Natural Right and History

Strauss argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for distinguishing right from wrong, and that the modern rejection of this 'natural right' leads to disastrous consequences, ultimately nihilism [citation:6][citation:12]. He rejects the fact-value distinction central to Max Weber's social science, arguing that a science unable to discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate objectives becomes merely instrumental—the 'handmaid of any powers' [citation:3][citation:12]. He also rejects historicism's claim that all standards of right are products of historical circumstance, insisting that the ability to question our society's ideals presupposes a standard beyond them [citation:12].

Strauss argues that classical natural right articulates and is continuous with the everyday experience of engaged participants in political life—the experience of choices, conflicts, and practical projects from 'within' a horizon of engagement [citation:1]. Modern thought, by contrast, has manufactured an 'artificial experience' that obscures how human things originally make sense as matters of praxis [citation:1]. This is the heart of the 'crisis': we have become disoriented about the basic questions of how to live because modern philosophy and social science have severed us from the pre-theoretical understanding that classical political philosophy preserved.

Weber serves as the pivotal modern figure who codified the fact-value distinction, arguing that social science can be wise about means but must remain silent about ultimate ends [citation:3]. Strauss contends this position is incoherent: if our basic principles have no support other than blind preference, we are 'sane and sober' in trivial matters but 'gamble like madmen' on serious issues—'retail sanity and wholesale madness' [citation:3][citation:12]. Weber's science cannot help us discriminate between just and unjust objectives, making it servile to any power. Strauss's critique of Weber is the hinge on which his broader indictment of modern social science turns.

A major criticism, voiced in the Partisan Review shortly after publication, is that Strauss's conservatism is one of 'embarrassment'—inspired by fear and distrust of the future rather than positive aims, and incapable of 'lucid decisions and firm ideological commitments' [citation:13]. The reviewer characterized his alleged campaign against nihilism as itself 'creeping nihilism' [citation:13]. Another criticism is that the book's core lies in its implicit presentation of philosophical inquiry as the highest human vocation, while the political virtues it defends remain 'as unsettled by the end as they were in the introduction' [citation:9]. The argument for natural right is less a systematic proof than an illustration through engagement with canonical texts.

Strauss developed his theory of 'esoteric writing' in Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), published one year before Natural Right and History [citation:5]. The theory holds that many philosophers disguised controversial ideas to avoid persecution, writing in a way that conceals as well as reveals [citation:5]. Recent scholarship argues that Natural Right and History itself operates on two levels: an 'exoteric' critique of historicism that denies knowledge of universal principles, and an 'esoteric' critique showing historicism ignores the necessity of prudence—concrete decisions that suspend universal principles [citation:14]. Strauss's own writing practice is thus integral to understanding the book's full argument.

The crisis is the loss of any rational standard by which to judge political ideals, resulting from the modern rejection of natural right [citation:1]. Strauss traces this loss through the trajectory of modern political philosophy, from Machiavelli through Hobbes to Weber and historicism. The consequence is that we can be 'wise in all things of secondary importance' but must resign ourselves to 'utter ignorance in the most important respect' [citation:3]. The crisis is not merely theoretical: without knowledge of natural right, we cannot distinguish genuine needs from fancied ones or establish a hierarchy among conflicting societal needs [citation:12]. The book is Strauss's attempt to recover the possibility of such knowledge.