Robert Eden, "Tocqueville and the Problem of Natural Right" in Interpretation Vol. 17, No. 3 (Sprint 1990)

Excerpt:

“The primary questions of classical political philosophy, and the terms in which it stated them, were not specifically philosophic or scientific; they were questions that are raised in assemblies, councils, clubs and cabinets, and they were stated in terms intelligible and familiar, at least to all sane adults, from everyday experience and everyday usage. These questions have a natural hierarchy which supplies political life, and hence political philosophy, with its fundamental orientation. Similarly it can be said that the method, too, of classical political philosophy was presented by political life itself in practically all cases claims are raised in the name of justice. The opposed claims are based, then, on opinions of what is good or just. To justify their claims, the opposed parties advance arguments. The conflict calls for arbitration, for an intelligent decision that will give each party what it truly deserves. Some of the material required for making such a decision is offered by the opposed parties themselves, and the very insufficiency of this partial material an insufficiency obviously due to its partisan origin points the way to its completion by the umpire. The umpire par excellence is the political philosopher.”

-Leo Strauss, “On Classical Political Philosophy”

In this, to my knowledge the sole mention of Tocqueville in his published work, Strauss adumbrates a twofold approach, to and from classical political philosophy, from and to Tocqueville. He suggests that our most direct access to the questions and method of classical political philosophy might be through Democracy in America and implies that a full understanding of that work would presuppose or require and might therefore have to await an ample and adequate recovery of those questions and that method. For Strauss, Democracy in America is a threshold to the ancient questions and method. However, the great difficulty of truly recovering classical political philosophy is one of Strauss’s most prominent themes (OT, p. 116, n. 44; NR, p. 34). Indeed, Strauss exhibits that difficulty so persuasively that one must wonder whether Tocqueville is not properly the least accessible of the authors we commonly study in political philosophy. Precisely to the extent that he was, as Strauss here intimates, “the umpire par excellence,” or the living exemplar of what it means to be a political philosopher in the classical sense, Tocqueville should exemplify that difficulty. Thus, while Tocqueville’s book on democracy may gracefully serve as a portal to the questions and methods of classical political philosophy, the order may have to be reversed if we wish to understand the mind and spirit the philosophic judgment of the umpire Tocqueville. In that case, the study of the ancient political philosophers would necessarily provide the portal to understanding the questions and methods of Tocqueville. To the degree that the premises of modem political science govern our perceptions and hold our thinking within the circle of its questions and methods, Strauss implies that we need the classics to understand Tocqueville.

Online:
Interpretation [pdf]