Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Hobbes, Souveränität; Institutionen - Erziehung (Tugend); Staat: Engel, Teufel (Kant); Garantie der Gerechtigkeit durch Beherrschung der Leidenschaften; Demokratie: einzige legitimes Regime

Kurzinhalt: As regards Hobbes's teaching on sovereignty in particular ... It implies the denial of the possibility of distinguishing between good and bad regimes ... Man can guarantee the actualization of the right social order because ...

Textausschnitt: 192a As regards Hobbes's teaching on sovereignty in particular, its doctrinaire character is shown most clearly by the denials which it implies. It implies the denial of the possibility of distinguishing between good and bad regimes (kingship and tyranny, aristocracy and oligarchy, democracy and ochlocracy) as well as of the possibility of mixed regimes and of "rule of law."1 Since these denials are at variance with observed facts, the doctrine of sovereignty amounts in practice to a denial not of the existence, but of the legitimacy, of the possibilities mentioned: Hobbes's doctrine of sovereignty ascribes to the sovereign prince or to the sovereign people an unqualified right to disregard all legal and constitutional limitations according to their pleasure,2 and it imposes even on sensible men a natural law prohibition against censuring the sovereign and his actions. But it would be wrong to overlook the fact that the basic deficiency of the doctrine of sovereignty is shared, if to different degrees, by all other forms of natural public law doctrines as well. We merely have to remind ourselves of the practical meaning of the doctrine that the only legitimate regime is democracy. (Fs)

193a The classics had conceived of regimes (politeiai) not so much in terms of institutions as in terms of the aims actually pursued by the community or its authoritative part. Accordingly, they regarded the best regime as that regime whose aim is virtue, and they held that the right kind of institutions are indeed indispensable for establishing and securing the rule of the virtuous, but of only secondary importance in comparison with "education," i.e., the formation of character. From the point of view of natural public law, on the other hand, what is needed in order to establish the right social order is not so much the formation of character as the devising of the right kind of institutions. As Kant put it in rejecting the view that the establishment of the right social order requires a nation of angels: "Hard as it may sound, the problem of establishing the state [i.e., the just social order] is soluble even for a nation of devils, provided they have sense," i.e., provided that they are guided by enlightened selfishness; the fundamental political problem is simply one of "a good organization of the state, of which man is indeed capable." In the words of Hobbes, "when [commonwealths] come to be dissolved, not by external violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the matter, but as they are the makers, and orderers of them."1 Man as the maker of civil society can solve once and for all the problem inherent in man as the matter of civil society. Man can guarantee the actualization of the right social order because he is able to conquer human nature by understanding and manipulating the mechanism of the passions. (Fs)