes, but in his highest and most sublime and abstruse thoughts.” According to the historicists, man is trapped by history more than by nature. “We modern men are by virtue of this “progress” in need of historical studies in order to see again the hidden foundations of our thought.”
Strauss devotes much time in separating the difference of meaning between the ancients and the moderns, even when, superficially, their ideas seem similar, based on the inadequacy of definition and translation. “Political philosophy as the quest for the just or the good society has become incredible in our age owing to positivism and historicism…. Positivism leads to the contempt or neglect of the political philosophies of the past. Historicism, on the other hand, must cultivate the history of political philosophy, although it can no longer recognize the possibility of political philosophy proper.” (That is, the idea that there is one greatest-good polis, for all times and for all peoples.) The fact that there is only one greatest-good does not mean, however, that philosophy does not stand on the shoulders of giants. “Every attempt at rational knowledge, philosophic or scientific, consists in replacing opinions by knowledge. This cannot be contentiously done if one does not first know the opinions from which one starts. But these opinions are only partly our opinions. Their most important part, or their largest part at least, is inherited. What we regard as our opinions consists to a considerable extent of the sediments of past discussions, discussions which were conscious, which were the focus of attention in earlier centuries, and now we live on their results.”
For Strauss, the moderns originate in Hobbes and, even earlier, if less overtly, in Machiavelli. “Here we have a decisive opposition of the two considerations: a political teaching which takes its bearings by how men ought to live [the ancient position], and a teaching which takes its bearings by how men do live [the modern position].” But are these two positions really that different? “What is characteristic of men like Machiavelli and Hobbes is that they claim to oppose a realistic teaching to the idealistic teaching of the past…. But we must not forget for one moment that what they tried to do was to erect on this so-called realistic basis an ideal order…. The perfection is much lower than that aspired to by Plato, but perfection it is.”
One difference of the ancients and moderns was their distinction between natural duties and natural rights. “In the traditional doctrine, especially as presented by Thomas Aquinas, these natural inclinations of man give rise primarily to duties…. [For Hobbes,] the fundamental phenomenon is not any duty but the right to preserve myself, and any duties which come are derivative from the foundational right…. That people should do their duties, one can only hope. But that they should be concerned with their rights, and fight for them: this is a much safer, more realistic, assumption.” Man generalizes his rights into universals through the means of reason. “In the moment I conceive my desire in terms of a law, I become already more reasonable, to say the least, than I was before…. By nature, men are unequal according to Rousseau, but the social contract replaces the natural inequality by conventional equality, and that is justice…. As long as the classical tradition lasted, a distinction was made between the natural law and positive law…. The political philosophy founded by Socrates, constituted itself by establishing the view that the just and the noble are fundamentally natural and not merely conventional.”
Strauss does not believe in the prevailing modern strain of historical relativism. He believes that the purpose of philosophy is to search for the truth. Political philosophy helps man, through its conception of the just society, to build ideal social institutions and traditions. “We have no higher duty and no more pressing duty than to remind ourselves and our students of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their baseness, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness.”
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