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"Modernity" in Western Political ThoughtAuthor(s): Dante GerminoSource: New Literary History, Vol. 1, No. 2, A Symposium on Periods (Winter, 1970), pp. 293-310Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468633 .

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"Modernity" in Western Political Thought*

Dante Germino T --HE

question I propose to consider is whether it is meaning- ful to speak of "modern political thought," and if so on what grounds and with what qualifying observations. This is obviously a vast problem, and within the limits of an

essay one can hope at best only to illustrate some of the difficulties involved and to throw out some hints at their possible resolution.

The conventional periodization adopted in histories of political thought assumes that a profound break in the continuity of western political speculation occurs around 1500; this date presumably marks the beginning of "modern" as opposed to "pre-modern" political thought. Courses in the history of political thought which extend over the academic year generally devote the first semester to ancient and medieval, and the second to modern writers and movements. A similar subdivision of the field of political theory into modern and pre- modern periods for examination purposes is frequently encountered in graduate school curricula.

One possible objection deserving of serious consideration not only to the conventional periodization in political theory but to any periodization whatsoever would be that serious political thought, or political theory, is a branch of philosophy and that strictly speaking philosophy has no history but is independent of place and time. The temporal location of a particular thinker is of only peripheral interest; we are interested primarily in whether a political teaching can sustain what it asserts when brought to the bar of reason. Political theory, conceived of as the critical inquiry into the first principles of politics, is then from this point of view a seamless web, and to divide it into modern and pre-modern phases is arbitrary and conceivably betrays a bias, which is inadvisable in philosophical inquiry as such, for or against

* Portions of this essay will appear in the introductory chapter to a history of modern political theory in preparation by the author for Rand McNally. I am pleased to acknowledge the able and helpful secretarial assistance of Miss Frances Lackey, Office of the Center for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia.



294 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the earlier or later group of writers. From this perspective, the decisive distinction should not be between early or late political philosophy but between political philosophy as such and non-philosophical modes of thought about politics.

There is much to be said for the argument that political philosophy is a unity - a continuing conversation about the ends of political existence and the nature of political reality. It is also true, however, that this very concept of self-conscious and critical inquiry into the (timeless - or universally "timely") first principles of politics emerged at a particular point in time in a particular civilization, the same civilization which has bequeathed to mankind the consciousness of existence as in itself historical (as distinct from mythical and cos- mological). A strong case can also be made, then, for Eric Voegelin's contention that "theory is bound by history," and for Hegel's observa- tion that every man (including the philosopher) is a "son of his time."

Thus far we have employed, without sharply distinguishing, three terms: political philosophy, political theory, and political thought. Political philosophy I shall take to be the most comprehensive manner of self-conscious reflection discovered and utilized by man in the consideration of his existence in community with his fellows. Political theory aspires to the same level of understanding and critical awareness as does political philosophy, but it may confine itself to the explicit elaboration of only a "segment" or dimension of man's political existence and so only implicity contains the comprehensive reflection discovered in political philosophy proper. Political thought I take to mean any form of human speech about politics that has attained to such a level of coherence as to be recognizable as serious thought. In distinguishing these three terms, we have moved from a specific and limited to a general category; there are few political philosophers, a somewhat greater number of political theorists, and an exceedingly great number of political thinkers. All political philosophers are also political theorists (with reference to a segment of their teaching), but not all political theorists are political philosophers in the full sense. Both political philosophers and political theorists are political thinkers, but by no means all political thinkers are either political theorists or political philosophers. Political thinkers may be preachers, partisans, publicists, behavioral scientists, institu- tional analysts, ideologues, utopian dreamers, etc., instead of political philosophers or theorists.

These distinctions, once made, raise the issue of the relationship of political philosophy and theory on the one hand and the general stream of less reflective and self-conscious political thought on the



"MODERNITY" IN WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT 295

other. Does a periodization which may be adequate if applied to the evolution of political doctrines also apply to the tradition of inquiry known as political philosophy or theory? My own answer to this question is a qualified "yes," because political theory/philosophy develops in part as a response to the prevailing symbolization and self-interpretation of the society in which it appears. To argue, as some pro- ponents of the "sociology of knowledge" have tended to do, that political philosophy is simply a reflection of the prevailing "climate of opinion," would be arbitrarily to ignore the important difference between levels of political thought. One would be on sounder ground were he to maintain that political philosophy, while inevitably influ- enced by the prevailing winds of opinion, by its very nature - which is to be critical - is discriminating in the ideas it chooses to absorb and transform.

To summarize what I am maintaining thus far: there is some basis for the view that, inasmuch as political philosophy is an inquiry into the perennial questions of political existence, periodization cannot be appropriately attributed to philosophical or theoretical thought; there is only political philosophy, and not ancient, modern, seventeenth- century, French, German, etc. political philosophy. Nonetheless, it needs also to be emphasized that political philosophy unfolds in time and has a "history," even though as philosophy it is concerned above all with "timeless" questions - or rather "time-bound" questions in the most general signification of this term, inasmuch as existence itself is time-bound. Political philosophy develops in interreaction with non-philosophical symbolizations present in the political culture. One of the tasks of the political philosopher is to examine in a critical fashion the prevailing political ideas of the environment in which he finds himself. In this latter sense, a periodization valid for political thought in general would also cast light on the development of political philosophy as a particular mode of inquiry. By these introductory remarks I mean to dissociate myself both from an extreme historicism which leaves no room for the philosophia perennis, and from an abstract rationalism which would tend to view philosophy as an activity conducted by some strangely disembodied creature occupying an archimedean point outside history and the drama of existence.




Problems Inherent in Any Attempt at Periodization

All attempts at periodization must deal with two interrelated problems: (1) the "boundaries" of the period and (2) its unifying characteristics. Any periodization is always open to the objection that it is an arbitrary demarcation of the historical process, which is in reality a continuous flow of events in time. For a particular periodization to be justifiable, the historians who utilize it must be able to offer a reasonable explanation as to why they designate particular points in time as the "beginning" and "end" of an era and in what respects the events contained within these lines of demarcation constitute a unity.

In defense of periodization as such, it may be said that it is necessary to historical writing properly considered. In defining a period, the historian engages in an activity which Hegel described as Nachdenken (literally "thinking after," or "recollection"). He imposes an inter- pretive pattern upon the events described which those who partici- pated in shaping them could not have wholly perceived at the time. In principle, there is nothing "wrong" with writing history in this way; in fact, as Michael Oakeshott has observed, history is precisely the attempt to "understand past conduct and happening in a manner in which they were never understood at the time."1 In a similar vein, Oakeshott has also noted that history is

made by nobody save the historian; to write history is the only way of making it. . . . The course of events is, then, the result not the material of history; or rather, it is at once material and result. And the course of events is not a mere series of successive events, but a world of co-existent events - events which co-exist in the mind of the historian.2

The Boundary Problem

Why accept the prevailing interpretation of modernity as beginning with the Renaissance and the Reformation? Conceivably this particular periodization could be nothing more than a historiographic cliche that has long since outlived its usefulness and deserves to be scrapped.

It is certainly not for the lack of alternative suggestions that I opt for retaining what has come to be considered the "conventional"

1 Michael Oakeshott, "The Activity of Being an Historian," in Historical Studies, Proceedings of the Second Irish Conference of Historians (Dublin, 1958), p. 17. 2 Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge, 1933; reprinted 1966), pp. 99-100.




periodization. One eminent contemporary political theorist, Eric Voegelin, has suggested that a "suitable date" for the "formal beginning" of modernity "would be the activation of ancient gnosticism through Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, because his works . .. were a continuous influence in the underground Gnostic sects before they came to the surface in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."3 Voegelin comes to this remarkable conclusion as a result of his theory that "gnosticism" - a particular style of thought which he finds to be spiritually diseased - is the "essence of modernity." Other writers of note would have modernity's boundaries moved forward in time. J. B. Bury, the historian of the idea of progress, insists that "in the realm of knowledge and thought, modern history begins in the seventeenth century."4 In his famous study of the perils of abstract ideological thinking, The Rebel, Albert Camus regarded the French Revolution as marking the true beginning of modern times, at least insofar as political thought is concerned, for he held that the radical secularization of the Christian rectilinear concept of history which constituted the basis for a doctrine of "political messianism" commenced at that time.5 Although J. L. Talmon does not equate political messianism and modernity, his own studies of the phenomenon of political messianism, conducted independently, reinforce Camus' interpretation in a more systematic fashion. If we take into account such earlier political writers preoccupied with periodization as Giuseppe Mazzini and Auguste Comte, we would see the boundaries of modernity shift even farther forward in time. Both Mazzini and Comte held that it was only in the nineteenth century (conveniently coinciding with their own appearance on the scene) that modernity truly began. Comte and Mazzini held that the French Revolution closed out pre-modern

3 Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago, 1952), p. 128. See also

p. 133: "Conventionally, Western history is divided into periods with a formal incision around 1500, the later period being the modern phase of Western society. If, however, modernity is defined as the growth of gnosticism, beginning perhaps as early as the ninth century, it becomes a process within Western society extending deeply into its medieval period." See below, 306-7 for further discussion of Voegelin's position. 4 J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York, 1955 - originally published in 1932), p. 64. "Ubiquitous rebellion against tradition, a new standard of clear and precise thought . . . a flow of mathematical and physical discoveries so rapid that ten years added more to the sum of knowledge than all that had been added since the days of Archimedes, the introduction of organized co-operation to increase knowledge . . . characterize the opening of a new era."

5 See the interesting discussion in Richard H. Cox, "Ideology, History and Politi- cal Philosophy: Camus, L'Homme Rdvolt6" in Social Research, II (Spring, 1965), 78-79-




times; a new era of progress, order, association and science had begun in their day.6 In fact, in surveying the literature of modern political thought one encounters a multiplicity of opinions regarding the boundaries of modernity.

It is worth noting, however, that Hegel, the most gifted and profound philosopher of history to appear in the nineteenth century, did interpret modern times as commencing with Luther and the Protestant Reformation.

Faced with this kind of evidence, the contemporary historian conceivably would despair of employing the concept of modernity at all, preferring instead to limit himself to discussing periods that might hopefully be more easily delineated and defined, such as the Renais- sance, the Reformation, the Age of the Baroque, the Enlightenment, the Romantic Reaction, the Age of Ideology.

Diversity of opinion on the boundary question need not lead us to abandon the search for "modernity," however. One argument in favor of retaining what has today become the prevailing or "conventional" periodization, which dates the inception of modernity from the Renaissance, is that the symbol of a "modern" as opposed to an "ancient" and a "medieval" age itself originates in the intellectual milieu of the Italian Renaissance. It was the historian Flavio Biondo (1392-1463) who first "recognized" and "chronicled" the millennium from the fall of Rome in 410 to the year 1410o as a "closed age of the past."7 Thus, our current tripartite division of history into ancient, medieval, and modern, dates from the Renaissance.

6 See Mazzini's essay "Thoughts on the French Revolution of 1789," in The Duties of Man and Other Essays (London, 1907), p. 265. Comte thought in terms of three historical stages (theological, metaphysical, and scientific) . For Comte, the French Revolution represented the last gasp of individualistic, destructive "metaphysical" speculation and was to be followed by a new "organic" "positive" and "scientific" age in which Comtian "positivism" would be the reigning intellectual orthodoxy. 7 On Biondo see Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, pp. 133-34, and Denys Hays, "Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages," Proceedings of the British Academy, XLV (1963), P. 117. Biondo was the author of the Decades, a history of the millennium from 410 to 1410, later designated the medium aevum.




The "Boundary Problem" in Relation to the "Unity Problem"

Biondo's understanding of his own period as marking the beginning of a new historical epoch raises the question of how much weight the contemporary historian is to assign the self-interpretation of participants as he attempts to arrive at his own interpretation of a period. Here we shall suggest the need to amend Oakeshott's characterization of the activity of the historian, at least with respect to intellectual history. The historian of political thought deals with the writings of men who possessed an unusual capacity for self-awareness: i.e., men who reflected in a highly self-conscious fashion on the human predica- ment as manifested in the particular problems of their time. If the intellectual historian is to fulfill his task, he must not only be concerned to characterize events in a manner in which they were "not understood at the time." He must also be preoccupied with elucidating the self-interpretations of the actors in the series of events he is describing; in other words he must attempt to show how the participants themselves saw this series as well as how he, the historian of today writing retrospectively, sees it. Without the perspective of the historian writing "after the fact," a period cannot be grasped in its wholeness. Without due consideration of the perspectives of the participants, however, the historian runs the danger of offering a "merely private" interpretation of a series of events. Thus, for the historian of political thought the paradigmatic interpretation of a period results from the synthesis of the two perspectives of retrospective detachment and concurrent, self-conscious involvement in the mind of the historian. It is on the basis of such an act of conceptual synthesis that the intellectual unity of a period may be elucidated.8

With the above considerations in hand, it is possible to accept as valid Mircea Eliade's characterization of the "modern world" as a "certain state of mind which has been formed by successive deposits ever since the Renaissance and the Reformation."9 Eliade's succinct formulation has the virtue of emphasizing both the unity and diversity of the modern period. Instead of arguing in terms of the substantive intellectual homogeneity of the period, Eliade's "definition" assumes that modernity can be more adequately represented as a combining of highly diverse elements which nonetheless in a deeper sense com-

8 Hegel's dialectical concept of the concept (Begriff) has some utility in coming to grips with intellectual history, even if his dialectic as such is obscure and unusable as a method.

9 Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter between Contem. porary Faiths and Archaic Realities (New York, 1960), p. 25n.




prise an intelligible unity from the vantage point of the contemporary historian.

The problem is how to characterize this unity of outlook which binds this multiplicity of thinkers and intellectual currents together. Eliade goes on to define modern societies as "those which have pushed the secularization of life and the Cosmos far enough."10 If not confused with a militant and narrow "secularism," secularization in the broad sense can be readily accepted as the end-product of modernity; however, given our previous insistence upon the need for dual perspectives of interpretation in the mind of the historian, it must immediately be observed that by no means all of those who engaged in the shaping of the modern consciousness intended any such result as "secularization," even as broadly defined. Specifically in the case of the thinkers of the Reformation, the secularization of life and the Cosmos was very far from their thoughts, and, although the Reformation of the sixteenth century undoubtedly contributed indirectly to this process, it was most emphatically not by virtue of any conscious intent on the part of its leaders and adherents.

Judged retrospectively, then, the modern age in political thought is one which tends toward the interpretation of political life primarily in terms of man's temporal or inner-worldly needs and concerns. In relation to categories I have employed elsewhere," it is the period which witnesses the increasing dominance of anthropocentric and metastatic as opposed to theocentric modes of political speculation. Questions relating to man's relationship to a transcendent, divine Being are bracketed or relegated to the private, "non-political" sphere by an ever increasing number of significant political thinkers. This does not necessarily mean, save in radically immanent metastic types of speculation (such as with Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, etc.), that the experience of transcendence or the authenticity of religious experience as such is explicitly denied. One has only to think of the political theories and philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Hegel to recognize that any characterization of modern political philosophy as in principle atheistic is wide of the mark. Even Machiavelli, despite his for the most part undeserved "diabolical" reputation, is ambigu- ous on this question. What it does mean is that in the course of its development, a shift of accent occurs in modern political thought from the transcendent to the immanent, from the divine to the

io Eliade, p. 28.

11 See my Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory (New York, 1967), Ch. ii, for the distinctions between the traditions of theocentric, anthropocentric, and messianic or metastatic humanism.



"MODERNITY"V IN WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT 301

human, from Being to becoming, from eternity to time. Even if we take our stand with the validity of explicitly theocentric speculative forms, this shift can scarcely be flatly categorized as a derailment from the perspective of political philosophy. Anthropocentric and metastatic forms of humanism contain rich and valuable insights, and constitute an enduring part of man's continuing attempt to discover meaning in his existence. It should also be pointed out that in the course of modern political thought, theocentric orientations and philosophies explicity grounded in the experience of transcendence do not simply disappear; they are reduced to minority status, however, despite the fact that until the very recent past it continues to be widely assumed that the West remains "Christian" in form.

From the perspective of the self-interpretations of the leading participants of modern political thought, can we see any traits that unite the participants so we may describe them as sharing a common outlook that we may call modern? I would argue that there are two such unifying characteristics present in the dominant thinkers and movements of the period: an awareness of existing in a new historical era and a heightened appreciation of the seriousness of inner-worldly activity as such. For purposes of brevity, let me designate these shared tenets as (1) the consciousness of novelty and (2) the predilection toward activism.

Many of the leading thinkers from the Renaissance onward pro- fessed an awareness that they were living in a new age which required the fabrication of new symbols and concepts for its comprehension and illumination. Thus, Machiavelli wrote of charting a "new way not yet travelled by any one," Luther and Bodin each claimed to have propounded concepts relating to temperal government which the political thought of the past had utterly failed to unearth, Hobbes modestly insisted that "civil philosophy" was "no older" than his book De Cive, Vico entitled his major work the New Science, and a whole line of writers presented themselves as harbingers of a new age of enlightenment and progress about to dawn for mankind (Condorcet, Comte, Mazzini, Marx). The conscious quest for novelty - for new political symbols, styles, and orientations - is a large part of the story of modern political thought. This basic restlessness accounts for much of the creativity and intellectual vitality of the period. To the extent that serious and reflective political thought influences events, this intellectual restlessness also helps to account for the period's institu- tional upheavals and crises on a scale and frequency hitherto unknown.

The awareness of participating in a new era in the development of the human spirit did not necessarily carry with it a belief in the idea




of inevitable and illimitable progress in history. The idea of progress in this sense does not appear to gain wide acceptance until the French Enlightenment. However, when the awareness of living in a new age was coupled with a heightened appreciation of the importance of inner-worldly activity as such - in comparison with the monastic life or the secluded "self-sufficient" existence of the contemplative philosophers as it had been understood by Aquinas or Aristotle, for example - the ground was prepared for the emergence of the conception of historical progress in the eighteenth century. Thus, despite the fact that Renaissance humanists such as Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, and Erasmus sought a greater purity of the life of the spirit and that Luther and Calvin insisted repeatedly that worldly activity was meaningless or vicious unless done for the greater glory of God and in hope of man's eternal salvation by the grace of God, the long-range effects of the call by Renaissance and Reformation thinkers to western man to turn toward the responsibilities of this life and not to shirk his worldly responsibilities was to pave the way for an activist, dynamic, and secularized society. As Ernst Troeltsch points out in his book Protestantism and Progress, there were "tendencies" in Protestantism "drawing it toward the modern world," and these tendencies originated in the thought of Luther and Calvin themselves.12 Thus Philip Melanchthon, Luther's most able lieutenant, praised the "worldly works" of God such as service in "government, courts, and wars" as superior to the "glamour of ceremonies and monkery," provided that knowledge of and faith in Christ are present in the minds and hearts of those performing them.13

In stressing the activist predilection of modern political thought, I do not mean to imply, as do some critics, that modern political thinkers have assured the triumph of a civilization based on vulgar materialism, absolute temporalism, and opposition to the life of the spirit. Concern for what constitutes the quality and style of an authentically human existence persists in all but the most philistine of the period's representatives. We are dealing for the most part with men of sensitivity, largeness of vision, and compassion. Even so "worldly" a writer as Machiavelli, who clearly ranks as one of the initiators of the modern period, was concerned with the life of the spirit. In his little- known sermon, the Exhortation to Repentance, Machiavelli echoes

12 Ernst Troeltsch, Protestanism and Progress (Boston, 1958; first published 1910), p. 92.

13 Melanchthon, On Christian Doctrine (Loci Communes, 1555), translated and edited by Clyde L. Manschrech (New York, 1915), p. 331. God requires not sacri- fices and "soft works" but "improvement in living, justice in the courts, and protec- tion of widows and orphans."




the theme of other humanists of the time who were more noted for their concern for religion, that when man repents of his sins he would do better to show the genuineness of his repentance in concrete acts of service to his fellow men rather than by fasting and mortification of the flesh. In the Discourses, Machiavelli explicitly condemns those who have interpreted Christianity "according to sloth rather than to vigor."

Opposition to any "otherworldly" interpretation of the life of the spirit is characteristic of all leading political thinkers in the modern period. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche - to say nothing of a host of other writers of the second rank - all in different ways share in the conviction that the spirit properly manifests itself in activity directed toward the concerns of this world.

We may conclude, therefore, that when the consciousness of novelty is combined with a pronounced shift of orientation toward activity in the world (i.e., with the vita activa as opposed to the priority accorded the vita contemplativa in classical and medieval Christian political philosophy), the result is a distinctive intellectual and spiritual phenomenon identifiable as the modern spirit or political consciousness.

Deficiencies of Monistic Substantive Interpretations of Modernity

Although I contend that the evidence permits and even demands that we speak of a modern period in the history of political thought, I would argue against adopting any of the monistic substantive interpretations of that period which have been offered either recently or in the more distant past. Modernity as such is neither to be extolled nor condemned by the historian of political thought. At the substantive level - the level of experiences of order and of the meaning of an authentically human existence - the modern age displays a rich diversity of insights which, taken together constitute a formidable contribution to man's self-knowledge. At the same time modernity also reveals unresolved tensions and contradictions which require clarification if we are to understand and cope with the problems the period has left in its wake. Other than the broad tendencies indicated above, it is doubtful that any discernible homogeneity of spiritual and intellectual substance characterizes the history of political thought from the sixteenth century - or any of the intermediary benchmarks - until today. The nature of the period is distorted when only one




strand of modern political thought is emphasized to the point where it defines the whole.

Monistic interpretations of modernity are of two types: negative or affirmative. Affirmative monistic interpretations typically see the period as one of decisive advance for the human spirit - in other words they tend to adopt one or another version of the "progress" idea. The victory of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution into Stalinism in Russia caused a number of knowledgeable and sensitive contemporary observ- ers uncompromisingly to reject the monistic progressive interpretation of modernity. In doing so, they may have erred in the opposite direc- tion by embracing an unnecessarily pessimistic - and equally monistic - interpretation of the modern period in political thought. Three leading contemporary political philosophers who portray modernity in such unflattering relief are Bertrand de Jouvenel, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin.

According to de Jouvenel, in the period since 1500, Western political thought has been dominated by a "hedonist and productivist" outlook with profoundly antihumanistic implications. The historian of today can discern that the movement of the western consciousness has been toward the creation of a civilization now identifiable as the "modern world, which is the apotheosis of the libido in all its forms," a world which "takes pride in its capacity to satisfy ever more fully all desires . . . and where political systems aspire only to achieve the same objective: to dispense satisfactions more fully."'4

Leo Strauss is also convinced that political thought in the modern era displays a particular kind of substantive intellectual unity. He unfailingly juxtaposes "ancient" to "modern" philosophy, attributing to modern political philosophers a consistent line of attack against the "Great Tradition" of pre-modern thought. Strauss labels this attack, mounted by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and others, as the "modern project":

According to the modern project, philosophy or science was no longer to be understood as essentially contemplative and proud but as active and chari- table; it was to be in the service of the relief of man's estate; it was to be cultivated for the sake of human power; it was to enable man to become the master and owner of nature through the intellectual conquest of nature. Philosophy or science should make possible progress toward ever greater

14 Bertrand de Jouvenel, "Essai sur la politique de Rousseau," in his edition of Rousseau's Du Contrat Social (Geneva, 1947), pp. 25-26. Martin Heidegger makes essentially the same point when, in his Letter on Humanism, he describes contemporary "Russia and America" as "the same."



"MODERNITY"V IN WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT 305

prosperity ... The progress toward ever greater prosperity would thus become, or render possible, the progress toward ever greater freedom and justice.15

For Strauss, the contrast between "ancient" and "modern" philosophy, and therefore also political philosophy, is decisive:

. . the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns seems to us to be more fundamental than either the quarrel between Plato and Aristotle or that between Kant and Hegel.

o . . only in the light of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns can modernity be understood. By rediscovering the urgency of this quarrel we return to the origins of modernity.16

Modern political philosophy for Strauss is derivative in nature, in the sense that it presupposes, and is a reaction to, ancient political philosophy. It does not, therefore, result from a direct confrontation with political reality itself. Strauss makes the contrast between the "ancients" and "moderns" so stark, for one reason, in order to question the contemporary preference for modern, as against classical, political philosophy. He contends that to seek today simply to imitate classical political philosophy would be neither feasible nor desirable, for new situations call for radically fresh attempts to understand political things; but he sees the return to classical political philosophy to be a necessary precondition for elaborating a political philosophy rele- vant to contemporary problems.

There is no question that for Strauss modernity as such constitutes a retrogression in the history of thought and that the results of modern civilization, even when justified in an "idealistic" fashion, are profoundly inimical to human freedom and dignity. Modern political thought, particularly as it is expounded by its greatest representatives, is characterized by the virtual elimination of standards of excellence, the blurring of the distinction between just and unjust regimes so central to pre-modern thought, and the destruction of the philosopher's critical perspective vis a vis his own society or any society that would conceivably replace it. Modern thought makes the Socratic position and radical questioning on the basis of it impossible. At the

15 Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago, 1964), pp. 3-4. 16 Strauss, "Jerusalem and Athens," Commentary, XLIII (June, 1967), 55; What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Glencoe, 1959), p. 172; Cited in Victor Gourevitch, "Philosophy and Politics, I.," Review of Metaphysics, XXII (Sept., 1968), 59-60. See also Gourvitch's second article on the same subject (Strauss's views of the relation of philosophy to politics) in the December issue of the Review.




same time it imprudently helps to sweep away religious restraints on unvirtuous conduct among the majority of non-philosophers - who are in need of such restraints - by either overtly or covertly teaching atheism. Further, modern political thought at first weakens (through the subjective natural "rights" doctrines) and later destroys (through "historicism") the pre-modern teaching that there exists an objective moral order knowable by reason - i.e., that there is a "right by nature."

While there is much that is thoughtful and worthy of serious consideration in Strauss's interpretation of the character of modern political philosophy, it is highly doubtful that modern political philosophers were so self-consciously and consistently revolutionary as he depicts them, or that they were engaged in a carefully premeditated assault on the basic tenets of the pre-modern teaching. Machiavelli, for example, also sought that fresh, immediate contact with reality to which Plato aspired and was like the Platonic Socrates at least in the respect that he believed in "questioning everything." While modernity is a distinct and identifiable phase within the "Great Conversation" of western political thought, it does not represent so abrupt a break with the speculation of previous ages as Strauss would have us believe. The leading modern thinkers, like their distinguished predecessors, were questing spirits and their teachings do not possess that mono- lithic consistency which Strauss - albeit with great learning and ingenuity - discovers in their works.17

Eric Voegelin also finds modernity to be fundamentally homogene- ous as to intellectual substance, despite the apparent diversity and heterogeneity of the thought of the period. In his New Science of Politics Voegelin adopted the highly controversial position that "gnosticism" is the "essence of modernity." He has reiterated this interpretation in more recent writings.1s By gnosticism, he refers to a school of thought originally held to be a Christian heresy but which more recent scholarship has demonstrated to have originated independently of and approximately contemporaneously with Christianity. The early gnos- tics were characterized by a desire to escape from the existing world, which they condemned as the emanation of an evil demiurge. Only by acquiring a privileged kind of "knowledge" (gnosis) could they liberate themselves from the confines of the world of the flesh and become new, "spiritual" ("pneumatic") men, The inherent uncer-

17 For further discussion of Strauss's works, see Gourevitch, and Germino, Beyond Ideology, Ch. vii, and "Second Thoughts on Leo Strauss's Machiavelli," The Journal of Politics, XXVIII (November, 1966), 794-817. 18 See in particular Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Chicago, 1968).




tainty and limitations of the human condition prove too much to bear for some men; all varieties of gnosticism, whether ancient or modern, are fallacious attempts to allay man's existential anxiety by creating a "second reality" or dream world in which he can find release from his fundamental (and in truth, irremediable) existential anxiety.

Gnostic forms of thought claim to have bridged the chasm between the divine and human. In place of an authentic conception of man's existence in "uncertain truth" as validly conceived in Greek philosophy, Judaism and Christianity, the gnostic intellectual offers the "certain untruth" of ideology and a bogus eternity within time. Ac- cording to Voegelin, following its "reactivation" by Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, the gnostic symbolic form manifests itself in the millennarian movements of the later Middle Ages (Joachim of Fiore is the key figure in this development), the extreme sectarian movements of the Reformation, and in increasingly secularized versions in the whole of modern thought. The "system" constructions of Hobbes and Spinoza, Enlightenment progressivism, Hegelian idealism, Marxist Communism, Nazi racism and various types of militant secularist ideol- ogies are all related to each other, whatever their apparent opposition, as more or less perverted types of gnostic speculation. Modern material progress is purchased at the price of the "death of the spirit."'9 Thus, for Voegelin, modern political thought is spiritually diseased at its core. The only hope for avoiding disaster is to recognize the gravity of the crisis and elaborate a political philosophy which builds on the insights of Platonic and Aristotelian political philosophy, as well as upon those resistance forces to gnosticism contained in the basic "common sense" of much of Anglo-American political thought.

So bald a summary as that which has been given scarcely does justice to the subtlety of Voegelin's analysis. The detailed critiques that he and Strauss, from rather different and yet also related perspectives, have produced of modern political thinkers are of considerable value in provoking the kind of self-examination demanded of a critical science of politics. Without wishing to denigrate in any way the impressive achievements of these scholars, I am nonetheless convinced that their judgments of the modern period in the history of political

g9 "The death of the spirit is the price of progress." Voegelin, New Science of Politics, p. 131. Voegelin's concept of gnosticism is too broad and amorphous to be usable in the analysis of modern political thought. It is, furthermore, of doubtful validity to portray the anti-human and totalitarian Nazi regime as the intellectual and spiritual progeny of modernity as such, when its intellectual antecedents can be much more precisely traced to the pernicious biologism and racist thinking of a specific school of writers. Nor are all "third realm" symbolizations which appear in modern political thought substantively or functionally equivalent.




thought are too sweeping and unsympathetic. Critical reflection on politics does not cease with the advent of modernity, and aspects of man's existential situation are illumined by thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx in such fashion as to make us grateful for what they contributed to the continuing Conversation begun by the Greek philosophers over two millennia ago. These men are men and as such are fallible and limited in their perspectives. To regard their thought as spiritually diseased and the product of the systematic deflection of the intellect from its proper course, runs dan- gerously close to a kind of dogmatism which Voegelin and Strauss themselves reject as inimical to philosophical inquiry. With due appreciation for their immense learning and insight, it will be necessary to push beyond the critiques of these gifted interpreters if we are to attain a critical assessment of modern political thought.

The "End of Modernity"?

We have considered the problem of assigning an approximate point of origin to modernity as well as the related question of unifying characteristics of the principal political thinkers of the period. There remains the problem of whether the modern age has come to an end, and if so at what point we may validly close the modern parenthesis in the history of political thought. Some years ago the German philosopher Romano Guardini published a volume entitled Das Ende der Neuzeit (The End of Modernity) in which, after sketching in what he saw to be the major contours of the ancient, medieval and modern world views, he reached the conclusion that the modern world view is today in an advanced state of dissolution. According to Guardini, a new epoch, still unnamed, is emerging, and present indications are that it will be marked by a lack of confidence in the beneficence of nature and the capability of the physical world to fulfill human aspirations. To post-modern man, the "winning of the world" seems less convincing as an ultimate goal than it did to the denizens of the modern period.20

In my concluding remarks here, I shall limit myself to a few reflec- tions on whether we may properly speak of modernity as having come to an end with respect to the history of political thought. (Fully to. explore the nature of the relationship between political thought and other forms of the consciousness would require a treatment on the

20 Romano Guardini, Das Ende der Neuzeit: Ein Versuch zur Orientierung (Wurzburg, 1950), pp. 59ff-




order of Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes, an undertaking far beyond the reach of the present writer.) The evidence on this score is at the present time inconclusive; it will presumably be possible for future historians who will have the advantage of greater distance from the events in which we ourselves today are participating to cope more adequately with this question than we can. However, with reference to the two key shared tenets of modern writers who reflect seri- ously on man's existence in society and history - i.e., on man's political existence as broadly conceived within the tradition of western inquiry itself - there is significant indication that both with respect to the sense of excitement over mankind's entering a "new age" of human history and to the willing deflection of greater psychic and physical energies to inner-worldly activity there is today rather profound disenchantment and malaise. This discontent with the promise and prospect of the world as characteristically experienced in the modern period is particularly evident in the radical protest movements within the so-called "affluent" societies of western Europe and North America. More generally, one sees on many fronts signs that the political creeds of the immediate past no longer stir the majority of their followers as they once did. The inherited labels of "left" and "right" are increasingly irrelevant in describing the political forces of contemporary "modernized" societies.

What we are not in a position to ascertain is whether this is but a temporary flagging of the modern spirit, which, when sufficiently rekindled, will reassert itself and recover its inventive and ultimately sanguine attitude toward the active life in this world. There are some indications that what F. S. C. Northrop styled rather optimistically the "meeting of East and West," coupled with widespread dissatisfac- tion with at least some of the fruits of modern industrial society, will eventually produce a new style of thought that places renewed emphasis upon the contemplative and aesthetic dimensions of experience and on attainment of some measure of inner serenity in the world of flux and change. And yet the same encounter of East and West which is resulting in a belated broadening of the Western intellectual horizon to include at least some familiarity with the great non-western religions and mythical speculations is also confronting the "developed" nations with the responsibility to assist materially impoverished societies to achieve their own version of "modernization." The frequency with which the terms "modernize" and "modernization" are employed reveals that, in the face of the monumental practical problems of increasing the food supply, improving the health services and facing up to the whole complex of problems brought on by unprecedented population increases, the activist spirit of modernity will indefinitely




continue to have a raison d'etre. From the interchange of cultural styles and norms between East and West it is not utopian to foresee the possible emergence of a post-modern age in which both the unity and the diversity of mankind will receive their due recognition in the domain of political thought and life. Over such hopes and possibilities hangs the terrible threat of nuclear annihilation, which helps to explain why the strenuous positing of a new world to be won no longer evokes the same response as it once did. More immediately, there remains the necessity at once to bring an end to the terrible and tragic war in Vietnam, which casts an ever-lengthening shadow over the prospects for a more humane, less brutal political world. Can a new world arise out of the ashes and destruction of the present? I suspect that in the present and coming generations of the questioning young people we find our best hope for an affirmative answer. To them I dedicate this essay.

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA



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