Gabriel Sanchez, a prominent contributor and critic of contemporary philosophy, engages in a thought-provoking discussion about Leo Strauss. They delve into Strauss's defense of natural rights against historicism and positivism. The conversation highlights the tensions between societal ideals and universal standards of justice. Additionally, they explore how modern scientific thought often falls short, advocating for a return to classical wisdom. Sanchez also contrasts Strauss's views with those of thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre, emphasizing the relevance of classical political philosophy.
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Strauss' Natural Right vs Natural Law
Strauss distinguishes natural right from natural law, seeing it as a broader way to understand the right way of life by nature.
He critiques Aquinas' natural law for being too determinate, lacking room for prudence and situational judgment.
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Historicism's Self-Contradiction Explained
Strauss sees historicism's flaw as its self-contradiction: it denies eternal truth yet asserts that all thought is historically contingent.
Historicism leads to relativism, making it impossible to judge different epochs or cultures against a universal standard.
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Strauss on Positivism's Limits
Strauss critiques positivism for its insistence on a fact-value distinction, denying social sciences can make value judgments.
He argues that sociologists inevitably make value judgments, even if implicitly, contradicting positivist claims.
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Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
Jacob Klein
Natural Right and History
Leo Strauss
In this book, Leo Strauss argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. He contrasts classical natural right, as expounded by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas, with modern natural right, which began with Thomas Hobbes and was further developed by thinkers like Locke, Rousseau, and Burke. Strauss critiques modern natural right for leading to historicist relativism and argues that classical natural right is more in line with human nature as political animals. The book is a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual crisis of modernity and the role of philosophy in understanding natural right[1][3][4].
Plato's Mino
Plato's Mino
Plato
«To reject natural right is tantamount to saying that all right is positive right, and this means that what is right is determined exclusively by the legislators and the courts of the various countries. Now it is obviously meaningful, and sometimes even necessary, to speak of “unjust” laws or “unjust” decisions. In passing such judgments we imply that there is a standard of right and wrong independent of positive right and higher than positive right: a standard with reference to which we are able to judge of positive right. Many people today hold the view that the standard in question is in the best case nothing but the ideal adopted by our society or our “civilization” and embodied in its way of life or its institutions. But, according to the same view, all societies have their ideals, cannibal societies no less than civilized ones. […] If there is no standard higher than the ideal of our society, we are utterly unable to take a critical distance from that ideal. But the mere fact that we can raise the question of the worth of the ideal of our society shows that there is something in man that is not altogether in slavery to his society, and therefore that we are able, and hence obliged, to look for a standard with reference to which we can judge of the ideals of our own as well as of any other society.» (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History).
Pater Edmund talks to Gabriel Sanchez about Leo Strauss’s defense of natural right against historicism and positivism. The discuss questions such as: Who is Leo Strauss and why should integralists care about him? Was he esoterically a nihilist? Why did he criticize Thomists? Is he better than Alasdair MacIntyre?
Gladden J. Pappin, “The Mutual Concerns of Leo Strauss and His Catholic Contemporaries: Passerin d’Entrèves, McCoy, Simon,” in: Geoffrey M. Vaughan (ed.), Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2018, pp. 137-166.
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