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Strauss’s Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor1 2 9the fruits of progress, and the stimulus for pursuing the latter, is a hedonisticethics the premise of which is the liberation from what Freud would later callthe religious neurosis. For Strauss, modern enlightenment is not really new.Opposing classical natural right, for which “the life according to nature”was “the life of human excellence or virtue,” Epicurus already affirmedthat the life according to nature, or the good life, was “the life of pleasure aspleasure.” 28 For Epicurus, then, philosophy functioned as a therapy meant toincrease man’s pleasure by freeing him from the fear of death and the fearof gods threatening to punish him for satisfying his desires. By contrast, theEnlightenment’s critique of religion was meant to produce not only “individualtranquility” but also “civil peace.” 29According to Strauss, the liberation of philosophy from the authority oftheology, and its subsequent popularization, has come at the cost of its degradation.First of all, Strauss argues that modern philosophers have deliberatelyoverlooked the incapacity of philosophy to refute revelation. Aware of the factthat they were lacking decisive arguments in the combat against theology,the representatives of the Enlightenment have appealed instead to dishonestrhetoric and, through propaganda, have popularized as philosophy what wasin fact dogmatic rationalism. 30 Moreover, philosophy has become popular atthe cost of its subordination to the practical interests of the city, which classicalphilosophy regarded as the vulgar wishes of the common man. 31 ForStrauss, Machiavellian thought is the first philosophy that no longer questions“the ends of the demos” but “accept[s] [them] as beyond appeal” andlimits itself to “seek[ing] for the best means conducive to those ends.” 32 Thisimplies “lower…standards of social action.” To be more specific, accordingto Strauss, the key characteristic of Machiavelli’s philosophy is the “rejectionof the classical scheme as unrealistic.” 33 Machiavelli notes in the Prince28Strauss, Natural Right and History, 127.29Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 40. Ivan Karamazov’s poem, from The Brothers Karamazov, entitled “TheGeological Revolution,” gives artistic expression to the Enlightenment’s promethean ideal, and indicatesthe fact that Dostoyevsky and Strauss share a common vision of the latter: “Once mankind…has repudiated God…, then…all will begin anew. People will unite together…only for the sake ofhappiness and joy in this world. Man will exalt himself with a spirit of divine, titanic pride” and will“experience…a pleasure so elevated that it will replace all his former hopes of celestial pleasure.” Manwill become “the man-god” (Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. David McDuff [London:Penguin Books, 2003], 829).30Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 32–33.31Ibid., 46–47.32Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 296.33Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?,” 39, 41.