leo strauss - theological-political problem

7/22/2019 Leo Strauss - Theological-Political Problem

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What Can We Learn From Political Theory?

Editorial note: punctuation has been put inside quotation marks, spacinghas been standardized, and paragraphs have been indented. Straussscorrections of typographical errors have not been noted.

(Lecture to be delivered in the General Seminar of the Summer Course1942, July 1942)

The title of this lecture is not entirely of my own choosing.1 I do not like very

much the term politicaltheory;2

I would prefer to speak of politicalphilosophy.Since this terminological question is not entirely verbal, I beg leave to say afew words about it.

The term political theory implies that there is such a thing as theoreticalknowledge of things political. This implication is by no means self-evident.Formerly,3 allpolitical knowledge was considered practicalknowledge, andnottheoretical knowledge. I recall the traditional division of the sciences into theor-etical and practical sciences. According to that division,4 political philosophy, orpolitical science, together with ethics and economics, belongs to the practical

sciences, just as mathematics and the natural sciences belong to the theoreticalsciences. Whoever uses the term political theory tacitly denies that traditionaldistinction. That denial means one of these two things or both of them: (1) thedenial of the distinction between theoretical and practical sciences: allscienceis ultimately practical (scientia propter potentiam); (2) the basis ofall reasonablepractice is pure theory.5 A purely theoretical, detached knowledge of things pol-itical is the safest guide for political action, just as a purely theoretical, detachedknowledge of things physical is the safest guide toward conquest of nature: thisis the view underlying the very term political theory.

The term political theory has another important implication. According topresent-day usage, theory is essentially different, not only from practice, butabove all fromobservation. If a man is asked how do you account for this orthat event? he may answer: I have a theory, or A number of theories maybe suggested; sometimes, one is asked: What is your theory? What ismeant by theory in such cases is the essentially hypothetical assertion of acause of an observed fact. The assertion being essentially hypothetical, it6 is

1making is crossed out and choosing inserted by hand.2theory is underlined by hand. All handwritten and typed underlinings have been

converted to italics.3Originally is crossed out and Formerly inserted by hand.4distinction is crossed out and division typed above it

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essentially arbitrary: my theory. What is seenHitlers rise to power e.g.isnot a theory, but our differing explanations of Hitlers rise to power are our

theories. This use of the term theory is of fairly recent date. The originalmeaning of the Greek verb u1vr1v, with which theory is connected, is tobe an envoy sent to consult an oracle, to present an offering, to be presentat festivals:7 to look at, to behold, to inspect, contemplate, consider,compare . . . , i.e., the original meaning of the term does not warrant at allthe distinction of theory from observation; it rather excludes it; it certainlydoes not justify the identification, or almost identification, of theory withan essentiallyhypotheticalkind of knowledge.

I have some misgivings as regards these two connotations of the term

theory, which are, to repeat, (1) the implication that a purely theoretical dis-cussion of political questions is possible, and (2) the view that political knowl-edge as a whole consists of observation of data and hypotheticalexplanation of these data; I prefer therefore the term political philosophywhich does not imply these assumptions. By political philosophy, we under-stand the coherent reflection carried on by politically minded people, con-cerning the essentials of political life as such, and the attempt to establish,on the basis of such reflection, the right standards of judgment concerningpolitical institutions and actions; political philosophy is the attempt to dis-

coverthe political truth. Accordingly, I would not speak of the political phil-osophy of Hitler, e.g., Hitler being not interested in truth and relying onintuition rather than on methodic reflection. It is legitimate, however, tospeak of the politicalthought, or of the politicalideas, of the Nazis. All politicalphilosophy is political thought, but not all political thought is political philos-ophy. (E.g., the very terms law and father imply political thought, but notpolitical philosophy. Political thought is as old as the human race, but politicalphilosophy emerged at some definite time in the recorded past.) I think weowe it to philosophy that we do not use its noble name in vain.

I

I shall then discuss the question What can we learn from political philos-ophy? For the purpose of a summary discussion, it is advisable to sketchfirst the argument in favor of the negative. It seems as if we can learnnothing from political philosophy. For: (1) One may doubt whether thereexists such a thing deserving to be called political philosophy, (2) even ifthere were a political philosophy in existence, we would not need it, (3)

even if we would need it, its lessons would necessarily be ineffectual.

(1) There isnopolitical philosophy because there aremanypolitical philos-

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does not know which is the true one. When we ask: what can we learnfrom political philosophy, we mean, of course, what can we learn from

thetruepolitical philosophy? We can learn nothingfromthe wrong pol-itical philosophies, although we may learn somethingon the occasionofthem. The situation in political philosophy is not fundamentally differ-ent from that in the other branches of philosophy. Philosophy meansthe attempt, constantly renewed, tofindthe truth, the very term philos-ophy implies that we donot possessthe truth. Philosophy is, at best, pos-session of clear knowledge of theproblemsit is not possession of clearknowledge of the solutions to the problems. The basic questions in allbranches of philosophy are as unsolved today as they were at all

times; new questions have been raised from time to time, the interesthas shifted from one type of question to others, but the most fundamen-tal, the truly philosophic questions remain unanswered. This is, ofcourse, no objection to philosophy as such: but it is an objection tothe expectation, or the claim, that philosophy is a safe guide foraction. One may try, and people did try, to seclude from the realm ofphilosophy the questions which do not seem to permit of a universallyacceptable answer, but in doing so, one is merelyevadingthe questions,not answering them. I have been trying to remind you of that melan-

choly spectacle called the anarchy of the systems, a phenomenonwhich is almost as old as philosophy itself and which seems to haveso profound roots in the nature of philosophy and of its objects thatit is reasonable to expect that it will last as long as philosophy itself.That spectacle becomes perhaps even more melancholy if one considerspolitical or social philosophy by itself. One could take almost any fun-damental question of political philosophy, and one could show that noanswer exists which is universally accepted by honest seekers of thetruth, to say nothing of the partisans of the various camps. (E.g., is

justice of the essence of the State?)

8

(2) But even if we could be reasonably certain that a given political philos-ophy is the true political philosophy, one could say that one cannotlearn anything important from it as far as political action is concerned.For that kind of knowledge which is indispensable for reasonablepolitical action is not philosophic knowledge: practical wisdom,common-sense, horse sense, shrewd estimation of the situation, theseare the intellectual qualities which make up the successful man ofaffairs: he does not require political philosophy for his guidance. I may

refer to the story told in England of H.G. Wells meeting WinstonChurchill and asking about the progress of the war. Were gettingalong with our idea, said Churchill. You have an idea? asked Wells.Yes, said Churchill, along the lines of our general policy. You

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have a general policy? Wells persisted. Yes, answered Churchill, theK. M. T. policy. And what is the K. M. T. policy? asked Wells. It is

this, replied Churchill, Keep Muddling Through. The fact that thismuddling through led to disaster in the case of Singapore and Libya9 isevidently not a proof of the necessity of political philosophy, consideringthat neither the Japanese generals10 nor Rommel are political philosophersto speak of. I have not the slightest doubt as to the possibility of devisingan intelligent international policy, e.g., without having any recourse topolitical philosophy: that this war has to be won, that the only guaranteefor a somewhat longer peace-period after the war is won, is a sincereAnglo-Saxon-Russian entente, that the Anglo-Saxon nations and

the other nations interested in, or dependent on, Anglo-Saxon preponder-ance must not disarm nor relax in their armed vigilance, that you cannotthrow power out of the window without facing the danger of the firstgangster coming along taking it up, that the existence of civil libertiesall over the world depends on Anglo-Saxon preponderanceto knowthese broad essentials of the situation, one does not need a single lessonin political philosophy. In fact, people adhering to fundamentally differentpolitical philosophies have reached these same conclusions.

(3) But even if it were true that we could not find our bearings in the pol-

itical world without being guided by political philosophy, i.e., by theone true political philosophy, the possibility would still remain thatthe orientation supplied by political philosophy would be ineffectual:political philosophy might teach us what should be done, and yet wemight be certain that this knowledge would not have the slightest influ-ence on the unpredictable course of events: a set of microbes killingHitler may seem to have an infinitely greater political significancethan the clearest and best demonstrated lesson in political philosophy.If we look at the whole course of the history of political philosophy, we

seem to learn that it is almost a law of the development of politicalthought that political conceptions are the by-product of actual politicalrelations (McIlwain,Growth, 391)11. As Hegel said, the owl of Minervastarts its flight in the dusk, philosophy comesalwaystoo late for thegui-danceof political action; the philosopheralwayscomespost festum; phil-osophy can merelyinterpretthe result of political action; it can make usunderstandthe State: it cannot teach us what should bedonewith regardto the State. One may wonder whether there are any significant politicalconcepts, or ideas, which are the product of political philosophy: all

9Gallipoli and Egypt are crossed out and Singapore and Libya are insertedby hand



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political ideas seem to go back to political fighters, statesmen, lawyers,prophets. Would philosophers have spoken of mixed constitutions but

for the fact that such constitutions had been devised by such nonphilo-sophic lawgivers as Lycurgus?12 Would Montesquieu have taught in1748 that the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial poweris desirable but for the fact that such a separation had been effected,to a certain extent, in England by the Act of Settlement of 1701? Whatis the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle but a reflection ofthe Greek political reality? The influence on political events ofAlexander the Great is infinitely greater than that of his teacherAristotleand Alexanders political activity is diametrically opposed

to the principles laid down by Aristotle.

II

Now, even if we have no knowledge ofourown to oppose to these arguments, wecannot help being impressed by an argument to the contrary which is taken fromauthority. If political philosophy is an evident failure, how is it understandablethat quite a few men of superior intelligence were convinced that political phil-osophy is the necessary condition of the right order of civil society, or, to quote

the most superior and the most famous of these men, that evils will not cease inthe cities until the philosophers have become kings or the kings have becomephilosophers? Shall we say with Pascal that Platos Republic was meant byPlato himself as a joke? It would certainly be rash to take this for granted. Allthe more so since Pascal himself continues his remarks on Platos andAristotles political philosophies as follows: They wrote on politics as if theywere organizing an insane asylum; and they pretended to consider politics assomething grand, because they knew that the madmen to whom they weretalking believed [themselves] to be kings and emperors. They accepted the

assumptions of these madmen, in order to make their madness as harmless asmight be (Pensees, Brunschvig, n. 771). Even according to Pascal, Plato andAristotledidbelieve that political philosophy is ofsomepractical use.

III

Let us then consider first the second argument, which was to the effect that wecan know without any political philosophy what should be done in the pol-

itical field, as regards international policy e.g. Now, a reasonable policy, I takeit, would be along these lines: human relations cannot become good if thehuman beings themselves do not become good first, and hence, it would be



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could be laid, and hence the choice is not between imperialism and abolitionof imperialism, but between the13 tolerably decent imperialism of the

Anglo-Saxon brand and the

14

intolerably indecent imperialism of the Axisbrand. Such a policy, as we all know, is by no means generally accepted; itis attacked not only by those who dislike the burden, and the responsibility,which go with the decent hegemony, but above all by a group of infinitelymore generous political thinkers who deny the assumptions, implied inthat reasonable policy, concerning human nature. If for no other purpose, atleast in order to defend a reasonable policy against overgenerous orutopian thought, we would need a genuine political philosophy remindingus of the limits set to all human hopes and wishes. In other words, even if it

were true that man does not need political philosophy absolutely speaking, he doesneed political philosophy as soon as reasonable political action is endangered by anerroneous political teaching. If Zeno had not denied the reality of motion, itwould not have been necessary to provethe reality of motion. If the sophistshad not undermined the basic principles of political life, Plato might not havebeen compelled to elaborate hisRepublic. Or, to take another example, peoplewould not have been willing to accept the policy of toleration, which was theonly way out of the religious wars and hatreds of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, if they had not become convinced by political philosophers

that it wasnottheir religious or moral duty to rebel against heretical govern-ments; the political philosophers did not inaugurate the policy of toleration,this was done by reasonable statesmen, but these statesmen never wouldhave succeeded but for the help of the political philosophers who enlightenedpublic opinion.

These and similar examples merely show that political philosophy isnecessary to defend a reasonable course of action, which was discoveredand embarked upon independently of political philosophy, against allegedlytrue political teachings, which endanger that reasonable course of action;

these and similar examples, I say, merely show the necessity of political phil-osophy as a sort of political apologetic. Such apologetics are evidently useful,and since they are bound to be backed by the politicians or statesmen whomthey support, they are not necessarily ineffectual. The difficultyconcerns pol-itical philosophy proper, which is not thehandmaidof a reasonable policy, butits architect, as it were.

Let me put the question this way: Is it true that all significant political con-cepts or theses are the by-product of political life, or the work of statesmen,politicians, lawyers, prophets, and not of philosophers? For arguments

sake, I will assume that it is true in all cases in which it could seem to betrue before one has sifted the evidence. There is certainly one fundamentalpolitical concept which is necessarily of philosophic origin because its very



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conception is, so to speak, identical with the emergence of philosophy as such.This concept is the concept ofnatural lawornatural right. For nature isthe

fundamental philosophic discovery. Truth, Being, even World, and all otherterms designating the object of philosophy are unquestionably older thanphilosophy, but the first man who used the term natureI think, it wasOdysseus, or Hermes, the god of thieves, merchants, and Athenian democ-racywas the first philosopher. The only contribution of philosophy to poli-tics of which we can be absolutely certain is the concept of natural law ornatural right, a law or right which is not made by man nor by gods, whichhas the same force everywhere, and which sets an absolute limit to humanarbitrariness.

Nature was the first and decisive and, I think, the most unambiguous dis-covery of philosophy. But one does not understand the meaning of the termnature if one does not bear in ones mind that from which nature is distin-guished and to which it is opposed. If everything were nature or natural,nature would be a very empty concept. The men who discovered nature,conceived of nature as the opposite of convention or law. Natural things,they observed, are everywhere the same, but the conventions vary fromcountry to country, from city to city. Fire burns in Persia as well as inGreece, that fire burns is necessary; men are generated by men, and dogs by

dogsthese things are necessary, but the laws concerning inheritance, theft,sacrifices, etc. are different in different countries and even in the samecountry at different times: these laws are essentiallyarbitrary, they are conven-tions. On the basis of that distinction, the idea arose that it should be possibleto discover such an order of life as is good and right everywherebecause it is inaccordance with the one and unchangeablenatureofman; thisnaturalorder isthe only truly legitimate standard for judgments on the arbitrary enactmentsof monarchs and republics, and it is the only reliable guide for reform andimprovement. Up to then, people had tacitly or expressly identified the

good with the inherited or the old; from that moment, men began to dis-tinguishthe good from the old: We are seeking the good, and not the old(Aristotle).15 With regard to this fact, we may say: philosophy is theantitradi-tional force; the liberation from the opinions of the past, the opening up ofnew vistas is, and always has been, of the essence of philosophy. As long asphilosophy was living up to its own innate standard, philosophers as such,by their merely being philosophers, prevented those who were willing tolisten to them from identifying any actual order, however satisfactory inmany respects, with theperfectorder: political philosophy is the eternal chal-

lenge to the philistine. There never has been, and there never will be a timewhen the medicine administered by political philosophy has been and willbe superfluous, although it must always be administered, as all medicinemust, with discretion. This holds true in particular of our time; for in our



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time, we are confronted not merely with the Philistines of old who identify thegood with the old or the actual, but with the Philistines of progress who ident-

ify the good with the new and the future. But of this, I shall have to speaksomewhat later.If it is true that the concept of a natural law, or of a natural order, is coeval

with philosophy itself, we are justified in speaking of the legitimate utopian-ism inherent in philosophy as such. This utopianism is the very soul ofPlatos and Aristotles political philosophy whose primary and guidingpurpose is to discover that constitution, that order of civil society,which is natural. And this utopianism is legitimate because it is not decep-tive: the philosophers I am speaking of call the perfect order of society an

object of 1yxh which means both wish and prayer: that perfect order isthe object of the wish, or the prayer, of alldecent people. Since it is acceptable,

and meant to be acceptable, to decent people only, it is not a theoretical con-struction, but a practical ideal. By calling it candidly an object of wish orprayer, they left no doubt as to the gulf separating the ideal from reality,they considered that the realization of the ideal is a matter ofchance, oflucky circumstances which may, or may not, arise. They did not make any

predictions. While completely suspending their judgments concerning therealization of the ideal, they were definite as to the ideal itself: this ideal

was, and was meant to be, the standard of sincere, uncompromising judg-ments on the real. The practical meaning of this utopianism was not, torepeat, to make any predictions as to the future course of events; it wasmerely to point out the direction which efforts of improvement wouldhave to take. They did not seriously believe that the perfect order ofsociety would ever become a reality; for, being an object of wish orprayer, there is no necessary reason why it should; but they felt that anyactual order could bear improvement, substantial improvement. Therelation of the ideal, or the utopia, to reality, as they conceived of it, may

be described this way: there is a common, ordinary civil justice which con-sists in obedience to the law of the land and just administration of that law;that justice is not concerned with the justice of the law itself; it is for thisreason a very imperfect justice, for every law, every legal order is boundto be only imperfectly just; therefore, justice must be supplemented byequity which is the correction of legal justice in the direction of perfectjustice; the equitable order, or, as we might prefer to say, the order ofcharity is the utopian order; that utopian order by itself is essentially theobject of wish or prayer, and not of political action; equity, or charity, by

themselves are not capable to subsist on this earth without the solid, some-what brutal, imperfectly just, substructure of common justice; commonjustice must be completed, corrected by considerations of equity orcharityit can never be supplanted by them, although all decent men



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you do not believe that the perfect condition can be brought about by politicalaction, you cannot hope for more than that one or the other of those in power

might be induced, by moral appeal, by advice, by exhortations, bysermons, todo his best in his station along the lines of decency and humanity. Thisapproach was underlying one special genre of political literature in particular,the mirrors of princes.

While mentioning the mirrors of princes, I have come to the great turningpoint in political philosophy, to the starting point of the development in thecourse of which the traditional utopianism of the philosophers and, wemay add, of the theologians, was gradually replaced by the modernutopian-ism of thesocial engineer. The mirrors of princes provoked the displeasure, the

disgust, the passionate reaction of Machiavelli. Opposing the whole traditionof political philosophy, he did not wish to study any longer how men oughttobehave, but how they do behave. He felt, not without good reason, thatprinces are not likely to listen to moral advice. From this he drew the con-clusion, which no good man would have drawn, that he ought to teachprinces how they could be efficient, if wicked. Machiavelli is the father ofmodern political philosophy, and16 in particular of that trend of modern pol-itical philosophy which came into being as areactionto his teaching. For veryfew philosophers were prepared to follow him on his dangerous course. The

general trend was along these lines: people accepted Machiavellis critique ofthe utopianism of the philosophic and theological tradition; they admittedthat the traditional ideals are too lofty to be put into practice, but, theyargued, one cannot limit oneself to merely describing how men are andbehave; men must be taught how theyshouldbe and behave. Thus a compro-mise between Machiavellianism and the tradition came into being: the idea tolowerthe traditional standard of conduct in order to guaranteethe realizationof these lower standards. Political philosophy attempted, therefore, to dis-cover standards whose realization would be necessary, or automatic, and,

hence, no longer an object of mere wish or prayer. The natural standard ofhuman societies is the common good; the problem was to reconcile thecommon good, the common interest, with the private good, the private inter-est. The answer which was given was this: the common good is the object ofenlightened self-interest, or: virtue is identical with enlightened self-seeking.Accordingly, the primary task of political philosophy became to enlightenpeople about their self-interest. The idea was that the necessary outcome ofgeneral enlightenment about self-interest would be that people would nolonger interfere with that natural, automatic process which would bring

about social harmony but for peoples foolish interference with that process.The guiding motive of all menthis is the realistic, Machiavellianassumption underlying this modern utopianismis self-interest.Self-interest, as we actually find it, unenlightened self-interest, necessarily



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leads to conflict, to the war of everyone against everyone, but this conflict isby no means necessary: everyone can be brought to realize that he would be

better off in peace. What you have to do is to enlighten people about their self-interest: enlightened self-seekers will be as cooperative as unenlightened self-seekers are untractable. Enlightenment will gradually make superfluous theuse of force.

The trouble with this idea, or rather the fallacy underlying this idea, is this:however enlightened a man may be about his self-interest, the object of hisenlightened self-interest is not necessarily identical with the object of hisstrongest desires. This means: the original conflict between moral demandsand desires remains intactit merely becomes much more difficult to cope

with. For the conflict between moral demands and desires has its naturalremedy: which is the appeal to [a] sense of duty, honor, or however youmight like to call it. The appeal to the enlightened self-interest necessarilylacks that moral sting. Enlightened self-interest requires as much sacrificeas justice itselfbut the exclusive appeal to enlightened self-interestweakens the moral fibers of men and thus makes them unable to bring anysacrifice. Things become, not better and clearer, but worse and more con-fused, if self-interest is replaced by self-realization.

Another implication of this utopianism is the assumption that people really

and basically want the object of their enlightened self-interest, that only lackof information prevents them from willing it. Actually, at least some peoplewant more: power, precedence, dominion. And these dangerous people,even if few in number, are able to counteract the whole effort of enlighten-ment by employing17 various devices, which sometimes are more effectualthan the quiet voice of enlightening reason. What I am alluding to is the well-known fact that this modern utopianism naturally forgets the existence of theforces of evil and the fact that these forces cannot be fought successfully byenlightenment. We know a number of people who were honest enough to

admit that they had forgotten the existence of evil; we can only hope thatthey will never do it again. One sometimes hears this kind of reasoning:during the last century, man has succeeded in conquering nature; naturalscience has been amazingly successful; all the more striking, and all themore regrettable, is the failure of the social sciences; the failure of the socialsciences to establish social harmony, when contrasted with the success ofthe natural sciences, appears paradoxical. But it is paradoxical on the basisof modern utopianism only. For what is the human meaning of the successof the natural sciences? That man has become enormously more powerful

than he has ever been. But does a man necessarily become a better, a nicerman by becoming more powerful?Let us consider for one moment under what conditions it would be reason-

able to say that man becomes better by becoming more powerful. This would



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be reasonable if all wickedness, nastiness, malevolence, aggressiveness werethe outcome of18 want. For as far as this is the case, one could make men better

by satisfying their wants. This view is underlying the famous theory of frus-tration and aggression. The decisive fallacy expressed in this theory is theassumption that frustration is avoidable, that a life without some sort orother of frustration is possible at all, or that full satisfaction of wants is poss-ible. I must try to explain this somewhat more fully.

The view that enlightened self-interest leads to public-spiritedness andeven to social harmony, whereas only unenlightened self-interest leads tosocial conflict, is not altogether erroneous. The error creeps in as a conse-quence of the ambiguity of the term wants. Which are the wants whose

satisfaction is the object of enlightened self-interest as distinguished fromthe object of unenlightened self-interest? Philosophers of former timesused to distinguish between the necessary and the superfluous things.And they held that if all men were satisfied with the necessary things,with the truly necessary things, with what the body really and absolutelyneeds, the products of the earth would be sufficient to satisfy these wantswithout any fight among human beings becoming necessary. In otherwords, they held that the only guarantee of universal harmony is univer-sal asceticism. Accordingly, they believed that the basic vice, the roots of

all social conflict, is the desire for superfluous things, for luxury.

19

Now,one of the first actions of modern utopianism was the rehabilitation ofluxury. It was assumed later on20 that if all men were interested exclu-sively in raising their standard of living, their comfort, in the commodavitae, social harmony would follow; it was assumed that the object ofenlightened self-interest is, not the bare minimum of subsistence, butthe highest possible standard of living. No sensible person can beunmindful of the great blessings which we owe to the victory of this ten-dency, but one is justified in doubting that it has brought about any

higher degree of social harmony, or that it has brought us any nearer touniversal peace. The number and the extension of the wars of the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries are not sensibly smaller than the wars ofearlier ages.

The curious thing about the present-day utopist is that he appears in thegarb of the most hardboiled realist. He does not speak of moral idealshespeaks of economic problems, economic opportunities, and economic con-flicts. He has learned in the meantime that mere enlightenment, that merechange of opinions, would not do, he insists on the necessity of changing of

18of is inserted by hand.19Platos Republic the true city the healthy city called by Glaucon the city of pigs



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institutions; he does not hesitate to recommend social revolution, unbloody21

or otherwise. I am aware ofthat. Nevertheless, I must insist on the basic agree-

ment between him and his grandfather of the eighteenth century.No one will misunderstand me as if I were saying anything against econ-omists. I still remember the papers read by Drs. Feiler and Marschak in lastyears summer course,22 papers which culminated in the thesis that themost important economic problems necessarily lead beyond the sphere ofeconomics into the sphere of moral decisions.

But to come back to the trend of my argument, modern utopianism is notwithout good reason inseparable from economism, as distinguished fromeconomics. For modern utopianism ultimately rests on the identification of

the common good with the object of enlightened self-interest understood asa high standard of living. The original thesis was that man would be deter-mined by economic impulses,ifhe were enlightened, whereas actually he isdetermined by such foolish impulses as pride, prestige, etc. The next stepwas the assertion that man is in fact decisively determined by economicimpulses and economic factors. The basic social or political facts are the econ-omic facts: the first private owner is the true founder of the State, powergoes with property. In its fully elaborated form, it is the economic interpret-ation of history which boasts of its more than Machiavellian realism, and

which has nothing but contempt for the utopian socialism which it sup-planted. But to say nothing of the withering away of the Statewhich willstill be a matter of pious or impious hope [a] long time after the witheringaway of Marxism will have been completedwhat is more utopian thanthe implication of Marxs famous sentence: Hitherto, the philosophershave limited themselves to interpreting the world; what matters is that theworld bechanged. Forwhydid the philosophers limit themselves to interpret-ing the world? Because they knew that the world in the precise, unmetaphoricsense of the term, the universe, cannot be changed by man. Marxs innocent

looking sentence implies the substitution of the little world of man for thereal world, the substitution of the whole historical process for the realwhole, which by making possible the whole historical process sets absolutelimits to it. This substitution, a heritage from Hegels idealistic philosophy,is the ultimate reason of Marxs utopian hopes. For is it not utopian toexpect a perfect order of society, which is essentially perishable? To expectmen to put all their will, hope, faith, and love on something which is admit-tedly not eternal, but less lasting than this planet of ours? To mistake eternityfor a time of very long duration, for some billions of years, is the privilege of

nonphilosophic men; it is the mortal sin for a man who claims to be a philo-sopher. If all human achievements, the jump into liberty included, are noteternal, the germ of ultimate destruction will be noticeable even in the



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highest human achievements, and hence the so-called perfect order on earth isbound to be a delusion.

Much more realistic were the philosophers of old who insisted on the factthat the realization of the ideal is essentially a matter of chance, or thetheologians of old who insisted on the fact that the ways of providence areinscrutable to man. Modern utopianism is based on the assumption thatthe realization of the ideal is necessary, or almost necessary. By almostnecessary I mean that but for an avoidable human shortcoming the idealwould necessarily be realized. The peak of modern utopianism wasreached in the apparently least utopian political philosophy of the last centu-ries, in the political philosophy of Hegel. For, contrary to Plato and Aristotle

and their followers who had insisted on the fundamental difference betweenthe ideal and the real, the reasonable and the actual, Hegel declared that thereasonable is the actual and the actual is the reasonable.

A general survey of the history of political philosophy is apt to create theimpression that there is no political philosophy from which we can learn any-thing because there is a disgraceful variety of political philosophies whichfight each other to [the] death. Deeper study shows that this impression ismisleading. It would be absurd to say that deeper study shows us all politicalphilosophers in perfect agreement; it does show us, however, that there was a

tradition of political philosophy whose adherents were in agreement asregards the fundamentals, the tradition founded by Socrates, Plato, andAristotle, which was transformed, but not broken under the influence ofthe biblical virtues of mercy and humility, and which still supplies us withthe most needed guidance as regards the fundamentals. We do not needlessons from that tradition in order to discern the soundness of Churchillsapproach, e.g., but the cause which Churchills policy is meant to defendwould not exist but for the influence of the tradition in question.

This tradition is menaced today by a spurious utopianism. No one will

deny that the basic impulse which generated that utopianism was generous.Nevertheless, it is bound to lead to disaster because it makes us underesti-mate the dangers to which the cause of decency and humanity is exposedand always will be exposed. The foremost duty of political philosophytoday seems to be to counteract this modern utopianism.

But to describe the service which political philosophy can render, notmerely today, but at all times, one would have to say that political philosophyteaches us how terribly difficult it is to secure those minimums of decency,humanity, justice, which have been taken for granted, and are still being

taken for granted, in the few free countries. By enlightening us about thevalue of those apparently negligible achievements, it teaches us not toexpect too much from the future. In the last analysis, political philosophy isnothing other than looking philosophically at things politicalphilosophi-



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Experience seems to show that common sense left to itself is not23 proofagainst these faulty extremes: common sense requires to be fortified by

political philosophy.Mans modern venture which has been amazingly successful in manyrespects, makes us distrustful of all teachings which insist on the fact thatthere are certain absolute limits to human progress: have not many of theallegedly existing limits proved to be surmountable? But the question iswhether the price which had to be paid for these conquests was not, insome cases, too high, in other words, whether it is not still true that mancan indeed expel nature with a hayfork, but that nature will always comeback with a vengeance. By erecting the proud edifice of modern civilization,

and by living within that comfortable building for some generations, manypeople seem to have forgotten the natural foundations, not dependent onhuman will and not changeable, which are buried deep in the ground andwhich set a limit to the possible height of the building.

In practical terms, this means that the task before the present generation isto lay the foundations for a long peace period: it is not, and it cannot be, toabolish war for all times. To quote a great liberal of the last century, HenryHallam: the science of policy, like that of medicine, must content itselfwith devising remedies for immediate danger, and can at best only retard

the progress of that intrinsic decay which seems to be the law of all thingshuman, and through which every institution of man, like his earthly frame,must one day crumble into ruin (Const. Hist. 1:182).24

This sounds pessimistic or fatalistic, but it is not. Do we cease living, andliving with reasonable joy, do we cease doing our best although we knowwith absolute certainly that we are doomed to die?

At the end of the third part ofKing Henry the Sixth, after the victory of hishouse, King Edward the Fourth says: For here, I hope, begins our lastingjoy. All the commentary that is needed is implied in the fact that Edwards

brother Richard, afterwards King Richard the Third, is silently present. Atthe end ofRichard III, after that bloody tyrant had been slain, the victoriousHenry VII concludes his speech by saying: peace lives again: That shemay long live here, God say amen! The prudent Henry VII, the favorite ofBacon, was wiser than the ill-fated Edward IV. A wise man cannot saymore than the father of Henry VIII did, and he cannot seriously hope formore. To what God did say amen after the victory of Henry VII, is recordedin the histories.

It is hard to face these facts without becoming cynical, but it is not

impossible. The philosophers advise us to love fate, stern fate. The Biblepromises us Gods mercy. But the comfort which comes from God is as



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little pleasant to the flesh as is the love of fate. For the flesh, which is weak,wants tangible comfort. That tangible comforta man-made eternal peace

and happinessnon datur. We have to choose between philosophy and theBible.



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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY'

Political philosophy is not a historical discipline. The philo-sophic questions of the nature of political things and of the best,or just, political order are fundamentally different from historicalquestions, which always concern individuals individual groups,individual human beings, individual achievements, individual civi-lizations," the one individual "process" of human civilization fromits beginning to the present, and so on. I n particular, politicalphilosophy is fundamentally different from the history of politicalphilosophy itself. The question of the nature of political thingsand the answer to it cannot possibly be mistaken for the questionof how this or that philosopher or all philosophers have ap-proached, discussed or answered the philosophic question men-tioned. This does not mean that political philosophy is absolutelyindependent of history. Without the experience of the variety ofpolitical institutions and convictions in different countries and atdifferent times, the questions of the nature of political things andof the best, or the just, political order could never have been raised.And after they have been raised, only historical knowledge canprevent one from mistaking the specific features of the politicallife of one's time and one's country for the nature of politicalthings. Similar considerations apply to the history of politicalthought and the history of political philosophy. But howeverimportant historical knowledge may be for political philosophy, itis only preliminary and auxiliary to political philosophy; it doesnot form an integral pa rt of it.

This view of the relation of political philosophy to history wasunquestionably predominant a t least up to the end of the eighteenthcentury. I n our time it is frequently rejected in favor of "his-toricism," i.e. of the assertion that the fundamental distinctionbetween philosophic and historical questions cannot in the lastanalysis be maintained. Historicism may therefore be said to ques-tion the possibility of political philosophy. At any rate it chal-lenges a premise that was common to the whole tradition of politi-


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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ND HISTORY 31cal philosophy and apparently never doubted by it . I t thus seemsto go deeper to the roots, or to be more philosophic, than the politi-cal philosophy of the past. I n any case, it casts a doubt on thevery questions of the nature of political things and of the best, orthe just, political order. Thus it creates an entirely new situationfor political philosophy. The question that it raises is to-day themost urgent question for political philosophy.

I t may well be doubted whether the fusion of philosophy andhistory, as advocated by historicism, has ever been achieved, oreven whether it can be achieved. Nevertheless that fusion appearsto be, as it were, the natural goal toward which the victorioustrends of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought con-verge. At any rate, historicisni is not just one philosophic schoolamong many, but a most powerful agent that affects more or lessall present-day thought. As far as we can speak at all of the spiritof a time, we can assert with confidence that the spirit of our timeis historicism.

Never before has man devoted such an intensive and such acomprehensive interest to his whole past, and to all aspects of hispast, as he does to-day. The number of historical disciplines, therange of each, and the interdependence of them all a re increasingalmost constantly. Nor are these historical studies carried on bythousands of ever more specialized students considered rnerelyinstrumental, and without value in themselves: we take it forgranted that historical knowledge forms an integral par t of thehighest kind of learning. To see this fact in the proper perspec-tive, we need only look back to the past. When Plato sketched inhis epublic a plan of studies he mentioned arithmetic, geometry,astronomy, and so on: he did not even allude to history. We can-not recall too often the saying of Aristotle who was responsiblefor much of the most outstanding historical research done in classi-cal antiquity) that poetry is more philosophic than history. Thisattitude was characteristic of all the classical philosophers and ofall the philosophers of the Middle Ages. History was praisedmost highly not by the philosophers but by the rhetoricians. Thehistory of philosophy in particular was not considered a philo-sophic discipline: it was left to antiquarians rather than to phi-


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3 LEO STRAUSSsixteenth century. The opposition then offered to all earlier phi-losophy, and especially to all earlier political philosophy, wasmarked from the outset by a novel emphasis on history. Thatearly turn toward history was literally absorbed by the unhis-torical teachings of the Age of Reason. The rationalism ofthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fundamentally muchmore historical than the rationalism of pre-modern times.From the seventeenth century onward, the rapprochement of phi-losophy and history increased almost from generation to genera-tion at an ever accelerated pace. Toward the end of the seven-teenth century it became customary to speak of the spirit of atime. In the middle of the eighteenth century the term philoeo-phy of history was coined. In the nineteenth century, the his-tory of philosophy came to be generally considered a philosophicaldiscipline. The teaching of the outstanding philosopher of thenineteenth century, Hegel, was meant to be a synthesis ofphilosophy and history. The historical school of the nineteenthcentury brought about the substitution of historical jurisprudence,historical political science, historical economic science for a juris-prudence, a political science, an economic science that were evi-dently unhistorical or a t least a-historical.

The specific historicism of the first half of the nineteenth cen-tury was violently attacked because it seemed to lose itself in thecontemplation of the past. I t s victorious opponents did not, how-ever, replace it by a non-historical philosophy, but by a more ad-vanced, and in some cases a more sophisticated form of his-toricism. The typical historicism of the twentieth century de-mands that each generation reinterpret the past on the basis of it sown experience and with a view to its own future. It is no longercontemplative, but activistic; and it attaches to that study of thepast which is guided by the anticipated future, or which startsfrom and returns to the analysis of the present, a crucial philo-sophic significance: it expects from it the ultimate guidance forpolitical life. The result is visible in practically every curriculumand textbook of our time. One has the impression that the ques-tion of the nature of political things has been superseded by thequestion of the characteristic trends of the social life of the


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POLITIC L PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY

tion of the probable or desirable future. The questions of themodern state, of modern government, of the ideals of Westerncivilisation, and so fo rth, occupy a place tha t was formerly occu-pied by the questions of th state and of th right way of life.Philosophic questions have been transformed into historical ques-tions- or more precisely into historical questions of a futuristiccharacter.

This orientation characteristic of our time can be renderedlegitimate only by historicism. Historicism appears in the mostvaried guises and on the most different levels. Tenets and argu-ments that are the boast of one type of historicism, provoke thesmile of the adherents of others. The most common form of his-toricism expresses itself in the demand tha t the questions of thenature of political things, of th state, of the nature of man, andso forth, be replaced by the questions of the modern state, ofmodern government, of the present political situation, of modernman, of our society, our culture, our civilization, and so forth.Since it is hard to see, however, how one can speak adequately ofthe modern state, of our civilization, of modern man, etc., withoutknowing first what a state is, what a civilization is, what man'snature is, the more thoughtful forms of historicism admit that theuniversal questions of traditional philosophy cannot be abandoned.Yet they assert tha t any answer to these questions, any attempt a tclarifying or discussing them, and indeed any precise formulationof them, is bound to be historically conditioned, i.e. to remaindependent on the specific situation in which they are suggested.No answer to, no treatment or precise formulation of, the universalquestions can claim to be of universal validity, of validity for alltimes. Other historicists go to the end of the road by declaringthat while the universal questions of traditional philosophy cannotbe abandoned without abandoning philosophy itself, philosophyitself and its universal questions themselves are historically con-ditioned, i.e. essentially related to a specific historic type, e.g.to Western man or to the Greeks and their intellectual heirs.

To indicate the range of historicism, we may refer to two as-sumptions characteristic of historicism and to-day generally ac-cepted. History designated originally a particular kind of


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4 LEO STRAUSSof its own fundamentally different from, although of course re-lated to, that other field, Nature. This assumption distin-guishes historicism most clearly from the pre-historicist view, forwhich History as an object of knowledge did not exist, andwhich therefore did not even dream of a philosophy of historyas an analysis of, or a speculation about, a specific dimension ofreality. The gravity of the assumption in question appears onlyafter one has started wondering what the Bible or Plato, e.g. wouldhave called tha t X which we are in the habit of calling History.Equally characteristic of historicism is the assumption that restora-tions of earlier teachings are impossible, or that every intendedrestoration necessarily leads to an essential modification of therestored teaching. This assumption can most easily be understoodas a necessary consequence of the view that every teaching is essen-tially related to an unrepeatable his torical7' situation.

An adequate discussion of historicism would be identical witha critical analysis of modern philosophy in general. We cannotdare try more than indicate some considerations which should pre-vent one from taking historicism for granted.

To begin with, we must dispose of a popular misunderstandingwhich is ap t to blur the issue. It goes back to the attacks of earlyhistoricism on the political philosophy which had paved the wayfor the French Revolution. The representatives of the historicalschool assumed that certain influential philosophers of the eigh-teenth century had conceived of the right political order, or of therational political order, as an order which should or could beestablished at any time and in any place, without any regard tothe particular conditions of time and place. Over against thisopinion they asserted that the only legitimate approach to politicalmatters is the historical approach, i.e. the understanding of theinstitutions of a given country as a product of i ts past. Legitimatepolitical action must be based on such historical understanding, asdistinguished from, and opposed to, the abstract principles of1789 or any other abstract principles. Whatever the deficien-cies of eighteenth-century political philosophy may be, they cer-tainly do not justify the suggestion that the non-historical philo-sophic approach must be replaced by a historical approach. Most


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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 5of course between the philosophic question of the best politicalorder, and the practical question as to whether that order could orshould be established in a given country at a given time. Theynaturally knew that all political action, as distinguished frompolitical philosophy, is concerned with individual situations, andmust therefore be based on a clear grasp of the situation concerned,and therefore normally on an understanding of the causes or ante-cedents of that situation. They took it fo r granted that politicalaction guided by the belief that what is most desirable in itselfmust be put into practice in all circumstances, regardless of thecircumstances, befits harmless doves, ignorant of the wisdom of theserpent, but not sensible and good men. In short, the truism thatall political action is concerned with, and therefore presupposesappropriate knowledge of, individual situations, individual com-monwealths, individual institutions, and so on, is wholly irrelevantto the question raised by historicism.

For a large number, that question is decided by the fact thathistoricism coines later in time than the non-historical politicalphilosophy history itself seems to have decided in favor ofhistoricism. If, however, we do not worship success as such,we cannot maintain that the victorious cause is necessarily thecause of truth. For even if we gran t that truth will prevail in theend, we cannot be certain that the end has already come, Thosewho prefer historicism to non-historical political philosophy be-cause of the temporal relation of the two, interpret then that re-lation in a specific manner: they believe that the position whichhistorically comes later can be presumed, other things being equal,to be more mature than the positions preceding it. Historicism,they would say, is based on an experience which required manycenturies to mature-on the experience of many centuries whichteaches us that non-historical political philosophy is a failure ora delusion. The political philosophers of the past attempted toanswer the question of the best political order once and fo r all.But the result of all their efforts has been that there are almost asmany answers, as many political philosophies as there have beenpolitical philosophers. The mere spectacle of the anarchy ofsystenis, of the disgraceful variety of philosophies seems to


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36 LEO STRAUSSsuch, since the inany irreconcilable political philosophies refuteeach other.

Actually, however, tha t history does not teach us that the politi-cal philosophies of the past refute each other. It teaches usmerely that they contradict each other. It confronts us then withthe philosophic question as to which of two given contradictorytheses concerning political fundamentals is true. I n studying thehistory of political philosophy, we observe, e.g. that some politicalphilosophers distinguish between State and Society, whereas othersexplicitly or implicitly reject that distinction. This observationcompels us to raise the philosophic question whether and how farthe distinction is adequate. Even if history could teach us thatthe political philosophy of the past has failed, it would not teach usmore than that non-historical political philosophy has hithertofailed. But what else would this mean except that we do not trulyknow the nature of political things and the best, or just, politicalorder This is so far from being a new insight due to historicismthat it is implied in the very name philosophy. If the anarchyof systems exhibited by the history of philosophy proves any-thing, it proves our ignorance concerning the most important sub-jects (of which ignorance we can be aware without historicism),and therewith it proves the necessity of philosophy. It may beadded that the anarchy of the historical political philosophiesof our time, or of present-day interpretations of the past, is notconspicuously smaller than tha t of the non-historical politicalphilosophies of the past.

Yet it is not the mere variety of political philosophies whichallegedly shows the futility of non-historical political philosophy.Most historicists consider decisive the fact, which can be estab-lished by historical studies, that a close relation exists betweeneach political philosophy and the historical situation in which itemerged. The variety of political philosophies, they hold, is aboveall a function of the variety of historical situations. The historyof political philosophy does not teach merely that the politicalphilosophy of Plato, e.9. is irreconcilable with the political phi-losophy, say, of Locke. It also teaches that Plato's politicalphilosophy is essentially related to the Greek city of the fourth


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POLITIC L PHILOSOPHY ND HISTORY 7political philosophy can reasonably claim to be valid beyond thehistorical situation to which it is essentially related.

Yet, not to repeat what has been indicated in the paragraphbefore the last, the historical evidence invoked in favor of histori-cism has a much more limited bearing than seems to be assumed.In the first place, historicists do not make sufficient allowance forthe deliberate adaptation, on the part of the political philosophersof the past, of their views to the prejudices of their contemporaries.Superficial readers are apt to think that a political philosopherwas under the spell of the historical situation in which he thought,when he was merely adapting the expression of his thought to thatsituation in order to be listened to at all. Many political philoso-phers of the past presented their teachings, not in scientifictreatises proper, but in what we may call treatise-pamphlets. Theydid not limit themselves to expounding what they considered t h epolitical truth. They combined with tha t exposition an expositionof what they considered desirable or feasible in the circumstances,or intelligible on the basis of the generally received opinions ; theycommunicated their views in a manner which was not purelyphilosophical, but at the same time civil.' Accordingly, byproving tha t their political teaching as a whole is historically

conditioned,'' we do not at all prove that their political philosophyproper is historically conditioned.

Above all, it is gratuitously assumed that the relation betweendoctrines and their times is wholly unambiguous. The obviouspossibility is overlooked that the situation to which one particulardoctrine is related, is particularly favorable to the discovery of thetruth, whereas all other situations may be more or less unfavorable.More generally expressed, in understanding the genesis of a doc-trine we are not necessarily driven to the conclusion that the doc-trine in question cannot simply be true. By proving, e.g. thatcertain propositions of modern natural law go back to positiveRoman law, we have not yet proven that the propositions in ques-tion are not de jure naturali but merely de jure positive For itis perfectly possible that the Roman jurists mistook certain princi-ples of natural law for those of positive law, or that they merely

divined, and did not truly know, important elements of natural


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38 L O STRAUSSlaw. We cannot then stop at ascertaining the relations betweena doctrine and its historical origins. We have to interpret theserelations; and such interpretation presupposes the philosophicstudy of the doctrine in itself with a view to its truth or falsehood.At any rate, the fact (if it is a fact ) that each doctrine is relatedto a particular historical setting does not prove at all that nodoctrine can simply be true.

The old fashioned, not familiar with the ravages wrought byhistoricism, may ridicule us for drawing a conclusion which amountsto the truism that we cannot reasonably reject a serious doctrinebefore we have examined it adequately. I n the circumstances weare compelled to state explicitly that prior to careful investiga-tion we cannot exclude the possibility that a political philosophywhich emerged many centuries ago is th true political philosophy,as true to-day as it was when it was first expounded. I n otherwords, a political philosophy does not become obsolete merely be-cause the historical situation, and in particular the political situa-tion to which it was related has ceased to exist. For every politicalsituation contains elements which are essential to all politicalsituations: how else could one intelligibly call all these differentpolitical situations political si tuations7 '?

Let us consider very briefly, and in a most preliminary fashion,the most important example. Classical political philosophy is notrefuted, as some seem to believe, by the mere fact that the city,apparently the central subject of classical political philosophy, hasbeen superseded by the modern state. Most classical philosophersconsidered the city the most perfect form of political organization,not because they were ignorant of any other form, nor because theyfollowed blindly the lead given by their ancestors or contempo-raries, but because they realized, at least as clearly as we realizeit today, that the city is essentially superior to the other forms ofpolitical association known to classical antiquity, the tribe and theEastern monarchy. The tribe, we may say tentatively, is charac-terized by freedom (public sp iri t) and lack of civilization (highdevelopment of the arts and sciences), and the Eastern monarchyis characterized by civilization and lack of freedom. Classicalpolitical philosophers consciously and reasonably preferred the


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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 9peculiarity bound up with their particular historical situation. Upto and including the eighteenth century, some of the most outstand-ing political philosophers quite justifiably preferred the city to themodern state which had emerged since the sixteenth century, pre-cisely because they measured the niodern state of their time by thestandards of freedom and civilization. Only in the nineteenthcentury did classical political philosophy in a sense become obsolete.The reason was that the state of the nineteenth century, as distin-guished from the BIacedonian and Roman empires, the feudalmonarchy, and the absolute monarchy of the modern period, couldplausibly claim to be at least as nluch in accordance with the stand-ards of freedom and civilization as the Greek city had been. Eventhen classical political philosophy did not become conlpletelyobsolete, since it was classical political philosophy which hadexpounded in a classic manner the standards of freedom andcivilization. This is not to deny that the eniergence of nioderndeniocracy in particular has elicited, if it has not been the outconieof, such a reinterpretation of both freedom and civilizationas could not have been foreseen by classical political philosophy.Yet that reinterpretation is of fundamental significance, not be-cause niodern democracy has superseded earlier forms of politicalassociation, or because it has been victorious-it has not alwaysbeen victorious, and not everywhere-but because there are definitereasons for considering that reinterpretation intrinsically superiorto the original version. Naturally, there are some who doubt thestandards mentioned. But that doubt is as little restricted tospecific historical situations as the standards themselves. Therewere classical political philosophers who decided in favor of theEastern monarchy.

Before we can make an intelligent use of the historically ascer-tained relations between philosophic teachings and their times,we must have subjected the doctrines concerned to a philosophiccritique concerned exclusively with their truth or falsehood.philosophic critique in its turn presupposes an adequate under-standing of the doctrine subjected to the critique. An adequateinterpretation is such an interpretation as understands the thoughtof a philosopher exactly as he understood it himself. All historical


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4 LEO STRAUSSis possible on the basis of historicism. This presupposition is opento grave doubts. To see this we must consider historicism in thelight of the standards of historical exactness which, according tocommon belief, historicism was the first to perceive, to elaborate,or at least to divine.

Historicism discovered these standards while fighting the doc-trine which preceded it and paved the way for it. That doctrinewas the belief in progress: the conviction of the superiority, say,of the late eighteenth century to all earlier ages, and the expecta-tion of still further progress in the future. The belief in progressstands midway between the non-historical view of the philosophictradition and historicism. It agrees with the philosophic traditionin so fa r as both admit that there are universally valid standardswhich do not require, or which are not susceptible of, historicalproof. I t deviates from the philosophic tradition in so far as itis essentially a view concerning the historical process'' it assertsthat there is such a thing as the historical process'' and that tha tprocess is, generally speaking, a progress a progress of thoughtanct institutions toward an order which fully agrees with certainpresupposed universal standards of human excellence.

In consequence, the belief in progress, as distinguished from theviews of the philosophic tradition, can be legitimately criticized onpurely historical grounds. This was done by early historicism,which showed in a number of cases-the most famous example isthe interpretation of the Middle Ages-that the progressivistview of the past was based on an utterly insufficient understandingof the past. I t is evident that our understanding of the past willtend to be the more adequate, the more we are interested in thepast. But we cannot be passionately interested, seriously inter-ested in the past if we know beforehand that the present is in themost important respect superior to the past. Historians whostarted from this assumption felt no necessity to understand thepast in itself; they understood i t only as a preparation for the pres-ent. In studying a doctrine of the pas t, they did not ask pri-marily, what was the conscious and deliberate intention of its origi-na to r? They preferred to ask, what is the contribution of thedoctrine to our beliefs? What is the meaning, unknown to the


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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 4They took i t for granted then that it is possible and even necessaryto understand the thinkers of the past better than those thinkersunderstood themselves.

Against this approach, the 'Lhistoricalconsciousness rightlyprotested in the interest of historical truth, of historical esact-ness. The task of the historian of thought is to understand thethinkers of the past exactly as they understood themselves, or torevitalize their thought according to their own interpretation. Ifw abandon this goal, we abandon the only practicable criterionof objectivity in the history of thought. For, as is well-known,the same historical phenomenon appears in different lights in dif-ferent historical situations; new experience seems to shed newlight on old texts. Observations of this kind seem to suggest thatthe claim of any one interpretation to be th true interpretation isuntenable. Yet the observations in question do not justify thissuggestion. For the seemingly infinite variety of ways in which agiven teaching can be understood does not do away with the factthat the originator of the doctrine understood it in one way only,provided he was not confused. The indefinitely large variety ofequally legitimate interpretations of a doctrine of the past is dueto conscious or unconscious attempts to understand its authorbetter than he understood himself. But there is only one way ofunderstanding him as he understood himself.

Now, historicisni is constitutionally unable to live up to thevery standards of historical exactness which it might be said tohave discovered. For historicism is the belief that the historicistapproach is superior to the non-historical approach, but practicallythe whole thought of the past was radically unhistorical. His-toricism is therefore compelled, by its principle, to attempt tounderstand the philosophy of the past better than it understooditself. The philosophy of the past understood itself in a non-his-torical manner, but historicism must understand it historically.The philosophers of the past claimed to have found th truth, andnot merely the truth for their times. The historicist, on the otherhand, believes tha t they were mistaken in making that claim, and hecannot help making that belief the basis of his interpretation. His-toricisnl then merely repeats, if sometimes in a more subtle form,


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4 LEO STRAUSSof the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historianis convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or themore he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have tolearn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, butfrom them. To understand a serious teaching, we must be seri-ously interested in it, we must take it seriously, i.e. we must bewilling to consider the possibility tha t it is simply true. The his-toricist as such denies that possibility as regards any philosophyof the past. Historicism naturally attaches a much greater im-portance to the history of philosophy than any earlier philosophyhas done. But unlike most earlier philosophies, it endangers byits principle, if contrary to its original intention, any adequate un-derstanding of the philosophies of the past.It would be a mistake to think that historicism could be theoutconie of an unbiased study of the history of philosophy, andin particular of the history of political philosophy. The historianmay have ascertained that all political philosophies are relatedto specific historical settings, or that only such men as live inspecific historical situation have a natural aptitude for acceptinga given political philosophy. He cannot thus rule out the possibil-ity that the historical setting of one particular political philosophyis the ideal condition for the discovery of th political truth. His-toricism cannot then be established by historical evidence. I t sbasis is a philosophic analysis of thought, knowledge, truth, phi-losophy, political things, political ideals, and so on, a philosophicanalysis allegedly leading to the result that thought, knowledge,truth, philosophy, political things, political ideals, and so on, areessentially and radically historical. The philosophic analysisin question presents itself as the authentic interpretation of theexperience of many centuries with political philosophy. Thepolitical philosophers of the past attempted to answer the cluestionof the best political order once and fo r all. Each of them heldexplicitly or implicitly that all others had failed. It is only aftera long period of tr ia l and error that political philosophers startedquestioning the possibility of answering the fundamental questionsonce and fo r all. The ultimate result of that reflection is his-toricism.


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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 4tal questions of political philosophy must be replaced by questionsof a historical character. The question of the best political order,e.g. cannot be replaced by a discussion of the operative idealswhich maintain a particular type of state, modern democracy,e.g.; fo r any thorough discussion of those ideals is bound togive some consideration to the absolute worth of such ideal^. ^Nor can the question of the best political order be replaced by thequestion of the future order. For even if we could know with cer-tainty that the fu ture order is to be, say, a communist world society,we should not know more than that the communist world society isthe only alternative to the destruction of modern civilization, andwe should still have to wonder which alternative is preferable.Under no circumstances can we avoid the question as to whetherthe probable future order is desirable, indifferent or abominable.In fact, our answer to that question may influence the prospects ofthe probable future order becoming actually the order of the future.What we consider desirable in the circumstances depends ulti-mately on universal principles of preference, on principles whosepolitical implications, if duly elaborated, would present our answerto the question of the best political order.

What historicism could reasonably say, if the philosophicanalysis on which it is based is correct, is that all answers to theuniversal philosophic questions are necessarily historically con-ditioned, or that no answer to the universal questions will in factbe universally valid. Now, every answer to a universal questionnecessarily intends to be universally valid. The historicist thesisamounts then to this, that there is an inevitable contradiction be-tween the intention of philosophy and its fate, between the non-historical intention of the philosophic answers and their fa te al-ways to remain historically conditioned. The contradiction isinevitable because, on the one hand, evident reasons compel us toraise the universal questions and to attempt to arrive at adequateanswers, i.e. universal answers ; and, on the other hand, all humanthought i s enthralled by opinions and convictions which differ fromhistorical situation to historical situation. The historical limita-tion of a given answer necessarily escapes him who gives theanswer. The historical conditions which prevent any answer from


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LEO STRAUSSif a man knew that his answer would be determined, not by his freeinsight into the truth, but by his historical situation, he could nolonger identify himself with or wholeheartedly believe in, his an-swer. We should then know with certainty that no answer whichsuggests itself to us can be simply true, but we could not know theprecise reason why this is the case. The precise reason would bethe problematic validity of the deepest prejudice, necessarily hid-den from us, of our time. If this view is correct, political philo-sophy would still have to raise the fundamental and universalquestions which no thinking man can help raising once he hasbecome aware of them, and to try to answer them. But the phi-losopher would have to accompany his philosophic effort by a co-herent reflection on his historical situation in order to emancipatehimself as far as possible from the prejudices of his age. Thathistorical reflection would be in the service of the philosophic effortproper, but would by no means be identical with it.

On the basis of historicism, philosophic efforts would then beenlightened from the outset as to the fact that the answers to whichthey may lead will necessarily be historically conditioned.They would be accompanied by coherent reflections on the histori-cal situation in which they were undertaken. We might think thatsuch philosophic efforts could justly claim to have risen to a higherlevel of reflection, or to be more philosophic, than the naivenon-historical philosophy of the past. We might think fo r amoment that historical political philosophy is less apt to degen-erate into dogmatism than was its predecessor. But a moment'sreflection suffices to dispel that delusion. Whereas for the genu-ine philosopher of the past all the answers of which he couldpossibly think were, pr ior to his examination of them, openpossibilities, the historicist philosopher excludes, prior to his ex-amining them, all the answers suggested in former ages. He isno less dogmatic, he is much more dogmatic, than the average phi-losopher of the past. In particular, the coherent reflection of thephilosopher on his historical situation is not necessarily a sign that,other things being equal, his philosophic reflection is on a higherlevel than that of philosophers who were not greatly concernedwith their historical situation. For it is quite possible that the


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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ND HISTORY 5sub specie aeteruzitatis he is much more exposed to, and enthralledby, the convictions and trends dominating his age. Reflectionon one's historical situation may very well be no more than aremedy for a deficiency which has been caused by historicism, orrather by the deeper motives which express themselves in histor-icism, and which did not hamper the philosophic efforts of formerages.It seems as if historicism were animated by the certainty thatthe future will bring about the realization of possibilities of whichno one has ever dreamt, or can ever dream, whereas non-historicalpolitical philosophy lived not in such an open horizon, but in ahorizon closed by the possibilities known a t the time. Yet thepossibilities of the future are not unlimited as long as the differ-ences between men and angels and between men and brutes havenot been abolished, or as long as there are political things. Thepossibilities of the future are not wholly unknown, since theirlimits are known. I t is true that no one can possibly foresee whatsensible or mad possibilities, whose realization is within the limitsof human nature, will be discovered in the future. But it is alsotrue that it is hard to say anything at present about possibilitieswhich are a t present not even imagined. Therefore, we cannothelp following the precedent set by the attitude of earlier politicalphilosophy toward the possibilities which have been discovered, oreven realized since. TVe must leave it to the political philosophersof the future to discuss the possibilities which will be known onlyin the future. Even the absolute certainty that the future will wit-ness such fundamental and at the same time sensible changes ofoutlook as can not even be imagined now, could not possibly in-fluence the questions and the procedure of political philosophy.It would likewise be wrong to say that whereas non-historicalpolitical philosophy believed in the possibility of answering funda-mental questions once and for all, historicism implies the insightthat final answers to fundamental questions are impossible.Every philosophic position implies such answers to fundamentalquestions as claim to be final, to be true once and for all. Thosewho believe in the primary significance of the unique and morallyultimate character of the concrete situation,'' and therefore reject


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46 LEO STRAUSSoffer what claim to be final and universal answers to the questionsas to what a moral situation7' s and as to what the distinctivelymoral traits, or the virtues' ' are.4 Those who believe in prog-ress toward a goal which itself is essentially progressive, andtherefore reject the question of the best political order as toostatic, are convinced that their insight into the actuality of sucha progress has come to stay. Similarly, historicism merelyreplaced one kind of finality by another kind of finality, by thefinal conviction that all human answers are essentially and radi-cally historical. Only under one condition could historicismclaim to have done away with all pretence to finality, if it presentedthe historicist thesis not as simply true, but as true for the timebeing only. I n fact, if the historicist thesis is correct, we cannotescape the consequence that that thesis itself is historical orvalid, because meaningful, for a specific historical situation only.Historicism is not a cab which one can stop a t his convenience his-toricism must be applied to itself. I t will thus reveal itself as rela-tive to modern man; and this will imply tha t i t will be replaced, indue time, by a position which is no longer historicist. Some his-toricists would consider such a development a manifest decline.But in so doing they would ascribe to the historical situation favor-able to historicism an absoluteness which, as a matter of principle,they refuse to ascribe to any historical situation.

Precisely the historicist approach would compel us then to raisethe question of the essential relation of historicism to modern man,or, more exactly, the question as to what specific need, character-istic of modern

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