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56 David L. Schaefer
meaningless materialism or a new, ideological sort of fanaticism that
turned against both liberalism and reason.
The modern "crisis" was, for Strauss, an intellectual one, deriving
from the incompleteness of early modern political philosophy, which
engendered its own radicalization and finally its rejection by intellectual
"elites." The remedy for this crisis, if there is one, he believed, lay not in
the rejection of reason or of the liberal political regime, but in the
reconsideration of philosophy in its original, classical form, and a
continuing critical comparison of classical political philosophy with its
modern successor. The goal of this reconsideration was not any Utopian
endeavor to resurrect the ancient polis, as careless readers of Strauss's
work sometimes charged, but a restoration of the "natural" understanding
of political things that preceded the modern philosophical revolution, and
a consequent consideration of the manner in which classical political
philosophy might yet assist us in dealing with the issues we face, which
reflect the problems inherent in human nature, or in the trans-historical
"human condition." 53
The contemporary need which Strauss emphasized to recapture a more
direct awareness of the fundamental phenomena of human life as against
the modern philosophical tradition which had obscured those phenomena
ironically recapitulates the need by which Montaigne and his philosophic
successors found themselves confronted to recover such an awareness in
opposition to the overlayering of nature that resulted from Christian
theology and its simultaneous incorporation and transformation of
classical philosophy. 54 Precisely because of the
53 Strauss's remark regarding the "oblivion of eternity" is almost echoed in the
conclusion of a lecture on Thucydides where he alludes to "the oblivion of the most
fundamental things." The latter remark refers to the supplanting of the political history
that Thucydides emphasized with the "history of civilization" (The Rebirth of Classical
Political Rationalism, p. 102). The implication is that for Strauss, unlike Heidegger, the
"most fundamental things" are the political phenomena, as experienced by the citizen. It
is from these phenomena, Strauss emphasized, that the classical political philosophers,
notably Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, began their inquiries: see What Is Political
Philosophy?, pp. 27-9, 78-94. Cf. Socrates' account of the "second sailing" that led to the
redirection of his primary concern to human or political things: Plato, Phaedo, 99c ff.
54 On the superiority of the relative freedom of opinion enjoyed by the ancient
philosophers to the modern prescription of School doctrine, see II, 12, 542 [420]; I, 54,
308 [234], recommending the separation of theological studies from "purely human and
philosophical" ones.
Montaigne and Leo Strauss 57
power of custom or accepted opinion to shape our thinking as
Montaigne describes it (in express agreement with Plato—I, 23
106 [77]), we can begin to escape the "cave" of such opinion only
by the shock of confronting serious books that challenge our
opinions Just as Montaigne, in order to engender such a liberation,
needed to promote a fresh confrontation with the wisdom of the
ancients, such a confrontation constitutes an even greater necessity
of the present time Even the attempt to do this, however, will
become impossible if we accept the historicist or deconstructionist
premise that books of the past have no inherent meaning that is
accessible to us, and that we can read them only in light of our own
presuppositions.
Awareness of Strauss's insights might not only encourage us to
consider the possibility that philosophic inquiry, understood as the
pursuit of truth, is still open to us, but might serve to reinvigorate
the held of Montaigne studies in particular, by rescuing it from
domination by the barren contention among rival hermeneutical
theories (deconstructionist, psychoanalytic, contextualist, etc.)
which reflect contemporary presuppositions, and from the pursuit
of often trivial biographical information that can have no serious
importance for the non-specialist. In this way we would again read
the Essais, and benefit from such reading, in the ways that their
author intended Given Montaigne's own questioning spirit, it
would be wholly in conformity with his model that we reconsider
his thought in the light of the classical understanding that he
himself recognized as the most serious alternative to it. 55
Holy Cross College
55 It is noteworthy that, although Montaigne takes issue with the classical
Philosophers on a number of critical points, he never tries to explain their thought
in terms of the influence of historical circumstances or of any supposed
"evolution" of their minds. Montaigne's belief in the possibility of genuine
philosophical dialogue over the centuries may serve as a inspiration to pursue
such a path today