17 October 2001

Irving Kristol and Leo Strauss

It is proper for more reasons than the most obvious one that I should open this series of Charles R. Walgreen Lectures by quoting a passage from the Declaration of Independence. . . . "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

-- Leo Strauss, Introduction to Natural Right and History

In a column today, Ronald Bailey reports on (or critiques -- it's a little hard to tell) Irving Kristol's Monday lecture given at the American Enterprise Institute. The lecture, unavailable online, was entitled "The Education, So to Speak, of a Neoconservative or Why American Conservatism Is Exceptional." Bailey left somewhat unconvinced, noting that Kristol not once mentioned individual liberty in his lecture.

Those of us familiar with Kristol -- and with neoconservatism more broadly -- are not really surprised at this omission. Indeed, what I found strangest about Kristol's talk (as reported by Bailey) was his reliance upon political philosopher Leo Strauss. Of Strauss's many contributions to the study of philosophy and politics, his two most notable are his teachings on textual analysis and on natural right. And while a handful of elites in Washington, D.C. have been influenced by Strauss (or Straussians), it is nonsensical for Kristol to suggest that Strauss's primary influence was to foster religious observance -- or rather, adherence to religious customs (not necessarily faith, Bailey informs us) among neocons!

I have no idea what Kristol was trying to argue, and apparently Bailey couldn't figure it out either. But his omission of individual liberty is even more distressing given the fact that he DID cite Leo Strauss. The conservative Claremont Straussians (Strauss taught for a time at Claremont, with a former student and the current dean of West Coast Straussians, Harry Jaffa) have long explicated the natural right underpinnings of the American founding and American constitutionalism, and Jaffa was the first (and foremost) of Strauss's students to apply the conception of natural right to the study of the American regime in his study of the great document of American liberty as well as natural right, the Declaration of Independence. To the extent conservatism and Leo Strauss are intertwined, it has far less to do with Kristol's bizarre notions of religiosity, and far more to do with the serious study of politics and philosophy that Strauss encouraged -- study that of course involves liberty. Why Kristol's lecture went so far astray is puzzling to me.

[Posted @ 11:21 PM CST]