Thomas L. Pangle, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, delivered the fourth of the 2003-2004 Bradley Lectures on December 1. He addressed some of the misunderstandings in recent accounts of the teachings and influence of political theorist Leo Strauss (1899-1973). After outlining the major themes of Strauss's thought, Pangle turned to the political implications of a Straussian education. What follows is an edited excerpt from that section; the complete text and video of the lecture are available online. The quotes in the excerpt are all drawn from the preface to Strauss's Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968).

Strauss's teaching instills a tempered appreciation for the nobility of the political life within liberal democracy as the best regime possible in our epoch, in full awareness of this democracy's and that epoch's intensifying spiritual and civic dilemmas.

At the same time, Strauss provides an immunization against--precisely by arousing a deep sympathy for the original motivations of--the terrible delusions that inspire the political fanaticism of the contemporary Left and Right, in their desperate attempts to replace liberal democracy with more elevated and radical versions of the great modern project, or in their hopeless attempts to bring about a political return to a lost pre-liberal and pious order.

By the same token, Strauss teaches one neither to expect nor to hope for an "end of history triumph" of American or of any other form of liberal democracy. It is by no means unreasonable to suppose that America and its liberal democracy will exercise planetary predominance or even hegemony for the foreseeable future. But it is unreasonable, given Strauss's analysis, to expect that the human spirit will not rise up in unforeseeable forms of longing and rebellion against the spiritual deformations imposed by and attendant upon this regime's hegemony.

The yearning for transcendent purpose, and, most likely, the return to or recrudescence of some form of pre-liberal religiosity, will--if Strauss is right--remain permanent impulses bursting forth unpredictably from generation to generation. Nor is it likely that we will ever, so long as modernity prevails, see the end of various sorts of desperate nihilisms that find perverse exaltation in dying to destroy that "evil" for which they cannot devise a viable replacement.

Those of civic ambition who are influenced by Strauss's reflections will presumably not await passively these profound threats to our liberal democracy. They will try to awaken others to their likelihood, in part by raising awareness of the controversial character of the deepest moral and religious foundations of liberal democracy. To possess this awareness is to recognize the fragility at the heart of our regime and to become all the more aware of the need for thoughtful action not only to defend modern liberalism but to shore it up--in part by supplementing it with classical liberalism and by learning from this liberalism to elucidate moral potentials still present in contemporary liberalism that are in danger of extinction.

Relation to Conservatism

This means to say that for most practical purposes Strauss's influence inclines one toward the conservative part of the present-day spectrum. Classical political philosophy "cannot be simply conservative since it is guided by the awareness that all men seek by nature, not the ancestral or traditional, but the good." Besides, "the conservatism of our age is identical with what was originally [modern] liberalism, more or less modified by changes in the direction of present-day liberalism"; yet as such, Strauss was apt to think, contemporary conservatism puts healthy brakes on contemporary liberalism.

"Liberals" (using the term now in the more narrow current sense) tend to agree with "Communism as regards the ultimate goal," which "may be said to be" the "universal and homogeneous state." "Pragmatic" liberals would be "satisfied with a federation of all now existing or soon emerging states, with a truly universal and greatly strengthened United Nations." Conservatives tend to be soberly dubious about this trajectory. This is not because conservatives are still (as they tended overwhelmingly to be in the nineteenth century) simply nationalistic, let alone imperial: "there is no reason whatever," Strauss opined, "why they should be opposed to a United Free Europe, for instance. Yet they are likely to understand such units differently from the liberals. An outstanding European conservative [de Gaulle] has spoken of l'Europe des patries." In other words, "conservatives look with greater sympathy than liberals on the particular or particularist and the heterogeneous; at least they are more willing than liberals to respect and perpetuate a more fundamental diversity"--Strauss means, political diversity, rooted in the nations, with their distinct and healthily competing traditions.