The Weimar Intellectual Baggage in Leo Strausss Natural Right and History

Asim Jusic1

SJD candidate, Central European University (Budapest). Comments welcome, email: jusic_asim@phd.ceu.hu ; asimjusic@yahoo.com . This paper in its edited version is meant to be a part of the larger comparative study on the philosophy of law of Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt and Jurgen Habermas and its theoretical relevance for the current debate on European constitution.

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Abstract Leo Strauss remains one of the most interesting and controversial political theorists of the 20th century. In this paper, I analyze several chapters of his most famous work Natural Right and History in order to discern their Weimar intellectual roots. Using textual interpretation, I compare his work with works of Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. I conclude that, by and large, his closest intellectual affiliation is with Carl Schmitt. However, I argue that Strauss attempts to supersede the boundaries of Schmitt's thought by means of emerging himself into the reinterpretation of the fundamental problems of political theology and the perennial problem of the proper grounds of every polity from a perspective which lies outside the anthropological boundaries of Schmitt's thought. Nevertheless, in spite of this attempt, Strauss' criticism of Schmitt turns out to be a rejection of the consequences of Schmitt's reckless intellectual and political engagement rather than altogether persuasive building of an entirely new theoretical foundation of a 'new polity.'

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction................................................................................................................. 4 2. Strauss, the historicist thesis, and Heideggers existentialism....................................... 9 2.1 The greatest philosopher and his politics...................................................... 11 2.2 Historical attack on natural right................................................................... 13 2.3 Existentialism goes legal or Carl Schmitt..................................................... 28 3. Max Weber and the fact-value distinction ................................................................ 38 3.1 Critic of Max Webers fact-value distinction ............................................... 39 3.2 Heidegger, Schmitt and Weber as brothers in arms...................................... 47 3.3 Applying the Weimar lessons in America .................................................... 52 4. Thomas Hobbes, or on the foundation of liberalism................................................. 56 4.1 Consequences of Hobbes Liberalism .......................................................... 61 4.2 Objections to Hobbes and liberalism ............................................................ 64 4.3 United again .................................................................................................. 67 5. Reinventing Locke .................................................................................................... 73 5.1 Locke, the pursuit of happiness and the property ......................................... 74 5.2 Natural law non-believer............................................................................... 77 5.3 Natural constitutional law ............................................................................. 79 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 84 7. Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 88

1.

Introduction

Leo Strauss is a friend of the liberal democracy, but not the believer in the ultimate goodness of liberal democracy. The best way to express his stance towards the liberal democracy would be to paraphrase famous Churchills phrase that the democracy is the worst possible political system, the problem is that we have no better. Strauss was born on 20 September, 1899 in Kirchhain, Hessen, Germany, in a Jewish family, and died on 18 October, 1973, in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. 2 His own life to a certain degree reflects cataclysms of the 20th century. Educated during the crisis of the Weimar Republic, he shared the feeling of the crisis of modernity with his contemporaries, most notably Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, and Carl Schmitt. For all of them, the crisis of the Weimar Republic had cosmic proportions; it was no less than the crisis of whole humanity and the final evidence that whole history has somehow gone wrong. Strauss eventually migrated to the United States and managed to escape all the horror of the Second World War in Europe. During his life in America, he was a part of the group of great three, together with Hans Morgenthau and Friedrich Hayek, which was teaching at the approximately same time at the University of Chicago. As John P. McCormick argues, each of them, in his own way, contributed to the American conservatism. Moreover, all three had a common friend, famous and infamous German legal and political theorist, Carl Schmitt.
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Although Strauss spent the rest of his life and

wrote his most important works in the United States, without exaggerating one can say that Strauss spiritually always remained under the intellectual influences of his Weimar days. To this claim, we can add one important qualification. Strauss made his life task to make sure that cataclysm that followed the fall of the Weimar Republic does not repeat
Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (MacMillan Press, 1988), p. 1. John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 302-304. Hereafter Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism. McCormick identifies three lines of American conservatism that is traceable back to Carl Schmitt: cultural conservatism via Leo Strauss; technoeconomic conservatism via Hayek; and foreign-policy conservatism via Morgenthau. McCormick also argues that concepts of all of the above named, following the end of the Cold War, may transform from what previously perceived as a friendly conservative critic of liberal democracy to more malignant forms, see ibid. For other sources on Morgenthaus and Hayeks relationships with Carl Schmitt, see, Alfons Sllner, German Conservatism in America: Morgenthaus Political Realism, Telos 72 (summer 1987), and Bill Scheuerman, The Unholy Alliance of Carl Schmitt and Friedrich A. Hayek, Constellations 4:2 (October 1997).
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itself in the United States. Viewed this way, his political philosophy stops being the purely academic exercise in probity and becomes an epic saga. In the introduction to one of his most important works, Natural Right and History, this is precisely what Strauss tells us. 4 He begins the book by quoting the renowned phrase from the American Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 5 Strauss then proceeds by warning his audience of the disappearance, or the lack of belief, in that teaching that made the United States of America one of the greatest countries in the world. He claims that this disappearance and the lack of belief in the selfevident rights of man are now characteristic of the American social science, if not of the Western thought in general. The reason for this, according to Strauss, is that the American social science has fallen prey to dangers of German thought, namely the historicist thesis and the value-free social science. In his words, It would not be the first time that a [German] nation, defeated on the battlefield, and, as it were, annihilated as a political being, has deprived its conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the joke of its own thought. 6 We are then led to believe that Strauss was an unqualified believer in the teachings of natural law and natural right and the fervent critic of the joke of German thought, the tradition in which he was (together with his Jewish origins) raised and educated. But is that really so? In this paper I argue, contrary to Strauss, that his views are deeply embedded in the German philosophical tradition, more precisely, the German philosophy as Strauss experienced it during his education in the turbulent days of the Weimar Republic. Through description, interpretation, and comparison, I will demonstrate that the ideas Strauss advocates, supposedly in the name of natural right, share much in common with works of his teachers and friends from the days of his education. Views of Martin Heidegger qualified by retreat to Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitts critic of his teacher Max Weber and his opinions on Hobbes; negative views of the liberalism, technology
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Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), hereafter NRH. All unnamed references are works by Leo Strauss. 5 Ibid, p. 1. 6 Ibid, p. 2.

and modernity in general, shared by all the above named gentleman; all that is very much present in Strausss Natural Right and History. But it is all somewhat concealed in Natural Right and History, and except Weber and Nietzsche, both Heidegger and especially Schmitt were not addressed by name. As I said, my intention is to show, through the description, interpretation and comparison, influence of Heidegger (and through his proxy Nietzsche) and Carl Schmitt on Strausss work Natural Right and History. With this in mind, I felt that it was sufficient to focus the most of my work on three chapters in Natural Right and History: natural right and the historical approach; natural right and the distinction between facts and values; and the modern natural right of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. It is superfluous to say that this was not at the expense of the rest of the book or other works by Leo Strauss, but only for the reasons of more focused analysis and the restrictions of space. Complete analysis would require work much more voluminous than this one. In part one of this work, I analyze Strausss critic of the historicist thesis. Although he is unnamed in it, Heideggers historicism and existentialism is its primary target. In spite of Strausss critic, due mostly to Heideggers controversial political engagement, I emphasize Strausss debt to Heidegger and his qualification of Heideggers existentialism with Friedrich Nietzsches concept of nature, authenticity, noble delusion and the belief in the necessity of the philosopher-king. In addition, I analyze legal existentialism of Carl Schmitt, similarity between Schmitts and Heideggers thought and Strausss fundamental agreement and radicalization of Schmitts critique of liberalism. In part two, I examine Strausss critic of Max Webers value free of social science and argue that it is fundamentally the same as Carl Schmitts critic of Max Weber. Moreover, using examples of Strausss post-WWII writings, I try to show how Strauss retained negative attitude towards the value-free and quantitatively oriented social science during his life in the United States. Strausss critic of Thomas Hobbes, whom Strauss regards as the founder of liberalism, is addressed in the part three. Again, I argue that his critic of Hobbes and liberalism is similar to Carl Schmitts critic of liberalism. Also, I analyze roots and depth of Strausss critic of Carl Schmitt and try to show that

Strauss criticizes him more on account of the consequences of Schmitts Machiavellianism than on the basis of the fundamental disagreement with him. Strausss interpretation of the political philosophy of John Locke is analyzed in part four. There, my argument is that Strauss invents his own Locke according to his model of atheist philosopher-legislator that publicly preaches natural law and religion in which himself does not believe, the model that he became aware of during his Weimar days under the influence of Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. Moreover, I describe how Strauss interprets Locke as the continuation of the liberal experiment started by Hobbes and argue that Lockes philosophy, in Strausss interpretation, contains elements that are sufficient for the launch of Strausss project, the education of elite in the liberal massdemocracy. As for the works of Leo Strauss cited in this thesis, naturally the one most frequently used is Natural Right and History. But Strausss ideas are spread throughout his works and he does not reveal his ideas and their sources in a straightforward manner. Even when he does so, as he did, i.e., in the chapter on Max Webers fact/value distinction in the Natural Right and History, there is still a concealed part or reference to unnamed authors whom Strauss engages in the intellectual debate or from whose ideas he borrows. It is, then, not surprising that those readers who read just one of his works, find his philosophy difficult to understand. To avoid this, I have made frequent references to Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism and Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, especially in the chapter on Heidegger. Rebirth and Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy contains two essays in which Strauss addresses Heidegger and his ideas directly, in contrast to the chapter on historicism in Natural Right and History, where he does not mention Heidegger even once. As for Carl Schmitt, Strauss wrote only one essay on him, dated 1932, Comments on Carl Schmitts Der Begriff Des Politischen. After that essay, for the rest of his life, to my knowledge, Strauss never directly mentioned Schmitt in his other works. One is then bound, as I did, to engage in the comparative study of Strausss and Schmitts works, especially Schmitts The Concept of the Political, in order to find similarities or differences. 7

For a list of Strausss works used, see Bibliography, p. 83.

Regarding the secondary sources used, several authors are the most important and most frequently cited. David Dyzenhauss Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Herman Heller in Weimar and John P. McCormicks Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology provide indispensable insights into the political ideas of Carl Schmitt. McCormicks work is very detailed and provides an indepth discussion of Schmitt, especially his debt to Max Weber and the comparison with Leo Strauss. Of course, Shadia B. Drury is the most vocal and publicized critic of Leo Strauss, and no one working on this topic can afford to ignore her two seminal works, Leo Strauss and the American Right and The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. Regarding Heidegger, his political speeches, and activities and their impact on his students, Richard Wollins The Heidegger Controversy and Heideggers Children is a very useful as both primary and secondary source. Strausss critic of Max Weber was thoroughly analyzed by Nasser Behnegar in Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the Scientific Study of Politics. In chapters on Hobbes and Locke, I have relied mostly on Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, and Steven M. Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism and the American Revolution. 8

Complete list of secondary sources used in Bibliography, p. 84.

2. Strauss, the historicist thesis, and Heideggers existentialism

Martin Heidegger was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Several of the contemporary philosophical schools of thought are indebted to his work at least to a certain degree, whether they admit it or not. The influence he exerted upon his students was even greater. Hannah Arendt, Karl Lwith, Leo Strauss, Herbert Marcuse, HansGeorg Gadamer, to mention only the most renowned ones, remained indebted to his thought. They were all, as Richard Wolin says, Heideggers Children. 9 In the United States, perhaps Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss are the most publicly known. Both Arendt and Strauss, each in its own different ways, have contributed to the revival of interest in the political theory and the political philosophy in USA. 10 For two reasons Heidegger has left such a long-lasting impact on his students. Firstly, for all his students he was the greatest philosopher after Hegel, one who supplied all of them with completely new stance towards life and ethics. One cannot stress enough the influence that Heideggers existentialism and the ethics of authenticity and resoluteness had on his students. For them, he was a hero who brought a new light into the dark and shady world of the Weimar Republic; the man who virtually rewrites all Western history and intellectual heritage and starts anew. However, one could make a strong case, without negating the depth of his philosophy, that Heidegger exercised such an influence partially because of the social crisis of Weimar. For both Heidegger and his students, crisis of Weimar was not only a localized crisis, but also the crisis of cosmic proportions, the apex of the general crisis of life and the Western civilization. To his students, Heidegger appeared to have provided an answer to all questions.

Richard Wolin, Heideggers Children ( Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002). Wolins book addresses the relationship between Heidegger and his Jewish students, Arendt, Lwith, Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse (but not Strauss), prior and after his engagement with National Socialism. 10 On comparison between Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss, see generally Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Horst Mewes and Elisabeth Glaser Schmidt, ed., Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigres and American Political Thought after World War II (German Historical Institute, Washington D.C. and Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Secondly, Heideggers way of teaching and lecturing virtually had a mesmerizing effect on his audience. There are numerous testimonies that support this claim. 11 As Richard Wolin says, Few scholars who experienced his [Heideggers] mesmerizing lectures and seminars remained untransformed. 12 As I will show below, Strauss includes himself in to this group. As Shadia Drury suggests, Strauss was particularly impressed with Heideggers analysis of the text and Strauss, to a certain degree, modeled his own style of the textual analysis under Heideggers influence. 13 After Heideggers short involvement in politics and the NSDAP, all of his students and devotees were compelled to answer one question. How was it possible that somebody who they regarded as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century could have borrowed his authority to such a movement? The heated discussion that followed focused on, more or less, following issue. Was Heideggers political engagement an honest mistake or was there an inclination towards extremism within his philosophy? It is, of course, beyond the scope of this study to address that question fully. 14 As I shall argue bellow, Strauss stands on a side that finds reasons for Heideggers political engagement within his philosophy. However this may be and no matter how Heideggers students developed their own individual philosophies after they departed from him, Heidegger always remained in their shadow. Indeed, it seems that this shadow influenced them considerably. As Richard Wolin argues, all [Heideggers students] accepted, wily nilly, a series of deep-seated prejudices concerning the nature of political modernity-democracy, liberalism, individual rights, and so forth- that made it very difficult to articulate a meaningful theoretical standpoint in the postwar world. 15 [italics in original]

See, i.e., Karl Jaspers, Letter to the Freiburg University Denazification Commission from December 22, 1945, in Richard Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy, p. 144-151 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). Jaspers describes Heideggers way of teaching as magical, profoundly unfree and prone to seducement of young people who are not strong enough to resist Heideggers charms. 12 Wolin, Heideggers Children, p. 7. 13 Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), p. 77. 14 For a collection of essays regarding the subject of Heideggers political activities and Heideggers political speeches, see generally Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy. 15 Wolin, Heideggers Children, p. 8.

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2.1

The greatest philosopher and his politics

Strauss spoke of Martin Heidegger with utmost respect and considered him to be undoubtedly a greatest philosopher of the 20th century. His respect for Heidegger dated back to 1922, at a time when Strauss himself was still a PhD student. In Strausss own words, before meeting Heidegger I had been particularly impressed, as many of my contemporaries in Germany were, by Max Weber: by his intransigent devotion to intellectual honesty, by his passionate devotion to the idea of science a devotion that was combined with a profound uneasiness regarding the meaning of science 16 . After the first time Strauss heard Heidegger teaching in Freiburg, he confessed to his friend Franz Rosenzwig that, compared to Heidegger, Weber appeared to me as an orphan child in regard to precision, probing and competence 17 . Heideggers teacher was Edmund Husserl, founder of the phenomenology, whom Strauss considered to be the only German philosopher prior to Heidegger. Husserl, according to Heidegger, conceived an objective reality appearing as a phenomena distinct from the reality which appears to one when one reflects on a reality as a subjective interpretation or as pragmata, scientific reasoning as understood by a Greek philosophy. 18 In consequence, according to Husserl, to achieve knowledge of the objective reality, one that is prior to the conscious constructs, one needs to analyze pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is a consciousness that is prior to the question of usefulness, what do I need this for?, or the question of opinion or interpretation, what do I think about this or that? Hence, the philosophy is the knowledge of the pure consciousness as the absolute being. 19 Heidegger based his objection to Husserl on a fact that a human consciousness is determined and restricted by the human mortality and finiteness. Finiteness makes impossible for the human being to merely contemplate on an absolute being, for this does not provide for any solution to problems of here and now. In other words, one needs Weltanschauung or Weltanschauungsphilosophie to satisfy the need for solution of the problem of here and now, and what remains to be find is the proper foundation for such a
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism : An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, selected and introduced by Thomas L. Pangle, (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1989), p. 27. Hereafter RCPR. All unnamed references are works of Leo Strauss. 17 Ibid, p. 28. 18 Ibid, p. 29. 19 Ibid.
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solution. 20 This is, of course, a beginning of Heideggers concept of Dasein, of full meeting with Being, full existence in here and now, existence truthful to oneself. Before analyzing Strausss critic of Heideggers radical historicism and the existentialism and the corresponding devastating consequences, one needs to bear in mind that Strauss never considered himself to be a philosopher equivalent to Heidegger. To the contrary, Strauss considered himself merely a scholar unequal to Heidegger, who is a great thinker. Moreover, Strauss admitted that he probably never completely understood Heidegger. 21 This fact was however insufficient for completely abandoning the attempt to understand and criticize whole greatness of the Heideggers thought, especially the question which is, similar to the other Heideggers students, the most important for Strauss. That question is a following one: how was it possible that a great philosopher such as Heidegger rendered his intellectual authority to a fanaticism of the 1933? In a manner unusual for him, Strauss is very explicit regarding the Heideggers relation to National Socialism. According to Strauss, Heidegger identified himself with the National Socialism in his inaugural speech, Rektortsrede, at the University of Freiburg in 1933. 22 Moreover, Strauss explicitly denies that this was just an honorable error of judgment of a philosopher inexperienced in the matters of politics. For, as Strauss says, Everyone who had read his first great book [Being and Time] and did not overlook the wood for the trees could see the kinship in temper and direction between Heideggers thought and the Nazis. 23 However, qualification to this statement immediately follows. It is politically insufficient to say nothing about the philosophical quest for the truth to assert that a certain philosophical view contributed to a rise of extremism. For that says nothing about the correctness or incorrectness of the philosophical view in question. It merely says that the extreme solutions proposed for the problem tackled with were incorrect, but by no means implies that the description or the insight into the nature of

Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. by Thomas L. Pangle, (Chicago and London. Chicago University Press, 1983), p. 36. Hereafter SPPP. 21 RCPR, p. 29-30. 22 Ibid, p. 30. See full text of Heideggers speech given on an occasion of assuming the position of the Rector of the University of Freiburg under title The Self Assertion of the German University in Wolin, ed.,The Heidegger Controversy, p. 28-39. 23 RCPR, p. 30.

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problem was incorrect. Furthermore, Strauss recognizes Heidegger as the one who grasped the problem in its fullness. 24

2.2

Historical attack on natural right

In the chapter titled Natural Right and the Historical Approach in Natural Right and History, Strauss does not mention Heidegger even once. 25 Albeit when one compares this chapter to the essays in which Strauss speaks directly about Heidegger, there can be no doubt that Heideggers radical historicism is his primary target. 26 That becomes somewhat more understandable when one takes into account that a vast majority of Strausss works, except maybe ones devoted solely to antique philosophy, start by addressing Heidegger directly or at least by explaining problem posed to modernity by the radical historicism and existentialism together with positivism. 27 Furthermore, similarity between titles Natural Right and History and Being and Time [Sein und Zeit] is not to be underestimated. In the Natural Right and the Historical Approach, Strauss starts by stating that the attack against a natural right in the name of history can be said to have a following form. Natural right claims to be a right that is discernible by human reason and is universally acknowledged; but history (including anthropology) teaches is that no such right exists; instead of the supposed uniformity, we find an indefinite variety of notions of right or justice. 28 However, the attack on natural right in the name of history does not rest solely on the basis of historical evidence, but on a philosophical critique of the possibility of, or of the knowability, of natural right a critique somehow connected with history. 29 Infinite number of the notions of right present in the world was always known to political philosophy and gave impetus to a view that Strauss calls

Ibid, p. 30-32. Natural Right and History, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 9-34. Hereafter NRH. 26 Compare, i.e., Natural Right and the Historical Approach in NRH with An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism in RCPR and Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy in SPPP. 27 See, i.e., SPPP, RCPR, and What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1959). 28 NRH, p. 9. 29 Ibid, p. 10.
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conventionalism. 30 Conventionalism denies the existence of the natural right on a basis of a claim that all right is made within the limits of the certain time and place, hence right is the result of the social convention and certainly not natural. However, out of the notion of the variety of rights conventionalism, according to Strauss, did not conclude that there is no eternal order, quite opposite, fundamental ability to grasp eternal principles was preserved by the conventionalism for philosophy. On the other hand, the contemporary view, which Strauss calls historicism, proclaimed that all philosophizing essentially belongs to historical world, culture, civilization, Weltanschauung, that is to what Plato called the cave. 31 Nave historicism There are two kinds of historicism, according to Strauss: nave historicism and radical, Heideggers historicism or existentialism. Naive historicism did not grow out of purely theoretical atmosphere, but as a reaction to a catastrophe of natural right doctrine that paved the way for the French Revolution 32 . For the purpose of this study, we can divide the development of the nave historicism, as understood by Strauss, in to stages. In the first stage, nave historicism rejects universal norms in order not to render human beings strangers in this world, for if one accepts existence of the universal norms that never comes true, social existence becomes unbearable because of perpetual distance of the norms of the present society and the universal norms. 33 The second stage is the rebellion against the unnatural or conventional and otherworldliness or transcendence (not only religious but also every metaphysical transcendence), all in the name of the specific understanding of the natural pursuit of happiness that is specific for each individual. 34 In the third stage, nave historicism finds the grounds for a new society in historical rights and hence presumes the existence of the folk minds and certain unique national characters. In Strausss words, The only kinds of rights that were neither incompatible with social life nor uniform were historical rights: rights of Englishman, for example, in

30 31 32 33 34

Ibid. Ibid, p. 12. Ibid, p. 13. Ibid, p. 13-14. Ibid, p. 14-16.

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contradistinction to the rights of man. Local and temporal variety seemed to supply a safe and solid middle ground between antisocial individualism and unnatural universality. 35 Once the nave historicism establishes the existence of historical rights, according to Strauss, nave historicism transforms itself to historical empirical positivism, distinguished in principle from the positivistic natural science. 36 At this point, the great difficulty arises for nave historicism that attempts to establish itself as the highest authority. For history has proven itself to be meaningless because nave historicist thesis, after it invalidated all universal norms, could not come out with any norm that would explain the chain of historical events. As Strauss describes, the historical process revealed itself as the meaningless web spun by what men did, produced, and thought, no more than by unmitigated chance a tale told by an idiot. 37 Writing against nave historicism, Strauss does not base his criticism purely on the nave historicisms rejection of the possibility of the existence of the natural right. Nave historicism itself rests on a presumption of the possibility of the trans-historical knowledge, the very same presumption on which the natural right doctrine is based on 38 . What Strauss objects to nave historicism is that, while passing a judgment on all of the human thought by explaining it in historical terms, nave historicism exempts itself from the very same judgment. Here Strauss sees that the historicist thesis is self-contradictory or absurd. He writes, We can not see the historical character of all thought that is all thought with the exception of the historicist insight and it implications without transcending history, without grasping something transhistorical 39 . Radical historicism or Heideggers existentialism As I mentioned above, for Strauss, the radical historicism is an equivalent of the existentialism. The word existentialism (mentioned only once in the brackets in the Natural Right and History) is regarded by Strauss as a movement centered on Heideggers thoughts. 40 At the core of existentialism, according to Strauss, stands the
35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid, p. 14. Ibid, p. 16. Ibid, p. 18. Ibid, p. 24. Ibid, p. 25. SPPP, p. 30.

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claim that fundamental human experience is anguish or angst 41 . While this experience is present at all times, it is nevertheless the main characteristic of the modern man. Hence, it must follow that rise of the anguish in modern time was somehow made possible by an important change which happened along the way of history, the change which is peculiar to a modernity. Such a change is embodied in the modern belief in technology and progress, the belief in science. 42 It seems that this is why Heidegger was devoted critic of the Descartes scientific method and Kants formalistic ethic. According to Ian Ward, Heidegger objected to both Descartes and Kant for using a scientific, reason-based method to build a wall between subject and object, the wall that Heidegger wants to tear down with the Dasein, being here and now. 43 Ultimately, science, with its unqualified belief in reason, proved to be utterly incapable of providing the answer to an important question of what constitutes a true, human existence. Moreover, science provides no answers to questions such as a meaning of life, justice, good and so on. Science managed to provide human beings with means to achieve their goals, but not with a standard of reference which could help them to discern and decide on the desirability of the particular goal. While managing to equip humanity with the technological power unprecedented in history, science did not provide any knowledge of how to use that power since, in eyes of a science, all goals are of equal worth. This objection to science, in short, defines the core of Strausss critic of Max Webers fact-value distinction that I will present in some detail in the next chapter. Even worse, science made the possibility of the extinction of humanity very much real and dehumanized life to a point when human beings are homeless in the world, lonely crowds. Through the deprivation of the seriousness of life, technology turns a life in to a never-ending pleasure hunt under the aegis of the mechanical concept of the state that endorses a liberal and rational individualistic pleasure-driven concept of life. 44 For

RCPR, p. 32. Ibid. 43 Ian Ward, Law, Philosophy and National Socialism: Heidegger, Schmitt and Radbruch in Context (Bern; Frankfurt a. M.; New York; Paris; Wien: Lang, 1992), p.78-80. 44 Heidegger identified machine technology with the domination of nature which . . . rages around the world today like an unchained beast. Heidegger, quoted in John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 85. Hereafter Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism.
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Heidegger, two metaphysically equal ideologies, Americanism and Bolshevism, are embodiment of this new technological, soulless civilization, the empire of average man. 45 Contrary to the scientific optimism, Strauss adds, scientific hope that in the end science would be able to provide some kind of a rational morality is now extinct, for science itself proves that that it is based on premise which can not prove. In other words, the assumption that people should act rationally is a not a scientific assumption, since it s based on a value judgment which is ipso facto unscientific and therefore out of the scope of the scientific interest. Since the concept of progress is also a value judgment directed towards the perfection of human mind, we can scientifically speak only about change. There is no evident reason why human beings should live according to scientific rationality. As Strauss says it, it [science] admits that it is based on fundamental hypotheses which always remains hypotheses. 46 If this is accepted as correct, Strauss continues, then choice for a science as a way of resolving the final question of how to live a life is nothing but a choice, groundless choice, no better or and no worse then living a life of pleasure or life of faith. The ground for making the choice between the life of science, faith or pleasure is therefore not some standard of reference but the fundamental freedom, which is the only certainty. Necessity of making this choice is the source of the modern anguish or angst, further complicated by what we can call the historicist difficulty. That difficulty is the following one. Individuals live in human society and need to live well, just as society itself needs it. In order to do so, individuals and societies have to choose a certain solid categorical system, principles that will guide them without being considered mere artificial net erected around the individual and the society in order to organize their world. These principles have to be considered definite, ultimate ones, not just free constructs of the human will specific to our time and our society. If the society does not consider these principles as ultimate, it can easily endanger its own existence and fall as an easy prey of enemies from the outside or within. Why would anybody fight for his own country if he would believe that principles of the society he belongs to are
From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same; the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average man. See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), trans. Ralph Mannheim (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday Anchor, 1961), p. 37. 46 RCPR, p. 32.
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nothing but products of somebodys imagination? The erection of the artificial net that protects the society from the corrosive influence of the nihilistic truth is, according to Strauss, Nietzsches solution. As Strauss says it: According to Nietzsche, the theoretical analysis of human life that realizes the relativity of all comprehensive views and thus depreciates them would make human life itself impossible, for it would destroy the protecting atmosphere within which life or culture or action is alone possible. Moreover, since the theoretical analysis has its basis outside of life, it will never be able to understand life. The theoretical analysis of life is noncommittal and fatal to commitment, but life means commitment. To avert the danger to life, Nietzsche choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependant on, life or fate. If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative. 47 However, Heideggers existentialism defies this solution on grounds that the human society is too far down the road to simply accept the old cure of faith or any other kind of metaphysical system such as the ones found in Platos or Aristotles work. For the basic evidence of history shows that there are numerous ways to organize a life of an individual and a society, and the historicist thesis already admits that these numerous ways are essentially equivalent to each other. Consequently, the source of the modern anguish Strauss expresses in one word: relativism. However, Strauss immediately qualifies this, saying Existentialism admits the truth of relativism, but it realizes that relativism, so far from being a solution or even a relief, is deadly. 48 Here, also, Strauss implies that his own preferential answer to relativism is a return to the Nietzsches metaphysics or nature, or, in Strausss terms natural right. As he says, Existentialism is the attempt to free Nietzsches alleged overcoming of relativism from the consequences of his relapse into metaphysics or of his recourse to nature 49 . The historicist thesis exempts itself from the historical judgment which it applied to all other periods of human history. Similar to the historicist thesis, existentialism belongs to a period of the decay and crisis of liberal democracy, according to Strauss. Against a dehumanizing technological progress made possible by science, obsolete
47 48 49

NRH, p. 26. RCPR, p. 36. Ibid, p. 26.

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religious and metaphysical systems and the nihilistic devotion to pleasure, existentialism looked for the solution in a creation out of nothingness. While it claimed that it looked deep in to a abyss of nothingness revealed by Nietzsche, Heideggers existentialism in its analytics of Existenz tried to overcome its own angst not by referring to a will for power, but by referring to a will to know [Wissen vollen] which seems to be more of a will to create, construct. Implication is following: in order to truly meet Being, to be truly oneself, one need to re-create its own world by being truthful to oneself. In this act, this decision, Entscheidung, fundamental freedom of choice is re-constructed together with the seriousness of life. It seems that from this one practical consequence follows. While one is being truthful to inner self, one does not need to justify its actions in the court of either religious good and evil nor by the reference to the Kantian and Neo-Kantian universalism, and especially not in the court of science. The final criterion is the truthfulness to one self, grounded in the freedom of choice from which nobody can runaway from. There is no choice but to make a choice imposed on us by the fate of historical circumstances, with qualification that the existentialism proclaimed the return to all obsolete metaphysical or religious systems to be a betrayal of the inner freedom, subjugation. In a God-like manner, human beings construct their own world without reference to anything but itself and the abyss in to which it purportedly looked deep in too. That is what Existence precedes Essence seems to mean. There is no categorical system prior to existence of human beings, but other way around, human beings construct the reality after they have been thrown (to use Heideggers term) in the world. These concepts of Heideggers philosophy faithfully reflect Heideggers own life, for he started as a theologian and gradually moved toward the rejection of religious and metaphysical concepts. For Strauss, although Heidegger demanded liberation from religious, especially Christian, concepts, his understanding of the existence nevertheless remained one of Christian origin (guilt, conscience, anguish, being unto death). 50 When this concept of existential freedom is taken to its logical conclusion, Strauss says, there seems to exist a possibility of the existentialist ethic, since ones freedom to re-create himself would also oblige him to respect the others freedom to do the same.
50

Ibid, p. 38.

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However, Strauss concludes, Heidegger never believed in the possibility of an ethics. 51 Existentialism, therefore, denies the existence of the objective truth, demands freedom of action unconstrained by the ethical scruples, and nevertheless preserves for itself status of the ultimate truth. It would follow, for somewhat unclear reasons, that Heideggers existentialism denies possibility of the existence of infinite numbers of subjective truths and implicitly leans towards aggressive stance regarding the other subjective truths. Understood in these terms and hidden somewhere in the core, Heideggers existentialism preserved Nietzsches notion of life-giving truth and the will to power, which fights to assert itself. Even if that is so, Heidegger rejected Nietzsches return to metaphysics and nature. The Heideggers pitfall, as Shadia Drury argues, starts with the socialization of his ethics, which is meant to be the individual ethics, that is, liberation of the individual from the chains of religious and metaphysical tradition. But socialization necessarily implies this tradition, and hence it is a virtual betrayal of its individual, humanistic message. 52 According to Strauss, Heidegger himself asserted that being truthful to oneself, truly existing as a human, implies also being in a community, being with others. 53 Dasein of community must be, then, similar to the individual Dasein, truthful to oneself. Truthfulness of the community to itself implies rootedness in the soil and accompanying tradition and language, which together with other factors creates the Geist of the community. Rootedness in the soil is the opposite of the homelessness, which is the result of the nihilistic, metaphysical and technological alienation of humanity from Dasein. According to Gillespie, all of that this still does not explain why Heidegger required a leadership of to assert the historical truths and the Dasein of the German community. Furthermore, Gillespie suggests that the National Socialist rejection of the theory in the favor of leadership was the decisive aspect that attracted Heidegger, who was already an enemy of the mechanical, technological reasoning and the metaphysical

51 52

Ibid, p. 36. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, p. 67. 53 RCPR, p. 36. That the human existence is always being-with-others is the conclusion of Being and Time, see Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquerrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).

20

systems that prevent the Dasein. 54 Ian Ward suggests that Heidegger needed a leader because he came to believe that the connection between the Geist and the Volk was the need for the geistige Fhrung, the need for a commanding necessity, which would finally bring the aletheia, primordial, authentic truth 55 . Jrgen Habermas also argues that Heidegger needed somebody to complete the transformation of the German Dasein, overcome the nihilism and put truth to work 56 . In Natural Right and History, Strauss asserts that for the nave historicism that served as a partial base for the Heideggers historicist thesis, local and national particularities are already proven a safe, middle ground on which one can erect the truthful existence of the community. 57 In other places, in a tone that seems to exculpate Heidegger, Strauss says that in Europe, shook to its foundations by the First World War, Heidegger welcomed the 1933 after the faith in progress decayed and the only people who kept that faith in its original vigor were the communist and Spenglers Decline of the West seemed to be credible. 58 Leaving it on this would amount to submitting to hopelessness and desperation, according to Strauss. By saying this, Strauss implies that Heidegger believed he was saving and regenerating the whole Western, European Dasein through the proxy of spiritualization of the National Socialism in 1933. In the end, however, Heidegger became disillusioned, for National Socialists were not the saviors from the nihilism and technology, but the embodiment of the technological conquer and nihilistic rule over Being. Furthermore, Strauss continues, Heidegger was taught by the failure of the National Socialism that Nietzsches hope of a united Europe ruling the planet, of a Europe not only united but revitalized by this new, transcendent responsibility of planetary rule, had proved to be a delusion. 59 To Heidegger, it seemed that after the failure of that dream the night of the world has begun. The night of the

Michael Allan Gillespie, Martin Heideggers National Socialism, in Political Theory, Vol.28, No. 2 (April 2002): p. 140 -166. 55 Ward, p. 77 and p. 75. 56 Jrgen Habermas, Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective in Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). 57 NRH, p. 14. 58 RCPR, p. 41. 59 Ibid. This refers to Nietzsches statement that Europe wants to become one, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886) in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 386.

54

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world for Heidegger was the coming of world society controlled by either Washington or Moscow which are metaphysically the same, and from whom only God can save us. 60 For Heidegger, as Strauss says, it means the victory of an even more completely urbanized, even more completely technological West over the whole planet complete leveling and uniformity regardless of whether it is brought about by iron compulsion or by soapy advertisement of the output of the mass production. It means unity of the human race on the lowest level, complete emptiness of life; nothing but work and recreation; no individuals and no peoples, but instead lonely crowds. 61 The mantra on the horror of the world society is repeating in works of Heidegger, Schmitt and Strauss, and I will explain that further in the discussion on Hobbes. For Strauss, whatever Heideggers mistakes were, he was the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. Heidegger saw clearly all the problems of the modernity and was determined to face the void and abyss with resolution. Heidegger fully understood the disease of modernity. Strauss himself admits that because of Heideggers critic of liberalism he could never again be a full-fledged liberal, [Because of Heideggers critic] All rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance. One may deplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophic positions which have been shown to be inadequate. 62 As Shadia Drury argues, Strauss agrees with Heideggers description of modernity as a disease, but not with a cure Heidegger suggested 63 . What Strauss says about the relationship between Hobbes and Locke, may as well be said for his relationship with Heidegger. It is because of his fundamental agreement with Heidegger that Strauss rejects Heideggers conclusion. Return to Nietzsche or the philosopher-king In the Natural Rights and History, Strauss criticizes existentialism for two reasons. Firstly, because radical historicism (existentialism) focuses on being here and now, on history as ever changing and non-repeatable process, and not, as Strauss suggests, on being always and eternally, the perspective of classical political philosophy. The political
See interview Heidegger gave to Der Spiegel in 1966 under title Only a God Can Save Us in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy, p. 91-116. 61 RCPR, p.42. 62 Ibid, p. 29. 63 Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, p. 69-78.
60

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philosophy is not a historical discipline, becasuse it is driven by the desire to know, if not to solve, the fundamental problems of living in society, problems that are perpetual and changeable only in form, but not in substance. 64 Radical historicism denies the existence of the fundamental problems or the existence of the natural horizon because it claims that all the existence is existence in time, here and now. Here and now existence is unique and unrepeatable, hence there exists no unchangeable fundamental problems and, consequently, radical historicism denies the need for the political philosophy as such. Secondly, more importantly, Strauss does not fully reject Heideggers premises, but he completely rejects Heideggers solution on a basis of his return to Nietzsche. As I stated above, in his critique of historicism in the Natural Rights and History, Strauss implies that Nietzsche accepted the notion of Platonic noble delusion as a way of preserving the artificial net that guards the society from the destructive influence of the nihilistic historical truth, namely the groundlessness of all values, values of the given society included. Strausss objection to Heidegger is that he did not truly understand what the consequences of the public dissemination of philosophical truth were. It is not that Heidegger was wrong in his basic conceptions, his mistake was that he expected too much from the masses. On the one hand, Heidegger mythologized, together with Carl Schmitt, the Volk, and, on the other hand, he publicly expressed what was supposed to remain hidden: the individual choice for nationalistic or any other kind of living has no support in the nature or the eternity. The choice is nothing but blind choice dictated by the fate of historical circumstances. Of course, Heidegger, despite of his debt to Nietzsche, rejected Nietzsches praise of nature as a final judge of the authenticity. Heidegger refused to return to the notion of the Platonic noble delusion as a recovery of metaphysics. For Heidegger, as Catherine Zuckert argues, the concealment of Being begins when Plato separated ideas from things and Heidegger regarded that moment as the beginning of the mans alienation from the world that finally led to widespread feeling that man is the stranger in this world, that he is thrown in to the world. 65
What is political philosophy? and Other Studies, p. 56. Catherine Zuckert, Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 4. Also see generally Zuckerts discussion on Heideggers interpretation of Plato in ibid, p. 33-69.
65 64

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There are important similarities between Strausss and Nietzsches philosophy. For Strauss, Nietzsche, probably more the any other philosophers, attached such an importance to a philosophy as a discipline and the philosophers as rulers. Nietzsches philosophers are no less than Supermans, ones that are meant to rule over the vulgar masses. They are the free and brave among humans, ones that will not despair in the face of the emptiness of the world and the ultimate pointlessness of life. According to Strauss, Nietzsche saw the twentieth century as an age of world wars, leading to a planetary rule unprecedented in history, rule that would require a new kind of aristocracy. As Strauss says, The invisible rulers of that possible future would be the philosophers of the future. Certainly, this resembles Platos notion of the philosopher-king, ruling secretly as the power behind the throne. But there is a major difference between Platos and Nietzsches philosophers of the future, according to Strauss. Nietzsches philosopher, unlike his classical predecessor, is an heir to Bible. In the heart he is an atheist. His public philosophizing and exoteric teaching are religious, for he waits for a God to come back to the world. 66 Although Heidegger would reject much of this as a return to metaphysics, he nevertheless, according to Habermas, expected to be the secret ruler behind the throne, the philosopher-king with an arrogant and not well-hidden contempt for the masses 67 . Strauss himself never abandoned this view. In the chapter Classic Natural Right in the Natural Right and History, the virtual Strausss political manifesto, the problem of the rule of philosophers-kings in the vulgar society is one of the major themes. 68

RCPR, p. 40-41. Cf. Nietzsches emphatic statement , Toward new philosophers; there is no choice; towards spirits strong and original enough to provide the stimuli for opposite valuations and to revalue and invert eternal values; toward forerunners, toward man of the future who in the present tie knot and constraint that forces the will of millennia upon new tracks, [italics in original] in Beyond Good and Evil, above n. 51, p. 307. 67 Habermas, Martin Heidegger: On the Publication of the Lectures of 1935 in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy, p. 186-197. According to Habermas, He [Heidegger] had the nutty idea that he, as a spiritual leader, could set himself at the head of the whole movement, ibid. p. 189. As for Heideggers contempt for masses, Habermas claims that Heidegger believed that It is strength that elevates the aristocratic individual above the ordinary Many. The noble individual, who chooses fame, will be ennobled by the rank and mastery that belong to Being itself, while the Many who, according to Heraclitus, whom Heidegger approvingly cites, are like a well-fed cattle - the Many are the dogs and the asses, see ibid, p. 193. 68 See chapter Classic Natural Right in NRH, p. 120-164.

66

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Exotericism and esotericism In the context of the Platonic noble delusion and Heideggers mistake, the way Strauss interprets it, can we understand Strausss famous and infamous thesis on the exoteric and esoteric teaching and the writing between the lines, of which, as I will show below, he will make ample use in his discussion about Locke in the Natural Rights and History. Core of the thesis can be, somewhat briefly, stated in a following manner. The great philosophers of the past did not state truths in a plain and straightforward manner for two reasons. In the first place, they were afraid of the social persecution, for philosophy always questions basic premises and values on which the given society is based on. Secondly, even more important in my opinion, Strauss claims that philosophers never stated their opinions explicitly because they accepted their social responsibility. They knew that the truth plainly said would cause disturbance among the vulgar, among masses that are majority in every society. Tacit presumption of this thesis is that the truth is dark and hard to bear. Hence, it must be kept secret and known only to those few wise, which are of course philosophers, who are able to bear the truth without devastating consequences, namely destroying the society and their fellow citizens 69 . Strausss philosopher is, then, the holder of truth (or more likely, the guardian of the truth that there is no truth) and, at the same time, the countercultural and sub cultural fellow. He is countercultural insofar that he claims to know that all truths of society are but opinions and noble delusions. But he is also sub-cultural since he does not attempt to make any revolutionary changes in the society. Strausss philosopher, resonating Platos philosopher king, is assured that philosophical way of life is the best way of life, and that he himself and company of his philosophical brothers are elevated well above vulgar masses. Nevertheless, since the philosophical life presupposes peace and order in the society, philosophers should secretly counsel the rulers and make gradual changes in society, when and if they deem necessary.
69

See generally Persecution and the Art of Writing, (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952). Also see How Farabi Read Plato Laws in What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies, and Exoteric Teaching and How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy in RCPR. For example, Strauss argues that Farabi used Plato as a mouthpiece to present his own atheistic views, and by taking the stance of the historian of ideas, protected himself from the theological persecution. Major controversy, of course, is whether Strauss himself applies the same method, or, in other words, when Strauss describes, for example, Machiavellis ideas how can you be shore who is speaking, Strauss or Machiavelli?

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As Catherine Zuckert shows, all postmodern Platos, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss and Derrida, felt at some point the need to return to Plato as the beginning of the philosophy. Their motivation was the postmodernist contention according to which there is no objective truth, or, at least, the knowledge of it is not accessible to man, hence everything is an interpretation. And if the only certain knowledge is the knowledge that we do not know, then all the philosophy from Socrates onwards was running in circles, since Socrates knew this at the very beginning. Plato, as Socrates most famous student and the one who transmits Socrates teaching in his writings, must be the key of understanding. Zuckert further argues that Strauss differs from his postmodern companions in so far that they received their knowledge on Plato true the proxy of Neo-Platonism, or, in other words, already Christianized Plato. 70 It is safe to say that since both Heideggers students, Gadamer and Strauss, each in their own different ways, developed distinct hermeneutical methods for treating the texts, one could trace the origins of their methods back to Heidegger and possibly even to Nietzsche. But the difference that makes Strauss unique among the other, to use Catherine Zuckerts term, postmodern Platos, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gamader and Derrida, is that Strauss, after he parted from Heidegger, developed distinct hermeneutical method by drawing from different sources than the rest of his postmodern companions, namely from the Jewish and Islamic medieval philosophies and mysticism. Strauss tried to understand the philosophical text precisely in a way that its writers understood it, contrary to Heidegger who claimed that all previous philosophies were unaware that they are being determined by the social and historical circumstances and hence that Heidegger understands the texts and philosophers better than they understood themselves. This difference in the origin of source is the core of Strausss critic of what we may call Christianizing philosophy and, in the long run, social science. For Strauss, Christianity or at least its influential thinkers did what should not be attempted, namely they tried to show that reason (philosophy) and fate could be reconciled. The example in the Natural Right and History is the attempt of Thomas Aquinas to reconcile Aristotelian teaching on an infinitely mutable natural right with the truths of faith. 71 Aquinas

70 71

Zuckert, p. 4-6. NRH, p. 163-164.

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succeeded in this, but at cost of making the natural law teaching rigid and conservative, and the consequence was Hobbess rebellion. For Strauss, Aquinass attempt is futile, since Strauss believes that the secret of the vitality of the Western civilization lies in the tension between reason and fate. Reason should stay on the playfield of the philosophers and the fate is meant to be the relief for masses. Heidegger (who started out as a Christian theologian) and, as I shall argue below, Weber and Hobbes were mistaken in thinking otherwise, and for that reason their philosophies had such a bad aftermath. Moreover, they over-publicized their teaching, without considering if their audience, the vulgar and the heard, is ready to exchange the sweet delusion of religion for sore truth. Similarities and differences To sum up, we can say that, despite the differences, Strauss shares much with his teacher Heidegger. Firstly, Heidegger left on Strauss his imprint in so far that Strauss thinks of modernity as a state of crisis and interprets the truth as nihilistic and hard to bear. Moreover, he agrees with Heidegger that the Enlightenments faith in science and the power of reason and is futile. Strauss parts with Heidegger regarding the solution of the crisis. Relying on Nietzsche and Plato, he seeks to reestablish the position of the metaphysics and religion in the public space, but only so far that these teachings are meant for the masses as the noble delusion in order to ease the pains of the existence. The truth (or the truth that there is no truth) is preserved for the philosophers or the wise elite. Secondly, through the influence of Heidegger, Strauss relies heavily on Nietzsche and preserves the elevated position for the philosophers in contrast to the vulgar masses. Moreover, for all three of them, philosophers are not only ones who try to explain and reflect on the Being or existence, the philosophers are legislators, rulers (secret or not), and the makers of public universe. Thirdly, although different in content, Strausss way of interpreting the text, writing and teaching resembles Heideggers style, and, as Shadia Drury says, it is not by chance that Strauss gathered so many followers around him, just as ones he followed

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Heidegger 72 . In this respect, the main difference between Strauss and Heidegger is that the former is oriented toward the Dasein understanding of the here and now and claims that he understands his philosophical predecessors better than they understood themselves because they were oblivious of the historical groundings on which they were erecting their respective philosophies. Strauss claims to follow the pre-historical, common sense understanding and attempts to understand the text as his creator understood it, irregardless of social and historical circumstances. Chiefly because of this belief did Strauss manage to sketch the very unusual picture of the classical natural right in the Natural Right and History, and in the latter part of his life, to dedicate himself fully to the study of classical Greek philosophy.

2.3

Existentialism goes legal or Carl Schmitt

Although the above subtitle may be a somewhat confusing, given that in a chapter on Strausss critic of Max Weber I emphasize Schmitts debt to Weber, the explanation is following. Part of Webers though, ethics of conviction or intention, as I will argue below, is very similar in its temper and direction to Heideggers existentialism and to, as I choose to call it, legal existentialism of Carl Schmitt. Carl Schmitt probably belongs among greatest and most controversial legal and political theorists of the twentieth century. Moreover, both his life and his works bear almost ironical resemblances to that of Heidegger, as it was suggested by, i.e, Karl Lwith, Christian Graf von Krockow and Reinhard Mehring. 73 From 1933-1936 Schmitt was, according to Ian Ward, Kronjurist for the National Socialist, at about the same time when Heidegger was politically engaged. 74 Moreover, in his letter to Schmitt, Heidegger urged him to become legal spiritual leader, while Heidegger would be philosophical

Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, p. 75-78. Karl Lwith, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy, p. 167-185. Christian Graf von Krockow, Die Entscheidung: Eine Untersuchung ber Ernst Jnger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1990). Reinhard Mehring, Der philosophische Fhrer und der Kronjurist: Praktisches Denken und geschichtliche Tat von Martin Heidegger und Carl Schmitt in Deutsches Vierteljahrsschrift fr Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 68 (1994). 74 Ward, p. 156-168.
73

72

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leader of the National Socialist movement. 75 What makes Schmitt even more controversial than Heidegger is that not even a year before he became a Kronjurist, according to Mller, he publicly advocated and strongly advised President Hindenburg to ban the Communist Party and the National Socialist Party in order to preserve peace and stability. 76 Both Heidegger and Schmitt, although coming from strong Christian backgrounds, turned their backs on religion and attempted to overcome the chains of tradition through the Being (Heidegger) or decision (Schmitt). Their political careers with the NSDAP were short, and National Socialists rejected them both. In addition, they both suffered the prohibition on university teaching after the end of the WWI. Schmitts works are abundant with language and concepts that sound as Heideggers existentialism applied in law. Throughout all Schmitts works, the major enemy, similarly to Heidegger, is liberalism as an embodiment of the technological rule over humanity. Liberalism for Schmitt subsumes living to pure functioning within the aegis of the mechanized machine of the soulless state. In legal terms, Schmitt recognizes this liberal over-rationalization of life in the legal positivism of Hans Kelsen. Against the legal over-rationalization that attempts to predict and control all circumstances of life, Schmitt launches critic based on decisionism which is the distinctive mark of the sovereign. In Political Theology, Schmitt lays one of his famous statements, Souvern ist, wer ber den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet. 77 In legal terms, it is a brilliantly constructed phrase. For it does not mean that sovereign decide in the state of exception or emergency, but sovereign also decides when the state of emergency is, hence the rule of sovereign is next to infinite. The ultimate purpose of the existence of state is to decide unconstrained by any a priori existing laws. State exists fully in the moment of decision a pure decision, which, because it can not be rationalized or discussed, nor in itself justified, is an absolute decision out of normative nothingness. 78 It is not hard to recognize in the above sentence the resonance of existentialism, and it is unimportant if Schmitt developed it by himself or under Heideggers influence. Important is that Schmitt elevates the state above the individual, and, just as Heidegger rejected ethics as an
75 76

Ibid, p. 118. Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 35. 77 Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souvernitt (Berlin, 1990), p. 11. 78 Ibid., p. 83.

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obstacle on the way towards true Being, Schmitt rejects all a priori legal rules (constitution) as an obstacle on the way toward the full existence of the state. In his most famous work, The Concept of the Political, Schmitt reaches the peak of his intellectual engagement contra liberalism. 79 But before interpreting its most important parts, one remark is necessary. Schmitts book always has to be read against the background of the social and political crisis of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was toured both from inside, as result of political parties competition and deep economic crisis, and from outside, as a consequence of the unjust Versailles Peace Treaty and the obnoxiously high war reparations that were imposed upon Germany. Given imposed circumstances, the rise of extremism was but to be expected. 80 In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt makes two famous claims. First, Schmitt claims, The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.81 The political itself has a polemic, if not a dialectical, nature. As morality is consisted of good and evil, esthetics of beautiful and ugly, so does the political has its own dialectic. But what differentiates the political from moral, religion, esthetics and so on, is that the political is the most intense human activity. Moreover, it is an independent activity, if not the one that encompasses in itself all other domains of life (religious, moral, and economical although Schmitt is somewhat vague regarding the relationship of the political and other domains of life). What is, then, the distinction specific for the political, according to Schmitt? The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. 82 The enemy needs not be an economic competitor, morally evil or something alike, it suffices that he is the other, the stranger.83 Echoing Heidegger, Schmitt writes, The friend and enemy concepts are to be understood in their concrete and existential sense. 84 Important is that the enemy is not a private, but public

Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. and intro. George Schwab, with comments on Schmitts essay by Leo Strauss (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers, 1976). 80 On the crisis of the Weimar Republic and Schmitts role in it see, i.e., David Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Herman Heller in Weimar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 2-37, and Mller, p. 15-48. 81 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 19. 82 Ibid, p. 26. 83 Ibid, p. 27. 84 Ibid.

79

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enemy, since the political is above the individual. The political as concept reaches its greatest intensity within the organized political entity, state, which alone decides on the friend enemy distinction. 85 States, organized political entities of individuals, exist because of the problematic, if not evil, character of human beings (again Schmitt is somewhat unspecific at this point). Evil in man must be restrained through obedience and fear, as Hobbes testifies, if man is not to return to the state of nature. At this point, Schmitt changes Hobbess argument. For Hobbes, state of nature (or civil war that Hobbes witnessed in England) is primarily war among individuals (although secondarily also the war of states), but for Schmitt, in the state of nature states exist among themselves in a condition of continual danger. 86 As McCormick suggest, Schmitt found a source of inspiration in Hobbes because Hobbess Leviathan was written in the times of civil war and unrest, times that reminded Schmitt of the situation of the Weimar Republic. 87 Moreover, Schmitt praises Hobbes for revealing the truth and constructing his absolute sovereign, Leviathan, to instill in man once again the mutual relation between Protection and Obedience. For Schmitt, The protego ergo obligo is the cogito ergo sum of the state. 88 Schmitt also adds another important qualification to Hobbes. Hobbes always insisted that the natural right to self-preservation, the right of individual not to sacrifice its life as a result of the sovereign command, is preserved in every situation, hence sovereign can demand obedience, but only so far that the obedience protects lives of individuals. It is not so for Schmitt. The state as the decisive political entity posses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of man. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies. 89 To the state alone, according to Schmitt, belongs the honor of deciding in the extreme case, in the state of emergency or war. And the possibility of the war is ever present and when that possibility realizes itself, the core of the concept of the political, the friend-enemy distinction, shows itself in its purest form. For Schmitt, War is the
Ibid, p. 30. Ibid, p. 58-59. 87 John P. McCormick, Fear, Technology and the State: Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and the revival of Hobbes in Weimar and National Socialist Germany, Political Theory, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov., 1994): 619652. 88 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 52. 89 Ibid, p. 46.
86 85

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existential negation of enemy. It is the most extreme consequence of enmity. It does not have to be common, normal, something ideal, or desirable. But it must nevertheless remain a real possibility for as long as the concept of the enemy remains valid. 90 Besides his somewhat disturbing and mystified concept of friend-enemy distinction and the warmongering vocabulary, Schmitt is more concrete and coherent regarding his enemy. And his enemy is, similar to Heidegger, liberalism and technology. We need not repeat here Schmitts laments on the rationalization and mechanization of life. For our purposes here, it is more important to see how Schmitt describes the consequences of the world liberalization. For Schmitt, liberalism is canny and vicious. It hides its true intentions behind the many veils and humanitarian motives. In other words, the power structures of the presumably apolitical liberalism are precisely that political. Liberalism attempts to destroy the friend-enemy distinction as the purest core of the political and turn in to meaningless economic competition or intellectual debate. 91 The existence then becomes a never-ending pleasure and profit hunt, with occasional unimportant conversations during short breaks. Liberalism destroys the political by granting the autonomy to the cultural, economic, religious, labor party and other kinds of pluralistic values, political party values included (since for Schmitt the state equals party politics concept is a liberal delusion and trick). 92 It motivates individuals to associate themselves with different kind of groups, all attempting to use the state for their own purposes, while at the same time remaining faithful to their groups, but not to the state. Hence, liberalism undermines the power of state by depriving her of the obedience of her members. What happens, according to Schmitt, in the world where liberalism prevails, world where the possibility of war is outlawed or made impossible? A world in which the possibility of war is utterly eliminated, a completely pacified globe, would be a world without the distinction of friend and enemy and hence a world without politics. 93 There would be no state or politics in such a world but culture, civilization, economics,

90 91

Ibid, p. 33. Ibid, p. 28. 92 Ibid, p. 32. 93 Ibid, p. 35.

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morality, law, entertainment, etc. 94 Schmitt implies that such a world would be dehumanized world. In addition, throughout The Concept of the Political, Schmitt forcefully criticizes forces that, for him, are attempting to outlaw war, pacify and liberalize world. The League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact are but different faces of this movement. Implicitly, at several places Schmitt also targets Woodrow Wilson. Schmitt asserts that It is a manifest fraud to condemn war as homicide and then demand of men that they wage war, kill and be killed, so that there never again be war. 95 Behind this false pacifist-humanitarian ideology, Schmitt traces new imperialistic, economical and ideological interests that are more intense than any other in history, because, by their nature, they do not tend only to defy their enemies militarily. They intend to globalize, spread across national borders and perpetrate every level of the enemies society, in the name of, ultimate lie for Schmitt, universal humanity. Comments or Schmitt and Strauss united against liberalism In 1932, Leo Strauss published his Comments on Carl Schmitts Der Begriff des Politischen. 96 By that time he was already Schmitts protg. As Strauss himself admits in a letter to Schmitt, dated March 13, 1932, Schmitts references were vital for securing him the grant of the Rockefeller Foundation for studies in Paris and subsequently in Oxford. 97 As Heinrich Meier shows, it seems that the respect between Schmitt and Strauss was mutual. Schmitt himself several times talked about Strauss as important philosopher and he was also one who recommended Strausss comments for publication. 98 According to both McCormick and Drury, in his commentary, Strauss radicalized Schmitts already radical concept of the political.99 As McCormick argues, Strauss immediately recognizes the importance of Hobbess concepts of fear and the state of

Ibid, p. 53. Ibid, p. 48. 96 Leo Strauss, Comments on Carl Schmitts Der Begriff des Politischen in Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 81-105. 97 Leo Strauss, Letter One in Heinrich, Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 123. 98 Meier, p. 8. 99 McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 258-266. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, p. 91-95. For this interpretation I rely heavily on McCormick.
95

94

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nature for Schmitts concept of the political. 100 He also recognizes the need for such a reference to Hobbes in the light of the present Weimar situation. The whole Schmitts thesis is determined, according to Strauss, by his fight against liberalism. 101 Strauss joins Schmitt in so far that he also admits the present decline of the state and its neutralization and depoliticizing as result of the prevailing conception of culture, [according to which] the various provinces of culture are autonomous. 102 Term culture that Strauss uses denotes various pluralistic, liberal values which Schmitt criticizes, as argued above. In accordance with Schmitt, only more forcefully, Strauss asserts the state of nature and a need not only for physical obedience of the ruled ones, but also a psychological one: This conception makes us forget that culture always presupposes something which is cultivated: culture is always cultivation of nature. Originally that means culture develops the natural disposition; it is a careful cultivation of nature whether of the soil or of the human mind; in this it obeys the indications that nature itself gives Since we understand by culture above all the culture of human nature, and since man is by nature an animal sociale, the human nature underlying culture is the natural living together of men, i.e., the mode in which man-prior to culture behaves towards other man. The term for the natural living together thus understood is status naturalis. One may therefore say, the foundation of culture is the status naturalis. 103 [italics in original] As McCormick argues, the cultivation of the state of nature, for both Schmitt and Hobbes, is the state, which establishes order and makes society possible. Hence, Strauss makes Schmitts critique of the liberal autonomy even more firm. 104 In short, human autonomy is evil just as human beings are and they are in need of being ruled, for the status naturalis (Weimar) gives ample examples of mans intrinsic evilness. But Strauss pays attention to another, for him more important, contradiction in Schmitts thesis. Hobbes qualifies (although narrow) states right to demand of citizens to die in the name of the natural right of self-preservation. For Strauss, Schmitt remained within the playfield of the objective valueless liberalism. Schmitt did assert that the state has a right to demand from individuals to die in a fight, but he did not established
McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p.259. Leo Strauss, Comments on Carl Schmitts Der Begriff des Politischen in Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 82. 102 Ibid, p. 86. 103 Ibid, p. 86-87. 104 McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p.260.
101 100

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individual moral duty to do so, hence he granted too much individual freedom. Schmitt sustained from passing a moral judgment upon his enemy. As Strauss understands it, Morality is for Schmitt always at least in the context here under discussionhumanitarian morality. This means however that Schmitt accepts his opponents view of what constitutes morality instead of questioning the claim of humanitarian-pacifist morality to be the true morality; he remains under the spell of the opinion he combats. 105 Schmitt then, according to Strauss, affirms the political, but in the same way as liberalism tries to nullify the political. He remains constrained within the liberal concepts. His concept of political is but a negative liberalism. What is required for Strauss is a completely new morality that would deploy humanitarian liberal tricks. In Strausss words, The critique of liberalism that Schmitt has initiated can therefore be completed only when we succeed in gaining a horizon beyond liberalismA radical critique of liberalism is therefore possible only on the basis of an adequate understanding of Hobbes 106 . All of this was, to remind once again, written in 1932. As I will argue below, even in 1953, when Strauss wrote Natural Right and History, his opinion on liberalism and Hobbes has not changed substantially. According to Herman Meier, after Schmitt read Strausss Commentary, he said to one of his doctoral students (Gnther Krauss): Youve got to read this. He saw through me and X-rayed me as nobody else has 107 . Indeed, it may well be that Strauss already recognized the general direction in which Schmitts thought was going. Nonetheless, it would be a mere speculation to say how much Strauss was aware of this, or if he could predict Schmitts later political engagement, to which his The Concept of the Political contributed. To summarize this chapter, we may say that, at least in 1932, Strauss fundamentally agreed to Carl Schmitts critique of liberalism. Strauss concurs with Schmitt that liberalism puts emphasis on the protection of individual rights and autonomy of society versus the rights of the state, by so weakening her power; consequently,
105

Leo Strauss, Comments on Carl Schmitts Der Begriff des Politischen in Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 102. Ibid, p. 105. Meier, p. xvii.

106 107

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liberalism is the one to blame for the weakness of the Weimar Republic; and liberalism, while purportedly apolitical, seeks imperialistic ways of spreading around the globe. What differentiates Strauss from Schmitt is that he openly calls not only for the critic of liberalism, but for the establishment of a new, counter-liberal morality.

36

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3.

Max Weber and the fact-value distinction

Throughout the rest of his life in the United States, after the emigration in 1930s, Strauss retained negative attitude towards the quantitatively oriented social science or, as he usually calls it, positivistic social science. The roots of his distrust lay in the experience of the Weimar Republic and the influence of Strausss great contemporary, Max Weber. As stated above, while he was still a young student in the 1920s and 30s, and prior to meeting Heidegger, Strauss was impressed by Max Weber, as many of his contemporaries were. And despite all the criticism towards Webers thought, which he shared with Carl Schmitt, Strauss nurtured great respect for Weber. In 1953, writing in Natural Rights and History, Strauss still maintained No one since Weber has devoted a comparable amount of intelligence, assiduity, and almost fanatical devotion to the basic problem of the social science. Whatever may have been his errors, he is the greatest social scientist of our century. 108 [emphasis mine] In this chapter, I elaborate on Strausss criticism of Webers fact/value distinction. First and second parts of this chapter are devoted to the interpretation of chapter Natural Right and the Distinction Between Fact and Values in Natural Right and History. Throughout both parts, besides explaining Strausss critic, I emphasize similarity of his critic with the critic Carl Schmitt directed towards Hans Kelsens legal positivism and, implicitly, towards Max Weber. I argue that Strauss critic shares more in common with Carl Schmitt than its meets the eye, that is, although implicitly critical towards Schmitts practical solutions, on a basic theoretical level Strauss is very much in agreement with him. Moreover, I emphasize Kelsens and Schmitts debt to Max Webers thought, by arguing that they both represent one part of Webers thought, adopted to the exclusion of other. Following that, I elaborate on Strausss suggestion on a similarity of political conclusions in between Heidegger, Weber, and Schmitt. In the third part of this chapter, on the example of An Epilogue, a critical essay directed towards the positivistic social science, I try to present how Strauss retained the negative stance he adopted following Weimar during his life in the United States.

108

Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 36. Hereafter NRH. All unnamed references are works by Leo Strauss.

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3.1

Critic of Max Webers fact-value distinction

For Strauss, the radical historicist thesis denies the possibility of natural right and hence of the philosophy itself because he claims philosophy in the full sense of the term is impossible. 109 The historicist thesis is based on the existence of the historically changing horizons and the denial of the existence of the natural horizon. 110 Social science criticized by Strauss does not follow the historicist thesis fully. It recognizes that there exists fundamental problems and fundamental alternatives; but it denies that these fundamental problems are conclusively solvable. Hence, this kind of social science does not deny the possibility of the philosophy, but it certainly denies the existence of the natural right. As Strauss says it, The possibility of philosophy does not require more than that the fundamental problems always be the same; but there can not be natural right if the fundamental of political philosophy cannot be solved in a final manner. 111 The assumption of this kind of social science, according to Strauss, runs contrary to a major assumption held by political philosophers from Plato to Hegel, and that assumption was that the fundamental political problem is susceptible of a final solution. The assumption rests on the Socratic answer to the question of how man ought to live. The Socratic answer to this question, starting from the fact of ones ignorance, changes the face of society in which one lives in since there are political consequences for taking this answer seriously, as shown in the Platos Republic or Aristotles Politics. Now, this quest for wisdom may well prove that the wisdom chased was not the one thing needful. As Strauss says it, the disavowal of reason must be reasonable disavowal. 112 In other words, if we are to proclaim the political philosophy or the natural right to be insufficient or superfluous, that should be from within the political philosophy, on its own terms. Rejection of the natural right in the name of value-free social science advocated by Max Weber, according to Strauss, has the following shape. Natural right is then
109 110 111 112

Ibid, p. 35. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid, p. 36.

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rejected today not only because all human thought is held to be historical but likewise because it is thought that there is a variety of unchangeable principles of right or of goodness which conflict with one another, and none of which can be proved to be superior to the others. 113 Max Weber has started, in Strausss view, as a follower of the historical school, but in the name of science, Weber made serious objections to the historical school , albeit halfheartedly. 114 On the one hand, in the name of the individual, regarded by Weber as the basis of real, Weber rejected the historicist claim on the existence of the folk minds. On the other hand, Weber also rejected the historicist belief in the intelligibility of history as metaphysical, for he believed only in the intentions of historical actors as a way of the understanding of historical process. 115 Strauss further claims that Weber understood very well that the value ideas determine the interest of social science; but value ideas are historically relative and so it follows that the science itself is to a certain point part of the Weltanschauung. This precisely was what Weber wanted to negate. In his attempt to prove that the science is independent of the Weltanschauung, Weber took the necessary step and removed the point of interest of social science from values to facts and their causes. This decisive point separates Weber and the historicist school, according to Strauss. In his interest in facts and their causes, Weber found the idea of trans-historical, timeless values, and on this base, according to Strauss, Weber rejected the idea of natural right. 116 In a game of words that follows, Strauss claims, the social science, always to a certain degree part of the given historical Weltanschauung, now move from the value judgments, which are purportedly unscientific, to reference to values. Reference to values is the ethically neutral, value-free way of describing the social processes without saying anything about their goodness or desirability. It is a practical tool required for finding the focus of interest of the social science, for how else could the social science discern its object of the inquiry from the myriad of facts? By refereeing to this concept, Strauss claims, Weber was in the position to base his concept of the ethically neutral
113 114

Ibid. Ibid, p. 37. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid, p. 38-39.

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social science in what he regarded as the most fundamental opposition of all the opposition of Is and Ought, or the opposition of reality and norm or value. 117 At this point, Strauss suggests, for a moment we may assume that we have the knowledge of some undeniably true system of values, which we came to know because of the scientific or any other, say philosophic for example, pursuit. If that is true, then social science becomes a way of social engineering, truly means-oriented science, guided by the values assumed. The mere possibility of the existence of this assumption, that is the existence of the true value system, is exactly what Weber negated. For Weber, according to Strauss, did not just believed in the opposition of the Is and Ought, he believed that there can not be any knowledge of the Ought. Moreover, Strauss continues, for Weber the true value system does not exist; there is a variety of values which are of the same rank , whose demands conflict with one another, and whose conflict can not be solved by human reason. 118 A large part of the rest of the chapter on Max Weber and the distinction between facts and values Strauss devoted to explaining how Weber arrived at the position described above. While reading it, one cannot escape the feeling that Strauss is trying to present to a reader just what the uncontrolled love for truth can do to a man when it is not qualified with the appreciation of good or the public interest which, for Strauss, is a different concept. It is almost an epic story, written not without the sympathy and understanding for Weber, albeit not in a manner that exculpates Weber. In front of the reader Strauss lays the psychological profile of a man cursed with the love for truth and, at the same time, in desperate search for the possibility of genuine ethics or, more precisely, the knowledge of the grounds on which man, guided solely by reason and faithful to himself, can make an ethical choice. Moreover, the way Strauss tells it, it is a story about the man who, through the virtue of intellectual honesty and incapable of a Life-asserting self-deception, committed himself to a scientific reason until the point of self-destruction. Coming from a both neo-Kantian and the historical school background, according to Strauss, Weber, following these two schools of thought, rejected utilitarianism and the

117 118

Ibid, p. 40-41. Ibid, p. 41-42.

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faith in the possibility of the right social order. Similar to neo-Kantianism, he preserved the idea that the human dignity embeds itself in a human autonomy, the individual free choice of values and ideas as exemplified in Become what thou art. 119 Kants categorical imperative, according to Strauss, at this point remains alive and Thou shalt have ideals is still a formal, non-arbitrary and intelligible standard. Then the first twist comes. In a manner of disenchanted theoretician unconnected to the real world, Weber, instead of moving down the Kants road of universality, treats God and Demon as equivalents. As Strauss says, Webers own formulation of his categorical imperative was Follow thy demon or Follow thy god or demon. However, since the choice for either God or Demons is insoluble by human reason and either choice is praiseful for its own sake the conclusion, as Strauss says it, is following. The categorical imperative has then to be formulated as follows: Follow God or the Devil as you will, but, whichever choice you make, make it with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your power. 120 Now it seems that while Weber was following the stars, he was slowly falling in to the mud, which he embraced as equally shine. That is what Strauss refers to when he says that Webers position is a resolute strive for baseness, baseness meaning the indifference toward all causes. Weber acts as a disenchanted intellectual, uncommitted to any cause whatsoever and without the regard for common good. For only the total alienation from practical reality, non-commitment to anything, can afford to draw a sign of equivalence in between the vitalistic values, resolute strive for ones own goal irregardless of the consequences for others or the violation of categorical imperative, and the cultural values of Webers own time, bourgeois commitment to comfort and prestige. After this only complete chaos remains, chaos in which, it seems for now, Weber stands as a spectator, not as an actor. Hence, Strauss concludes, The final formulation of Webers ethical principle would thus be Thou shalt have preferences- an Ought whose fulfillment is fully guaranteed by the Is. 121
119 120

Ibid, p. 44. Ibid, p. 44-45. 121 Ibid, p. 46-47. Nasser Behnegar describes this part of Strausss critic of Webers ethical wonderings as a path from moral duties to relativistic idealism, from idealism to fanatical resoluteness, from there on to philistinism, and, finally, from philistinism to insanity. Behnegar also points out that the cultural part of Webers notion of values is as nihilistic as a vitalistic part, albeit differently. The evidence for this

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If Strausss interpretation of Webers social science is for a moment accepted as a correct one, what are the consequences, how would Weberian-style social scientists look alike? Obviously, the first consequence would be that he acts as the United Nations in certain parts of Balkans. Since he restrained from any value judgment, with a stoic peacefulness and cold mind, he may factually report on the inconveniences of genocide or concentration camps or may well proclaim Gretchen equal to a prostitute. He might also explain a causal chain of events that led to a mass murder and he might describe motivations of both perpetrator and victim, albeit treating them both as morally equal in all decisive respects. The second consequence would be that, if he is a political adviser, he could peacefully and with equivalent seriousness render his services to a government that is planning to commit a mass murder, and to the one that is planning to eradicate the poverty from society. Whatever comes, be that tyranny or liberal democracy or cannibalism, may pass as far as he is concerned, for he does not approve nor reject any kind of the social order. At least on a human intuitive level, as Strauss comments in a number of places, this is unacceptable, nor did Weber, in his search of objectivity, avoided naming things their true names, namely greed, avarice, devotion, sense of proportion, etc., and he indeed knew the difference between Gretchen and a prostitute. 122 In short, according to Strauss, it is impossible to restrain fully from the value judgments and the attempt to do so ends up in a disaster. The second conclusion drawn above is the very objection that Strauss directs towards generous liberals, namely that they are able to give an advice with equal competence and alacrity to tyrants as well free peoples.123 Although general, in this case his objection is targets Hans Kelsens legal positivism. Of course, we need not prove here the known fact that Hans Kelsens Pure Theory of Law is an application of Webers
Behnegar finds in the conformism or philistinism. Bourgeois conformism is oriented towards the passion and the pleasures of instinct promulgated as the culture of society. But it is nihilistic insofar that it does not believe in the values beyond the simplest pleasures of instinct, or the instinctive pleasures that require fighting, as pure vitalistic values do. See Nasser Behnegar, Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the Scientific Study of Politics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 77-86, esp. p. 86. In the historical context, the implication would be that the rise of National Socialism, representative of the vitalistic values, was made easier by the bourgeois conformism, the representative of the cultural values. Since in it self was nihilistic, conformism, by definition, had no reason to oppose the rise of vitalistic values. All that conformism could do is hope, or ask for a promise, that their only value, passion and pleasures of instinct, will not be abrogated because of the rise of vitalistic values. 122 NRH, p. 52-53. 123 Ibid, p. 4.

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methodological principles, and the Is and Ought distinction within the realm of legal theory. 124 By quoting Kelsen, Strauss gives one example of what he has in mind. Vollends sinnlos ist die Behauptung, das in der Despotie keine Rechtsordnung bestehe, sondern Willkr das Despoten herrsche . . . stellt doch auch der despotisch regierte Staat irgendeine Ordnung menschlichen Verhaltens dar . . . . Diese Ordnung ist eben die Rechtsordnung. Ihr den Charakter das Rechts abzusprechen, ist nur eine naturrechtliche Naivitt oder berhebung . . . . Was als Willkr gedeutet wird, ist nur die rechtliche Mglichkeit des Autokraten, jede Entscheidung an sich zu ziehen, die Ttigkeit der untergeordneten Organe bedingungslos zu bestimmen und einmal gesetzte Normen jederzeit mit allgemeiner oder nur besonderer Geltung aufzuheben oder abzundern. Ein solcher Zustand ist ein Rechtszustand, auch wenn er als nachteilig empfunden wird. Doch hat er auch seine guten Seiten. Der im modernen Rechtsstaat gar nicht seltene ruf nach Diktatur zeigt dies ganz deutlich 125 . What Strauss objected to Webers social science through the backdoor of Kelsens legal positivism is somewhat similar to objection made to Kelsen by Carl Schmitt. Schmitt claimed that Kelsens positivism, by restraining the power of state and not being able to make a distinction in between the friend and enemy, makes the state an easy prey for its enemies. 126 Of course, we may wonder if Strauss and Schmitt had the same concept in mind when speaking about the tyrants and enemies. As Strauss suggests at different places, Weber was deeply rooted in his own culture and in the Protestant type of Christian ethics. He was also a child of his time, although an unsatisfied child. It suffices, according to Strauss, to look at Webers three
124

For explanation of Kelsens legal positivism and his debt to Weber, see David Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Herman Heller in Weimar, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 102 157, hereafter Legality and Legitimacy. For Kelsens opinion on the natural law, see Kelsen, Natural-Law Doctrine Before the Tribunal of Sciencein Shadia B. Drury, ed., Law and Politics: Readings in Legal and Political Thought, p. 251 257 (Calgary, Alberta: Detselig Enterprises Ltd, 1980). In essence, Kelsen argues that the natural law presupposes the presence of value in the reality. Hence, according to Kelsen, the natural law is always, more or less, religious in character. The main fallacy of the natural law is its attempt to obliterate the difference in between law, which is a realm of science concerned with the Is, and the realm of morality, ethics and politics , which is concerned with the Ought. In Kelsens words Since the metaphysical assumption of the immanence of value in natural reality is not acceptable from the point of view of science, the natural-law doctrine is based on the logical fallacy of an inference from the is to the ought, see ibid, p. 255. 125 NRH, p. 4, n. 2. Kelsens quote which Strauss uses here is in Kelsen, Algemeine Staatslehre (Berlin 1925), p.335-36. In the same footnote, Strauss notes that since Kelsen has not changed his attitude toward natural right, I cannot imagine why he has omitted this instructive passage from the English translation (General Theory of Law and State [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949], p. 300), see ibid. 126 For Carl Schmitts critic of Kelsens legal positivism see Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 104 123. Also see John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 206 248. Hereafter Carl Schmitts Critic of Liberalism.

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ideal types of legitimacy (traditional, rational, and charismatic) and to see that not a comprehensive reflection on the nature of political society but the experience of two or three generations hap supplied the basic orientation. 127 More importantly, says Strauss, Webers own methodology affected adversely the content of his thought. 128 No matter how much Weber was concerned with the difference between the natural science and the historical or cultural sciences, he still based his methodology, according to Strauss, on the modern natural science, the new physics. 129 According to McCormick, Carl Schmitt made the exact same objection to Webers method and generally to quantitatively oriented social science. 130 Schmitt complained that In almost every discussion one can observe the extent to which the methodology of the natural-technical sciences dominates contemporary [social science] thinking. 131 Weber, according to Strauss, was aware of the influence of natural sciences on his own methodology. Weber also suspected that the disenchanted situation of a modern, man was made possible by the rise of natural science, which promised to render man free from all the delusions of past. The promised freedom of delusion proved itself just another delusion, although one that is hard to bear. Nevertheless, Weber concluded that the irreligion or science (his own faith) has an equivalent legitimacy to religion. He came to see that the choice for religious or scientific view of the world rests on nothing but a blind choice. How in practice the choice would look like is to a certain point dictated by fate, or the mere accident of being born in a time that prefers science to religion or vice versa. At this point there is, again, a similarity between Strauss and Carl Schmitt. According to Howse, what Strauss objected to Webers science, Schmitt objected to Hans Kelsens concept of the Grundnorm. In Kelsens scientific theory of law the Grundnorm is the basic norm from which all other legal norms within one legal system derive their
NRH, p. 57. Strauss refers to the experience of continental Europe in the post-French revolution era, which is, according to Mller, one of the perennial subjects of Carl Schmitt. Schmitt believed that the liberal neutralization and the demise of the European states and Europe in general started after the French revolution. Schmitt transferred this belief to his two pupil-historians, Reinhart Koselleck and Hanno Kesting. See Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 104-111. 128 NRH, p. 59. 129 Ibid, p. 78. 130 McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 59. 131 Schmitt, quoted in ibid.
127

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validity. The problem with the Grundnorm is that it cannot be, by definition, derived from the state system, yet the coherence of all legal and political system rests on it. And if morality or politics is the realm of value judgments and, therefore, beyond the scientific interest, then the Grundnorm has no basis in itself. It is the command or decision of someones will, or, we may add, the result of the blind choice or fate, unable to give an account of itself. 132 The religious (or any metaphysically guided) way of life is then decisively equal to scientific way of life in a sense that both choices, ways of life, cannot give an account of themselves. This, according to Strauss, is what Weber had in mind when he said that science seemed to be unable to give a clear or certain account of itself and All arguments in favor of revelation seem to be valid only if belief in revelation is presupposed; and all arguments against revelation seem to be valid only if unbelief is presupposed. 133 Nevertheless, even though choice is blind or dictated by faith, the choice has to be made if for no other reason than the practical one, for, as Strauss says it, man cannot live without light, guidance, knowledge. 134 For this reason, inability of Weber to adhere to normative system which would not grant legitimacy to every preference, Strauss labels Webers thesis as one that necessarily leads to nihilism. 135 However, Strauss also labels it as noble and not ordinary nihilism, since it steams out of the alleged or real insight into the baseless character of everything thought to be noble. 136 To break out of this vicious circle would require, according to Strauss, a return to the world of pre-scientific understanding, the world of common sense. That step which Weber was obviously not willing to take is the step that Strauss takes by resurrecting the notion of classical natural right.

132

Robert Howse, From Legitimacy to Dictatorship and Back Again: Leo Strausss Critique of the AntiLiberalism of Carl Schmitt in David Dyzenhaus, ed., Law as Politics: Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 57-91 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998). 133 NRH, p. 74-75. 134 Ibid, p. 74. 135 Ibid, p. 42. 136 Ibid, p. 48.

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3.2

Heidegger, Schmitt and Weber as brothers in arms

When one compares the above Strausss claim regarding Webers position to Strausss exegesis of Heideggers thought, it is implied that Weber and Heidegger arrived at the same conclusion, namely the groundlessness of all choices and the imposition of fate (historical circumstances) upon it, just coming from the different directions. A thought that Strauss subscribes to Weber (although he adds that Weber did not consistently adhere to it), all meaning, all articulation, originates in the activity of knowing or evaluating subject 137 certainly sounds as Heideggers thought. This is way in What is Political Philosophy and Other Studies Strauss explicitly claims that positivism (term he often uses for what he understands as a Weberian style value-free and facts oriented social science) necessarily transforms itself to historicism. 138 In light of that claim, we can reconsider the possible kinship in the temperament and direction among Heideggers, Schmitts, and Webers thought. As I argued above, both Heidegger and Carl Schmitt despaired over what for them were the consequences of liberalism and technologization of society, namely the disappearance of the seriousness of life and its conversion to mere entertainment and economics. Both Heidegger and Schmitt made a turn towards the creation out of nothingness in order to find the way out of the mechanized, soulless world. In a similar manner, Weber despaired over the situation of a modern man that finds himself alone in a disenchanted world, after all the past safe guidelines of tradition and religion have lost their meaning. Such a modern man is consequently compelled to re-construct his own world, albeit he has no guiding light for doing so, and ultimately everyone is bound to make a blind choice at some point. Moreover, Weber described the modern economic order in a way that is clearly similar to Heidegger and Schmitt. For Weber, modern economic order has no internal meaning; it is a pure instrumental order that turns those to which it was suppose to serve in to servants; it is an iron cage. 139

137 138

Ibid, p. 77. What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 25. 139 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of the Capitalism, trans. Talcot Parsons, intro. Anthony Giddens (London: Unwin Hyman 1989; first pub. 1904-1905), p. 181 183.

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Strauss repeats no less than three times that Weber saw two ways out of the situation which he experienced as a highly problematic, if not a desperate one. Either a spiritual renewal (wholly new prophets or a powerful renaissance of old thoughts and ideals) or else a mechanized petrifaction, varnished by a kind of convulsive sense of self-importance, i.e., the extinction of every human possibility but that of specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart. 140 Two ethical systems correspond to these alternatives, the ethics of intention and the ethics of responsibility. As Strauss says it, According to former [ethics of responsibility], mans responsibility extends to the foreseeable consequences of his actions, whereas, according to the latter [ethics of intention], mans responsibility is limited to the intrinsic rightness of his actions. 141 Strauss continues to explain that Weber believed that these ethics supplement each other and both united constitute the genuine human being. 142 However, Strauss stresses that what Weber really had in mind when speaking of the ethics of the intention is, in fact, wholly alien to the ethics of this-worldly social and political movements and actually constitutes a certain interpretation of Christian ethics, strictly otherworldly ethics of I stand here, I can do no other type. It follows, in Strausss opinion, that conflict between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of intention represents a conflict in between this-worldly and otherworldly ethic, conflict insoluble by human reason. 143 According to David Dyzenhaus, legal and political theories of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt represent these two different types of Webers ethics, albeit constructed in a mutually exclusive manner. Kelsen adopts the ethics of responsibility by constructing his system of legal positivism with a goal of constraining the political power of state. Nevertheless, his ethics of responsibility, following Webers Is and Ought distinction, remains deprived of the political and moral content, for the politics and morals fall into the categories of value judgments and, hence, remain removed from the interest of Kelsens scientific understanding of legal science. Contrary to this, Schmitts legal and political theory (at least in its fully developed stage) follows ethic of intention
140 141

NRH, p. 42, p. 49 and p. 74. Ibid, p. 69. Weber presented a speech on two ethics in 1918 under the title Politics as a Vocation. See Politics as a Vocation in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, p. 77128 (London: Kegan Paul, 1947). 142 NRH, p. 70. 143 Ibid.

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(conviction), arguing for a Volk as a homogenized political unit and a strong and unconstrained executive power willing to decide and assert its own existence. Schmitt finds that unrestrained, executive will embodied in a charismatic person. 144 Here we may rightly ask if Weber leave the issue solely on that, presenting the above-sketched ethical alternatives without his own preference. In other words, did the alleged inability of reason to resolve the conflict of value systems completely paralyzed Weber? As Strauss comments, for Weber conflict is an unambiguous thing, while the peace is not. Weber himself always put the word peace in quotation marks because for him universal peace is an illegitimate and fantastic goal, equivalent with the moral depravity of the last man. There is an equally high duty to join the eternal struggle for the elbow room for our nation; and while considering our national interest we should be guided by the warrior ethics for the most naked Machiavellianism [would have to be] regarded as a matter of course in every respect, and as wholly unobjectionable from an ethical point of view. 145 From within Webers thesis itself, as Strauss suggests, extreme political positions are preferable to middle ones for the reason of their consistency and passion in pursuance of their goal.146 Hence, conflict has assumed the position of sacredness. When one takes into account Webers ideal type of the charismatic person and, as Dyzenhaus suggests, his appeal for the leader, charismatic person that would change the disastrous state of the Weimar Germany we can already see to whom this helped. 147 Put in to a historical context, it has cleared the way for Hitler. It took the genius, but troublesome work of Webers student Carl Schmitt, the second of his two legitimate
Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 14. NRH, p. 65. 146 Ibid, p. 67. Very similar opinion regarding Webers own political, especially foreign policy, preferences, and his appeal for the charismatic leadership can be found in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890 -1920, trans. Michael S. Steinberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). As Mommsen argues in The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 191-193, when he first published Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920 in 1959, the reactions were more than unwelcoming and critical. However, things changed after the 15th German Sociological Congress in Heidelberg in 1964, organized to commemorate the centenary of Max Webers birth. At that Congress, Habermas claimed that there is a connection in between Carl Schmitts decisionism and Webers view of democracy. On views Habermas presented at the Congress, see Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 236. 147 Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 12. For Webers own thoughts on the relationship between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction and an appeal for a new leader, see Weber, Politics as a Vocation, above n. 34.
145 144

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sons (the first being Hans Kelsen), to take one part of Webers thoughts to their radical conclusion. According to Dyzenhaus, Hans Kelsens legal positivism, the other part of Webers thought, did not exactly pave the way for National Socialism, but it offered no resource for legal resistance to it, since Kelsen insisted on the difference between law and morality. 148 We may only wonder what Weber himself would do if he had lived to see that. 149 Of course, Strauss is aware of the shadow of Hitler from the beginning of the chapter on distinction between facts and values in the Natural Right and History and he warns not to be turned away by that. What Strauss says about Weber and his (as understood by Strauss) relationship to National Socialism might as well apply to Strausss relationship with Heidegger and Schmitt. It does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum; the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler. 150 [italics in original] This is not a pleasant claim on Webers account but, as suggested by Strausss comment above, not particularly troublesome for Strauss himself. Jrgen Habermas, David Dyzenhaus, and John P. McCormick also claim that the certain parts of Webers thought contributed to the rise of National Socialism through the works of his student Carl Schmitt. Jrgen Habermas asserts that Webers sociology stripped state authority

148 149

Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 5. The discussion of a new leader, charismatic authority, ethics of responsibility, and ethics of conviction was, in the historical context, the discussion on the legal position of a president and his relationship to the parliament in the new, post-Versailles German parliamentary democracy. According to Wolfgang Mommsen, Weber advocated that in a parliamentary democracy (future Weimar Republic) that was to replace the German monarchy, the president should be a counterbalance and should also retain an upper hand in his relationship to it. The president would claim his charismatic authority from his ability to win a popular plebiscitary election, Mommsen, quoted in Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 13. For an in depth study of Webers role, see Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890 -1920. For different opinions on Webers political role, see Dyzenahus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 13, n. 33. In one of many Weimar Republic constitutional crises, Schmitt and Kelsen engaged in a heated debate regarding the relationship among the president, parliament and constitutional court. Schmitt interpreted the Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic as authorization to the President to decide in the state of emergency, while Kelsen thought that the Constitutional Court needs to inspect the presuppositions for such a decision and, effectively, almost make that decision itself, see Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 70-85 and 123-133. As I will argue in the chapter on Strausss critic of Locke, Strauss retained Webers and Schmitts faith in the need for a strong, executive power. 150 NRH, p. 42.

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of its kinship with reason and religion and that Carl Schmitt is a legitimate pupil of Max Weber. 151 As noted above, for David Dyzenhaus, Kelsen and Schmitt represent the two ethical paths inscribed in Webers thought and both Kelsen and Schmitt embrace either ethics of responsibility or the ethics of intention (conviction) to the exclusion of the other alternative. 152 John P. McCormick also claims that Schmitt has taken parts of Webers thought to their radical conclusion and draws a fascinating parallel with another famous Webers student, Georg Lukacs. It is indeed troublesome to see that both Webers students, Schmitt and Lukacs, have invested their intellectual geniality into the totalitarian political ideologies, National Socialism and Communism. 153 As McCormick persuasively shows, by the time when both Schmitt and Lukacs understood that they got involved with irrational political movements, they both tried to point to Weber as an intellectual source of their mistake. 154 The question of Webers responsibility, nevertheless, remains open. As I have tried to show above, Strauss follows two divergent lines within Webers thought and within Webers concept of the fact/value distinction. As for the first line, Strauss claims that the ethics of responsibility together with the cultural values leads to an inability to take a stance against the extreme political movements; moreover, it makes their victory more probable. Contrary to Weber, Strauss argues that it is impossible to take a fully neutral stance while judging the facts of the social life and implicitly advocates social activism and partisanship. Furthermore, Strauss identifies the responsible and purely scientific part of Webers thought in Hans Kelsens legal positivism. As Dyzenhaus shows, Kelsens positivism did not exactly supported National Socialism, but it made its rise easier by undermining all the legal resources of resistance. 155 But that still has not reached the core of the argument. The main issue is that although Strauss tries to persuade us that he argues from the perspective of the natural right and contra tyranny, his critique shares many common points with Carl
151

Habermas, quoted in Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 236. For the full account of Habermas opinion on Carl Schmitt, including Schmitts relation to Webers thought, see The Horrors of Autonomy: Carl Schmitt in English in Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians Debate, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 128-139. 152 Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 14. 153 McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 31 82. 154 Ibid, p. 78. 155 Dyzenhaus, Legality and Legitimacy, p. 5.

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Schmitts critique of Kelsens positivism. Strauss and Schmitt both criticize the dominance of the natural sciences method and its application to the social science in Webers theory. And while Strauss criticizes Webers value-agnosticism for not being able to take a stance, Schmitt criticizes Kelsen (and implicitly his teacher Weber) for not being able to make a decision. Of course, one could make a counter-argument that the difference between Strauss and Schmitt lies in a content of stance or decision, but given that Strauss is not quite clear how that stance would look from the perspective of natural right, the similarity remains, to say at least, suspicious. In spite of this, Strauss indeed implicitly criticizes Schmitt, by directing his critic against Schmitts legitimate father Weber and the second line in his thought, ethics of intention (conviction). As suggested, the second line of Webers theory, his concepts of the ethics of conviction, charismatic leader, vitalistic values and so on, lead directly to, according to Strauss, the most radical extremism. This kind of extremism was for Strauss, moreover, Webers own preference. For Strauss, the trouble with this kind of extremism is not that it is extreme, but it is extreme in a most sinister manner. It is irrational and, so to say, base and situation-minded and completely oblivious of any restraints when choosing its goals. The greatest trouble is, that while oblivious and irrational when choosing goals, it is completely rational in the process of their accomplishment, that is, in choosing means for achieving goals. It is a sort of scientific lunacy.

3.3

Applying the Weimar lessons in America

One could make a case that Webers value-free social science did perhaps contribute to the rise of National Socialism only because of the social and political deficiencies of the Weimar Republic and not because such a science is inherently inclined to do so. Nevertheless, Strauss remained deeply convinced in the basic deficiency and inability of the quantitatively oriented social science to resolve social problems. Moreover, as Nasser Behnegar persuasively shows, until the end of his life in the United States, Strauss remained committed to criticizing, in his days prevailing, quantitative political science. 156

156

Behnegar, p. 141 147.

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In 1962, in An Epilogue, part of the collection of essays written by Strauss and his students, Strauss very critically addressed the new political science (behavioral and positivistic political science).157 He accused the new political science for applying the value free analysis and not being able to affirm the existence of the hierarchy of values, and, consequently, the fundamental superiority of the liberal democracy over other political systems. 158 Value free analysis, for Strauss, undermines the resistance and makes the victory of enemies (Communism at the time) more probable. He believed that the inability of such a new political science to defend liberal democracy against its enemies is an evidence of its failure and a sign of the crisis of liberal democracy. Of course, this is a continuation of Strausss negative opinion about the value-free social science, along the lines presented in the above discussion. It is a reminiscent of his deep conviction that liberal democracy, if not properly guarded, ends up in fascism, as Strauss believes it was the case in the Weimar Republic. In Strausss words: Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavellis teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless, one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns. 159 As stated in the chapter on Heidegger, Strauss, following Nietzsche, considered religion to be the cure for masses and the ultimate glue for the societal cohesion. The Cold War political climate, with is insistence on opposition to the atheistic Communism, has made it easier for him to object to the new political science that it rests on a dogmatic atheism which presents itself as merely methodological or hypothetical. 160 In other words, Strauss objected that the role of religion in a public sphere is disregarded by the social science, since the religion is treated as a mere private hypothesis. Moreover, according to Strauss, the new political science insists on liberal relativism and denies the concept of the common good, since it treats all opinions as equal without the regard

157

I am referring to reprint of An Epilogue in Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss, edited with an introduction by Hilail Gildin, (Indianapolis, New York: Pegasus, 1975), p. 99-130. 158 Ibid,p. 128 129. 159 Ibid, p. 129. 160 Ibid, p. 122.

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for the public interest. 161 Strausss essay implies that the social science should serve in a public or national interest. He stops just one step short of recommending to social science to think in advance of all the consequences of its conclusions, that is, before making it public. This also serves as evidence that Strauss regarded the truth as a matter that should not be carelessly spread among masses, who would then supposedly loose their minds and start the destruction games, as Strausss interpretation of Weimar goes. Religion, then, comes as a handy and noble delusion. Needless to say, above comments did not made Strauss particularly popular among his colleagues. However, after Strausss death in 1973, he left behind him a number of devoted students and adherents and thoroughly changed the position of political philosophy as an academic discipline in North-American universities. Political philosophy, before Strauss considered being the low-rated subfield of political science and not so important historical discipline, after his death became exactly what he would want it to be. It became the way of living. As Robert Devigne shows, Strausss writings and his students academic and governmental work have reshaped the conservatism in the United States. 162 New conservatism, sometimes suspected as un-American, gained new meaning, by orienting itself towards values and the critic of unrestrained liberalism, especially during the Vietnam War. Strausss adherents took up his attitude towards the social science and the role of religion in the society. I have already showed Strausss opinion of the societal role of religion. However, it is not altogether clear what, for Strauss, should take the place of the ethically neutral social science research. It seems to me that Strauss succeeds more in criticizing the practical consequences of such a science than in proving persuasively that such a science is altogether wrong. What should be the substitute? Should the government control the social science, so it directs itself purely towards the strengthening of the values or convictions of a given society? If so, what remains of the academic freedom? In short, is the social science supposed to be the servant of national interest? Naturally, I cannot give an answer to these questions here. I can only say that an allusion to such a position of the social science in a society does not speak highly of the one who
161 162

Ibid, p. 123-124. Robert Devigne, Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshott, Strauss and the Response to Postmodernism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 36 77.

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alludes, no matter how noble his intentions are. Nor it would speak highly of the society that would accept the allusion. Both the society and the one that alludes do not, then, play by the rules established by the democracy.

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4.

Thomas Hobbes, or on the foundation of liberalism

As I have already noted in the chapter on Heideggers existentialism, in Commentary on The Concept of the Political, written in 1932, although he shared most of Schmitts views on liberalism, Strauss radicalized Schmitts already radical notion of the concept of the political that presupposes the concept of the state. Moreover, Strauss points out that Schmitt, although trying to engage and challenge liberalism, nevertheless remains within the playfield of the liberalism. It is constrained by its assumptions, which, according to Strauss, Schmitt takes upon on their face value. Strauss also indicates the need for reaching to the horizon beyond liberalism that is possible only on a basis of the proper understanding of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, which is the one who made the radical turn from the classical to modern natural right and by so radically reoriented the direction of history. In this chapter, I try to prove that in 1953, Strauss still did not find the way to fully reject Schmitts influence on him, even after the immigration and the end of the WWII, when all the consequences of the political engagement of his Weimar friend and teacher Carl Schmitt were made public.

***
In Natural Right and History, Strauss describes Hobbes as the one who stands in between Locke and the Anglican divine Richard Hooker. Hobbes is the one who draws all the consequences from the rise of modern natural science. According to Strauss, to understand Locke and the turn from the classical to modern natural right one has to turn to Hobbes, that imprudent, impish, and iconoclastic extremist, that first plebeian philosopher, who is so enjoyable writer because of his almost boyish straightforwardness, his never failing humanity, and his marvelous clarity and force. 163 In Strausss view, Hobbes, self-regarded as the founder of the political philosophy or political science, knew from the beginning the basics of the classical tradition against which he was rebelling, albeit he tacitly took some of the premises of that very tradition and transformed them. The classics (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
163

Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 166, hereafter NRH. All unnamed references are works by Leo Strauss. On the natural law teaching of Richard Hooker, see Ross Harrison, Hobbes, Locke, and Confusions Masterpiece (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 33-38

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Seneca, Tacitus, and Plutarch) distinguished and preferred nobility and justice, the good, to pleasure; and asserted the existence of the natural right and the naturally best order as distinguished and independent of human conviction.164 But for Hobbes himself, all this was too idealistic. However, he did not, for that reason, rejected the classical view altogether, but he tried to succeed where the Socratic tradition has failed. Hobbes did this, according to Strauss, in two ways, by means of the political hedonism and the political atheism. 165 Firstly, Hobbess political hedonism consists in the following: he denied the traditional assumption of the classics that held that, by nature, human being is a political or social animal, that is to say, Hobbes denied to human beings their natural sociality. Contrary to the classics, Hobbes regarded human beings as apolitical or asocial animals. Following this, Hobbes could also deny that a good is distinguishable from the pleasure, or, in other words, Hobbes claimed that the good and the pleasant are identical. 166 Secondly, Hobbes rebelled against the notion that the universe is intelligible and parted with the already present tradition of the extreme skepticism. Using the method of the then new natural science, Hobbes withdrew the intelligibility from the universe and gave it to human beings. From then on, a man is a stranger in the cosmos and could understand only what he makes and is, therefore, free to construct. Hence, Hobbes political atheism consists in a claim that the nature is unintelligible and there are no knowable limits to the conquest of nature. 167 Strauss comments that, despite all of the above, what is certain is that mans natural state is misery; the vision of the City of Man to be erected on the ruins of the City of God is an unsupported hope. 168 This suggestion implies that Hobbes was also rebelling against the conservatism of Christianity of his days. According to Strauss, the classical tradition of natural right lived under the aegis of the Christianized natural law teaching. 169 Nevertheless, it seems that Strauss also suggests that Hobbes merely secularized the very teaching against which he was rebelling.

164 165

NRH, p. 167. Ibid, p. 169. 166 Ibid, p. 168-169. 167 Ibid, p. 170-175. For another interpretation of Strausss claims on Hobbess political hedonism and political atheism and generally on Strausss description of Hobbes, see Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (MacMillan Press, 1988), p. 133-150. 168 NRH, p. 175. 169 Ibid, p. 163-164.

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At this point Strauss makes a claim that is perhaps the most important addition to his Commentary on The Concept of the Political. Strauss claims Machiavelli is the one which laid the foundations on which Hobbes is building his concept of the natural law. Hobbes, according to Strauss, accepted Machiavellis premises, but not his conclusions. The major difference in between Machiavelli and Hobbes is that the latter oriented himself towards the exceptional cases and on that ground based the concepts of the civic virtue and the statesmanship, while the former one oriented towards normalcy and the self-preservation of individual. The fact that Strauss claims that Machiavelli oriented himself towards the exception reminds us that Carl Schmitt did the same. As Robert Howse suggests, Strauss only later understood Machiavellis importance for both Hobbes and Schmitt, and that was due to Strausss newly adopted orientation toward the classical natural right. Howse also suggests that the reason why Strauss did not name Schmitt explicitly was the prevalent political climate of McCarthyism that prevented prejudice-free academic discussion at the time when Strauss wrote Natural Right and History. 170 According to Strauss, Machiavelli limited the vision of the classical political philosophy in order to achieve practical goals. In opposition to classics, Machiavelli started not from how man ought to live (as classics did), but from how man actually lives. Furthermore, Machiavelli claimed that human beings are evil and that there is no superhuman or natural support for the existence of justice. Because men are evil, the beginning of the civil society is a crime, fratricide, as the founding of Rome shows. Therefore, the exception, the state of emergency, is the representative of the true nature of the civil society and the basic order of things. However, Strauss explicitly criticizes Machiavellis opinion and therefore also implicitly Carl Schmitts inclination toward the exception because it led to the substitution of patriotism or merely political virtue for human excellence, or, more particularly, for moral virtue and the contemplative life. 171 Strauss also says that in case of Machiavelli and Schmitt the root of the efficient cause

170

Robert Howse, From Legitimacy to Dictatorship and Back Again: Leo Strausss Critique of the AntiLiberalism of Carl Schmitt in David Dyzenhaus, ed., Law as Politics: Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 57-91 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998). 171 NRH, p. 178.

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takes place of the end or of the purpose. 172 In other words, from the perspective of the classical natural right, we are then oriented not toward the perfection, but towards imperfection. Strauss implies the further connection in between Machiavellis love for exception and the praise of political virtue as the virtue and Schmitts politics. According to Strauss, the German historical thought of the nineteenth century (with which Schmitt shares some important common beliefs) has recovered Machiavellis notion of statesmanship. The consequence of this, however, was that during the process historical thought destroyed all moral principles of politics. 173 That this claim of Strauss is directed toward Carl Schmitt can be proven, according to Robert Howse. Howse refers to Schmitts own appraisal of Fichte and Hegel, which rehabilitated Machiavelli in the nineteenth century in order to defend German people against an enemy Napoleon, which was, similarly to Wilsonian liberalism against which Schmitt is rebelling, armed with a humanitarian ideology. 174 For Strauss, this revival was a moral backlash exemplified in the school of thought known as the reason of state. Moral backlash consists in the reason of state school insistence on the efficiency and realism rather then on the classical ideals of human perfection made possible in the best regime. In Strauss words, reason of state school replaced the best regime by efficient government. 175 Now that we have sketched Strausss description and critic of Machiavelli and Schmitt, we may return to Hobbes. As stated above, Hobbes, according to Strauss, accepted Machiavellis premises but rejected his conclusion. Hobbess different conclusion, however, makes Strauss no less critical toward him. The presumption which Machiavelli and Hobbes agreed on is mans evilness or a sociality. Machiavellis conclusion or, rather, call for the unrestrained political virtue with all its brutalities, sufferings and sacrifices in the name of the state, Machiavellis admiration for the lupine policies of republican Rome, motivated Hobbes to restore moral principles or the concept of natural law, albeit in a new, scientific manner. 176 In contrast to the classical natural right, Hobbes started not from the mans ends, but from its beginnings and found the basis for his modern concept of the natural right in the natural right of self172 173 174 175 176

Ibid, p. 178 179. Ibid, p. 192. Howse, above n. 8, p. 68. NRH, p. 191. Ibid, p. 179.

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preservation. The guiding light for Hobbes, according to Strauss, was not merely reason, but reason working in cooperation with passions, or, specifically, the strongest of all passions, the fear of violent death at the hands of others. 177 Classical natural right inclination towards mans perfection, moreover natural duty to achieve perfection, was changed in to an inclination towards natural right to self-preservation. The concept of the state, according to Strauss, was profoundly transformed by this change in orientation. The function of the state is no longer a promotion or production of virtues or virtuous life. Instead, the safeguarding of the natural right of self-preservation is called for. This safeguarding is the only absolute limit to the power of state. This change in the concept of the state led to a birth of liberalism. In Strausss words, If we may call liberalism that political doctrine which regards as the fundamental political fact the rights, as distinguished from the duties of man, and which identifies the function of the state with the protection or the safeguarding of those rights, we must say that the founder of liberalism was Hobbes. 178 Hence, in the way that Strauss portrays Hobbess development, Hobbes started from the extreme skepticism, combined it with the scientific method and the prejudice against the teleological concept of the universe and founded liberalism. It is indicative that for Strauss extreme skepticism (read liberalism) was then guided by the anticipation of a new type of dogmatism. 179 The idea that everybody, no matter how foolish, should be a judge of what is required for his or her self-preservation or what is just, Strauss calls the natural right of folly. 180 All Hobbess efforts were, according to Strauss, motivated by realism, a need to replace the classical natural right conception of the order (state) based on mans duties, whose actualization is highly improbable and utopian, with the modern natural right concept of order which is based in mans rights and whose actualization is, then, almost certain. For the appeal to rights common to all is bound to have a warm and welcoming

Ibid, p. 180. Ibid, p. 181-182. 179 Ibid, p. 171. 180 Ibid, p. 186. Richard Tuck argues against Strausss depiction of Hobbes as the demon of modernity. Tuck recognizes that Strauss has made important insights in to Hobbess moral and political philosophy and his relationship with natural science. The reason why, according to Tuck, Strauss depicts Hobbes as the demon of modernity is Strausss fanciful reading of the ancient writers rather than Strausss reading of Hobbes. See Richard Tuck, Hobbes as the demon of modernity in Great Political Thinkers, p. 214-217 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
178

177

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reception among many, since it promises incentives for its embracement, while the case is quite contrary with an appeal to duties without incentives. The appeal to many, no matter how vulgar, and the promise of incentives explains, according to Strauss, that during the modern period natural law became much more of a revolutionary force that it had been in the past. Moreover, the requirement for the effectiveness of the modern natural right is enlightenment or propaganda rather than moral appeal. 181

4.1

Consequences of Hobbes Liberalism

Because of this Hobbess turn toward the individual and its right to self-preservation as a new center of the natural law, several important consequences took place, according to Strauss. For the purpose of this study, four are important: new concept of the state of nature as the basis of the natural law; doctrine of sovereignty and the notion of the commodious living; legal positivism and the new concept of justice; and the institutionalization as the basis of the good governance. To a certain degree, all these consequences are interconnected and I will explain each of them in turn. It is only after Hobbes, according to Strauss, that the doctrine of natural law has in essence became the doctrine of the state of nature. It was necessary for Hobbes to claim that the state of nature antedating civil society is the brutish condition of the fight for survival, where everyone is a law on to himself. It is a state of perpetual war for survival where everybody is everybody elses enemy, or the state of the homo homini lupus. The human reason leads the man to conclude that the orderly state of things is preferable to the disorderly and brutish state of nature, since it is easier to save ones own life if everybody subjects themselves to one sovereign that will have a duty to preserve a peace among the individuals. Strauss notices that if Hobbess state of nature is present everywhere and people are, by virtue of reason, led to replace it by the state of peace, one could ask why the state of peace is not present everywhere, since it is supposed to emerge naturally. Hobbes explains this as an interference of human stupidity in a natural order. Contrary to Hobbes, for Strauss it is obvious that The right social order does not normally come about by natural necessity on account of mans ignorance of that order.
181

NRH, p. 183.

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The invisible hand remains ineffectual if it is not supported by the Leviathan or, if you wish, by the Wealth of Nations. 182 Another reason that Strauss gives for Hobbess state of nature concept not being overcome everywhere is because, according to Strauss, Hobbess concept of the state of nature is but a secularized Christian concept of the state of grace, hence concept not evident to a pure human reason that does not accept fate. Essentially, Hobbes replaced the divine grace with the good government. 183 Based on the supposed brutish state of nature Hobbes was able to build his doctrine of sovereignty. The sovereign then becomes the one that preserves peace in the society and elevates it from the brutish state of nature. Sovereign bases its claim to governance and preservation of social peace in a social contract to which every individual adheres to ones that it has become a member of the society. In other words, individuals surrender to the sovereign their own right to self-preservation. However, Hobbes, according to Strauss, did not stop at this. Opposing the classical, Epicurean tradition of the ascetic hedonism, according to which nature has given to a man only needful things, driven by the hedonism and the belief in the power of science to conquest and change nature, Hobbes claimed that there are no purely natural wants. Hobbes claimed that all wants are legitimate as long as they are pleasant, with exception of one, namely the want to disturb the peace. From there on, the function of state is not only to preserve the peace and the self-preservation of individuals, but also to make their pleasurable living possible, to secure commodious living. And since sovereign is the result of the contract among individuals, the machine that is supposed to guard pleasurable existence of individuals, the sovereign may do only that to which individuals have consented to. In opposition to the classical natural right, in Hobbess modern natural right, consent takes precedence over wisdom. The doctrine of sovereignty then becomes a legal doctrine and the natural law transforms itself in to a natural public law. As Machiavelli insisted to replace the best regime with the efficient government, Hobbess natural public law substituted best regime with the legitimate government.184 A logical consequence of Hobbess doctrine of the state of nature and the doctrine of sovereignty is the legal positivism, according to Strauss. Since everybodys natural
182 183 184

Ibid, p. 200-201. Ibid, p. 184. Ibid, p. 191.

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right to self preservation is transferred to a sovereign which, in turn, creates laws that are suppose to guard that very right, there is no reason anymore to oppose the legal norms enacted by the sovereign, since these norms are based in the supposed consent of individuals. The positivist legal position, according to Jean Hampton, understands law as dependable on sovereigns will. 185 This is the reason why, according to Jean Hampton, Hobbes is frequently regarded as absolutist, since when this Hobbess legal theory is taken to its logical conclusion, individuals cannot oppose any decision made by sovereign, since the sovereigns will is presumably the will of everybody. 186 We may then conclude that Hobbes opposed the traditional position of natural law as defined by Thomas Aquinas, according to which for a law to be proper law, it needs to be just and known by human reason. The mere fact that the sovereign commands the law does not suffice. 187 Again, according to Strauss, Hobbes motivation for this was his realism and scientific approach and, as Strauss implies, the rebellion against the traditional, conservative Christian natural law teaching. Hobbes wanted the legal system to endow all the individuals for their entrance in to the social contract and the creation of sovereign, and not just to appeal to the idealistic moral virtue, in a way that classics of natural right, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas did. To strengthen his endowment of the individuals, and in consistence with his claim that the good and pleasant are equal and that the function of the state is to preserve the commodious living, Hobbes also had to transform the classical notion of justice. According to Strauss, while for Aristotle the justice was a virtue of serving others, for Hobbes justice is equivalent to fulfilling ones contracts. 188

Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 107. Hobbess definition of law is following I define Civill Law in this manner. CIVILL LAW, Is to every subject, those Rules, which the Common-wealth hath Commanded him, by Word, Writing, or other sufficient Sign of the Will, to make use of, for the Distinction of Right, and Wrong; that is to say, of what is contrary, and what is not contrary to the Rule. [italics and capital letters in original] Hobbes quoted in ibid. For M.M. Goldsmith, there is a difference between Hobbess and Kelsens legal positivism. In case of Hobbes, final authority is the sovereign, beyond which there is no appeal In the case of Kelsen, the final authority is the Grundnorm which validity is presupposed. See M.M. Goldsmith, Hobbes on law in Tom, Sorrel, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, p. 274-304 (Cambridge University Press, 1996). 186 On the absolute sovereignty in Hobbess work see Hampton, 98 104. On the legal positivism as a result of Hobbess concept of the absolute sovereignty, see ibid, p. 107 110. 187 Thomas Aquinas quoted in Hampton, p. 107. 188 NRH, p. 187.

185

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If human beings are regarded as asocial or evil and are led by reason to install the sovereign, Leviathan, which is to preserve peace and commodious living, the task of sovereign is to enforce laws in order to achieve these goals. The primary task of the government so constructed ceases to be the education of character or the creation of virtuous citizens. Since self-interest and the need to satisfy there infinite wants is the individuals primary motive, private vices will become public benefits only trough the institutionalization of government. For classics (Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, etc), institutionalization was only secondary in comparison with education, i.e. formation of character. 189 Strauss identifies this orientation towards the institutionalization also in Kants philosophy. As Kant put it in rejecting the view that the establishment of the right social order requires a nation of angles: Hard as it may sound, the problem of establishing the state [i.e. the right social order] is soluble even for a nation of devils provided they have sense, i.e. provided that they are guided by enlightened selfishness. 190

4.2

Objections to Hobbes and liberalism

Apart from more abstract objections for deviating from the classical natural right, Strauss files two other concrete objections to Hobbes. Hobbes himself noted one of Strausss objections and made serious attempt to overcome it. Both objections are very similar to the ones Carl Schmitt directed towards liberalism, and as we have seen, Strauss identifies Hobbes (with the addition of Machiavelli) as the founder of liberalism. The first objection, the one that according to Strauss Hobbes made every effort to overcome, we may call competing fear. Strauss describes this by quoting two passages from the Leviathan. In the first passage Hobbes says that the fear of the power of man (i.e., the fear of violent death) is commonly greater than the fear of the power of spirits invisible, i.e., than religion. In the second passage he says that the fear of darkness and ghosts is greater than other fears. 191 Hobbes then came to see that the only way to salvage his project against the competing fear of invisible powers which endanger the
189 190 191

Ibid, p. 193. Ibid. Ibid, p. 198.

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purpose of his project, peaceful and commodious living, was to weaken or eliminate that fear, or, more precisely speaking, to establish a a-religious or atheistic society as the solution of the social or political problem. 192 Hence, according to Strauss, enlightenment then becomes propaganda against the religious beliefs or the tyranny of reason over other, traditionally held beliefs. The second objection that Strauss makes to Hobbes was already made in the 17th century, according to Jean Hampton, when Hobbess Leviathan was identified as a rebels catechism. 193 For although it seems that the sovereign as constructed in Hobbess Leviathan is an absolute ruler, the reservation against sovereign, virtually knife in the back, is already present in the very bases of social contract that made sovereigns rule possible. Sovereign can demand obedience from ones that he protects as long as sovereigns demands do not endanger the natural right of self-preservation, the basis of the social contract. Hence, sovereign cannot demand from the ruled ones to surrender their lives in the war or subject themselves to the capital punishment. Strauss notes this and says, by granting this, he [Hobbes] destroyed the moral basis of national defense. The only solution which preserves the spirit of Hobbess political philosophy is the outlawry of war or the establishment of a world state. 194 Moreover, Strauss suggests that Hobbes rejected the ambition and avarice as vices. Hobbes supported this asserting that the virtuous, peaceful, and commodious living will come true because of scientific ethics and the exercise of it in the conquest of nature. By doing this, Hobbes undermined the basis of the greatness of state and effectively proclaimed the statesmanship undesirable. 195 I have above described how Strauss objected to Machiavelli and implicitly to Schmitt that their notion of statesmanship and effective government is deprived of any moral substance. However, as shown, Strauss does not fully reject Machiavellis and Schmitts concept of statesmanship, as he leads us to believe earlier, but he is supposedly

192 193

Ibid. Hampton, p. 197 207. 194 NRH, p. 197-198. 195 Ibid, p. 192 and 199. Hampton agrees with Strauss in this respect. It is interesting to note, and Strauss must have been aware of this, that Hobbes, according to Hampton, depicted the desire for honor as a cause of the continual warfare by using examples from German history, see Hampton, p. 66.

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trying to qualify it with his concept of the classical natural right. 196 While interpreting Aristotles teaching on infinitely mutable natural right, Strauss gives following explanation. When speaking of natural right, Aristotle does not primarily think of any general propositions but rather of concrete decisions [sic]. 197 As situations in practical life are infinitely mutable, so are decisions, and no a priori rules that would be valid in all situations can be given. This, according to Strauss, is especially visible in the case of emergency and war. We can say that Schmitts fascination with exception, emergency, and war retained magical influence on Strauss. In those cases, Strauss says, the public safety is the highest law, and it is justified to suspend certain rules of natural right (this is an obvious contradiction, since Strauss already claimed that that are no a priori assignable rules). 198 Suspension may apply to both foreign and domestic enemies. In Strausss words, Considerations which apply to foreign enemies may well apply to subversive elements within society. 199 Furthermore, Strauss again tries to prove that there is a difference between his Aristotelian natural right and Machiavellianism (or Schmittianism), by saying that the Aristotelian statesman is oriented towards normalcy, while Machiavellian (Schmittian) one is oriented towards exception and war and even derives pleasure from that. But Strauss himself admits that he cannot fully explain the difference and we may rightly ask if there is any essential difference. As he says, No legal expression of this difference can be found. Its political importance is obvious. The two opposite extremes, which at present are called cynicism and idealism, combine in order to blur this difference. And, as everyone can see, they have not been unsuccessful. 200 Schmitts political engagement, then, is to blame for the bad reputation of the theoretically correct view.
196

NRH, p. 120-164. In his work devoted solely to Machiavelli, Strauss calls him the teacher of evil,see Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 9. As Steven Dworetz argues, for Strauss, Machiavelli and Locke (and I would add Hobbes) are partners in crime, the contributors to the same pathology in Strausss history of political philosophy, in contrast to J. G. A. Pocock, for whom Machiavelli is a hero, an embodiment of civic humanistic ideals and the republican virtue. See Steven M. Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism and the American Revolution (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 102. For Pococks views on Machiavelli, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton University Press, 1975). For the interpretation of Strausss view of Machiavelli, see Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, p. 114-132. 197 NRH, p. 159. 198 Ibid, p. 161. 199 Ibid, p. 160. 200 Ibid, p. 162.

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4.3

United again

The objections that Strauss makes to Hobbes, which he regards as the founder of the liberalism, are, in essence, the objections Carl Schmitt makes to liberalism. In Roman Catholicism and Political Form, early Schmitt, clearly resonating Nietzsches language and opinion, identifies, according to McCormick, technology as un-Christian or at least anti-Catholic, an attempt to undermine the value of fate. 201 Since Schmitt considers technology and liberalism as interconnected, if they are not the two sides of the same coin, we can safely say that indeed for Schmitt it is liberalism that is trying to expel the religious out from the public and in to the private sphere. However, Schmitts critic of the liberalism would become even more virulent after his break with the Catholic Church in the mid-twenties. 202 In Schmitts early writings, then, the effective force able to resist the poisonous influence of the liberalism and technology was the faith. For late Schmitt writing in the Concept of the Political (it seems to me that the Political Theology stands in the mid-ground between these two positions), that force is the romanticized politics. Romanticized politics is at the same time secularized theological concept and a highest form of existence that takes the place of faith. Recall that Strauss noted that Hobbes exchanged the state of grace for the government that will provide the salvation. Understood like this, Schmitt shares with Hobbes more than it appears at the first sight. As I argued above, Strauss complains that Hobbes undermined the basis of the national defense by granting to the individuals the natural right to self-preservation. Moreover, Strauss asserts that the peace for Hobbes is the only virtue; the ambition and statesmanship are superfluous and damaging. Schmitt claims essentially the same thing in somewhat different terms, as argued previously. Schmitt accepts Hobbess claims about mans evilness; he also admits that the basis of the state is fear, the ever present fear of the return in to the brutish state of nature; and he accepts the correspondent need for the

201

John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 87, hereafter Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism. See Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, trans. G. L. Ulmen (Westport: Greenwood, 1996). 202 According to Mller, Schmitt was excommunicated from the Catholic Church after his divorce and remarriage, see Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 19.

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absolute sovereign 203 . Nevertheless, Schmitt tries to disqualify Hobbess major claim that says the individuals in order to secure their right to self-preservation can disobey the sovereigns command. For Schmitt, admittance of this right would make the return of the state of nature or the civil war even more probable. Hence, Schmitt, according to McCormick, demands from the citizens of the Weimar Republic the absolute obedience to the sovereign, which he thoroughly romanticized along the lines of Webers ideal type of charismatic person, forgetting at the same time that that for Hobbes sovereign is an artificial person. For Schmitt, virtually the sacrifice of the individual on the altar of state is the one thing needed. Just as Strauss argues that the idea that everybody is the judge of what is required for ones own self-preservation, or what is just, is the natural right of folly, Schmitt demands from individuals to, as McCormick says it, transfer their illegitimately exercised subjectivity regarding friend and enemy to the sovereign state. 204 To be sure, for Schmitt the friend-enemy distinction is the existential decision equivalent to the decision on self-preservation. Protego ergo obligo is for Schmitt the cogito ergo sum of the state and all the qualifications to this are weakening the strength of state. 205 McCormick argues that Schmitt intended to end a competition among group and individual interests that, according to Schmitt, rendered Weimar Republic weak and he felt compelled to claim that the state solely decides on external and internal enemy, and not the individuals or groups and their split loyalties. 206 For Schmitt, no individual interest or group identity should come before the loyalty to the state. Resemblance to Strausss Aristotelian natural right of state to suspend the rules in order to deal with the external and internal enemies is obvious. Since Hobbes undermined the power of sovereign by his insistence on the individual natural right of self-preservation, for Strauss, as I have stated above, there are only two solutions if Hobbess concept of the state and the corresponding individual liberalism is to survive. The only solution which preserves the spirit of Hobbess political philosophy is the outlawry of war or the establishment of a world state 207 and,
203

Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. and intro. George Schwab, with comments on Schmitts essay by Leo Strauss (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1976), p. 52. 204 McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 257. 205 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 52 206 McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 257. 207 NRH, p. 197-198.

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in context, Strauss regards both solutions as negative. It is implied in Strausss statement that this solution is necessary because the arena of international relations remains the state of nature. Hence, Strauss tacitly accepts Schmitts elevation of Hobbess war of individuals to a level of the war of nations. The expression outlawry of war implies supranational order, and this implication bears uncanny resemblances to both Heideggers glorification of Germanys 1933 withdrawal from the League of Nations, towards which Schmitt already had a hostile stance. For Heidegger, the withdrawal was the assertion of German Dasein and uniqueness, while Schmitt throughout his book The Concept of the Political laments that the liberal forces and the League of Nations want to undermine the sovereignty, under the disguise of international pacifism. 208 The second expression, the world state, implies that the only just war is then the Wilsonian war to end all wars. The making of the world state based on liberal principles is for Heidegger, Schmitt and Strauss ultimate horror. As I stated above, Strauss explains what that means for Heidegger, and now we may safely say for Strauss himself. It means the victory of an even more completely urbanized, even more completely technological West over the whole planet complete leveling and uniformity regardless of whether it is brought about by iron compulsion or by soapy advertisement of the output of the mass production. It means unity of the human race on the lowest level, complete emptiness of life; nothing but work and recreation; no individuals and no peoples, but instead lonely crowds. 209 Schmitt also objects that the liberalism undermines his beloved concept of the political by depriving a life of its seriousness and subsuming it to mere economics and entertainment. 210 In sum, for Heidegger, Schmitt, and Strauss, the world state represents the inglorious Hegelian end of the Western history, the kingdom of Nietzsches last man entertaining himself while living in Webers iron cage of the modern economic order. Francis Fukuyama, distant disciple of Leo Strauss, in his book The End of the History

208

Heideggers speech welcoming Germanys withdrawal from the League of Nations in Richard Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy, p. 49-51 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). For Schmitts view of the League of Nations, see The Concept of the Political, p. 55-56. 209 The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, selected and introduced by Thomas L. Pangle, (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1989), p.42. Hereafter RCPR. 210 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 53.

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and the Last Man eloquently describes the state of the world after the fall of Communism clearly along the lines drawn above. 211 Heidegger seeks refuge from this purportedly terrible state of things in the myth of Volk and unique national character to which individuals should succumb in order to assert their own existence, existence that would otherwise be, according to him, meaningless. While Schmitt concurs in this part with Heidegger, he takes a step further and mystifies the state, a representative of the homogenous unit of people, which has a right to ask the individuals to sacrifice their lives on its altar. According to Mller, in his post-WWII writings, Schmitt continued, probably following Nietzsches appeal for the united Europe ruled by the new aristocratic elite, to work on jus publicum Europeaum and the theories of international relations 212 . Neither Schmitt nor Strauss ever claims that the coming of world state is impossible. 213 To the contrary, they both concur insofar that such a world state could come true because it is based on an appeal to self-interest, an appeal that is understandable to all irregardless of class, religion, nation or culture. They nevertheless agree on the undesirability of such a state. Schmitt seeks a way to change the coming of such a future along the lines I just suggested above. Somewhat similarly, Strauss finds reasons for hope and the point of resistance to a liberal, world state in two pillars, culture and religion, both understood by Strauss as interconnected. In his own words: How can there be hope? Fundamentally, because there is something in man which cannot be satisfied by the world society: the desire for the genuine, for the noble, for the great. We may also say: a world society can be human only if there is a world culture, a culture genuinely uniting all man. But there has never has been a high culture without a religious basis: the world society can be human only if all men are genuinely united
211

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (New York: Free Press, 1992). Fukuyama, once an intellectual flag of the neoconservatives, was a PhD student of the one of the most famous Strausss students, Allan Bloom, author of Closing of an American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Theoretically, the way I see it, Fukuyama draws heavily on the ideas developed in Leo Strausss On Tyranny, especially on the dialogue in between Leo Strauss and Alexander Kojeve, see On Tyranny, Revised and expanded edition, including the Strauss-Kojeve Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (New York: Free Press, 1991). Kojeve was a famous Hegelian and one of the ideological founding fathers of the todays European Union. Fukuyama makes every effort to present himself as a Kojeve style Hegelian, but his ideas are closer to Strauss then to Kojeve. Curiously enough, Kojeve was a good friend of Carl Schmitt. On the subject of Kojeve-Schmitt relation and their intellectual debate, that looks very similar to KojeveStrauss debate, see Mller, p. 90-98. 212 Mller, p. 87-90 213 NRH, p. 201, and Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 54.

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by a world religion. But all existing religions are steadily undermined, so far as their effective power is concerned, by the progress towards a technological world society. There forms itself an open or concealed alliance of the existing religions which are united only by their common enemy (atheistic communism). Their union requires that they conceal from themselves and from the world that they are incompatible with each other that each regards the other as indeed noble, but untrue. 214 What is true for the macrocosm of the world society is also true in the microcosm of the particular, national society. This Strausss statement clearly reveals his cultural and religious conservatism. For Strauss, culture is but the superstructure based in religious values and, as I will argue in the part on Strausss interpretation of Locke, it is not by chance that Strauss praises Locke for restoring the place of religion in the public sphere. Moreover, it would follow that for Strauss task of the society and state is to preserve cultural and religious basis against the corrosive influences of liberalism. Cultural and religious conservatism, then, is not the guaranty of the existence of the society (society will not cease to exist even if its values are thoroughly changed), but the guaranty of the nobleness and humanity of the society. Implication is that the culture, religion, and state need to be intertwined, contrary to liberalisms intention of preserving the autonomy of cultural and religious values as private matters, and prescribing to the state task of economic development and the preservation of peace among the competing beliefs and values. The trouble with this kind of thinking is that it says nothing about the possibility of the pluralistic values, that is, the possibility of the existence of multicultural and multireligious values in one society: it even considers them a treat to the wellbeing of the society and state. Furthermore, in the world consisted of societies that adhere to above Strausss opinions, the relations among states would of necessity be hostile playground, but not necessary war of all against all. The grouping or coalitions among the states would occur along the lines of the cultural and religious similarities. It would prove even more difficult to reach common agreement among such coalitions, since cultural and religious differences are, by nature, more difficult to overcome. As McCormick suggests, it is then not by chance that Samuel Huntington speaks about the clash of civilizations

214

RCPR, p. 42.

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and it is not accident that Strausss and Schmitts ideas were bound to arise fresh following the fall of Communism and the rapid economic globalization. 215 As a conclusion to this chapter, we can say that since 1932 and the publication of Schmitts Concept of the Political and his Commentary, until 1953 and the chapter on Hobbes in Natural Right and History, Strauss has not dramatically changed his opinion about the liberalism. He shares with Schmitt all the major assumptions regarding liberalism. For both of them, the liberalism is a deprivation of humanity since it puts emphasis on the individual rights and subsumes life to economics and entertainment; it constrains the strength of the state both in internal matters and especially in external matters; and it is imperialistic insofar that it attempts to transform all of the world into his own kingdom of pleasure and game. The critic that Strauss, through the proxy of Machiavelli, directs towards Schmitt is not a full rejection of Schmitts assumptions. At best, one could say that Strauss objects to Schmitt for allowing the state to exercise unlimited power for the sake of power itself, without spiritualizing state goals. For Strauss, Schmitts unrestrained state power did not reach for the horizon beyond liberalism.

215

McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, p. 302-314.

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5.

Reinventing Locke

Importance of the political philosophy of John Locke and especially his influence on the Founding Fathers is a well-known and debated matter. A wide span of opinions of Lockes influence on the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers ranges from attaching the decisive importance to Locke to claims that his influence is but a myth. 216 The fact that Strauss chose to include Locke in the chapter on modern natural right in Natural Right and History indicates his intention of speaking to the American public. As stated before, in the introduction to Natural Right and History, Strauss warns about the disappearance of the natural law teaching as a result of succumbing to the joke of German thoughts. And without the danger of exaggeration, one could say that Locke is certainly most famous of his natural law teaching, the one whose statements about natural, self-evident and God given truths of right to life, liberty and property inspired many revolutionaries, including the American ones. In what follows, through interpretating and drawing on the above chapters on Heidegger and Hobbes, I will present how Strauss paints Locke in two different ways. Strausss Locke, on the one hand, is a continuation of Hobbes and his liberal conquest. On the other hand, he is, so to say, Weimar-style Locke, modeled according to Nietzsche Strausss model of atheist philosopher-legislator which, for political purposes, professes religious beliefs in which he himself does not believe.

***
Locke, according to Strauss, preserved the basics of Hobbess teaching, that is, Locke agrees with Hobbes in following aspects. The right of self-preservation is the most fundamental of all; reason leads men to will the peace in civil society in order to supersede the miserable state of nature marked by penury and the war of everybody against everybody; notions of the good or bad are equivalent to pleasure or pain . 217

For the discussion of different opinions on Locke and his influence on the American Revolution, see Steven M. Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism and the American Revolution (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990), esp. p. 3-38 and p. 97-134. 217 Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 227-229, and p. 249. Hereafter NRH. All unnamed references are works by Leo Strauss.

216

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Strauss further argues that Locke differs from Hobbess conclusions at different points. For our purposes, three differences are important. Firstly, pursuit of happiness and property rights are continuations of the natural right to self-preservation. Secondly, Lockes exoteric restoration of Christianity is, in conjunction with reason, a source of natural law in existence of which, according to Strauss, Locke himself did not believe. Thirdly, Locke believed that the limited government is an assurance of natural right to self-preservation. I will discuss each of them in turn.

5.1

Locke, the pursuit of happiness and the property

According to Strauss, Locke denied the traditional teaching of natural law (rejecting Hookers views) that the law of nature is imprinted in mens minds and more forcefully than Hobbes insisted on the existence of the state of nature. 218 His main reason for doing so was to affirm the natural right to a pursuit of happiness and property rights as ones existing prior to civil society and hence having the character of absolute right. As Strauss says it, for Locke The desire for happiness and the pursuit of happiness have the character of an absolute right, of a natural right. The desire of happiness and an aversion to misery are the same. Furthermore, this desire is absolute since it is intrinsic in human beings and hence absolute, while natural laws are not. 219 However, Strauss does not emphasize the pursuit of happiness as he does on Lockes doctrine of property. Lockes doctrine of property, for Strauss, is directly intelligible today if it is taken as the classic doctrine of the spirit of capitalism or as a doctrine regarding the chief objective of public policy. 220 The chief reason why Locke, stronger than Hobbes, affirmed the existence of the state of nature is that he wanted to prove that property is a corollary of the fundamental right of self preservation. In order to secure selfpreservation, man needs to own property (food, land and so on). Moreover, since property is necessary for self-preservation, humans enter in to the social contract to preserve it. Property, therefore, exists in the state of nature and antedates the creation of

218 219 220

Ibid, p. 221 and 225. Ibid, p. 226-227. Ibid, p. 246.

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civil society. Hence, society exists to preserve property.221 Nevertheless, there is still a major difference between what the property means in the state of nature and what it means in the civil society. As Strauss argues, for Locke, labor is the creator and the source of property even within the state of nature. Though unpleasant activity, work is necessary in order to take away from nature things required for the survival, even more so since the state of nature is poverty. But there are natural laws to be obeyed in the state of nature regarding what can and what cannot be appropriated, in other words, there are limits to mans appetites and appropriation. Man has to make a distinction in appropriation of perishable and useful things and durable and useful things, and may appropriate very little of latter, but very much of the former (including gold and silver, since, in themselves, they are not useful things). Moreover, he has to take care of nature in terms of not disposing its own waste, since he receives all the needful from nature. Furthermore, he is to be concerned with the preservation of others, as long as that does not endanger his own existence. In Strauss words, It is the poverty of the first ages of the world which explains why the original law of nature (1) commanded appropriation by labor alone, (2) commanded the prevention of waste, and (3) permitted unconcern for the need of other human beings. 222 With the coming of the civil society and, in accordance and in continuation of Hobbess claim that there are no unnatural wants and desires, apart from the peacebreaking ones, the status of the labor and property, for Strausss Locke, changes. The creation of money as a sign of property allows man to appropriate as much as money as possible as long as he does so in accordance with the positive laws. Even labor, although it remains the origin of value, seizes to be a property title, since the ownership of the means of production and not the labor itself constitutes a title to property (at this point, Strauss certainly starts to sound like a Marxist critic of capitalism). The original law of nature, even one regarding the disposal of waste, is abandoned. 223 Hence, men enter the society in order to enlarge his property and not merely to save it. But if men are to enlarge it, they must be motivated by their wants, so the motivation requires the enlargement of wants. Not much labor is required for mere survival, and there is always
221 222 223

Ibid, p. 234-35. Ibid, p. 239. Ibid, p. 239-241.

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present danger of falling back into laziness. In order to be motivated for the unpleasant activity of work, men must always be in the state of want, desire, not merely desire to survive, but the desire for pleasure. The labor and property, then, serve to satisfy infinite pleasurable appetites in a mutually supportive manner. As Strauss says, quoting Locke, [But] this is peculiar hedonism: The greatest happiness consists not in enjoying the greatest pleasures but in having those things which produce the greatest pleasures 224 . The accumulation, then, of the potentially pleasurable things is more pleasant than actually enjoying the very same things; moreover, as it will be argued below, it is the foundation of a prosperous society. Karl Marx would gladly sign this claim. Locke, according to Strauss, did not commit the absurdity of justifying the emancipation of acquisitiveness by appealing to a nonexistent absolute right of property. He justifies the emancipation of acquisitiveness in the only way which can be defended: he shows that it is conducive to the common good, to public happiness or to the temporal prosperity of society. 225 In continuation of the project started by Hobbes, Locke more forcefully asserts that the private vices, moreover governmental support of the private vices, become public benefit. The true grounds for building the prosperous society is not, as classics thought, the moral appeal to virtue for the sake of virtue itself, but the appeal to an enlightened self-interest, appropriately endowed and preserved by the government. For Strauss, this is absurdity. According to him, this means that death and pain have assumed the place of the guiding light, the telos of life and, I would add, only one step is required from that to Heideggers existentialist orientation toward finiteness, mortality. If Lockes teaching is accepted as true, then human beings live in the perpetual state of escape from pain, and cling to life not because the life is sweet but because of the fear of death. If the primary fact is want and desire then The goal of desire is defined by nature only negatively the denial of pain. 226 In order to escape and remove the uneasiness and satisfy their desires, human beings engage in work, an unpleasant and painful activity. As Hobbes identified the rational life as the escape from fear, Moved by the same spirit, Locke identifies the rational life with the life dominated

224 225 226

Ibid, p. 249. Ibid, p. 242. Ibid, p. 250.

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by the pain which relives pain. 227 Work, pain that relieves pain, seizes only in death. The government is there only to ensure the conditions for peace and individual hedonism. Hence, according to Strauss, hedonism becomes utilitarianism or political hedonism. The painful relief of pain culminates not so much in the greatest pleasure as in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasure. Life is joyless quest for joy. 228

5.2

Natural law non-believer

Contrary to Strauss, not too many contemporary political scientists or economists would have a lot to object to Strausss Locke. At least they would agree that the consumption supports production and produces jobs. But Strauss emphasizes that our contemporary understanding was not the understanding of all ages, and certainly not Lockes age, hence he attempts to understand Locke in a way Locke understood himself, in contradiction to the above criticized historicist thesis. For Strauss, that explains why Locke wrote in such a contradictory way, why he was full of illogical flaws and inconsistencies and felt necessary to strengthen his concept of natural law by an appeal to God and religion . 229 At this point Strauss makes his original claim, one that divides him from many other Lockes commentators. Strauss claims that Locke himself did not believe in the natural law or that the natural law has any support in Gods providence or nature itself. Hence, Strauss implies that Locke was an atheist, or at least a deist, somewhat similar to Hobbes, nevertheless socially responsible atheist or deist. Lockes teaching on natural law which has a source in the Christian God and nature was merely his public and exoteric teaching, meant for the political purposes and not his true opinion. Strauss himself calls this conclusion shocking. 230 And indeed this Strausss conclusion stands in contrast to what is usually understood by Lockes teaching and it was criticized by many and persuasively refuted by, i.e., Steven Dworetz and Ruth Green. Both of them, with the aid of textual evidence, show that Strauss disregarded and wrongly interpreted many of Lockes statements in order to prove that Locke did not
227 228 229 230

Ibid. Ibid, p. 251. Ibid, p. 220. Ibid.

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believe in the existence of natural law backed by divine sanctions. 231 But in the light of the arguments I presented above, especially in the chapter on Heidegger, that is only to be expected, since Strauss models Locke according to his own Heidegger-Nietzsche view of the philosopher-atheist-legislator. Strausss Locke matches the Heidegger-Nietzsche model of philosopher all too well, and this similarity is nothing but suspicious. Chasing the textual contradictions in Lockes texts, in accordance with his persecution and the writing between the lines thesis, Strauss eagerly tries to prove that Locke was a philosopher who could not possibly accept the teaching of faith. As evidence to his argument, Strauss points that Locke accepted the weakest of all proofs of Gods existence, miracles of Jesus, as the corner stone of his proof that God indeed exists and that he is the source of natural law and morality. 232 In addition, it suffices, for Strauss, to see that Locke left different contradictory statements spread around in his works to conclude that Locke had different opinion than the one he publicly professed. Nevertheless, Strauss praises Locke for being a cautious writer who did not publicly state his doubts and his true opinion. But why did Locke hide his true opinion? Strauss argues that Locke was aware that the masses cannot be persuaded in certain moral truths, if those moral truths are not backed by the fear of divine sanctions. As Strauss says it, quoting Locke, The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe, so much so, that even if philosophy had given us ethics in a science like mathematics, in every part demonstrable, the instruction of the people were best still to be left to the precepts and principles of gospel. 233 Hence, if the masses are to be motivated for political actions, they have to be persuaded to do so by the threat of divine sanctions. But Locke went further. For Strauss, not only that Locke hides his true opinion regarding his own religious (non)belief, but he also hides that he draws heavily from Hobbes, whose name Locke publicly calls justly decried one. 234 Even though Hobbess name appeared to be not particularly popular at the time, Strausss Locke borrows heavily from Hobbes, for he knows that even the threat of divine sanctions is not enough if there are no rewards and sanctions in this life, too.
231

Dworetz, p. 125-126, and Ruth Green, John Lockes Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 8-9. 232 NRH, p. 209-211. 233 Ibid, p. 221. 234 Ibid, p. 211.

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Reward is life, accumulation of property, and the pleasure that one takes in it, pursuit of happiness and so on. Sanction is penury, civil unrest and the threat of the return to the brutish state of nature. Locke, then, overcomes Hobbes in so far that he understands that two treats, the treat of divine and of this-worldly sanctions, have to work in conjunction, if the social control is to be both internal and external. Failure is inevitable if one puts emphasis on just one or the other. Again, Strausss Locke is a perfect model of the Heidegger-Nietzsche-Straussstyle philosopher, although he does not share Strausss opinions, for we have seen that Strauss is highly critical of Lockes liberalism. Strausss Locke is an atheist philosopher, legislator that knows how to motivate vulgar masses through religious beliefs and the promises of pleasure. His exoteric and public profession of religion is a mere political propaganda. It is a Weimar-style Locke.

5.3

Natural constitutional law

In Lockes work, according to Strauss, a view of the natural law as the natural public law, initiated by Hobbes, becomes the natural constitutional law. As Strauss says it, It is on the basis on Hobbess view of the law of nature that Locke opposes Hobbess conclusions. He tries to show that Hobbess principles-the right of self preservation- far from favoring absolute government, requires limited government. 235 Hobbes needed the absolute sovereign in order to keep peace, and nevertheless preserved for the individuals right to self-preservation and consequently a right not to sacrifice their lives when sovereign asks them to. Locke agrees with Hobbes in part regarding the sacredness of the individual right to self-preservation, and precisely because of that demands that the sovereign, the government, be not the absolute but limited, constitutional government. Hobbess sovereign is absolute in so far that it demands of individuals absolute obedience, minus the self-preservation qualification. This is because Hobbes is convinced that reason itself in combination with a fear of disorder and the return to brutish state of
235

Ibid, p. 231. Steven M. Dworetz questions this contention of Strauss that Locke is but a continuation of Hobbes on two levels: on the level of Hobbess materialistic and Lockes Christian hedonism and on the level of Strausss claim that Lockes constitutional government is but Hobbes diluted. Dworetz rightfully asks, if Hobbes and Locke are fundamentally the same, why did Locke even bother to insist on the limited government? See Dworetz, p. 119.

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nature will lead everyone to conclude that the obedience is best for both the individuals and society. What separates Locke from Hobbes is that Locke insists even more on the power of majority and ultimately grants to the majority something which Hobbes was not keen to do, namely the right to replace the sovereign with another one. In Strausss words Locke opposes Hobbes by teaching that whatever the people or the community, i.e., the majority, have placed the supreme power, they still retain a supreme power to remove or alter the established government, i.e., they still retain a right of revolution. 236 Lockes sovereign, supreme power, is the result of the consent of majority and the will of individuals. Individuals participate in the decision-making process through their representatives and form the majority that is to be a check on a bad government and, at the same time, a way to dismantle the government in a case if it is not receptive to the will of people. In order to achieve this, according to Strauss, Locke believed that the best institutional safeguards for the rights of individuals are supplied by a constitution that, in practically all domestic matters, strictly subordinates the executive power (which must be strong) to law, and ultimately to a well-defined legislative assembly. 237 [emphasis mine] We can safely say, in light of the above Strausss critic of Hobbess emphasis on individual rights and the consent over wisdom, that Strauss is not particularly happy about a further dilution of the right of the wise elite to rule and the accent on the consent of many. However, Strauss emphasizes that Locke, although he accepted that the individuals are created equal in so far that anybody can kill anybody, did not for that reason deemed that the natural inequalities should be altogether abandoned. To the contrary, according to Strauss: Locke regarded the power of the majority as a check on bad government and a last resort against tyrannical government: he did not regarded it as a substitute for government or as identical with government. Equality, he thought, is incompatible with civil society. The equality of all men in regard to the right of self-preservation does not obliterate completely the special right of the more reasonable people. On the contrary, the exercise of that special right is conducive to the self-preservation and happiness of all. Above all, since self-preservation and happiness require property, so mush so that the end of civil society can be said to be the preservation of property, the protection of the propertied members of society
236 237

NRH, p. 232. Ibid, p. 233.

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against the demands of the indigents or the protection of the industrious and the rational against the lazy and quarrelsome- is essential to public happiness or the common good. 238 [emphasis mine] Hence, even though Locke continued liberal conquest started by Hobbes, there is still hope for the success of Strausss philosophical project. There is hope because there is an opportunity for the founding of the governing elite in the midst of the liberal project. It does not matter, in my opinion, that such an elite is based on the wealth and not on the philosophical or republican virtue. What matters is that the doors are open. Although the constitution restricted the ruling power of elite, it retained two opportunities, however weak, for the exercise of influence, namely the opportunity of the executive power that does not have to rely totally on the consent, and the opportunity to govern the foreign affairs. Some similarity with Schmitts insistence on the power of president over parliament, I believe, exists. And the true playground of such an elite becomes foreign policy, the realm of, as Strauss and Schmitt believe, the state of nature. And all of that for the good of many. My argument is more understandable when one takes in to account how Strauss describes and distinguishes in between the theoretically and practically best regime. The theoretically best regime is the rule of the wise, wise being of course philosophers. Moreover, that rulers, by virtue of being wise, are not to be held accountable by the unwise, vulgar, subjects, or, in Strauss words, the rule of the wise must be absolute rule. 239 But the wise are few, and they cannot rule many unwise by force (Strauss even implies that tyranny begins when the rule of many, consent, takes precedence over the rule of wise). There must be an aristocratic class of gentlemen that serves as the intermediary between the wise and the vulgar. This class of gentlemen is nevertheless prone to take instructions from the wise ones. Hence, the practically best regime will then be a republic in which the landed gentry, which is at the same time urban patriciate, well-bred and public spirited, obeying the laws and completing them,
238

Ibid, p. 234. Cf. following Lockes statement. Though I have said that all Men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed too understand all sorts of equality: Age or Virtue may give men a just precedency: Excellence of Parts and merit may place others above the Common Level. [italics in original]. Locke, quoted in Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 25. 239 NRH, p. 140.

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ruling and being ruled in turn, predominates and gives society its character. 240 The fact that the constitution (rule under law) is a check on an unlimited rule of aristocracy instructed by the wise need not be an obstacle to the creation of the elite within the mass society. The elite is distinguished from the many not by their obedience to laws, but by their way of life. This is what Strauss implies when proposing the concept of politeia, rather than the constitution (rule of law), as a guiding principle of elite life. In his own words: The American Constitution is not the same thing as the American way of life. Politeia means the way of life rather than its constitution. Yet it is no accident that the unsatisfactory translation constitution is generally preferred to the translation way of life of a society. The character, or tone, of a society, depends on what the society regards as most respectable or most worthy of admiration. But by regarding certain habits or attitudes as most respectable, a society admits the superiority, the superior dignity, of those human beings who most perfectly embody the habits or attitudes in question. 241 We may then say that Lockes philosophy, no matter how critical Strauss is towards it, retains loopholes for the launch of the Strausss project. On the one hand, Lockes philosophy is the continuation of Hobbess liberal conquista of the overemphasis on individual rights against government and the chase for property for the sake of pleasure. On the other hand, possibility for the rule of elite (gentleman instructed by the secret kingship of wise philosophers) is real. Moreover, Locke returned the religion in to the public space and with it antidote against the relapse of Lockean liberalism into the historicism and value-free social science. As I have argued in the chapters on Heidegger and Weber, for Strauss, liberalism suffers catastrophe when social science and historicism undermine the belief in the life-giving truths. When they prove that the way of the life of society is nothing but a blind choice, no better and no worse than any other choices, the artificial net protecting the society is destroyed and the Weimar type political nihilism steps in, with disastrous consequences. But the germ of liberalisms failure is already embedded even within the Lockes project. What is required, then, is the defense and protection of society. There is no better cure against historicism than faith, religion, civil religion or the belief in the ultimate

240 241

Ibid, p. 142. Ibid, p. 137.

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goodness of values of the ones own society, that is, belief that our values have ultimate support in the divine sanctions, or, even better, that they are universal values. Such faith inserts in individuals feeling of self-confidence and, by the way, provides the handy tool for governing. One would lay his life (in defensive or aggressive war or in any other way) voluntarily if he believes that it is done not because it is the right of government to ask him to do so, but because that is the right and good thing to do. Hence, historicism must be contained or, at least, kept secret. Recall that Strauss argues that Hobbess liberalism was made possible by the rise of natural science and that Weber employed the natural science methodology in his social science, and made the rise of political extremism easier. For Strauss, Locke is the continuation of Hobbess liberal project. Both Locke and Hobbes attach great importance to science in terms of its being the tool for the conquest of nature and the way to satisfy infinite desires. The problems arise when science becomes value free and grants the same validity to all preferences. First, that supports extreme individualism and weakens the coherence of the society, and we already know that Strauss, together with Schmitt, depicted such a liberal individualism as a folly. Second, such a science makes the state easy prey for its enemies, because it does not distinct, if you wish, between the friend and enemy, or, it does not support the validity of social beliefs in an unqualified manner. Again, containment of such a value-free social science, as I argued in the chapter on Weber, is necessary. Understood in this way, Strauss is a strange friend of American liberal democracy. This is not to say that he is a liberal democrat; for he is certainly not. He does not believe in the self-evident truths or any Lockean natural law. Nevertheless, he urges the wider public to remain faithful to truths that he considers mere public teachings, useful propaganda. Reason for his adherence to American liberal democracy is an unsupported hope that his project, ideas he brought from across the ocean, may find fertile soil in America.

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6.

Conclusion

As Volker Reinecke and Jonathan Uhlaner say, Leaving Europe behind, Strauss begin to rearrange his attitude towards philosophy. He abandoned none of the positions with which he had worked for over a decade, but transformed their coordination.242 I concur in this. Strausss most influential book, Natural Right and History, contains many elements and concepts that he came to accept as true during his education in the Weimar days. His work is abundant with influence of Heidegger and through him Nietzsche, and especially Carl Schmitt. To an attentive reader it may appear that certain places were repetitions of what was already said. Fault for this lies not in the author of this work, but in the general intention behind my examination and the topic dealt with. Main issues in Heideggers, Schmitts, Webers, and Strausss work discussed here remained more or less the same and self-repeating. The disappearance of nobleness of humanity was a result of the Enlightenment and the liberal and scientific modernity; liberal individualism was nothing but a demise of the human being to a well-fed and enlightened, but self-interest and lonely beast. All of the above discussed authors longed for the greatness, fulfillment and reconnection with the fullness of life, which was lost along the way of history. Furthermore, as we have seen, the final victory of the liberalism over the whole world, coming of the world state and the last man, was their common fear. Through description and comparison of works of Leo Strauss and his Weimar contemporaries such as Heidegger, Weber, and Schmitt, I have tried to show that in spite of Strausss professed turn away from the German thought towards natural right teaching, he remained deeply embedded in the tradition in which he was educated. Natural right was but a cover for ideas Strauss already accepted, although he tried, unsuccessfully, to
242

Volker Reinecke and Jonathan Uhlaner, quoted in John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 287, n. 78.

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distinguish himself at certain points from it, or more precisely, to distinguish between the theory, which he accepted as true, and a bad reputation that that theory gained due to the political engagement of his Weimar friends. As I have argued in Chapter I, even after his immigration to the United States, Strauss remained under the spell of Martin Heidegger, his hermeneutics, his way of teaching, and his diagnosis of modernity as crisis. But Strauss also learned something from Heideggers inglorious flirt with politics. He understood that the public prophesizing of philosophical truths and the attempt of philosophy to govern and spiritualize the world end in a disaster, and he retreated towards Nietzsche, noble delusion, and his exoteric-esoteric thesis. But the retreat was more tactical, than strategic, for he never lost faith that the philosophers are the wise and elite of elites in the society, who are destined to rule, or otherwise the world will go to hell. Moreover, with the example of Carl Schmitt, I have showed how Heideggers existentialism looks like when it turns into radical legal concepts, to whom Strauss lend his intellectual strength in order to arm it with the new morality and make it a more consistent enemy of liberalism. In Chapter II, I have argued that Strausss critic of Max Webers fact-value distinction shares many similarities with the critic that Carl Schmitt directed towards his teacher Weber. Both Schmitt and Strauss concur insofar that they blame Weber for his value agnosticism and its political implications. Strauss differs from Schmitt and criticizes both him and Max Weber for their rational jump into the ethicsfree irrationality, either with Schmitts concept of the decisionism out of nothingness or with Webers vitalistic values. In addition, I have showed how Strauss retained negative attitude towards the positivistic social science during his life in the United States, and what was for him the proper position and function of the social science in the society. In Chapter III, in connection with Chapter I, I have showed Strausss Weimar and post-WWII obsession with Thomas Hobbes as the founder of liberalism, which he shared with his teacher and friend Carl Schmitt. Strauss and Schmitt identify the sins of liberalism in Hobbess work: emphasis on the rights of individuals against the state; grant of license to individuals to enjoy the pleasures of the commodious living, while the states role is nothing but a peacekeeper; institutionalization versus Strausss preferred education of character; political atheism and the expulsion of religion out of public space; and, the inclination of liberalism to transform itself into the world state. Moreover, I have

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showed how Strausss critic of Schmitts Machiavellianism is inconsistent and does not amount to the full rejection of Schmitts position. Even Strausss concept of the Aristotelian classical natural right looks almost identical to Schmitts decisionism, although Strauss tries to prove otherwise. In Chapter IV, I have showed how Strauss applies all of the above in American context. Continuing the criticism of Hobbess liberalism, Strauss, on the one hand, accuses Locke for even affirming natural right of self-preservation through his teaching on the pursuit of happiness, theory of property, and the further dilution of the right of wise to rule through the concept of limited, constitutional government. On the other hand, Strauss reinvents Locke according to the Heidegger-Nietzsche model of atheistphilosopher legislator, which for political purposes of ruling masses and motivating them for political action, preaches religious natural law teaching in which he does not believe. Locke is praised, because he knew what Heidegger, Schmitt, and Weber did not want to know, namely that the religion in public space is indispensable for well being of the society and that the state, trough secularized political-theological concepts, can never take its place. Taught by Heideggers failed attempt to govern openly, Strauss advocates breeding of intermediary elite, which serves as a mediator between the wise and vulgar, masses. The elite is distinguished from the masses throw its way of life or, if you wish, education. And although constrained trough the constitutional system, Strausss elite retains opportunity to influence the society on two levels. On the first level, it exercises its influence throw the legal means of executive will and the foreign policy, something that Strauss learned from his teacher Carl Schmitt and his insistence on the supremacy of president over the parliament and the constitutional court, and description of relations among states as the brutish state of nature. On the second level, such an elite exercises influence on the society trough the propaganda (Strauss learned that from the success of Enlightenment) of religious and cultural values as opposed to the values of others, who are purportedly trying to infiltrate among us (far cry of Schmitts friend enemy distinction and the assertion that the enemy simply needs to be other). And while that was not the primary goal of this study, I hope that throw the explanation of Strausss reinvention of Locke, I have managed to at least partially explain

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which parts of Strausss political philosophy can be recognized in the contemporary American conservatism. Both supporters and opponents of Strauss agree that his philosophy influenced the American right, and the only disagreement is on the extent.243 Before finally concluding this work, I will say a few words on all the authors discussed in this thesis. None of the above was meant as a passing of judgment on Heidegger, Schmitt, Weber, or Strauss. My work was neither concealed as an accusation against or an apology for them. As for me personally, whatever their mistakes were, I would rather be on their side than against them. As a proof that all of them were onto something important, one just has to observe, since the end of the Cold War, how much interest in all of them (especially Schmitt and Strauss) has grown on both sides of the Atlantic. Their critic of liberalism and globalization as a process of alienation and leveling of life to the lowest level is today even more interesting than it was at the time when it was written, which shows how far beyond their times they all were. Criticism of their political engagement or inclinations that is meant to disregard their work as a whole should be dropped, for it seems that passing of time proves that their predictions of the future were correct. Perhaps they just did not find the right answers, or, rather, the time they lived in did not offer right options.

243

On the relationship between Strauss and American conservatism see, i.e., Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999),79 and Robert Devigne, Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshot, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).

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7.

Bibliography

Works by Leo Strauss.

Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953. On Tyranny. Revised and expanded edition, including the Strauss-Kojeve correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth. New York: Free Press, 1991. Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss, edited with an introduction by Hilail Gildin. Indianapolis, New York: Pegasus, 1975. Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, selected and introduced by Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1989. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

Secondary sources:
Behnegar, Nasser. Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the Scientific Study of Politics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Bloom Allan. Closing of an American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Devigne, Robert. Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshot, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994. Drury, B. Shadia. The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. MacMillan Press, 1988. ---Leo Strauss and the American Right. New York : St. Martins Press, 1999. Dworetz, M. Steven. The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism and the American Revolution. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990. Dyzenhaus, David. Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Herman Heller in Weimar. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992.

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Gillespie Michael Allan. Heideggers Aristotelian National Socialism. Political Theory, Vol. 28 No. 2 (April 2000): 140-166 Goldsmith, M. M. Hobbes on law. In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorrel, p. 274-304. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Green, Ruth. John Lockes Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Habermas, Jrgen. The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989. Hampton, Jean. Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 1986. Harrison, Ross. Hobbes, Locke, and Confusions Masterpiece. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Heidegger, Martin. An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), trans. Ralph Mannheim. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday Anchor, 1961. ---Being and Time, trans. J. Macquerrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Howse, Robert. From Legitimacy to Dictatorship and Back Again: Leo Strausss Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt. In Law as Politics: Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, ed. David Dyzenhaus, p. 57-91. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998. Kelsen, Hans. Natural-Law Doctrine Before the Tribunal of Science. In Law and Politics: Readings in Legal and Political Thought, ed. Shadia B. Drury, p. 251 257. Calgary, Alberta: Detselig Enterprises Ltd, 1980. ---Algemeine Staatslehre. Berlin, 1925. ---General Theory of Law and State. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949. Kielmansegg, Peter Graf, Horst Mewes and Elisabeth Glaser Schmidt, eds. Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigres and American Political Thought after World War II. German Historical Institute, Washington D.C., and Cambridge University Press, 1995. Krockow ,Christian Graf von. Die Entscheidung: Eine Untersuchung ber Ernst Jnger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1990. Lwith, Karl. The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism. In The Heidegger Controversy. ed. Richard Wolin, p. 167-185. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. McCormick, P. John. Fear, Technology and the State: Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and the revival of Hobbes in Weimar and National Socialist Germany. Political Theory, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov. 1994): 619-652. ---Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Mehring, Reinhard. Der philosophische Fhrer und der Kronjurist: Praktisches Denken und geschichtliche Tat von Martin Heidegger und Carl Schmitt. In Deutsches Vierteljahrsschrift fr Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschihte 68 (1994). Meier, Heinrich. Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Mommsen, J. Wolfgang. Max Weber and German Politics: 1890 -1920, trans. Michael S. Steinberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

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---The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Mller, Jan-Werner. A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1968. Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton University Press, 1975. Scheuerman, Bill. The Unholy Alliance of Carl Schmitt and Friedrich A. Hayek, Constellations 4:2 (October 1997) Schmitt, Carl. Politische Theologie Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souvernitt. Berlin, 1990. ---Roman Catholicism and Political Form, trans. G. L. Ulmen (Westport: Greenwood, 1996). ---The Concept of the Political, trans. and intro. George Schwab, with comments on Schmitts essay by Leo Strauss. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1976. Sllner, Alfons. German Conservatism in America: Morgenthaus Political Realism. Telos 72 (summer 1987). Tuck, Richard. Hobbes as the demon of modernity. In Great Political Thinkers, p. 214217. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Ward, Ian. Law, Philosophy and National Socialism: Heidegger, Schmitt and Radbruch in Context. Bern; Frankfurt a. M.; New York; Paris; Wien: Lang, 1992. Weber, Max. Politics as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and eds. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, p. 77-128. London: Kegan Paul, 1947. ---The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of the Capitalism, trans. Talcot Parsons, introduction Anthony Giddens. London: Unwin Hyman 1989, first pub. 1904-1905. Wolin, Richard, ed. The Heidegger Controversy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. ---Heideggers Children. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. Zuckert, H. Catherine H Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

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