Sunday, August 8, 2010

Robert P. Hunt on Leo Strauss II

This is another excerpt from Christianity, Leo Strauss, and the Modern/Ancient Distinction by Robert P. Hunt:
Under Glenn’s favorable interpretation of Strauss’s contribution to the recovery of political philosophy, Strauss’s view that the claims of reason and revelation are “mutually exclusive” need not be accepted by Roman Catholics. Rather, the Roman Catholic political philosopher can appropriate Strauss’s teaching in support of moral realism in the battle against subjectivism and relativism. In other words, Strauss shares with Roman Catholics an aversion to liberal modernity and provides a powerful philosophical argument for rejecting it, particularly in its positivist and radical historicist dimensions. The “ancient”/ “modern” distinction is a powerful hermeneutic tool through which one can embrace the moral realism of the “ancients” and reject the increasing nihilism of the “moderns.”8
And yet a closer reading of even the exoteric Strauss should give Roman Catholics pause before they embrace Strauss’s distinction. First, Strauss’s brand of “moral realism” is one which seems to be, at best, ambivalent to Christianity’s contribution to the history of political philosophy, particularly in its political ramifications. Second, Strauss’s distinction between ancients and moderns seems to be based primarily on the relationship between the philosopher and the city, not on whether the human mind has the capacity to grasp truths grounded in the nature of things. The first point is addressed obliquely in Natural Right and History, the second more directly What is Political Philosophy?
In his introduction to Natural Right and History, Strauss seems to indicate that “Roman Catholic social science” is preferable to most of “present-day American social science” in that it is not necessarily committed to “the proposition that all men are endowed by the evolutionary process or by a mysterious fate with many kinds of urges and aspirations, but certainly with no natural right.”9 In short, Straussimplies that Roman Catholic social science is at least open to the possibility of some view of natural right, implying for political philosophy the argument for a hierarchy of natural ends. The problem, however, is that “the modern followers of Thomas Aquinas” (i.e. neo-Thomists) have been forced to accept “a fundamental, typically modern, dualism of a nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man” that seems to break with the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas himself, thus pushing, one infers, much of contemporary Catholic social thought in a non-teleological, imperativist direction.10 A possible implication: for Roman Catholics to salvage their own tradition from the shoals of the liberal politics of modernity, they must embrace a more fully (as envisaged by Strauss) Aristotelian Christianity and its hierarchical, prudentialist view of politics rather than a form of Kantian Christianity with its egalitarian and imperativist implications.11
And yet, at the very end of Strauss’s chapter on “Classical Right”—at the virtual center of the work itself—Strauss indicates that the problem with even St. Thomas Aquinas himself, a Thomas not read through the prism of neo-Thomists such as Jacques Maritain and Heinrich Rommen, is that “the Thomistic doctrine of natural right, or more generally expressed, of natural law, is free from the hesitations and ambiguities of the teachings, not only of Plato and Cicero, but of Aristotle as well.” Thus, for St. Thomas, there are certain immutable first principles of natural law that “suffer no exception, unless possibly by divine intervention.” Under a Thomistic dispensation, reason and revelation are reconciled in such a manner as to imply (1) that all men are conscience-bound to obey the natural law, even in its immutable first principles, and (2) that this places an undue burden on the latitude exercised by statesmen in their pursuit of the common weal. Thus, Montesquieu (a “modern” under any reasonable interpretation of Strauss’s “ancients”/”moderns” distinction) “tried to recover for statesmanship a latitude which had been considerably restricted by the Thomistic teaching.” The seeming gap between the “ancient” teleological view of political life and at least the early “modern” view (embodied in the writings of Machiavelli and Montesquieu) is bridged by a common rejection of immutable first principles that would limit the statesman’s capacity to do what might be necessary to serve the regime.12 It would seem, therefore, that the only way for political philosophers to salvage political wheat from the chaff of St. Thomas’s effort to reconcile reason and revelation is to return to a more overtly “classical” view of politics, or perhaps to argue for a Christian view which more greatly minimizes the difficulties caused by the ‘Christianizing” of “classical” political philosophy by portraying the Christian view of politics as an interesting footnote to Greek classicism.13"


I think Hunt's main point is that one does not have to throw in completely with all the implications of ancient philosophy to avoid the pitfalls of modern relativism.  The "immutable first principles" discussed here would seem to be rooted in imago dei and the inherent worth of the individual. My question is why any regime, whether ancient or modern, that would reject these principles is worth serving? 

15 comments:

King of Ireland said...

I saw the discussion on Leviathan down a bit after I did the post but I think it germane to that discussion.

eli said...

Well gosh darn it, in *this* clip Hunt has reiterated everything I ever heard TvD say on the topic. And I still don't know what the tension between reason and revelation is. Clearly I don't have a copy of the secret code book and I don't know the handshakes.

From this post I will assume that Hunt believes this tension to represent the state's latitude in carrying out its affairs. Less lattitude = natural law = limited by a divine code. More lattitude = natural right = influenced by the wisdom of the philosophers, with an ethical rule broken here or there as dictated by the needs of the situation. If nothing else, this is the realistic view of what is going to happen anyway.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Eli, it's gratifying---and a relief!---to see someone agree so thoroughly with my own reading of Strauss. He even noted that Strauss placed Thomas Aquinas in the middle of the book, albeit on the "classic[al]" side. [Strauss was into stuff like that, and claimed the ancient writers did it too.]

As for the pragmatism of the statesman, I think it's Thomas West who argues a closer reading of Thomas permits wisdom when inflexiblity with codes results in a greater evil. Natural law, contra Strauss, is not merely some code to be blindly followed.

There is a good point in here, made by Kraynak and others, that following Jacques Maritain's neo-Thomist whirewashing natural law and human rights into some bland secular pabulum [Maritain was a driving force behind the UN Declaration of Rights] is inconsistent with Aquinas or true "Roman Catholic social science," which Strauss seems to think well of.

So when people ask, why can't we have human rights without the God or Christian stuff, the reason is that "rights" becomes a different term in different people's mouths. In the end, we're not talking about the same thing atall: liberty becomes license; "rights" become entitlements; duties under natural law become nonexistent.

eli said...

I've had an epiphany finally due to this post and some recent dialogue we've had... finally I'm able to situate ideas into a better understanding of what is being talked about here. So - thanks Tom for your input!

So when people ask, why can't we have human rights without the God or Christian stuff, the reason is that "rights" becomes a different term in different people's mouths. In the end, we're not talking about the same thing at all: liberty becomes license; "rights" become entitlements; duties under natural law become nonexistent.

That's why I hope Rothbard provides a valid way. We ought to at least be prepared for the possibility that secularism will continue to advance. It might be suicide to insist that natural law is valid only if God exists.

eli said...

Oh, and King - thanks for the great posts.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Well, the Supreme Court has already thrown natural law in the crapper.

But if virtually every Founder---including Jefferson and Franklin--- believed that the God of Providence is a reality, and 70-80% of Americans still do, how did it come to pass that the Constitution demands we pretend He doesn't exist?

Where does it say that in the 14th Amendment?

eli said...

Remember the advice of Clarence Thomas: You can put up with it, or you can revolt. The logic of government dictates that ours will continue building on the Harvard Narrative.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Clarence Thomas, of course, is the last natural lawyer.

But it does occur to me that the Protestant fideists, in rejecting natural law for sola scriptura, went all-or-nothing, and are ending up with nothing.

Very few Americans could even tell you what natural law even is, although I think there's little disagreement around here that it was the Founding political theology.

BTW, by the way, I'm having dinner with Rothbard biographer David Gordon soon, and he owes me an answer on how an atheist can be a supporter of natural law.

But remember that Grotius and Suarez anticipated this 400 years ago, and said that natural law still works without God.

http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2009/04/primer-on-natural-law.html

eli said...

Well we are getting far afield here, but if you ask *me*, all of Christianity (with the help of rabbinic Judaism, which is unfortunately stingy about this), in rejecting Torah Law for grace through faith, set themselves up for the fall. Their sola scriptura has no concrete divine code in it. Having then rejected natural law, they left the rules and the rule-making to whoever else happened to show up. I guess I'm oversimplifying a bit, but still...

PS I've written David Gordon an email or two over the years... he wouldn't recognize me though. Too bad I can't be there with ya, sounds like fun.

King of Ireland said...

"Their sola scriptura has no concrete divine code in it. Having then rejected natural law, they left the rules and the rule-making to whoever else happened to show up. I guess I'm oversimplifying a bit, but still..."

I tried to tell church people this for many years and they basically threw me out. Well put and true.

Tom Van Dyke said...

I liked that riff from Eli too. What Mark Noll must mean by the "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind." [The argument being: there isn't one.]

By abandoning "right reason" for fideism, they retreated from the marketplace of ideas.

Hell, "because the Bible tells me so" doesn't even work with Christians who think the Bible tells us something different, and there are 34,000 varieties of Protestantism! Geez.

I picked up Francis Schaeffer's "How Shall We Then Live" to get up to speed on Protestant thought. It was so fideistic and intellectually clumsy I was embarrassed for such a clearly intelligent man. I didn't learn a damn thing I couldn't learn from a televangelist.

I understand that for some Protestants the concerns of the next world are paramount and faith alone saves, but if you want some input into this world, you gotta speak the other guy's language, not just yours.

King of Ireland said...

"Oh, and King - thanks for the great posts"

You should really thank Jon and Tom who have hashed this all out numerous times. I think I am finally starting to get it too. Strauss puts this discussion into a good frame. Though obviously I do not agree with some of his conclusions.

King of Ireland said...

"I understand that for some Protestants the concerns of the next world are paramount and faith alone saves, but if you want some input into this world, you gotta speak the other guy's language, not just yours."

That is what Aquinas did.

bpabbott said...

Re: "I understand that for some Protestants the concerns of the next world are paramount and faith alone saves, but if you want some input into this world, you gotta speak the other guy's language, not just yours."

It is my understanding that secularism arouse out of the desire to discuss in a doctrine neutral language. Ironically, the more venomous "secularists" would go beyond language and apply the policy to thought. In hoping to purge the world of ignorance and fundamentalism, they join the fundamentalists in intolerance :-(

I'm confident, in the long run, that constructive cooperation will win out over divisive rhetoric, and that both secular discussion / expression and religious conviction / inspiration will play necessary roles in that success.

King of Ireland said...

"It is my understanding that secularism arouse out of the desire to discuss in a doctrine neutral language. Ironically, the more venomous "secularists" would go beyond language and apply the policy to thought. In hoping to purge the world of ignorance and fundamentalism, they join the fundamentalists in intolerance :-(


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Very well put Ben.