Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Historismus - Max Weber; Wertvorstellung, zeitloser Wert - Fakten

Kurzinhalt: ... what is trans-historical is the validity of these findings; but the importance or significance of any findings depends on value ideas

Textausschnitt: II NATURAL RIGHT AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN FACTS AND VALUES

35a The historicist contention can be reduced to the assertion that natural right is impossible because philosophy in the full sense of the term is impossible. Philosophy is possible only if there is an absolute horizon or a natural horizon in contradistinction to the historically changing horizons or the caves. In other words, philosophy is possible only if man, while incapable of acquiring wisdom or full understanding of the whole, is capable of knowing what he does not know, that is to say, of grasping the fundamental problems and therewith the fundamental alternatives, which are, in principle, coeval with human thought. But the possibility of philosophy is only the necessary and not the sufficient condition of natural right. The possibility of philosophy does not require more than that the fundamental problems always be the same; but there cannot be natural right if the fundamental problem of political philosophy cannot be solved in a final manner. (Fs)

35b If philosophy in general is possible, political philosophy in particular is possible. Political philosophy is possible if man is capable of understanding the fundamental political alternative which is at the bottom of the ephemeral or accidental alternatives. Yet if political philosophy is limited to understanding the fundamental political alternative, it is of no practical value. It would be unable to answer the question of what the ultimate goal of wise action is. It would have to delegate the crucial decision to blind choice. The whole galaxy of political philosophers from Plato to Hegel, and certainly all adherents of natural right, assumed that the fundamental political problem is susceptible of a final solution. This assumption ultimately rested on the Socratic answer to the question of how man ought to live. By realizing that we are ignorant of the most important things, we realize at the same time that the most important thing for us, or the one thing needful, is quest for knowledge of the most important things or quest for wisdom. That this conclusion is not barren of political consequences is known to every reader of Plato's Republic or of Aristotle's Politics. It is true that the successful quest for wisdom might lead to the result that wisdom is not the one thing needful. But this result would owe its relevance to the fact that it is the result of the quest for wisdom: the very disavowal of reason must be reasonable disavowal. Regardless of whether this possibility affects the validity of the Socratic answer, the perennial conflict between the Socratic and the anti-Socratic answer creates the impression that the Socratic answer is as arbitrary as its opposite, or that the perennial conflict is insoluble. Accordingly, many present-day social scientists who are not historicists or who do admit the existence of fundamental and unchanging alternatives deny that human reason is capable of solving the conflict between these alternatives. Natural right is then rejected today not only because all human thought is held to be historical but likewise because it is thought that there is a variety of unchangeable principles of right or of goodness which conflict with one another, and none of which can be proved to be superior to the others. (Fs)

36a Substantially, this is the position taken by Max Weber. Our discussion will be limited to a critical analysis of Weber's view. No one since Weber has devoted a comparable amount of intelligence, assiduity, and almost fanatical devotion to the basic problem of the social sciences. Whatever may have been his errors, he is the greatest social scientist of our century. (Fs)

36b Weber, who regarded himself as a disciple of the historical school1 came very close to historicism, and a strong case can be made for the view that his reservations against historicism were halfhearted and inconsistent with the broad tendency of his thinking. He parted company with the historical school, not because it had rejected natural norms, i.e., norms that are both universal and objective, but because it had tried to establish standards that were particular and historical indeed, but still objective. He objected to the historical school not because it had blurred the idea of natural right but because it had preserved natural right in a historical guise, instead of rejecting it altogether. The historical school had given natural right a historical character by insisting on the ethnic character of all genuine right or by tracing all genuine right to unique folk minds, as well as by assuming that the history of mankind is a meaningful process or a process ruled by intelligible necessity. Weber rejected both assumptions as metaphysical, i.e., as based on the dogmatic premise that reality is rational. Since Weber assumed that the real is always individual, he could state the premise of the historical school also in these terms: the individual is an emanation from the general or from the whole. According to Weber, however, individual or partial phenomena can be understood only as effects of other individual or partial phenomena, and never as effects of wholes such as folk minds. To try to explain historical or unique phenomena by tracing them to general laws or to unique wholes means to assume gratuitously that there are mysterious or unanalyzable forces which move the historical actors.2 There is no "meaning" of history apart from the "subjective" meaning or the intentions which animate the historical actors. But these intentions are of such limited power that the actual outcome is in most cases wholly unintended. Yet the actual outcome--historical fate--which is not planned by God or man, molds not only our way of life but our very thoughts, and especially does it determine our ideals.3 Weber was, however, still too much impressed by the idea of science to accept historicism without qualification. In fact, one is tempted to suggest that the primary motive of his opposition to the historical school and to historicism in general was devotion to the idea of empirical science as it prevailed in his generation. The idea of science forced him to insist on the fact that all science as such is independent of Weltanschauung: both natural and social science claim to be equally valid for Westerners and for Chinese, i.e., for people whose "world views" are radically different. The historical genesis of modern science--the fact that it is of Western origin--is wholly irrelevant as regards its validity. Nor did Weber have any doubt that modern science is absolutely superior to any earlier form of thinking orientation in the world of nature and society. That superiority can be established objectively, by reference to the rules of logic.4 There arose, however, in Weber's mind this difficulty in regard to the social sciences in particular. He insisted on the objective and universal validity of social science in so far as it is a body of true propositions. Yet these propositions are only a part of social science. They are the results of scientific investigation or the answers to questions. The questions which we address to social phenomena depend on the direction of our interest or on our point of view, and these on our value ideas. But the value ideas are historically relative. Hence the substance of social science is radically historical; for it is the value ideas and the direction of interest which determine the whole conceptual framework of the social sciences. Accordingly, it does not make sense to speak of a "natural frame of reference" or to expect a final system of the basic concepts: all frames of reference are ephemeral. Every conceptual scheme used by social science articulates the basic problems, and these problems change with the change of the social and cultural situation. Social science is necessarily the understanding of society from the point of view of the present. What is trans-historical are merely the findings regarding the facts and their causes. More precisely, what is trans-historical is the validity of these findings; but the importance or significance of any findings depends on value ideas and hence on historically changeable principles. Ultimately, this applies to every science. All science presupposes that science is valuable, but this presupposition is the product of certain cultures, and hence historically relative.5 However, the concrete and historical value ideas, of which there is an indefinitely large variety, contain elements of a trans-historical character: the ultimate values are as timeless as the principles of logic. It is the recognition of timeless values that distinguishes Weber's position most significantly from historicism. Not so much historicism as a peculiar notion of timeless values is the basis of his rejection of natural right.6 (Fs)