Mark Blitz

Leo Strauss's Understanding of Modernity

ne of the arguments for which Leo Strauss is famous is that the division between ancients and moderns is a decisive intellectual split. It is more significant than the threefold cut among ancient, medieval, and modern, which is so useful for academics following Hegel. Strauss’s division between ancient and modern includes the medieval on the ancient side. Modernity begins with Machiavelli and is a new beginning. Interest in the notion of modernity has grown since Strauss’s death. This growth has something to do with Strauss and his students, but it also, and even more so, results from the pervasive interest in postmodernism and the influence of Heidegger’s students once or twice removed. A look at Strauss’s argument, therefore, is useful not only intrinsically, but also because it helps restore substance to today’s often ethereal discussions. I focus my analysis on early modernity, the period between Machiavelli and the American founding. My purpose is to outline the basic political and ethical elements of the split and then to uncover the less obvious “ontological” matters that Strauss has in view when he splits the classics and moderns politically. By uncovering these objects, we also gain a useful standpoint from which to see whether what the moderns newly emphasized can be grasped sufficiently on classic grounds.

Responsibility and Biotechnology

e possess an obvious and growing ability to manipulate ourselves biochemically. The technologies we use vary, and some may never prove fruitful, but W few doubt that we will wield remarkable powers in fifty, twenty, or even ten years. The political question at hand is how to guide these powers’ use. The issue divides into two sets of problems. One set concerns our choice among ends, given what we understand, however imprecisely, to be good. An example is the clash between health for some and life for others that we see in the stemcell and therapeutic cloning controversies. However difficult such choices, we have grounds to make them. Most controversies about them follow familiar paths. Another example (at least at first blush) is genetic selection. The traits we might choose are good or not in terms that we grasp, see, and feel and to which we are attracted. The second set of issues concerns our inadvertently (or even intentionally) changing the conditions under which we experience or strive for these goods and, therefore, their meaning or goodness for us. Could we be in danger of denaturing the human good through misunderstanding complex interrelations, bad judgment, or even venality? We fear or ought to fear that we will distort what is good, destroying or weakening the conditions under which we grasp it and the phenomena that embody or lead us to it. One clear example of this is the way we might denature pride and spiritedness in the name of controlling anger and aggression. This issue goes beyond genetics and reaches also to questions of drug therapies, brain chemistry, and artificial intelligence.’ The two sets of problems fit together. Both require that we think seriously about why things are good and the conditions under which what is good can be experienced and is attractive. We are moving into a period of literally trying to

Beyond Original Meaning: The Task of Interpretation

I discuss Scalia and education under three rubrics: first, what his opinions in cases relevant to education tell us about his views of democratic self-government, educational choice, and religion; second, what his opinions in these cases teach us about his view of constitutional interpretation; and third, what his understanding of constitutional interpretation teaches us about the task of interpretation itself. My overall point is that Scalia’s education opinions are consistent with his “originalism,” and that originalism is a sensible but ultimately limited mode of constitutional interpretation.

Are America's Political Principles Universal?

Abstract Universal principles direct political life by defending natural rights and by directing politics to the dominance of reason in enjoying other goods. Good politics comprises the institutions and laws that combine these principles in the most excellent conditions, and lesser politics would imitate these as appropriate to their own circumstances. Principles much like our founding ones are universal in this subtle manner, and are, therefore, justly available for export, in complex ways.