Edmund Burke,Strauss, and the Straussians

In Natural Right and History, Leo Strauss accused Edmund Burke of being ignorant of the nobility of last-ditch resistance; defending a conception of history that set the path for historicism; and discarding a vision of politics as it ought to be. By separating philosophy from politics, Burke, according to Strauss, helped lay the intellectual foundation for modern political ideologies. While a number of scholars have attempted to vindicate or refute Strauss' criticisms through textual exegesis, my article aims to lay a sharper emphasis on particular historical episodes of Burke's political life in which his political thought and statesmanship calls into question Strauss' interpretations. I argue, moreover, that Burke's legislative activities retain a closer resemblance to Strauss' conception of classical statesmanship than Strauss suggests in Natural Right and History. I conclude by maintaining that Straussian scholars could enrich their framework of the Western canon by giving greater attention to Burke's political thought.     

The Bible and Leo Strauss

According to Leo Strauss, the Hebrew Bible is to be regarded as being in “radical opposition” to philosophy and as its “antagonist.” This is an influential view, which has contributed much to the ongoing omission of the Bible from most accounts of the history of political philosophy or political theory. In this article, I examine Strauss's arguments for the exclusion of the Bible from the Western tradition of political philosophy (i) because it possesses no concept of nature; (ii) because it prescribes a “life of obedient love” rather than truth-seeking; and (iii) because it depicts God as “absolutely free” and unpredictable, and so without a place in the philosophers' order of “necessary and therefore eternal” things. I suggest that Strauss's views on these points cannot be accepted without amendment. I propose a revised view of the history of political philosophy that preserves Strauss's most important insights, while recognizing the Hebrew Bible as a foundational text in the Western tradition of political philosophy.     

From experience to law: Leo Strauss and the Weimar crisis of the philosophy of religion

This paper is a study of the origins of Leo Strauss's thought, arguing that its early development must be understood in the context of the philosophy of religion of late Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. More specifically, it shows that Strauss's early works were written against the background of Kantian philosophy and post-Kantian accounts of religious experience, and that his turn towards medieval law as a topic and ideal was precipitated by the critique of those accounts by radical Protestant theologians writing in the post-World War I era of crisis. Ironically, then, Strauss's investment in premodern Judaism—and his related rejection of modern philosophy—had important Christian origins.     

Between Athens and Jerusalem: Western otherness in the thought of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt

In understanding the meaning of the West, twentieth‐century political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss called for a return to “Athens” (classical political philosophy) in order to address the “crisis of the West,” a loss of a sense of legitimate and stable political authority which, in their view, constitutes a nihilistic threat to Western democracy. The only way for the West to escape this nihilistic crisis is to return to Plato and Aristotle. Implicit in this critique is the belief that the other tradition of the West, “Jerusalem” (the Bible) has contributed to this nihilism, by undermining the authority of the Greeks. Is Jerusalem, then, the fatal “Other” for the West? Which tradition—Athens or Jerusalem—is best prepared to alleviate the crisis of the West, especially the survival of democracy? As I address these questions, I shall contend that it is Jerusalem, not Athens, which is the true source of Western democracy.     

Liberty and Community: A Liberal Resolution

Much has been written in the last few years regarding Leo Strauss's political attachments, especially with respect to his purported influence over American neoconservatives. Problematically, Strauss scrupulously avoided explicit ideological entanglements, rarely addressed particular policy debates, and left little guidance for the statesman or thoughtful commentator interested in drawing practical political inferences from his philosophical writing. To add further ambiguity to already muddy waters, Strauss's discussion of the relation between prudence and philosophic insight coupled with the many and incompatible roles he assigns to the philosopher within the city make it unclear if there is anything at all that philosophy can teach us of political significance. The following essay aims to explain Strauss's view of the political function of philosophy in light of his distinction between classic and modern utopianism and what he calls in On Tyranny "philosophic politics."     

Comments on Robert Howse,Leo Strauss: Man of Peace

Robert Howse's book does a good and welcome job of showing a Leo Strauss who is far from the bloodstained “neoconservative” caricature that is so commonly presented. He rightly emphasizes Strauss's concern for decency and the keeping of peace where possible. Especially telling is his account of Strauss's view of Thucydides's alleged “realism.” He does a good job of showing how Strauss, like Thucydides, balances the claims of necessity with the substantive and practically important claims of justice. However, Howse pushes Strauss a little too far when it comes to his faith in permanently peaceful large federations and goes to excess in distancing himself from Strauss's neoconservative followers, at one point even falling into mischaracterization in doing so. If the purpose of this distancing was to make Strauss more acceptable to leftist critics, it is doubtful that this will succeed; if the purpose was less strategic and more personal, it seems an excessive response.     

The Will to Exist: Reflections on Desire and the Good in Western Culture

In my essay I argue that the critical distinction that Spinoza makes between two concepts of desire, as also between two concepts of the good, captures the distinction that Tertullian makes in posing the question: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? In identifying the good with desire—desire with the good—and in denying that desire is dependent on the good in itself (e.g., Plato’s form of the good), Spinoza shows us that philosophy, as ethics, belongs to Jerusalem, to the Bible, and not to Athens (ancient Greek philosophy). We see, then, that the distinction between Athens and Jerusalem is not the distinction between philosophy and the Bible, between reason and faith, between the secular and the religious.     

Yoram Hazony and Leo Strauss on the Relation between Philosophy and Revelation

This essay challenges Yoram Hazony's ostensible correction of Leo Strauss's account of the tension between philosophy and revelation in Hazony's book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. While Hazony persuasively demonstrates the value of the Hebrew Bible, notably the half that he calls the “History of Israel,” as a work of rational political theory, emphasizing the difference in function between the Torah and the Christian “New Testament” (which serves chiefly to “bear witness” to particular events, rather than account for the permanent character of human and political life), he wrongly accuses Strauss of sharing the position of the radically antiphilosophic Christian theologian Tertullian that the Bible and classical philosophy are “absolutely oppos[ed],” even though Strauss, unlike Tertullian, takes the side of philosophy rather than the Bible in this conflict. Contrary to the impression Hazony conveys, Strauss readily acknowledged that the believer, no less than the philosopher, is obliged to make use of reason in his quest for truth and noted the critical areas of agreement between the Torah and classical philosophy. He simply emphasized the conflict between philosophy's reliance on reason as the ultimate guide to truth and the dependence of the Bible on belief in divine revelation, a dependence that Hazony implausibly seems to deny. And Hazony's challenge to the very distinction between reason and revelation threatens to weaken our appreciation of both sides of this tension, which Strauss identified as the source of the West's “vitality.”     

Laundering Leo Strauss

Robert Howse's book on Leo Strauss tries to defend Strauss by emphasizing how different he was from today's “Straussians.” In Howse's telling, Strauss's best-known followers favor war and oppression, though Strauss himself did not. To make this case, Howse relies not only on absurd caricatures of Strauss's students but on highly distorted (or highly selective) accounts of what Strauss himself wrote. Howse tries to make a positive case for Strauss as a “man of peace” by showing that Strauss supported “international law.” He makes that case by depicting “international law” as one continuous tradition since Grotius, oblivious to the many varieties of outlooks and doctrines that have invoked some version of international law. On Howse's account, those who have qualms about the United Nations or the European Union must be regarded as nihilists—hence at odds with “Leo Strauss, Man of Peace.”     

What is ‘First Philosophy’? Comments on Richard Velkley's Heidegger,Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy

In a noteworthy new study, Richard Velkley brings together Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss as part of a reexamination of the foundations and nature of philosophical questioning. In what follows, I critically reflect on this shared search for foundations, and particularly on the role of Plato in Strauss's effort to forge a new path for philosophy which moves away from Heidegger without losing sight of him.     

Pascalian Suite. Elements of an Apologia

Abstract

This article considers the thought of Claude Lefort as a response to Leo Strauss. It compares their views on the task of political philosophy as such, and on its specific relation to modernity, religion, and democracy. For Strauss, the revival of political philosophy under modern conditions requires a return to its ancient roots. While Lefort agrees that such a restoration is necessary, he argues that this requires a departure from ancient thought: political philosophy must recognize modern democracy as a new kind of regime, independent of theologico-political norms.     

Thoughts on Yoram Hazony's The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture

This article focuses on two claims in Yoram Hazony's book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: (1) that Hebrew Scripture contains a philosophy and (2) that this philosophy renders the conventional distinction between Jerusalem and Athens untenable insofar as it is a distinction that falls outside the purview of Hebrew Scripture.     

Leo Strauss's “On Classical Political Philosophy”

Abstract

Leo Strauss's “On Classical Political Philosophy” contrasts classical political philosophy with modern political philosophy and present-day political science. Strauss stresses two seemingly contrary features of classical political philosophy: its direct relation to political life and its transcendence of political life. Its direct relation to political life prevented it from taking for granted the necessity and possibility of political philosophy. The classical political philosopher appears as good citizen, umpire among the parties, or ultimately teacher of lawgivers. He was compelled to transcend political life when he realized its ultimate aim can be reached only by the philosophic life. Philosophy must concern itself with political life, yet political philosophy's highest subject must be the philosophic life.     

Humphrey and Civil Rights: The Politics of Racial Progress

Abstract

This article explores and defends Leo Strauss's interpretation of Edmund Burke's thought. Strauss argues that Burke's conservatism is rooted in the modern empiricist school of John Locke and others. Following Strauss, this article sets out to consider the suitability of these foundational principles to conservative politics. Burke wants to temper or ennoble Lockean politics by inspiring sublime attachment to the political community and its traditions, but he shies away from stating universal standards according to which the traditions of political communities ought to be judged. This respect for reason in history without moorings in transcendent standards of reason or revelation leaves his conservatism on precarious ground.     

Tocqueville on Pantheism,Materialism, and Catholicism

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Leo Strauss was an extraordinary scholar and teacher who strove to open up forgotten vistas of philosophical inquiry. Gigantic controversy rages, however, about the sorts of political and social changes, if any, that he hoped to promote. The fire has been fueled by the alleged contributions of Straussians to the Iraq War—and by the publication of Strauss's 1933 letter that commended “fascist, authoritarian, and imperial” principles. This article reviews and then updates the assessments proffered in my 2009 book (Straussophobia) about the state of the “Strauss Wars.” Critics such as Shadia Drury continue to embarrass themselves in prestigious venues, but newer voices are using innovative strategies to argue that Strauss was attempting to undermine the principles of American democracy. Whereas William Altman relies on “esoteric interpretations” of Strauss's writings, Alan Gilbert illuminates Strauss's behind-the-scenes efforts regarding policy disputes. Although I maintain that Gilbert and especially Altman have made invaluable contributions, I argue that they both overreach.     

The Absence of Macpherson and Strauss in Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARY

Pocock's Machiavellian Moment is monumental in its erudition, and thus one may be surprised that Pocock virtually ignored Macpherson's Political Theory of Possessive Individualism in his assessment of seventeenth-century political thought, and ignored Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli. Pocock noted that ‘the schools of Marx, Strauss and Voegelin concur’ in holding Locke to be a bourgeois or possessive individualist. Pocock elaborated a paradigm of republicanism as civic humanism as a contrast to liberalism as possessive individualism. Pocock seemed to accept tacitly Macpherson's and Strauss's view that Locke inverted the Aristotelian view of property as a means to political participation, whereby politics became a means to the protection and accumulation of property. Macphersonian scholars have criticised Pocock for misinterpreting the function of property in the Atlantic republican tradition and Straussian scholars have criticised The Machiavellian Moment for its failure to distinguish ancient from modern republics, and for Pocock's failure to appreciate the epochal significance of Machiavelli's call to master fortune or dominate nature through technique. But it is questionable whether or not it is incumbent on an intellectual historian to address present preoccupations about capitalism or global technique.     

Leo Strauss and the Defense of Western Civilization

To Father Ernest Fortin:

[The] highest achievement … of theology's handmaiden is to show that the arguments leveled against divine revelation are not compelling or demonstrably true.1 1.?Father Ernest Fortin, The Birth of Philosophic Christianity, Collected Essays, 4 vols. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996): I: 230. View all notes

To the extent that we are now in the midst of the so-called “clash of civilizations,” it may be noteworthy that a major controversy—scholarly and journalistic––has emerged over the bearing of Leo Strauss on the defense of the West. This article explores the roots of the controversy as found in his “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,” which raises and answers two questions: what is Western Civilization and is it worthy of defense? It is claimed that the very foundation of Western Civilization is constituted at its core by the twin pillars of revelation and Socratic philosophizing; and that the West merits life only if both of its pillars are defendable by reason against rational attack. In what follows, I attempt to trace Strauss's dialectical defense of the West by means of his demonstration of the irrefutability of revelation by reason and the theological-political bearing of this defense. I come to a dual conclusion: the existence of the monotheistic God of revelation is irrefutable by philosophy; yet, the human relevance of revelation, as the guide for a way of life—politically and individually—remains open to challenge by philosophy. Along the way, I also treat the recent research that is in conflict over Strauss's views.     

The Locke Essay: Achievement and Promise

Abstract

Strauss's essay on Locke is devoted to Locke's early lectures on the law of nature, a text unpublished when he initially wrote on Locke in Natural Right and History. One purpose of his essay was to show that the Locke text did not contradict the position on the law of nature that Strauss had earlier attributed to him. Strauss also used the essay as an opportunity to further his own reflections on traditional natural law doctrine.