Beyond Struggle and Power: Heidegger's Secret ... - Interpretation

Leo Strauss on the Understanding of the Politically Better and Worse
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to the question “What is the right way of life?” Taken more narrowly, only
answers to the question “What is the right way of life?” which include morality
as ordinarily understood can be called moral teachings. Kant’s moral philosophy
is moral in both the broad and the narrow sense. Aristotle’s moral teaching
is a more ambiguous case. To the extent that Aristotle teaches that the life of
theoretical understanding is the highest life, ranks the life of intellectual virtue
higher than the life of moral virtue, and contrasts them as two ways of life, he
endorses an understanding of the right way of life that is transmoral (rather
than immoral) in addition to one that is moral. When Strauss writes to Kojève:
“I agree: philosophy is just, but I hesitate on the basis of Plato to identify ‘just’
with ‘moral,’” an ambiguity similar to the one we have just found in Aristotle is
at work (Strauss 1991, 274). (Does Klein’s remark that “the ultimate consideration
of things, as far as one is ever capable of doing that,” never frees man from
the compulsion to act rightly mean anything more than this [Strauss 1997, 465]?)
In his preface to the American edition of The Political
Philosophy of Hobbes, Strauss writes:“I had seen that the modern mind had lost
its self-confidence of having made decisive progress beyond pre-modern
thought; and I saw that it was turning into nihilism, or what is in practice the
same thing, fanatical obscurantism” (1952, xv). As long as the modern belief in
Progress remained intact, the modern mind’s self-confidence was not shaken.
A crucial component of that belief was the conviction that “once mankind has
reached a certain stage of development, there exists a solid floor beneath which
man can no longer sink” (1989, 267). That belief was shattered, in Europe, not
only by the experiences of the First World War but even more in 1933 by the
success in one of the most advanced countries of Europe of a movement dedicated
to the destruction of the principles of civilization. The threat to
civilization did not vanish with the victory of the allies in World War II, though
the threat to freedom diminished. The harm done by the collapse of the full
modern belief in Progress has led to disorientation regarding the ends of education
(to say nothing of other ends). Strauss’s efforts as a writer addressing
contemporary issues of public concern, as well as his private efforts as an
admired teacher, were chiefly directed to combating this disorientation, and to
encouraging his students to combat it by devoting their lives to teaching. His
efforts in the practical sphere were directed more to the crisis of liberal education
than to any other urgent practical issue, though he did, on occasion, take
public stands on other urgent practical issues.