Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
114 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
example, that in denying the possibility of rational ends,
rational means are on not a very secure basis either:
Reason [according to Brecht and the relativists]
cannot even tell us that we ought to choose attainable
ends; if someone “loves him who desires the
impossible,” reason may tell him that he acts irrationally
but it cannot tell him that he ought to act
rationally or that acting irrationally is acting badly
or basely. 64
From Brecht, Strauss proceeds to a fine critique of the
positivist destruction of the principle of causality, a principle
that is essential to rational absolutism. Strauss concludes
here that “positivistic science in general and therefore positivistic
social science in particular is characterized by the
abandonment of reason or the flight from reason.” 65
Strauss then goes on to an interesting critique of the
Marxist theoretician Georg Lukacs, showing that Lukacs,
trying to escape from relativism, winds up as a relativist
(Marxist-historicist variety) anyway. He also has some keen
words of criticism about the Marxist vision of the change
from “necessity” to “freedom” in the ultimate communist
utopia.
After finishing with Lukacs, Strauss returns to logical
positivism with a blistering critique of the weaknesses of
positivism as a pure analysis of science, and an interesting
maintained, among other things, that values and ultimate aims could
not be defined scientifically. He also wrote various works on themes
relating to the institutional and constitutional problems of federalism
and totalitarianism. Among others, see Prelude to Silence: The
End of the German Republic (New York and London: Oxford University
Press, 1944), Federalism and Regionalism in Germany (New
York and London: Oxford University Press, 1945), and The Political
Education of Arnold Brecht: An Autobiography, 1884–1970
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).
64Strauss, “Relativism,” p. 144.
65 Ibid. p. 145.