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Leo Strauss on Modern Political Science:Two Previously Unpublished Manuscripts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2017
Extract
The two manuscripts published here for the first time were written by Leo Strauss: the first in 1956 and the second between 1957 and 1962. The first, entitled “Lecture in Milwaukee: Michigan Midwest Political Science,” was written for the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Midwest Conference of Political Scientists on May 4, 1956, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The second is an unpublished passage of “An Epilogue” Strauss wrote for Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, published in 1962. Together these pieces improve our understanding of both the context in which Strauss developed his critique of the new political science and the audience to whom that critique was addressed. These two texts are of “biographical” interest. They are biographical in the sense that they clarify Strauss's thought and its evolution. The “Lecture in Milwaukee” clarifies the context in which Strauss's critique of modern political science was born: confrontation with the political scientists of the 1950s, here represented by Glendon Schubert who is not mentioned in Strauss's published writings. Without this lecture one might overlook the reference to “extrasensory perception” in the ironical discussion of “our man in Missouri” in “Epilogue.” The critique of Arthur Bentley, Bernard Berelson, Harold Laswell, and Herbert Simon by Strauss's students also takes on new meaning if read in the light of this lecture's references and Schubert's published article. Aside from Strauss's view of academia in the 1950s, his references in the lecture to the British Labour Party's policy toward Nazi Germany, to postwar American disarmament, and to prison reform and immigration policy in the United States provide rare and thus important information about Strauss's political views and judgment.
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References
1 Strauss, Leo, “An Epilogue,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 212Google Scholar. “An Epilogue” originally appeared in Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Storing, Herbert (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962), 307–27Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., 204.
3 For a general introduction to Schubert's thought see Segal, Jeffrey A., “Glendon Schubert: The Judicial Mind,” in The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior, ed. Maveety, Nancy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Kort, Fred, “The Works of Glendon Schubert: The History of a Subdiscipline,” Political Science Reviewer 4 (1974):193–227 Google Scholar. A revised version of Schubert's paper was published the following year as “‘The Public Interest’ in Administrative Decision-Making: Theorem, Theosophy, or Theory?,” American Political Science Review 51, no. 2 (1957): 346–68CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The paper by Morgenthau seems to be a version of the argument made in Morgenthau, Hans J., Dilemmas of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 54–87 Google Scholar.
4 The program of the conference was obtained with the help of the executive director of MPSA, William Morgan. Among Strauss's students Harry V. Jaffa is mentioned as a member of the program committee. The presence of Strauss at the round table is attested by a report by Morton Frisch to Clifford A. Bates back in 1992.
5 Strauss had explained more fully what the ancient Greeks meant by “regime” in Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 136–40Google Scholar.
6 Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908)Google Scholar.
7 See Schubert, “‘The Public Interest’ in Administrative Decision-Making: Theorem, Theosophy, or Theory?,” 367.
8 See Plato, Apology of Socrates 25c5–26b2. Strauss's reference to dogs rather than to horses might be significant. See Pangle, Lorraine Smith, Virtue Is Knowledge: The Moral Foundations of Socratic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 See Strauss, “An Epilogue,” 219.
10 See Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar, esp. 28, 84, 86, 235.
11 The reference is to Berelson, Bernard, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954)Google Scholar.
12 See Strauss, Leo, “What Is Political Philosophy?,” in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 23Google Scholar.
13 For “macroscopic,” “microscopic,” and “telescopic,” see Strauss, Leo, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), xGoogle Scholar.
14 The references are, respectively, to Bentley, Process of Government, 218; and Truman, David, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York: Knopf, 1951), 486Google Scholar.
15 See Strauss, Leo, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 30Google Scholar.
16 See Strauss, Leo, “The Three Waves of Modernity,” in An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays, ed. Gildin, Hilail (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 91Google Scholar.
17 The manuscript has no title. In blue pencil on the right-hand side of the manuscript it is written “originally intended for Epilogue.” The phrase is not in Strauss's handwriting.