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Book Review: Locke, Science, and Politics1 8 1Steven Forde, Locke, Science, and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2013, 263 pp., $95.00.Wi l l Mor r i seyHillsdale Collegewmorrisey@hillsdale.eduDuring his lifetime, Leo Strauss enjoyed conversations and correspondencewith several philosophic friends who disagreed sharply but intelligently withhim. It is nonetheless fair to say that the intelligent scholarly responses to hiswork—apart from those by men and women who have modeled their workon his own—remain rare. While Strauss has never lacked scholarly critics ofserious and even well-nigh deadly intent, they have inclined toward polemics.How refreshing and instructive to read Professor Forde’s book, whichstrikes me as exactly the sort of non-Straussian scholarly work that Straussians(and every other stripe of political-philosophy scholar) can study withpleasure. He writes in a good cause, bringing clarity to the writings of JohnLocke, that philosopher of supreme discretion and even indirection.By “non-Straussian,” I mean that Forde departs from the main line ofStrauss’s account of Locke, namely, that Locke presented himself as a respectable,Christian writer along the lines of “the judicious” Richard Hooker, but infact took his philosophic bearings from the decidedly un-Christian ThomasHobbes. Forde dissents, arguing that although Locke considered himself botha philosopher engaged in the modern-scientific project of Francis Bacon—aswas Hobbes—and a literary defender of that project, he rejected Hobbesianmaterialism and founded his version of natural right on a version of divineright—not, to be sure, the divine right of kings, but rather a natural rightdivine in origin. Further, Locke’s god endowed rights to humanity as a whole,not simply or even primarily to individuals; Forde thus challenges or at least© 2015 Interpretation, Inc.