History of Political Philosophy Quotes

“Just as the banqueteers are drunk from wine, the citizens are drunk from fears, hopes, desires, and aversions and are therefore in need of being ruled by a man who is sober.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“[H]e (Socrates) thus implies that there is a parallelism between the city and the human individual or, more precisely, between the city and the soul of the human individual. This means that the parallelism between the city and the human individual is based upon a certain abstraction from the human body.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“Rule of law is inferior to the rule of living intelligence because laws, owing to their generality, cannot determine wisely what is right and proper in all circumstances given the infinite variety of circumstances: only the wise man on the spot could correctly decide what is right and proper in the circumstances. [...] All laws, written or unwritten, are poor substitutes but indispensable substitutes for the individual rulings by wise men. They are crude rules of thumb which are sufficient for the large majority of cases: they treat human beings as if they were members of a herd.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The distinction between nature and convention is fundamental for classical political philosophy and even for most of modern political philosophy, as can be seen most simply from the distinction between natural right and positive right.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The Prussian state is, for Hegel, the model most akin to the rational state because it represents, thanks both to the Protestant religion and the authority of the monarchy, a synthesis between the revolutionary exigencies of principles and the traditional exigencies of organization.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The Athenian cannot refute the atheists before he has stated their assertions. It appears that they assert that body is prior to soul or mind, or that soul or mind is derivative from body and, consequently, that nothing is by nature just or unjust, or that all right originates in convention. The refutation of them consists in the proof that soul is prior to body, which proof implies that there is natural right.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“[I]t is perhaps more important to realize that the regime most difficult to change is oligarchy, the regime which occupies the central place in the order of regimes presented in the Republic. Surely, the city to be founded must not be tyrannically ruled. The best regime is that in which a god or demon rules as in the age of Kronos, the golden age. The nearest imitation of divine rule is the rule of laws. But the laws in their turn depend on the man or men who can lay down and enforce the laws, i.e., the regime (monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, aristocracy, democracy). In the case of each of these regimes a section of the city rules the rest, and therefore it rules the city with a view to a sectional interest, not to the common interest. We know already the solution to this difficulty: the regime must be mixed as it was in a way in Sparta and Crete, and it must adopt a code framed by a wise legislator.

The wise legislator will not limit himself to giving simple commands accompanied by sanctions, i.e., threats of punishment. This is the way for guiding slaves, not free men. He will preface the laws with preambles or preludes setting forth the reasons of the laws. Yet different kinds of reasons are needed for persuading different kinds of men, and the multiplicity of reasons may be confusing and thus endanger the simplicity of obedience. The legislator must then possess the art of saying simultaneously different things to different kinds of citizens in such a way that the legislator’s speech will effect in all cases the same simple result: obedience to his laws. In acquiring this art he will be greatly helped by the poets. Laws must be twofold; they must consist of the “unmixed law,” the bald statement of what ought to be done or forborne “or else,” i.e., the “tyrannical prescription,” and the prelude to the law which gently persuades by appealing to reason. The proper mixture of coercion and persuasion, of “tyranny” and “democracy,” of wisdom and consent, proves everywhere to be the character of wise political arrangements.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The Cretan and Spartan laws were found to be faulty because they did not permit their subjects to taste the greatest pleasures. [...] The pleasures of banquets are drinking and singing. In order to justify banquets one must therefore discuss also singing, music, and hence education as a whole: the music pleasures are the greatest pleasures which people can enjoy in public and which they must learn to control by being exposed to them. The Spartan and Cretan laws suffer then from the great defect that they do not at all, or at least not sufficiently, expose their subjects to the music pleasures. The reason for this is that these two societies are not towns but armed camps, a kind of herd: in Sparta and Crete even those youths who are by nature fit to be educated as individuals by private teachers are brought up merely as members of a herd. In other words, the Spartans and Cretans know only how to sing in choruses: they do not know the most beautiful song, the most noble music. In the Republic the city of the armed camp, a greatly improved Sparta, was transcended by the City of Beauty, the city in which philosophy, the highest Muse, is duly honored. In the Laws, where the best possible regime is presented, this transcending does not take place. The city of the Laws is, however, not a city of the armed camp in any sense. Yet it has certain features in common with the city of the armed camp of the Republic. Just as in the Republic, music education proves to be education toward moderation, and such education proves to require the supervision of musicians and poets by the true statesman or legislator. Yet while in the Republic education to moderation proves to culminate in the love of the beautiful, in the Laws moderation rather takes on the colors of sense of shame or of reverence. Education is surely education to virtue, to the virtue of the citizen or to the virtue of man.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“Socrates then turns to the communism regarding women and children and shows that it is desirable because it will make the city more “one,” and hence more perfect, than a city consisting of separate families would be: the city should be as similar as possible to a single human being or to a single living body, i.e., to a natural being. At this point we understand somewhat better why Socrates started his discussion of justice by assuming an important parallelism between the city and the individual: he was thinking ahead of the greatest possible unity of the city.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“This abstraction shows itself most strikingly in two facts: when Socrates mentions the fundamental needs which give rise to human society, he is silent about the need for procreation, and when he describes the tyrant, Injustice incarnate, he presents him as Eros incarnate. In the thematic discussion of the respective rank of spiritedness and desire, he is silent about eros. It seems that there is a tension between eros and the city and hence between eros and justice: only through the depreciation of eros can the city come into its own.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“It is true that “spiritedness” includes a large variety of phenomena ranging from the most noble indignation about injustice, turpitude, and meanness down to the anger of a spoiled child who resents being deprived of anything that he desires, however bad. But the same is also true of “desire”: one kind of desire is eros, which ranges in its healthy forms from the longing for immortality via offspring through the longing for immortality via immortal fame to the longing for immortality via participation by knowledge in the things which are unchangeable in every respect. The assertion that spiritedness is higher in rank than desire as such is then questionable.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“It is most important, both for the understanding of the Republic and generally, that we do not behave toward Thrasymachos as Thrasymachos behaves, i.e., angrily, fanatically, or savagely. If we look then at Thrasymachos’ indignation without indignation, we must admit that his violent reaction is to some extent a revolt of common sense. Since the city as city is a society which from time to time must wage war, and war is inseparable from harming innocent people, the unqualified condemnation of harming human beings would be tantamount to the condemnation of even the justest city. [...] Thrasymachos contends that justice is the advantage of the stronger. Still, this thesis proves to be only the consequence of an opinion which is not only not manifestly savage but is even highly respectable. According to that opinion, the just is the same as the lawful or legal, i.e., what the customs or laws of the city prescribe.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“[T]he more one reads Thucydides, the less one feels that Athens’s suffering was fitting or deserved. And, more generally, our first response to the book as a whole is not satisfaction at justice having been done, but is far more likely to be a feeling of sadness. This sadness arises, in large measure at least, from a growing sense that the defeat of Athens is not the victory of justice, but that justice itself is among the chief victims of the war.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“[E]very reader must be struck by the contrast between the outspokenness of these speeches and Thucydides’ own reticence. [...] Now this silence does not mean that he is indifferent, or that he no longer responds to men and events, as he encourages us to do, with approval and disapproval. It shows, rather, that he is a skillful political educator. For the moral seriousness that he fosters in us remains immature, it does not sufficiently help us to promote the well-being of our communities, which it necessarily wants to promote, unless it is guided by or culminates in political wisdom. And since political wisdom is primarily good judgment about unprecedented, particular situations, it is not so much a subject matter to be taught as a skill to be developed through practice. Accordingly, instead of telling us whether or not he approves of a given policy, Thucydides asks us to make our own judgments, and then to subject them to the testing that the war provides.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“Through the discovery of nature the radical difference between these two kinds of “ways” or “customs” came to the center of attention. The discovery of nature led to the splitting up of “way” or “custom” into “nature” (physis) on the one hand and “convention” or “law” (nomos) on the other. [...] The distinction implies that the natural is prior to the conventional. The distinction between nature and convention is fundamental for classical political philosophy and even for most of modern political philosophy, as can be seen most simply from the distinction between natural right and positive right.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“the complacency engendered by the tranquil possession of a God-given truth.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“But whereas Cyrus wanted his praises to be sung by all human beings, Xenophon was concerned primarily with honor from his friends.[125] Unlike Cyrus, he was not as eager for praise from incompetent judges as from competent ones. This difference helps us to understand his equanimity in the face of the most varied political fortunes: for example, the dignity and wit with which he defended himself when confronted with ingratitude and baseless hostility on the part of the very men whose lives he had saved.[126] It helps us also to understand his ability to leave political life to return to a private life. [...] Country retirement, while lacking the immediate challenges to heart and mind presented by politics at their peak, would have appealed to him as allowing more leisure for contemplation and writing—especially since that contemplation might embrace, as we know from the Anabasis that it did, his own political experiences among other things. For a man like Xenophon, the contemplative reliving of experiences was sure to be a deepening of them. It could thus have been looked forward to as promising a more profound enjoyment than the original experiences themselves, and one less mixed with pain.

[125]Cyropaedia III 2.31; Anabasis VI 1.20. 126.
[126]Anabasis VII 6.11 ff.; compare V 7.5 ff. and 8.2 ff.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“As a political leader, Xenophon was forced to adapt himself to this situation and to induce those he led to do so. Among the most impressive passages in the Anabasis are the speeches in which he instructs his fellow Greeks on the necessity of compliance with certain Spartan demands that are far from just or reasonable and, in general, on the necessity of accommodating themselves to “those who now rule Greece.” [123] Readers who are at all sensitive to how harsh political necessity can occasionally be may also find in Xenophon the writer, in his treatment of the Spartans, a model of how to proceed under like circumstances. He applauded and thus encouraged what was good, while pointing out without rancor or bitterness what was bad, to the extent that it was prudent and useful to do so. To return to what distinguished him from the elder and younger Cyruses, the high qualities which in the case of the two Persians (that is, barbarians) could be prevented from doing political harm only by being suppressed, or excised from the soul, could safely thrive in Xenophon, who had had the benefit of a Socratic education, an education that those qualities among others fitted him to receive.

[123] Anabasis VI 6.8–16 and VII 1.25–31; compare III 2.37 and VI 1.26–28.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“Xenophon shared the traits that distinguished the younger Cyrus from his more illustrious predecessor. Like him (and also like his Socrates), he was an erotic man. And he was, to judge at least from the attention his writings give to the problem of justice, no less concerned with justice. But he lacked the younger Cyrus’ rashness or defects of judgment. In particular, he never let zeal to avenge a wrong overcome his prudence, even for a moment. To state this point in a manner more Thucydidean than Xenophontic, he knew that the existence of an injustice does not guarantee that the attempt to provide due retribution will meet with success; that our situation may be such as to require us simply to bear an unavenged wrong.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The use of divination, for example, implies the claim that a meaningful connection may exist between two events (a sneeze and the future salvation of an army, to take one example from among many in Xenophon’s Anabasis) that does not stem from the events themselves, the deliberate action of human beings, or chance. Or, to refer to divine punishment for certain misdeeds, as Xenophon does very emphatically in the midst of his Hellenica, is to suggest that those deeds had consequences not stemming naturally, so to speak, from the deeds themselves. In particular, it is to deny the validity of the suggestion which seems to be conveyed by the beginning and the ending of the Hellenica: that human affairs are drawn out of their usual confusion only when, and so long as, they are directed by human prudence in the form of a competent leader at the helm.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“We might be tempted to think that knowledge of unchanging classes or kinds or species could simply take the place of knowledge of the unchanging causes. But this would be to ignore the manifest dependence of classes of beings on the existence of those (individual) beings. Xenophon’s Socrates never speaks of separately existing “ideas”: the classes or kinds are not separate from their members; the characters are always characters of the things possessing them. It is true that the characters are causes of those things, setting limits to them. They share this responsibility, however, with something other than them, something for which they are not responsible and whose existence and nature are guaranteed neither by them nor by anything else we know of. (Socrates may point to this shared responsibility when he calls attention to the dissimilar behavior of things possessing the same perceptible character.) As a result, we cannot know, though we may suspect, that some classes are permanent.

The deepest implication of Socrates’ criticism of his philosophic predecessors becomes clear only when we consider more precisely what it was the pre-Socratics were trying to do. They had attempted to discover not merely the state of the cosmos but “the necessities” by which each of the heavenly things comes into being or “the way the god contrives each of the heavenly things” understood as the way he must contrive them. Needless to say, they understood the reign of necessity to extend to earthly matters as well. Human prudence and folly, as well as chance, derive from the fundamental necessity and are limited by it. Their most basic contention, the inspiration of the doctrines by which they sought to elaborate and vindicate that contention, was that not just anything can come into being or come to pass but only what accords with or is permitted by the nature of the fundamental cause or causes. But if the fundamental causes are undiscoverable, must one not regard this contention as merely plausible? Yet could Socrates, either as a philosopher or as a human being, leave it an open question whether “just anything” can come to pass?”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“In fact, classification, the separating of things into classes or kinds, underlies our speech, our capacity to speak. According to Socrates, “conversing” (to dialegesthai) was given its name from the practice of those who come together to deliberate in common by separating (to dialegein) matters according to their kinds.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“Socrates criticized his predecessors’ doctrines about the nature of all things for their implausibility: “some of them are of the opinion that being is one alone, others that beings are unlimited in multitude; some that everything is always in motion, others that nothing is ever moved; some that everything comes into being and perishes, others that nothing ever comes into being or perishes.” Beyond that, he regarded the matters they attempted to elucidate as undiscoverable for human beings. He cannot have meant by this that reason is unable to cast any light at all on the matters in question—the implausible doctrines themselves point to plausible ones (the means between the opposed extremes). He must rather have had in mind that to be in possession even of very plausible doctrines is not yet to have knowledge of those matters. Socrates’ own philosophic activity would then have been distinguished from that of at least many of his predecessors by being guided by a greater awareness of its limits.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The final allegation of the accuser states that Socrates made a mischievous use of certain passages in the most highly reputed poets, interpreting, for example, a line from Hesiod to mean that one should abstain from no unjust or shameful deed but do even such things for the sake of gain. Xenophon’s response speaks of Socrates’ standard as the beneficial or the good; it says nothing about his views on the noble and just.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“The best students have in common with Euthydemus in the first place a longing for that virtue “through which human beings become capable of engaging in politics ... and able to rule,” that is, for “the noblest virtue and the greatest art,” which is called the “royal art.” In the second place, since their ambition is a noble one, they share with him a conviction that one cannot become good in these things without being just. Socrates would apparently begin his serious instruction by appealing to that ambition or longing and that conviction. It follows that a knowledge of justice is a prerequisite of fundamental importance to political understanding and political action.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“According to Xenophon, Socrates wanted his companions to come to accept what he approved of—which would have been fully possible only in the case of his best students. One of the signs by which he thought he could recognize the youths with the best natures, the ones he most wished to consort with, was their desire to learn everything required for nobly directing a political community. (It is only in the section of the Memorabilia devoted to Socrates’ conversations with actual or would-be political or military leaders that Xenophon mentions Plato, whom he implicitly but clearly identifies in the context as the student Socrates was most interested in.)”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“We are perhaps most clearly invited or instructed to compare Cyrus and Socrates by the parallel stories of Panthea and Theodote. When Cyrus was urged by the friend to whom he had entrusted her care to have a look at Panthea, an extremely beautiful captive queen, Cyrus refused out of fear that her beauty would make him so desirous of continuing to look at her that he would neglect what he had to do. When Socrates, on the other hand, was informed of the presence in town of Theodote, a woman whose beauty, according to Socrates’ informant, was too great for words to describe, Socrates replied, “Then we must go have a look, for it is not possible for those who [merely] hear to learn what is too great for words to describe.” There was no danger of Socrates’ being kept from his daily activity by desire to continue to look at Theodote.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“On the basis of these and other similar considerations, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that Xenophon thought the thesis about Cyrus put forward in his preface was refuted rather than sustained by his elaboration of Cyrus’ career. He must after all have regarded the Cyropaedia as a whole as an endorsement of the old “Persian” laws and regime rather than of their transformation by Cyrus, if an endorsement suitably qualified in light of the defects of the old order brought out in the work. But why, in that case, did he present Cyrus’ transformation in such a way as to make it attractive to us, at least on a first and even on a second impression? Did he merely wish to purge us of a dangerous temptation after first eliciting our affinity for it? Or are we now running the risk of repeating our error, this time by moving too far in the opposite direction from our earlier erroneous view? Does the truth about Cyrus, does Xenophon’s own view of Cyrus, lie somewhere between these extremes?

[...] it is open to us to wonder whether some later indications of Xenophon as to the inner poverty—against a background of unlimited external splendor and success—of the life of Cyrus as king are not meant to suggest the consequences of his ignoring his father’s advice. Surely Xenophon never says of his Cyrus, as he said once of Socrates, “He seemed to me to be himself blessedly happy.”

[...] Xenophon has led us to suspect that Cyrus himself lacked an education of this highest kind.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“We will leave aside the facts that Cyrus’ new founding was to a considerable extent merely a “reshuffling of the deck,” with the formerly ruling tribes now reduced to slavery in service to the new masters; that the resultant ill will made necessary the maintenance of an immense military establishment and a large personal guard for Cyrus, a virtually omnipresent, if informal, internal spying network, and the use in addition of various “bewitching” techniques to hold the ruled in awe as well as fear; that the individual “merit” rewarded so lavishly by Cyrus was sometimes difficult to distinguish from loyalty to him and willingness to serve his merely personal aims; and that the rewards thus received were revocable at any time at Cyrus’ pleasure. It is more important for our present purpose to note that the greatest danger to his throne Cyrus judged to come from the very friends he had most rewarded. The significance of this may be seen from the fact that these friends were for the most part the same peers whose acquisitiveness (in all its aspects) Cyrus had emancipated by his suggestion that they replace the pursuit of virtue for its own sake with pursuit of it for its rewards.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy

“His efforts can be seen by now to have rested on a profound understanding or, at least, a remarkable intuitive grasp of the limitations of “Persia,” that is, of classical aristocracy. He knew, for example, that the loyalty it demanded, like that for any particular, nonuniversal society, rested on an arbitrary division of mankind into fellow citizens (friends) and strangers (enemies actual or potential). (Compare Plato’s analysis in the Republic of the defects of justice understood as helping friends and harming enemies.) He knew likewise that the class hierarchy without which, in the premodern condition of material scarcity, the unique Persian system of public education could not have been supported, rested not on merit or natural capacity but on the indefensible criterion of inherited wealth. (In the Republic, Plato was able to remove this stain from classical aristocracy only by the extreme expedient of abolishing the family.) These defects of the old order were to be removed in the new by the creation of a universal (and therefore all-inclusive) empire and by making positions of wealth, honor, and responsibility within it depend upon merit alone.

Above all, Cyrus knew or sensed the weakness of that attachment to virtue and virtuous deeds as ends in themselves which the old Persian education prided itself on producing, an attachment on which the preference for old Persia and its way of life depended. To speak now only of the attachment itself and not of the virtue that was its object, it was not truly the result of education in the strict sense of the word. Rather, it had been beaten into the Persian peers both literally and figuratively (through praise and blame). And an attachment so produced is vulnerable to temptation. (Compare what Plato suggests, in the myth of Er which concludes the Republic, by his tale of the choice of lives.) Still, in providing that temptation, in suggesting to the peers that they no longer pursue what they take to be virtue for its own sake but rather for its rewards, Cyrus would appear to be more of a corrupter than a reformer.”
― Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy