[In the following review, Caton regards Liberalism, Ancient and Modern as a fitting introduction to Strauss's political philosophy.]

Getting acquainted with the thought of Leo Strauss is not especially easy for most readers. For one thing, Strauss presents his thought mainly in the form of commentaries on authors long since dead. This is a double jeopardy, for not only does he thereby disappoint the demand for originality—the real philosopher, we are assured, opens new vistas and brings fresh insights—but in addition his choice of ancient authors must, in the opinion of many, class his work as history of ideas at best, or nostalgic rummaging in archives at worst. Conservatives, who by and large do not simply share these opinions, if only because they are aware that the Bible is an ancient book, are nevertheless frequently ill-prepared by modern education to understand old writings even with the help of commentary. For all such persons, Liberalism, Ancient and Modern takes its place beside What Is Political Philosophy? as the most appropriate introduction to Strauss' thought.

Strauss' originality consists not in innovation but in the recovery of something lost. Its importance is to be estimated from the fact that the thing lost is clarity about and comprehension of the fundamental moral, religious and philosophical opinion upon which the modern secular state and modern life are based. An instance of this forgetfulness is noted in the Preface, when Strauss explains the inadequacy of “liberal” and “conservative” as terms denoting opposites. The distinction was originally made with respect to the opposition of advocates of popular sovereignty and freedom of religion to the principles of throne and altar. Since American conservatives fully agree with liberals on this important question, one should rather say that what conservatives oppose is “progressivism.” Strauss provisionally characterizes this opposition in terms of a single issue: the attitude of the two camps toward the idea of a world-state. Progressives in principle favor a “universal and homogeneous” society, not merely in deference to the threat of nuclear war, but because they regard it as the moral and rational completion of man's future, whereas conservatives in principle favor many particular societies. Consequently, conservatives oppose Communism both in its means and end, whereas progressives, disapproving only of the means, frequently find themselves joined by Communists in opposition to conservatives on questions of national sovereignty (hence foreign policy), religion and so forth.

Having adumbrated the relation between conservatism and progressivism, Strauss classes them as species of modern liberalism as distinguished from ancient liberalism. The object of the book is to set forth this difference, with the intention, one might surmise, of showing conservatives and those progressives who will listen, that classical philosophy provides the only viable theoretical and moral basis for liberalism, ancient or modern. The book fittingly contains two types of essay that should ease the transition from modernity to antiquity. Six essays are about modern themes or conditions, written from the point of view of classical liberalism. These prepare the reader for the four essays devoted to commentary on pre-modern philosophers.

Strauss illustrates what is at stake in the issue between ancients and moderns through a discussion of education. Both historically and in the nature of things, education is flanked by philosophy and politics; from the character of a given education one can read the relationship that philosophy bears to politics, for in his capacity as teacher, the philosopher necessarily encounters non-philosophers. Modern education is universal education, which was first instituted in the United States. From the beginning, the motives for it were clear. Unlike the sophisticated social scientists of today, our great-grandfathers thought that maintenance of a healthy democracy required an electorate both civic-minded and tolerably judicious. And they had learned from Locke and Adam Smith that the general welfare is best promoted by promoting the “mechanical arts” and agriculture. Thus the liberal arts, which in the West have up to now been the core of education, shared honors with technology.

Today the results are painfully clear. Universal education turns out to be mass education—the acquisition of useful skills and “adjustment” to society rather than the attainment of intellectual and moral self-sufficiency that was always the goal of liberal education. The adjustment consists of a bland enlightenment designed to remove the basis of all religious and national differences for the sake of the homogeneity necessary for general toleration and cohesiveness. The substance of this enlightenment (which—one may count upon it—every college freshman will parrot) is that science justly claims universal assent, whereas all “values” are relative to individual choice.

In its effects this relativism is like a crippling disease. It renders students incapable of thinking about the great questions of life because they have been taught to believe that in this domain there is nothing to be known and all is choice. They are reduced to a kind of mindlessness that manifests itself in docile compliance or impulsive rebellion. And not only the students. The ravages of the disease are evident among the representatives of the liberal arts themselves—in the sterility of scholarship owing to an incapacity to discern what the questions are and in increasingly pronounced confusion about the nature and purpose of the liberal arts.

A root of this disease comes to light if one reflects on the claim of the newly arisen social and behavioral sciences to be the only true custodians of the knowledge of man. This claim at once denies the liberal arts all intellectual dignity by, in effect, making them subservient to the new sciences. And what is the character of social scientific knowledge? It declares all questions about the “ought” to be unscientific and strives to transform all “common sense” questions into forms amenable to treatment by the techniques of the natural sciences.

Philosophy was traditionally thought to be the core and highest goal of liberal education. According to Strauss, the disintegration and transformation of the liberal arts into the social sciences is properly understood only by comprehending the reasons for the exhaustion of philosophy. Strauss finds these reasons in the fundamental revision that classical philosophy underwent around the seventeenth century, the revision that generated modern philosophy and, if Strauss is right, modern times.

Modern liberalism is the child of modern philosophy, and stands or falls with it. The essence of modern philosophy is the mastery of nature for the sake of liberating mankind from its bondage to nature. By what twists and turns this orientation brought about or abetted the political catastrophes, spiritual distress and intellectual confusion of our times Strauss limns in other works. Here he is content to establish the need for a return to meditation on the great books, and hence to classical philosophy, by forcefully pointing out the incapacity of the social sciences to deal with or even recognize the fundamental questions.

But precisely owing to the decay of liberal education, one cannot profitably return to the classics without a guide. Strauss' commentaries are intended to help re-establish the tradition of liberal education. The commentaries show that it is not possible to understand what pre-modern authors teach without taking account of how they communicate their teaching. The reason is that pre-modern authors practiced a certain reserve or restraint in the communication of their thought, or in other words, pre-modern authors did not believe in either the possibility or desirability of popular enlightenment. They believed that education is necessarily the preserve of the educable. To understand this moderation and its basis is to understand classical liberalism and non-egalitarian social science.

Strauss very clearly states what he hopes “almost against hope” might come of his efforts: “Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society.”