Natural Right and History

A study, based on Strauss's Walgreen Lectures of 1949, of whether there is a natural standard of right by which political societies can be judged. Strauss opens with the American Declaration of Independence and asks whether modern Western thought still believes its claim of self-evident rights. He argues that two modern doctrines have undermined that belief: historicism, which holds that all thought is bound to its time, and the distinction between facts and values, which he examines through Max Weber and argues leads toward nihilism. He then traces the origin of natural right to Greek philosophy's discovery of nature and contrasts the classic natural right of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, with modern natural right, examined chiefly in Hobbes and Locke, which he sees as lowering the aims of politics to self-preservation and comfortable acquisition. A final chapter on the crisis of modern natural right discusses Rousseau and Burke. Critics find his readings of Hobbes and Locke contestable and his search for hidden teachings speculative.

It is a forceful argument that relativism has practical costs, and the clearest way into Strauss's influential contrast between ancient and modern political philosophy.