Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Locke's "Partial Natural Law" Not Natural Law At All

LE SAGE LOCKE, "the sagacious Locke," is what Voltaire called John Locke. Thomas Jefferson called Locke one of the three greatest men who ever lived, rivaled in greatness only by Bacon and Newton. For Locke to have gained the respect of two such virulent haters of the Catholic Church and revealed religion should give one pause before accepting him hook, line, and sinker, or, perhaps more paronomasiacally, lock, stock, and barrel. If Locke, who quoted the Aristotelian/Thomistic Richard Hooker, "one of the least revolutionary men who ever lived," Strauss, 207, who appeared to advance a traditional notion of natural law, who feigned intimate knowledge with "those justly descried names" of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, was up front, then why are these two princes of the Enlightenment, these two chiefs of the Revolution, so bullish on Locke?

What's up with that? Were his traditional-sounding words part of a great dissembling? Was Locke the "Great Dissembler"? This seems to be the judgment of Leo Strauss:

We see, then, that, according to Locke, cautious speech is legitimate if unqualified frankness would hinder a noble work one is trying to achieve or expose on to persecution or endanger the public peace; and legitimate caution is perfectly compatible with going with the herd in one's outward professions or with using ambiguous language or with so involving one's sense that one cannot easily be understood.

Strauss, 208-09. Locke writes as if the New Testament revelation provides the perfect law, but he responds or acts in such a manner so as to belie that belief. As Strauss notes, actions speak louder than words, and Locke wrote "Two Treatises on Government, and not a 'Politique tirée des propres paroles de l’Écriture sainte.'"* Granted, it is difficult if not impossible to know whether the dissembling was the result of Locke's own doubt on revelation, or rather his concern that his audience had doubts with respect to it. Therefore, though his words sound pious, he seems to have been judicious though calculating nevertheless to advance a form of political teaching, of natural law, as independent of Scripture and Christianity, indeed as independent of God, as he could possibly make it. Strauss, 209. Locke appeared to believe that it was impossible, through the light of reason alone, to arrive at any conclusion on life after death for mankind. Accordingly, any law that referred to life after death, or a notion that "after death comes judgment," Heb. 9:27, was not, strictly speaking, a natural law based upon reason alone at all.

Therefore, if there is to be a law "knowable by the light of nature, that is without the help of positive revelation," that law must consist of a set of rules whose validity does not presuppose life after death or belief in a life after death.

Strauss, 212. Not only was the belief in life after death not materia propria for natural law philosophy, neither was the connection between virtue and happiness, since from the vantage point of any particular man's mortal life alone there seems to be little correlation between virtue "Locke cannot have recognized any law of nature in the proper sense of the term."
--Leo Straussand happiness or prosperity (That's why Billy Joel has the seducer sing to the Catholic Virginia who insists on the virtue of chastity: "Only the good die young!") But what was apparent on a micro scale to Locke was not necessarily so on a macro scale. And Locke seized on what he perceived was something arguable by reason alone: a necessary link between "several moral rules" and "public happiness," and on this linkage crafted a doctrine of a "partial law of nature," different from the "complete law of nature." Strauss, 213.

There exists, indeed, [in Locke's view], a visible connection between "public happiness" or "the prosperity and temporal happiness of any people" and the general compliance with "several moral rules." These rules, which apparently are a part of the complete law of nature, "may receive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or admitting the true ground of morality; which can only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hands rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender."

Strauss, 213. The "several moral rules" in this "partial" natural law seem rather limited, as even the laws of marriage Locke finds outside of them, apparently having difficulty justifying monogamous marriage from polygamy or even concubinage or incest (the latter two the dissembler simply remains silent about) under principles of natural law, and does not see marriage as a union for the life of the spouses, but only one that ought to be "more firm" and more "lasting" (whatever that may mean) in men, than say satyrs or rabbits, but only because of the length of time needed in the raising of children. It seems that for Locke, the civil society can legislate on marriage virtually in any way it wants, since the natural law has so little to say about it. Marriage is therefore in practice outside of Locke's "partial" natural law. There are other discrepancies between Locke's "partial" natural law and the teachings of Scripture, the details of which need not be gone into here. "It can safely be said," in any event, "that Locke's 'partial law of nature' is not identical with clear and plain teachings of the New Testament or of Scripture in general." Strauss, 219. A fortiori when we add the moral teachings of the infallible Church, which, of course, Locke, the good Protestant become Deist and incipient Atheist he was, had long ago jettisoned as having any relevance.

In Locke's take of the natural law, this "partial natural law," the law of nature is totally and thoroughly secularized, nay, more, temporalized. The "one thing necessary," the unum necessarium,--contemplation of God--has disappeared. Maries are ostracized from the natural law. The natural law is only for Marthas. (Cf. Luke 10:38-42) Indeed, "the 'partial law of nature' does not require belief in God." Strauss, 219.

There is yet another log in Locke's intellectual eye which prevents his teachings on "partial" natural law from being on a sound foundation. "Locke's political teaching stands or falls by his natural law teaching concerning the beginnings of political societies." Strauss, 215. "Locke's entire political teaching is based on the assumption of a state of nature," a notion that refers neither the pre-lapsarian or post-lapsarian state of man. Strauss, 215. Locke's notion of the "state of nature" is Hobbesian, and it is a notion, it may be observed, entirely at odds with Scriptural concepts. The Fall of Man has no meaning to Locke in his political theories. It is a notion, as Strauss notes, "wholly alien to the Bible." Strauss, 215.

So when Locke's suggestion that the natural law is contained in the Scriptures is compared to his "partial law of nature" and its contradiction to the Scriptures, "it follows that the 'partial law of nature' does not belong at all to the law of nature." Strauss, 219. Indeed, since the "partial law of nature" does not require belief in God, it follows that there is no enforcer or judge of it, which means, naturally, that the "'partial law of nature' is, then, not a law in the proper sense of the term." Strauss, 220. It is thus that Strauss concludes in a manner that he admits is "in shocking contrast to what is generally thought to be his doctrine." "Locke cannot have recognized any law of nature in the proper sense of the term." Strauss, 220.

Egads! Isn't Locke one of the principal inspirations for the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution? And, if Strauss is to be believed, he did not recognize the natural law in any proper sense of the term? What does all this mean?

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*The reference is to Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's (1627-1704) work by that name. Translated, the title is: "Politics Drawn from the Very Words of the Holy Scriptures."

Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Hobbesian Alleycat Morals, Natural Public Law, and the Bush Doctrine

HOBBES TINKERED WITH, OR PERHAPS BETTER, SMASHED the classic notion of natural law. Everything was built on self-preservation, the fear of death. This was to have significant effect upon his notion of the moral law. As Strauss observes, the Hobbesian focus on the fear of violent death and the right to self-preservation as the universal tie among all men leads to a simplification of moral doctrine. Instead of the complex interplay of law, equity, and the multiplicity of virtues (all of which demanded equal play, classically, but two of which, magnanimity and justice, were seen as preeminent or most general) which were the accouterments of the old order, the new order was simplistic: one virtue, self-preservation, loomed large and fed all the others. "Self-preservation requires peace. The moral law became, therefore, the sum of rules which have to be obeyed if there is to be peace." Strauss, 187. This requires compact, and so self-preservation's compact becomes the source of justice. For Hobbes, then, "justice becomes identical with the habit of fulfilling one's contracts." Strauss, 187. Justice is thus conventional. Look at the transformation wrought by Hobbes, and how he hobbled Western thought by clapping it in irons, tied down with the dual chains of relativism and legal positivism:

Justice no longer consists in complying with standards that are independent of human will. All material principles of justice--the rules of commutative and distributive justice or of the Second Table of the Decalogue--cease to have intrinsic validity. All material obligations arise from the agreement of the contractors, and therefore in practice from the will of the sovereign. For the contract that makes possible all other contracts is the social contract or the contract of subjection to the sovereign.

Strauss, 187-88. The contract of all contracts, the source of justice, is the State, that mortal God. And vice, it follows, is anything that detracts from peace and detracts from life subordinated to the convention of all conventions, the State. Hobbes, then, advances what Strauss calls "political hedonism," and through modification and adaptation of the Epicurean ethic, it transmogrifies itself into a sort of ethic of the bourgeoisie, an ethic not of wisdom or excellence (arete), but of "commodious living," "the good life." Strauss, 188. Gone are the monks, hermits, and martyrs, and the roseate wounds of Christ, replaced by the pudgy, the soft, the flabby, and roseate-noses of the bourgeoisie. Life becomes governed by a sort of cheapening advertising jingle, a facile slogan.

In the meantime, a curious creature begins to make its appearance: "natural public law," ius publicum universale seu naturale.

Natural public law represents one of the two characteristically modern forms of political philosophy, the other being "politics" in the sense of Machiavellian "reason of state." Both are fundamentally distinguished from classical political philosophy. In spite of their opposition to each other, they are motivated by fundamentally the same spirit.

Strauss, 190. (We have treated the issue of "reason of state" before, see Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the Natural Law, Part 11.) Just like the Hobbesian ethic results in the dumbing down of the moral law, so does the Hobbesian ethic, like the Machiavellian, lead to the dumbing down of the art of governance. The Aristotelian "best regime" was replaced by either Machiavellian ("reason of state" school) "efficient government" or by Hobbesian ("natural public law" school) "legitimate government." Strauss, 191.

This notion of "natural public law" was to have some important consequences, and so it merits some focus.

Natural public law intends to give such a universally valid solution to the political problem as is meant to be universally applicable in practice. In other words . . . the new type of political theory solves, as such, the crucial practical problem: the problem of what order is just here and now. . . . We may call this type of thinking "doctrinairism" . . . . [T]he practical meaning of the doctrine [is] that the only legitimate regime is democracy.*

Strauss, 192-93.

Along with Hobbes comes something else. Power. "It is in Hobbes's political doctrine that power comes for the first time eo nomine a central theme." Strauss, 194. "[O]ne may call Hobbes's whole philosophy the first philosophy of power." Strauss, 194. According to Strauss, the emphasis on power is related to the rejection of the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and act. The actus suggests an end, the potentia the power. The rejection of the doctrine of ends (the rejection of teleology, of final causality) meant that focus was placed upon the only thing remaining, power, away from act. "Power, as distinguished from the end for which power is used or ought to be used, becomes the central theme of political reflections . . . ." Strauss, 195-96. Without a natural end, power could be used for whatever purpose man saw fit.

Strauss completes his treatment of Hobbes by pointing out some difficulties associated with the Hobbesian claim of universality, a claim which is predicated upon the assumption that the fear of violent death, the desire for self-preservation, is universally the central passion, and so a firm foundation of political and social order. Hobbes builds his theory on the extreme case, assuming in the "state of nature" a condition of civil war, or total chaos, of no order. He assumes that if his theory of political order works in the extreme case, then it will work in the ordinary case (when there is no state of war). Hobbes encounters some problems, however, in his assumption that the "fear of violent death" is universal. There are other motives that man has other than the fear of violent physical death. For example, there is the "fear of hell fire or the fear of God" that may prove stronger than the fear of violent death. Strauss, 198. The Hobbesian overcomes this by the notion of "popular enlightenment," of "the disenchantment of the world," of ridding the world of "invisible powers." Paulatim eruditur vulgus. The ignorant, the vulgar, will gradually be enlightened, by those without faith, who built their sky-castles on the sands of the philosophy of man, scientific and mathematical, without recourse to God. Hobbes would not countenance the lessons of Psalm 126:

Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.

Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem frustra vigilavit qui custodit.

Psalm 126(127):1. So "Hobbes's is the first doctrine that necessarily and unmistakably points to a thoroughly . . . a-religious or atheistic society as the solution of the social or political problem." Rather than accommodating his theory to faith, faith would be accommodated to his theory.

More importantly, the Hobbesian theory confronts a dual conundrum. If the fear of violent death is the basis for the social contract that gives rise to the State, then why would the social contract allow for capital punishment and recruitment for war? Why would man trade on the fear of violent death and accept as consideration a situation that exposes him to violent death, either as a result of capital punishment or war? Hobbes would argue that a man does not give up the right to self-preservation and one condemned of a capital offense can fight tooth and nail against his custodians, and in self-defense can justifiably slaughter even his executioner, thereby pointing to an inconsistency between the rights of government and the rights of the individual to self-preservation. What a far cry this is from Socrates! Or Christ! Both of whom submitted to the injustice of the duly-constituted powers in recognition of goods far, far better and desirable than self-preservation. The Italian penologist, Beccaria, on the other hand, would take the Hobbesian principle to its logical conclusion, "in spirit, if against the letter of Hobbes," Strauss, 197, and maintain that the State had not right to put a criminal to death because no man would, under a social contract, trade his fear of violent death for a State which would be able to instill in him the fear of violent death. Hobbes also waffled on the issue of national defense, suggesting that most men (including him) run away from war, and therefore do not willingly contract for it. "But by granting this," Strauss notes, "he destroyed the moral basis of national defense." Strauss, 197. The only way out was the outlawing of war or the establishment of a world state., both of which we have come a long way to trying to achieve. One therefore wonders how much of the modern penchant for outlawing capital punishment or war, and the desire for a one world government is based upon Hobbesian presuppositions regarding the fear of violent death (and not the right to life, which is something different) being the most principal passion.

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*As an aside, this sort of doctrinairism is what was behind the "Bush doctrine," and its emphasis on "democratic regime change." At the heart of the "Bush doctrine" was this notion of natural public law, that would ascribe to "democracy," which is nothing but a process, the virtue of being an absolute panacea to social and political problems. In this view, democracy is the only legitimate form of government and is the answer to the world's political and social ills. Though "neo-conservative" in origin, the Bush doctrine has its roots in this "natural public law thinking," and is highly unclassical and untraditional. It is rank Hobbesianism. It is, at heart, therefore, deeply anti-Conservative in the classical or traditional sense. "The classics had conceived of regimes (politeiai) not so much in terms of institutions as in terms of the aims actually pursued by the community or its authoritative part. Accordingly, they regarded the best regime as that regime whose aim is virtue, and they held that the right kind of institutions are indeed indispensable for establishing and securing the virtuous . . . . From the point of view of natural public law, on the other hand, what is needed in order to establish the right social order is not so much the formation of character as the devising of the right kind of institutions." Strauss, 193.

Leo Strauss and Natural Law: The Hobbesian Path to Avernus

AVOIDANCE OF VIOLENT DEATH or self-preservation becomes the source of Hobbesian morality and the the root of Hobbesian justice. It also is the passion that compels man, who would rather be a solitary atom, to combine himself with others in society through compact. Man has no duties but those which come from the "fundamental and inalienable right of self preservation." Strauss, 181. Duty, for Hobbes, follows right. More precisely, duty is limited by the right to self-preservation, and so self-preservation trumps all duties. All duties become relative to this right:

There are, then, no absolute or unconditional duties; duties are binding only to the extent to which their performance does not endanger our self-preservation. Only the right of self-preservation is unconditional and absolute.

Strauss, 181. What this means is unsettling. Strauss puts the hammer on the nail's head: "By nature, there exists only a perfect right and no perfect duty. The law of nature, which formulates man's natural duties, is not a law, properly speaking." Strauss, 181. Hobbes has redefined natural law out of existence, and all of a sudden, it seems, people start talking of rights and become forgetful of duties. Liberalism raises its ugly head in a world where all there are only rights, where there is no natural law. Hobbes may therefore be called the father of liberalism:

If we may call liberalism that political doctrine which regards the fundamental political fact the rights, as distinguished from the duties, of man and which identifies the function of the state with the protection or the safeguarding of those rights, we must say that the founder of liberalism was Hobbes.

Strauss, 181-82. Similarly, we find in Hobbes the germ for the modern penchant for rights-talk, and its for duties-talk mutism:

The fundamental change from an orientation by natural duties to an orientation by natural rights finds its clearest and most telling expression in the teaching of Hobbes, who squarely made an unconditional natural right [self-preservation] the basis for all natural duties, the duties being therefore conditional. He is the classic and the founder of the specifically modern law doctrine.

Strauss, 182. Ah, with what facility did the Hobbesian passion-derived, natural right theory supplant the Thomistic reason-derived, natural duty theory in a massive social apostasy? Facilis descensus Averno. The descent to Averno is easy. The Gates of Hell are open wide. It is holding the line, nay, even more, it is the ascent to truth that is the labor, that is burdensome and hard.

Facilis descensus Averno;
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est.

(Virgil, Aeneid, VI.124 ff.) Less classically, perhaps, Strauss quotes the conservative Burke (Thoughts on French Affairs) and not Virgil as I have done:

"The little catechism of the rights of men is soon learned; and the inferences are in the passions." With regard to Hobbes's classic formulation, we add that the premises already are in the passions.

Strauss, 183. So Hobbes initiated a paradigm shift which clearly take mankind downhill: individual rights were now prior to social duty, and thus preceded the common good, whereas in the past individual rights followed social duty, and so came out of or derived from the common good. All of a sudden, people started talking about the "state of nature," and pitting it against the Aristotelian man who, by nature was political, social. More ominously was the shift in the use of the term "state of nature," which had referred to the fallen condition of man prior to grace, to the use of the term "state of nature" to refer to the condition of man prior to the State. Indeed, there may have been more method than madness to the use of the term, for we have through Hobbes the introduction of the secular salvation of man:

Prior to him [Hobbes], the term "state of nature" was at home in Christian theology rather than in political philosophy. The state of nature was distinguished especially from the state of grace, and its was subdivided into the state of pure nature and the state of fallen nature. Hobbes dropped the subdivision and replaced the state of grace by the state of civil society. He thus denied, if not the fact, at any rate the importance of the Fall and accordingly asserted that what was needed for remedying the deficiencies or the "inconveniences" of the state of nature is, not divine grace, but the right kind of human government.

Strauss, 184. Since for Hobbes self-preservation is the ultimate rule and ultimate source of rules, we find an interesting corollary comes with it. Whereas the natural law assumed the judgment of the wise, Hobbesian natural right assumed the judgment of everyman, including, so it seems the fool. Every man, even the most base, has an instinct for self-preservation, and so every man, regardless of wisdom, has the right to judge the right. "We may speak of a natural right of folly." Strauss, 186. Along with the democratization of judgment comes the emphasis on consent and will, rather than reason, as the basis of law.

As we shall see, the building of the natural moral law upon the right of self-preservation was to have important repercussions on the natural moral law.

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Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Hobbesian Natural Law

LOCKE LIKED TO DRESS IN HOOKER'S ROBES, but underneath he wore Hobbes's breeches, or perhaps better his soiled skivvies. Richard Hooker, Strauss notes, was safely within the Thomistic natural law tradition. Thomas Hobbes most definitely was not. And John Locke, more judicious, or perhaps more of a dissembler than the judicious Hooker, quoted Hooker while thinking Hobbes. Locke is the American political philosopher par excellence, and so when it comes to natural law Americans tend, like Locke, to be disguised Hobbesians and not, alas, Hookerian Thomists, much less just simple Thomists.

With this introduction of Hobbes's influence on Locke, Strauss launches into his criticism of Hobbes. Hobbes was notable for having extruded the core of modern science, that is "nonteleological natural science," and applied it to the realm of political philosophy, replacing the classical philosophical basis which he regarded "rather a dream than science," thus ushering in, as self-proclaimed father of political science, "modern natural right." The rejection of a teleological view of nature required a replacement, and Hobbes's mechanistic, atomistic view of random, arbitrary movement supplied no adequate replacement. (How can one know chaos?) So Hobbes replaced nature's teleology with human knowledge. (But is this not, on Hobbes's theory, chaos knowing chaos?)

[Hobbes's] notion of philosophy or science has its root in the conviction that a teleological cosmology is impossible and in the feeling that a mechanistic cosmology fails to satisfy the requirement of intelligibility. His solution is that the end or the ends without which no phenomenon can be understood need not be inherent in the phenomena; the end inherent in the concern with knowledge suffices. Knowledge as the end supplies the indispensable teleological principle. Not the new mechanistic cosmology but what later on came to be called "epistemology" becomes the substitute for teleological cosmology. . . . Of political philosophy thus understood, Hobbes is indeed the founder.

Strauss, 176-77.

But this Hobbesian "modern natural right" is a theory markedly different from that of the past; indeed, it represents a break from all classic natural right. "He presents his novel doctrine as the first truly scientific or philosophic treatment of natural law." Strauss, 168. Hobbes, Strauss tells us, "became the creator of political hedonism, a doctrine which has revolutionized human life everywhere on a scale never yet approached by any other teaching." Strauss, 169. (Strauss ignored Islam, a rival political theory, which is political theology, based upon the teachings of a professed prophet, and presents itself as more revolutionary, and even more dangerous, than anything Hobbes ever dreamed of. I say professed because Muhammad contradicted the natural law in a variety of ways in both his teaching and his life, and a prophet of God would not have violated the natural law. It presents an absolute impediment to a thinking man to the acceptance of Islam. But this topic is for another day.) But Hobbes is more. Hobbes is an advocate of "political atheism." His natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanistic at its core, is that of the materialists, the atomists Democritus and Epicurus, though guised in Platonic ideal form. "His philosophy as a whole," Strauss concludes, "may be said to be the classic example of the typically modern combination of political idealism with a materialistic and atheistic view of the whole." Strauss, 170. Thus Hobbes presents us with a new beast, a synthesis of two opposing world views, the Platonic and the Epicurean.

There are several core features of classic natural right that are rejected by Hobbes and supplanted by foreign concepts. First, Hobbes rejects the Aristotelian notion that man is by nature political or social. Here, Hobbes adopts an Epicurean view of man "that man is by nature or originally an a-political and even an a-social animal," and he draws out the political implications of that view. Strauss, 169. He also adopts the supreme Epicurean moral principle and identifies the good with the pleasant, or at least with self-interest. Hobbes "tries to instil the spirit of political idealism into the hedonistic tradition." Strauss, 169. It is an odd, bizarre and monstrous yin-yang combination of "idealism" and "anti-idealism." Strauss, 178. At heart, Hobbes appears to have accepted the methodological doubt, the fundamental skepticism, of Descartes, rejecting at the same time pre-modern or scholastic nominalism which maintained faith in ability of the mind to grasp accurately the reality of the cosmos. Strauss, 171 n. 7, 174-75. For Hobbes, "[t]here is no natural harmony between the human mind and the universe." Strauss, 175. (Is Hobbes a precursor to Kant? But it was Hume, not Hobbes, that Kant said awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers.) And his mechanistic view of the universe, even of man, likening his heart to a metal spring, is well-known. And with it came a resolute rejection of any notion of a final end, of a teleological view of the world or of nature, where the universe "is nothing but bodies and their aimless motions." Strauss, 172. Hobbes's mixture was explosive, revolutionary; it had all the instability of a barrel of nitroglycerine placed at the foundations of the moenia, the walls, of the City of God and the City of Man which saw the heavenly city as its ideal, so as to undermine them. Hobbes's vision, though "an unsupported hope," was a "vision of the City of Man to be erected on the ruins of the City of God." Strauss, 175.

Hobbes's intellectual effort may be viewed as his attempt to explore the continent discovered by Machiavelli, "that greater Columbus" of political philosophy, in whom we also see a combination of idealism and anti-idealism (his "realistic" revolt against "tradition," or "moral virtue" and the value of a "contemplative life," supplanting it by "patriotism or merely political virtue.") Strauss, 177-78. As Strauss views it, Hobbes's efforts were intended to fill a gap left by Machiavelli's corrosive theories:

It was the difficulty implied in the substitution of merely political virtue for moral virtue or the difficulty implied in Machiavelli's admiration for the lupine policies of republican Rome that induced Hobbes to attempt the restoration of the moral principles of politics, i.e., of natural law, on the plane of Machiavelli's "realism." . . . . The predominant tradition had defined natural law with a view to the end or the perfection of man as a rational and social animal. What Hobbes attempted to do on the basis of Machiavelli's fundamental objection to the utopian teaching of tradition, although in opposition to Machiavelli's own solution, was to maintain the idea of natural law but to divorce it from the idea of man's perfection . . . . This complete basis of natural aw must be sought, not in the end of man, but in his beginnings, in the prima natura or, rather, in the primum naturae.

Strauss, 180. For Hobbes, the most fundamental nature of man was passion, not reason. (Hume was to take this thought, and run with it.) "Natural law will not be effectual if its principles are distrusted by passion or are not agreeable to passion," thought Hobbes. "Natural law must," therefore, "be deduced from the most powerful of all passions." Strauss, 180. Accordingly, not justice, not right, but fear of death, especially violent death, becomes the source of all right. In a sort of morbid irony, death, or perhaps more accurately, the desire for self-preservation, becomes the source of political life. But it is not excessive an exaggeration to state, as Strauss does, that in Hobbes: "Death takes the place of the telos." Strauss, 181. Satan, we may remember as an important (though "unscientific") aside, is the Angel of Death.

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Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Thomistic Natural Right

THE THOMISTIC DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHT is the last general type of classic natural right theory identified by Leo Strauss in his Natural Right and History. In many ways the Thomistic theory of natural right cleans up the ambiguities and irresolute character of its pagan predecessors, but Strauss does not find this an improvement. Reading between the lines of Strauss's work, I find it a bit disdainful, a bit impatient of Thomistic natural right. "In definiteness and noble simplicity," St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching on natural law, "surpasses the mitigated Stoic natural law teaching." Strauss, 163. Informed by the light of the Gospel and the lodestar of revealed knowledge of man, of nature, and of God, the Thomistic natural law doctrine appears to have synthesized all tensions, polished all rough spots, in some way to have woven a seamless theory:

No doubt is left, not only regarded the basic harmony between natural right and civil society, but likewise regarding the immutable character of the fundamental propositions of natural law; the principles of the moral law, especially as formulated in the Second Table of the Decalogue, suffer no exception, unless possibly by divine intervention. The doctrine of synderisis or of the conscience explains why the natural law can always be duly promulgated to all men and hence be universally obligatory.

Strauss, 163. One has a hunch, in reading Strauss's short treatment of Thomistic natural law, whether the "lack of doubt" encomium heaped upon the Thomistic doctrine by Strauss is not a back handed complement, sort of like Anthony gives to Brutus in his funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. His treatment of it certainly gives it short shrift. And he mentions it in his Natural Right and History only to ignore it. Strauss, of course, was famous for writing in esoteric ways, leaving hidden messages between the lines. Strauss wonders whether the Thomistic formulation, which is intertwined with Scriptural and Patristic doctrine, is a pure, reason-based natural law doctrine. Is the natural law doctrine, as proposed by St. Thomas, graspable by reason alone? Or does it already presuppose faith in divine revelation? He asks the question already knowing how he intends to answer it.

For Strauss, the question of whether Thomistic natural law is truly natural is made even more urgent as a result of the Thomistic understanding of man's supernatural end and its belief in God. It is obvious that this understanding of man's supernatural end transcends the end that reason would assign to man, which would be limited to intellectual and moral perfection. St. Thomas, however, would see enough of a hint of man's supernatural end even in his natural end, as the natural end of man is reasonably seen as insufficient or lacking. (Clearly all men, regarless of faith, can testify to the plaint of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes vanity of vanities, and all is vanity." Vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. (Eccl. 1:2)) St. Thomas would also believe that the existence of God could be established by reason alone. There is therefore reason's hint that there is more to man than his natural perfection. As Strauss explains:

Thomas . . . virtually contend[s] that, according to natural reason, the natural end of man is insufficient, or points beyond itself or, more precisely, that the end of man cannot consist in philosophic investigation, to say nothing of political activity. Thus natural reason itself creates a presumption in favor of the divine law, which completes or perfects the natural law.

Strauss, 164.

For Strauss, the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, then, would require more than merely a natural theology. It would require the acceptance of a biblical revelation. Strauss, therefore, sees it as being a case of "the absorption of natural law by theology." Strauss, 164. The doctrine of modern natural right, advanced by Hobbes and Locke among others, which Strauss is about to treat in his book, was a reaction to this absorption, this tying-together. As it would have been unknown to the pagan, classical treatment of natural law, it would again be wanted to be unknown by the moderns. Not only would the scriptural influences upon the natural law be rejected, but so likewise would the requirements of natural theology (i.e., that God can be known by reason). The modern natural law theories are based upon the belief that the evidence of the existence of natural moral principles are greater than the evidence of the existence of God. Thus, the argument goes, the basis for moral philosophy is greater than the basis of natural theology. So it is that efforts were made to jettison not only scriptural theology, but even natural theology, from the theory of natural law. In his soft, underhanded, dismissive way of addressing Thomistic natural law, one thinks one sees Strauss's atheism showing.

Strauss hints at the real motive behind this desire to wrest the natural law from natural theology and to separate the two. The State appears to have coveted certain areas of human action (indissolubility of marriage, contraception, he mentions: there are others, health care and education) which, under the Thomistic view, had been within the competency of the Church. How would the State take them back? Thus, for example, Montesquieu in his Spirit of Laws, opposes himself to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law. Why? Strauss suggests that "Montesquieu tried to recover for statesmanship a latitude which had been considerably restricted by the Thomistic teaching." Strauss, 165 (emphasis added). So for Strauss, Montesquieu is "nearer in spirit to the classics than to Thomas." Strauss, 164.

Yes. Perhaps. But perhaps that is just a scholarly way of saying that Montesquieu was unfaithful, was a dismantler. One might recall that Montesquieu De l'Esprit des Lois was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books, and the ecclesiastical censors, though moderns may spurn them, at least had their reasons. Perhaps what is involved is an overweening Caesar absorbing things that are, or at least once were, God's? When one has traveled down this road of separating Caesar from Christ, and made substantial gains in de-divinizing, de-sacralizing the State, why turn back? Food once swallowed and digested, why should it be vomited back out? What sort of recovery is that? One should recall, a dog returns to his own vomit. Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum sic inprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam. (Proverbs 26:11). So maybe the rejection of natural theology and the hint of a supernatural end for man from natural law is a step backward. But Strauss the atheist did not mention that possibility.