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3. Pluralist Democracy: Dissent and Evolution
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>> 23 3 Pluralist Democracy: Dissent and Evolution Pluralist democracy achieved hegemony during the post–World War II era as the correct theory and practice of government. Yet pluralist democracy neither went unchallenged nor remained static. The first part of this chapter focuses on Leo Strauss, a leading opponent of pluralist democracy, while the second part explains the ways in which the pluralist democratic regime changed over time. Émigré Dissenter: Leo Strauss European émigrés, particularly Leo Strauss, an escapee from Nazi Germany, persistently opposed pluralist democracy. By the end of the 1940s, Strauss and other émigrés, such as Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin, were established political philosophers within the American intellectual community. 24 > 25 asked, is not historicism “self-contradictory”? How can historicism claim that it is a valid viewpoint itself? And even more important, when humanity is ostensibly freed of all “permanencies,” such as knowing “the distinction between the noble and the base,” then we are too apt to spiral into terror , as happened with Hitler and the Nazis. “It was the contempt for these permanencies which permitted the most radical historicist in 1933 [to gain power].”3 Strauss attacked the pretensions of modern social science with equal vigor. Social scientists claim that facts and values must be separated: “[T]he Is and the Ought” cannot be joined. They posit that all knowledge must be empirical, based on experience of facts, and that therefore social science must be “value free” and “ethically neutral.” But to Strauss, modern social science is wrongheaded on several counts. Most simply, he argued that value-free social science is impossible. Values seep into any social or political analysis in numerous ways, from the choice of research questions to the definition of terms. At a deeper level, to insist on value-free social science, including political science, would be to render it meaningless: “It is impossible to study social phenomena, i.e., all important social phenomena , without making value judgments. . . . A man who refuses to distinguish between great statesmen, mediocrities, and insane impostors may be a good bibliographer; he cannot say anything relevant about politics and political history.”4 And even if value-free social science were possible, the single-minded focus on empirical research, on facts, would necessarily preclude any knowledge of values and ends. From the modern standpoint, values, which are the sources of our goals or ends, are not subject to scientific (empirical ) determination and therefore are not knowable. Modern social science leads us, then, to ethical relativism. “[T]here cannot be any genuine knowledge of the Ought. [The modern social scientist] denied to man any science , empirical or rational, any knowledge, scientific or philosophic, of the true value system: the true value system does not exist; there is a variety of values which are of the same rank, whose demands conflict with one another, and whose conflict cannot be solved by human reason. Social science or social philosophy can do no more than clarify that conflict and all its implications; the solution has to be left to the free, non-rational decision of each individual.” Modern social science, with its desire to be empirical and “neutral in the conflict between good and evil,” relegates us to a 26 > 27 quest for answers to our dilemmas, and ancient philosophy might guide us on our journey. But the end of the quest might never be reached—it might never become visible.7 In his quest for truth, Strauss insisted that we consider whether the ancients had correctly linked political philosophy with natural right. To explore this possibility, Strauss distinguished between the classical (or ancient) and modern concepts of natural right. According to the ancients, natural right could be comprehended only in connection “with a teleological view of the universe,” Strauss explained. “All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them.” Natural right, then, arose from the inherent end or purpose of a political regime. That is, “classic natural right doctrine . . . is identical with the doctrine of the best regime.” The philosophical quest for natural right amounts to a search for “the perfect moral order.” Strauss left ambiguous, it should be noted, the precise relationship between classical (or ancient) natural right and classical (or ancient) natural law. Sometimes he appeared to distinguish between natural right and natural law, but other times he appeared to use the terms interchangeably. In fact, when Strauss equated classical natural right with the best regime or perfect...