About the author
German-American political philosopher (1899–1973), who fled Nazi Germany and taught for decades at the University of Chicago. Strauss revived the study of classical and medieval political philosophy, developed influential readings of esoteric writing, and founded a school of thought ('Straussianism') that profoundly shaped American conservative political theory.
Synopsis
Strauss traces the modern abandonment of natural right, first through the 'fact–value' distinction of social science and then through historicism, which holds that all ideals are relative to their time. He argues this leaves us unable to condemn even the worst regimes, and recovers the classical and early-modern debates over natural right — Plato and Aristotle against Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau — to restore reason's claim to know the just by nature.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workStrauss argues that if all standards are merely the products of their time, we lose any rational ground for preferring justice to tyranny — and so the question of natural right, of what is good by nature, must be reopened.
Strauss's warning is that relativism and historicism, however sophisticated, disarm us morally: without natural standards, the distinction between freedom and despotism becomes mere preference. His recovery of 'natural right' is an attempt to restore reason's authority over the deepest political questions.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with the historicists and positivists Strauss attacks (from Weber to modern social science) who deny trans-historical standards, and with critics who see in Straussian natural right an anti-modern or anti-democratic politics, or an esotericism that obscures more than it reveals.
Reading note
Difficult and allusive; read it slowly, ideally after some Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes. It is the key to the influential Straussian school and to a serious conservative critique of modern relativism.
Best paired with
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.