Thoughts on Harry Jaffa and “Natural Right”

Some traditional conservatives wince when they hear Straussians, especially Harry Jaffa and his students, talk about natural right. They see such talk as derived from Enlightenment rationalism and thus they are suspicious of it as being overly universalistic and not respectful of long held traditions and folkways. Likewise, Straussians such as Jaffa balk at the traditional conservative defense of tradition and customs as another form of historicism and thus is a rejection of reason as a guide for human life. In the accusations that are commonly made, it is not uncommon to hear Straussians called “Jacobins” and traditional conservatives labeled historicist and relativists.[1]

Additionally, when prominent traditional conservatives like the late M. E. Bradford and the late Russell Kirk proclaim that “there is a better guide than reason,” Straussian read such statements as forms of misology or other forms of anti-rationalism. But is this really the case or is there a fundamental misunderstanding of the different language these different schools of intellectual conservatism uses. This was all evident the debate between Henrie and Fitzgerald in issues of Intercollegiate Review in the late 1990’s, or the Claes Ryn and William Voegeli debate about historicism and Jacobinism published on the online blog of the Claremont Institute in the early 2004-5.[2]

On one level traditional conservatives tend to not understand what Jaffa and other West Coast Straussians mean when they speak of natural right. The first assumptions, and this is reasonable given that Jaffa and others imply that Natural Right is present in the American regime because of the Declaration of Independence and that natural right is the singular of natural rights. This misunderstanding makes sense given it would seem that natural right is the singular of the plural natural rights. But natural rights and natural right are not the same thing or even really the same word. Although it is the case that in the German there is no difference between the singular and the plural, what I am pointing to here, however, is not a point about grammar but about fundamental substantive difference between these two concepts. Although the words in question may be the same words, they conceptually mean wholly different things. 

Natural right is what is right or proper by nature. The way we get this specific usage of natural right is that it is also the Germanic translation of what the Ancient Greeks called physis dike.[3] Thus natural right is the basis on which human beings come to intuit through reason, or more correctly prudence, what is the proper course of action. It is natural in that proper course of action is that which is intended by the design of our human nature. On the other hand, natural rights is the view that because of our common human nature all human beings are endowed with rights and what legitimized government is its securing those rights for its subjects.[4] Thus natural rights is a specific interpretation of what is right by nature—or in other words—it is a particular form of natural right. Thus there is a connection between natural rights and natural right, but the connection is that the doctrine of natural rights is a particular conception of natural right, one that is very narrow and derived from the modern philosophical understanding of human nature. Thus, although it can be said that the natural rights view is a form or understanding of natural right, it may be even truer that it is an incorrect or faulty form or understanding. Thus most Straussians, especially students of Jaffa, in their use of this term fail to properly delineate between natural right and possibly a faulty view of natural right expressed in theory of natural rights. Thus some traditional conservatives’ criticism on natural rights doctrines are not attacks on the whole tradition of natural right, but only a narrow and in their view fundamentally flawed Modern view of natural right. But even if we admit that the object of traditional conservatives’ attacks is the natural rights doctrines, yet do their defense of tradition and culture allow them to accept any notion of natural right? I believe the answer is not only yes they do and can, but their understanding of the limits of human reason are closer in application to what the classic philosopher taught about natural right than the Straussian proponents of natural right. 

To make this case, it is necessary to address the argument made by Straussians that traditional conservatives, such as Russell Kirk and M. E. Bradford, explicitly reject reason as the guide of justice in human life in favor of tradition and social custom. The Straussians claim because traditional conservatives make reason a servant to tradition, they are like Hobbes and other Modern philosophers, making reason the slave of the passions and thus lower human beings to the realm of mere animals. They also say that the concern for tradition and preserving social custom is not different from cultural relativism and other forms of historicism. Let us see if the Straussian criticism of the traditional conservatives holds up to careful examination of both what prominent traditional conservatives argue and what the classical theorists of natural right argue.

One must understand that traditional conservatives’ critique of rationalism is in fact a critique of the abuse of reason propagated by the propagators of modern philosophy (i.e., Descartes, Hobbes, et al.) and not the limited conception of human reason that the classics held. One must remember that modern philosophy radically alters and rejects the understanding of both man and nature held by classical philosophy.  Thus one must not simply assume any defense of reason or rationalism is in fact a true defense of the proper concept of reason that is defined by human nature. This can be seen by the following he fundamental precepts of modern rationalism: a-priori view of the justice;  abstraction from particulars to universals; radically a-historical/circumstantial view of reason; and dogmatic in regard to the working of the mind.

When Fitzgerald and other Straussians attack Russell Kirk and other traditional conservatives for their claim that reason must be guided or constrained by tradition or circumstance, they see this as a rejection of reason or the subordination of reason to non-reason. Yet we must ask if they are correct in both their understanding of what traditional conservatives are in fact saying about the role of reason and what is in fact the role of reason in human nature. It could be said that the Straussians in criticizing the traditional conservatives, in their view that reason be restrained by tradition or circumstance, they are not following the teaching of the classics, but rather Kant, et al. This can be shown in how the Straussians understand and speak about human rationality. They tend not to distinguish between the different activities of human reason that Aristotle and the other classical philosophers use when they discuss human rationality and speak of human reason. Do so, they are either being imprecise if they believe themselves to be working with the classical framework, or they are subtly rejecting the distinction.

Concerning human rationality, Aristotle says that human reasoning is divided between an ability to intellect the eternal and unchanging and the temporal and changing. This division corresponds to Aristotle’s division of intellection between Praxis, the practical, and Theoria, the theoretical. The practical is again divided between what is strictly connected with human action, praxis (in the strict sense of the term), and what is connected with human making, poiesis. The two intellectual excellences of these two practical activities are phronesis, prudence, and techne, art or craft, respectively. Thus, the intellectual excellence that deals with how to live one’s life in the best manner is phronesis or prudence. 

When we then talk about natural right and what intellectual faculty we must be dealing with in our understanding of the activity of perceiving what is right by nature, it is imprecise to speak of human reason. The reason it is imprecise to speak simply of human reason in regard to the activity of natural right is that human reason can embrace the changing and temporal as well as the eternal and unchanging. Also, given the fact that human things, especially the concerns of natural rights, are in the realm of the changing and temporal and not the unchanging and eternal, the proper intellectual faculty in which one is engaged is prudence. Therefore, those influenced by Strauss claim, that the traditional conservatives’ critique of the bad political effect of modern rationalism is also an attack on all reason and does not withstand the examination of what the classical philosophers, especially Aristotle, understand the proper function of human reason and more specifically prudence in making decision of what political actions to take. Thus the traditional conservatives’ defense of tradition and the mistrust of abstraction and universalistic principle is consistent the proper understanding of the activity of phronesis or prudence in the application of human justice.[5]

Therefore, when we examine what traditional conservatives understand as their critique of rationalism, we cannot conclude that this is a rejection of reason, as their Straussian critics claim.  Rather, Bradford and Kirk’s criticism of reason or the claim that “man is a rational animal” and their embracing of Jonathan Swift’s statement that “man is an animal capable of reason” is not so much a rejection of the proper function of human reason, understood in term of the activity of prudence, but the narrow and limited rationalism that arose out of the enlightenment. Again, when one closely examines Aristotle’s account of human reason in both his Ethics, nowhere does he explicitly say that he holds that man is a rational animal. Nor does he hold political activity to deal with anything but the human and the temporal. Because of this, he also claims that reason, expressed in the function of prudence, is a prominent feature of human being’s political nature.[6] Thus Swift’s statement and the traditional conservatives’ understanding of that principle makes them closer to Aristotle’s actual understanding of the role of reason in human decisions about justice and politics than either their Straussian critics or whoever opined the famous statement–made even more famous during the enlightenment–“man is a rational animal.”  Thus the Straussians (such as Jaffa and his various students) who attack Kirk, Bradford reveal their allegiance to the Modern project when they treat politics and natural right as though they are talking about a theoretical act rather than a practical act.

NOTES:

[1] Fitzgerald does this subtle in the footnotes where he attempts to link Russell Kirk’s defense of tradition to Michels Foucault’s genealogical-historicism.  In defending Kirk against this charge, Henre adequately refutes Fitzgerald’s point so one does not need to do so again.  See, cite.

[2] I mention Clase Ryn’s debate as somewhat following in the problem of those traditional conservatives who would suggest the experience one gains from the course of history and tradition are more instructive sources to guide our notions of right than abstract reason.

[3] Given that Leo Strauss was a German emigre, it is quite understandable his use of this term in the way he does in Natural Right and History and the rest of his work.

[4] Cf. Declaration of Independance, John Locke’s Second Treastise, and Paine’s The Rights of Man.

[5] It is interesting to note the large role that prudence plays in the work of Russell Kirk, especially one of his latter works, The Politics of Prudence.

[6] The only explicit definition of man made by Aristotle is the claim that man is a political animal.

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