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Strauss’s Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor1 2 5which is by nature social, is virtue. 5 This means that, as the reflection ofthe well-ordered soul, the natural social order is the one in which “politicalactivity is…directed toward human perfection or virtue” and “the best menhabitually rule.” 6 Since reason is the highest faculty of the soul, it followsthat the highest virtue is wisdom, and those who dedicate their lives to itspursuit, the philosophers, are those who by nature should rule the ideal city.Thus “the best regime” of classical political philosophy is “the absolute ruleof the wise.” 7 Hierarchical and holistic, classical political philosophy has noconcern for democracy or individual rights. 8 By opposition, modern naturalright regards society as a contract between individuals, the purpose of whichis the protection of their presocial natural rights. Presocial nature refers notto man’s “end,” but to his primary condition, or his “elementary wants orurges.” 9 The liberal society then guarantees the right of all individuals tochoose their own ends. The equality of choices, implied by the disappearanceof natural ends, explains why, in contradistinction to classical natural right,modern natural right is democratic and individualistic.As “quest for knowledge of the whole…by the unassisted human mind,” 10philosophy assents only to what is obvious. Being aware of his ignorance, thephilosopher of the Socratic tradition seeks wisdom. But “as long as there is nowisdom but only quest for wisdom, the evidence of all solutions is necessarilysmaller than the evidence of the problems.” Being “zetetic (or skeptic in theoriginal sense of the term),” philosophy is then “nothing but genuine awarenessof the problems, i.e., of the fundamental and comprehensive problems.” 11Philosophy’s main opponent is revelation, which is based on the assumptionthat there are divine realities, by definition inaccessible to human reason,which the gods communicate through prophets whom they choose to be carriersof their message. Incapable of demonstrating the falsity of such a claim,which is irrefutable because unprovable, the philosopher “merely suspends5Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 127.6Ibid., 140.7Ibid., 142.8Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Cristopher Nadon (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2003), 106.9Leo Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?,” in An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essaysby Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gildin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 49.10Ibid., 4, 7.11Leo Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” in On Tyranny (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1961), 196.