David Lewis Schaefer

Montaigne, Tocqueville, and the Politics of Skepticism

A sensible starting point for political science in a liberal democracy, it has plausibly been suggested, is the skeptical and empirical outlook of the proverbial “man from Missouri,” who has to be shown the evidence for a political proposition before he will assent to it.’ In recent decades, however, this healthy skepticism has been replaced among “enlightened” Americans by a dogmatic relativism (as depicted by the late Allan Bloom, among others) that denies the truth of all moral propositions, except for the proposition that the truth is relative (and hence in practice, “anything goes”).2 It is not, of course, that Americans (or any other people) are literally relativists, in the sense of not behaving as if they believed in some moral opinions over others (witness “political correctness”). But relativism as a widely held theoretical orientation stands in the way of any genuinely liberal education, since it denies in advance the possibility of learning truths that can affect the way that we live. It is a way of insulating one’s particular convictions or prejudices against serious questioning: Objectors to a particular assertion meet with replies such as, “well, that’s just how I feel.” As applied to politics, relativism undermines the foundation of American constitutionalism in the doctrine of natural rights, by denying that there can be a rationally knowable and objective or Wanscultural standard of right, as distinguished from a Rawlsian appeal to the idiosyncratic (and in principle malleable) beliefs that characterize the particular “culture” or community to which we happen to be10ng.~ I propose in this essay to examine the relation between healthy liberal skepticism and the dogmatic relativism, or

Economic Scarcity and Political Philosophy Ancient and Modern Views

The history of political philosophy exhibits two fundamentally opposed responses to economic scarcity. The classical view, exemplified by Aristotles Politics, accepts scarcity as an inevitable feature of human existence, but endeavors to direct at least some individuals toward a life of virtue that transcends the concern with economic acquisition. Aristotle rhetorically exaggerates natures beneficence to humans in order to facilitate this goal. A concomitant of his approach is the acceptance of slavery, despite its acknowledged injustice, as the precondition of the leisure essential to the practice of virtue by the citys governing class. In contrast, the modern doctrine, as expounded in Montaignes Essays, emphasizes the natural neediness of humans and their consequent need to ameliorate their condition by the technological mastery of nature. The modern view aims to liberate human acquisitiveness from the moral and political restraints that both classical and medieval thinkers had endeavored to impose on it. Part of the reason for Montaignes advocacy of acquisitiveness and self-indulgence had been the desire to divert peoples minds from the religious, moral, and political concerns that generated civil strife and religious persecution. The materialism and privatism that characterize modern liberal society render it vulnerable to the attacks of the radical left, however, and subject also to the more profound criticism of Solzhenitsyn.

“Moral Theory” Versus Political Philosophy: Two Approaches to Justice

John Rawlss book A Theory of Justice1 has been widely looked to not only as a substantive account of the meaning of justice, but also as a model of the procedure by which the requirements of justice may be determined. Rawls terms his mode of approach to justice “moral theory,” and apparently subsumes the traditional discipline of political philosophy under this more inclusive science. At the same time, he claims that his approach is Socratic in nature, and that it “goes back in its essentials to Aristotles procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics ” (pp. 49, 51). “Moral theory,” from this point of view, is simply a new name for the enterprise pursued by the great political philosophers from Socrates onwards. But, surprisingly, despite the number of outstanding thinkers who devoted themselves to this enterprise, little progress was ever made in it, for the theories with which we have been left, according to Rawls, remain “primitive and have grave defects” (p. 52). It is Rawlss claim to have developed a “theory of justice” that is superior to any of those devised by previous philosophers, in that it conforms better to the dictates of mens “sense of justice” (p. 52).

Leo Strauss and American Democracy: A Response to Wood and Holmes

Although Leo Strauss spent the better part of his scholarly career in the United States, his name remained essentially unknown in this country during his lifetime outside the rather restricted academic circles of political science and Judaic studies. Only in recent years — owing, positively, to the best-selling status achieved by a book by one of his students, Allan Blooms Closing of the American Mind ; and negatively, to several critical reviews of his thought and influence in the semi-popular media —has Strausss name been publicized to a somewhat wider audience. This article is a response to two of the critiques: Gordon Woods relatively moderate “The Fundamentalists and the Constitution,” published in the New York Review of Books (18 February 1988), and Stephen Taylor Holmess less restrained “Truths for Philosophers Alone?”, which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement (1–7 December 1989)

Of Cannibals and Kings: Montaigne's Egalitarianism

It is paradoxical that an author whose thought is widely recognized to have had a profound influence on such revolutionary thinkers as Locke, Bayle, and Rousseau should be regarded as having himself been an extreme conservative in questions of political practice. Yet such is the almost unanimous judgment of contemporary scholars on Michel de Montaigne. While Montaigne endeavored in the Essays to question radically the grounds of all accepted beliefs and practices, and specifically denounced the unreasonableness and unjustness of many laws and customs practiced in his time, it is believed that he nonetheless opposed all attempts at political innovation or reform, fearing that any such change would only make matters worse.

Montaigne: Founder of Modern Liberalism

Abstract In this essay David Lewis Schaefer summarizes and defends the argument set forth in his book The Political Philosophy of Montaigne (Cornell University Press, 1990; second edition 2019) that Michele de Montaignes Essays (first edition, 1580) merits consideration as a founding text of modern political liberalism. After responding to the most extensive published critique of his interpretation (by James Supple) and citing other recent studies that harmonize with his argument, Schaefer compares his analysis of Montaignes political aims and political-ethical teaching with those set forth in two other recent studies: Philippe Desans Montaigne: A Life and Pierre Manents Montaigne: La Vie sans loi.

Fair Howsing? Robert Howse on Strauss and Straussians

ABSTRACT Robert Howses Leo Strauss Man of Peace performs a valuable service in vindicating Strauss against scurrilous charges coming from the academic Left in recent decades that he was an antidemocratic warmonger, rather than (as Strauss described Socrates) a seeker of peace, though not a pacifist. Unfortunately, Howse initially pursues his goal by launching a variety of unfounded criticisms of some of Strausss most prominent students, accusing them of distorting their masters teaching in the direction of bellicosity and intolerance. This major flaw aside, Howses book offers insightful interpretations of Strausss analyses of Thucydides, and Machiavelli, as well as his opposition to Carl Schmitts “warrior morality,” that are highly illuminating. Howse demonstrates that Strauss was neither a Machiavellian “realist” nor someone who dismissed the Florentine as a mere “teacher of evil” (as a superficial reading based on the first page of Thoughts on Machiavelli would suggest); rather, he found in Thucydides a superior, because it is more moderate, resolution of the problems of political morality raised by Machiavelli (even if that resolution would require considerable adaptation in the Christian era). Unfortunately, in his concluding chapters, Howse distorts Strausss thought by bending it in the direction of his own favored political enterprise of increasingly subordinating national sovereignty to transnational institutions, an enterprise for which neither Strausss writings nor transcripts of his classroom lectures provide support.

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Economic Analysis or Tract for the Times?

ABSTRACT I argue that the French economist Thomas Pikettys 2014 (American) bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century is not the treatise of economic analysis that its author purports it to be, but is rather a work of political partisanship making claims about the supposedly inevitable increase in the share of national income deriving from capital as opposed to labor—to the point where Chinese bankers or Middle Eastern oil sheiks might own “everything,” even peoples bicycles, barring either world catastrophe or broad government intervention—that lack any empirical support or logical plausibility. As a professed heir to (what he understands to be) the spirit of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, as distinguished from the American Declaration of Independence, Piketty displays none of the respect for the rights of the individual—including the right not to have lawfully acquired property arbitrarily confiscated by government—that the original American political tradition entails. Nor, indeed, despite his profession of staking everything on “democracy,” does Piketty display any regard for the principle of self-government. Rather, his ultimate, admittedly “utopian” goal, outlined in Part IV of his book, is of a European “budgetary parliament,” selected in vague fashion by the existing parliaments of Eurozone members (not by the people themselves), that would hold sweeping powers to confiscate any privately owned wealth that its members regarded as “excessive” and redistribute it to others they deem more needy or deserving. This body would exacerbate all the difficulties resulting from the European Unions widely publicized “democracy deficit.” Yet Piketty implies it should ultimately be a model for world governance. Ultimately, his cause is the opposite of democracy: the unfettered continental or even worldwide rule of unaccountable bureaucrats, advised by “intellectuals” like Piketty himself, convinced that they know far better than their fellows how the latter should live their lives, and claiming the authority to regulate it accordingly.

Yoram Hazony and Leo Strauss on the Relation between Philosophy and Revelation

ABSTRACT This essay challenges Yoram Hazonys ostensible correction of Leo Strausss account of the tension between philosophy and revelation in Hazonys book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. While Hazony persuasively demonstrates the value of the Hebrew Bible, notably the half that he calls the “History of Israel,” as a work of rational political theory, emphasizing the difference in function between the Torah and the Christian “New Testament” (which serves chiefly to “bear witness” to particular events, rather than account for the permanent character of human and political life), he wrongly accuses Strauss of sharing the position of the radically antiphilosophic Christian theologian Tertullian that the Bible and classical philosophy are “absolutely oppos[ed],” even though Strauss, unlike Tertullian, takes the side of philosophy rather than the Bible in this conflict. Contrary to the impression Hazony conveys, Strauss readily acknowledged that the believer, no less than the philosopher, is obliged to make use of reason in his quest for truth and noted the critical areas of agreement between the Torah and classical philosophy. He simply emphasized the conflict between philosophys reliance on reason as the ultimate guide to truth and the dependence of the Bible on belief in divine revelation, a dependence that Hazony implausibly seems to deny. And Hazonys challenge to the very distinction between reason and revelation threatens to weaken our appreciation of both sides of this tension, which Strauss identified as the source of the Wests “vitality.”

Grant N. Havers, Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy: A Conservative Critique

Grant Haverss Leo Straus and Anglo-American Democracy: A Conservative Critique seriously misrepresents Strausss thought, largely as a result of Haverss determination to use the history of political philosophy for partisan purposes of his own, unlike Strausss determined and meticulous effort to learn fromthe greatest philosophic writers both ancient and modern.ᅟ