Kennington - Natural Right and History

Strauss's Natural Right and History
Author(s): Richard Kennington

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Sep., 1981), pp. 57-86
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STRAUSS'S NATURALRIGHTAND HISTORY
RICHARD KENNINGTON
J\t the time Strauss published Natural Right and History (1953)
the state of the question of natural right was amixture of oblivion and
fitful restoration. Natural right had disappeared from the center of
discussion in political philosophy for well over a century. No philoso
pher of the first rank had written a treatise on, or advocated the ne
cessity of, natural right since the time of German idealism or perhaps
since Rousseau. Kant more than any other had emptied "natural
right" of meaning?by asserting that the moral law must be a law of

reason and not a law of nature. Naturrecht in the subtitle of Hegel's
great treatise on right did not mean right derived from human nature
or from nature as a norm or standard: right was to be sought in the
conjunction of the rational and the historical. By the middle of the

last century there arose a virtually unanimous agreement between
the conservative right and the radical left: the question of right had to
be decided on the plane of "history" and not by reference to "na
ture." The attack on natural right in its explicit form had begun with
the critique of modern natural right by the great conservatives of
"the historical school." It was completed by Nietzsche and Heideg
ger who traced the "nihilism" of the age to the continuing power of
the belief in trans-historical or "eternal" truths, e.g., to the belief in
natural right.
Certainly in this period there were distinguished conservatives
who pointed to the necessity of a "higher law" as distinct from the
positive law, or who sought to restore the claims of natural law. But
the re-assertion or restoration of "the tradition of natural law," as dis
tinct from a specific version of natural law, demands an exact histori
cal understanding of that tradition. The histories of that tradition as
sumed a unity and continuity which was borrowed from or at least in
harmony with the assumptions of Hegel's history of human thought.
Just as Naturrecht could be translated, and was translated by able
scholars, as referring to either natural law or natural right, so both
the partisans and opponents of natural law tended to blur the distinc
Review of Metaphysics 35 (September 1981); 57-86. Copyright ? 1981 by the Review of

Metaphysics
58 RICHARD KENNINGTON
tion between "natural right" and "natural law." And the natural law
tradition was often regarded as a single, continuous tradition stretch
ing from the Stoics through the natural law theories of Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau. At the same time it was acknowledged that
Stoic and medieval natural law had a considerable dependence on the
teachings of Plato and Aristotle?in which the presence of the term,
or the concept, of natural law is at best problematic. Against this
background, the protagonists of Thomistic natural law possessed the
greatest clarity. Their grasp of the opposition between pre-modern
and modern natural law reflected the awareness of that distinction in
the modern teachers of natural law. The exposition of natural law
within the architectonic of Thomas's thought was and remains their
greatest strength. It proves also a ground for reservation of as

sent. It leads one to wonder whether the ultimate grounds of the
doctrine were accessible to human reason. It forces one to ask
whether the "nature" of the Thomistic doctrine, clearly of mainly
Aristotelian origin, could withstand the claims of the "nature" pre
sumably established for all to see by the victory of modern natural
science. On the other hand, modern "nature" has implied or required
diametrically opposed answers to the question of natural right. Our

contemporaries, in the name of rigor, or at least of methodology, as
sure us that the "facts" of nature supply us with no knowledge what
ever of the "values" of right and justice. But the founders of the
modern natural right doctrines thought that natural right was con
sistent with, and even in part dependent on even the most extreme
"mechanistic" versions of modern nature.
Accordingly for the author of Natural Right and History, "the

problem of natural right is today a matter of recollection rather than
of actual knowledge" (Introduction, p. 7). The first thing needful is
"historical studies." "I had to write a pr?cis raisonn?e of the history
of natural right."1 This is a first reason for the tentative character,
often overlooked, of a book which scarcely ever claims to demon
strate, or to refute, a single doctrine in a final manner. Strauss is
unique in contending that "historicism" raises the utmost jeopardy

for natural right. But he grants that "in the present state of our
knowledge, it is difficult to say at what point in the modern develop
ment the decisive break occurred with the 'unhistorical' approach
1 to Helmut
Private letter Kuhn, undated. Published in Independent
Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 23.
STRAUSS'S NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY 59
that prevailed in all earlier philosophy" (p. 13). In his earlier Hobbes
book (1936) he had explored the turning to history by Hobbes and
others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He does not even
allude to this earlier turn inNatural Right and History, nor did he
ever publish his related studies of Montesquieu and others: "the dis
covery of history" remained for Strauss an uncompleted inquiry.
Similarly, as regards the first origins of natural right, "the full under
standing of the classic natural right doctrine would require a full un
derstanding of the change in thought that was effected by Socrates.
Such an understanding is not at our disposal" (p. 120). We cannot
say with confidence that Strauss himself believed this gap was elimi
nated by his subsequent books on Socrates. Natural Right and His
tory consists in great part of reasonings for the necessity of investiga
tions rarely if ever undertaken by others yet left incomplete by
Strauss. What was never actual knowledge can never become "a
matter of recollection."
It is difficult to fit together the "historical" dimension of Strauss's
book with his obvious intent to establish the philosophical grounds for
a decision as regards natural right. This difficulty begins with the
title. Despite the title it has been understood as, and described as,
"[Strauss's] study of natural law."2 The difficulty of grasping his
sense of "natural right" and "natural law" is owing ultimately to his
peculiar mode of exposition. Strauss nowhere gives a "systematic"

or even thematic discussion of the relation of these terms. The ques
tion arises whether his "essentially historical" treatment of these no
tions is meant to elicit their abiding and univocal meaning, or to show
that the "concreteness" of their instantiation defeats such univocity.
Certainly some of Strauss's most iconoclastic historical judgments

seem to presuppose an abiding meaning of "natural law." Thus it is
essential to his understanding of all three major protagonists of mod
ern natural law?Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau?that their teach
ings do not have the genuine character of natural law (pp. 181, 228,
276). It does not follow, however, that the character of natural law
which is absent there is present throughout pre-modern natural law.
Strauss's historical judgments are even more innovative about classic
natural right than about modern. The original form of classic na
tural right?the Socratic-Platonic?divides into a natural right
2
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: At the
Clarendon Press, 1980), p. vi.
teaching and a natural law teaching. It must be distinguished from

two other forms of classic natural right, Aristotelian natural right and
Thomistic natural law. The two forms of classic natural law which
thereby emerge are far from homogeneous. It might be tempting to
resolve this "terminological" discussion by saying: "natural right is
the genus and natural law is a species characterized by certain differ
ences, obligatoriness, universal promulgation, etc." Strauss's judg
ments about the heterogeneity within classic natural law do not per
mit this resolution. The heterogeneity within natural law, between
classic and modern natural right, and possibly between "natural law"
and "natural right," make impossible the abiding and univocal mean
ings of a "history of natural right." At the same time it does not fol
low that the particularity of these views is enmeshed in "historical
concreteness." Natural Right and History is a disclosure of funda
mental alternatives.
The difficulty just discussed proved to be connected with what is
surely the fundamental obstacle to the interpretation of Strauss's
book. The introduction begins with the invocation of the modern nat
ural rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence. Modern nat
ural right proves to be invulnerable to the modern critiques made by
the proponents of historicism, or of the distinction of facts and values,
because of their questionable premises. But modern natural right
from the outset sanctioned an "individualism" which has proved more
powerful than the restraints on individuality supplied by the modern
doctrines. "When liberals . . . had to make a choice between natu
ral right and the uninhibited cultivation of individuality" they chose
the latter (p. 5). The modern doctrine of individuality, developed in
several chapters, is the hitherto most powerful solvent of natural
right. Its inherent difficulties force us to think of the return to classic
natural right. In the final paragraph ofNatural Right and History we
read: "The quarrel between the ancients and moderns concerns even
tually, and perhaps even from the beginning, the status of 'individu
ality'." But classic natural right is "connected with a teleological
view of the universe," which "would seem to have been destroyed by
modern natural science" (pp. 7-8). "The fundamental dilemma, in
whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modern natural sci
ence" (p. 8). How then can classic natural right be a philosophic al
ternative for Strauss?
Finnis has remarked that Strauss's chapter 4 does not support
the "connection" alleged in the introduction between classic natural
right and a teleological uni verse.3 It is certainly correct that the ini
tial section of chapter 4 on the Socratic-Platonic "science of the whole"
is devoid of teleology. Read more carefully and in its entirety chap
ter 4 shows that part of the classic natural right doctrine does not re
quire a teleological universe, but that another part?even within the

Socratic-Platonic brand of natural right?does make that require
ment, in so far as it requires natural law and divine providence. The
destructive impact of modern natural science is then limited to those
natural right theories which make such requirements. But this in
turn proves The jeopardy
incorrect. raised by modern natural sci
ence is only as severe
as the cognitive status ofthat science is secure,
and in so far as its subject matter is comprehensive. Strauss ques
tions the claims of science on both grounds in chapters 2 and 5, using
in both cases primarily the self-understanding of modern philosophy
and science. Accordingly, his implied criticism, in this context, of
"the modern followers of Thomas" is not what it is initially stated to
be in the introduction?that they seek to combine the incombinable, a
teleological account of man with a modern, non-teleological account of
the universe (p. 8). Rather, they fail adequately to recognize that
modern science has never been able to deliver a comprehensive and
intelligible account of nature?if indeed that was ever its promise.

Yet Strauss insists on the necessity of an account of nature or the
whole as the indispensable condition of natural right. A pre-modern
account of nature or the whole is possible or necessary. Only at this
point is the fundamental issue of Natural Right and History finally

joined. It is not modern natural science but radical (or "existen
tialist") historicism which raises the most fundamental objections to
the intelligibility of the whole. The confrontation with historicism in
chapter 1 is the true introduction to the book.
The first two chapters ofNatural Right and History treat what
Strauss regards the as two greatest powers of contemporary life,
"History" and "Science." Each is a source of the denial of natural
3
"So far as I can see, Strauss, in his exposition of'classic natural right'
(Natural Right and History, chap. 4), makes no attempt to justify his prom
inent but vague assertion (ibid., 7) that 'natural right in its classic form is
connected with a teleological view of the universe'." Finnis, p. 52.
right. The book as a whole is divided into such pairs. Just as chap
ters 1 and 2 are "contemporary," so chapters 3 and 4 are "ancient"
and 5 and 6 are "modern." Given the length of the two parts of 5 and
of 6, Strauss could easily have given us four "modern" chapters: he
preferred a pair structure in the surface organization. All roads lead
to or from, all doctrines prepare or depart from, "classic natural
right" in chapter 4. It is "central" in its weight, but also central liter

ally, ifwe count the introduction and the subdivisions of 5 and 6 as
parts. The final chapter turns back upon?forms a pair with?the
first: chapter 5 on the turning to history prepares the first chapter on
historicism. Thus in 6 "Burke paves the way for 'the historical
school'"; in 1we begin the account of historicism with "the historical
school" without a mention of Burke (pp. 316, 13). The book becomes
something like a whole through the activity of the reader who joins
its end to its beginning; it ceases to be a linear "history" of natural
right. The pairs that articulate this whole are sometimes easily com
binable, the one being the root of which the other is the florescence,
sometimes heterogeneous and difficult to think together.
Likewise chapter 1 is a succession of pairs. We first learn that
historicism must be distinguished from conventionalism because one
rejects and the other accepts "the idea of philosophy." Historicism
has two forms, naive or "garden variety" historical relativism, and
"radical ('existentialist') historicism." Historical relativism is self
contradictory; radical historicism avoids self-contradiction by jetti
soning the claim to theoretical truth. Underlying both is "the experi
ence of history" which has two premises, one temporal and one atem
poral. The atemporal premise proves to be decisive. Radical

historicism is opposed to philosophy: one denies the intelligibility of
the whole, the other allegedly assumes it dogmatically. The concept
of philosophy in turn divides into "the idea of philosophy" and "the
Socratic notion of philosophy." Only the latter supplies the decisive
basis for a response to radical historicism?to Heidegger.
Strauss begins chapter 1 with the contrast between historicism
and conventionalism in order to establish the primacy of "the idea of
philosophy" for the question of natural right. "The fundamental
of conventionalism is . . . other than the idea of
premise nothing
philosophy as the attempt to grasp the eternal" (p. 12). Historicism
is the view that "all philosophizing essentially belongs to a 'historical
world', a 'culture' etc.?to what Plato had called the cave" (p. 12).
The possibility of philosophy is the necessary though not the sufficient
condition of natural right (p. 35). If philosophy is impossible, the

case for natural right is hopeless; if possible, the question of natural
right remains open. Strauss's book moves back and forth, in differ
ent chapters and within a single chapter, between two planes, the
possibility of philosophy, and the still further question of natural

right and its "sufficient condition." Chapter 1, on the first plane,
shows that historicism, by making philosophy impossible, makes nat
ural right impossible. Hence in chapter 1 Strauss restricts his use of
"idea" to two things, "the idea of philosophy" and "the idea of natural
right." But this distinction of planes does not always prove disjunc
tive. For it was the critique of a specific form of natural right?mod
ern natural right?which initially led to the historicist critique of "the
idea of philosophy."
Historicism, by denying philosophy, and conventionalism, by
only denying natural right, exist on different planes. They appear to
employ the same argument. From the variety and perishability of
opinions about right and justice they conclude to the denial of un
changeable right and justice. In each case this proves to be only a
first appearance. Each
requires special premises about the un
changeable. Conventionalism, as we learn from the thematic exposi

tion in chapter 3, must ultimately assume, e.g., that each man by na
ture seeks his own good, or that the good is the pleasant.
Conventionalism, at least in its outstanding exponents, was aware of

its premises. Strauss's task in explaining historicism is of consider
able difficulty. He must show what the non-historical premises of
historicism were, and that it was unaware of them. The question
arises whether this ignorance of their premises is a consequence of
the abandonment of "the idea of philosophy."
Strauss contends that historicism is a single phenomenon that di
vides into naive (theoretical) historicism and radical ("existentialist")
historicism (pp. 25, 32), which are both continuous and discontinu
ous. Naive historicism originates in the reaction of the eminent con
servatives of "the historical school" to the natural right doctrines of
the revolutionaries of 1789. It culminates in "the experience of his
tory" (pp. 20-22). The experience of history points backwards: its
premises are either identical with, or rooted in, the same natural
right doctrine which was opposed by "the historical school." It also

points forward: the experience of history was accepted by radical his
toricism, but without critical reflection on the premises ofthat experi

ence. The "experience of history" is thus the essence of the middle
term of a three-term historical sequence: modern natural right, naive
historicism, radical historicism. The experience of history only ap

pears to be based on empirical evidence?of the variety, incomplete
ness, inconsistency, and perishability of all past human thought. Its
strength in fact rests on two underlying beliefs or premises, stated in
paragraph 17, which are the core of chapter 1. Each premise, how
ever, is given a double formulation, one version corresponding to

modern natural right, the second to the historical school and naive
historicism. The identity within each double formulation is the bond
between modern natural right and naive historicism.
It seems to us that what is called the "experience of history" is a

bird's-eye view of the history of thought, as that history came to be
seen under the combined influence of the belief in necessary progress
(or in the impossibility of returning to the thought of the past) and of
the belief in the supreme value of diversity or uniqueness (or of the
equal right of all epochs or civilizations) (p. 22).
In the first or "temporal" premise the underlying identity of the two

versions is "progress"?implied in the second version, and dropping
the "necessity" of the first. "Progress" is preserved in radical histor
icism in the assertion that the historicity of human thought, while a
fateful and arbitrary disclosure and in no wise intelligible and neces
sary, is an advance over all prior, "pre-historicist" human thought (p.
25). In the second or "atemporal" premise, the identity is "individu
ality" or the belief that the real is the individual. Strauss reduces the
two premises to one in the discussion of radical historicism:
Nietzsche's preference for "the tragic life" (p. 26, footnote) shows
that he accepted individuality, "the fundamental premise of the his
torical school." But the view of the natural right revolutionaries of
1789 is that "the natural is always individual" (p. 14). Individuality
bonds together the three phases of Strauss's history of historicism.
If "individuality" is the fundamental premise, the temporal
premise, i.e., the temporality of all human thought, must be indepen
dent or derivative from it. The grand, overarching thesis ofNatural
Right and History, developed through chapters 5 and 6 but culminat
ing in 1, is that the individuality thesis precedes and prepares, chron
ologically and logically, the temporality of thought in the dimension of
history. Only this relationship makes possible a "history of histor
icism" as an account of a phenomenon which appeared for the first
time in the course of modern thought.
The "individual" inHobbes, the founder of modern natural right,
is an individual precisely because his selfhood is not constituted by
any relationship to other men, or to anything that is always, or eter
nal, neither to God, nor to the ultimate atomic individuals, as in an

cient materialism. From the Hobbesian individual Strauss traces a
course in chapters 5 and 6 to "history"; but this "humanistic" or politi
cal course of development will require a "cosmological" complement in
chapters 5 and 6 to justify the thesis that "the real is the individual"
simply. The solitude of the Hobbesian individual in the state of na
ture was bad but only because he was insecure. Moreover, as Rous
seau observed, he was not genuinely natural because he was
equipped with reason, pride, and other passions which presupposed

civil society. Rousseau's correction of Hobbes's individual presup
posed his distinction between the state of nature and civil society.
Hobbes's denial of man's natural sociality is the most visible starting
point for any account of the "discovery of history." Rousseau more
than any other established that individuality is good. Because his
goodness presupposed his independence or freedom, the natural man
had to be stripped of reason and those passions which are inseparable
from society and therefore dependence. In the first stage of his
thought Rousseau had made the discovery that to be an individual in
the modern sense is to be inhuman or subhuman. Man's humanity
(e.g., his reason and speech) is acquired, but his natural freedom is
lost, in the course of history, a mysterious process whose causality is

a mixture of necessity and accident. Rousseau sought to re-establish
the goodness of individuality or freedom on the basis of man's histori
cally-acquired nature, but the fundamental dependence on the myste
rious process of history remained. The elaboration of the good man
and the good citizen could be no more than an account of man as he
happens to have become up to now.

Man's nature is historically determined but man's knowledge is
not: a tension existed between the historical character of existence to
which the individuality premise had led, and the possibility of trans
historical knowledge. A resolution seemed to be available in the no
tion of an "absolute moment," discovered by Rousseau and Hegel (pp.
273, 315, 29). In the absolute moment the historical character of indi
viduality is disclosed as knowledge of final validity. Yet it proved im
possible to establish the absoluteness of the moment without non-his
torical or "theoretical" reasoning which belied the novel insight of
"the discovery of history." It was only radical historicism that recon
ciled historical individuality and temporality, or "being and time," by
abandoning the plane of theoretical understanding.
The immediate reason for the emergence of radical historicism
was the perception of the self-contradiction within naive historicism.

The latter had said all human thought is historical but had inconsist
ently exempted itself from its own verdict (p. 25). At this juncture it
would have been reasonable to examine the credentials of "the discov
ery of history" which had created the difficulty. Instead, Nietzsche
and his successors said we must make a "turn" to being or reality.
The difficulty exists only ifwe assume that reality is intelligible. But
the realization that human thought is embedded in historicity is a dis
closure of blind fate, not in principle intelligible to man as man, and
made to certain men at certain and perhaps
times only once. Is this
not once again the notion of an "absolute moment"? On the one hand,
the radical historicist denied that the end of history had been reached;
on the other, he said or implied that the disclosure of historicity was
an absolute advance over all previous, "prehistoricist" thinking. He
could not "prove" this superiority by historical evidence of an "em
pirical" variety without relapsing into theoretical, non-historical rea
soning. The mysterious ground of the disclosure of history is hidden,

but it can be wrested from its hiddenness by the creative actions of
poets, thinkers, and statesmen as distinct from philosophers.4 It
does not exist apart from the individual creative human actions, the
truly historical events; it is dependent on human doings. "The high

est principle, which as such, has no relation to any possible cause or
causes of the whole, is the mysterious ground of'history' and [is]wed
ded to man and man alone . . ." 176). The which re
(p. difficulty
sults is stated by Strauss in terminology which is probably meant to
to Heidegger. ". . . there are no human beings,
refer [I]f and when
there may be entia, but there cannot be esse, that is . . . there can
be entia while there is no esse" (p. 32).5
The other side of the radical historicist argument is its critique of
the possibility of philosophy, especially in its ancient or classical
form. This critique must be met by Strauss, most obviously in the
4
Martin Heidegger, Einf?hrung in die Metaphysik (T?bingen: Neo
marius Verlag, 1953), pp. 47-48; English translation, An Introduction to
Metaphysics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1959), pp.
62-63.
5
Cf. Heidegger, p. 64: "Es gibt keine Zeit, da der Mensch nicht war,
nicht weil der Mensch von Ewigkeit her und in alle Ewigkeit hin ist, son
dern weil Zeit nicht Ewigkeit ist und Zeit sich nur je zu einer Zeit als
menschlich-geschichtliches Dasein zeitigt." English translation, p. 84;
"There is no time when man was not, not because man was from all eternity
and will be for all eternity but because time is not eternity and time fashions
itself into a time only as a human, historical being-there."
"ancient" chapters 3 and 4, if natural right is to be possible. Philoso
phy makes the dogmatic assumption that the whole is knowable, that
is, intelligible (p. 30). "The whole as it is in itself is identified with

the whole in so far as it is intelligible." Strauss could have observed
that this is the textbook objection to modern, especially Cartesian,
rationalism: what is "clear and distinct" to the human mind is arbi
trarily identified with the substance of things. While classical philos

ophy is the ultimate source of this modern error, it is apparent that
the objection turns on its modern consequences. The identification
mentioned makes it possible to regard the whole as an "object" to be
mastered by a "subject"?in the terms of Descartes. The classical
assumption supplied the remote but necessary basis for the techno
logical goal of the founders of modern philosophy?"mastery of na

ture" in Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes. The "quarrel of the ancients
and moderns" is thereby abolished. The opposition between an an
cient philosophy whose intention is primarily theoretical or contem
plative, and a modern philosophy whose intention is to make the
human race "lord of the universe," is replaced by a single metaphysi
cal tradition, whose beginning is in antiquity, and whose fruit ismod
ern technological mass society. If the whole is intelligible (or "law
ful" in terms of modern physics) it is predictable and controllable.
The root of the guiding assumption now reveals itself to be the dog
matic identification of "to be" in the highest sense with "to be always."
in the highest sense with "to be always."
It is clear already in chapter 1 that Strauss means to respond to
radical historicism not with "the idea of philosophy" but with a pre
cise version thereof, "the Socratic sense of philosophy" (pp. 23, 32,
35). "Philosophy is knowledge that one does not know, that is, it is
knowledge of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamen
tal problems and, therewith, of the fundamental alternatives regard
ing their solutions that are coeval with human thought" (p. 32). The
possibility of philosophy does not require that there be "ideas" which
are "the only things which are beyond all change" and "separated"
from the things (cf. City and Man, pp. 119-20). It requires no more
than that "the fundamental problems always be the same" (p. 35). In
accordance with this understanding of Socratism, the usage of "idea"
through Strauss's book departs markedly from that usually found in

the mouth of Socrates in the Platonic writings. An "idea" is a funda
mental problem. From this perspective we understand how chapter
4 can be entitled "The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right": ideas can
come to be.
InNatural Right and History "idea" is used with economy and

precision. Each chapter is concerned with one or two but not more
than five items which are designated as "ideas." Chapter 1 speaks of
"the idea of philosophy" and "the idea of natural right" but no others;
chapter 2 of "the idea of science" and "the idea of natural right" but no
others. "The idea of science" occurs in no other chapter, and "the
idea of philosophy" in no other chapter, except in connection with
Rousseau's rejection of "the classical idea of philosophy" (pp. 261
62). The term "idea" is normally used not in the chapter where it re
ceives its primary exposition, but in the chapter where it becomes
problematic. Thus, "the idea of philosophy" as the attempt to grasp
the eternal is spelled out at length in chapter 3 where the phrase is
absent. And "the idea of science," which is expounded at length in
connection with Hobbes in chapter 5, where it is absent, occurs only
in the chapter devoted to Max Weber.
II
The only chapter inNatural Right and History which examines

a twentieth century thinker at length is also the only chapter inwhich
Strauss permits irony to pass over into jest and ridicule. The chap
ter on Max Weber is also the only chapter inwhich is discussed amat
ter of some gravity, "the secular struggle between philosophy and
theology" (p. 75).
The theme of chapter 2 is the rejection of "the idea of natural
right" made on the basis of "the idea of science" in its contemporary,
or at least Weberian, version. Weber understood scientific method to
be autonomous, or devoid of need for philosophic justification in terms
of the nature of reality. His method was "metaphysically neutral" or
"
'scientific' in the present day sense of the term" (chapter 6, p. 266).
Hence chapter 2 seems to exist on a different plane from chapter 1: it
concerns not the possibility of philosophy, but the question of a deter
minate answer to the question of the right life, or of the possibility of
natural right. It could appear that method determines ethics, in so
as
far method dictates the necessity of the distinction between "facts"
and "values," and declares that only the former are capable of rational
adjudication. Weber, as distinct from many he influenced, did not

draw this conclusion. To establish that values are a different sort of
thing from facts, it was necessary to show that there are a variety of
insoluble conflicts between values, or between "unchangeable princi
pies of right and goodness." Ethics determines method. More pre

cisely, the discussion of ethics which shows its impossibility at the
same time establishes the necessary condition of method, the distinct
ness of the domain of "fact" from that of "value." But the reasonable
ness of the life devoted to factual inquiry obviously depends on a
value, the value of science. The same argument that established the
rationality of the factual domain of science, establishes the irratio

nality of the science that studies that domain.
It might seem that this result shows the folly of "the idea of sci
ence" when divorced from "the idea of philosophy." But Strauss ap
pears to accept Weber's view that they stand or fall together. The
ultimate conflict forWeber between "unchangeable principles of right
or goodness" is the conflict between "religious faith" and "the idea of
science." Strauss tried "to state in more precise terms what Weber
had inmind when he said that science seemed to be unable to give a
clear or certain account of itself" (p. 74). The "more precise" account
proved to be in terms of "the secular struggle between philosophy

and theology." "The fundamental question is whether men can ac
quire that knowledge without which men cannot guide their lives in
dividually or collectively by the unaided efforts of their natural
powers, or whether they are dependent for that knowledge on Divine
Revelation" (p. 74). Philosophy and
revelation each regard them
selves as "the one thing needful"; no harmony or synthesis is possi
ble. The question of what each can say on its own behalf appears to
involve what each can say to exclude the other. But revelation is un
able but also not obligated to refute the possibility of philosophy,
whereas philosophy, to show its own
reasonableness, is obligated but
unable to refute the possibility of revelation. The choice of philoso
phy cannot satisfy its own requirement that the choice be reasonable
choice.
Weber was wrong: the conflict is not insoluble but decides in
favor of revelation. But the final blow to the rationality ofWeberian
science appears to be a pyrrhic victory for Strauss. If philosophy is
impossible as a rational alternative, the case of natural right is hope
less. Natural Right and History stands at the crossroads. Yet such
is the unconcern of Strauss that he lets stand without objection the
argument of chapter 2 inwhich philosophy is vanquished by revela
tion, and leaves the scene of battle with a jest, "hastening back from
these awful depths ..." (pp. 75-76). This is the most curious mo
ment inNatural Right and History.
We start with the observation that Strauss went out of his way
to sharpen in his own terms what was only latent inWeber. The
"more precise" version is also what he calls a "bird's-eye view" of the
struggle between philosophy and theology. This reminds us of the

"bird's-eye view" quoted above underlying the "experience of his
tory," a fallacious view in Strauss's judgment. (The phrase occurs
only twice.) The "bird's-eye view" o?Natural Right and History

proves to be identical with Strauss's view in his early book of 1930 on
Spinoza and biblical religion. In both the premise that philosophy
cannot refute the possibility of revelation is fatal to the rationality of
the choice of philosophy. In the 1930 book Strauss concluded that or
thodoxy is superior to the modern rationalism of Spinoza; the relation
to pre-modern philosophy, which was not a live option, did not have to
be considered. In the 1962 preface to the English translation of the
Spinoza book Strauss criticized his earlier views in two respects.
"The victory of orthodoxy through the self-destruction of rational
philosophy was not an unmitigated blessing, for itwas a victory not of
Jewish but of any . . ."6 he had
orthodoxy, orthodoxy. Meanwhile,
come to believe that a return to pre-modern philosophy is possible.
"Other observations and experiences confirmed the suspicion that it
would be unwise to say farewell to reason" (in the phrase of Spinoza).7
This self-criticism of 1962 can already be found inNatural Right
and History, provided we follow the theme of religion and philosophy
into the "ancient" chapters. In place of a confrontation with the one
"Revelation" as in chapter 2, philosophy confronted the "many ortho
doxies" or the many "divine codes" at its inception, according to chap
ter 3. It was the "contradiction" among the many divine codes (pp.
86-87) that was a necessary condition of the original emergence of
philosophy. For the "pre-Socratics" the status of revelation or "su
perhuman information" (p. 87) was settled prior to the emergence of

"the idea of philosophy." But Strauss's auto-critique required a sec
ond phase. In the Socratic concept of philosophy in chapter 4, the
"divine codes" are not dismissed but restored to a place among the
fundamental alternatives (p. 125), without, however, losing their
manyness or their mutual contradiction.
6 Leo
Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken,
1965), preface, p. 30.
7
Ibid., p. 31.
III
Philosophy first emerged with "the discovery of nature" which

was "made by some Greek twenty-six hundred years ago or before"
(p. 82). The first section of chapter 3 (paragraphs 1-17) is an arche

ology of this discovery. Why is the original discovery of "the idea of
philosophy" by "the first philosophers" the genuine meaning of philos
ophy which is "trans-historical" and valid for all time?
The answer which underlies the whole ofNatural Right and His
tory lies in the inseparable connection between "the idea of philoso
phy"?which we met in chapter 1?and "the idea of nature," a con
nection of final validity. Strauss tacitly grants that what the first
philosophers discovered was not so much "nature"?only once does
he deign to mention what they said nature is?but "the idea of na
ture." Only by recognizing the elements which belong to the prob
lem of nature is philosophy possible. The first philosophers discov
ered nature in this sense, but they denied natural right: they were
"conventionalists." Because they discovered nature as an authority
or standard, and hence as a term to be distinguished from "conven
tion," they were able to pose the problem of natural right. Accord
ingly, the first part of chapter 3 on "the idea of nature" is followed by

its other part on "the idea of natural right." Only these two "ideas"
occur in chapter 3. Strauss seeks to show why the specific answer of
the first philosophers to the problem of nature led to the conventiona
list answer to the problem of natural right. He designates the cause
of their error in the central of the first section: ". . . the
paragraph
perspective inwhich nature was discovered [was] determined by the
original character of authority" (p. 86). Authority in pre-philosophic
life is "characterized by the primeval identification of the good with
the ancestral" (p. 83). Strauss's general problem is to show that al
though philosophy and nature originally emerged in opposition to an

"authority" of a specific type that distorted the original meaning of
philosophy and nature, nonetheless the meaning of the "ideas" of phi
losophy and nature that emerged are of timeless validity.
The "way" or "custom" of things is the pre-philosophic anteced
ent of "nature" (p. 82). Prior to philosophy almost anybody knows a
good deal about the ways peculiar to kinds of things, e.g., dogs, etc.,
but the paramount custom or way is the way of one's own society. It
was not the "way" of a class or kind of thing which provoked the dis
covery of nature, but the way of one's own society, which tends to
comprehend everything, the way of our tradition, the core of which is

the belief that "the good is the ancestral" (pp.82-83). Or rather it
was the discovery that the ancestral good as expressed in the "divine
code" written or unwritten of one's own society is in contradiction
with the divine codes of other societies. The perception of the con
tradiction between the divine codes was the necessary condition for
the discovery of nature. Those who were believed to have estab
lished the divine codes were thought to be gods, or sons of gods, or
"dwelling near the gods" (pp. 83-84). Just as these first beings
were both "first" and "good," so when nature replaced the divine
codes in the emergence of philosophy itwas understood as both "the
first things" and an authority or standard for all other things. As
"determined by the original character of authority" the discovery of
nature as "the first things" obscured the manifest articulation of
things into classes or kinds. But "the two most important meanings
of nature" are "the first things" and the essential character of a kind
or class of things (p. 83, footnote 3). The understanding of nature
tended therefore to have the character of a descent from the first or
divine or imperishable things (cf. Sophist 242c8-243bl). In so far as
it ascended from "experience" it did not ascend from the kinds of
things, and in its descent it did not link the first things with the kinds
of things. Its perspective was therefore adverse to the discovery of
the natural within the class of human things. This "divine" perspec
tive is reflected in the text of Heraclitus which is crucial for our grasp
of conventionalism in the first philosophers. "In God's view, all
things are fair [noble] and good and just, but men have made the sup
position that some things are just and others are unjust" (p. 93).
The judgment of the first philosophers that right and justice are
"by convention" had only a loose connection with "nature." What
could be traced to the divine codes could be safely relegated to con
vention. On the other hand, since the first things are the eternal or
imperishable things (p. 89), it was apparent that the class of perish
able things is too wide to be identified with convention, or traced to
the divine codes. Neither the generation of animals, nor their char
acteristic behavior?the barking and wagging the tail of dogs, for in
stance?is amenable to the influence of divine codes. Nor was it possi
ble to derive such features of things from specific versions of the "first
things" such as the atoms and void of Democritus. It was necessary
to embark on an inquiry into the human things to establish what could
be attributed to the divine codes, i.e., to human decision and agree

ment, and what was independent thereof. To compress the results of
Strauss's lengthy analysis, it was not the variety and changeableness
of beliefs about right and justice which proved decisive, but the anal
ysis of law and the city. "The nerve of the conventionalist argu
ment ... is this: is conventional because essen
right right belongs
tially to the city and the city is conventional" (pp. 107-108). The
right which belongs to the city is conventional, however, only because
it is opposed to the thesis that by nature everyone's desire is directed
towards one's own good. And this thesis in turn was traceable?so
Plato at least
thought?to the view that human nature discloses to us
that "the good is identical with the pleasant." These special assump
tions were not drawn from the inquiry into the variety and unchange
ableness of opinions. They were not evidently applicable to human
phenomena alone, although what they were meant to explain was pe
culiarly human. There was perhaps a harmony between these as
sumptions and particular ("materialist") views of the first things.

But there was no firm bond between the "nature" embodied in these
assumptions about the human, and "nature" understood as "the first
things." The conventionalism of the "pre-Socratic" conventionalists

was arbitrary.
Nevertheless, by the discovery of nature as "the first things" the
first philosophers discovered "the idea of philosophy." This discov
ery keeps its finality even though it is susceptible of alternative inter
pretations. The whole of Natural Right and History is an experi
mental inquiry into its implications. "The fundamental premise" of
the discovery of nature is "that no being emerges without a cause" (p.
89). The causality we acknowledge to account for the manifest
changes of things familiar to us is incomplete, and dependent on fur

ther and unknown causes, and therefore not known as causality, un
less there are first things which are as such unchangeable. If, on the
other hand, causality becomes understood as a "construct" or "cate
gory" of the human mind, it loses the possibility of being understand

able: it is nature, and not the human mind, which is the cause of the
human mind. It is only the first things, and not some psychology or
study of the human, that can account for the possibility of philoso
phy. The "idea of philosophy" demands therefore that one distin
guish between that causality which is attributable, at least immedi
ately, to human agency, and that which is not, precisely in order to
understand itself as a human possibility. It requires the distinction
between nature and art, on the one hand, and nature and convention
on the other.
Hobbes was the first modern to experiment with the abandon
ment of the ("metaphysical") quest for the first things. Accordingly
he had to abandon the double sense of "nature" in antiquity: as a term
of distinction, and as a standard. He tried to abolish the distinction
between nature and art; he was forced to understand philosophy as
art or "construction" in contradistinction to nature. Philosophy, as
distinct from other human activities, stands or falls by its relatedness
to the first things. Its own quest for knowledge of ultimate things
cannot possess its distinctive character?a good internal and unique
to its own activity?unless the first things are of "higher dignity" (p.
89) because they constitute the order in which everything else is.
This insight into "the idea of philosophy" is not denied but confirmed
by those of our century who suggest that the highest human possibil
ity is the attempt, through authentic despair or "creativity," to con
front the groundlessness of all things in any "first things." Such at
tempts seek to return to the ancestral or "the gods" on the plane of
human reflection without thinking about the nature of the ancestral.
The possibility of philosophy is stamped with the duality of the first
things which both mirrors and departs from the duality of the ances
tral.
IV
The treatment of "classic natural right," the subject of the cen

tral chapter, is divided according to a complex plan:
1. The Socratic or Socratic-Platonic "science of the whole" (pp. 120
26)
2. The classic natural right teaching (pp. 126-46)
3. The Socratic-Platonic form of classic natural right, including Stoic
natural law (pp. 146-56)
4. The Aristotelian form of classic natural right (pp. 156-63)
5. Classic natural right in the form of Thomistic natural law (pp. 163
64)
The Socratic-Platonic "science of the whole" in section 1 is the only
"classic" account of the whole or nature, and hence the only "classic"
version of "the idea of philosophy" found in chapter 4. Thus sections
1 and 3 must bear the whole weight of the question, what is the con
nection of classic natural right and teleology? Section 2 is the only
"anonymous" section: it strives to remain neutral, especially to the

differences between "Plato" and "Aristotle." At the end of section 2
we encounter the central difficulty of the chapter. It is only after
spelling out the classic natural right doctrine, especially as regards

"the best regime," that Strauss addresses the questions: from what
can natural right be derived? "Can natural right be deduced from
man's natural end? Can it be deduced from anything?" (p. 145).
More precisely, can "the idea of justice" be derived from "the idea of
man?" (p. 145). "Justice" and "man" are the only items designated as
"ideas" in chapter 4; they are not designated as such in any other
chapter. The connection between these two ideas, especially but not
only in their Socratic-Platonic context in section 3, is the core of chap

ter 4. This conclusion is confirmed by the absence of any derivation
of natural right or natural law in the Aristotelian and Thomistic sec
tions 4 and 5. Moreover, the clarification of the distinction between
"natural right" and "natural law," in so far as it is supplied by
Strauss, is found primarily in the Socratic-Platonic contexts. Only
this clarification makes possible Strauss's novel assimilation of the
Stoic natural law to the Socratic-Platonic form of classical natural
right, on the one hand, and the distinction between Stoic and Tho
mistic natural law, on the other.
Philosophy, according to Socrates, is "the science of the whole"
(p. 122). This novel view was prepared or necessitated by the effort
"to call philosophy down from heaven" and force it to inquire into the
human things. To avoid the reduction of human things to the divine
or natural things (p. 122) required the acknowledgment of the essen
tial heterogeneity of all the kinds or classes of things. "Nature" as
"the first things" can be linked with "nature" as class or kind of things
only in the light of the whole which comprehends both the eternal and
the perishable. Since the things which are "first" in the whole are
not directly accessible to us, we must begin with what is "first to us,"
the articulation of things into kinds, which is manifest. Socrates
never ceased considering "what each of the beings is" (p. 122). "To
be" means "to be something" or a particular being of a certain kind.
"To be" means therefore "to be a part," of the kind, and of the whole.
Since the "whole" cannot "be" in the same sense inwhich everything
that is "something" is, the whole must be "beyond being." Philoso
phy, accordingly, is not "metaphysics" as knowledge of "being as
being." So far is itfrom making the arbitrary assumption that "to be
is to be intelligible" that it is guided by the undeniable manifestness of
the articulation of things into groups or kinds. "This view makes
possible, and it favors in particular, the study of the human things as

such" (p. 123). It remains unclear in section 1what Strauss means by
stipulating the task of philosophy as "to understand the unity that is
revealed in the manifest articulation of the completed whole" (p.
123). Whether there are "horizontal" principles that mingle with, or
cut across, different classes, and whether such principles are ranged
in some "vertical" hierarchy with an apex or apices is not touched
upon.
The immediate problem that links section 1 and the following sec
tion of chapter 4 is that of knowing a class, e.g., the human nature of
man. Of any class of animals it is to some extent true that what is
common to a class is too impoverished to capture the superior activity
of the outstanding or "paradigmatic" examples of the class. It is a
question whether the propensity to imitation common to humans illu
minates the poetic activity of Shakespeare as much as his activity illu
minates this human propensity. To join these considerations with
ones before mentioned, if "to be" means "to be a part" this means for
human beings both a part of human kind or the social whole to which
we belong; it may also mean to be related as a part to the whole sim
ply through the mediation of one's kind or as an individual.

Thus we find Strauss speaking of "kind-relatedness," so to
speak, as "man's natural conscience" (p. 130), which is an awareness

that there are limits to his freedom in action related to his own kind.
But in addition "man cannot live without having thoughts about the
first things" (p. 91). This duality is reflected in the opinions which
men have about "those simple experiences regarding right and wrong
which are at the bottom of the natural right doctrines" (p. 105). As
epigraph to Natural Right and History Strauss places two stories
from the Bible, one of which illustrates the sense of natural injustice
present when a rich man with abundant resources takes from a poor
man. In the other a king offers to Naboth the Jesreelite fair ex
change or fair compensation for a vineyard which is nonetheless an
ancestral inheritance. Inquiry into the human things divides into
study of men essentially related to their own kind, and study of para
digmatic human beings whose excellence is essentially related to, or
even grounded in, "the first things."
It is recognition of this duality which requires that the Socratic
Platonic form of classic natural right?as distinct from the Aristote
lian or any other?be treated in two waves, in sections 2 and 3. In
the "classical natural right" which we encounter in section 2, the dis

tinctiveness of the Socratic-Platonic teaching is effaced in the com
mon ground it shares with the Aristotelian teaching, neither being
named. The common premise of both is the Socratic discovery of
kinds, and the specific heterogeneity of the human kind. Thus there
is a common answer of classic natural right to the conventionalist the
sis that the good is identical with the pleasant. The pleasures prove
to be derivative from the wants, and in the case
of the human, from
the natural order of the wants. "It is the hierarchic order of men's
natural constitution which supplies the basis for natural right as the
classics understood it" (p. 127). Nevertheless, neither in the immedi
ate sequel nor in the whole of section 2 does Strauss supply the deri
vation of natural right, which is reserved for following sections, as we
noted above. In section 2 we observe an oscillation between what is
common, and the perfection of man. As regards the common, "It is
man's natural sociality that is the basis of natural right in the narrow
or strict sense of right" (p. 129). But the basis of natural right in the
wide sense?the hierarchic order of man's natural constitution?
points in the direction of the natural inequality of men, of the unequal

contributions of men to the common good, and towards "the fuller ac
tualization of humanity in the statesman, the legislator, or the foun
der" (p. 133). Ultimately, "wisdom appeared to the classics as that
title to rule which is highest according to nature" (p. 140). Neverthe
less, in section 2 "the idea of justice" is not derived from "the idea of
man." The emphatically political character of classic natural right re
quired that the wisdom of the highest human type, for which the so
ciety has the greatest need, be harmonized with the inability of the
non-wise to recognize that wisdom (p. 141). In effect, this means
that the rule of law is to take the place of the rule of men, however
wise, and that "the best regime" is a "mixed regime." Section 2 ac
cordingly ends with a question, from what if anything can natural
right be deduced (p. 145)?

Section 3 (pp. 148-56) is prefaced by a premise on "opinion," and
is comprised of a double ascent to the nature of justice and right.
Only the aspiration expressed in speech, as distinct from what is ob
servable in the "facts," guides us to perfection. "Whatever may be
the proper starting point for studying human nature, the proper
starting point for studying the perfection of human nature, and
hence, in particular, natural right, iswhat is said about these subjects
or the opinions about them" (p. 146). Section 2 had begun with the
refutation of conventionalism by appeal to the "facts," as distin

guished from the "speeches," and led to the "hierarchic order ofman's
natural constitution" (pp. 126-27). Section 3 begins with the
speeches: with "the conflict between the two most common opinions
regarding justice" (p. 146), close to the beginning of Republic 1, and
leads to the "hierarchy of merit" (p. 148). Sections 2 and 3 are re
lated differently to the political: in the first the rule of the wise had to
be qualified by the consent of the unwise; in the second, this qualifica
tion is dropped in the pursuit of perfection. But the perfection that
transcends the political points in two directions.
What we may call "the first ascent" of section 3 is guided by "the
idea of justice." "In a just society the social hierarchy will correspond
strictly to the hierarchy of merit and merit alone" (p. 148). Perfect
justice demands that this principle not be qualified by requirements
however indispensable to the existence of political or civil society.
Civil society, as a rule, requires "indigenousness" as a condition of
high office: to be eligible, a citizen must be born within its borders,

and perhaps even a son of a citizen father and a citizen mother. Civil
society requires that one treat fellow citizens differently from

"foreigners" or "aliens," regardless of merit. Whereas the conven
tionalists had argued that it is against nature arbitrarily to "cut off
one segment of the human race and set if off against the rest" (chap
ter 3, p. 104), the same conclusion is now drawn in the name of jus
tice. Accordingly, the city can avoid contradicting justice only if it
transforms itself into the "world-state" (p. 149). Since only God can
rule the whole human race justly, the just society is "the cosmos ruled
by God" which "is simply according to nature because it is simply
just" (p. 150). The natural is derivative from the just. Only the wise
are citizens of this cosmopolis, and the character of their obedience to
its law, which is "the natural law" (p. 150)?is "prudence."
Strauss has here sketched the reasoning, drawn from Platonic di
alogues, which underlies the Stoic natural law doctrine found in Cic
ero's writings. More precisely, what has been sketched is the "origi
nal and unmitigated Stoic natural law teaching" (p. 155), as distinct
from the more familiar mitigated or diluted version (pp. 154-55). It
is at least the unmitigated Stoic teaching which is "based on the doc
trine of divine providence and on an anthropocentric teleology" (p.
154). This first ascent, or this form of classic natural right, indeed
substantiates the claim of the introduction that "natural right in its
classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe"
(p. 7).
It is then the perfection of justice and not the perfection of man

which leads to "the natural law." Since the natural law implies, or is
derived from, a divine law-giver, a harmonization is possible between
natural law and "the divine codes" of pagan antiquity and of every
time. Indeed Strauss seems to suggest that the reflection on perfect
justice is at the root of some divine codes at least. But "the idea of
justice" is problematic in a way different from "the idea of man" (p.
145). The natural law just sketched is problematic because it is
trans-political and therefore politically useless, at least in its undi
luted form; and because its theological and teleological requirements
are not easily satisfied by philosophy. Accordingly, the original Stoic
natural law doctrine was diluted: "the exoteric version" (p. 155) was
harmonized with the needs of civil society in general, and of Rome, in
particular. Its "theological-teleological doctrine" was subjected to
"severe criticism" by Cicero (p. 154). In this respect, we must say
that he conformed to the teaching, or the silence, of the Republic, and
to the aporetic character of theology and teleology in the Timaeus
and Laws. "On the basis of the biblical faith," the natural law or
dained by God becomes independent of, and prior to, "the paramount
social phenomenon"?the best regime, as understood by classic natu
ral right (p. 144, cf. p. 137). The best regime is the City of God and
therefore always actual, and not the "object of the wish or prayer of
gentlemen as that object is interpreted by the philosopher" (p. 139).

A certain de-politicization of the best regime results. "The cessation
of evil, or Redemption, is brought about by God's supernatural ac
tion" (p. 144) and not by the human construction of the best regime.
When Thomistic natural law harmonized natural right with the claims
of civil society, in part by including the Second Table of the Decalogue
in the moral law, a doubt remained whether it is natural law strictly
speaking, i.e., a law knowable to the human mind, unassisted by di
vine revelation (p. 163).8
What we may call "the second ascent" to perfect justice is guided
by "the idea of man." Whereas the first ascent moved from justice to
nature, the second moves from nature to justice. The life that is
"truly according to nature" is that which truly accords with the
hierarchic order of man's nature?the "basis for natural right" (p.
127) in the general as distinct from the "narrow or strict sense" (p.
8 sources of the natural see Ernest

For the diverse law tradition, L.
Fortin, "Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the Problem of Natural Law,"
Mediaevalia vol. 4 (1978): 179-208.
129). The excellent human life is "devoted to the pursuit of some

thing which is absolutely higher in dignity than any human things?
the unchangeable truth" (p. 151). Strauss does not so much offer the
deduction of natural right as identify its principle. "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" (p. 151). "That good life sim
ply ... is the life of a man who is awake to the highest possible de
. . . the of man's nature" "One may there
gree perfection (p. 127).
fore call the rules circumscribing the general character of the good
life 'the natural law'" (p. 127). To sum up, it is primarily this prob
lem of combining the diverse requirements of the two ascents?a
combination which is apparently insoluble "theoretically"?which is
the "idea of justice."
In ancient thought, the emergence of philosophy precedes by

perhaps two centuries the discovery of natural right and political phi
losophy. In modern thought, the emergence of a distinctively mod
ern "realistic" political philosophy inMachiavelli precedes by about a
century the founding of modern philosophy by Bacon, Hobbes, and
Descartes. In each case, the sequence proves illuminating. What
was discovered by the first philosophers was "the idea of nature," or
the essentially trans-political character of philosophy, which retained
its validity for Socrates and classic philosophy. What was discovered
by Machiavelli was that sound political "modes and orders" must be
understood without reference to "the ideal of human perfection" or
that perfect human life which is directed to the trans-political and
trans-human. We may then speak of Machiavelli's politicization of
political philosophy. The manner in which Machiavelli's principle

was the principal factor in the abandonment of "the idea of philoso
phy" and the politicization of philosophy is the theme of Strauss's in
terpretation of Hobbes. The three paragraphs on Machiavelli (pp.
177-79) thus have a weight out of proportion to their magnitude.
With the Hobbes discussion we enter on two chapters which prove to
be concerned with modern thought in its entirety. The importance of
Hobbes may be stated schematically: it was Hobbes, and only he, of
the illustrious founders of modern thought, who first conjoined the
two dominant strands of modern thought?the new "realistic" doc
trines of human individuality, and the new mathematical principles of
physical science. It was the Hobbesian foundation of modern natural
right whose crisis produced the turning to history, inwhich the politi
cization of philosophy culminated. We shall then treat chapters 5-6
as a unit.
The basic stratum of Hobbes's thought is a series of three fu
sions. He accepted the "public spiritedness" of philosophy which
follows from the premise that politics is the source of great human
goods. But he joined itwith the hedonism of the materialist tradition
which denied public-spiritedness. Hedonism can become public
spirited if it has nothing to seek or to fear beyond the political, and if
it can gain an indispensable benefit from the political. In the second
fusion, the elimination of the transpolitical took place on the plane of
natural philosophy. Hobbes joined together the Platonic notion that
"mathematics is the mother of all natural science," with Epicurean
materialism. His natural philosophy is "both mathematical and ma
terialist-mechanistic" (p. 170). But this fusion is possible only if its
components lose their original integrity and are treated as malle
able. The principle of this joint transformation was "method" or
methodology. We can know only if we have a procedure that links
together, preferably by deduction, only that which is fully evident.

Both the procedure and the evident must therefore be made or con
structed by ourselves. We can know what we make. The definitions
and axioms of mathematics are then understood as our postulations;
the principles of physics are not the "first things" or principles of the
whole, e.g., atoms and the void, but human constructs. Hobbes's
well-known materialism proves to be a "methodical" not a "metaphys
ical" materialism (p. 174). Because he had abandoned "the idea of na
ture," he was compelled to abandon "the idea of philosophy as the at
tempt to grasp the eternal" (p. 12). How then is the goal of
philosophy to be understood? It cannot be essentially different from
the goal of politics; it differs only as the teacher of the political from
its practitioner; it becomes a higher form of politics. Philosophy,
originally the humanizing quest for the eternal order, "has become a
weapon, and hence an instrument" (p. 34). Hobbes took over,
through Bacon, the politicization of philosophy by Machiavelli. In
the third fusion, the end by which philosophy and politics are joined
together comes from politics. Men as men are and can be concerned
only with "acquisition," or with the power to gain, and the power to
keep, whatever they actually desire. Scientia propter potentiam.

The connection of Hobbes and "History" is relatively easy to
make in one sense?on the plane of political philosophy. We have
only to locate the specific problems of modern natural right which

compelled Rousseau and then Burke to turn for a remedy to the his
torical (or "the local and accidental"). To divest natural man of those
social characters illicitly given him by Hobbes, Rousseau described a
"history of man," showing how men only acquired their rationality
and sociality as they moved away from the state of nature. To blunt
the doctrinaire character of modern natural right, Burke appealed to
the proved beneficence of actual regimes such as England in their his
torical circumstances. But however articulated is our political ac
count of their turn to the historical, it proves in both cases to be
grounded in premises about "metaphysics" and the intelligibility of
individuals and wholes. Rousseau's history of man in the Second
Discourse "ismeant to be neutral with regard to the conflict between
materialism and anti-materialism, or to be 'scientific' in the present
day sense of the term" (p. 266). Strauss's footnote refers us back to
discussion of Hobbes and Locke for the meaning of and preparation
for this remark. When a rational inquiry is "neutral" to first or ulti
mate principles, i.e., when the rationality of its inquiry is held to be
independent of such principles, we may call it "metaphysically neu
tral."9 On this basis Rousseau presented a "physical" history of man,
employing scientific categories of necessity and accident, while ex

cluding questions of the teleology of the historical process and of the
whole. Similarly, the central notion of man as "perfectible" in the
sense.of "malleable," was chosen because it was not implicated in
"metaphysical dispute," as was the quality of being a free agent. As
regards Burke, he started with the problem of the relation of theory

to practice, but his recovery of this pre-modern problem was clouded
by an understanding of "theory" which was partially and perhaps ulti
mately "modern." "[Burke] parts company with the Aristotelian tra

dition by disparaging theory and especially metaphysics" (p. 311).
His concept of metaphysics was influenced by Locke and Hume. We
must now turn explicitly to this metaphysical theme to understand
why historicism claimed that not merely the historical or human
whole is unintelligible, but why the whole simply is so.
The two key concepts of Strauss in understanding modern
thought are "individuality" and "metaphysical neutrality." The first
is pervasive in chapters 5-6; the second, less visible; and the linkage
9 in Descartes and Locke, see the au

For "metaphysical neutrality"
thor's "The 'Teaching of Nature' in Descartes' Soul Doctrine," Review of
Metaphysics 36 (September 1972): esp. 109 ff.
between them is dark. It is helpful to begin with their reflection in

common judgement about modern thought. The scholarly judgment
is that "the individual" is the dominant notion of modern political phi
losophy, and "epistemology" of modern philosophy. With "the indi
vidual" are connected unconditional rights, the "right of the particu
lar to be satisfied," and freedom as the realization of selfhood. To
"epistemology" belong the priority of method in science and philoso

phy, the demand for "foundations" of knowledge, the requirement
that philosophy be Wissenschaft, the several "transcendental" logics
or psychologies of knowledge, and Nietzsche's physio-psychology of
knowledge. The dominance of each is somehow neutral to the vicissi

tudes of "metaphysics." In general, the connection of these two dom
inant modern concerns has never been established. The exactness
demanded by epistemology has proved fatal to principles of right and
justice; the grounding of human activity in the good has proved be
yond the powers of the activity of epistemology. The irrationality of
values undermines the scientific value of rationality; the impossibility
ofWeltanschauung that includes the human good rebounds upon the
rationality of "philosophy as rigorous science."10 Both have long since
lost connection with intelligible principles of the whole. Even the su
preme efforts to link together "individuality" and rationality inHegel
and Nietzsche prove only to be stages in the development of histor
icism.
In Strauss's approach, the root concept is "individuality." We
need "order" and "method" as mediating concepts before it is seen to
entail "metaphysical neutrality." Modern individuality is the discov
ery of Machiavelli. If we examine "men as they are and not as they
ought to be" we are led to the modern individual who does not belong
by nature to any whole, neither to family, nor society, nor by inclina
tion or knowledge to what is abiding and eternal. His nature is most
clearly disclosed when he is most alone?in "the extreme situation."

His individuality is properly understood, however, when correctly re
lated to that order which is the indispensable condition of his being,
the social order, especially to the well-constructed or sound social
order. The sound social order does not seek to educate to virtue the
strivings of individuals for their own good, but to use them. "The
good order or the rational is the result of forces which do not them
selves tend toward the good order or the rational" (p. 315). This Ma
10
See Leo Strauss, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Phi
losophy," Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (Summer
1971): 1-9.
chiavellian principle is explicitly stated near the end ofNatural Right

and History in a context inwhich Strauss contends that it is the prin
ciple common to the concepts of the historical in Rousseau and
Burke. It had previously been exemplified in Locke, who believed
that the root of property or wealth is the labor or enterprise of the
individual, and that the sound order of political economy would result
from liberating the natural desire for acquisition (cf. Prince, chapter
3) from ethical or political restraints. The principle of order, which
was a principle of conscious construction with Machiavelli and in
Hobbes and Locke, became recognized as the intelligible element in
the process of history by Rousseau and Burke, but after the fact and
without human foresight. The Machiavellian principle brings the in
dividual within an order, but one which is exclusively human. In its
indifference to the trans-human, it prepares the concept of "meta
physical neutrality."
A more direct link to "metaphysical neutrality" is made when
Hobbes extends the Machiavellian intention to make the principles of
politics actual or effective, to the actualization of wisdom. Stated dif
ferently, the intention of Machiavelli to master fortune or chance in
human affairs was extended to "the mastery of nature" as the goal of
philosophy by Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes. In all three the me

diating concept was "method." It was by "the right method" that it
was thought possible to resolve the unending dispute between "dog
matism"?the great doctrines?and "skepticism," in the history of
thought. Only the exercise of extreme skepticism could lead to un

shakeable "foundations" of knowledge, i.e., a new dogmatism.11 The
heir of this resolution of the quarrel of dogmatism and skepticism is
ultimately historicism (chapter 1, p. 20). While the experiment with
extreme skepticism is best known to us from the "universal doubt" of
Descartes, the essential character of method was most clearly recog
nized by Hobbes. If we impose rules of method of human devising,
we may expect that method will enable us to master or control na
ture, but not that itwill disclose to us the articulation of nature, and
still less its first principles.
The possibility thus arises that it is of the essence of "epistemol
11
The origin of this "methodological" formula may be found in Francis
Bacon, Novum Organum (1620), in which "foundations" are established by a
method which rejects the "natural species" conveyed by the senses, thereby
finding a middle route between the dogmatism of Aristotle and the "acata
lepsia" of the Academy. See especially Novum Organum 1, Aph. 67.
ogy" to be "metaphysically neutral." Since it is now method which

guarantees the
cognitive status of our principles, there is no longer a
necessity to understand them by reference to still higher or "first"
things or principles. Epistemologically speaking, what is "first to us"

can be identified with what is "first in itself" ifwhat is "first to us" is
method, and not what "comes to sight" of
itself, through sensation
and opinion. The awareness of our ignorance of what is first simply,
or eternal, which is the original sting that gives rise to philosophy,
now became a matter of indifference. It remained for Kant to "dem
onstrate" the impossibility of metaphysics, and by means of the Cri
tique of Pure Reason, to show that not only science, but morality as
well, require "metaphysical neutrality." The Hobbesian insight into
the implications of method seems not to have been acknowledged by
"the founder of modern rationalism." To his method Descartes sup
plied a further foundation in a theocentric metaphysics. It thus ap
pears that Descartes preserved the concern of philosophy with the
"first things" and the eternal. Nevertheless, all scholars agree that
Descartes never even attempted to infer from the natures of things to
the existence and nature of God; his argument from "the effects" is
merely from "ideas." Nor did he even attempt to show that God
could be understood as the cause of the particular natures of things
which we experience, or even of the content of the laws of nature.
Descartes' "nature" is "metaphysically neutral" to the existence and
nature of God. The enormous responsibility imputed to God as guar
antor of human knowledge tends to blind us to Descartes' great de
parture from the metaphysical tradition: his refusal to acknowledge
that God could be known as the cause of the beings of this world.
"The good order or the rational is the result of forces which do
not themselves tend toward the good order or the rational" (p. 315).
This principle is not restricted to the human, but applies to cosmol
ogy, as Strauss indicates by endorsing Hegel's application of it to "the
planetary system," i.e., Newton. That Newton's system is "neutral"
in the sense we have used, is shown by the cognitive independence of
his fundamental laws from the question of the nature of body. That
body or matter must be understood in terms of atoms or "particles"
remains hypothetical or "probable" (Optics, query 31). The principle
as exemplified in cosmology was never integrated with its use in the
understanding of human things. In Descartes' cosmogony (Dis
course 5), it is a principle of a temporal process: from an original
chaos, bodies with inertial force, in accordance with "laws," little by
little constitute the present order of the solar system and the visible
heavens. The further evolution of the animal and human was beyond
Descartes' powers of deduction. In the political constructions of
Hobbes and Locke, it was not characteristic of a temporal process,
but of a constructed and enduring human order. In Rousseau and
Burke the principle was discovered in phenomena both temporal and
human?the workings of history. When Hegel followed their prece
dent, he divorced the manifestations of the principle in history from
the principles of nature (p. 320): the whole is beyond order. When
the historical was said to embrace the natural and all else, the last
vestige of an order which could embrace the modern individual was
lost. The natural whole had become incomplete and therefore unin
telligible inDescartes and Spinoza, because the future manifestations

of the laws of nature were infinite in character;12 unless the exhaus
tion of all possible manifestations compelled "the eternal return of the
same," a possibility recognized by Leibniz.13 The all-comprehensive
historical whole became incomplete and therefore unintelligible when
the possibility of "laws of history" was abandoned.
The Catholic University of America.
12
See Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, preface, p. 16:
"The knowledge of God as presented in the First Part of the Ethics is only
universal or abstract; only the knowledge of individual things or rather
events qua caused by God is concrete. Spinoza thus appears to originate
the kind of philosophic system which views the fundamental processus as a
progress: God in Himself is not the ens perfectissimum. In this most im
portant respect he prepares German idealism."
13 in Spinoza's Eth
See the author's "Analytic and Synthetic Methods
ics," in The Philosophy ofBaruch Spinoza, Studies in Philosophy and the
History of Philosophy 7 (1980): 316-18.

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Strauss's Natural Right and History

Author(s): Richard Kennington

right" of meaning?by asserting that the moral law must be a law of

conjunction of the rational and the historical. By the middle of the

Review of Metaphysics 35 (September 1981); 57-86. Copyright ? 1981 by the Review of

greatest strength. It proves also a ground for reservation of as

diametrically opposed answers to the question of natural right. Our

Accordingly for the author of Natural Right and History, "the

strate, or to refute, a single doctrine in a final manner. Strauss is

unique in contending that "historicism" raises the utmost jeopardy

peculiar mode of exposition. Strauss nowhere gives a "systematic"

Certainly some of Strauss's most iconoclastic historical judgments

teaching and a natural law teaching. It must be distinguished from

quire a teleological universe, but that another part?even within the

intelligible account of nature?if indeed that was ever its promise.

point is the fundamental issue of Natural Right and History finally

right" in chapter 4. It is "central" in its weight, but also central liter

poral. The atemporal premise proves to be decisive. Radical

condition of natural right (p. 35). If philosophy is impossible, the

possibility of philosophy, and the still further question of natural

changeable. Conventionalism, as we learn from the thematic exposi

Conventionalism, at least in its outstanding exponents, was aware of

right doctrine which was opposed by "the historical school." It also

toricism, but without critical reflection on the premises ofthat experi

term of a three-term historical sequence: modern natural right, naive

historicism, radical historicism. The experience of history only ap

ever, is given a double formulation, one version corresponding to

It seems to us that what is called the "experience of history" is a

In the first or "temporal" premise the underlying identity of the two

any relationship to other men, or to anything that is always, or eter

nal, neither to God, nor to the ultimate atomic individuals, as in an

equipped with reason, pride, and other passions which presupposed

lost, in the course of history, a mysterious process whose causality is

happens to have become up to now.

was the perception of the self-contradiction within naive historicism.

soning. The mysterious ground of the disclosure of history is hidden,

truly historical events; it is dependent on human doings. "The high

"ancient" chapters 3 and 4, if natural right is to be possible. Philoso

is, intelligible (p. 30). "The whole as it is in itself is identified with

trarily identified with the substance of things. While classical philos

logical goal of the founders of modern philosophy?"mastery of na

through Strauss's book departs markedly from that usually found in

InNatural Right and History "idea" is used with economy and

The only chapter inNatural Right and History which examines

adjudication. Weber, as distinct from many he influenced, did not

pies of right and goodness." Ethics determines method. More pre

rationality of the factual domain of science, establishes the irratio

proved to be in terms of "the secular struggle between philosophy

struggle between philosophy and theology. This reminds us of the

tory," a fallacious view in Strauss's judgment. (The phrase occurs

only twice.) The "bird's-eye view" o?Natural Right and History

philosophy. For the "pre-Socratics" the status of revelation or "su

perhuman information" (p. 87) was settled prior to the emergence of

Philosophy first emerged with "the discovery of nature" which

(p. 82). The first section of chapter 3 (paragraphs 1-17) is an arche

ingly, the first part of chapter 3 on "the idea of nature" is followed by

though philosophy and nature originally emerged in opposition to an

comprehend everything, the way of our tradition, the core of which is

be attributed to the divine codes, i.e., to human decision and agree

sumptions and particular ("materialist") views of the first things.

things." The conventionalism of the "pre-Socratic" conventionalists

changes of things familiar to us is incomplete, and dependent on fur

gory" of the human mind, it loses the possibility of being understand

The treatment of "classic natural right," the subject of the cen