Leo Strauss - Theological-Political Problem

AND OTHER ESSENTIAL TEXTS
Contents
I. Strauss' Preface to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft
II. The Living Issues of German Post-War Philosophy
III. Reason and Revelation
IV. What can we learn from Political Theory?
V. Notes on Schmitt's "Concept of the Political"
VI. Political Philosophy and History
VII. Mutual Influence of Theology & Philosophy
VIII. Gerhard Krüger's Review of Strauss' Spinoza Book (trans.)
This is an expanded collection of texts published separately over a
period of 25 years. Added here to the two previously unpublished
and inaccessible essays edited and made available for the first time in
2006 by Professor Meier (“Living Issues” & “Reason and Revelation”)

are several essays relevant to the theological-political problem, an
autobiographical statement by Strauss, and a review (very difficult to
obtain) by Krüger – a review which was praised highly by Strauss
himself. All interpretive material has been excluded from this edition
to make room for the more important writings of Strauss in his own
voice.
Only the best or original texts have been used for this
collection.
This valuable edition will serve as an introduction to the core of
Strauss’ thought, but also provides trained and experienced readers
with some of the finest examples of Strauss’ art of writing in their
earlier, but fully mature expression.
April 2009.
Leo Strauss
What Can We Learn From Political Theory?
Editorial note: punctuation has been put inside quotation marks, spacing
has been standardized, and paragraphs have been indented. Strauss’s
corrections of typographical errors have not been noted.
(Lecture to be delivered in the General Seminar of the Summer Course
1942, July 1942)
The title of this lecture is not entirely of my own choosing.1 I do not like very
much the term political theory;2 I would prefer to speak of political philosophy.
Since this terminological question is not entirely verbal, I beg leave to say a
few words about it.
The term “political theory” implies that there is such a thing as theoretical
knowledge of things political. This implication is by no means self-evident.
Formerly,3 all political knowledge was considered practical knowledge, and not
theoretical knowledge. I recall the traditional division of the sciences into theor-
etical and practical sciences. According to that division,4 political philosophy, or
political science, together with ethics and economics, belongs to the practical
sciences, just as mathematics and the natural sciences belong to the theoretical
sciences. Whoever uses the term “political theory” tacitly denies that traditional
distinction. That denial means one of these two things or both of them: (1) the
denial of the distinction between theoretical and practical sciences: all science
is ultimately practical (scientia propter potentiam); (2) the basis of all reasonable
practice 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, detached
knowledge of things physical is the safest guide toward conquest of nature: this
is the view underlying the very term political theory.
The term political theory has another important implication. According to
present-day usage, theory is essentially different, not only from practice, but
above all from observation. If a man is asked “how do you account for this or
that event?” he may answer: “I have a theory,” or “A number of theories may
be suggested”; sometimes, one is asked: “What is your theory?” What is
meant by “theory” in such cases is the essentially hypothetical assertion of a
cause of an observed fact. The assertion being essentially hypothetical, it6 is
1
“making” is crossed out and “choosing” inserted by hand.
2
“theory” is underlined by hand. All handwritten and typed underlinings have been
converted to italics.
3
“Originally” is crossed out and “Formerly” inserted by hand.
4
“distinction” is crossed out and “division” typed above it.
5
The following handwritten note was added at the bottom of the page: Science, d’où
prevoyance; prevoyance, d’où action (Comte).
6
“it” is inserted by hand.
515
516 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
essentially arbitrary: my theory. What is seen—Hitler’s rise to power e.g.—is

not a theory, but our differing explanations of Hitler’s rise to power are our
theories. This use of the term theory is of fairly recent date. The original
meaning of the Greek verb u1vr1́v, with which “theory” is connected, is to
be an envoy sent to consult an oracle, to present an offering, to be present
at festivals:7 to look at, to behold, to inspect, contemplate, consider,
compare . . . , i.e., the original meaning of the term does not warrant at all
the distinction of theory from observation; it rather excludes it; it certainly
does not justify the identification, or almost identification, of theory with
an essentially hypothetical kind 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 hypothetical
explanation of these “data”; I prefer therefore the term political philosophy
which 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 concerning
political institutions and actions; political philosophy is the attempt to dis-
cover the political truth. Accordingly, I would not speak of the political phil-
osophy of Hitler, e.g., Hitler being not interested in truth and relying on
intuition rather than on methodic reflection. It is legitimate, however, to
speak of the political thought, or of the political ideas, of the Nazis. All political
philosophy is political thought, but not all political thought is political philos-
ophy. (E.g., the very terms “law” and “father” imply political thought, but not
political philosophy. Political thought is as old as the human race, but political
philosophy emerged at some definite time in the recorded past.) I think we
owe 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 sketch
first the argument in favor of the negative. It seems as if we can learn
nothing from political philosophy. For: (1) One may doubt whether there
exists such a thing deserving to be called political philosophy, (2) even if
there 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 is no political philosophy because there are many political philos-
ophies; only one of them, if any, can be true, and certainly the layman
7
“hence” is crossed out by hand.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM POLITICAL THEORY? 517
does not know which is the true one. When we ask: what can we learn
from political philosophy, we mean, of course, what can we learn from
the true political philosophy? We can learn nothing from the wrong pol-
itical philosophies, although we may learn something on the occasion of
them. The situation in political philosophy is not fundamentally differ-
ent from that in the other branches of philosophy. Philosophy means
the attempt, constantly renewed, to find the truth, the very term philos-
ophy implies that we do not possess the truth. Philosophy is, at best, pos-
session of clear knowledge of the problems—it is not possession of clear
knowledge of the solutions to the problems. The basic questions in all
branches of philosophy are as unsolved today as they were at all
times; new questions have been raised from time to time, the interest
has shifted from one type of question to others, but the most fundamen-
tal, the truly philosophic questions remain unanswered. This is, of
course, no objection to philosophy as such: but it is an objection to
the expectation, or the claim, that philosophy is a safe guide for
action. One may try, and people did try, to seclude from the realm of
philosophy the questions which do not seem to permit of a universally
acceptable answer, but in doing so, one is merely evading the questions,
not answering them. I have been trying to remind you of that melan-
choly spectacle called the anarchy of the systems, a phenomenon
which is almost as old as philosophy itself and which seems to have
so profound roots in the nature of philosophy and of its objects that
it is reasonable to expect that it will last as long as philosophy itself.
That spectacle becomes perhaps even more melancholy if one considers
political or social philosophy by itself. One could take almost any fun-
damental question of political philosophy, and one could show that no
answer exists which is universally accepted by honest seekers of the
truth, 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 cannot
learn anything important from it as far as political action is concerned.
For that kind of knowledge which is indispensable for reasonable
political action is not philosophic knowledge: practical wisdom,
common-sense, horse sense, shrewd estimation of the situation, these
are the intellectual qualities which make up the successful man of
affairs: he does not require political philosophy for his guidance. I may
refer to the story told in England of H.G. Wells meeting Winston
Churchill and asking about the progress of the war. “We’re getting
along with our idea,” said Churchill. “You have an idea?” asked Wells.
“Yes,” said Churchill, “along the lines of our general policy.” “You
8
This parenthesis was added by hand.
have a general policy?” Wells persisted. “Yes,” answered Churchill, “the

K. M. T. policy.” “And what is the K. M. T. policy?” asked Wells. “It is
this,” replied Churchill, “Keep Muddling Through.” The fact that this
muddling through led to disaster in the case of Singapore and Libya9 is
evidently not a proof of the necessity of political philosophy, considering
that neither the Japanese generals10 nor Rommel are political philosophers
to speak of. I have not the slightest doubt as to the possibility of devising
an intelligent international policy, e.g., without having any recourse to
political philosophy: that this war has to be won, that the only guarantee
for a somewhat longer peace-period after the war is won, is a sincere
Anglo-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 cannot
throw power out of the window without facing the danger of the first
gangster coming along taking it up, that the existence of civil liberties
all over the world depends on Anglo-Saxon preponderance—to know
these broad essentials of the situation, one does not need a single lesson
in political philosophy. In fact, people adhering to fundamentally different
political 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 the
one true political philosophy, the possibility would still remain that
the orientation supplied by political philosophy would be ineffectual:
political philosophy might teach us what should be done, and yet we
might be certain that this knowledge would not have the slightest influ-
ence on the unpredictable course of events: a set of microbes killing
Hitler may seem to have an infinitely greater political significance
than 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 political
thought that political conceptions are the by-product of actual political
relations” (McIlwain, Growth, 391)11. As Hegel said, the owl of Minerva
starts its flight in the dusk, philosophy comes always too late for the gui-
dance of political action; the philosopher always comes post festum; phil-
osophy can merely interpret the result of political action; it can make us
understand the State: it cannot teach us what should be done with regard
to the State. One may wonder whether there are any significant political
concepts, or ideas, which are the product of political philosophy: all
9
“Gallipoli” and “Egypt” are crossed out and “Singapore” and “Libya” are inserted
by hand.
10
“Tojo” crossed out and “the Japanese generals” handwritten.
11
Charles Howard McIlwain, The Growth of Political Thought in the West, From the
Greeks to the End of the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan, 1932).
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 in
1748 that the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial power
is 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? What
is the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle but a reflection of
the Greek political reality? The influence on political events of
Alexander the Great is infinitely greater than that of his teacher
Aristotle—and Alexander’s political activity is diametrically opposed
to the principles laid down by Aristotle.
II
Now, even if we have no knowledge of our own to oppose to these arguments, we

cannot help being impressed by an argument to the contrary which is taken from
authority. If political philosophy is an evident failure, how is it understandable
that 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 in
the cities until the philosophers have become kings or the kings have become
philosophers? Shall we say with Pascal that Plato’s Republic was meant by
Plato himself as a joke? It would certainly be rash to take this for granted. All
the more so since Pascal himself continues his remarks on Plato’s and
Aristotle’s political philosophies as follows: “They wrote on politics as if they
were organizing an insane asylum; and they pretended to consider politics as
something grand, because they knew that the madmen to whom they were
talking believed [themselves] to be kings and emperors. They accepted the
assumptions of these madmen, in order to make their madness as harmless as
might be” (Pensées, Brunschvig, n. 771). Even according to Pascal, Plato and
Aristotle did believe that political philosophy is of some practical use.
III
Let us then consider first the second argument, which was to the effect that we
can 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 take
it, would be along these lines: human relations cannot become good if the
human beings themselves do not become good first, and hence, it would be
a great achievement indeed if foundations for a peace lasting two generations
12
This sentence is added by hand at the bottom of the page.
could be laid, and hence the choice is not between imperialism and abolition
of imperialism, but between the13 tolerably decent imperialism of the
Anglo-Saxon brand and the14 intolerably indecent imperialism of the Axis
brand. Such a policy, as we all know, is by no means generally accepted; it
is 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 infinitely
more generous political thinkers who deny the assumptions, implied in
that reasonable policy, concerning human nature. If for no other purpose, at
least in order to defend a reasonable policy against overgenerous or
utopian thought, we would need a genuine political philosophy reminding
us 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 does
need political philosophy as soon as reasonable political action is endangered by an
erroneous political teaching. If Zeno had not denied the reality of motion, it
would not have been necessary to prove the reality of motion. If the sophists
had not undermined the basic principles of political life, Plato might not have
been compelled to elaborate his Republic. Or, to take another example, people
would not have been willing to accept the policy of toleration, which was the
only 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 was not their 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 would
have succeeded but for the help of the political philosophers who enlightened
public opinion.
These and similar examples merely show that political philosophy is
necessary to defend a reasonable course of action, which was discovered
and embarked upon independently of political philosophy, against allegedly
true 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 whom
they support, they are not necessarily ineffectual. The difficulty concerns pol-
itical philosophy proper, which is not the handmaid of a reasonable policy, but
its 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 argument’s
sake, I will assume that it is true in all cases in which it could seem to be
true before one has sifted the evidence. There is certainly one fundamental
political concept which is necessarily of philosophic origin because its very
13
“a”is crossed out and “the” is inserted by hand.
14
“a” is crossed out and “the” is inserted by hand.
conception is, so to speak, identical with the emergence of philosophy as such.

This concept is the concept of natural law or natural right. For “nature” is the
fundamental philosophic discovery. Truth, Being, even World, and all other
terms designating the object of philosophy are unquestionably older than
philosophy, but the first man who used the term “nature”—I think, it was
Odysseus, or Hermes, the god of thieves, merchants, and Athenian democ-
racy—was the first philosopher. The only contribution of philosophy to poli-
tics of which we can be absolutely certain is the concept of natural law or
natural right, a law or right which is not made by man nor by gods, which
has the same force everywhere, and which sets an absolute limit to human
arbitrariness.
“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 term
nature if one does not bear in one’s 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 from
country to country, from city to city. Fire burns in Persia as well as in
Greece, that fire burns is necessary; men are generated by men, and dogs by
dogs—these things are necessary, but the laws concerning inheritance, theft,
sacrifices, etc. are different in different countries and even in the same
country at different times: these laws are essentially arbitrary, they are conven-
tions. On the basis of that distinction, the idea arose that it should be possible
to discover such an order of life as is good and right everywhere because it is in
accordance with the one and unchangeable nature of man; this natural order is
the only truly legitimate standard for judgments on the arbitrary enactments
of monarchs and republics, and it is the only reliable guide for reform and
improvement. Up to then, people had tacitly or expressly identified the
good with the inherited or the old; from that moment, men began to dis-
tinguish the 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 the antitradi-
tional force; the liberation from the opinions of the past, the opening up of
new vistas is, and always has been, of the essence of philosophy. As long as
philosophy was living up to its own innate standard, philosophers as such,
by their merely being philosophers, prevented those who were willing to
listen to them from identifying any actual order, however satisfactory in
many respects, with the perfect order: political philosophy is the eternal chal-
lenge to the philistine. There never has been, and there never will be a time
when the medicine administered by political philosophy has been and will
be superfluous, although it must always be administered, as all medicine
must, with discretion. This holds true in particular of our time; for in our
15
Politics 1269a 3–4.
time, we are confronted not merely with the Philistines of old who identify the
good 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 speak
somewhat 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 of
Plato’s and Aristotle’s political philosophy whose primary and guiding
purpose 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 1yÒ xh́ which means both wish and prayer: that perfect order is
the object of the wish, or the prayer, of all decent 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 or
prayer, they left no doubt as to the gulf separating the ideal from reality,
they considered that the realization of the ideal is a matter of chance, of
lucky circumstances which may, or may not, arise. They did not make any
predictions. While completely suspending their judgments concerning the
realization 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, to
repeat, to make any predictions as to the future course of events; it was
merely to point out the direction which efforts of improvement would
have to take. They did not seriously believe that the perfect order of
society would ever become a reality; for, being an object of wish or
prayer, there is no necessary reason why it should; but they felt that any
actual order could bear improvement, substantial improvement. The
relation 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 this
reason a very imperfect justice, for every law, every legal order is bound
to be only imperfectly just; therefore, justice must be supplemented by
equity which is the correction of legal justice in the direction of perfect
justice; the equitable order, or, as we might prefer to say, the order of
charity is the utopian order; that utopian order by itself is essentially the
object 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; common
justice must be “completed,” corrected by considerations of equity or
charity—it can never be supplanted by them, although all decent men
would wish, or pray, that it could.
It is for this reason that traditional political philosophy, or moral philos-
ophy, frequently took on the form of exhortation, or moral advice. For if
you do not believe that the perfect condition can be brought about by political
action, 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, by sermons, to
do his best in his station along the lines of decency and humanity. This
approach 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 turning
point in political philosophy, to the starting point of the development in the
course of which the traditional utopianism of the philosophers and, we
may add, of the theologians, was gradually replaced by the modern utopian-
ism of the social engineer. The mirrors of princes provoked the displeasure, the
disgust, the passionate reaction of Machiavelli. Opposing the whole tradition
of political philosophy, he did not wish to study any longer how men ought to
behave, but how they do behave. He felt, not without good reason, that
princes 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 teach
princes how they could be efficient, if wicked. Machiavelli is the father of
modern political philosophy, and16 in particular of that trend of modern pol-
itical philosophy which came into being as a reaction to his teaching. For very
few philosophers were prepared to follow him on his dangerous course. The
general trend was along these lines: people accepted Machiavelli’s critique of
the utopianism of the philosophic and theological tradition; they admitted
that the traditional ideals are too lofty to be put into practice, but, they
argued, one cannot limit oneself to merely describing how men are and
behave; men must be taught how they should be and behave. Thus a compro-
mise between Machiavellianism and the tradition came into being: the idea to
lower the traditional standard of conduct in order to guarantee the realization
of 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 of
human societies is the common good; the problem was to reconcile the
common 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 of
enlightened self-interest, or: virtue is identical with enlightened self-seeking.
Accordingly, the primary task of political philosophy became to enlighten
people about their self-interest. The idea was that the necessary outcome of
general enlightenment about self-interest would be that people would no
longer interfere with that natural, automatic process which would bring
about social harmony but for people’s foolish interference with that process.
The guiding motive of all men—this is the “realistic,” “Machiavellian”
assumption underlying this modern utopianism—is self-interest.
Self-interest, as we actually find it, unenlightened self-interest, necessarily
16
“and” handwritten
leads to conflict, to the war of everyone against everyone, but this conflict is
by 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 the
use 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 his
enlightened self-interest is not necessarily identical with the object of his
strongest desires. This means: the original conflict between moral demands
and desires remains intact—it merely becomes much more difficult to cope
with. For the conflict between moral demands and desires has its natural
remedy: which is the appeal to [a] sense of duty, honor, or however you
might like to call it. The appeal to the enlightened self-interest necessarily
lacks that moral sting. Enlightened self-interest requires as much sacrifice
as justice itself—but the exclusive appeal to enlightened self-interest
weakens the moral fibers of men and thus makes them unable to bring any
sacrifice. 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 lack
of information prevents them from willing it. Actually, at least some people
want 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 effectual
than 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 the
“forces of evil” and the fact that these forces cannot be fought successfully by
enlightenment. We know a number of people who were honest enough to
admit that they had forgotten the existence of evil; we can only hope that
they will never do it again. One sometimes hears this kind of reasoning:
during the last century, man has succeeded in conquering nature; natural
science has been amazingly successful; all the more striking, and all the
more regrettable, is the failure of the social sciences; the failure of the social
sciences to establish social harmony, when contrasted with the success of
the natural sciences, appears paradoxical. But it is paradoxical on the basis
of modern utopianism only. For what is the human meaning of the success
of the natural sciences? That man has become enormously more powerful
than he has ever been. But does a man necessarily become a better, a nicer
man 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
17
“employing” is inserted by hand.
be reasonable if all wickedness, nastiness, malevolence, aggressiveness were

the 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 the
assumption that frustration is avoidable, that a life without some sort or
other 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 and
even to social harmony, whereas only unenlightened self-interest leads to
social 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 from
the object of unenlightened self-interest? Philosophers of former times
used 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 absolutely
needs, the products of the earth would be sufficient to satisfy these wants
without any fight among human beings becoming necessary. In other
words, 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 of
luxury. It was assumed later on20 that if all men were interested exclu-
sively in raising their standard of living, their comfort, in the commoda
vitae, social harmony would follow; it was assumed that the object of
enlightened self-interest is, not the bare minimum of subsistence, but
the highest possible standard of living. No sensible person can be
unmindful 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 to
universal peace. The number and the extension of the wars of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries are not sensibly smaller than the wars of
earlier ages.
The curious thing about the present-day utopist is that he appears in the
garb of the most hardboiled realist. He does not speak of moral ideals—he
speaks of economic problems, economic opportunities, and economic con-
flicts. He has learned in the meantime that mere enlightenment, that mere
change of opinions, would not do, he insists on the necessity of changing of
18
“of” is inserted by hand.
19
Plato’s Republic—the true city, the healthy city, called by Glaucon the city of pigs—
Glaucon is dissatisfied with the vegetarian food of the nice peaceful people—he gets
his meat—and he gets with the meat: war. [Strauss’s hand written footnote]
20
“later on” is inserted by hand.
institutions; he does not hesitate to recommend social revolution, unbloody21

or otherwise. I am aware of that. 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 last
year’s summer course,22 papers which culminated in the thesis that the
most important economic problems necessarily lead beyond the sphere of
economics into the sphere of moral decisions.
But to come back to the trend of my argument, modern utopianism is not
without good reason inseparable from economism, as distinguished from
economics. For modern utopianism ultimately rests on the identification of
the common good with the object of enlightened self-interest understood as
a high standard of living. The original thesis was that man would be deter-
mined by economic impulses, if he were enlightened, whereas actually he is
determined by such foolish impulses as pride, prestige, etc. The next step
was the assertion that man is in fact decisively determined by economic
impulses 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,” “power
goes 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 State—which will
still be a matter of pious or impious hope [a] long time after the withering
away of Marxism will have been completed—what is more utopian than
the implication of Marx’s famous sentence: “Hitherto, the philosophers
have limited themselves to interpreting the world; what matters is that the
world be changed.” For why did the philosophers limit themselves to interpret-
ing the world? Because they knew that the world in the precise, unmetaphoric
sense of the term, the universe, cannot be changed by man. Marx’s innocent
looking sentence implies the substitution of the little world of man for the
real world, the substitution of the whole historical process for the real
whole, which by making possible the whole historical process sets absolute
limits to it. This substitution, a heritage from Hegel’s idealistic philosophy,
is the ultimate reason of Marx’s utopian hopes. For is it not utopian to
expect a perfect order of society, which is essentially perishable? To expect
men 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 eternity
for 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 not
eternal, the germ of ultimate destruction will be noticeable even in the
21
“bloody” crossed out and “unbloody” typed above it.
22
Arthur Feiler and Jacob Marschak, New School economics colleagues.
highest human achievements, and hence the so-called perfect order on earth is
bound to be a delusion.
Much more realistic were the philosophers of old who insisted on the fact
that the realization of the ideal is essentially a matter of chance, or the
theologians of old who insisted on the fact that the ways of providence are
inscrutable to man. Modern utopianism is based on the assumption that
the realization of the ideal is necessary, or almost necessary. By “almost
necessary” I mean that but for an avoidable human shortcoming the ideal
would necessarily be realized. The peak of modern utopianism was
reached 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 between
the ideal and the real, the reasonable and the actual, Hegel declared that the
reasonable is the actual and the actual is the reasonable.
A general survey of the history of political philosophy is apt to create the
impression that there is no political philosophy from which we can learn any-
thing because there is a disgraceful variety of political philosophies which
fight each other to [the] death. Deeper study shows that this impression is
misleading. It would be absurd to say that deeper study shows us all political
philosophers in perfect agreement; it does show us, however, that there was a
tradition of political philosophy whose adherents were in agreement as
regards the fundamentals, the tradition founded by Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, which was transformed, but not broken under the influence of
the biblical virtues of mercy and humility, and which still supplies us with
the most needed guidance as regards the fundamentals. We do not need
lessons from that tradition in order to discern the soundness of Churchill’s
approach, e.g., but the cause which Churchill’s policy is meant to defend
would 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 exposed
and always will be exposed. The foremost duty of political philosophy
today seems to be to counteract this modern utopianism.
But to describe the service which political philosophy can render, not
merely today, but at all times, one would have to say that political philosophy
teaches 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 the
value of those apparently negligible achievements, it teaches us not to
expect too much from the future. In the last analysis, political philosophy is
nothing other than looking philosophically at things political—philosophi-
cally, i.e., sub specie aeternitatis. In thus making our hopes modest, it protects
us against despondency. In thus making us immune to the smugness of the
philistine, it makes us at the same time immune to the dreams of the visionary.
Experience seems to show that common sense left to itself is not23 proof
against these faulty extremes: common sense requires to be fortified by
political philosophy.
Man’s modern venture which has been amazingly successful in many
respects, makes us distrustful of all teachings which insist on the fact that
there are certain absolute limits to human progress: have not many of the
allegedly existing limits proved to be surmountable? But the question is
whether the price which had to be paid for these conquests was not, in
some cases, too high, in other words, whether it is not still true that man
can indeed expel nature with a hayfork, but that nature will always come
back with a vengeance. By erecting the proud edifice of modern civilization,
and by living within that comfortable building for some generations, many
people seem to have forgotten the natural foundations, not dependent on
human will and not changeable, which are buried deep in the ground and
which set a limit to the possible height of the building.
In practical terms, this means that the task before the present generation is
to lay the foundations for a long peace period: it is not, and it cannot be, to
abolish war for all times. To quote a great liberal of the last century, Henry
Hallam: “the science of policy, like that of medicine, must content itself
with 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 things
human, 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, and
living with reasonable joy, do we cease doing our best although we know
with absolute certainly that we are doomed to die?
At the end of the third part of King Henry the Sixth, after the victory of his
house, King Edward the Fourth says: “For here, I hope, begins our lasting
joy.” All the commentary that is needed is implied in the fact that Edward’s
brother Richard, afterwards King Richard the Third, is silently present. At
the end of Richard III, after that bloody tyrant had been slain, the victorious
Henry VII concludes his speech by saying: “peace lives again: That she
may long live here, God say amen!” The prudent Henry VII, the favorite of
Bacon, was wiser than the ill-fated Edward IV. A wise man cannot say
more than the father of Henry VIII did, and he cannot seriously hope for
more. To what God did say “amen” after the victory of Henry VII, is recorded
in 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 Bible
promises us God’s mercy. But the comfort which comes from God is as
23
“a sufficient guarantee” is crossed out.
24
Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII
to the Death of George II (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1880).
little pleasant to the flesh as is the love of fate. For the flesh, which is weak,
wants tangible comfort. That tangible comfort—a man-made eternal peace
and happiness—non datur. We have to choose between philosophy and the
Bible.
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 historical
questions, which always concern individuals : individual groups,
individual human beings, individual achievements, individual "civi-
lizations," the one individual "process" of human civilization from
its beginning to the present, and so on. I n particular, political
philosophy is fundamentally different from the history of political
philosophy itself. The question of the nature of political things
and the answer to it cannot possibly be mistaken for the question
of 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 absolutely
independent of history. Without the experience of the variety of
political institutions and convictions in different countries and at
different times, the questions of the nature of political things and
of the best, or the just, political order could never have been raised.
And after they have been raised, only historical knowledge can
prevent one from mistaking the specific features of the political
life of one's time and one's country for the nature of political
things. Similar considerations apply to the history of political
thought and the history of political philosophy. But however
important historical knowledge may be for political philosophy, it
is only preliminary and auxiliary to political philosophy; it does
not form an integral part of it.
This view of the relation of political philosophy to history was
unquestionably predominant at least up to the end of the eighteenth
century. I n our time it is frequently rejected in favor of "his-
toricism," i.e., of the assertion that the fundamental distinction
between philosophic and historical questions cannot in the last
analysis 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-
A Hebrew translation of this paper appeared in Eyoon-Hebrew Journ-a1 of
Philosophy, I (1946), 129 ff.
30
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 31
cal philosophy and apparently never doubted by it. I t thus seems

to 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 the
very questions of the nature of political things and of the best, or
the just, political order. Thus it creates an entirely new situation
for political philosophy. The question that it raises is to-day the
most urgent question for political philosophy.
I t may well be doubted whether the fusion of philosophy and
history, as advocated by historicism, has ever been achieved, or
even whether it can be achieved. Nevertheless that fusion appears
to be, as it were, the natural goal toward which the victorious
trends of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought con-
verge. At any rate, historicisni is not just one philosophic school
among many, but a most powerful agent that affects more or less
all present-day thought. As far as we can speak at all of the spirit
of a time, we can assert with confidence that the spirit of our time
is historicism.
Never before has man devoted such an intensive and such a
comprehensive interest to his whole past, and to all aspects of his
past, as he does to-day. The number of historical disciplines, the
range of each, and the interdependence of them all are increasing
almost constantly. Nor are these historical studies carried on by
thousands of ever more specialized students considered rnerely
instrumental, and without value in themselves: we take it for
granted that historical knowledge forms an integral part of the
highest kind of learning. To see this fact in the proper perspec-
tive, we need only look back to the past. When Plato sketched in
his Republic 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 responsible
for much of the most outstanding historical research done in classi-
cal antiquity) that poetry is more philosophic than history. This
attitude was characteristic of all the classical philosophers and of
all the philosophers of the Middle Ages. History was praised
most highly not by the philosophers but by the rhetoricians. The
history of philosophy in particular was not considered a philo-
sophic discipline: it was left to antiquarians rather than to phi-
losophers.
A fundamental change began to make itself felt only in the
32 LEO STRAUSS
sixteenth century. The opposition then offered to all earlier phi-

losophy, and especially to all earlier political philosophy, was
marked from the outset by a novel emphasis on history. That
early turn toward history was literally absorbed by the "unhis-
torical" teachings of the Age of Reason. The "rationalism" of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fundamentally much
more "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 a
time." In the middle of the eighteenth century the term "philoeo-
phy of history" was coined. I n the nineteenth century, the his-
tory of philosophy came to be generally considered a philosophical
discipline. The teaching of the outstanding philosopher of the
nineteenth century, Hegel, was meant to be a "synthesis" of
philosophy and history. The "historical school" of the nineteenth
century 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 the
contemplation of the past. Its 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 its
own experience and with a view to its own future. It is no longer
contemplative, but activistic; and it attaches to that study of the
past which is guided by the anticipated future, or which starts
from and returns to the analysis of the present, a crucial philo-
sophic significance: it expects from it the ultimate guidance for
political life. The result is visible in practically every curriculum
and textbook of our time. One has the impression that the ques-
tion of the nature of political things has been superseded by the
question of the characteristic "trends" of the social life of the
present and of their historical origins, and that the question of the
best, or the just, political order has been superseded by the ques-
tion of the probable or desirable future. The questions of the

modern state, of modern government, of the ideals of Western
civilisation, and so forth, occupy a place that was formerly occu-
pied by the questions of the state and of the right way of life.
Philosophic questions have been transformed into historical ques-
tions- or more precisely into historical questions of a "futuristic"
character.
This orientation characteristic of our time can be rendered
legitimate only by historicism. Historicism appears in the most
varied guises and on the most different levels. Tenets and argu-
ments that are the boast of one type of historicism, provoke the
smile of the adherents of others. The most common form of his-
toricism expresses itself in the demand that the questions of the
nature of political things, of the state, of the nature of man, and
so forth, be replaced by the questions of the modern state, of
modern government, of the present political situation, of modern
man, of our society, our culture, our civilization, and so forth.
Since it is hard to see, however, how one can speak adequately of
the modern state, of our civilization, of modern man, etc., without
knowing first what a state is, what a civilization is, what man's
nature is, the more thoughtful forms of historicism admit that the
universal questions of traditional philosophy cannot be abandoned.
Yet they assert that any answer to these questions, any attempt at
clarifying or discussing them, and indeed any precise formulation
of them, is bound to be "historically conditioned," i.e., to remain
dependent on the specific situation in which they are suggested.
No answer to, no treatment or precise formulation of, the universal
questions can claim to be of universal validity, of validity for all
times. Other historicists go to the end of the road by declaring
that while the universal questions of traditional philosophy cannot
be abandoned without abandoning philosophy itself, philosophy
itself 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
linowledge or inquiry. Historicism assumes that the object of his-
torical knowledge, which it calls "History," is a "field," a "world"
34 LEO STRAUSS
of 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, for
which "History" as an object of knowledge did not exist, and
which therefore did not even dream of a "philosophy of history"
as an analysis of, or a speculation about, a specific "dimension of
reality. ' ' The gravity of the assumption in question appears only
after one has started wondering what the Bible or Plato, e.g., would
have called that 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 intended
restoration necessarily leads to an essential modification of the
restored teaching. This assumption can most easily be understood
as a necessary consequence of the view that every teaching is essen-
tially related to an unrepeatable "historical7' situation.
An adequate discussion of historicism would be identical with
a critical analysis of modern philosophy in general. We cannot
dare 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 misunderstanding
which is apt to blur the issue. It goes back to the attacks of early
historicism on the political philosophy which had paved the way
for the French Revolution. The representatives of the "historical
school" assumed that certain influential philosophers of the eigh-
teenth century had conceived of the right political order, or of the
rational political order, as an order which should or could be
established at any time and in any place, without any regard to
the particular conditions of time and place. Over against this
opinion they asserted that the only legitimate approach to political
matters is the "historical" approach, i.e., the understanding of the
institutions of a given country as a product of its past. Legitimate
political action must be based on such historical understanding, as
distinguished from, and opposed to, the "abstract principles" of
1789 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
political philosophers of the past, in spite or rather because of the
non-historical character of their thought, distinguished as a matter
POLITICAL P H I L O S O P H Y AND HISTORY 35
of course between the philosophic question of the best political

order, and the practical question as to whether that order could or
should be established in a given country at a given time. They
naturally knew that all political action, as distinguished from
political philosophy, is concerned with individual situations, and
must 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 for granted that political
action guided by the belief that what is most desirable in itself
must be put into practice in all circumstances, regardless of the
circumstances, befits harmless doves, ignorant of the wisdom of the
serpent, but not sensible and good men. I n short, the truism that
all political action is concerned with, and therefore presupposes
appropriate knowledge of, individual situations, individual com-
monwealths, individual institutions, and so on, is wholly irrelevant
to the question raised by historicism.
For a large number, that question is decided by the fact that
historicism coines later in time than the non-historical political
philosophy : "history" itself seems to have decided in favor of
historicism. If, however, we do not worship "success" as such,
we cannot maintain that the victorious cause is necessarily the
cause of truth. For even if we grant that truth will prevail in the
end, we cannot be certain that the end has already come, Those
who 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 which
historically 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 many
centuries to mature-on the experience of many centuries which
teaches us that non-historical political philosophy is a failure or
a delusion. The political philosophers of the past attempted to
answer the question of the best political order once and for all.
But the result of all their efforts has been that there are almost as
many answers, as many political philosophies as there have been
political philosophers. The mere spectacle of "the anarchy of
systenis," of "the disgraceful variety" of philosophies seems to
refute the claim of each philosophy. The history of political phi-
losophy, it is asserted, refutes non-historical political philosophy as
36 LEO STRAUSS
such, since the inany irreconcilable political philosophies refute

each other.
Actually, however, that history does not teach us that the politi-
cal philosophies of the past refute each other. It teaches us
merely that they contradict each other. It confronts us then with
the philosophic question as to which of two given contradictory
theses concerning political fundamentals is true. I n studying the
history of political philosophy, we observe, e.g., that some political
philosophers distinguish between State and Society, whereas others
explicitly or implicitly reject that distinction. This observation
compels us to raise the philosophic question whether and how f a r
the distinction is adequate. Even if history could teach us that
the political philosophy of the past has failed, it would not teach us
more than that non-historical political philosophy has hitherto
failed. But what else would this mean except that we do not truly
know the nature of political things and the best, or just, political
order 1 This is so far from being a new insight due to historicism
that it is implied in the very name "philosophy." If the "anarchy
of 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 be
added that the "anarchy" of the historical political philosophies
of our time, or of present-day interpretations of the past, is not
conspicuously smaller than that of the non-historical political
philosophies of the past.
Yet it is not the mere variety of political philosophies which
allegedly 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 between
each political philosophy and the historical situation in which it
emerged. The variety of political philosophies, they hold, is above
all a function of the variety of historical situations. The history
of political philosophy does not teach merely that the political
philosophy of Plato, e.9.) is irreconcilable with the political phi-
losophy, say, of Locke. It also teaches that Plato's political
philosophy is essentially related to the Greek city of the fourth
century B.C., just as Locke's political philosophy is essentially
related to the English revolution of 1688. I t thus shows that no
political philosophy can reasonably claim to be valid beyond the

historical situation to which it is essentially related.
Yet, not to repeat what has been indicated in the paragraph
before the last, the historical evidence invoked in favor of histori-
cism has a much more limited bearing than seems to be assumed.
I n the first place, historicists do not make sufficient allowance for
the deliberate adaptation, on the part of the political philosophers
of the past, of their views to the prejudices of their contemporaries.
Superficial readers are apt to think that a political philosopher
was under the spell of the historical situation in which he thought,
when he was merely adapting the expression of his thought to that
situation in order to be listened to at all. Many political philoso-
phers of the past presented their teachings, not in scientific
treatises proper, but in what we may call treatise-pamphlets. They
did not limit themselves to expounding what they considered the
political truth. They combined with that exposition an exposition
of what they considered desirable or feasible in the circumstances,
or intelligible on the basis of the generally received opinions ; they
communicated their views in a manner which was not purely
"philosophical, " but at the same time " civil. "' Accordingly, by
proving that their political teaching as a whole is "historically
conditioned,'' we do not at all prove that their political philosophy
proper is "historically conditioned."
Above all, it is gratuitously assumed that the relation between
doctrines and their "times" is wholly unambiguous. The obvious
possibility is overlooked that the situation to which one particular
doctrine is related, is particularly favorable to the discovery of the
truth, 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., that
certain propositions of modern natural law "go back" to positive
Roman law, we have not yet proven that the propositions in ques-
tion are not de jure naturali but merely de jure positive. For it
is 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
Compare Locke, Of Civil Gouernment, I, Sect. 109, and 11, Sect. 52, with his
Essay Concerning Human Unde~standing,111, ch. 9, Sects. 3 and 22.
38 LEO STRAUSS
law. We cannot then stop at ascertaining the relations between

a doctrine and its historical origins. We have to interpret these
relations; and such interpretation presupposes the philosophic
study 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 "related"
to a particular historical setting does not prove at all that no
doctrine can simply be true.
The old fashioned, not familiar with the ravages wrought by
historicism, may ridicule us for drawing a conclusion which amounts
to the truism that we cannot reasonably reject a serious doctrine
before we have examined it adequately. I n the circumstances we
are compelled to state explicitly that prior to careful investiga-
tion we cannot exclude the possibility that a political philosophy
which emerged many centuries ago is the true political philosophy,
as true to-day as it was when it was first expounded. I n other
words, 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 political
situation contains elements which are essential to all political
situations: how else could one intelligibly call all these different
political situations "political situations7'?
Let us consider very briefly, and in a most preliminary fashion,
the most important example. Classical political philosophy is not
refuted, as some seem to believe, by the mere fact that the city,
apparently the central subject of classical political philosophy, has
been superseded by the modern state. Most classical philosophers
considered the city the most perfect form of political organization,
not because they were ignorant of any other form, nor because they
followed blindly the lead given by their ancestors or contempo-
raries, but because they realized, at least as clearly as we realize
it today, that the city is essentially superior to the other forms of
political association known to classical antiquity, the tribe and the
Eastern monarchy. The tribe, we may say tentatively, is charac-
terized by freedom (public spirit) and lack of civilization (high
development of the arts and sciences), and the Eastern monarchy
is characterized by civilization and lack of freedom. Classical
political philosophers consciously and reasonably preferred the
city to other forms of political association, in the light of the stand-
ards of freedom and civilization. And this preference was not a
peculiarity bound up with their particular historical situation. Up

to and including the eighteenth century, some of the most outstand-
ing political philosophers quite justifiably preferred the city to the
modern state which had emerged since the sixteenth century, pre-
cisely because they measured the niodern state of their time by the
standards of freedom and civilization. Only in the nineteenth
century 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 feudal
monarchy, and the absolute monarchy of the modern period, could
plausibly claim to be at least as nluch in accordance with the stand-
ards of freedom and civilization as the Greek city had been. Even
then classical political philosophy did not become conlpletely
obsolete, since it was classical political philosophy which had
expounded in a "classic" manner the standards of freedom and
civilization. This is not to deny that the eniergence of niodern
deniocracy in particular has elicited, if it has not been the outconie
of, such a reinterpretation of both "freedom" and "civilization"
as 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 political
association, or because it has been victorious-it has not always
been victorious, and not everywhere-but because there are definite
reasons for considering that reinterpretation intrinsically superior
to the original version. Naturally, there are some who doubt the
standards mentioned. But that doubt is as little restricted to
specific historical situations as the standards themselves. There
were classical political philosophers who decided in favor of the
Eastern 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 philosophic
critique concerned exclusively with their truth or falsehood. A
philosophic critique in its turn presupposes an adequate under-
standing of the doctrine subjected to the critique. An adequate
interpretation is such an interpretation as understands the thought
of a philosopher exactly as he understood it himself. All historical
evidence adduced in support of historicisni presupposes as a matter
of course that adequate understanding of the philosophy of the past
40 LEO STRAUSS
is possible on the basis of historicism. This presupposition is open

to grave doubts. To see this we must consider historicism in the
light of the standards of historical exactness which, according to
common 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 doctrine
was 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 progress
stands midway between the non-historical view of the philosophic
tradition and historicism. It agrees with the philosophic tradition
in so f a r as both admit that there are universally valid standards
which do not require, or which are not susceptible of, historical
proof. I t deviates from the philosophic tradition in so far as it
is essentially a view concerning "the historical process'' ; it asserts
that there is such a thing as "the historical process'' and that that
process is, generally speaking, a "progress" : a progress of thought
anct institutions toward an order which fully agrees with certain
presupposed universal standards of human excellence.
I n consequence, the belief in progress, as distinguished from the
views of the philosophic tradition, can be legitimately criticized on
purely historical grounds. This was done by early historicism,
which showed in a number of cases-the most famous example is
the interpretation of the Middle Ages-that the "progressivist"
view of the past was based on an utterly insufficient understanding
of the past. I t is evident that our understanding of the past will
tend to be the more adequate, the more we are interested in the
past. But we cannot be passionately interested, seriously inter-
ested in the past if we know beforehand that the present is in the
most important respect superior to the past. Historians who
started from this assumption felt no necessity to understand the
past in itself; they understood it only as a preparation for the pres-
ent. I n studying a doctrine of the past, they did not ask pri-
marily, what was the conscious and deliberate intention of its origi-
nator? They preferred to ask, what is the contribution of the
doctrine to our beliefs? What is the meaning, unknown to the
originator, of the doctrine from the point of view of the present?
What is its meaning in the light of later discoveries or inventions?
They took it for granted then that it is possible and even necessary
to understand the thinkers of the past better than those thinkers
understood themselves.
Against this approach, the 'Lhistoricalconsciousness" rightly
protested in the interest of historical truth, of historical esact-
ness. The task of the historian of thought is to understand the
thinkers of the past exactly as they understood themselves, or to
revitalize their thought according to their own interpretation. If
we abandon this goal, we abandon the only practicable criterion
of "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 new
light on old texts. Observations of this kind seem to suggest that
the claim of any one interpretation to be the true interpretation is
untenable. Yet the observations in question do not justify this
suggestion. For the seemingly infinite variety of ways in which a
given teaching can be understood does not do away with the fact
that the originator of the doctrine understood it in one way only,
provided he was not confused. The indefinitely large variety of
equally legitimate interpretations of a doctrine of the past is due
to conscious or unconscious attempts to understand its author
better than he understood himself. But there is only one way of
understanding him as he understood himself.
Now, historicisni is constitutionally unable to live up to the
very standards of historical exactness which it might be said to
have discovered. For historicism is the belief that the historicist
approach is superior to the non-historical approach, but practically
the whole thought of the past was radically "unhistorical." His-
toricism is therefore compelled, by its principle, to attempt to
understand the philosophy of the past better than it understood
itself. 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 the truth, and
not merely the truth for their times. The historicist, on the other
hand, believes that they were mistaken in making that claim, and he
cannot help making that belief the basis of his interpretation. His-
toricisnl then merely repeats, if sometimes in a more subtle form,
the sin for which it upbraided so severely the "progressivist"
historiography. For, to repeat, our understanding of the thought
42 LEO STRAUSS
of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian
is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the
more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to
learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but
from them. To understand a serious teaching, we must be seri-
ously interested in it, we must take it seriously, i.e., we must be
willing to consider the possibility that it is simply true. The his-
toricist as such denies that possibility as regards any philosophy
of the past. Historicism naturally attaches a much greater im-
portance to the history of philosophy than any earlier philosophy
has done. But unlike most earlier philosophies, it endangers by
its 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 the
outconie of an unbiased study of the history of philosophy, and
in particular of the history of political philosophy. The historian
may have ascertained that all political philosophies are related
to specific historical settings, or that only such men as live in s
specific historical situation have a natural aptitude for accepting
a given political philosophy. He cannot thus rule out the possibil-
ity that the historical setting of one particular political philosophy
is the ideal condition for the discovery of the political truth. His-
toricism cannot then be established by historical evidence. I t s
basis is a philosophic analysis of thought, knowledge, truth, phi-
losophy, political things, political ideals, and so on, a philosophic
analysis allegedly leading to the result that thought, knowledge,
truth, philosophy, political things, political ideals, and so on, are
essentially and radically "historical." The philosophic analysis
in question presents itself as the authentic interpretation of the
experience of many centuries with political philosophy. The
political philosophers of the past attempted to answer the cluestion
of the best political order once and for all. Each of them held
explicitly or implicitly that all others had failed. It is only after
a long period of trial and error that political philosophers started
questioning the possibility of answering the fundamental questions
once and for all. The ultimate result of that reflection is his-
toricism.
Let us consider how f a r that result would affect political phi-
losophy. Historicism cannot reasonably claim that the fundamen-
tal questions of political philosophy must be replaced by questions

of a historical character. The question of the best political order,
e.g., cannot be replaced by a discussion "of the operative ideals
which maintain a particular type of state," modern democracy,
e.g.; for "any thorough discussion" of those ideals "is bound to
give some consideration to the absolute worth of such ideal^."^
Nor can the question of the best political order be replaced by the
question of the future order. For even if we could know with cer-
tainty that the future order is to be, say, a communist world society,
we should not know more than that the communist world society is
the only alternative to the destruction of modern civilization, and
we should still have to wonder which alternative is preferable.
Under no circumstances can we avoid the question as to whether
the probable future order is desirable, indifferent or abominable.
I n fact, our answer to that question may influence the prospects of
the 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 whose
political implications, if duly elaborated, would present our answer
to the question of the best political order.
What historicism could reasonably say, if the philosophic
analysis on which it is based is correct, is that all answers to the
universal philosophic questions are necessarily "historically con-
ditioned," or that no answer to the universal questions will in fact
be universally valid. Now, every answer to a universal question
necessarily intends to be universally valid. The historicist thesis
amounts 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 fate al-
ways to remain "historically conditioned. " The contradiction is
inevitable because, on the one hand, evident reasons compel us to
raise the universal questions and to attempt to arrive at adequate
answers, i.e., universal answers ; and, on the other hand, all human
thought is enthralled by opinions and convictions which differ from
historical situation to historical situation. The historical limita-
tion of a given answer necessarily escapes him who gives the
answer. The historical conditions which prevent any answer from
being universally valid have the character of invisible walls. For
A. D. Lindsay T h e ilfodern Democratic State (Oxford, 1943)) I , 45.
44 LEO STRAUSS
if a man knew that his answer would be determined, not by his free
insight into the truth, but by his historical situation, he could no
longer identify himself with or wholeheartedly believe in, his an-
swer. We should then know with certainty that no answer which
suggests itself to us can be simply true, but we could not know the
precise reason why this is the case. The precise reason would be
the 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 universal
questions which no thinking man can help raising once he has
become 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 emancipate
himself as far as possible from the prejudices of his age. That
historical reflection would be in the service of the philosophic effort
proper, but would by no means be identical with it.
On the basis of historicism, philosophic efforts would then be
enlightened from the outset as to the fact that the answers to which
they 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 that
such philosophic efforts could justly claim to have risen to a higher
level of reflection, or to be more philosophic, than the "naive"
non-historical philosophy of the past. We might think for a
moment that historical political philosophy is less apt to degen-
erate into dogmatism than was its predecessor. But a moment's
reflection suffices to dispel that delusion. Whereas for the genu-
ine philosopher of the past all the answers of which he could
possibly think were, prior to his examination of them, open
possibilities, the historicist philosopher excludes, prior to his ex-
amining them, all the answers suggested in former ages. He is
no less dogmatic, he is much more dogmatic, than the average phi-
losopher of the past. I n particular, the coherent reflection of the
philosopher on his historical situation is not necessarily a sign that,
other things being equal, his philosophic reflection is on a higher
level than that of philosophers who were not greatly concerned
with their historical situation. For it is quite possible that the
modern philosopher is in much greater need of reflection on his
situation because, having abandoned the resolve to look at things
sub specie aeteruzitatis, he is much more exposed to, and enthralled

by, the convictions and "trends" dominating his age. Reflection
on one's historical situation may very well be no more than a
remedy for a deficiency which has been caused by historicism, or
rather by the deeper motives which express themselves in histor-
icism, and which did not hamper the philosophic efforts of former
ages.
It seems as if historicism were animated by the certainty that
the future will bring about the realization of possibilities of which
no one has ever dreamt, or can ever dream, whereas non-historical
political philosophy lived not in such an open horizon, but in a
horizon closed by the possibilities known at the time. Yet the
possibilities of the future are not unlimited as long as the differ-
ences between men and angels and between men and brutes have
not been abolished, or as long as there are political things. The
possibilities of the future are not wholly unknown, since their
limits are known. I t is true that no one can possibly foresee what
sensible or mad possibilities, whose realization is within the limits
of human nature, will be discovered in the future. But it is also
true that it is hard to say anything at present about possibilities
which are at present not even imagined. Therefore, we cannot
help following the precedent set by the attitude of earlier political
philosophy toward the possibilities which have been discovered, or
even realized since. TVe must leave it to the political philosophers
of the future to discuss the possibilities which will be known only
in the future. Even the absolute certainty that the future will wit-
ness such fundamental and at the same time sensible changes of
outlook 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-historical
political philosophy believed in the possibility of answering funda-
mental questions once and for all, historicism implies the insight
that final answers to fundamental questions are impossible.
Every philosophic position implies such answers to fundamental
questions as claim to be final, to be true once and for all. Those
who believe in " the primary significance of the unique and morally
ultimate character of the concrete situation,'' and therefore reject
the quest for "general answers supposed to have a universal mean-
ing that covers and dominates all particulars," do not hesitate to
46 LEO STRAUSS
offer what claim to be final and universal answers to the questions

as to what "a moral situation7'is and as to what "the distinctively
moral traits," or "the virtues'' are.4 Those who believe in prog-
ress toward a goal which itself is essentially progressive, and
therefore reject the question of the best political order as "too
static," are convinced that their insight into the actuality of such
a progress "has come to stay." Similarly, historicism merely
replaced one kind of finality by another kind of finality, by the
final conviction that all human answers are essentially and radi-
cally "historical." Only under one condition could historicism
claim to have done away with all pretence to finality, if it presented
the historicist thesis not as simply true, but as true for the time
being only. I n fact, if the historicist thesis is correct, we cannot
escape the consequence that that thesis itself is "historical" or
valid, because meaningful, for a specific historical situation only.
Historicism is not a cab which one can stop at 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 that it will be replaced, in
due 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 raise
the question of the essential relation of historicism to modern man,
or, more exactly, the question as to what specific need, character-
istic of modern man, as distinguished from pre-modern man, un-
derlies his passionate turn to history. To elucidate this question,
as far as possible in the present context, we shall consider the
argument in favor of the fusion of philosophic and historical
studies which appears to be most convincing.
Political philosophy is the attempt to replace our opinions
about political fundamentals by knowledge about them. Its first
task consists therefore in making fully explicit our political ideas,
so that they can be subjected to critical analysis. "Our ideas7' are
only partly our ideas. Most of our ideas are abbreviations or
residues of the thought of other people, of our teachers (in the
broadest sense of the term) and of our teachers' teachers ; they are
abbreviations and residues of the thought of the past. These
4 John Dewey, Recofistruction i n Philosophy (New York, 1920), 189 and 163 f.
thoughts were once explicit and in the center of consideration and
discussion. I t may even be presumed that they were once per-
fectly lucid. By being transmitted to later generations they have
possibly been transformed, and there is no certainty that the trans-
formation was effected consciously and with full clarity. At any
rate, what were once certainly explicit ideas passionately dis-
cussed, although not necessarily lucid ideas have now degenerated
into mere implications and tacit presuppositions. Therefore, if
we want to clarify the political ideas we have inherited, we must
actualize their implications, which were explicit in the past, and
this can be done only by means of the history of political ideas.
This means that the clarification of our political ideas insensibly
changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of
political ideas. To this extent the philosophic effort and the his-
torical effort have become completely fused.
Now, the more we are impressed by the necessity of engaging in
historical studies in order to clarify our political ideas, the more
we must be struck by the observation that the political philosophers
of former ages did not feel such a necessity at all. A glance at
Aristotle's Politics, e.g., suffices to convince us that Aristotle suc-
ceeded perfectly in clarifying the political ideas obtaining in his
age, although he never bothered about the history of those ideas.
The most natural, and the most cautious, explanation of this para-
doxical fact would be, that perhaps our political ideas have a
character fundamentally different from that of the political ideas
of former ages. Our political ideas have the particular character
that they cannot be clarified fully except by means of historical
stndies, whereas the political ideas of the past could be clarified
perfectly without any recourse to their history.
To express this suggestion somewhat differently, we shall make
a soniewhat free use of the convenient terminology of Hume.
According to Hume, our ideas are derived from "impressions "-
from what we may call first-hand experience. To clarify our ideas
and to distinguish between their genuine and their spurious ele-
ments (or between those elements which are in accordance with
first-hand experience and those which are not), we must trace
each of our ideas to the impressions from which it is derived. Now
it is doubtful whether all ideas are related to impressions in fun-
damentally the same way. The idea of the city, e.g., can be said
to be derived from the impressions of cities in fundamentally the
48 LEO STRAUSS
same way as the idea of the dog is derived from the impressions
of dogs. The idea of the state, on the other hand, is not derived
simply from the impression of states. It emerged partly owing
to the transformation, or reinterpretation, of more elementary
ideas, of the idea of the city in particular. Ideas which are derived
directly from impressions can be clarified without any recourse to
history; but ideas which have emerged owing to a specific transfor-
mation of more elementary ideas cannot be clarified but by means
of the history of ideas.
We have illustrated the difference between our political ideas
and earlier political ideas by the examples of the ideas of the state
and of the city. The choice of these examples was not accidental ;
for the difference with which we are concerned is the specific differ-
ence between the character of modern philosophy on the one hand,
and that of pre-modern philosophy on the other. This funda-
mental difference was described by Hegel in the following terms :
"The manner of study in ancient times is distinct from that of
modern times, in that the former consisted in the veritable train-
ing and perfecting of the natural consciousness. Trying its pow-
ers at each part of its life severally, and philosophizing about
everything it came across, the natural consciousness transformed
itself into a universality of abstract understanding which was
active in every matter and in every respect. I n modern times,
however, the individual finds the abstract form ready made."'
Classical philosophy originally acquired the fundamental concepts
of political philosophy by starting from political phenomena as they
present themselves to "the natural consciousness," which is a
pre-philosophic consciousness. These concepts can therefore be
understood, and their validity can be checked, by direct reference
to phenomena as they are accessible to "the natural conscious-
ness." The fundamental concepts which were the final result of
the philosophic efforts of classical antiquity, and which remained
the basis of the philosophic efforts of the Middle Ages, were the
starting-point of the philosophic efforts of the modern period.
They were partly taken for granted and partly modified by the
5 T h e Phenomenology of the Mind, tr. J . B. Baillie, 2nd edition (London, New
York, 1931), 94. I have changed Baillie's translation a little in order to bring out
somewhat more clearly the intention of Hegel's remark.-For a more precise analy-
sis, see Jacob Klein, "Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der modernen
Algebra," Qzcellew und Stzcdien zur Gesclzichte der Matkematik, Astronomie umd
Physik, vol. 3, H e f t 1 (Berlin, 1934), 64-66, and H e f t 2 (Berlin, 1936), 122 ff.
POLITICAL P H I L O S O P I l Y A N D HISTORY 49
founders of modern political philosophy. In a still more modified

form they underlie the political philosophy or political science of
our time. I n so far as modern political philosophy emerges, not
simply from "the natural consciousness," but by way of a modifi-
cation of, and even in opposition to, an earlier political philosophy,
a tradition of political philosophy, its fundamental concepts cannot
be fully understood until we have understood the earlier political
philosophy from which, and in opposition to which, they were
acquired, and the specific modification by virtue of which they were
acquired.
I t is not the mere "dependence" of modern philosophy on classi-
cal philosophy, but the specific character of that "dependence,"
which accounts for the fact that the former needs to be supple-
mented by an intrinsically philosophic history of philosophy.
For medieval philosophy too was "dependent" on classical phi-
losophy, and yet it was not in need of the history of philosophy as
an integral part of its philosophic efforts. When a medieval phi-
losopher studied Aristotle's Politics, e.g., he did not engage in a
historical study. The Politics was for him an authoritative text.
Aristotle was the philosopher, and hence the teaching of the Poli-
tics was, in principle, the true philosophic teaching. However he
might deviate from Aristotle in details, or as regards the applica-
tion of the true teaching to circumstances which Arisotle could not
have foreseen, the basis of the medieval philosopher's thought
remained the Aristotelian teaching. That basis was always
present to him, it was contemporaneous with him. His philosophic
study was identical with the adequate understanding of the Aristo-
telian teaching. I t was for this reason that he did not need histor-
ical studies in order to understand the basis of his own thought. I t
is precisely that contemporaneous philosophic thought with its
basis which no longer exists in modern philosophy, and whose ab-
sence explains the eventual transformation of modern philosophy
into an intrinsically historical philosophy. Modern thought is in
all its forms, directly or indirectly, determined by the idea of prog-
ress. This idea implies that the most elementary questions can
be settled once and for all so that future generations can dispense
with their further discussion, but can erect on the foundations once
laid an ever-growing structure. I n this way, the foundations are
covered up. The only proof necessary to guarantee their solidity
seems to be that the structure stands and grows. Since philosophy
demands, however, not merely solidity so understood, but lucidity
50 LEO STRAUSS
and truth, a special kind of inquiry becomes necessary whose pur-

pose it is to keep alive the recollection, and the problem, of the
foundations hidden by progress. This philosophic enquiry is the
history of philosophy or of science.
We must distinguish between inherited knowledge and inde-
pendently acquired knowledge. By inherited knowledge we under-
stand the philosophic or scientific knowledge a man takes over from
former generations, or, more generally expressed, from others; by
independently acquired knowledge we understand the philosophic
or scientific knowledge a mature scholar acquires in his unbiased
intercourse, as fully enlightened as possible as to its horizon and
its presuppositions, with his subject matter. On the basis of the
belief in progress, this difference tends to lose its crucial signifi-
cance. When speaking of a "body of knowledge" or of "the
results of research,"e.g., we tacitly assign the same cognitive
status to inherited knowledge and to independently acquired know-
ledge. To counteract this tendency a special effort is required to
transform inherited knowledge into genuine knowledge by re-vital-
izing its original discovery, and to discriminate between the genu-
ine and the spurious elements of what claims to be inherited knowl-
edge. This truly pliilosophic function is fulfilled by the history
of philosophy or of science.
If, as we must, we apply historicism to itself, we must explain
historicism in terms of the specific character of modern thought,
or, more precisely, of modern philosophy. I n doing so, we observe
that modern political philosophy or science, as distinguished from
pre-modern political philosophy or science, is in need of the history
of political philosophy or science as an integral part of its own
efforts, since, as modern political philosophy or science itself
admits or even emphasizes, it consists to a considerable extent of
inherited knowledge whose basis is no longer contemporaneous or
immediately accessible. The recognition of this necessity cannot
be mistaken for historicism. For historicism asserts that the
fusion of philosophic and historical questions marks in itself a
progress beyond "naive" non-historical philosophy, whereas we
limit ourselves to asserting that that fusion is, within the limits in-
dicated, inevitable on the basis of rnodern philosophy, as distin-
guished from pre-modern philosophy or "the philosophy of the
future."
New School for Social Research

Leo Strauss - Theological-Political Problem

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Leo Strauss - Theological-Political Problem

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

AND OTHER ESSENTIAL TEXTS

I. Strauss' Preface to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft

II. The Living Issues of German Post-War Philosophy

III. Reason and Revelation

IV. What can we learn from Political Theory?

V. Notes on Schmitt's "Concept of the Political"

VI. Political Philosophy and History

VII. Mutual Influence of Theology & Philosophy

VIII. Gerhard Krüger's Review of Strauss' Spinoza Book (trans.)

This is an expanded collection of texts published separately over a

period of 25 years. Added here to the two previously unpublished

2006 by Professor Meier (“Living Issues” & “Reason and Revelation”)

autobiographical statement by Strauss, and a review (very difficult to

obtain) by Krüger – a review which was praised highly by Strauss

This valuable edition will serve as an introduction to the core of

Strauss’ thought, but also provides trained and experienced readers

with some of the finest examples of Strauss’ art of writing in their

earlier, but fully mature expression.

What Can We Learn From Political Theory?

essentially arbitrary: my theory. What is seen—Hitler’s rise to power e.g.—is

have a general policy?” Wells persisted. “Yes,” answered Churchill, “the

political ideas seem to go back to political ﬁghters, statesmen, lawyers,

Now, even if we have no knowledge of our own to oppose to these arguments, we

conception is, so to speak, identical with the emergence of philosophy as such.

be reasonable if all wickedness, nastiness, malevolence, aggressiveness were

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

Political philosophy is not a historical discipline. The philo-

cal philosophy and apparently never doubted by it. I t thus seems

sixteenth century. The opposition then offered to all earlier phi-

tion of the probable or desirable future. The questions of the

of its own fundamentally different from, although of course re-

of course between the philosophic question of the best political

such, since the inany irreconcilable political philosophies refute

political philosophy can reasonably claim to be valid beyond the

law. We cannot then stop at ascertaining the relations between

peculiarity bound up with their particular historical situation. Up

is possible on the basis of historicism. This presupposition is open

tal questions of political philosophy must be replaced by questions

sub specie aeteruzitatis, he is much more exposed to, and enthralled

offer what claim to be final and universal answers to the questions

founders of modern political philosophy. In a still more modified

and truth, a special kind of inquiry becomes necessary whose pur-

Potrebbero piacerti anche