Leo Strauss contra Schmitt (II), on the nature of Civilisation, and Empire
In my last post I claimed that in his (1932) response to Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss implies that he does not reject civilization while Schmitt does. I included a footnote that I had been anticipated by Robert Howse’s (2014) Leo Strauss Man of Peace. Cambridge University Press, chapter 2, but that I disagree with Howse on what Strauss means by ‘civilization.’ (A reader of this blog recommended the Howse book after one of my pieces on Oakeshott—apologies for forgetting who that was, but thank you!)
As it happens, friend of these Digressions, Jeffrey Bernstein (himself a bona fide Strauss scholar), suggested that “in “German Nihilism”, [Strauss] speaks about civilization as co-extensive with liberalism…when he defines the civilization that the nihilists are rejecting (calling it just “civilization”), it contains all the properties of liberalism.” Bernstein’s interpretation is not far from Howse’s, which I quote below. (Some other time, perhaps, I return to Howse’s more general interpretation of Strauss.) So, it is with some trepidation that I propose an alternative reading of Strauss’s relatively early response to Schmitt on the nature of civilization against two real experts.
Before I get there, a few building blocks need to be put into place. First, I will be relying on a lecture by Strauss, “German Nihilism” that was almost certainly delivered in February 26, 1941 in the General Seminar of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research in New York. It was first published in Interpretation, spring 1999 (26:3), pp. 353-78. This is also the evidence Howse (and Bernstein) focus on.
Second, “German Nihilism” explicitly mentions Schmitt. The passage is worth quoting in full:
The adolescents I am speaking of, were in need of teachers who could explain to them in articulate language the positive, and not merely destructive, meaning of their aspirations. They believed to have found such teachers in that group of professors and writers who knowingly or ignorantly paved the way for Hitler (Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, [illegible], Ernst Jünger, Heidegger). If we want to understand the singular success, not of Hitler, but of those writers, we must cast a quick glance at their opponents who were at the same time the opponents of the young nihilists. Those opponents committed frequently a grave mistake. They believed to have refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men.
But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. pp 7-8
The adolescents are the ‘'German nihilists.’' (Hitler and the Nazis are treated as the “most vulgar” (p. 15; see also p. 4) kind of these nihilists.) What the critics of the nihilists have not understood are the evaluative commitments of these nihilists: they “had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modem civilisation; the great authorities of that civilisation did no longer impress them.” (p. 8) Strauss’ lecture is worth re-reading because he grasps almost phenomenologically (and Howse thinks Strauss is himself drawing on his own past) what drives such rejection of civilisation. Some other time I will explore this more fully because contemporary responses to the resurgence of far right commitments miss some of the insights in the vicinity.
Now, according to Strauss, Schmitt’s significance (alongside others) qua teacher is then that building on that shared rejection of civilisation, he offers the young new existential ideals. The political, then, with its identity based friend-enemy distinction gives meaning or intensity to the rest of culture and life and it is ultimately oriented toward militarism of a certain sort. (This is called ‘nihilism’ in virtue of being based on a rejection of civilisation in so far as it has a moral meaning not because nihilists embrace cynicism or rejects all commitments (p. 4).)
Third, before Strauss defines ‘civilisation’ he characterises it as follows, the “term civilisation designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian.” (10) This is, in fact, a quite traditional (republican) account of civilisation, quite common among imperial projects (of the sort we may find, say, in Hume), in which the rustic warrior may be called a ‘barbarian’ or ‘savage’ (I return to that below). After he defines civilisatio,n Strauss claims that “civilisation is the conscious culture of reason.” (p. 11) And that “Civilisation is inseparable from learning, from the desire to learn from anyone who can teach us something worthwhile.” (p. 12) Up to here I agree with Howse and Bernstein.
Eventually Strauss defines ‘civilisation;’ the passage is worth citing in full:
By civilisation, we understand the conscious culture of humanity, i.e. of that which makes a human being a human being, i.e. the conscious* culture of reason. Human reason is active, above all, in two ways: as regulating human conduct, and as attempting to understand whatever can be understood by man; as practical reason, and as theoretical reason. The pillars of civilisation are therefore morals and science, and both united. For science without morals degenerates into cynicism, and thus destroys the basis of the scientific effort itself; and morals without science degenerates into superstition and thus is apt to become fanatic cruelty. Science is the attempt to understand the universe and man; it is therefore identical with philosophy; it is not necessarily identical with modern science. By morals, we understand the rules of decent and noble conduct, as a reasonable man would understand them; those rules are by their nature applicable to any human being, although we may allow for the possibility that not all human beings have an equal natural aptitude for decent and noble conduct. —p. 10.
Now, this is in some respects a generic definition of civilization. In principle, on this account, civilization can be present in many times and eras. Near the end of his lecture, Strauss speaks of “eternal principles of civilisation.” (p. 15). And if one has a capacious view of ‘philosophy,’ this account of ‘civilisation’ fits the late nineteenth and early twentieth century approach to comparative history in which ‘great’ civilizations (like Indian, China, Rome, Japan, etc.) have a place. In his lecture Strauss explicitly mentions the Japanese, so his position need not be Eurocentric at all.
But the quoted passage also reveals two bits of tension for a view like Bernstein’s. First, many strands of liberalism embrace “modern science.” Second, nearly all strands of liberalism embrace the idea that (nearly) all human beings have an equal natural aptitude for decent and noble conduct. (Yes, there were some really racist or sexist liberals who thought otherwise.) So, pace Bernstein, it’s not obvious that civilisation and liberalism are co-extensive for Strauss.
More important, in the lecture, Strauss is explicit that there are different kinds of civilisations: civilisations can come in degrees (p. 11); can be older or younger (p. 14); they can be “somewhat rotten” or not (p. 5). Throughout the lecture he uses “modern civilisation” in such a way as implying that there was an ancient one. So, even if Strauss thought liberalism was co-extensive with ‘modern civilisation’ (that’s a defensible reading), non-liberal civilisations are clearly possible according to Strauss.
Now, Howse’s version of the claim I am contesting is more subtle. I quote the passage I have in mind, with this qualification that I fully agree with the first two sentences:
Strauss has some sympathy with the opposition of the German nihilists to the decline of virtue or moral standards in liberal modernity. But he maintains that it is not inevitable that such a moral sentiment result in a rejection of civilization as such; the latter reaction is a product of distinctive tendencies in German thought. Not all elements of modern or liberal thinking are incompatible with an older ideal of civilization. Indeed, in England, where the philosophical ideas of liberal modernity originated, there existed “the very un-German prudence and moderation not to throw out the baby with the bath (sic), i.e. the prudence to conceive of the modern ideals as a reasonable adaptation of the old and eternal ideal of decency, of rule of law, and of that liberty which is not license, to changed circumstances” (GN, p. 372). “While the English originated the modern ideal, the pre-modern ideal, the classical ideal of humanity, was no better preserved than in Oxford and Cambridge” (GN,p. 372). England shows that nihilistic rebellion against modernity or against civilization as such is not the necessary or inevitable outcome of modernity. Howse Leo Strauss Man of Peace, p. 31
The problem is that after seemingly distinguishing them, Howse seems to equate modern and liberal thinking (in Strauss’s thought). In fact, as my previous posts suggests Strauss implies in his “Notes” that this equation is one of Schmitt’s mistakes. But Strauss does not claim that England, especially the England as led by Churchill (who he praises on p. 8) in 1941, is liberal!
In fact, in “German Nihilism,” Strauss does not use ‘liberal’ conjoined with modernity at all. He uses “liberal democracy” three times to refer to Weimar republic (p. 6). And once he speaks of the 19th century educational reformers as “liberals” (like Von Humboldt on p. 7). So what’s the nub of the matter?
Here’s how Strauss ends the lecture:
Whatever may be wrong with the peculiarly modern ideal: the very Englishmen who originated it, were at the same time versed in the classical tradition, and the English always kept in store a substantial amount of the necessary counterpoison. While the English originated the modem ideal—the pre-modem ideal, the classical ideal of humanity, was no where better preserved than in Oxford and Cambridge. The present Anglo-German war is then of symbolic significance. In defending modem civilisation against German nihilism, the English are defending the eternal principles of civilisation. No one can tell what will be the outcome of this war. But this much is clear beyond any doubt: by choosing Hitler for their leader in the crucial moment, in which the question of who is to exercise military rule became the order of the day, the Germans ceased to have any rightful claim to be more than a provincial nation; it is the English, and not the Germans, who deserve to be, and to remain, an imperial nation: for only the English, and not the Germans, have understood that in order to deserv [sic] to exercise imperial rule, regere imperio populos, one must have learned for a very long time to spare the vanquished and to crush the arrogant: parcere subjects et debellare super bos. (p. 16 [with editorial commentary removed])
So, the English have a distinct version of modern civilisation (which, if Strauss is consistent with his earlier “Notes,” was developed in response to Hobbes as a species of liberalism); but theirs is mixed with ancient elements. Crucially, they maintain respect for what I am going to call ius gentium. (In fairness to Strauss, in 1941 the British had not started bombing German cities indiscriminately.) As I have argued (recall in The Concept of the Political), Schmitt rejects just war theory.
But, crucially, Strauss asserts that there is such a thing as what one may call ‘imperial merit’ (notice that repeated being deserving of empire) and that it is rooted in being civilized and adhering to ius gentium. That is, Strauss does think that some nations and social orders are worthy of empire.
Now, of course, there were British imperialists who were liberals of this sort, but even among the liberals who were imperialists the more common kind (like J.S. Mill) believed in a kind of civilizational cultural mission that would eventually terminate one’s rule. That is to say, there is nothing distinctly liberal about Strauss’ argument against Schmitt in the 1930s and 40s, and there is no reason to think Strauss thinks the British worth in ruling is itself distinctly liberal. What he admires in their civilisation is not its tincture of liberalism, but rather the elements that retain in it the rule of a kind of (idealization of) gentlemanly aristocracy.*
*To what degree Howse is right to suggest that later Strauss did accommodate himself to a kind of federal liberalism familiar from Kant’s Rechtslehre and late essays, I leave for another time.