SOURCE: Guerra, Marc D. “The Ambivalence of Classic Natural Right: Leo Strauss on Philosophy, Morality, and Statesmanship.” Perspectives on Political Science 28, no. 2 (spring 1999): 69-74.

[In the following essay, Guerra warns against vulgarizing and oversimplifying Strauss's sometimes obscure thoughts on natural rights.]

Natural Right and History is without a doubt Leo Strauss's best known and most influential work.¹ It is also his most timely. When the book appeared, the major currents in political science were either corrupted or paralyzed by the modern dogmas of historicism and positivism. Contemporary social scientists understood themselves to be duty bound to view every moral and political action as an expression of a particular ideological prejudice. Strauss accordingly began Natural Right and History by asking whether or not the United States still believed in the self-evident truths articulated in the Declaration of Independence, or whether it had abandoned the ancient faith in which it was conceived and founded.² Viewed from that perspective, nothing could be more “untimely” than the book's suggestion that the natural right teaching of classical political thought can provide a principled ground for modern statesmanship. By making this suggestion, Strauss raised the possibility, remote as it may be, that the renewed appreciation of the character of classical political philosophy would help to restore the political vitality of the West. For this reason it is fair to say that one of Strauss's central concerns in Natural Right and History is to point out that classical political philosophy and its teaching on natural right ultimately are superior to any of their modern counterparts.³

But what exactly does Strauss have to say about classic natural right and political life in Natural Right and History? What, if anything, does the classic natural right teaching say about political life that could help restore the kind of appreciation of politics that has been lost due to the effects of dogmatic historicism and positivism and the self-destruction of modern rationalism?

Interestingly enough, when one turns to the chapter in Natural Right and History devoted to classic natural right, one finds less an explicit discussion or definition of classic natural right than a brief genealogical account of political philosophy. Strauss there observes that according to a tradition that dates back to Cicero, Socrates was the first human being to call philosophy down from heaven and force it to make investigations into human affairs. By so doing, Socrates became the founder of political philosophy and by way of extension the originator of a tradition of natural right teachings whose three major representatives Strauss identifies as Socratic-Platonic, Aristotelian, and Thomistic.⁴ Yet Strauss further notes that Socrates was not always a political philosopher. Socrates, like all the early philosophers, initially was preoccupied with the divine and the heavenly things. Socrates' turn to the human things seems then to have required that he give up his studies of the superhuman things, things that philosophy evidently does not have to be forced to study. Strauss's genealogy of political philosophy thus has the curious effect of drawing attention to the fact that the philosopher is not naturally concerned with human things but must be compelled to investigate them.⁵ In other words, prior to considering any particular classic natural right teaching, Strauss points out that political philosophy is something of an unnatural enterprise, that it is not the original concern of the philosophical life.

Having quietly brought attention to this problem, Strauss proceeds to explain why the Socratic turn to the human things marked a new way of studying the whole. In contrast to what one can paradoxically call his earlier, pre-Socratic approach, Socrates' new method of philosophizing attempted to discover “what each of the beings is.” It appreciated that “to be” means to be “something” and that most fundamentally this means to be different from “something else.” Socrates thus was led to inquire about the various heterogeneous parts of the whole. This “new approach to the understanding of all things,” according to Strauss, had the twofold benefit of not reducing the human things to the divine things, as well as uncovering the unity “that is revealed in the manifest articulation of the completed whole.”⁶ The radical change in orientation brought about by the Socratic turn can be seen most clearly in what philosophy now took as its point of departure. Whereas the pre-Socratic philosophers routinely began their inquiries by investigating what is first in itself, Socrates now began from phenomena that are “first for us.” Socrates' turn to the human things thus marked philosophy's move away from the world of abstractions and its return to the world of common sense.⁷

In keeping with his return to the common-sense perspective, Socrates now began his inquiries into the nature of things by examining the most reasonable, authoritative opinions about them. Such discussions, Strauss claims, supply “the most important access to reality that we have, or the most important vestiges to the truth which are within our reach” (124). But as one engages in these discussions, one discovers that different human beings hold different opinions about the most important things. The awareness of the divergence of opinions accordingly gives rise to the recognition that one has to sift through the variety of opinions in the hope that this will unearth the truth. Simply stated, one becomes aware of the need to engage in “dialectics” or the “art … of friendly dispute” (124). For opinions about things are only partially true, that is, they contain only “fragments of the truth” (124). Yet precisely because the opinions are partly true, they must be taken seriously. As Strauss repeatedly emphasizes, recognition of the absence of the whole truth need not occasion universal doubt, as the modern philosophers believed, but rather points to the need for the dialectical ascent from the realm of opinion to truth. Dialectics, in other words, is characterized by the effort to transcend the combination of falsehood and truth that is emblematic of opinion.

According to Strauss, it is the art of dialectics that brings to light the actual grounds of the classical teaching on natural right. For in his effort to counter the powerful arguments leveled against natural right by hedonism, the dialectician becomes a phenomenologist of the human soul, articulating both its order and its end. The dialectical examination of the soul reveals its inherent natural desires or “wants.” These “wants” do not simply represent a collection of indistinguishable urges and impulses. Rather they possess “a natural order” that reflects the hierarchical “natural constitution” of the soul. As regards human beings, the order of their natural constitution finds its distinctiveness in the ability to speak or to reason. “The proper work of man,” Strauss concludes, “consists in living thoughtfully, in understanding, and in thoughtful action,” for such a life is in accordance with nature and reflects “virtue or human excellence” (127). Strauss straightforwardly remarks that the human being whose actions are guided by thought displays a kind of nobility of character that all but the morally obtuse admire for its human excellence. It is as a “phenomenologist of the soul” and a spokesman for the grounds of human dignity then that Strauss first speaks of the relation of nature and virtue or human excellence.⁸

But as Strauss points out, the classical thinkers understood that to live well, to live in accordance with nature, human beings have to live within society. For “man is by nature a social being.”⁹ Human rationality, the ability to speak and to communicate with others, makes human beings social in the most radical way imaginable. Every human act, every action involving speech, is directed toward another and is therefore in some sense a social act. Strauss goes so far as to claim that “humanity itself is sociality” and observes that human sociality has natural goods attached to it, such as “love, affection, friendship, and pity” (129). Strauss maintains that it is sociality, a characteristic shared by human beings as human beings, that ultimately supplies the basis of natural right “in the narrow or strict sense of right” (129). For since human sociality is natural, it stands to reason that justice, the quintessential social virtue, is itself natural. On the most basic level, this means that the rules that govern human social relations at least implicitly must acknowledge that human beings are not simply free to act in any way they see fit. As Strauss powerfully formulates it, while human reason obviously allows for an elevated, increased form of freedom, it is also “accompanied by a sacred awe, by a kind of divination that not everything is permitted.”¹⁰ In the final analysis, nature imposes restraints on human beings that make life in society both possible and tolerable.

Yet the powerful, complex passions at work in the soul require that members of society be restrained from acting on their lower impulses and undermining the basis of society. Strauss therefore speaks of the need for political leaders who are entrusted with a “serious concern for the perfection of a community.”¹¹ Such human beings possess a greater degree of virtue than do ordinary citizens and are motivated by a deep appreciation of the demands of justice and nobility. They are the guardians and the caretakers of the body politic. Strauss squarely opposes modern social science's “crypto-materialistic” account of the statesman, which seeks to explain his actions purely “on hedonistic or utilitarian grounds” (128). Strauss insists that the political actions of the authentic statesman are guided by a genuine concern for the common good and cannot be reduced to the mere calculation of self-interest. Strauss's praise of the kind of human excellence that reveals itself most fully in the field of politics, his “Churchillian speech,” culminates in the observation that

the full actualization of humanity would then seem to consist, not in some sort of passive membership in civil society, but in the properly directed activity of the statesmen, the legislator, or the founder.

(133)

But shortly after Strauss presents the case for the just and noble statesmen as the ideal of human excellence, he raises the question of what ability or set of abilities should entitle a human being to rule. By so doing, he gradually and subtly changes the terms on which his discussion is based. Whereas previously Strauss had spoken of natural right in terms of human beings' natural sociality and their perfection as moral and political beings, he now approaches natural right from the perspective of human beings' perfection as rational beings.¹² As a result of this shift of emphasis, Strauss slowly but perceptibly moves out of the realm of the just and the noble, the realm in which his preceding evaluation of political life had taken place. The prudent statesman who earlier had “seemed” to represent the full actualization of humanity eventually is replaced by the wise philosopher as the highest human type. But what is most striking is that Strauss begins to cast serious doubts on his previous description of the general character of the good life. He gradually raises questions about the adequacy or self-sufficiency of the moral-political horizon tout court.

Strauss notes that according to the classical authors the question of who should rule is to some extent identical to the question of the best regime. The classical thinkers realized that human beings had different natural capacities, most notably and decisively in the capacity to reason. They appreciated that only a few rare souls are graced with both a first-rate intellect and the means to cultivate it. But despite these genuine obstacles, the classical authors still concluded that it is naturally just for those who are superior in wisdom to rule those who are inferior in wisdom. As specialists in the human soul, the wise, whom Strauss identifies with the philosophers, know best what is needed for the perfection of each human being and therefore appreciate what is due to each human being. The regime sanctioned by nature, the best regime, accordingly would “seem to be the rule of the wise.”¹³

Yet as Strauss points out, although the absolute rule of the wise is theoretically the best of regimes, for all practical purposes it is an impossibility. To begin with, it is questionable whether the unwise multitude will freely submit to the rule of philosophers. For it is highly unlikely that the unwise will be persuaded that to be ruled by philosophers is in their best interest. Moreover, the sheer number of the unwise makes it impossible that the small number of philosophers could secure their rule by force. But what is arguably the greatest obstacle to the rule of the philosophers is that as a group they do not wish to rule. Strauss states that this simple fact has been all but obscured today “due to the denial of the possibility of philosophy” (143). For the philosophers fundamentally desire to be left alone. Indeed their desire for privacy runs so deep that “philosophers as philosophers do not go with their families” (143). The philosopher understands the best or the most blessed life to consist not in the social pursuit of noble and just things, but in not being troubled by society and thus being free to engage in his private speculations. As Strauss rather jarringly states,

the wise do not desire to rule; they must be compelled because their whole life is devoted to the pursuit of something which is absolutely higher in dignity than any human things—the unchangeable truth. … If striving for knowledge of the eternal truth is the ultimate end of man, justice and moral virtue in general can be fully legitimated only by the fact that they are required for the sake of that ultimate end or that they are conditions of the philosophic life. From this point of view the man who is merely just or moral without being a philosopher appears as a mutilated human being. It thus becomes a question … whether what Aristotle calls moral virtue is not, in fact, vulgar virtue … whether by transforming opinion about morality into knowledge of morality, one does not transcend the dimension of morality in the politically relevant sense of the term.

(151-52)

What is one to make of the striking and somewhat disturbing image of the philosopher that Strauss here presents? For in the course of explaining why the philosopher would not want to rule, Strauss appears to pull the rug out from underneath his previous phenomenological account of the order of the soul and the perfection that flows from the social nature of human beings. Strauss currently pits the needs of human sociality against the needs of human rationality and seems to conclude not only that the latter are more important, but that they have very little in common with the former.¹⁴ The claim that human beings are social animals seems to be supplanted by the claim that human beings are rational animals.

Though it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of this question here, it is possible to shed light on some of the larger issues involved and, in so doing, offer some provisional suggestions. Let us begin by observing that in the passage cited above, Strauss calls into question three of the arguments he had advanced previously in his discussion of natural right: (1) that human beings naturally desire to participate in social life, (2) that the tradition of philosophy that begins with Socrates is primarily concerned with human things, and (3) that there are moral actions that are intrinsically noble and that constitute ends in themselves.

Strauss's description of the radically private life desired by the philosopher is in obvious tension with his earlier, rich account of human sociality. Strauss had spoken earlier of the human need to share one's life with others, to participate in a community that aims at a good that is greater than that of any one individual. Moreover, he had defended the existence of goods that are intrinsically social, like love and friendship, whose desirability grew out of human nature. Yet the philosopher that he describes in the passage above is the most asocial, even antisocial, being imaginable. The philosopher's relations with his fellow human beings appear to be marked by the most detached kind of attachment. The philosopher must live with others, since his distinctive way of life relies on a division of labor that exists only within a political community. However, his concern with those he lives with remains largely negative: He avoids them and wishes that they do him no harm. The philosopher described above, in other words, lives on the fringes of society. He is a citizen only in the most attenuated sense of the term.

Yet, one must ask, is this type of life human, or does it more closely resemble the kind of life that Aristotle claimed was proper to apolitical beings who were either beasts or gods? And even if one is willing to grant that the philosophic life is the most divine life, does it follow that the human being who is a philosopher could, let alone should, live like a god? Strauss seems to answer this question in the negative. He concedes that even apart from the question of his material well-being, the philosopher is not simply a self-sufficient human being. Although the philosopher finds his bliss in the essentially private activity of thinking, he still retains “the natural affection which men have for men, especially for their kin, regardless of whether or not these men have ‘good natures’ or are potential philosophers.”¹⁵ The image of the philosopher as a radically private being seems to represent an inhuman idealization or divinization of the philosophic life. For while philosophy in some sense ultimately transcends the dimensions of social life, the philosopher does not. As a being constituted by a body and a soul, the philosopher remains “essentially an ‘in-between’ being.”¹⁶

But it is this recognition that human beings occupy a place between the brutes and the gods that makes perplexing Strauss's assertion that the political philosopher pursues something that is “absolutely higher in dignity than the human things—the unchangeable truth.” For Strauss had said at the beginning of the chapter on classic natural right that Socrates' turn toward the human things was the innovation in philosophy that marked the birth of political philosophy. These two conflicting statements point to an ambiguity in Strauss's presentation of political philosophy and raise the question, What is the political philosopher's true relationship to human things?

In Natural Right and History, and in his writings in general, Strauss oscillates between two related yet distinct descriptions of political philosophy. One takes politics as its subject and offers a philosophic reflection on political life.¹⁷ Political philosophy is here in genuine dialogue with civil society and attempts to inform human action with human wisdom. It can distinguish between good and bad action and articulate the various virtues and vices as well as the political facts that are constitutive of political life. Political philosophy thus remains marked by Aristotelian sobriety and as a result discusses political life “on its own terms … refus[ing] to be drawn into the dialectical whirlpool that carries us far beyond justice in the ordinary sense of the term toward the philosophic life.”¹⁸ In this presentation of political philosophy the political philosopher is the good citizen par excellence, the “umpire” who is able to mediate between the various political parties and goods that come into conflict in political life.¹⁹

But Strauss also describes political philosophy as primarily being a politic presentation of philosophy. Political philosophy thus understood retains a greater distance from actual political life. The political philosopher is still concerned with the human things, but no longer as the artisan of the political community. His studies of the distinctively human things are in the decisive sense instrumental to his supra-political concerns. On the one hand, he turns to the human things and the opinions about them because they provide him with the greatest access to the divine or eternal things, to the nature of the “whole.” The particularities that come to light in political life, in other words, serve as a means of access to the universals they reflect. Moreover, in turning to human things, the Socratic philosopher does not abandon his studies of nonhuman nature. Accordingly, Strauss cites as proof of Socrates' continued interest in the nature of all beings a passage in Xenophon's Memorabilia in which Xenophon relates that while Socrates repeatedly spoke of the impracticality of astronomical knowledge, he continued to attended lectures on the subject.²⁰ On the other hand, the turn to the human things allows the philosopher subtly to point out the tensions inherent in the moral-political life and thus to alert others with “good natures” to the superiority of the philosophic life. In this sense, a work of political philosophy is a “speech caused by love” intended to benefit the “puppies” of the philosophic race.²¹

It is tempting to view Strauss as presenting two different and opposing accounts of political philosophy. But if we look at what Strauss does and not merely at what he says, we must conclude that the relation between political philosophy and political philosophy is more dialectical than would appear at first glance. Strauss observed that Machiavelli's amoral political philosophy could not account for the public spiritedness that animated Machiavelli as a political philosopher.²² A similar observation can be made about Strauss and the kind of cautiously “apologetic” or instrumental description of political philosophy that he sometimes gives. For whereas Strauss published many thoughts that have little direct connection to any recognizably political concerns, he also wrote things whose concern with moral and political matters cannot be reduced to mere veiled pleas for the superiority of the philosophic life. For Strauss, then, political philosophy must mean something more than either philosophic reflection on politics or the politic presentation of the philosophic life. Straussian political philosophy therefore combines both of these Aristotelian and Platonic elements in a way whose theoretical coherence perhaps denies any straightforward presentation.²³

Be this as it may, the tension between Strauss's Platonic and Aristotelian presentations of political philosophy comes to the fore most clearly in the claim that the person who is morally virtuous but not a philosopher is a “mutilated human being.”²⁴ How does one reconcile this claim with his previous statement that there are moral actions that are intrinsically noble? Does Strauss agree with Aristotle that moral virtue has a standing of its own, or does he adhere to the Platonic view that “moral virtue” is only necessary as a means to the philosophic life? Does Strauss think that the demands of morality are in accordance with human beings' political nature, or does he take them to be emblematic of the illusory character of life in the “cave”? Does Strauss believe that the dialectical examination of moral virtue reveals it to be baseless, that is, vulgar virtue, or simply in need of further philosophic refinement?

These questions cut to the heart of the tension that results from Strauss's juxtaposition of human sociality and human rationality. On the one hand, Strauss speaks from within the political community and offers a defense of the moral-political horizon. Strauss extols the greatness and nobility of the Burkean or Churchillian statesman who goes “down with guns blazing and flags flying” in the face of political evil.²⁵ On the other hand, Strauss raises as a legitimate question the striking possibility that the human being who is simply noble and just may not be superior to the “nonphilosophic ‘erotic’” tyrant (151). In so doing, Strauss openly calls into question the very grounds of morality.

Though by itself it cannot be viewed as conclusive, Strauss's repeated preference for a Platonic rather than an Aristotelian understanding of the relationship of theory to practice would seem to suggest that he thinks that justice and moral virtue do not have a basis outside of the philosophic life.²⁶ Moral virtue would therefore not be desirable for its own sake, but only to the extent that it allows one to philosophize. As Strauss says at the beginning of chapter 4 of Natural Right and History, the tradition of philosophy that is in keeping with Socrates preserves the “distinction … between genuine virtue and political or vulgar virtue.”²⁷

It should be noted, however, that Strauss himself adds a curious wrinkle to this entire discussion. At the end of the paragraph in Natural Right and History in which he suggests that the person who is just and moral but not a philosopher is a mutilated human being, Strauss references fourteen books and one article. All of the books that Strauss cites except one are classical texts. The exception is David Grene's Man in His Pride: A Study in the Political Philosophy of Thucydides and Plato. Strauss's four-page review of Grene's book is the lone article.²⁸ In his review, Strauss praises Grene for seeing the tension that exists between Plato's presentation of the life devoted to justice and the life devoted to eros and regards this as “an important insight.”²⁹ But he goes on to question whether Grene's argument does not exaggerate that tension. Despite this concern, Strauss concludes his review with the curious observation that

today it is perhaps better thus to overstate Plato's thesis regarding the disproportion between philosophy and politics than to follow the beaten path by failing to see a problem between philosophy and politics.³⁰

One cannot help wondering what significance should be placed on the fact that Strauss cites Grene's book and his review of it in the very passage in Natural Right and History that makes the greatest claim about the differences that exist between the philosophic and the political ways of life. If nothing else, the reference raises the possibility that Strauss may be subtly acknowledging that he also exaggerates Plato's thesis about the differences that separate the two ways of life. In other words, it raises the possibility that Strauss does not think that the demands of human sociality and human rationality are as radically opposed as his presentation of the self-sufficient, godlike philosopher would lead one to believe. But if this is in fact the case, one has to wonder about just how effective a rejoinder this footnote can possibly be. If the textual key to realizing that Strauss exaggerates the disproportion between human beings' needs as political animals and their needs as rational animals depends upon tracking down a book review cited in a footnote, then perhaps the surprising statement that one finds in that book review finally is of little importance. Or, perhaps, is Strauss writing for a philosophically minded audience that is likely to track down his subtle hint and draw the proper conclusion?

In conclusion, we should point out that it is undoubtedly tempting for readers of Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History to look for a way to resolve the tension between what we have called his “Aristotelian” and “Platonic” speeches. One may be inclined to put an end to this tension, to unstring the bow as it were, by ignoring one of its two component parts. Readers who are appreciative of Strauss's Aristotelian attention to the facts and the goods that motivate citizens and statesmen, even present-day citizens and statesmen, may too quickly pass over Strauss's efforts to clarify some of the problems that arise in political life. In so doing, they forget that Aristotle himself comments on political life from within as well as from above the perspective of the city. In other words, such readers run the risk of blurring the distinction between the good citizenship of the political philosopher and the enlightened partisanship of the ordinary political actor. On the other hand, readers disposed to a more Platonic understanding of political philosophy may lose sight of the goods that Strauss claims provide the grounds for political philosophy. Their desire to engage in the endless articulation of philosophical puzzles may lead them to “an unmanly contempt for politics.”³¹ Indeed, the excessive playfulness that often arises from such an understanding of political philosophy is not all that different from the Epicureanism that Plato himself opposed or, paradoxically enough, from the postmodernism that Straussians uniformly attack. Both types of readers thus may do violence to the kind of measured reflection that Strauss offers in Natural Right and History.

Yet perhaps succumbing to this temptation is unavoidable when reading Leo Strauss. Perhaps his thought is prone to being “vulgarized” in either of these two ways. For in many of his works, Strauss himself speaks neither as a Platonist nor as an Aristotelian, but as a defender of “classical political philosophy.” But whereas it is fairly easy to distinguish between ancient and modern political philosophy, one eventually has to acknowledge that classical political philosophy does not present itself or understand itself as a unified front.³² Notwithstanding their obvious agreements, there are significant, substantive disagreements among the various classical political philosophers—as Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's idea of the good in book 1, chapter 6, of the Nicomachean Ethics makes particularly clear.³³ Yet by falling back on general terms such as “classic natural right” or “classical political philosophy,” Strauss is able to pass over these differences in relative silence.³⁴ As a result, his reader is able to give such terms a Platonic, Aristotelian, or even a Ciceronian cast. Paradoxically, by allowing his reader to associate a particular author with what is meant by phrases like “classic natural right” or “classical political philosophy,” Strauss contributes further to obscuring what he ultimately means by these terms that are so central to his thought as a whole.

Notes

1. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); hereinafter cited as NRH.

2. NRH, 1.

3. Richard Kennington has pointed out that as regards the overall argument of Natural Right and History, “all roads lead to or from, all doctrines prepare or depart from, ‘classic natural right’ in ch. 4. It is ‘central’ in its weight, but also central literally, if we count the introduction and the subdivisions of 5 and 6 as parts” (“Strauss's Natural Right and History,” Review of Metaphysics 35 [1981]: 62).

4. NRH, 120. Strauss gives a similar, “traditional” account of Socrates as the founder of political philosophy in The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 13-14. See also page 21 of The City and Man, where Strauss contrasts Socrates, the founder of political philosophy, with Aristotle, the founder of political science.

5. This is the fatal point that Hobbes overlooks, according to Strauss. Strauss's deepest criticism of Hobbes as a philosopher is that “he accepted on trust the view that political philosophy or political science is possible or necessary” (NRH, 167).

6. NRH, 122-23. Whereas Strauss here speaks openly of the merits of Socrates' new method of philosophizing, elsewhere he is less sanguine about its ability fully to elucidate the nature of the whole. Strauss in fact goes so far as to say that the kind of knowledge that comes from knowledge of parts “is not knowledge of the whole. It seems that knowledge of the whole would have to combine somehow political knowledge in the highest sense with knowledge of homogeneity. And this knowledge is not at our disposal. Men are therefore constantly tempted to force the issue by imposing unity on the phenomena, by absolutizing either homogeneity or knowledge of ends. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm” (“What is Political Philosophy?” in What is Political Philosophy? [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988], 29-40). One wonders therefore whether Strauss chooses to remain silent about the limitations of the “parts approach” to the whole in Natural Right and History in order to make the “Socratic” argument for natural right appear less tentative than it may in fact be. Yet see NRH, 125-26.

7. NRH, 123.

8. Daniel J. Mahoney makes this point in his insightful and provocative essay “L'Expérience du Totalitarisme et la Rédécouverte de la Nature,” in Revue Des Deux Mondes, Janvier 1997, 109-25. I have borrowed the description of Strauss as a “phenomenologist of the soul” from Mahoney's essay.

9. NRH, 129.

10. NRH, 130. Strauss also speaks of the importance of sacred restraints in his “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero.” Strauss there states that Hobbes, Hegel, and Kojeve are able to construct their accounts of human life only by denying the existence of such natural restraints. See “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero,” in What is Political Philosophy? 111.

11. NRH, 133.

12. Victor Gourevitch captures this tension when he observes that by looking at human perfection from the perspective of sociality and then from the perspective of rationality, Strauss raises the question of “whether natural right is equivocal” (“The Problem of Natural Right and the Fundamental Alternatives in Natural Right and History,” in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, ed. Kenneth Deutsch and Walter Soffer [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987], 39). The tension that arises from this shift of emphasis in some respects mirrors the tension that inheres in Natural Right and History itself. On the one hand, the book is an attempt to articulate a concrete natural right teaching that can be used in political life; on the other hand, the book is an effort set forth “a nonhistoricist understanding of nonhistoricist philosophy” (NRH, 33). It nevertheless remains an open question whether and how these two intentions relate to each other.

13. NRH, 140.

14. See Mahoney, “L'Expérience du Totalitarisme et la Rédécouverte de la Nature,” 125.

15. NRH, 152. Strauss makes a similar argument in his “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero.” Yet he adds that the philosopher “is attached to a particular type of human being, namely to actual or potential philosophers or to his friends … he cannot help being attached to men of well-ordered souls: he desires ‘to be together’ with such men all the time … the philosopher therefore has the urge to educate potential philosophers simply because he cannot help loving well-ordered souls” (What is Political Philosophy? 120-21). In light of what Strauss says about philosophers not going with their families, perhaps, on the deepest level, the philosopher's “kin” would not be determined by blood but by thought. See also Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 36.

16. NRH, 152.

17. See, for example, What is Political Philosophy? 93-94, and Persecution and the Art of Writing, 35-37.

18. NRH, 156.

19. See What is Political Philosophy? 84.

20. See NRH, 122, and Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv.7.5.

21. Persecution and the Art of Writing, 36.

22. See Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 293-95.

23. David Lowenthal makes a similar point when he notes that Strauss combines the “divergent dispositions” of political and philosophic responsibility “perhaps more naturally than Shakespeare's Prospero” (“Leo Strauss's Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy,” Interpretation 13.3 [September 1985]: 305). I would add that the fact that these two things need to be combined in Strauss suggests that for him they do not go together theoretically, that is, that they point to a tension in Strauss's deeds that is never resolved in Strauss's thought.

24. Shadia Drury points to this statement as alleged proof of Strauss's Epicureanism. See Shadia Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 105; “Leo Strauss's Classic Natural Right Teaching,” Political Theory 15.3 (August 1987): 308. Harry V. Jaffa counters Drury's charge by noting that Strauss elsewhere states that both the Biblical and the Greek philosophic traditions acknowledge that morality needs to be perfected by something higher, piety or faith for the former and wisdom for the latter. Jaffa concludes that “morality cut off from transcendence sinks into Kantian absurdity” (“Dear Professor Drury,” Political Theory 15.3 [August 1987]: 321). Though Jaffa's comments provide a reasonably convincing response to Drury's claim, they also tend to soften Strauss's statement. For Jaffa sidesteps the question of whether or not the human being who acts virtuously does so for its own sake or because he understands it to be perfected by something higher. In other words, Jaffa ignores the question of whether or not Strauss considers moral virtue in some sense to be its own reward.

25. NRH, 318.

26. NRH, 6, 35, 78, 127, 144, 150, 151, 164. Along these lines, Lowenthal impishly remarks that Strauss called his book “studies in Platonic, not Aristotelian, political philosophy” (“Leo Strauss's Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy,” 304).

27. NRH, 121.

28. The review first appeared in Social Research, 18.3: 394-97. It has been reprinted in What is Political Philosophy? 299-302. All references to Strauss's review are to What is Political Philosophy?

29. What is Political Philosophy? 301.

30. What is Political Philosophy? 302.

31. Leo Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 29.

32. Bernard Yack makes a similar point about the polemical or reactive character of the Straussian concept of the “ancients” in The Fetishism of Modernities: Epochal Self-Consciousness in Contemporary Social and Political Thought (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 51.

33. See Strauss's discussion of this particular difference in his letter to Alexandre Kojeve of 28 May 1957. Reproduced in On Tyranny, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (New York: Free Press, 1991), 276-80.

34. In this, Strauss seems to follow the medieval Islamic philosopher Fârâbî. Commenting on Fârâbî's On the Purpose of Plato and of Aristotle, Strauss notes that he states that “Plato and Aristotle … ‘have given us philosophy’ together with ‘the ways toward it and the way toward its introduction after it has been blurred or destroyed.’” Strauss further observes that Fârâbî states “that … the purpose of Plato and Aristotle was one and the same.” Strauss subsequently concludes that “two points in Fârâbî's On the Purposes of Plato and of Aristotle strike one most. The work owes its origin to the concern with the restoration of philosophy ‘after it has been blurred or destroyed’; and it is more concerned with the purpose common to Plato and Aristotle than with the agreement or disagreement of the results of their investigations. What Fârâbî regarded as the purpose of the two philosophers … [was that] philosophy … is not only necessary but sufficient for producing happiness: philosophy does not need to be supplemented by something else, or by something that is thought to be higher in rank than philosophy, in order to produce happiness” (Persecution and the Art of Writing, 12-13). It seems that Strauss thought that to restore philosophy after historicism had denied its very possibility, it was necessary to give an account of classical philosophy that was similar to Fârâbî's—one that emphasized the similarities and downplayed difference between Plato's and Aristotle's philosophical teachings.