Strauss on Natural Right: The Discovery of Philosophy

The Quote

"The discovery of natural right is the emergence of philosophy."

— Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953)

Historical Context

Leo Strauss delivered the lectures that became Natural Right and History at the University of Chicago in 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The question of natural right — whether there is a standard of justice that transcends the laws and conventions of particular societies — had acquired an urgent practical significance. The Nuremberg Trials had appealed to universal principles of justice in prosecuting Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) had asserted the existence of rights that belong to all human beings by virtue of their humanity. But the intellectual foundations of these appeals were under attack from two directions: from the historicist tradition, which held that all moral standards are products of their historical epoch, and from the positivist tradition, which held that the only meaningful statements are those that can be empirically verified.

Strauss's book was a defense of the classical tradition of natural right against the relativism and nihilism that he saw as the intellectual consequences of modern historicism. The passage quoted here is the thesis statement of the entire work. Strauss is arguing that the idea of natural right — the idea that there is a standard of justice that is grounded in the nature of things, not merely in human convention — is not one philosophical doctrine among others but the very condition of philosophy itself. The discovery of natural right and the emergence of philosophy are the same event, because philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion about the nature of things with knowledge of the nature of things, and the concept of nature is inseparable from the concept of a standard that transcends human convention.

The context of the Cold War is also important. Strauss was writing at a time when the competition between liberal democracy and Soviet communism was intensifying, and when the question of whether liberal democracy could be given a rational foundation was a matter of urgent practical concern. Strauss's argument that the classical tradition of natural right provided a more adequate foundation for political life than the modern alternatives — the relativism of historicism, the instrumentalism of positivism, the utopianism of Marxism — was a contribution to the intellectual defense of liberal democracy, even as Strauss himself was critical of many features of modern liberalism.

Philosophical Interpretation

Strauss's identification of natural right with the emergence of philosophy is a claim about the relationship between the philosophical enterprise and the problem of justice. Philosophy, for Strauss, is not merely the love of wisdom but the attempt to transcend the "cave" of conventional opinion — the system of beliefs and values that a particular society takes for granted — and to achieve knowledge of the nature of things as they truly are. The concept of nature is the crucial term: nature is the standard that is prior to and independent of human convention, and the discovery of nature is the discovery that there is a standard of truth and justice that is not merely a product of the human will.

The tradition of natural right that Strauss defends is the tradition that begins with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. For the classical philosophers, the question of justice was inseparable from the question of the nature of the human being: what is the best life for a human being, and what is the best political order that makes that life possible? The answer to these questions was not a matter of subjective preference or cultural convention but of rational inquiry into the nature of the human good. The natural right tradition, in Strauss's reconstruction, holds that there is a universal standard of justice that is accessible to human reason, and that this standard provides the basis for judging the adequacy of actual political arrangements.

Strauss's argument is directed against the modern alternatives to natural right: the historicism of Hegel and his successors, which holds that all standards are historically conditioned and that there is no trans-historical standpoint from which to judge the justice of social arrangements; the positivism of Max Weber and the social sciences, which holds that facts and values are fundamentally different domains and that reason cannot adjudicate between competing value commitments; and the radical conventionalism of thinkers like Nietzsche, who saw the appeal to nature as a mask for the will to power. Against these positions, Strauss argues that the denial of natural right leads to nihilism: if there is no standard of justice that transcends human convention, then the only standards are those of power and preference, and the distinction between justice and tyranny collapses.

Related Concepts

Strauss's defense of natural right is part of a broader debate about the foundations of justice and rights in the Western political tradition. The natural law tradition, associated with Thomas Aquinas and the medieval scholastics, holds that the moral law is grounded in the nature of the human being and is accessible to natural reason. The natural rights tradition, associated with John Locke and the modern social contract theorists, holds that individuals have rights that are prior to and independent of the state. Strauss's claim that the discovery of natural right is the emergence of philosophy is a claim about the essential unity of the philosophical enterprise and the moral quest for justice.

The debate between natural right and its critics connects to the foundational questions of political philosophy: is there a universal standard of justice, or are all standards relative to particular cultures and historical epochs? The answer to this question has profound implications for how we understand the relationship between the individual and the state, the grounds of political obligation, and the possibility of moral criticism of existing social arrangements.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Leo Strauss." Covers Strauss's interpretation of the history of political philosophy, his defense of natural right, and his critique of modernity.
2. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). The primary source of the quoted passage.
3. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Leo Strauss: An Introduction." An accessible overview of Strauss's thought and its influence.