Prefaces and Introduction

In the introduction and prefaces of their work History of Political Philosophy, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey lay out first who this book is designed for, namely undergraduates in political philosophy as well as those that do not see political science as a science in the same sense that chemistry is a science. As they go on to explain, today political philosophy has become synonymous with ideology or myth, and this combined with the hard, fast, and purely modern distinction between philosophy and science has caused many to try and push political science into the realm of the “hard” sciences, but as Strauss and Cropsey believe, it is more proper to place it within the realm of philosophy.

Strauss and Cropsey do however draw a distinction between political thought and political philosophy as according to them, while political thought is concerned with political life, political philosophy is concerned with a particular political life, for example, in the original context of political philosophy, those that practiced it were concerned with the political life of the ancient Greeks, and the Athenians in particular.

Thus, political philosophy begins with the Greeks, and more specifically with Socrates. In the Greek conception of political philosophy, which serve as the roots of our own, there is a deep connection between “nature” and “growth” and that which does not grow is not properly seen as a part of nature, while that which can grow is seen as a part of nature. Nature was not seen as inaccessible in this context, but rather as something that could be discovered. With these two concepts in mind, the Greeks came to see the polis as part of nature, with elements that could be discovered. The further division of nature into the concepts of custom and law further fueled the Greek drive toward developing political philosophy. A good example of the distinction between custom and law can be seen in a tribe’s use of language. While it was a matter of custom which particular language a tribe used, it was a matter of law that a tribe had such a concept as “language” as the ability to use a language was a natural part of all people.

Because so much of what made people fully human was found in nature for the Greeks, it only made sense that nature also offered important lesions on how to best govern the polis. Socrates even saw the natural law as true justice and thus human laws that did not confine to the natural law were seen as unjust. Thus, instead of law being seen as the arbitrary will of rulers, it was instead seen as part of the natural order of the world which individual rules could accept or reject. Law then could be objective and discovered, just as modern natural scientists have discovered the objective law of gravity.  

One of the last points Strauss and Cropsey make is to note that while modern political theory makes a strong distinction between the state/polis and society, this distinction did not exist in the classical period, which further integrated the polis into natural law as there was no modern distinction where the state/polis could be arbitrary and yet society still remain natural. For the Greeks, to reject the polis as natural also meant a rejection of society as natural. With these ideas set up, Strauss and Cropsey are now prepared to examine the history and development of political philosophy.