Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 14

MODERN AGE

Strauss's influence on the development
of what some call the Straussian school of
political theorists is extremely important for
political theory in American higher educa-
tion and in the councils of government. That
influence seems to have two sources. One
source is Strauss's admirable and influential
mastery of classical philosophy. Many of
his students have contributed significantly
to our understanding of ancient political
theory, and some recent scholarship on the
Progressive movement by Straussian schol-
ars affiliated with the Claremont Review is
critical for our understanding of the growth
of an all-intrusive administrative state in
American political life.22 However, the other,
unfortunate effect of Strauss's influence
is due to making the "doctrine of natural
right" a part of the philosophic discussion
of the best regime. Thus the best regime is
committed to the actualization of natural
right, and natural right is seen as integral to
its definition. That, of course, is contrary to
the original meaning of the classical theory
of "right by nature."
Strauss's examination of natural right
"doctrine" would have been seen by Voege-
lin as a philosophic "derailment," a term
Voegelin used to express the eclipse of
philosophy grounded in experience. Derail-
ment can take several forms. In the period
of transition of classical philosophy to the
speculation of the Stoics, philosophy was
deformed into "doctrine." The symbols that
Plato and Aristotle created to articulate
their experience of reality were evocative
of original experience of the sacred. But
once philosophy ceases to be a medium of
experience, Voegelin writes, "a new intel-
lectual game with imaginary realities in an
imaginary realm of thought, the game of
propositional metaphysics, has been opened
with world historic consequences that reach
into our own present."23 My explanation of
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FALL 2014

this process in The Development of Political
Theory is still valid:
The Stoic dogmatization of philosophy,
though destructive in its ultimate con-
sequences, had the immediate effect of
preserving the insight of Classical phi-
losophy against the inevitable defect
that philosophy requires "philosophers"
if it is to be preserved. In the absence of
persons of the rank of Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle to continue the search for
truth, and of circumstances conducive
to the contemplative life, the dogmatiza-
tion of philosophy at least preserved the
symbols of philosophy. But the ravages
of dogmatism can be contained only so
long before they take pernicious forms.
For Voegelin, the concept "ideology"
represents the final turn in the decline of
philosophy when the symbols no longer
articulate original experience of theoph-
any, but become the means by which
theophany is eradicated from public and
personal consciousness.24

The derailment of Strauss's classical schol-
arship in his doctrine of natural right has
had negative consequences for American
foreign policy.
Robert Kagan's important analysis of
the development of America in Dangerous
Nation contains themes consistent with
Strauss's natural right doctrine. American
foreign policy, according to Kagan, was "rev-
olutionary" as a consequence of the struggle
for independence from Britain. From that
struggle, the Founders "invented a new
foreign policy founded upon the universal-
ist ideology that the Revolution spawned."
Contrary to the interpretation of the War
of Independence by conservatives that the
rebellion sought to preserve the rights of
Englishmen, Kagan argues that the colonists
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