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Leo Strauss's Confrontation with Max Weber: A Search for a Genuine Social Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Nasser Behnegar
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Extract

An analysis of Leo Strauss's difficult and relatively neglected criticism of Max Weber in Natural Right and History reveals the fundamental difficulties that political science, and social science more generally, must overcome in order to be a genuine science. In Strauss's view, the inadequacy of the fact-value distinction, which is now widely acknowledged, compels a re-examination of Weber's denial of the possibility of valid knowledge of values. Strauss identifies the serious ground of this denial as Weber's insight that modern philosophy or science cannot refute religion. Believing that philosophy or science cannot ultimately give an account of itself that meets the challenge of religion, Weber maintained a “tragic” view of the human situation. Strauss also expresses profound doubt about the possibility of philosophy or science, but ultimately he suggests that a certain kind of study of the history of political philosophy might resolve the conflict between philosophy and divine revelation, and, therewith, the “value problem.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 97 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1997

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References

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10 It would of course be foolish to take Strauss's conclusion for granted. There are, however, in principle only two legitimate responses: one must either show that modern science does not reject revelation or show that its rejection of revelation is based on sufficient reasons.

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31 Although Strauss is known for his insistence that one should understand a thinker as he understood himself, his work on Weber shows clearly that he does not believe that social science should confine itself to this approach, for otherwise the social scientist “would have to bow without murmur to the self-interpretation of his subjects” (pp. 55–56). This approach is merely preparatory: before judging or explaining a doctrine in sociological or other terms, one must understand it exactly as its originator understood it (p. 57). But if self-interpretations can be erroneous, understanding a thinker better than he understood himself may be the true understanding.

32 Brecht, Arnold, Political Theory: The Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961)Google Scholar; Bruun, H. H., Science, Values, and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1972).Google Scholar

33 Strauss's contention, therefore, is not refuted by Weber's alleged personal preference for the ethic of responsibility, for according to Weber's theory of values it is permissible to reject this ethic. Similarly, Brecht's contention that for Weber “values are unequal according to their different origins, implications, and consequences” contradicts Weber's discussion of syndicalism, which shows that these considerations are not decisive ( Political Theory, p. 263; MWES, pp. 120–21). Regarding the consequences of the acceptance of this thesis by social science positivism, consider Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, p. 20.

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35 Guenther Roth's interpretation of this passage testifies to the strength of these temptations. He writes: “But Strauss is fair enough to denounce Reductio ad Hitlerum, the assertion that Weber's thinking led to fascism” (Bendix, Reinhard and Guenther, , Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971], p. 64)Google Scholar. Strauss, however, argues that even if Weber's thoughts led to fascism, one cannot dismiss them because they can still be true.

36 Weber's nice distinction between “value judgments” and “reference to values” is untenable, because “reference to values presupposes appreciation of values”, and this appreciation “enables and forces the social scientist to evaluate the social phenomena” (p. 63). Ernest Nagel sees the force of Strauss's criticism and therefore tries to defend value-free social science by making a distinction between “characterizing value judgments” and “appraising value judgments”. He admits that science cannot dispense with “characterizing judgments”, but he does not show why these judgments are more valid than appraising ones (Structure of Science, pp. 490–95).

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38 Ibid., p. 22.

39 Ibid.

40 Consider Weber's criticism of the attitude of “the mere ‘power politician’” for having no relation to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action is truly interwoven (MWES, pp. 116–17). Weber's belief in the supremacy of conflict is the common link that explains the otherwise mysterious connection between Weber's inaugural lecture (Gesammelte Politische Schriften, ed. Winckelman, Johannes [Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1958], pp. 1–25)Google Scholar and his later writings which are based on the notion of a value-free social science.

41 Compare this with Nietzsche's preference for tragedy (26n.) and his description of the future ruler as “the Roman Caesar with Christ's soul” (The Will to Power, trans. Kaufman, Walter and Hollingdale, R. J. [New York: Random House, 1967], p. 513)Google Scholar.

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44 Charles R. Walgreen lectures delivered at the University of Chicago, 1946, III, 4; see also 70n.

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47 MSS, p. 84.

48 Ibid., p. 110.

49 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), 13Google Scholar; MWES, pp. 350–57. Strauss argues that Spinoza's ultimate critique of revelation was his argument that “the world and human life are perfectly intelligible without the assumption of a mysterious God”, but that Spinoza's system, and every other system, failed to give such an account. Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. Sinclair, E. M. (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), pp. 28–29Google Scholar. Science, therefore, came to understand itself as infinitely progressive. Weber realized that this really is an unacknowledged admission by science of its defeat: an infinitely progressive science is meaningless and leads to weariness instead of satiety (MWES, pp. 137–40,356). Whereas science presupposes that its object is accessible to reason, the infinitely progressive character of science suggests that “one can say with at least equal right that it [the object of science] is radically mysterious” (Strauss, , “Relativism”, in Relativism and the Study of Man, ed. Schoeck, Helmut and Wiggens, J. W. [Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961[, p. 154).Google Scholar

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51 Ibid.; Weber, , Protestant Ethic, p. 182.Google Scholar

52 Eden, , “Why Weber Wasn't a Nihilist?”, p. 225Google Scholar; Drury, Shadia, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), pp. 38–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Compare Strauss's account with Weber's argument about the conflict between science and religion: being unable to answer with certainty the question of its own ultimate presupposition and being compelled in the name of intellectual integrity to regard the possession of rational culture as the highest good, the intellect not only shoulders the burden of ethical guilt, but also, and more decisively, is marked with “senselessness—if this cultural value is to be judged in terms of its own standard” (MWES, p. 355).

54 MWES, pp. 323–59. Moreover, since Strauss does not share Weber's preference for tragedy, Strauss takes more seriously both revelation's claim and philosophy's claim to be the one thing needful (compare pp. 74–75 with Weber, MWES, pp. 148–49). Whereas Weber suggests that we should combine the ethics of intention and the ethics of responsibility (MWES, p. 127), Strauss argues that we can be either philosophers or theologians but not both.

55 Perhaps, a metaphysically neutral science would not be at odds with the Bible. But Strauss suggests that the non-neutrality of social science becomes visible in its analysis of religion: “The new science uses sociological or psychological theories regarding religion which exclude, without considering it, the possibility that religion rests ultimately on God's revealing Himself to man” (Liberalism: Ancient and Modern [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968], p. 218)Google Scholar. The question is whether this apparent agnosticism is compatible with reverence for revelation or whether it “is actually doubt or distrust” of revelation. It should go without saying that the existence of pious social scientists does not affect the answer to this question.

56 Strauss, therefore, suggests that the Scholastic synthesis of philosophy and Christian revelation was really an attempt to resolve the conflict in favor of revelation. It was on account of this attempted resolution that philosophy first lost its character as a way of life and became an instrument or a department, a view which has survived Scholasticism and continues to obscure the conflict between philosophy and revelation.

57 MSS, p. 16.

58 Plato The Apology 20d–22e.

59 Strauss, Le, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 172Google Scholar; Micah 6:8. This philosophic enterprise should not be confused with a polemic against religion, which seeks to discredit or weaken religion by hook or by crook.

60 Strauss, , What Is Political Philosophy?, p. 104Google Scholar. Consider also Weber's contention that those who wanted to politicize the German university were turning it “into a theological seminary—except that it does not have the latter's religious dignity” (MSS, p. 7).

61 It may be objected that Easton was not concerned with fundamental riddles, but with important political issues such as urban riots and Vietnam. Yet there is a kinship between resoluteness in following moral and political agendas and the disregard of precision, a disregard nourished by a hope based on either secular or religious faith that one's actions will prove to be correct. Consider Weber's argument that “some kind of faith must always exist” for a politician, because “the final result of political action often, no, even regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning” (MWES, p. 117).

62 Easton, , “The New Revolution in Social Science,” pp. 1053–55.Google Scholar

63 But must the agreement be an agreement about “ultimate values”? Has not liberalism shown that this is not necessarily the case? To respond adequately to these serious objections, one must investigate the importance of the critique of religion for liberalism. One must also consider Strauss's contention that“a society that tolerates indefinitely many Weltanschauungen does this by virtue of one particular Weltanschauung”(Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, p. 37).

64 Strauss, , “The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon,” p. 532Google Scholar. Weber suggests that the harmony between religion and politics was shattered by the emergence of universalistic religions of salvation, or more precisely, by the emergence of Christianity. Christianity, however, is still a social phenomenon. Although it came into conflict with the natural sib and the political orders of the world, it did not undermine the authority of the community but sought to reformulate and strengthen its basis. Accordingly, “prophecy has created a new social community” (MWES, pp. 333, 328–29).

65 Strauss, , Spinoza's Critique of Religion, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

66 Strauss, Leo, “An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's,” Interpretation 7:3 (1978): 2.Google Scholar

67 Kennington, , “Strauss's Natural Right and History,” p. 69.Google Scholar

68 Ibid.

69 Turner, and Factor, , Max Weber, p. 119.Google Scholar

70 Strauss argues that divine guidance originally took the form of divine laws, which informed man not only about his obligations to gods but also to other men. Concern for justice seems to be the common ground between classical philosophers and believers. If it is true “that the moral principles have a greater evidence than the teachings even of natural theology” (p. 164), one might hope that the quarrel between philosophy and revelation could be settled by an examination of the nature of justice.

71 In chapter 1 Strauss argues that in order to understand the issue between historicism and nonhistoricist philosophy we must have a nonhistoricist understanding of classical philosophy (the subject of chapter 4) and “an understanding of the genesis of historicism that does not take for granted the soundness of historicism” (the subjects of chapters 5 and 6). Political life seems to have been the original matrix of both history and divine revelation.

72 Strauss, , The City and Man, p. 10.Google Scholar

73 MSS, p. 18.

74 Strauss, , Introduction to Political Philosophy, p. 289Google Scholar; The City and Man, p. 2.

75 Compare Strauss, , An Introduction to Political Philosophy, pp. 289–90 with 309–310.Google Scholar

76 “As far as I know, the present-day arguments in favor of revelation against philosophy are based on an inadequate understanding of classical philosophy” (Ibid., p. 300, emphasis added). The classical response to revelation would not lead to the spiritual exhaustion of the individual, if it does not presuppose the solution to the riddle of being. In fact, one may argue that response is necessary so that we may become free to articulate that riddle.