格兰特与施特劳斯

Grant Havers George Grant and Leo Strauss: Modernist and Postmodernist Conservatisms The influence of Leo Strauss (1899-1973) on George Grant's thought has been widely acknowledged, not least by Grant himself. In the 1966 edition of Philosophy in the Mass Age, Grant included this tribute to Strauss: "As the greatest joy and that most dif- ficult of attainment is any movement of the mind (however small) towards enlighten- ment, I count it a high blessing to have been acquainted with this man's thought" (1995 [1966]:122). Grant saw in the political philosophy of Strauss a powerful cele- bration of ancient wisdom, as well as a vindication of his own suspicions of modernity. Both men were fierce critics of such modernist cultural hallmarks as liberalism, the idea of progress, the promise of enlightenment, and irreligiosity. Moreover, both turned to Plato in order to make sense of the contradictions and disorders of moder- nity. Thus, it is no surprise that a Canadian nationalist saw a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany as a kindred philosophical spirit. As we shall see, the current revival of interest in the work of Strauss justifies an assess- ment of his intellectual relationship to Grant. This revival is taking full account of the influence of Strauss, whose vast corpus of works on the major political philosophers of the West helped to spawn a whole new approach to political philosophy in the twentieth century. Like his fellow emigres Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin, Strauss not only opposed the rising tide of historicism, progressivism, and value-free neutral- ity in political science, but advocated at least a partial return to Platonic philosophy as the way out of the modem crises of nihilism and totalitarianism (1953;1963). The fact that his influence (as evidenced by his numerous supporters in political circles) con- tinues to shape American conservatism as well as academic political theory in both Canada and the United States (Drury 1999) is reason enough to assess the meaning of Strauss's works. Given the current uncertain future of conservatism in both Canada and the United States, we would also do well to ponder the nature of Strauss's impact on Grant's understanding of conservatism. For that future is still shaped by the legacy of Grant and Strauss. Yet what is the true nature of this relationship? Did Grant wholeheartedly embrace (or even grasp) Straussian philosophy? Was it compatible with his distinctly Canadian con- servatism? Most readers and students of Grant have agreed that there are clear family resemblances between his thought and that of Strauss. The scholarly consensus tends to lean towards the assumption, first fostered by Grant himself, that Strauss seeks to recover the ancient wisdom of Plato and Aristotle in order to combat the corrosive effects of modemity (as symbolized by historicism, progressivism, and value-free neu- trality). In this paper, I will argue, contra this popular interpretation, that there are enormous differences between Grant and Strauss. Additionally, I shall contend that Grant is best understood as a "modernist conservative," whereas Strauss is a "postmodem conser- vative." While Grant embraced a defeatist version of conservatism, which is heavily defined by his ideas of modemity, Strauss followed a more activist conservatism, mak- ing use of elitist Nieaschean concepts, for the purpose of countering what he consid- ers the liberal egalitarian attack on "culture." Indeed, their very distinct understanding of Nieasche's philosophy, as I shall show, reveals the depth of their dif- ferences. Furthermore, I shall argue that Strauss's consequent cultural elitism clearly clashed with the egalitarianism of Grant. -I $? 5 The scholarly Consensus on Grant and Strauss 92 It is generally assumed by readers favourable to Grant and Strauss that both philoso- phers decry the effects of modernity on culture, ethics, and politics. It is also agreed that both sought a return to ancient philosophy in order to counteract these effects. The assumption which they both held is that the ancients, particularly Plato and Aris- totle, possessed a sense of the "higher things," of eternity, which is the only means of counteracting historicism and relativism. Strauss famously critiques modem philoso- phy for reducing truth to a mere image of the "lower things," such as historical con- text, culture, or power. Only Plato and his heirs provide a sense of an absolute foundation, for only they comprehend, in contrast to the modems, that the philo- sophical truth is eternal and unchanging, and thus irreducible. A s Strauss observes in his classic statement of the "natural right" doctrine: "Philosophy is possible only if there is an absolute horizon or a natural horizon in contradistinction to the histori- cally changing horizons or the caves" (1953:35). Throughout Strauss's works, the implication seems to be that Plato and Aristotle grasped this eternal horizon, while the modems languish in the caves, quarrelling over mere transitory opinions. Certainly Grant believed that Strauss was providing this type of approach. Moreover, Grant assumed that Strauss was a wholesale opponent of the modern tradition of phi- losophy, culminating in the historicism of Nieasche. Grant accepted the seemingly strict dividing line which Strauss set up between Plato and the classics on the one hand and the modernists on the other. Grant believed, following his own interpreta- tion of Strauss, that the Modems from Machiavelli to Darwin had attempted to shred any idea of eternal truth and the related ancient virtues of nobility, excellence, and character. The modem age had delivered humanity into a morass of instrumental rationality, historicism, and conquest of human nature through the use of technology. As he wrote in Lament for a Nation: fie Defeat of Canadian Nationulim, The modem account of human nature and destiny was developed from a profound criticism of what Plato and Aristotle had written. The modem thinkers believed that they had overcome the inadequacies of ancient thought, while maintaining what was true in the ancients. (1991 [1965]:95) As Grant makes clear in a footnote on the same page, his thinking is indebted to that "wise man," Leo Strauss. Clearly, scholars who are also committed to the Straussian interpretation of antiquity and modernity have largely associated Grant's thinking with that of Strauss. Grant's biographer Wdiam Christian comments that "In Strauss's own political philosophy George found a resonance of his own . . . Strauss was the only contemporary thinker he had encountered who was trying to wrestle with the politi- cal consequences of such a vision" (1993:225). Barry Cooper states that "Grant fol- lowed Strauss's understanding of classical political philosophy in formulating many of his critical analyses of modem society" (1990: 113). This debt includes Grant's agree- ment with Strauss that modernity sacrifices any sense of the eternal "in its attempt to become the master and possessor of nature" (1990:129). Michael Allen Gillespie i remarks, in a way consistent with Christian and Cooper, that Strauss helped Grant g grasp the political implications of modem philosophy, especially advancing beyond 5 OD Heidegger's critique of technology in the process (1990:128). Thus, these three sym- - pathetic readers of Grant and Strauss largely accept Grant's claim that he and Strauss 93 shared the same commitment to a recovery of the classical wisdom. H. D. Forbes, one of the few readers to write extensively on Grant and Strauss, also concurs that Grant saw in Strauss's philosophy a sophisticated attempt to revive the old quarrel between the ancients and the modems. Strauss "had challenged in a new way the conventional view that modem thought is superior to that of the ancients" (1996:177). All four of these readers are quite right in arguing that Grant attributed to Strauss this approach to the ancients. Yet I believe that these readers all too quickly and uncritically assume that Grant was correct in attributing such a meaning. For it is not at all obvious that Strauss saw such a clear dividing line between antiquity, moder- nity, and postmodernity, as Grant and others claim. Indeed, a whole new body of scholarly literature on Strauss has emerged in the past ten years, forcefully challeng- ing the idea that Strauss was, like Grant, simply a pre-modern seeker of an escape from modernity. The "Revisionist" Approach to Strauss It is necessary to discuss what I shall call the "revisionist" approach to Strauss, since it raises questions about the compatibility of his thought with that of Grant. For this compatibility, as we have seen, rests entirely on the premise that both thinkers are committed to the ancients against the modems. This new literature suggests that Strauss was not nearly as committed to this dichotomy as he and his supporters often suggest. Indeed, the representatives of this view contend that Strauss was heavily indebted to modems like Machiavelli and Joseph De Maistre, and postmoderns like Nietzsche, for his views. This radical divergence of interpretation is explained by the fact of Strauss's notori- ously esoteric style of writing. A s both supporters and detractors of Strauss well know, Strauss believed that there was a clear tension between philosophy and society. The former cannot help but challenge the conventional myths of the latter, since philoso- phy is the embodiment of reason. Society, however, rests on unexamined truths about its own good and nobility. Yet, as the fate of Socrates reveals, if philosophy too openly and too boldly challenges these truths, this society will be thrown into disorder and wind up persecuting philosophy. For this reason, Strauss (1952) believed that the most sophisticated philosophers, from Plato onwards, wrote esoterically, in order to conceal the most dangerous ideas from all but the most astute readers. Thus, philoso- phy would be preserved from persecution. Whatever the validity of Strauss's reading of the history of philosophy, it has led to the position that Strauss himself writes esoterically in order to conceal the harshest truths of philosophy. Shadia Drury, for example, has argued that Strauss secretly believes that religion is totally vulnerable to the rational critique of philosophy, but he conceals this -I 5 insight so that religious myths, which are so necessary for the preservation of culture, 5 will be preserved (1988:37-60). Drury (1994) calls this "right-wing postmodernism" (L) or the belief that religions and other myths are useful fictions which must be pre- 94 served in order to save culture. (Drury contrasts this with "left-wing postmodernism", as represented by Foucault and Bataille, who want to expose and deconstruct all fic- tions.) To my knowledge, Drury is the only scholar who has classified Strauss as a right-wing postmodern. Even Jurgen Habermas, who has studied the neoconservative implications of postmodernism, follows the conventional approach of classifying Strauss as a pre-modern (1976:201) with links to the old European Right (1989:137), but not to postmodernism itself. In any case, I shall make use of the related notion, "postmodern conservatism," in order to emphasize that Strauss applies postmodern ideas (such as the philosophy of Nietzsche) for very conservative (or anti-liberal) pur- poses. Since Strauss writes esoterically, many of his critics have argued that his commitment to antiquity is more apparent than real, and that Strauss's real commitment may be more modem and postmodern than his supporters realize. For example, Drury (1988) argues that Strauss is secretly a Machiavellian (in his commitment to conceal- ing the truth) and a Nietzschean, committed to the idea of the Superman, who will challenge modernist ideas of equality and liberty in favour of a new philosophical elite, presumably to be headed by Strauss's followers who will lead the ignorant masses away from modernist ideologies (1994: 157-59). Stephen Holmes (1994) argues that the real root of Strauss's thought, once the secret meaning is uncovered, is not Plato but the modernist conservative anti-enlightenment. Holmes contends that Joseph De Maistre and other opponents of the enlightenment and the French Revolu- tion are the real philosophical ancestors of Strauss, for they all share a conservative dislike of democracy and liberalism. Laurence Lampert (1996), like Drury, believes that Strauss's debt to Nietzsche is enormous, and that he clearly embraces both Nietzsche's analysis of and solution to the modem crisis. Perhaps most significantly of all, Stanley Rosen, a former student of Strauss, argues that his former teacher was a postmodemist opponent of the enlightenment (1987:87-140). I mention this collection of revisionist critiques because they raise serious questions about the accuracy of linking Grant's ideas with Strauss's. To my knowledge, no one cited here has pursued a study of the implications of the revisionist critique for stud- ies of Grant's indebtedness to Strauss. In the rest of this paper, I would like to build on this literature by showing that Grant's and Strauss's political philosophies were remarkably divergent, and that the meaning of Strauss's purpose is reasonably clear, despite the debate over Strauss's esoteric style. Grant's Modernist Conservatism At fist glance, both Grant and Strauss seem to launch a remarkably similar critique against modernity. Both had grave misgivings about technology, secular education, the impact of liberalism on virtue, and the reduction of politics to selfish calculation. As a result, both thinkers have been called "conservative," although they both detested -I that label. Nevertheless, this apparent congruence of their ideas has captured the admiration of conservative writers like Christian and Cooper, and has led them to clas- 2 5 srfy both Grant and Strauss on the rightist side of the political spectrum. 0) 95 Still, how similar are they in this respect? I believe that Grant and Strauss defined their own political ideologies so differently that it makes a simple labeling of both as "con- servative" misleading in the extreme. A s readers of Grant well know, he defines con- servatism solely in opposition to modem philosophers of liberalism and technological progress (and later to Nietzsche who, for Grant, is the culmination of modernity any- way). Indeed, as Grant makes clear in Lament for a Nation, his brand of Canadian conservatism has fought a losing battle against the liberalism of the United States ever since Confederation. This conservatism, which is commonly called "Red Toryism" (a label Grant disliked) is committed to the idea of community, suspicion of individual- ism and economic calculation, and an embrace of order and tradition, as represented by the Loyalists who rejected the American Revolution and fled to Canada. Grant openly admitted that this conservatism is no match for the technologically sophisti- cated and liberal ways of America, and that the fate of this conservatism is largely the fate of Canada's survival as anything more than a satellite nation. As Grant put it: The impossibility of conservatism in our era is the impossibility of Canada. As Canadians we attempted a ridiculous task in trying to build a conservative nation in the age of progress, on a continent we share with the most dynamic nation on earth. The current of modern history was against us. (1991 [1965]:68) live implications are central here. First, Grant's defeatist spirit is unmistakable. Sec- ond, Grant defines the idea of progress to be the preeminent, quintessential ideology of modernity. These points are related. The kind of conservatism to which Grant appealed could have challenged liberalism at one time, but that time was passed (with the defeat of Diefenbaker by continentalist forces in 1963). As Grant observes in the same work, this "British" version of conservatism, represented in the philosophy of Edmund Burke, was less an ideology than "an appeal to an ill-defined past . . . It was an inchoate desire to build, in these cold and forbidding regions, a society with a greater sense of order and restraint than freedom-loving republicanism would allow" (1991 [1965]:70). Grant was convinced that the idea of progress triumphed over all other modem ideologies, a contention which he developed in Philosophy in the Mass Age (1995 [1959]:38-74). What is significant here is that Grant defines conservatism as a reaction to the idea of progress and, in a Canadian context, to the encroachments of the American way of life. This is the only conservatism which Grant can imagine. The reason for this self-imposed limitation on Grant's part lies in his belief that, for conservatism to be what it claims to be, it must look backward in time to a romanti- cized version of modernity. The ideals of community and order were throwbacks to a pre-capitalist age, when liberalism was only beginning to emerge in England, in the eighteenth century. Grant constantly defined conservatism in terms of looking back- ward, lamenting the loss of a still modem ethos. Yet this modernist conservatism, with its romanticist leanings, could never compete with American liberalism. -I It is well-known that Grant saw "American conservatism" as an oxymoron precisely 5 because he believed that the United States, with its embrace of progressivism, never - " looks backward. For Grant, there was no commitment to tradition or community in 96 the American ideology. Even the so-called "conservative" movements in American pol- itics, such as Goldwater's Republicans, were simply older versions of the same liberal- ism, and represented "the last-ditch stand of a local culture" (1991 [1965]:66). Both right (the Republicans) and left (the Democrats) in the United States were committed to capitalism, individualism, and technological progress. The only difference was in their choice of means to achieve these goals. Grant believed that, since the United States had always been the quintessential liberal nation, there was no reason to believe or hope that anything could alter this liberal course. Grant followed the analysis of Louis Hartz (1955): that America was born lib- eral, a child of the Anglo-American enlightenment, with its commitment to freedom, equality (at least in principle), and limited government. America had no conservative tradition: from its very beginnings, the United States lacked all of the institutions of Old World conservatism (except in the South) such as a state church, landed ruling class, and a commitment to noblesse oblige. The United States was the first truly mod- em nation, with its fervent commitment to the classical liberal ideals which shied away from the old European conservative tradition of order and aristocracy. Since Grant defined conservatism solely in modernist terms, as a reaction to progres- sivism, it follows that he could never get beyond political defeatism, or sense of trag- edy about the shared fate of Canada and conservatism in modernity. Yet this was not a defeatism which Strauss shared. Strauss's Postmodern Conservatism I shall argue here that Strauss lacked this sense of defeatism, not because he pos- sessed a more optimistic soul than Grant, but because his approach to modernity (and postmodernity) was subtly distinct from Grant's. To be sure, Strauss agreed with Grant that the liberalism and progressivism of modernity were damaging to the old classical virtues. Yet Strauss never recommended a return to the conservatism which Grant favoured. Strauss's brand of conservatism was activist and more forward-loo