This article was downloaded by: [Queensland University of Technology]

On: 14 October 2014, At: 03:35

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Perspectives on Political Science

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vpps20

Leo Strauss's Understanding of Modernity

a
Mark Blitz
a
Claremont McKenna College
Published online: 07 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Mark Blitz (2004) Leo Strauss's Understanding of Modernity, Perspectives on Political Science, 33:4,
215-220, DOI: 10.3200/PPSC.33.4.215-220

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/PPSC.33.4.215-220

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the
Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for
any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of
the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
 Leo Strausss Understanding
of Modernity
Downloaded by [Queensland University of Technology] at 03:35 14 October 2014
MARK BLITZ
O
ne of the arguments for which Leo Strauss is
famous is that the division between ancients
and moderns is a decisive intellectual split. It
is more significant than the threefold cut
among ancient, medieval, and modern, which
is so useful for academics following Hegel. Strausss divi-
sion between ancient and modern includes the medieval on
the ancient side. Modernity begins with Machiavelli and is
a new beginning.
Interest in the notion of modernity has grown since
Strausss death. This growth has something to do with
Strauss and his students, but it also, and even more so,
results from the pervasive interest in postmodernism and the
influence of Heideggers students once or twice removed. A
look at Strausss argument, therefore, is useful not only
intrinsically, but also because it helps restore substance to
todays often ethereal discussions.
I focus my analysis on early modernity, the period
between Machiavelli and the American founding. My pur-
pose is to outline the basic political and ethical elements of
the split and then to uncover the less obvious ontological
matters that Strauss has in view when he splits the classics
and moderns politically. By uncovering these objects, we
also gain a useful standpoint from which to see whether
what the moderns newly emphasized can be grasped suffi-
ciently on classic grounds.
I Christianity of the early moderns (TOM, WIPP).* The dif-
If we start by looking back from the culmination of
modernitys first phase, we can see at least seven salient
political-ethical differences between the classics and the
moderns: religious toleration, equality of rights by nature,
representative government, economic acquisitiveness, the
ethical stance, and the view of happiness, coherent with
Mark Blitz is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Political
Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College.
215
this acquisitiveness, and the use of science and enlightened
understanding to advance happiness generally. The mod-
erns supported all of these; the classics did not. One would
be hard pressed, of course, to argue that Strauss was the
first to recognize any of these points, several of which are
broadly familiar. It is especially the unity and radical
meaning of these elements that Strauss uncovers. His
recognition is based on his unflinching look at the issues
and his consequent ability to not be befuddled or thrown
off track by the tendency of modern authors (and, conse-
quently, much scholarship) to make themselves seem less
new than they are. Strauss did not see in every mention of
God the sign of humble religious awe, of virtue a belief in
natural aristocracy or republican firmness, of education or
nobility a contempt for acquisition and satisfaction, of
democracy or monarchy a belief in the traditional doctrine
of the order of regimes, or of every gesture toward Aristo-
tle profound agreement. He kept his eye on the main thread
of what looks to be radical in modern thinkers and did so
from the standpoint of someone who knows the ancients
but questions them, giving their possible truth a full run for
its money.
The first of the seven elements that Strauss sees in
modernity is a new approach to religion. It begins with
Machiavellis understanding of Christianity as a human
invention and culminates in toleration. Strauss takes pains
to point out the anticlericalism, atheism, or opposition to
ficulty with religion is its distortion of the human spirit,
with either obsequious humility or pious cruelty as the
result; this difficulty is multiplied by a publicly dominating,
not to say imperially successful, religion (TOM 17273;
WIPP 4445).
Machiavelli understood Christianity as propaganda, that
is, the successful insinuation of a lie in the human mind. He
learned from Christianity not its truth or the natural truths
with which it accords or can be made to accord. He learned
from Christianity its propagandistic ways, although in the
 216
service of his own discoveries. Christianitys success is the
clue to success simply. Reasonable or spirited devotion to
the common good can, of course, make use of religion. This
is only to say, however, that religion is judged by its contri-
bution to the citys good or the princes glory. Hobbes, who
made several efforts to demonstrate his piety or, at any rate,
his consistency with piety, also makes clear enough his true
view. Natural fear of death, that is, the fear of death as the
destructive end, must replace fear of invisible powers, the
fear of punishment after natural death. Our true beginning
or motivating spring is not an effort to achieve heavens just
reward or longing for the blessed completion that com-
mences after this life. Our true beginning is the fearsomely
anticipated nullity of death. It is nothing teleological.
Enlightenment means illuminating the hitherto invisible
and ghostly, flushing them from their dark corners in the
Downloaded by [Queensland University of Technology] at 03:35 14 October 2014
way that light makes rats scurry from their hiding places.
Hobbess successor Locke may have been more prudent
than his master, but only the credulous or god intoxicated
would fail to see who his master was. Lockes teaching on
natural right does not depend on traditional, or Thomistic,
natural law. Indeed, the view of the state of nature and of
property to which Lockes doctrine of natural right leads is
not compatible with Scripture. Locke may have tried to
show that Christianity was reasonable, that is, Lockean; he
did not derive his views from revelation. Who could seri-
ously believe that the Bible permits, let alone recommends,
the unlimited acquisition of gold and silver that Locke jus-
tifies in the same breath with which he decries it? The tol-
eration of different sects that Locke supportssomething
we already see in Hobbesis intended to reduce the public
sway of religion, not increase it. Modern toleration makes
belief essentially private: Religions become activities to
which one attaches oneself voluntarily; privacy and compe-
tition weaken their authority.
Modernity is characterized, in short, by an attempt to lib-
erate mans spirit and desire from priestly chains while
keeping religions natural utility and ground in view, if not
in full view. Strauss is able to see this question so clearly
because of his deep understanding of the revealed religions
and his consequent lack of sentimentality about them.
The second central element of modernity is natural
equality in rights, the formative principle of its most bril-
liant success, the United States. Strauss considers Hobbes
to have originated this teaching, which makes him the
founder of modern liberalism in the eyes of anyone with
eyes for the fundamentals. How much Hobbesian equal-
ity is discovered by reflecting on what one sees common-
sensically, how much it is a construction that organizes
methodologically facts only partially discovered by com-
mon sense, and how much it is a depiction that merely
accommodates itself to the language of natural law are
significant questions that we must answer if we are to
understand Hobbes fully (WIPP 175ff). We are naturally
equal in our right to self-preservation because we are
effectively equal in our desire for our preservation. The
right is not clearly distinguishable from the desire, how-
ever; it is our subjectively announcing to ourselves the
crucial meansour own authorityfor satisfying that
Perspectives on Political Science
desire. The self to be preserved is not positively attractive,
sweet in its mere presence, but is a fear of death, a shud-
der at the nullity from which we flee. Desire is less a pos-
itive attraction than an inconvenience to handle, an
uneasiness to be stabilized, an irritation to be eliminated.
Our equal rights are not uplifting. We overcome irritation
to stave off the greatest unease. Death more than life itself
makes equals of us all.
The import of the teaching of equal natural rights is
most obvious when we consider the next three elements of
modernity: the liberating of acquisitiveness and of the eth-
ical stance, and view of happiness, coherent with this lib-
eration. Here, the contrast of the modern with the classic
view and, perhaps, the limits of the modern, are most
clear. Acquisition becomes unlimited in principle because
desire has no complete stopping-point or satisfaction:
Eliminating unease is impossible before my death, and
death is always feared. My desire is not superior to yours,
because there is no standard that makes superiority intelli-
gible: Our rights and desires are equal. All the desires that
seem to us to serve or flesh out preservation or make it
comfortable are, therefore, equally unlimited in principle.
Enough can never be conclusively described or under-
stood, nor can it be defined practically through exhaus-
tion, laziness, or quiet satisfaction, because the equal right
to preservation means everyones equal right to everything
he thinks he needs. In the absence of enormous plenty,
destructive competition is the order of the day. Restless
acquisition is naturally necessary or naturally right.
Strauss clarifies how the classic natural right or justice
that guides our lives by limiting, ranking, and fulfilling is
transformed by Hobbes and Locke into something that jus-
tifies the necessity and propriety of limitless, restless
acquiring.
What needs to be acquired is power or property. Strauss
untangles the web of Lockes doctrine of property and links
it to the importance of power in Hobbes, Machiavelli, and
Locke himself (NRH 19496, 23132, 24446, 249; TOM
28687). What is vital in Machiavelli is not to bask in
honor as others give it freely or as one nobly deserves it
from the few who understand, but to acquire and secure
ones name or glory, or to be worshipped. One secures this
best, that is, most lastingly, from what can hardly distin-
guish its own good from yours: One secures it best from
subjects or devoted admirers. These are at once overawed
by you and very much like you, much in the same way as
they are by a sovereign man of the people or someone who
is very rich. Because death or loss is the prime motivation,
one secures and preserves this identity with subjects
largely through employing fear and what one does to alle-
viate fear, including the fear one causes. Especially with
Hobbes, power names what causes or alleviates fear: The
proper name for the means that we all seek (and that
becomes hardly distinguishable from the end we all seek)
is power (WIPP 42, 4849).
Of all powers, what is most immediately and securely
ones own is the property that satisfies desire or reduces our
most basic unease. There is no natural limit to property;
unlimited economic acquisition is the most obvious or
 Fall 2004, Volume 33, Number 4
accessible means to satisfaction. Wealth is endless accumu-
lation, not wise spending, just as glory is proffered less on
account of just rule than for the power with which you can
rule or seem to rule, justly or not. Securing power through
fear (perhaps after obtaining it through fraud) becomes the
means to glory, reputation, or their effectual truth. Securing
power through accumulation of wealth, in turn, becomes the
means to a successful flight from death. Wealth or rule is
not to be enjoyed through spending properly, or improperly,
for that matter. Wealth is to be secured for the sake of secu-
rity itself.
The unlimited desire for acquisition is not only a fact but,
to repeat, a guiding fact, a justified fact. It derives directly
from Hobbess and Lockes right of nature. As the justified
or properly guiding stance, it is a world apart from guidance
by natural duty (NRH 18182, 22225). Conscience is not,
Downloaded by [Queensland University of Technology] at 03:35 14 October 2014
in the end, natural for them any more than it is for Machi-
avelli. Our concern with others is always within the horizon
of our concern with ourselves, and our concern with our-
selves is limitless. Strauss does not seek to convince us of
the pleasantry that the moderns make duties to others some-
how correlative with rights or equal to them. My right does
not imply your duty to me. At most, it implies something
like my duty to myself: If there is a natural duty, it is only
ones responsibility for ones own preservation. Good
things for others result from rational foresight about this
concern for oneself; they do not result from selflessness.
Government and law are conventional. They must be justi-
fied to me as my own prudent choice to satisfy my own
desires. Government is of the people, by the people, for the
people. It can be justified naturally, but it is not legitimate
unless chosen.
The justification of limitless acquisition and the charac-
teristic moral stance it engenders correlate with a certain
understanding of happiness, the best way of life. To be
happy is to satisfy desire in the sense just discussed. It is
not satisfaction limited by what is noble, perfect, proper, or
beautiful. That is, it is not virtuous or moderate satisfaction.
Similarly, although modernity surely liberates spirit when
contrasted with Christianity, spirit is not measured by great
pride or even courage as much as it is by success. What
Hobbes thinks of as pride blocks the sway of the desire for
peace. Even for Machiavellis princefor are his people Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke.
so different from Hobbess?happiness or the recom-
mended human goal is success or glory in the sense just
mentioned, not the exercise of virtue as such. Reason serves
desire or spirit by discovering what is necessary for it to
advance and by organizing our powers, virtues, or property
according to these necessities. It discovers or constructs
what our enterprises require, for example, laws that serve
peace, satisfaction, and comfort. Those few whose efforts
most serve the common good are, therefore, neither the
rational nor the industrious alone, but those who are both
together, or each of us to the degree that we are both
together (TOM 45; NRH 24344). In acquiring and accu-
mulating property, for example, the rational and industrious
add to the common stock rather than depleting it; this
growth is the heart of the common good because alleviating
unease is what is good. Indeed, growth is almost identical
217
to what is commonly good and not merely its heart, for
what is good is more the potential than the actual allevia-
tion. Not proper consumption but the endless striving to
accumulate power and property for the sake of safety is the
activity that effectively defines happiness. As Strauss con-
cludes his discussion of Locke, life has become the joyless
quest for joy (NRH 251). So, traditional, classic, or com-
monsensical views of happiness as the sweetness of plea-
sure or repose, prideful courage, philosophic reflection,
and, of course, saintly divinity give way for most to the
acquisitive striving that comes to define the capitalists or
bourgeoisie.
One of Strausss characteristic questions concerns natur-
al right, that is, what is just by nature. This question neces-
sarily points to a notion of naturally just government. The
sixth basic element of modernity, therefore, is the concep-
tion of just government that is coordinated with our other
points. One imagines that this conception also must be new.
For the modern notions of duty, acquisition, equality in
rights, and toleration hardly could lead to or flourish in gov-
ernment as previously understood.
Contrasting modern political practices with their appro-
priate analogues shows that this supposition is correct. Mod-
ern government is characterized by representation as
opposed to rule; consent of the governed rather than rule of
the virtuous or wise; the importance of institutions, not char-
acter; emphasizing the salutary results of well-managed or
legitimized clashes (such as those between princes and peo-
ple, different political parties, or separated powers) rather
than political friendship or agreement; and the dominance of
purposes that are limited to furthering what is essentially
private or what comes to be treated as private, not public
(WIPP 43, 4647; NRH 23334). These purposes, in turn,
require or fit with the toleration and acquisitiveness we have
discussed and tend toward republicanism, explicit govern-
ment by the people, not monarchs. Each of these elements
can be articulated at length theoretically or instituted and
adjusted with subtlety practically. Strausss students, more
than Strauss himself, developed some of the arguments that
clarified these practices and viewsin, say, The Federalist
or Burkes defense of party government. But in one way or
another, they are clearly indicated in Strausss works on
The final defining practical element of modernity is
modern thinkers new understanding of the place or utility
of philosophy or science. Machiavelli sought to make his
discoveries useful, that is, to have them benefit the recov-
ery of human spirit or enterprise and the stabilizing or
institutionalizing of that recovery. To this end, as we have
said, he employed the only element of Christianity which
[he] took over, its idea of propaganda, in virtue of which
the unarmed prophet conquered posthumously (WIPP
45). He or his successors believed that his truths could
become known to all, either directly or through governing
institutions. Indeed, enlightenment was the common goal
of Machiavelli and those who followed: All fought one
and the same powerthe kingdom of darkness, as Hobbes
called it (TOM 231). The destruction of this kingdom is
their united enterprise. Enlightenment concerning the true
 218
moral and political principles and the true status of religion
is only part of the story. The use of science to overcome our
visible natural limits by understanding, redirecting, or
reforming the necessary motions of nature is its other part.
The purpose of this reform is to satisfy our desires, that is,
its goal is a commonly accessible goal and its worth a com-
monly measurable worth, however abstruse it may become.
This goal is served by the new science, the new mathemat-
ical physics, so championed in Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke.
Science as enlightenment and technology, the redirection
of theory to the political common good just as surely as
religion is redirected, is decisively modern.
II
These are the central elements of modernity when we
Downloaded by [Queensland University of Technology] at 03:35 14 October 2014
consider things from a political point of view, that is, from
the viewpoint of human happiness and the politics that con-
tributes to it. Do these elements and their justifications
stand on their own? Is there anything behind or above these
elements or their unity that makes possible their political
meaning? Do the modern thinkers make their new argu-
ments only to conform to a political motive, or do they
believe them to be true simply? What are the problems and
intentions that first brought about modernity (TOM 13,
98102, 168)?
When Strauss calls Machiavelli the first figure of moder-
nity, he obviously is making the heart of modernity some-
thing political, for Machiavelli is not Galileo or Descartes.
Strauss takes pains to defend Machiavelli as a philosopher
and attempts implicitly to link Machiavellis notions of
form, matter, necessity, and human malleability to the
physics and the more obvious philosophy that succeed him.
This is of a piece with Strausss efforts both to find a ground
for Hobbes work that does not reduce man to a branch of
physics or mathematics and to attend to Hobbess tenden-
cies to do just that. Strauss countenances neither the reduc-
tion of the human to the subhuman nor the claim that mod-
ern thought is an enterprise that serves nothing but low
practical motives.
We can clarify this issue by briefly discussing Strausss
remarks about eternity, immortality, reality, certainty, per-
fection, and chance; freedom; the soul, body, and matter;
causality and motion; goodness and measure; nature and
necessity; and philosophy in modern thought. Strausss
judgment appears to be that a view of these factors precedes
or is coeval with modern science and modern practice.
However, they do not cause this view.
Modernity is characterized by a wish or hope for mans
eternity that exists together with a concept of the possibility
of this eternity that differs from the classic and surely from
the Christian. Thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes,
Strauss argues, sought a political order and way of life that
could be unchangeably effective here and now, not in some
imaginary republic or principality. This realism was of a
piece with the elements of modernity we have pointed out:
lowering the site and sight of happiness to comfortable self-
preservation; using science or boldness to redirect and reform
matter to conquer chance; and identifying or, indeed, reduc-
Perspectives on Political Science
ing morality to law or an effect of law. This realism also is of
a piece with what occurs in later modernity: the attempt to
guarantee practical perfection through history or the effort to
capture theoretically every nuance of subjective meaning or
speech, thereby overcoming the difference between the gen-
eral and the particular. Without both this wish for eternity and
this understanding of its possibility and meaning, modernity
would not have been possible, let alone real.
Viewing the substance of the immortal not as unavoid-
able natures or limits, but as permanent material laws that
we can redirect to overcome these limits, is different from
the classic and the Christian view. The experience of the
permanent, or the essence of the wish or hope to which we
have referred, changes from search or love for the imperfect
presence of what beckons us to overcoming fear through
simply controllable security (WIPP 29, 41, 47, 51, 55,
180ff; NRH 179; TOM 74).
Strauss points to a second element of modernity that is
coeval with the modern experience of eternity: the modern
conception of freedom. As we have said, political freedom
is connected with independence and equal rights and,
therefore, with a kind of spiritedness. The great modern
thinkers, however, sought something beyond even this,
namely, a possibility of human control, an unhindered
mastery, an unparalleled ability to form and construct.
Strauss locates this phenomenon well before its flourish-
ing in Nietzsche or Kant and sees it in its beginning in
Hobbes and Machiavelli (WIPP 47, 182; NRH 24851;
TOM 215, 298). The defining human possibility is our
responsibility for making our own ends substantively
effective; ultimately, it is our self-malleability, indeed, our
malleable self-malleability (WIPP 42). The correlate to
this early modern notion of human freedom or control is a
material that can be shaped to our ends. We force or allow
our needs to come to light and be pursued by properly
understanding and redirecting the necessary movement of
things. The permanence or security of successfully meet-
ing our ends is grounded on necessity noted and trans-
formed. Strauss traces the career of this freedom through
Nietzsche and Heidegger to outcomes that almost contra-
dict the original freedom and its desired security. In early
modernity, however, necessity properly heeded is then
freely redeployed in the manner of modern physics. The
Hobbesian fear of death or the difficulties faced and insti-
tuted by Machiavellian princes become aids to security,
not burdens. By becoming more like animals, we become
more like gods (TOM 79).
Strauss also suggests that modern thinkers newly under-
stand what is good. The general sense of what is good as
pleasure in comfort, glory, or security is based on and
somewhat disguises a radical shift. There is a changed
comprehension of the goods meaning, essence, or stand-
ing. What is good in the modern view seems to be insepa-
rable from what is not good. No morality exists in Hobbes
or Machiavelli without the immorality that founds the soci-
ety on which morality depends (WIPP 49). Furthermore,
there is no good that is substantively compelling, because
security is as empty as the Hobbesian flight from death,
comfort as ill-defined as Lockes joyless quest, glory as
 Fall 2004, Volume 33, Number 4
vacant as a princely founders creating of the standards and
people by which he himself is judged. Our goals are
good without reference to any independent completion
that limits them. Acquiring, rather than what is acquired, is
our ground. Virtue or satisfaction simply is what enables
the desire to acquire to continue successfully. Rather than
being an end that forms by attracting us to a purity beyond
our grasp, what is good is what feeds or unleashes our abil-
ity to acquire and organize. It is whatever we can most suc-
cessfully treat as fully our own and the means to this. For
this reason, power, property, freedom, the will of morality,
powerful overcoming, and authenticity all at one time or
another are considered to be the chief modern good.
This notion of good fits with what we have said about
freedom and perfection made secure because it is so
entirely ones own. Also connected to these conceptions
Downloaded by [Queensland University of Technology] at 03:35 14 October 2014
are characteristic views of nature, the soul, measure,
causality, and the meaning or desirability of philosophic
activity. Causality is chiefly efficient causality and its
effective results, as Hobbes and Machiavelli have it.
Causality makes things happen; it does not shape or order
those things. Reason knows general rules or procedures
about how things happen and for making them happen.
The rules are stripped from any context or whole except
their own science or method, although they can then be
used within a context or for some end. Reason does not
mirror or find order but adds things up or strings them
together: What is universal can be discerned equally in any
and every body, namely, the ways they move or can be
counted. The sense of a part properly fitting this whole
evaporates. Judging as measuring is no longer finding the
Aristotelian mean, but learning, say, how much generosity,
for whom, and with whose money will be effective; that is,
learning how generosity works to secure ones position or
glory. The soul lacks independent ends whose fulfillment
or pursuit give it structure or order. Love or eros is not
yearning, but acquiring and the arts of its success. Pride is
not in defending something elevated or what is elevated in
oneself, but in spirit or independence simply. The differ-
ence between pride and eros effectively disappears, and
reason is amalgamated to them. It is the art that masters
necessity by knowing its every way, the art of the lover,
power-lover, or property-lover. Philosophy or science is
not the perfection of the soul but the powerful tool of
acquisitive self interest, glory, pride, and will (WIPP
17096; NRH 20251; TOM 23839, 285, 29697). ical inevitability nor arbitrary pointlessness. Modernity is
III
These elements seem broader or more general than the
major features of practical modernity proper because they
are not all limited to human beings. Strauss, however, does
not discuss them as if one has new conceptions of such
matters from which ones political philosophical views
then inevitably follow. Nor does he employ a checklist of
these issues as if they must be decisive for everyone, even
if they were not part of a particular thinkers intentions.
We should say, instead, that Strauss never disconnects
these broader matters from the political intention to which
219
they are linked. His indication about the modern stance
toward immortality and reality, for example, with all this
suggests about the practical possibility of permanent human
bodily security, does not depart from its tie to this focus. His
discussion of freedom or freedom of the will in Thoughts on
Machiavelli, to take another instance, is oriented to what he
says about the modern intention to reclaim human spirit or
power. The discussion of freedom is not visibly exhaustive
or systematic, but the human point is clear. In general, as
Strauss discusses these concepts they do not temporally or
mechanically precede the political ones. So, a changed view
of what is true about them does not cause the changes in
political understanding. Nor, however, does Strauss treat
these topics merely as casual metaphysical remarks that the
authors make or suggest that are meant only to buttress pre-
viously determined moral-political positions (TOM 24445;
WIPP 180).
Rather, the picture is as follows. There is a natural group
of topics and at least some order of precedence and impli-
cation among them: The topics and something of their
order must announce themselves in thinkers intentions as
the objects or correlates of these intentions. To be seized
with the problem of re-establishing the human spirit in the
Christian age forces a confrontation with the question of
divine powers and, thus, with eternity, chance, and what is
realistic. It forces confrontation with questions of human
happiness, excellence, and ability and, thus, with questions
of completion, sufficiency, goodness, and measure. It
forces confrontation with the issues of our bodies and
souls limits and lack of limits and, consequently, with the
character of limits and possibility. It forces confrontation
with desires and necessities and, thus, with the motions
and causes that make up their substance. It forces con-
frontation with the power and possibilities of the thinkers
self-understandings and, thus, with understanding itself.
There is nothing arbitrary about the deeper or broader
problems to which ones original problems lead, and there
is substance and not merely a general structure to the alter-
native solutions.
Yet, the paths of thought are not predictable or
inevitable, precisely because addressing or clarifying these
deeper problems in light of a guiding problem such as
restoring the spirit and dignity of human choice and inde-
pendence leads in unexpected directions, although some are
less unexpected than others. Strauss teaches neither histor-
neither inevitable nor accidental. My discussion also should
make clear that the problems and intentions that Strauss has
in mind are not those that announce themselves method-
ologically, as they might for a mathematician. Rather, the
issues that thinkers deal with are found or appear in the link
between the question of human goodness as we dispute this
question publicly and privately and the topics or order to
which these disputes unfold, topics that enter into them and
on which they depend in some way. What one discovers
technically may deepen the political philosophical ques-
tion, but, ultimately, it takes its bearings from this question
in the way that, say, Hobbes can see how science both
increases our fear, given the radical unfriendliness of the
 220 Perspectives on Political Science

cosmos it discovers, and reduces it, because of what it
might teach us. Immortality, causality, natural motions,
freedom, and the souls possibilities of moving or thinking
mean something to us and come to light for us in terms of
our human orientation to our good. This orientation may
and does bring to light what causes our actions independent
of our orientation. Nonetheless, one can still wonder if any-
thing ever fully breaks free of its coming to light for us
within our human pursuits. In any event, the moderns
Downloaded by [Queensland University of Technology] at 03:35 14 October 2014
intention points to and draws sustenance from what is not
simply modern.
*Editors Note: TOM stands for Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958). WIPP stands for Strauss, What is Politi-
cal Philosophy? (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959). NRH stands for Strauss,
Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
My references to these works are, in general, intended to be illustrative,
not exhaustive.

IN MEMORIAM

Valerie A. Earle
19182004


Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University
Associate Editor,


Perspectives on Political Science