Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 10

MODERN AGE

Despite Strauss's lack of interest in, or his
ignoring of, theology or biblical revelation,
it is significant that Strauss's students report
that he reengaged students who had placed
some distance between themselves and the
religions of their birth owing to estrangement
or spiritual dryness.10 Eric Voegelin's works
attracted American students and scholars for
whom the Old Testament and the Gospels
were more than a distant memory. Most
carried the truths of Christianity "in their
hips," to use a phrase of Willmoore Kendall,
and most students of Voegelin at the Uni-
versity of Notre Dame remembered lessons
from attendance at Catholic elementary and
secondary schools. The heads of Strauss's and
Voegelin's students were filled with ideas,
not cannabis or LSD, and they watched with
some interest the cultural decline of Ameri-
can churches, the destruction of higher edu-
cation by a "New Left" in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, and the intellectual weakness
of elected political leaders who ignorantly
expanded the powers and programs of the
American administrative state.

A

s for the conservative "movement,"
both Voegelin and Strauss were skepti-
cal. Both had experienced "movements" in
Europe that were destructive of the order
of the West. That may explain Voegelin's
criticism of Gerhart Niemeyer for holding an
event at the Chicago meeting of the Ameri-
can Political Science Association in 1964
that featured writings by Voegelin that, he
complained, could be described as having "a
strong slant toward conservative politics."11
What Leo Strauss may have thought of his
student Harry Jaffa, whose scholarly gifts
were used to craft speeches for Barry Gold-
water, is an interesting question.
Carnes Lord wrote that though Strauss
would have welcomed the resurgence of the
conservatism of the 1970s (Strauss died in
10

FALL 2014

1973), he would not have accepted "the fun-
damental outlook of the dominant elements
in the conservative coalition that emerged
in the 1980s,"12 the era of the "Reagan
Revolution."
If that is an accurate assessment, would
Voegelin have been similarly disposed?
Voegelin's position as a fellow at the Hoover
Institution for more than fifteen years would
have put him in close contact with many
Hoover scholars who served in the Reagan
administration. That familiarity would have
shaped his understanding of what was hap-
pening in the United States that led to the
election of Ronald Reagan. And Voegelin
was a realist who understood that Com-
munism represented a dangerous, deformed
consciousness that placed civilization in
peril.
Both Strauss and Voegelin deplored
the politicization of scholarship, however.
When I asked Voegelin about the scholar-
ship of Hoover Institution fellows, Voegelin
remarked, "Quite good, if your purpose is to
work for the next American president."
A sentence in William Galston's essay in
Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American
Regime suggests that Voegelin's and Strauss's
economic views may also have shaped their
views of American politics. Galston, who
served as a political appointee in the Clinton
administration, writes, "In many respects,
after all, the social value of work exceeds its
market value."13 Galston's rejection of unfet-
tered markets is considered heresy by some
contemporary American conservatives, but,
for European political theorists like Voegelin
and Strauss, it is likely that "capitalism"
would seem ideological and indicative of a
closed system they would have rejected. We
should remember also that even Frederick
Hayek in the Constitution of Liberty was at
pains to explore how a free economy can
ensure "a given minimum of sustenance
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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