NATURAL RIGHT IS THE BEST POLITICAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY

NATURAL RIGHT IS THE BEST POLITICAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY

1. NATURE, NOT CONVENTION, DETERMINES WHAT IS RIGHT

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 102.

Laws are just to the extent that they are conducive to the common good. But if the just is identical with the common good, the just or right cannot be conventional: the conventions of a city cannot make good for the city what is, in fact, fatal for it and vice versa. The nature of things and not convention then determines in each case what is just

The assumption that there is a variety of divine codes leads to difficulties, since the various codes contradict one another. One code absolutely praises actions while another code absolutely condemns. One code demands the sacrifice of one’s first born son, whereas another code forbids all human sacrifices as an abomination. The burial rites of one tribe provoke the horror of another. But what is decisive is the fact that the various codes contradict one another in what they suggest regarding the first things. The view that the gods were born of the earth cannot be reconciled with the view that the earth was made by the gods. Thus the question arises as to which code is the right code and which account of the first things is the true account. The right way is now no longer guaranteed by authority; it becomes a question or the object of a quest. The primeval identification of the good with the ancestral is replaced by the fundamental distinction between the good and the ancestral; the quest for the right way or for the first things is the quest for the good as distinguished from the ancestral. It will prove to be the quest for what is good by nature as distinguished from what is good merely by convention.

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 90.

Once nature is discovered, it becomes impossible to understand equally as customs or ways the

characteristics or normal behavior of natural groups and of the different human tribes; the “customs” of natural beings are recognized as their natures, and the “customs” of different human tribes are recognized as their conventions. The primeval notion of “custom” or “way” is split up into the notions of “nature,” on the one hand, and “convention,” on the other.

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 103.

For what is natural comes into being and exists without violence. All violence applied to a being makes that being do something which goes against its grain, i.e., against nature. But the city stands or falls by violence, compulsion, or coercion. There is, then, no essential difference between political rule and the rule of a master over his slaves. But the unnatural character of slavery seems to be obvious: it goes against any man’s grain to be made a slave or to be treated as a slave.
5. NATURAL LAW IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT UNJUST LAWS

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 2.

Nevertheless, the need for natural right is as evident today as it has been for centuries and even millennia. To reject natural right is tantamount to saying that all right is positive right, and this means that what is right is determined exclusively by legislators and the courts of various countries. Now it is obviously meaningful, and sometimes even necessary, to speak of “unjust” laws or “unjust” decisions. In passing such judgments we imply that there is a standard of right and wrong independent of positive right and higher than positive right: a standard with reference to which we are able to judge of positive right

OBJECTIONS TO NATURAL RIGHT ARE INCORRECT

1. NATURAL RIGHT DOES NOT LEAD TO AUTHORITARIANISM

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 84.

Plato has indicated by the conversational settings of his Republic and Laws rather than by explicit statements how indispensable doubt of authority or freedom from authority is for the discovery of natural right. In the Republic the discussion of natural right starts long after the aged Cephalus, the father, the head of the house, has left to take care of the sacred offerings to the gods: the absence of Cephalus, or of what he stands for, is indispensable for the quest for natural right

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 94.

The denial of natural right thus appears to be the consequence of the denial of particular providence. But the example of Aristotle alone would suffice to show that it is possible to admit natural right without believing in particular providence or in divine justice proper. For, however indifferent to moral distinctions the cosmic order may be thought to be, human nature, as distinguished from nature in general, may very well be the basis of all such distinctions.
3. TRANSCENDENT VALUES NEED NOT BE RELIGIOUS OR METAPHYSICAL

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, p. 137.

Transcendence is not a preserve of revealed religion. In a very important sense it was implied in the

original meaning of political philosophy as the quest for the natural or best political order. The best regime, as Plato and Aristotle understood it, is, and is meant to be, for the most part, different from what is actual here and now or beyond all actual orders.

1. MARXISM CANNOT ESCAPE FROM RELATIVISM

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. THE REBIRTH OF CLASSICAL POLITICAL RATIONALISM, 1989, p. 20.

Yet, according to Marx, the historical process is not completed, not to say that it has not even begun. Besides, Marx does not admit transhistorical or natural ends with reference to which change can be diagnosed as progress or regress. It is therefore a question whether by turning from Western relativism to Marxism one escapes relativism.

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. THE REBIRTH OF CLASSICAL POLITICAL RATIONALISM,

1989, p. 20.

Surely, the Marxist truths will be “preserved,” in Hegel’s sense of the term: “the ‘objectivity’ of the truth

accessible on the lower planes is not destroyed: that truth merely receives a different meaning by being

integrated into a more concrete, more comprehensive totality.” That is to say, Marxism will reveal itself as

a one-sided truth, a half-truth.
3. MARXISM CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT A POST-CAPITALIST SOCIETY WILL BE BETTER Leo Strauss, political philosopher. THE REBIRTH OF CLASSICAL POLITICAL RATIONALISM, 1989, pp. 20-1.

The application to Marxism is obvious: even if Marxism were the last word regarding the ground of the rottenness of capitalist society and regarding the way in which that society can and will be destroyed, it cannot possibly be the last word regarding the new society that the revolutionary action of the proletariat brings to birth: the new society may be as rich in contradictions and oppressions as the old society, although its contradictions and oppressions will, of course, be entirely novel. For if Marxism is only the truth of our time or our society, the prospect of the classless society too is only the truth of our time and society; it may prove to be the delusion that gave the proletariat the power and the spirit to overthrow the capitalist system, whereas in fact the proletariat finds itself afterwards enslaved, no longer indeed by capital, but by an ironclad military bureaucracy.