“Jerusalem in Athens: On the Biblical Epigraphs to Leo Strauss’s Natural Right and

History”

Paul O’Mahoney

Dublin, Ireland

Abstract:The Old Testament epigraphs used by Leo Strauss for his study 'Natural Right and History' tendinvariably to vex his readers. In the book itself and in other of his writings, Strauss explicitly statesthat the Old Testament tradition does not know 'nature' in the philosophical sense, and hence theconcept of 'natural right' is unknown or alien to that tradition. Another, more obvious problem theypresent has been seemingly universally passed over by commentators: neither epigraph tells the readeranything explicitly about right, natural or otherwise. One cannot claim them to contain lessons aboutright, because such lessons are not directly extractable from the epigraphs as they stand. Here I wishto argue that Strauss’s choice of epigraph does two things: first, it points to the fact that OldTestament stories can be given a political reading, or used to illustrate political lessons. In implyingthis, Strauss is following Machiavelli, who is the most important figure in ‘Natural Right andHistory’. Second, the epigraphs point to the deeply problematic nature of the concept of natural right,primarily the equivocal nature of the term, a difficulty never made explicit by Strauss but theawareness of which permeates his study.

Jerusalem in Athens: On the Biblical Epigraphs to Leo Strauss’s Natural Right and

History

I.

Strauss’s Natural Right and History takes as its epigraphs two biblical passages. The sources

are not given, but they are from, respectively, 2 Samuel 12:1−4, and 1 Kings 21:1−3. They

run:

There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man hadexceeding many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb,which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with hischildren: it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and wasunto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to takeof his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come untohim; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.

Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab kingof Samaria. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may have itfor a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house: and I will give thee for it a bettervineyard than it; or, if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money. AndNaboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it to me, that I should give the inheritance of myfathers unto thee.

Natural Right and History is a complicated book. The reader first gets an inkling of its

complexity as it becomes apparent that the critique of historicism and Weber’s positivism

elaborated in the opening chapters is in fact primarily a critique of historicism as represented

by Heidegger (who is nowhere named). This oblique treatment of Heidegger’s thought is the

first hint that Strauss’s purposes in the work might not be immediately apparent. The

complexity of the book’s structure as a whole has been admirably demonstrated in an

essential article by Richard Kennington.1 But, in a book already full of obfuscations and

reticence, the epigraphs still stand out as enigmatic. Their relationship to the content of the

book is obscure. One would presume them to illuminate its principle ideas, and to express

generally some principles of natural right. They have been taken this way. Kennington claims

the first story to illustrate ‘the natural sense of injustice present when a rich man with

1 Richard Kennington, ‘Strauss’s Natural Right and History’ Review of Metaphysics 35 (Sept. 1981)pp. 57−86

abundant resources takes from a poor man’; in the second he emphasizes the offer of fair

compensation and the fact that Naboth’s land is an ancestral inheritance. The stories are thus

related to what Strauss calls ‘those simple experiences regarding right and wrong which are at

the bottom of the natural right doctrines.’2 Other critics take a similar line. Stephen Smith

writes:

If certain forms of experience are indeed fundamental or natural, then presumably they shouldbe recoverable by anyone at any time and at any place. The two biblical passages that are usedas epigraphs for Natural Right and History are a case in point...It is revealing that Strauss citesthese passages unadorned. Presumably, one does not need to know their source, originallanguage, or context to grasp immediately their meaning. In what language or in what culture isit ever right for a rich man to steal from a poor one? Although the term ‘natural right’ is ofGreek origin, it presumably bespeaks experiences available to everyone.3

For another critic, in agreement with Kennington, the epigraphs ‘give examples of the sort of

phenomena regarding justice or right that are known to the prephilosophic consciousness and

that underlie the philosophic contention that there is a natural right.’4 Harry Jaffa argues that

Strauss’s choice of epigraphs indicates that even if there is ‘no knowledge of natural right as

such in the Old Testament,’ as Strauss claims, the ‘experience’ of natural right is ‘manifestly

present.’ He further argues that they demonstrate that Strauss ‘understood natural right in the

light of the teachings of the Old Testament.’5

These assumptions do not settle the issue of the epigraphs. The repetition of

‘presumably’ in Smith’s passage alone indicates their abiding opacity. There are two

immediate and basic problems with the chosen passages. Strauss’s statement that there is ‘no

knowledge of natural right as such’ in the Old Testament is based on the reasoning that the

discovery of nature is the work of philosophy, and ‘where there is no philosophy, there is no

knowledge of natural right as such.’ And so the Old Testament, ‘whose basic premise may be

said to be the implicit rejection of philosophy, does not know “nature”.’6 The idea of natural

2 Kennington p. 76; Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1965) p. 105 (NRH)3 Stephen B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism (University of Chicago Press,2006) pp. 159−1604 Anthony De Crespigny & Kenneth Minogue, Contemporary Political Philosophers (London: Taylorand Francis, 1976) p. 92 n. 625 Harry V. Jaffa, Storm Over the Constitution (New York: Lexington Books, 1999) p. xxi n. 96 NRH p. 81

right implies philosophy.7 Strauss’s book therefore must be understood as a work of

philosophy, and an engagement with a philosophical tradition that emphatically departs from

the spirit and teaching of the Old Testament. The first problem is thus the question of why he

would turn precisely to the Old Testament to furnish the first statement of the book

concerning natural right. One might be inclined to accept Jaffa’s reasoning. Though there is

no knowledge of natural right as such—that is, qua natural right, so defined conceptually—in

the Old Testament, there is nevertheless ‘the experience’ of natural right.8 However, this

leads us to the second basic problem, one that is so blindingly obvious that it is predictably

overlooked. That is, neither passage actually tells one anything one way or the other about

right and wrong. We are simply given two short descriptions of actions or events; no praise or

blame is apportioned. It is left to the reader to censure the rich man in the first, and neither

commendation nor condemnation of any kind is due Naboth or Ahab in the second.

It is difficult to hold that Strauss understood natural right ‘in the light of the teachings

of the Old Testament’ given that he imputes to biblical religion, along with ancient

egalitarian natural right, the cause of the decay of original classical natural right, which is to

say the specifically and emphatically political character of the classical natural right

teaching.9 We can add that the experience of natural right supposedly revealed in the two

epigraphs does not exist in an unadulterated form in the Old Testament tradition, because the

7 ‘For ‘nature’ is the fundamental philosophic discovery. Truth, Being, even World, and all otherterms designating the object of philosophy are unquestionably older than philosophy, but the first manwho used the term ‘nature’—I think, it was Odysseus, or Hermes, the god of thieves, merchants, andAthenian democracy—was the first philosopher...‘Nature’ was the first and decisive and, I think, mostunambiguous discovery of philosophy.’ Leo Strauss, ‘What can we learn from Political Theory?’ TheReview of Politics 69 (2007) p. 5218 This view is shared in John P. McCormick, Confronting Mass Democracy and IndustrialTechnology: Political and Social Theory from Nietzsche to Habermas (Duke University Press, 2002)p. 259, and Kenneth L. Deutsch & Walter Nicgorski, Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and JewishThinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994) p. 287. That the passages appear todemonstrate these ‘simple experiences’ is admitted by Robert Pippin (though by a presumed slip hecalls them ‘epigrams’), but he is more attentive to the fact that this makes their relationship to thebook, and its argument, far from simple. The ambiguities inherent in the epigraphs show, Pippinargues, Strauss’s awareness of playing a ‘dangerous double game’ in returning both to the ordinary orsimple experience of right and wrong and to the tradition of classical natural right, the founder ofwhich was executed in the name of ‘ordinary’ piety. Pippin, ‘The Unavailability of the Ordinary:Strauss on the Philosophical Fate of Modernity’ Political Theory, Vol. 31 No. 3 (June 2003) pp. 346-7. Pippin’s essay is also athttps://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/rbp1/Public/Unavailability%20of%20Ordinary.pdf?uniq=-ltczks(May 2011)9 NRH pp. 144−5

teachings of that tradition are addressed not to man as man but to a certain class or race of

men, who are chosen to uphold the divine Law. Not until its statutes are incorporated into the

Christian tradition are they universalized, in a manner that makes Paul the spiritual godfather

of democracy. That Strauss preferred classical, ‘political’ and non-egalitarian natural right to

the ‘reigning relativism, positivist or historicist’ is admitted in the preface to the seventh

impression still carried in copies of the book; and though the appeal to the divine law is

exempted from the ‘historicist’ appeals to higher law, it is reiterated that the divine law is not

natural right.10 In sum, we can say that if natural right does not exist ‘as such’ in the Old

Testament, then the ‘experience’ of natural right is alien to that tradition; the experience of

natural right either leads to the development of the concept and doctrine of natural right or it

cannot be unequivocally called such an experience. It is not clear therefore why Strauss

should, nor precisely how one could, understand natural right in the light of a tradition that

implicitly rejects philosophy.

If natural right is not to be understood in the light of a non-philosophical tradition, and

Strauss draws his epigraphs to his study of natural right from a tradition that is hostile to or

ignorant of philosophy—and a tradition that as revealed religion represents the perpetual and

apparently irrefutable alternative to philosophy—then the conclusion that must be drawn is

the opposite of Jaffa’s. The epigraphs indicate not that Strauss understood natural right in

light of Old Testament teachings, but that the material of the Old Testament could be

understood by the tradition of natural right; in other words, biblical stories can be given a

political or philosophical meaning.

In choosing epigraphs drawn from the Old Testament for a study of natural right,

which concept presupposes philosophy, Strauss brings face to face the two fundamental

alternatives of philosophy and religion. It is Strauss’s view that: ‘No alternative is more

fundamental than this: human guidance or divine guidance’; or, stated more fully: ‘The

fundamental question, therefore, is whether men can acquire that knowledge of the good

without which they cannot guide their lives individually or collectively by the unaided efforts

of their natural powers, or whether they are dependent for that knowledge on Divine

Revelation.’11 Strauss insists on the endurance of the alternatives, and declines to make

recourse to that view which Weber had ‘no compunction’ expressing, that ‘all belief in

10 Ibid. p. vii11 Ibid. p. 74. It is not clear why Strauss emphasizes the phrase by capitalizing it in this passage.Neither element retains a capital in the following pages, and the phrase is not capitalized in its other,prior occurrence on page 71.

revelation is ultimately belief in the absurd.’12 Strauss even reasons that the apparent mutual

irrefutability of these alternatives is ultimately what ‘seems to decide irrevocably against

philosophy and in favor of revelation.’ Though he considers that revelation is ‘always so

uncertain to unassisted reason that it can never compel the assent of unassisted reason, and

man is so built that he can find his satisfaction, his bliss, in articulating the riddle of being’,

the fact that philosophy must grant the possibility of revelation, which it cannot refute, is to

grant that the philosophic life is not evidently the good life. Thus, ‘the mere fact that

philosophy and revelation cannot refute each other would constitute the refutation of

philosophy by revelation.’13 Strauss entertains no thought of any plausible synthesis of these

alternatives.14 Their antagonism is assured because neither can directly refute the other, and

for one to grant the possible truth of the other seems to imply its own impossibility. So, if

philosophy must grant the possibility of revelation, revelation must grant the possible truth of

philosophy, or the view that the highest human good is accessible to unassisted reason, which

would be to contemplate the impossibility of its own position. Religion or revelation is not

only the antithesis to reason because it represents an alternative to rational enquiry into the

good or posits a supra-rational source for the good, but also because biblical revelation is,

strictly speaking, irrational, if we take as a measure of the rational the basic and

uncontroversial proposition that rationality is the ability to recognize contradictions in one’s

beliefs or reasoning combined with the unwillingness to rest satisfied with such

contradictions. The lessons or edicts of the bible, by which the believer is supposed to live,

frequently contradict one another (for example n. 37 below); meanwhile philosophy, or belief

12 Ibid. p. 7113 Ibid. p. 75. Kennington draws attention to this moment, at which Strauss at least casts doubts on thepossibility of philosophy—which would by another route align him with the conclusions of radicalhistoricism—and describes the phrase with which Strauss closes the treatment of ‘the secular strugglebetween philosophy and theology’ (that is, ‘...hastening back from these awful depths...’) as ‘the mostcurious moment in Natural Right and History.’ Cf. Kennington, pp. 68−914 For some of Strauss’s thoughts on this fundamental alternative see the essays ‘Jerusalem andAthens’ and ‘On the Interpretation of Genesis’ in Strauss & K. Hart Green, Jewish Philosophy and theCrisis of Modernity (SUNY Press, 1997) and ‘Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis inWestern Civilization’ Modern Judaism, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1981) pp. 17−45. ‘Jerusalem and Athens’is also in Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence Between Leo Strauss and EricVoegelin (University of Missouri Press, 2004) pp. 109-138. Perhaps the most emphatic rejection ofthe idea of a synthesis between reason and revelation is in the opening paragraph of ‘The MutualInfluence of Theology and Philosophy’ Independent Journal of Philosophy Vol. III (1979) pp. 111-18. Compare also the essay ‘Reason and Revelation’ in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and theTheologico-Political Problem (Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp. 141-80

in the possibility of philosophy, would be predicated on the idea that human reason can

divine what is good for man. Thus there can be no harmony between the two.15

It goes without saying that a man presenting a study of natural right and professing his

attachment to the doctrine in its classical, political and non-egalitarian form, has looked to

reason for the answers that revelation cannot furnish, or that Athens, and not Jerusalem, has

fashioned his perception of ‘the human things.’ In intimating through the epigraphs that the

biblical tradition can be understood in the light of the natural right tradition, Strauss is not

presenting a synthesis or even true point of contact or common ground between traditions. It

represents a decision in favor of philosophy, and it implies that the biblical narratives have a

political context, hence can yield political lessons, and thus can be encompassed by the

enquiry into natural right. This obviously entails the rejection of their claim to truth.

With this move, implying that biblical stories are subject to a political reading, Strauss

is following above all Machiavelli. It was Machiavelli who infamously hesitated to reason

about Moses as a founder prince because in God he had had such a great teacher, but who

found the deeds of Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus to be not inferior in rank; Machiavelli would

probably also give the prophet’s earthly teacher his due, as does Strauss, in establishing the

independence of political science from the biblical teaching.16 In treating David or Moses as

princes and warriors Machiavelli was treating the biblical tales much as he did the ancient

fables concerning Antaeus or Chiron, as political allegories.17 Machiavelli’s status as the

founder of modern political science means that he laid the foundations on which Hobbes and

his successors would erect the doctrinal edifices of modern natural right.18 If Hobbes denied

moral evil because he denied sin, Machiavelli had already secularized sin in the Prince,

15 Thus one cannot accept Thomas Pangle’s reasoning concerning the epigraphs, which seems tosuggest that they encourage the hope that an ‘important connection’ will be found between theteaching of the bible and the Lockean doctrine of natural right. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introductionto his Thought and Intellectual Legacy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) p. 1616 Machiavelli, Prince VI. The teacher of Moses in politics was his father-in-law Jethro, whocounseled Moses to establish a system of judges (Ex. 18:13−27); cf. Thoughts on Machiavelli(University of Chicago Press, 1976) p. 176 (TM). Texts followed in quoting Machiavelli are: ThePrince, trans. Q. Skinner (Cambridge University Press, 2003); The Discourses, trans. L.J. Walker(London: Penguin, 1998)17 For David, Prince XIII, Discourses I.26; Chiron, Prince XVIII; Antaeus, Discourses III.1218 NRH pp. 177−180; cf. TM pp. 59-60, 120; On Tyranny (University of Chicago Press, 2000) pp. 23-5 (OT); The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and its Genesis trans. E.M. Sinclair (Universityof Chicago Press, 1996) p. xv (PPH)

making it a failure of military rather than moral virtue.19 In rejecting sin and with it the

biblical teachings, and with his admiration for the non-egalitarian virtue of ancient Rome,

Machiavelli might seem to have created the conditions for a theoretical return to classical

natural right, at least on Strauss’s account, because he was rejecting the twin causes of the

original classical doctrine’s decline. But Machiavelli instead created the conditions for

modern political science. If he rejected sin, he also rejected Cicero—no book is more the

target of the polemical intent of the Prince than De Officiis. What Machiavelli actually

rejects, in favor of the ‘effectual truth,’ is the concern with the just. Machiavelli wished to

discuss things as they really are, and so dismissed the imaginary cities founded by his

forebears—that he did so openly, insistently and in his own name is for Strauss part of the

radicalism of his break with the classics.20 This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his

thoughts on the subject of war. War is the central phenomenon of political life and the sole

concern of the prince (Prince XIV). This centrality of war to political life was not of course a

view unfamiliar to the classics. Alcinous claimed war the central business of politics in his

Didaskalikos (34.5), although the sentiment, at least in this unsubtle form, is perhaps more his

own than it is Plato’s.21 But in the tradition of political science stemming from Plato and

Aristotle, with which Machiavelli breaks, ultimately war was always waged for the sake of

peace, a view still shared by the author of the most famous ‘mirror of princes’ among

Machiavelli’s contemporaries.22 Machiavelli effectively dispenses with the debates

concerning just and unjust war; the prince may wage war for the sake of gain or power,

19 See Prince XII, on the man (Savonarola) who condemned Italy for her sins. For a concise statementby Strauss on Hobbes’ denial of sin and its consequences see ‘Notes on The Concept of the Political’in Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2007) p. 114; cf. pp. 58,61, 65. TM p. 19120 See Prince XV. On Machiavelli’s relative boldness in promulgating doctrines in his own namewhich the classical authors put into the mouths of characters speaking behind closed doors cf. Strauss,TM pp. 10, 5921 ‘Politics then, is a virtue which is both theoretical and practical, the aim of which is to render a stategood, happy, harmonious, and concordant. It exercises a directive role, and has as subordinate to it thesciences of war and generalship and the administration of justice. Politics concerns itself with a vastarray of subjects, but above all the question of whether or not one should make war.’ Alcinous,Handbook of Platonism trans. John Dillon (Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 47. See also BenjaminConstant’s claim that in the ancient world war preceded commerce, while the moderns have reachedthe age where commerce naturally precedes war in the essay ‘De la liberté des anciens comparée àcelle des moderns’ Écrits Politique (Paris, Gallimard, 1997)22 Aristotle, Politics 1333a34−1333b1 (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1932); NicomacheanEthics 1177b5 (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1934); Castiglione, The Book of the Courtiertrans. George Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981) pp. 302−4

because this is a natural and ordinary desire, and quite in the order of things.23 Power and

arms are what is needful, because there can be no good laws without good arms.24 We could

say of such a view that it recognizes right as fundamentally derivative from might.

Strauss, as mentioned, is following a Machiavellian commonplace in implying a

political truth at the heart of a biblical tale otherwise devoid of the truths it claims to impart.25

Machiavelli reads the bible as one would ‘poetic fables.’ He dismisses the authority of the

bible, and in fact Livy becomes his bible.26 Strauss at least tacitly follows in the rejection of

sin in describing the lines placed in the mouth of Machiavelli in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

as ‘almost a definition of the philosopher.’ The line is recorded by Strauss: ‘I...hold there is

no sin but ignorance.’ 27 We must wonder what supplement would remedy its shortcomings as

a definition of the philosopher, and we must at least suspect that the formula is ‘almost’ a

definition until completed by its elided portion. Marlowe’s entire quote of course runs: ‘I

count religion but a childish toy / And hold there is no sin but ignorance.’ The philosopher

can see the uses of religion, and does not necessarily wish to destroy it but, ideally, to control

it; but, at least in the modern natural right tradition that springs indirectly from the

innovations of Machiavelli, the philosopher may hold out the hope of an atheistic society and

general enlightenment.28 If he follows Machiavelli in bringing up biblical stories in

23 The desire to annex territory is ‘natural and ordinary’: ‘É cosa veramente molto naturale e ordinariadesiderare di acquistare’ (Prince III.14)—just as he considers the difficulties encountered by a princein his newly acquired territories to derive from necessities that are also ‘naturale ed ordinaria’ (III.1).Aristotle for his part does consider the view that war can be counted a natural art of acquisition(Politics 1256b23).24 Prince XII; compare the fate of Savonarola in VI; also, the beginning of X with the comment onPhilip of Macedon in XXIV25 Note Strauss’s invocation of the phrase ‘memories of ancient histories’ to describe the bible and thetorah, without invoking the name of Machiavelli, in ‘Jerusalem and Athens’ in Strauss and HartGreen, op. cit. p. 380; and cf. its original context, TM p. 123.26 TM p. 51. On Livy as Machiavelli’s Bible, ibid. pp. 30, 93, 95, 109, 115, 122, 141 (Livy as a‘counter-bible’). Elsewhere, Livy is his bible and his ‘anti-bible.’ ‘Niccolò Machiavelli’ in Strauss &Joseph Cropsey, Eds. History of Political Philosophy (3rd Ed., University of Chicago Press, 1987) pp.307−8 (HPP) and ‘Machiavelli and Classical Literature’ Review of National Literatures (Annapolis:St. John’s Press, 1970) pp. 17, 2127 NRH p. 177. The same portion is elided, without indication of elision, when it is quoted in TM p. 1328 On this hope in Hobbes, cf. NRH p. 198. Compare the deliberately odd sentence in Persecution andthe Art of Writing (Chicago, 1988) pp. 33−4 (PAW), which substitutes ‘hearing’ where one wouldexpect to read ‘speaking’, in discussing the hope of modern ‘heterodox’ philosophers: ‘They lookedforward to a time...when no one would suffer any harm from hearing any truth.’ On the political usesof religion or the belief in reward and punishment after death, cf. TM pp. 189, 296, 345 n. 219; cf.

discussions of a political character, he also follows him in his use of caution, and he elides

the less palatable element of Marlowe’s lines not to spare Machiavelli but to distance himself

from the scornful attitude toward religion. In other words, Strauss shows the caution which

Locke demonstrated and which Hobbes lacked.29 If, in allowing revelation its place in

choosing his epigraphs, Strauss is essentially following Machiavelli in mode and method, we

must look again at these epigraphs and the lesson they might contain concerning natural right.

II.

We must begin from the problem mentioned earlier, which is too often passed over—that is,

neither tale related in the epigraphs tells one anything definite about justice or right. What is

more, taken on their own they are totally ambiguous, and one must assume deliberately so.

Taking the second story, of Ahab and Naboth, first, one can say that it is difficult to extract

letter to Kojève of April 22 1957 in OT p. 275. Also, Marsilius of Padua, Defensor Pacis trans. AlanGewirth (New York: Columbia UP, 2001) I.v.11; Machiavelli, Discourses I.11−1529 Compare Hobbes as an ‘imprudent, impish and iconoclastic extremist, the first plebeianphilosopher,’ characterized by ‘boyish straightforwardness,’ who was ‘deservedly punished for hisrecklessness, especially by his countrymen,’ with the ‘judicious Locke, who judiciously refrained asmuch as he could from mentioning Hobbes’s “justly decried name”.’ NRH pp. 166; cf. pp. 165,206−9. Machiavelli would stand between Hobbes and Locke on this view. Strauss’s Machiavelli, forall his boldness, is subtle at least in his blasphemies—nowhere more torturously subtle than in hisattribution of a line from the Magnificat to King David, according to the reading Strauss gives thissubstitution. See TM pp. 48−50; HPP pp. 311−12. He is subtle because he is not one of those vulgaror incautious enough to simply ‘vomit a blasphemy,’ in the words of Innocent Gentillet (TM p. 334 n.72; cf. HPP p. 312). He is sometimes a Callicles but never a Diagoras. Or, he is in this respect likeThrasymachus, who will claim might is right but will not publicly contradict the claim that the justman is a friend of the gods (Plato, Republic 352a−b; cf. Laws 716c−d). All quotations from Plato arefrom Plato: Complete Works, Ed. J.M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). Machiavelli has thecorrect mix of ‘boldness and caution.’ TM p. 32, 34, 47, 176, 276; this is in line with his mix of‘gravity and levity,’ which is for Machiavelli ‘the life according to nature.’ Ibid. pp. 40, 193, 241,244, 285, 289, 290, 294. For a criticism of Strauss’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s use of theMagnificat see Dante Germino, ‘Blasphemy and Leo Strauss’s Machiavelli’ The Review of Politics,Vol. 53, No. 1 (Winter, 1991) pp. 146−56. Germino points out that Machiavelli deals with David’s sinand repentance in his ‘Exhortation to Penitence,’ and claims there that ‘no greater penitence can befound in a man.’ On Machiavelli’s more cautious approach contrasted with Hobbes, Strauss PPH p.xvi. On Bion, another Diagoras, see Strauss, ‘Machiavelli and Classical Literature’ pp. 9−10.Machiavelli uses David and Peter as examples of those who offended the Lord and later were restoredto His good favor by their repentance. The example of David relates directly to Strauss’s firstepigraph, and in like manner Ahab spares himself by repentance of his deed. For the Exhortation seeA. Gilbert, Machiavelli: The Chief Works Vol. 1 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1965) pp. 170-75

any principle of natural right ordinarily understood from it. Two principles are involved: the

King, Ahab, recognizes that he must offer adequate compensation for the desired vineyard to

its current owner, and does so; he can be said to acknowledge a common idea of what is just

in offering to purchase the vineyard, rather than compelling his subject to surrender it. The

second principle is the ground of Naboth’s refusal: it is forbidden him to hand over his

inheritance to another. Naboth acts not out of human pride or principle, but in obedience to a

divine proscription. This proscription applies only to those of a certain race and creed, to

whom it is forbidden to cede their ancestral lands to aliens.30 How this tale is illuminative of

natural right is puzzling; the most one can say is that Naboth understands and Ahab

recognizes that the occupation of ancestral property is a natural right. One cannot be moved

or made to cede that property without being compensated adequately for the loss, and to take

possession of that property against the will of the inhabitant would constitute an injustice.

The first tale is only apparently a simpler matter. In fact it is much more ambiguous. We are

not told that the rich man did wrong; we are not told that it is the Prophet Nathan’s tale, or

that King David’s anger was immediately kindled against the rich man of the story. We are

not told that he was punished for the action. Strauss gives us the passage without source and

out of context. This is the first thing one reads as part of the text proper, and if we presume it

to express a principle of natural right—we do not yet know how Strauss will define the

term—it seems to suggest not that this was a blatant injustice, but rather that natural right is

the right of the stronger. The rich man takes the poor man’s lamb, one must imagine, because

he can take it without fear of reprisal; does it not seem that in this case the deeds of the richer

and more prosperous, therefore more eminent and powerful man, express the allegedly

‘natural’ truth that might is right?31

As they stand the two passages remain obscure and ambiguous. They do not serve

especially to illuminate the content of the book, and therefore are not explained or are very

difficult to explain in light of that content. We can only hope to understand Strauss’s choice,

therefore, by looking to the source. Only when we know the context of these biblical

passages can we derive a lesson from the larger narratives of which they are a part. What is

30 1 Kings 21: 3 with Lev. 25:23; Num. 36:7; Ezek. 46:1831 For example, Hobbes explicitly uses ‘right of nature’ to designate the right of the stronger in DeCive VIII.10. One may also keep in mind the Nietzschean idea of ‘natural right’ according to whichrights are connected to the duties taken upon oneself; a select few, on this view, would have a naturalright to either authority or uninterrupted scholarly leisure, according to their preference, while themajority of men do not even really have a right to life (perhaps most succinctly expressed at Will toPower § 872).

interesting is that the larger stories in which these passages occur have the same basic

structure and motifs.

The first tale is Nathan’s parable of David’s sin, the account of which prefaces and

prompts the visit of the prophet (2 Sam. 11). After David had seen Bathsheba, the wife of

Uriah the Hittite, bathing, while walking on the roof of his palace, he enquired after her and

sent for her. After she conceives, David orders Uriah, who is encamped with his comrades,

numerous times to go down to his house, but Uriah refuses. David plies him with wine, but

Uriah still does not return home; so, David sends a letter with Uriah for his commander Joab,

ordering that Uriah be placed in the front line of the fighting, and isolated by the other

soldiers so that he will be killed. After Uriah is killed, he takes Bathsheba as his wife and she

bears a son.

Nathan is sent by the Lord to make known his displeasure with David, and tells the

tale of the rich man taking the poor man’s lamb. David, stirred to anger, promises the rich

man will make fourfold compensation for the lamb, and Nathan reveals that David is the

man. He prophesizes, first, that the child born to David by Bathsheba will die, and secondly,

that ‘the sword shall never depart from your house’ (2 Sam. 12:10). When David repents, he

is promised his own life. The first prophecy is fulfilled when the child, which is unnamed,

duly falls ill and dies. Afterward the great king Solomon, who will succeed his father, is born

to Bathsheba. But Nathan’s other prophecy, that the sword would not depart from David’s

house, is fulfilled in the actions of Absalom and Achitophel—and ultimately, we might add,

in Christ, who is both a son of God and of the House of David (Matt. 1:1−17).

In the second tale, Naboth’s refusal results in Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, writing

letters in her husband’s name ordering a feast to be held in Jezreel at which Naboth is to be

honored. She commands that two base men be set opposite him to act as the witnesses

required by custom32 to accuse him of blasphemy; the false witness results in Naboth being

stoned to death, after which Ahab takes possession of the vineyard.

The Lord sends the Prophet Elijah to Ahab, who accuses him of his crimes. He

promises that where the dogs licked the blood of the murdered Naboth, they would lick

Ahab’s own, that the House of Ahab will be swept away and the king deprived of his

progeny, and that dogs will eat the flesh of Jezebel by the walls of Jezreel (21:19−23, cp. 2

Kings 9:6−10). Ahab repents of his sin, and like David, is spared from death (21:27−9). What

is prophesized duly come to pass (1 Kings 22:37−8; 2 Kings 1:17; 9:21−27, 30−37; 10:6−30).

32 Num. 35:30; Deut. 17: 2−6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28

The common structure of the stories seems to be the reason for Strauss’s choice of

epigraph. In both, a king is party to a conspiracy against one of his subjects, with the

intention of taking for himself what rightly belongs to the subject. In both cases deceit is used

to destroy the subject that bars the way to the king’s desire. In both cases, a prophet is sent by

Yahweh to announce his displeasure at the deed, promising retribution against the king in the

destruction of his progeny. Both kings are accused directly by the prophet of having killed

their loyal subject, though both pass the act of murder onto others. The life of the king

himself is in each instance spared owing to his repentance, but his expiation will come in the

suffering of his generations and the decline or destruction of his house. Both kings seek to

conceal their sin: David attempts to send Uriah to his wife, that the child she has already

conceived might be thought legitimate; Ahab’s words to Elijah: ‘Have you found me, O my

enemy?’ show him to have believed his sin adequately hidden. According to the source, the

sin of each man was to work evil in the sight of the Lord (2 Sam. 12:9, 1 Kings 21:20, 25; cf.

Deut. 4:25−7). But the idea of natural right is incompatible with the belief in the Old

Testament notion of sin. If these stories are supposed to illustrate the principles of natural

right, they must be purged of their claim to represent divine retribution to do so.33

What idea of natural right can then be illuminated in these stories? Strauss has written

elsewhere of the tale of Naboth, in highlighting the shortcomings of ‘value-free’ social

science as promoted by Weber:

33 It is an open question whether one must assume the atheism of the classical philosophers to regardthem as teachers of a natural right doctrine. Strauss certainly assumes their atheism, as we can gatherfrom the following bald statements: ‘Socrates did not believe in the gods of the city, nor did his pupilXenophon.’ ‘The Spirit of Sparta and the Taste of Xenophon’ Social Research 6 (1939) p. 532 (Thissentence concerns Xenophon, though the article’s subject is the Constitution of the Lacedaemoniansgenerally attributed—though apparently not by Strauss—to Pseudo-Xenophon); and the commentmade during a lecture on Symposium, regarding its characters, that ‘surely [they] don’t believe in theOlympian gods.’ Leo Strauss on Plato’s Symposium, Ed. S. Benardete (University of Chicago Press,2000) p. 169 (LSPS). See also Locke’s remarks quoted in NRH p. 208. On the other hand, the naturalright doctrine as developed by Aquinas, whose atheism one dares not assume, is treated by Strauss asa variety of classical natural right (ibid. pp. 120, 146)—however, just to complicate this further, whenhe comes to speak, very briefly, of Thomistic natural right (pp. 163−4), he shifts to the use of the term‘natural law,’ which is for Strauss a definitely distinct idea and tradition. By implying that Thomas’sdoctrine, which is more commonly called natural law, is acceptably so called, he would deny that itwas a true natural right teaching. Compare the note concerning Hobbes’ atheism, pp. 198−9 n. 43, andthe discussion of theology in determining that Cicero’s views did not go beyond Plato’s natural rightteaching and embrace Stoic natural law (pp. 154−5).

It is prudent to grant that there are value conflicts which cannot in fact be settled by humanreason. But if we cannot decide which of two mountains whose peaks are hidden by cloudsis higher than the other, cannot we decide that a mountain is higher than a molehill? If wecannot decide regarding a war between two neighboring nations, which have been fightingeach other for centuries, whose nation’s cause is more just, cannot we decide that Jezebel’saction against Naboth was inexcusable?34

One may well consider the actions of David or Jezebel to constitute the ‘simple experiences

of right and wrong’ that underpin doctrines of natural right. But the passages given by Strauss

give no hint of either crime; he gives Nathan’s parable concerning David’s sin, and only the

prelude to Jezebel and Ahab’s crime against Naboth: in the passage on its own, Ahab behaves

justly, and appears as a just man and ruler. Only by looking to the full biblical account in

which the passages occur can we have access to these ‘simple experiences’; no doubt it is

expected of the interested reader to source them and read those accounts. There is no doubt

the behavior of Jezebel and the two false witnesses is wrong, according both to moral

sentiment and biblical teaching,35 as is David’s adultery and his action against Uriah.36 Yet

the full accounts, read as political allegories in the manner of Machiavelli or as windows into

the world of warfare and politics, are much better measures of a world in which natural right

has little meaning and less relevance—perhaps to be expected in stories drawn from a

tradition with no knowledge of natural right.

The punishment of the wrongdoers is a result of divine wrath. It is an illustration of

the biblical principle, which makes its first appearance with the announcement of the

Decalogue, that retribution for the iniquities of the fathers will be visited on the sons.37 If we

remove God from the account, then this must represent a principle of the political realm.

Such would resemble a Herodotean view, although one divested of any metaphysical

conviction as to the principle’s justice or reliability. A more precise word for the political

universe of these stories is Machiavellian. Reading these stories one learns that power is what

matters. Kings take the property of their subjects, and kill by deceit. Those who undertake to

punish or depose a king, including Yahweh, who appears as not a just but a jealous God,

34 ‘What is Political Philosophy?’ The Journal of Politics, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1957) p. 35135 Ex. 20:16, 23:1−2; Deut. 5:20, 16:16−19; Dan. 13:21, 36−40, 61−2; Matt. 26:59−61; Acts 6:8−14;cp. Deut. 27:2436 David violates the fifth, sixth and ninth commandments of the Decalogue in his dealings withBathsheba and Uriah. Compare Job 24:2-4 with the action of the rich man in Nathan’s parable.37 Ex. 20:5, 34:6−7; Lev. 26:39; Num. 14:18, 18:1; Deut. 5:9; Lam. 5:7; Is. 65:7; Jer. 32:18; cp. Neh.9:2; Is. 14:21; Dan. 9:16. The principle is contradicted at Deut. 24:16; Ezek. 18:17−20, and by therecorded exemption of the sons of Korah from punishment at Num. 26:14

show no compunction in wiping out their male line. One learns that armed prophets will

conquer and unarmed prophets come to grief, and that that revenge against a king is to

deprive him of his progeny. It teaches that to truly punish a man you destroy his sons, which

we might learn from Medea, to say nothing of the Lord’s Passover in Exodus. If Jezebel’s

crime against Naboth might be recognized as inexcusable, still we cannot decide between the

warring nations such as we find in these accounts, or settle the question by preference for

those the Lord might favor. On the Machiavellian view, the ‘sins’ of Ahab and David would

be so called not because they are morally repugnant but because they make the kings’

positions less stable. Each violates fundamental rules of prudent monarchy, such as refraining

from laying hands on the property and the women of subjects, or killing subjects who are

lowly and loyal out of motives of greed or lust and without proper justification.38 Such

actions incite the resentment and distrust of the people and the enduring enmity of relatives of

those violated or executed. The one thing a prince cannot adequately guard against is a

determined regicide that has no fear of losing his own life.39 David commits the added lapse

in ordering Uriah’s death of turning against his soldiers. What these stories teach us, in fact,

is that legitimacy is rooted in power. The Machiavellian lesson is that all political legitimacy

is founded on illegitimate action, all power on crime. An order arises only by subjugation of a

mass or the overthrow of prior order. Every established order has its roots in fundamental and

foundational violence.40 After all, what culture or moral code would describe the

extermination of an entire bloodline as a decent act? Only considered from the point of view

38 See for example Prince XVII, XIX39 See the advice drawn from the fate of the emperor Antoninus in Prince XIX, killed by a centurionwhose brother had been executed by the emperor. This statement and its implied empowerment of oneindifferent to death might indicate how emphatic is Machiavelli’s remark in the famous letter toFrancesco Vettori of 10th Dec. 1513, that when he works in his study in the evenings and istransported to the courts of ancient kings and thinkers, he is so absorbed and content that he not onlyforgets his penury and cures his boredom, but he loses all fear of death.40 See NRH p. 179. The great founder-princes are thus criminals whose crime is covered by theestablishment of order; but the lesson Strauss insists must be drawn from Machiavelli is thatfoundational violence is repeated within that order whenever an extreme or emergency situation—onecould say a Schmittian Ausnahmezustand—arises. The ‘extreme case’ is more revealing andinstructive as to the nature of society than is the normal case. Compare Schmitt, Political Theology:Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (University of Chicago Press, 2005) p. 15 (PT): ‘Theexception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything.It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives from the exception. In the exceptionthe power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.’On this notion of ‘continuous foundation’ in Machiavelli cf. Strauss, TM pp. 44, 53, 100, 130, 133,166, 203, 287−8.

of political necessity, in other words from the perspective adopted in Machiavelli’s enquiries,

do such actions acquire legitimacy. There can be no moral legitimacy or apolitical

justification for the deeds of David, Ahab or Jezebel, or for those of Uriah’s commander

Joab, or indeed Jehu’s prodigious slaughter of the house of Ahab. When we read these tales

politically, we are taught the Machiavellian lesson that, to risk a rather glib yet grim

formulation, legitimacy in the political realm is simply the sum of the equation crime + time

(just as, as is so commonly said, tragedy + time = comedy). The Machiavellian political

authority does not act in the sight of God; he knows when to conceal and when to display his

cruelty and injustices and to exterminate the bloodline of the one he deposes. A sin

disappears with the one sinned against, or interested witnesses; as the lines that follow those

earlier quoted in Marlowe’s play run: ‘Birds of the air will tell of murders past? / I am

ashamed to hear such fooleries / Many will talk of title to a crown / What right had Caesar to

the empire? / Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure / When, like the Draco’s,

they were writ in blood.’ Precisely the lesson that only power matters is what emerges from

these biblical stories, and that morally reprehensible actions are excusable in a political

context. To revenge oneself requires power, and power can only be met with power. ‘Might

first made kings,’ and only by acquiring and exercising greater might can one oppose or

depose them. Every change of order imitates the foundational violence of the great founder-

princes. Every great ‘new prince’, who acquires his state not through inheritance but through

foundation or annexation, comes to power through crime and wickedness. In this respect, one

cannot underestimate the importance of chapter eight of the Prince, which gives an account

of two men, Agathocles and Oliverotto of Fermo, who rose to prominence from low origins

by means of violence and deceit: after Severus and Cesare Borgia, these men, despite the

appearance of censure, are probably Machiavelli’s ideal princes.41 These biblical narratives

41 The implications of Machiavelli’s famous simile in the Epistle Dedicatory are seldom grasped. Inexcusing himself for presuming to offer instruction to a prince, he likens his activity to that of thecartographer, who must go to low ground to study heights, and higher ground to survey lower. In alike manner he claims, counterintuitively, one must be a prince to understand the people, and must beof the people to truly understand a prince. This means that the best prince will be the one whounderstands kingship, having previously surveyed it from the lower ground of private citizenship.Machiavelli’s word popolare, ‘of the people,’ means those who are not of a royal house or prominentfamily. The truest princes in the book are Oliverotto and Agathocles, who came from the people androse to prominence by their own efforts. They alone are in a position to understand both the princeand the people, having like the titular tyrant of Xenophon’s Hiero tasted both lives. Cf. Hiero I.(2) inOT p. 3; see also Machiavelli’s discussion of Hiero of Syracuse in Prince VI. Machiavelli’spreference for such men of obscure birth, encumbered rather than aided by fortune, might beconfirmed by his literary diversion Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca—the opening paragraph of

actually teach what the story of the stolen lamb given without context appeared to teach about

‘natural right.’ ‘Might is right’ remains a fundamental truth, and perhaps the fundamental

truth, of political affairs. This is not, however, the vulgar idea commonly associated with the

sophists.42 Rather, the truth is that might makes right: Autoritas non veritas facit legem—a

statement which contains and almost conceals within it the more troubling proposition,

Autoritas facit veritatem.

Strauss thus follows a Machiavellian model in reading the bible in a political way, as

allegory or illustration of political truth, and the political lesson imparted by the stories is

startling in the context of the subject of his book. Just as they come from a tradition without a

knowledge of natural right, they teach one that natural right, particularly as conceived of by

the ancients, does not really exist, or more precisely that if it does exist, it is irrelevant to

political considerations. Because mere power and not merit or virtue is what matters in the

political realm, the hierarchical order of human beings will never reflect who should wield

power, only who can, and the nature of the political is such that these will seldom coincide.43

In this realm to say that the iniquities of the fathers will be revisited on the sons is only to

affirm that it is legitimate to return the violence inevitably committed by one who attains

power (as a ‘new prince’) by doing violence to his successors and offspring (or ‘natural

princes,’ so called in Prince 2). The epigraphs when examined lead us to the principles of the

man who most emphatically rejected natural right.

III.

This is perhaps just as it should be. Machiavelli is at the centre of Natural Right and History.

Epigraphs are often like a preface, which may be read before the beginning of a book proper,

but can only be appreciated or understood when read again after completing the book (as with

which also intimates that founder-princes propagate stories of divine parentage precisely to cover thelowness of their birth. Strauss suggests of the Castruccio piece that ‘this graceful little work revealsMachiavelli’s moral taste in a more direct or simple and more condensed manner than his greatworks.’ ‘Machiavelli and Classical Literature’ p. 842 Machiavelli was certainly not a sophist, as that term is discussed and defined at NRH p. 116, andStrauss insists that the sophists were certainly not ‘Machiavellians’—cf. HPP pp. 316−17;‘Machiavelli and Classical Literature’ p. 13; also Strauss, The City and Man (University of ChicagoPress, 1978) p. 17 with 23 (CM); TM p. 292, ‘The Problem of Socrates,’ Interpretation, Spring 1995Vol. 22, No. 3 p. 33443 Cf. Machiavelli’s Dedication in the Discourses. Plato, Republic 347c−d, 520b−c 521b, 539e−540b,592a−b

the Epistle Dedicatory of the Prince and its famous simile). Here, to conclude, we can do no

more than indicate the importance of Machiavelli to the book, by way of strengthening the

connection between his political theory and the lesson to be drawn from the epigraphs. The

problem posed by Natural Right and History, particularly if read in conjunction with

Thoughts on Machiavelli, is this: Machiavelli, as is clear, both inadvertently founds modern

natural right (developed in response to his teachings), and proves the force upon which it

founders, but rejects the essentials of classical natural right. A rejection is not a refutation,

however, and so the failure of modern natural right is more fatal to it than is Machiavelli’s

rejection to classical natural right. The fundamental alternatives therefore, in Strauss’s

scheme, are classical natural right and a species of Machiavellianism that remains

Machiavellianism and not an attempt to modify or cover it over. However, given that Strauss

nowhere contests the correctness of Machiavelli’s political judgment, and indeed commends

his wisdom and intrepidity of thought, one must then ask how he can claim, as he does in the

preface, a personal preference for classical natural right. The first clue in answering this

crucial question is in the only direct comparison between the two alternatives—specifically

the comparison between Machiavelli and Aristotle—which lies almost literally at the center

of Natural Right and History.44 Discussion of that comparison is outside the scope of our

present concerns, however. Kennington realizes that the three paragraphs on Machiavelli on

pp. 177−9 ‘thus have a weight out of proportion to their magnitude.’45 But even Kennington

underestimates the centrality of Machiavelli. The single most important passage in Natural

Right and History is the extended footnote on pp. 60-61, taking issue with Weber’s thesis

concerning the role of the Protestant spirit in the development of capitalism. It is the passage

through which one threads together all the rest of the book’s argument, or to use one of

Strauss’s phrases, ‘the movement of its argument.’ Strauss’s modification of the thesis is

44 We do not know whether Strauss’s compositional wiles extended to consultation on the actualformatting of the work, but this comparison is almost literally the middle of the book, which mightindicate its importance. On such contrivances see NRH p. 155 on the position of Laelius in Cicero’sRepublic; LSPS p. 47; CM pp. 64, 65; also the middle essay (No. 54) of Montaigne’s complete Essais,‘Des Vaines Subtilitez,’ and, one suspects, the place of Strauss’s essay on the plan of Beyond Goodand Evil in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. See also Kennington’s remark (op. cit. p. 64) onthe crucial premises stated in paragraph 17 of NRH chapter 1, which are ‘at the core of the chapter.’ Ivery much suspect that Strauss had a hand in this positioning—compare, for example, the perceptivediscussions of the use of paragraph numbering in Thoughts on Machiavelli in Larry Peterman,‘Approaching Leo Strauss: Some Comments on Thoughts on Machiavelli,’ Political Science ReviewerXVI (Fall 1986) pp. 317-35145 Kennington, op. cit., p. 80

based on the argument that Weber underestimated a prior, wholly secular revolution which

had a great bearing on the development of morality and economic science—the revolution in

thought effected by Machiavelli. This passage is crucial for recognizing Machiavelli not only

as the looming presence behind the discussions of modern natural right in Hobbes and Locke,

but also for recognizing in Machiavelli the etiology of historicism, the (oblique) critique of

which opens the book.46 Again, we can do no more than indicate these facts, elaboration of

46 NRH pp. 60-61 n. 22. The criticism of Weber’s use of ‘questionable psychological constructions’ totrace capitalism to Calvinism echoes Schmitt’s criticism of Weber’s methods and analyses in Schmitt,PT pp. 44-5. In the brief reference to Tawney here, Strauss agrees with his observation that Weber’sobject of study was a late form of Puritanism that, in Strauss’s words, had ‘already made its peacewith “the world”,’ and hence with the capitalist world. Tawney may have provided some grounds alsofor the specific contention that the crucial development was secular, in the work of Machiavelli. Thework in question is obviously Tawney’s 1922 Holland Memorial Lectures published as Religion andthe Rise of Capitalism (6th Ed., John Murray, London: 1936) (RRC). The following points may beconsidered by way of brief indication. In finishing his summary of Luther as one of the continentalreformers, Tawney reminds us that Luther’s was also ‘the age of Machiavelli’; on the same page,beginning the treatment of Calvin, he remarks that ‘the teaching of the Puritan moralists who derivemost directly from Calvin is in marked contrast with that both of mediaeval theologians and Luther.The difference is not merely one of the conclusions reached, but of the plane on which the discussionis conducted.’ (pp. 102-3). ‘For Calvin, and still more his later interpreters, began their voyage furtherdown the stream. Unlike Luther, who saw economic life with the eyes of a peasant and amystic…they started from a frank recognition of the necessity of capital, credit and banking...’ (p.104). The shifting of ‘planes’ reminds us of Strauss’s imputation to Hobbes of a shifting of planes inthe natural right discussion in direct response to Machiavelli (NRH pp. 170 with 180-82; Hobbesachieves a synthesis of originally incompatible positions by the transition of thought onto a differentplane: this is in opposition to the other, assumedly ineffective way of ‘eclectic compromise’ (p.170)—something attempted by modern neo-Thomistic proponents of natural right (p. 8)). Alsosignificant is Tawney’s long footnote explicitly discussing flaws in Weber’s thesis, RRC pp. 319-21 n.32. There we read, for example: ‘Weber ignores, or at least touches too lightly on, intellectualmovements, which were favourable to the growth of business enterprise and to an individualisticattitude towards economic relations, but which had little to do with religion. The political thought ofthe Renaissance was one; as Brentano points out, Machiavelli was at least as powerful a solvent oftraditional ethical restraints as Calvin.’ The following difference should be noted, however: Tawneydoes write: ‘the most characteristic and influential form of Protestantism in the two centuriesfollowing the Reformation is that which descends, by one path or another, from the teaching ofCalvin.’—and Calvinism ‘sprang’ from Lutheranism (p. 102). A couple of centuries is enough forMachiavelli’s teaching to have left its mark (he belonging the same age as Luther), and prepared theground for what afterward looked like a religiously motivated revolution in thought or behavior. But,Tawney explicitly claims that it was Calvin’s treatment of capital that ‘change[d] the plane on whichthe discussion was conducted.’ (p. 107), an obviously direct echo of the phrase employed a few pagesearlier. Strauss, if he was inspired in any way by Tawney’s analysis to posit Machiavelli as the crucialfigure (and it would seem so), nevertheless modifies that analysis. Tawney does implicitly indicatethat Machiavelli’s work took time to leave its mark, writing that the economic revolution thataccompanied the Renaissance did not immediately alter social theory—which, ‘in spite of

which would require much greater engagement with Strauss’s thought as a whole.47 In

conclusion, we can repeat that the epigraphs present us with an enigma, one which stands

until one reads them in a secularized and politicized manner, as implicitly counseled by

Machiavelli in relation to biblical narratives. In the long preface composed for the first

English translation of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss wrote of Spinoza’s God

standing ‘beyond good and evil,’ and explicitly linked this vision of God to Machiavelli’s

position, and also perhaps Spinoza’s debt to Machiavelli:

The Biblical God forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates evil; Spinoza’sGod is simply beyond good and evil. God’s might is His right, and therefore the power ofevery being as such is its right; Spinoza lifts Machiavellianism to theological heights. Goodand evil differ only from a merely human point of view; theologically the distinction ismeaningless. The evil passions are evil only with a view to human utility; in themselvesthey show forth the might and the right of God no less than other things which we admireand by the contemplation of which we are delighted.48

The enigma resonates throughout the book, and is surely intended to disturb the cautious

reader (while eluding the casual one)—the passages are a prime example of Strauss’s often-

quoted maxim: ‘The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of

things, is the heart of things.’49 Here, the ‘surface’ is the opening of the book, and the

problem presented in the epigraphs (that they tell us nothing about right or justice that is not

Machiavelli…was only beginning to emancipate itself from the stiff ecclesiastical framework of theMiddle Ages.’ (80). The relationship between the two men is explored in S.J.D. Green, ‘The Tawney-Strauss Connection: On Historicism and Values in the History of Political Ideas’ Journal of ModernHistory, Vol. 67 No. 2 (1995) pp. 255-77. Green argues for Tawney’s being impressed by the force ofStrauss’s ideas in searching for alternatives or antidotes to historicism, but casts doubt on whethereither man’s work truly influenced the development of the other’s. For Brentano’s criticisms ofWeber’s thesis and his contention that Machiavellianism lay behind the ascent of capitalism in a moreprofound way than did Puritanism (which could accommodate capitalism so easily because it had bentto Machiavellianism in important respects) see Lujo Brentano, ‘Ethik und Volkswirtschaft in derGeschichte’ and ‘Puritanismus und Kapitalismus’ in Der Wirtschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte,Eds. H.G. Nutzinger and R. Bräu (Marburg: Metropolis-Verlag, 2008), pp. 53-82, 271-311. Asanother critic has bluntly stated Brentano’s position: ‘The true ideological “emancipation” ofcapitalism...was the work of Machiavelli.’ Alaistair Hamilton, ‘Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism’ The Cambridge Companion to Weber (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p.16347 The author intends to provide such a study at a future date.48 Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. E.M. Sinclair (University of Chicago Press, 1997) p.1849 TM p. 13

imposed by the reader) signals the ambiguities and difficulties that a study of the subject must

grapple with, perhaps without satisfactory resolution.50

50 Further evidence of the uncertainty of the notion of natural right might be provided by consultationof Hobbes’ remarks concerning King David in Leviathan chapters XX and XXI. Hobbes—of courseone of the recurring subjects of Strauss’s attention and exegesis—takes David as an example of theextreme power of a sovereign. Compare the lesson drawn by Hobbes in Leviathan XX from I Samuel8:11-17, and the content of those passages, with the stories surrounding each of the epigraphs; and inXXI, Hobbes’ claim that nothing done by a sovereign to a subject can be properly called injustice—citing by example David’s actions against Uriah. Though these, Hobbes explicitly says, contravene‘the law of nature,’ yet David did not wrong Uriah; he sinned only against God, and because he washimself the subject of God, who as Sovereign and Lord forbade violation of the law of nature. WereGod removed from the picture, or were He to transfer all judgement to David without interference orguidance, the Hobbesian view of sovereignty would place David essentially beyond wrongdoing.