Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Naturrecht: Ursprung; Plato: Gesetz, Staat; Philosophie - Höhle Zeus'; Krise der Autorität: das Gute - das Alte;

Kurzinhalt: The end of the Laws is devoted to the central theme of the Republic: natural right, or political philosophy and the culmination of political philosophy, replace the cave of Zeus

Textausschnitt: 84b Plato has indicated by the conversational settings of his Republic and his Laws rather than by explicit statements how indispensable doubt of authority or freedom from authority is for the discovery of natural right. In the Republic the discussion of natural right starts long after the aged Cephalus, the father, the head of the house, has left to take care of the sacred offerings to the gods: the absence of Cephalus, or of what he stands for, is indispensable for the quest for natural right. Or, if you wish, men like Cephalus do not need to know of natural right. Besides, the discussion makes the participants wholly oblivious of a torch race in honor of a goddess which they were supposed to watch--the quest for natural right replaces that torch race. The discussion recorded in the Laws takes place while the participants, treading in the footsteps of Minos, who, being the son and pupil of Zeus, had brought the Cretans their divine laws, are walking from a Cretan city to the cave of Zeus. Whereas their conversation is recorded in its entirety, nothing is said of whether they arrived at their initial goal. The end of the Laws is devoted to the central theme of the Republic: natural right, or political philosophy and the culmination of political philosophy, replace the cave of Zeus. If we take Socrates as the representative of the quest for natural right, we may illustrate the relation of that quest to authority as follows: in a community governed by divine laws, it is strictly forbidden to subject these laws to genuine discussion, i.e., to critical examination, in the presence of young men; Socrates, however, discusses natural right--a subject whose discovery presupposes doubt of the ancestral or divine code--not only in the presence of young men but in conversation with them. Some time before Plato, Herodotus had indicated this state of things by the place of the only debate which he recorded concerning the principles of politics: he tells us that that free discussion took place in truth-loving Persia after the slaughter of the Magi.1 This is not to deny that, once the idea of natural right has emerged and become a matter of course, it can easily be adjusted to the belief in the existence of divinely revealed law. We merely contend that the predominance of that belief prevents the emergence of the idea of natural right or makes the quest for natural right infinitely unimportant: if man knows by divine revelation what the right path is, he does not have to discover that path by his unassisted efforts. (Fs)

86a The original form of the doubt of authority and therefore the direction which philosophy originally took or the perspective in which nature was discovered were determined by the original character of authority. The assumption that there is a variety of divine codes leads to difficulties, since the various codes contradict one another. One code absolutely praises actions which another code absolutely condemns. One code demands the sacrifice of one's first-born son, whereas another code forbids all human sacrifices as an abomination. The burial rites of one tribe provoke the horror of another. But what is decisive is the fact that the various codes contradict one another in what they suggest regarding the first things. The view that the gods were born of the earth cannot be reconciled with the view that the earth was made by the gods. Thus the question arises as to which code is the right code and which account of the first things is the true account. The right way is now no longer guaranteed by authority; it becomes a question or the object of a quest. The primeval identification of the good with the ancestral is replaced by the fundamental distinction between the good and the ancestral; the quest for the right way or for the first things is the quest for the good as distinguished from the ancestral.1 It will prove to be the quest for what is good by nature as distinguished from what is good merely by convention. (Fs) (notabene)