“Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy” by Leo Strauss

This is a short collection of essays that Strauss had been compiling when he passed away. Although published posthumously, most of these pieces had been previously published in other venues and Strauss had already selected the order for their presentation in this collection. As usual, these essays mostly deal with a deep reading of the pre-modern philosophers, often with an esoteric interpretation. Strauss begins by stating that “political philosophy was concerned with the best or just order of society which is by nature best or just everywhere or always. [It] presents the relatively most perfect solution of the riddles of life and the world.”

Looking at Plato’s “Apology of Socrates,” Strauss begins by discussing philosophy beyond politics and on how a man must live virtuously, in general. He makes the assertion that Socrates insisted that “one must not when suffering injustice do injustice in turn…. Inflicting evil on human beings, even if one has suffered evil from them, is unjust, for inflicting evil on human beings differs in nothing from acting unjustly…. The cleavage among men is no longer that between knowers and ignoramuses, or between the philosophers and the non-philosophers, i.e., between the few who hold and the many who do not hold that the unexamined life is not worth living, but that between those who hold that one may not requite evil with evil and those who hold that one may, or even ought to, do it.”

In Strauss’ essay “On the Euthydemus” he discusses Socrates’ views on wisdom. When talking to his friend and patron Kleinias, Strauss interprets Socrates as claiming, “in all cases wisdom makes human beings fortunate…. Wisdom is, humanly speaking, omnipotent…. The mere use of good things will not suffice for making a man happy; the use must be right use; while wrong use is bad, non-use is neither good nor bad; right use is brought about by knowledge…. No possession whatever is of any benefit if its use is not guided by prudence, wisdom, intelligence; a man possessing little but using it intelligently is more benefited than a man possessing much but using it without intelligence…. Wisdom—and of course not honor or glory—is not only the greatest good; it is the sole good; only through the presence of wisdom and the guidance by it are the other goods good…. Since our happiness depends altogether on our wisdom and if virtue can be acquired by learning, learning, striving for wisdom, philosophizing is the one thing needful.”

Finally, Strauss moves his discussion to political philosophy, specifically. He states that Socrates felt that “justice seems to be the only good, the only virtue that is beneficent (on the whole) even if not guided by intelligence, perhaps because the laws which the just man obeys supply the lack of intelligence in the man himself…. Justice in contradistinction to courage and moderation cannot be misused.” However, Strauss ends his essay “On the Euthydemus” by stating that Socrates might have been a better cheerleader than teacher. “Socrates’ effort to determine the science which makes human beings happy has ended in complete failure. He has confirmed by deed the view of some of his critics that he was most excellent in exhorting men to virtue but not able to guide men to it.” Strauss finishes with a tantalizing thought about majorities and the politics of democracy. He states, “According to Socrates, the greatest enemy of philosophy, the greatest sophist, is the political multitude, i.e. the enactor of the Athenian laws.” Given Socrates’ end, this seems apt, even if in tension with his previous thoughts on just laws.

Strauss’ essay, “Xenophon’s Anabasis,” deals further with the practicalities of politics. Strauss contends that Xenophon often puts words in different speakers mouths for effect and that the “character” of “Themoistogenes of Syracuse is a pseudonym for Xenophon of Athens”, himself. Strauss states that Xenophon reports the Athenian Theopompos as saying, “the only good things which they have are arms and virtue, but their virtue would not be of any avail without the arms.” The speaker, “Theopompos,” is making the point echoed by Aristotle, “virtue, and especially moral virtue, is in need of external equipment.” Especially in politics, it does not do to have the moral high ground if you cannot execute your virtue.

Elsewhere in "Xenophon’s Anabasis,” Strauss discusses the role and comportment proper to a gentleman, by way of Proxenos. He states that Proxnos “believed to acquire through his actions with Cyrus [the Persian usurper] a great name and great power and much money; but he was obviously concerned with acquiring those things only in just and noble ways. He was indeed able to rule gentlemen but he was unable to inspire the soldiers with awe and fear of himself…. Proxenos seems to be more attracted to the noble acquisition of fame, great power and great wealth anywhere on earth to than to his fatherland,” Greece, whom he betrays. Two points of interest here are that Proxenos, the gentleman, is far from patriotic to his country of birth, but views his allegiance to whatever cause would advance him, with honor. Secondly, Proxenos might have been a great leader of gentlemen, but not of a mob of soldiers. In politics, one must tailor one’s words and actions to the situation. There are no absolutes.

Later in this essay, Strauss describes the scene after Xenophon has taken effective control of the entire mercenary Greek army on Asia Minor. Strauss speaks of interactions between “barbarous men whom [the Greek soldiers] had met on their march, the most remote from the Greek laws, for they did in public what others would do only when they are alone.” There was the idea of the Laws as being above private virtue and discretion for the Greeks but not for barbarians.

Strauss spent much of his career teasing out the implications of natural law. In his essay, “On Natural Law,” he states “by natural law is meant a law which determines what is right and wrong and which has power or is valid by nature, inherently, hence everywhere and always.” However, he then continues, “the primary question concerns less natural law than natural right, i.e. what is by nature right or just: is all right conventional (of human origin) or is there some right which is natural (physei dikaion)?” Did rights and law come to man when he created a society by covenant or were there laws and rights even within a state of nature? Strauss begins with Plato. “While Plato cannot be said to have set forth a teaching of natural law, there can be no doubt that he opposed conventionalism; he asserts that there is a natural right, i.e. something which is by nature just. The naturally just or right is the “idea” of justice…. A man (or rather his soul) or a city is just if each of its parts does its work well…. Only the wise man or the philosopher can by truly just…. Natural right in Plato’s sense is in the first place the natural order of the virtues as the natural perfections of the human soul…. Such assigning requires that the men who know what is by nature good for each and all, the philosophers, be the absolute rulers and that absolute communism (communism regarding property, women and children) be established among those citizens who give the commonwealth its character…. This order is the political order according to nature, as distinguished from and opposed to the conventional order.”

Strauss next contrasts a few other philosophers’ views of natural law. In Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” he defines ““the law according to nature” as the unchangeable law common to all men.” In “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle writes “natural right is that right which has everywhere the same power and does not owe its validity to human enactment.” As far as politics, Aristotle believed, “natural right is that right which must be recognized by any political society if it is to last and which for this reason is everywhere in force. Natural right thus understood delineates the minimum conditions of political life…. Natural right in this sense is indifferent to the difference of regimes whereas positive right is relative to the regime.”

The Stoics were the first Greek philosophers to make natural law an explicit theme of their works. For them, “the natural or divine or eternal law is identified with God or the highest god (fire, aether, or air) or his reason…. The virtuous life as choiceworthy for its own sake comes to be understood as compliance with natural law.” For the Stoics, all study of philosophy was a study in moral virtue. Positive laws that contradict the natural laws were invalid and must not be obeyed.

Finally, Strauss compares the ancient Greek conception with the Christian teachings of Thomas Aquinas. “In the Christian version, Stoic corporealism (“materialism”) is abandoned…. [However,] natural law retains its status as rational…. Natural law is clearly distinguished from the eternal law—God Himself or the principle of His governance of all creatures—on the one hand, and the divine law, i.e. the positive law contained in the Bible, on the other. The eternal law is the ground of the natural law…. As a rational being man is by nature inclined toward acting according to reason; acting according to reason is acting virtuously; natural law prescribes therefore the acts of virtue.” Just like for the Stoics, Aquinas, in the “Summa Theologica,” states that “a human law which disagrees with natural law does not have the force of law.”

Another one of Strauss’ recurring themes in his writings was the tension between Jerusalem and Athens. In this collection’s essay, “Jerusalem and Athens,” he comes about the conflict from a slightly different angle than his previous works. “According to the Bible, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers, the beginning of wisdom is wonder.” Strauss also contrasts the two viewpoints according to Nietzsche. “The peculiarity of the Greeks is the full dedication of the individual to the contest of excellence, distinction, supremacy. The peculiarity of the Hebrews is the utmost honoring of father and mother.” Strauss takes a close look at Genesis. He concludes, “man was not denied knowledge; without knowledge he could not have known the tree of knowledge nor the woman nor the brutes; nor could he have understood the prohibition. Man was denied knowledge of good and evil, i.e., the knowledge sufficient for guiding himself, his life. While not being a child he was to live in child-like simplicity and obedience to God.” Strauss contrasts Socrates with the Prophets. “The perfectly just man, the man who is as just as is humanly possible, is according to Socrates the philosopher and according to the prophets the faithful servant of the Lord. The philosopher is the man who dedicates his life to the quest for knowledge of the good, of the idea of the good; what we would call moral virtue is only the condition or by-product of that quest. According to the prophets, however, there is no need for the quest for knowledge of the good: God “hath shewed thee, o man, what is good.”” Finally, there is the question of their audience. “The prophets as a rule address the people and sometimes even all the peoples, whereas Socrates as a rule addresses one man.”

Strauss also included his essay, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil” in this collection. “For Nietzsche, as distinguished from the classics, politics belongs from the outset to a lower place than either philosophy or religion.” It is not a subset of philosophy, but below it. “Whereas according to Plato the pure mind grasps the truth, according to Nietzsche the impure mind, or a certain kind of impure mind, is the sole source of truth.” There is no natural law. “The world in itself, the “thing-in-itself,” “nature” is wholly chaotic and meaningless. Hence all meaning, all order originates in man, in man’s creative acts, in his will to power.” The world does not exist objectively, but must be interpreted. “The world of any concern to us is necessarily a fiction, for it is necessarily anthropocentric; man is necessarily in a manner the measure of all things.” Nietzsche contradicts Socrates about the nature, purpose, and goodness of knowledge. For Nietzsche, “knowledge cannot be, or cannot be good, for its own sake; it is justifiable only as self-knowledge: being oneself means being honest with oneself, going the way to one’s own ideal.” Nietzsche believed in different morals for different human beings. He despised “the morality stemming from timidity; that morality is the morality of the human herd, i.e. of the large majority of men.” He spoke of the “herd-instinct of obedience which is now almost universally innate and transmitted by inheritance.” Nietzsche denied that there is one true nature to man. “All values are human creations.” Passivity and amelioration will make man weak. “Suffering and inequality are the prerequisites of human greatness…. Hitherto suffering and inequality have been taken for granted, as “given,” as imposed on man. Henceforth, they must be willed.”

Strauss dives back into political philosophy proper with his essay, “Niccolo Machiavelli.” Strauss makes the case that Machiavelli’s ethics are a return to the ancients, to a pagan ethics. “That rediscovery which leads up to the demands that the virtue of the ancients be imitated by present-day men, runs counter to the present-day religion [Christianity]…. the virtues of the pagans are only resplendent vices.” For Machiavelli, Livy’s histories are his Bible. “Our religion has placed the highest good in humility, abjectness, and the disparagement of the human things, whereas the ancient religion has placed the highest good in greatness of mind, strength of body, and in all other things apt to make men most strong.” The Christian virtues might be fine for the individual, but not for politics and not for the ruler of men. “If one wishes that a sect or a republic live long, one must bring it back frequently to its beginning.” For Machiavelli, that beginning was ancient Rome. “Men were good at the beginning not because of innocence but because they were gripped by terror and fear.”

The final essay in this collection is Strauss’ introduction to a new edition of Hermann Cohen’s book, “Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism.” This neatly essay brings together Strauss’ passions for religion, reason, esoteric writing, deep reading, and the Jewish traditions. In Cohen’s discussion on the fellowship of man, Strauss brings out the point that “for the prophets and the psalms it is poverty and not death and pain that constitutes the great suffering of man or the true enigma of human life…. Poverty becomes the prime object of compassion.” On prayer, Strauss states, “the soul and inwardness of the Law is prayer. Prayer gives life to all actions prescribed by the Law…. Prayer is the language of the correlation of man with God. As such it must be a dialogue while being a monologue…. If all other purposes of prayer could be questioned, its necessity for veracity, for purity of the soul cannot.” Finally, Strauss ends, “truthfulness requires knowledge, and our knowledge is imperfect. Therefore truthfulness must be accompanied by modesty, which is the virtue of skepticism…. He who is humble before God is modest toward men.”

“On Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Leo Strauss

In this set of lectures at the University of Chicago, Strauss seeks to explain the crux of Nietzsche’s philosophy. “Nietzsche, as quite a few modern thinkers before him, revolts against God in the name of love of men. We can say they turn from the love of God to love of men.” Strauss goes further. ““God is dead,” that is the thesis. That is different from saying “God is not” or “God does not exist.” “God is dead” means God once lived. Nietzsche’s atheism is a historical atheism.” Nietzsche is concerned about what will become of man stripped to his modernity. “The death of God makes possible this greatest degradation of man, the last man, and this is the greatest threat now…. Christian morality without a Christian God, one herd without a shepherd, that is to say, anarchistic self-complacency combined with the abolition of suffering. Heaven on earth, that is to say, social or political hedonism, utilitarianism…. [Conversely,] the superman is a superhuman man. The superman is then the alternative to the last man.” In Zarathustra, Nietzsche ponders the tenuous essence that has always befallen man, “Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.” Strauss explains further Nietzsche’s conceptions of the nature of man, of the self, and of the individual. “The place of God is taken not by the ego but by the self. The self, not the ego, is the core of man. The self wishes to create beyond itself, not the ego, because the ego is not creative; that is to say, the ego as ego is in itself on its way to the superman, in which human creativity reaches its climax…. Nietzsche’s appeal was to the individual, and his concern was with the creativity of the individual, and this is absolutely incompatible with political action.”

Nietzsche is not an egalitarian. He states, “For, to me justice speaks thus: Men are not equal. Nor shall they become equal! What would my love of the overman be if I spoke otherwise?” Strauss explains, “For Nietzsche, inequality is the condition for any high achievement…. Life is will to power—i.e., will to superiority.” The will to power was engaged in an unwinnable fight against the arrow of time. Nietzsche claims, “It was’—that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy. Powerless against what has been done, he is an angry spectator of all that is past. The will cannot will backwards; and that he cannot break time and time’s covetousness, that is the will’s loneliest melancholy.” Strauss expands, “Man is an animal which cannot forget…. Man lives therefore as much in the past as in the present…. We are also always what we no longer are. Our existence is an imperfectum which can never be perfected. Man cannot forget; hence he sees everywhere becoming, as distinguished from being…. The will desires to be sovereign, to be simply creative, but it depends on the given, that is to say, on the past…. Will to power is not only the essence of man, will to power is the fundamental characteristic of everything living. The will to power doctrine is meant to account for the upward movement in evolution, in human history, without the assumption of a preexisting end…. Nietzsche calls philosophy the most spiritual form of the will to power…. The will to power, as we find it in the organic world and in man most of the time, is an attempt to overpower and incorporate other things. But on the highest stage, the will to power turned against itself.” In “Ecce Homo” Nietzsche reveals, “My task is to prepare a moment of the highest self-consciousness of mankind, a great noon where mankind looks into the future, where mankind leaves the dominion of chance and where it poses the question of the ‘why’ and ‘for what’ for the first time as mankind.”

Nietzsche suggests that all philosophy before him was subjective. Through the lens of historicism, he is able to see the cultural relativism in all prior truths. His is an attempt to step out of history. Or, if not to step out, which would be impossible, at least to acknowledge, the limits imposed on man by being embedded in history. “All knowledge, as [Nietzsche] puts it, is perspectivity. There is not the perspective: all knowledge is relative to a specific perspective, but there are narrower and broader perspectives. Nietzsche’s own doctrine of will to power is meant to correspond to the best or broadest perspective which has emerged hitherto…. The absoluteness of the perspective is established by the fact that life has now for the first time become conscious of itself, that it knows now what it truly is.”

Man is a creature of his own culture. “In Nietzsche’s opinion, a society is not possible without a culture of its own. A culture requires ultimately some commitment, which we may loosely call a religion. This is Nietzsche’s chief concern: a regeneration of man…. I return to the beginning: the death of God and the possibility of the superman; secondly, the death of God and the new understanding of both man and the whole to which man belongs. This new understanding is expressed in the thesis that nature or life is will to power in opposition to eros in the Platonic sense, as striving toward given ends, unchanging ends, transcendent ends. The will to power generates the ends—the will to power in contradistinction to the modern alternative, the will to mere life, because the will to life does not account for the upward thrust, for the overcoming of the lower, for the creativity in evolution. Now the superman is the highest form of the will to power, and therefore the two notions belong together.” Fundamentally attached to Nietzsche’s will to power is his concept of the eternal return. “Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power is the highest form of the most spiritual will to power because it is the first philosophy which is free from the spirit of revenge as he defined it. It does not rebel against becoming and perishing but accepts it and affirms it. It affirms it infinitely. This infinite affirmation of becoming and perishing is the belief in eternal return: no end of becoming, no end of perishing.” Nietzsche has found the only objective purpose for man. “Men have purposes, they set themselves purposes, but the highest purpose they can set for themselves is to be without purpose: simply to be, though to be while knowing. The highest act of creativity, we can therefore say, is the recognition.” Nothing is permanent except for the will to power. “The doctrine of the will to power… is primarily an attempt to understand history. The doctrine of the will to power is an attempt to state, particularly, the ground of historical knowledge, the ground of history. This ground is found in human creativity, and we can provisionally say will to power is primarily human creativity. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power is then the self-consciousness of human creativity and, with good reason, final.”

“On Political Philosophy” by Leo Strauss

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.”

“Liberalism Ancient and Modern” by Leo Strauss

These are a collection of essays on Strauss’ conception of liberalism and liberal education. He contrasts modern liberalism, which he sees as having merged with value-free science, with ancient liberalism, which sought out the “right way” to live and the search for “the truth”. Strauss uses his usual method of deep reading, plucking out timeless strands from Plato’s “Minos”, Lucretius’ “On the Nature of Things”, Maimonides’ “The Guide of the Perplexed”, Marsilius’ “Defender of the Peace”, and Spinoza’s “Theologico-political Treatise” amongst others. Purposefully, he chooses pagan, Epicurean, Jewish, Christian, and post-Enlightenment texts. He seeks to prove that “the finished product of a liberal education is a cultured human being.” His view is that every generation has access “to the greatest minds [but] only through the great books…. We are compelled to live with books. But life is too short to live with any but the greatest books.” And a liberal education is more than just memorization and indoctrination, it is treating texts with care, purpose, and criticism. He is unabashedly elitist. “Modern democracy, so far from being universal aristocracy, would be mass rule were it not for the fact that the mass cannot rule, but is ruled by elites…. Liberal education is the counterpoison to mass culture, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inherent tendency to produce nothing but specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.” Strauss elevates esoteric knowledge above the convictions of the masses. “It demands from us the boldness…. to regard the accepted views as mere opinions, or to regard the average opinions as extreme opinions which are at least as likely to be wrong as the most strange or the least popular opinions. Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity.” This is no trivial matter because “Plato’s suggestion [is] that education in the highest sense is philosophy. Philosophy is quest for wisdom or quest for knowledge regarding the most important, the highest, or the most comprehensive things; such knowledge, he suggested, is virtue and is happiness…. The gentlemen regard virtue as choiceworthy for its own sake, whereas the others praise virtue as a means for acquiring wealth and honor.” Ancient liberalism stood apart from society, but respected it. “The greatest enemies of civilization in civilized countries are those who squander the heritage because they look down on it or on the past; civilization is much less endangered by narrow but loyal preservers than by the shallow and glib futurists who, being themselves rootless, try to destroy all the roots and thus do everything in their power in order to bring back the initial chaos and promiscuity. The first duty of civilized man is then to respect his past.” Still, Strauss quotes Plato approvingly, “the wise men ought not to obey the laws as his rulers but ought to live freely.” Furthermore, “by denying the dependence of man’s thought on powers which he cannot comprehend, classical political philosophy was irreligious.” The philosopher stands aloof from the city, but cannot live without its protection. “Moderation will protect us against the twin dangers of visionary expectations from politics and unmanly contempt for politics. Thus it may again become true that all liberally educated men will be politically moderate men.” In Strauss there was always this tension between discovery and tradition, between the esoteric and accepted conventions, and between the individual and the city. “Originally, a liberal was a man who behaved in a manner becoming a free man as distinguished from a slave. According to the classic analysis, liberality is a virtue concerned with the use of wealth and therefore especially with giving: the liberal man gives gladly of his own in the right circumstances because it is noble to do so, and not from calculation; hence it is not easy for him to become or remain rich…. Most men honor wealth and show therewith that they are slaves of wealth; the man who behaves in a manner becoming a free man comes to sight primarily as a liberal man in the sense articulated by Aristotle. He knows that certain activities and hence in particular certain sciences and arts- the liberal sciences and arts- are choiceworthy for their own sake, regardless of their utility for the satisfaction of the lower kinds of needs. He prefers the goods of the soul to the goods of the body. Liberality is then only one aspect of, not to say one name of, human excellence or being honorable or decent. The liberal man on the highest level esteems most highly the mind and its excellence and is aware of the fact that man at his best is autonomous or not subject to any authority.” Even more pure, more isolated, more esteemed, and more estranged from the city than the life of the liberal gentleman was the life of the philosopher. “The gentleman as gentleman accepts on trust certain most weighty things which for the philosopher are the themes of investigation and of questioning…. Whereas the gentleman must be wealthy in order to do his proper work, the philosopher may be poor…. [Therefore,] philosophers will be ruled by the gentlemen, that is, by their inferiors…. [because] the end of the city is…. not the same as the end of philosophy.” The search for truth is an individual quest and therefore cannot be a political end. It is the goal for the liberally educated elite, but hardly achievable in one’s lifetime. “Given the fact that philosophy is more evidently quest for wisdom than possession of wisdom, the education of the philosopher never ceases as long as he lives; it is the adult education par excellence.”