3,657 words 

In my essay “Notes on Strauss and Husserl,”[1] I argued that Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology had a formative influence on Leo Strauss in two ways. First, Husserl’s method of dismantling traditional concepts in order to return to and describe the experiences they were based upon influenced Strauss’ recovery of the classical ideas of nature and natural right. Second, Husserl influenced Strauss’ hermeneutics, specifically his so-called “golden saying” on the surface of texts.

I published these arguments because I believed I had made my case. I held back another thesis because, at the time, I did not think I could establish it. My thesis was that Husserl’s discussion of the conflict between “philosophy as rigorous science” and “worldview” philosophy may have been Strauss’ first exposure to the question of the relationship of philosophy to society, which for Strauss is the core meaning of political philosophy. Let’s call this the influence thesis. I still can’t prove it, but I have decided to share it anyway, in the hope that others can confirm or deny it.

“Philosophy as Rigorous Science & Political Philosophy”

As his health declined, Strauss planned what he probably thought to be his last collection of essays, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. As the opening movement of this swan song, he chose a brief but forbiddingly dense and cryptic essay on Edmund Husserl entitled “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy.”[2]

This is one of Strauss’ most enigmatic late essays. Husserl is the topic, but he is only discussed on the last four pages. The first five pages deal mainly with Heidegger, who until that time Strauss had not dealt with extensively in print. I will deal with Strauss’ discussions of Heidegger in another essay. Here, I wish to focus on his remarks on Husserl.

Husserl’s “Philosophy as Rigorous Science”

Strauss proposes to discuss the place of political philosophy in Husserl based on his 1911 essay “Philosophy as Rigorous Science.”[3] Here Husserl defends a very lofty conception of philosophy as a purely theoretical activity that aims at “pure and absolute knowledge” and “whose vocation is to teach us how to carry on the eternal work of humanity.”[4]

Husserl defends scientific philosophy from two sets of pretenders: “naturalism” and “psychologism” on the one hand, and “historicism” and “worldview philosophy” (Weltanschauungsphilosophie) on the other. Husserl is not dismissive of his rivals. He offers high praise to both sets of pretenders before going beyond them.

Husserl’s essay is sweeping and programmatic. It is also “rigorous” in the sense of being difficult to traverse and understand. The essay is immensely prolix, sprawling across 53 pages in its original German publication. It is difficult to interpret, because Husserl offers little in the way of summaries, outlines, and guideposts. He seldom defines his key operative concepts, and if he defines them at all, it is only in passing. In a tour de force of condensation, Strauss distills Husserl’s 53 pages into a summary of fewer than three pages. It is like engraving a Bible verse on the head of a pin. But such concision presents its own interpretive difficulties. Thus I need to offer my own summary of Husserl before grappling with what Strauss says.

Naturally, Husserl’s own phenomenology best fits his idea of philosophy as a rigorous science, although he rather generously claims in the essay in question that such a philosophy does not yet exist.[5]

For our purposes, Husserl’s phenomenology has four characteristics.

First, it is a transcendental philosophy, meaning that it reflects on “transcendental subjectivity,” i.e., the universal structures of subjectivity that make knowledge possible. Thus Husserl claims that a Kantian “critique of reason . . . is the foremost prerequisite for being scientific in philosophy.”[6]

Second, philosophy distinguishes between valid and invalid forms of thought, i.e., it is normative.

Third, meanings—including norms—are ideal, meaning that the same idea can be thought in different brains, expressed in different languages, and appreciated in different historical epochs.

Finally, the exploration of transcendental subjectivity is an infinite task, i.e., a cumulative, multi-generational enterprise on the model of the natural sciences.[7]

Husserl applauds naturalism because it is an attempt to make philosophy scientific in the same way.[8] It goes wrong, however, by thinking that the domain of philosophy is just another realm of facts, alongside the realms studied by chemistry, physics, or biology. But philosophy does not deal with the realm of facts. It deals with what we bring to the world of facts, namely the transcendental conditions that allow facts to show up to us.

At this point, the naturalist concludes that philosophy is all about “consciousness,” which is the subject of psychology, hence “psychologism.” But philosophy is neither the introspective study of one’s own consciousness nor the extrospective study of somebody else’s brain states. Philosophy is the study of the transcendental conditions that make psychology (introspective or empirical) possible. These conditions, moreover, are ideal and normative. Thus they are not identical to individual thoughts or brain states.

Husserl’s critique of historicism and worldview philosophy hinges on the concept of absolute as opposed to relative validity.[9] To say, for example, that the principle of non-contradiction is absolutely valid means that it is valid across all historical contexts. To say that it is relatively valid means that its validity is confined to particular historical contexts. If there is just one absolutely valid idea, then historicism is false.

According to Husserl, Hegel is the father of historicism, because he claims that meaning, truth, and validity are relative to history.[10] Hegel is something of a transitional figure, however, because he holds that his own system has absolute validity because it occupies an absolute moment in history, when the historical process has come to an end by realizing all its possibilities, such that no further systems of thought are possible.

Hegel’s successors, however, rejected the idea that the absolute moment had yet arrived (for example, Marx), or they rejected the idea of an absolute moment altogether, which implies a never-ending succession of historically relative worldviews. This sort of position was later defended by Oswald Spengler, who for Strauss is a paradigm of radical historicism. Spengler claimed, for example, that classical culture had a different mathematics than our current Faustian culture.[11]

Husserl is happy to admit that some ideas are relative to their historical contexts. But he denies the strong historicist is claim that all ideas are relative to their historical contexts. Thus if there is just one absolutely valid idea, historicism is false.

Husserl’s basic response to historicism is simply to accept history in all its richness and complexity, but then to deny the inference that the diversity and relativity of history implies that there are no absolutely valid philosophical, mathematical, scientific, and other truths—truths that remain unchanged across all linguistic, cultural, and historical contexts. The historicist inference simply does not follow. To defend it seriously requires that one maintain that, in some cultures, it is possible for 2 + 2 = 5. I don’t think that even Spengler would go quite that far. Husserl also argues that some historicists presuppose forms of absolute validity even as they deny it.

Husserl’s treatment of the relationship of historicism and worldview philosophy is complex. Husserl introduces worldview philosophy as an outgrowth of historicism.[12] If philosophy cannot aim for absolutely valid knowledge, then it is confined to different historical worlds.

Later in the essay, however, Husserl claims that worldview philosophy existed from the very beginning of Western thought.[13] Thus there seem to be two kinds of worldview philosophy. The Ancients sought absolute knowledge but ended up with historically relative worldviews only by way of failure, whereas historicist worldview philosophy aims at nothing higher.

Yet worldview philosophy remains philosophy, meaning that it retains the lofty aims of “wisdom,” “virtue,” and “humanity.”[14] It is the best that can be achieved at any given time, whether it aims for universal validity or not.

Husserl equates philosophy as rigorous science with the pursuit of absolutely valid philosophical knowledge. Beyond that, he identifies it with purely theoretical philosophy, although it is unclear why we cannot have absolutely valid knowledge in moral and political philosophy.[15] Husserl also speaks of scientific philosophy as an unending quest, an infinite task, whereas worldview philosophy produces results in the here and now. Does this imply that scientific philosophy produces no results?

Husserl seems to regard scientific philosophy as an end in itself, which needs no fruits to justify it. Yet he suggests that it might provide practical fruits in the far future. If that is possible, then why not now or in the past?[16] Is the principle of non-contradiction not an absolutely valid product of rigorous, scientific thinking? If so, then scientific philosophy has been producing absolutely valid discoveries for over two thousand years now. Moreover, the principles of logic are eminently useful. One also wonders about the status of Husserl’s own philosophy, which bequeathed us some absolutely valid truths and useful polemics against fashionable errors in the last century.

By contrast, Husserl equates worldview philosophy with all forms of practical philosophy.[17] This would include the Socratic idea of philosophy as the ability to make right use of all things for the pursuit of happiness.[18] For Husserl, practical philosophy seeks to realize moral and aesthetic ideals in the here and now. Husserl also claims that worldview philosophy offers us “exaltation and consolation,”[19] which are sentiments connected with religious ideas about Providence and human dignity. Thus worldview philosophy can be completed, at least to the extent that it can offer concrete pragmatic benefits. What is more, worldview philosophy is necessary for living, since life requires philosophical guidance, and “we cannot wait”[20] for scientific philosophy to provide it in the distant future (if at all).

Because of the practical necessity of worldview philosophy, Strauss remarks that “the temptation to forsake it in favor of Weltanschauungsphilosophie is very great. From Husserl’s point of view one would have to say that Heidegger proved unable to resist that temptation.”[21] But is it really one or the other? Are we really dealing with two all-encompassing and thus mutually exclusive ways of life? I will grant that theoretical and practical philosophy have distinct aims, which should not be confused. But provided one does not confuse them, why can’t we have both? Exactly how do scientific philosophers live? How do they avoid falling into wells?

Aristotle, for example, managed to find a place for contemplation as an end in itself in an essentially Socratic-Platonic practical philosophy. This is why we find his treatment of the theoretical life in the middle of his principal work of practical philosophy, i.e., at the end of what came to be called the Nicomachean Ethics before the transition to what came to be called the Politics.[22]

What is the status of the distinction between scientific and worldview philosophy? Does it belong to scientific or worldview philosophy? Strauss claims that, “The reflection on the relation of the two kinds of philosophy obviously belongs to the sphere of philosophy as rigorous science.”[23] If so, then this is another example of scientific philosophy producing something, in this case a distinction, in the here and now. Yet this distinction, if it really is a distinction, is absolutely valid.

The Question of Political Philosophy

At this point, Strauss introduces the concept of political philosophy: Husserl’s distinction between scientific and worldview philosophy, “comes closest to being Husserl’s contribution to political philosophy.”[24] Strauss is not using “political philosophy” to refer to norms of political conduct. Instead, he is using it in his own sense, which refers to the relationship between philosophy and “the city.”

Philosophy seeks to replace opinions with truths. But opinions—especially authoritative opinions about gods, heroes, and right conduct—are the cement that holds society together. Thus, left to its own devices, philosophy dissolves society. But this can’t go on forever. Eventually, there will be a reaction. Society’s defenders will strike back at philosophy. Thus philosophy must change course to preserve itself, an eminently practical problem that Husserl would categorize as worldview philosophy.

Strauss continues:

He did not go on to wonder whether the single-minded pursuit of philosophy as rigorous science would not have an adverse effect on Weltanschauungsphilosophie which most men need to live by and hence on the actualization of the ideas which that kind of philosophy [philosophy as rigorous science] serves, in the first place in the practitioners of philosophy as rigorous science but secondarily also in all those who are impressed by those practitioners.[25]

Scientific philosophy takes place in a society. If scientific philosophy undermines something necessary for society,  it may undermine itself by provoking the guardians of public order to persecute it and its followers.

Husserl’s distinction between scientific philosophy and worldview philosophy is not, however, exactly the same as Strauss’s distinction between philosophy and opinion. But it is at least analogous, since worldview philosophy is like opinion insofar as it is necessary for practical life.

Strauss, however, overlooks the fact that in the first paragraph of “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” Husserl refers to the time when “religious forces restricted freedom of theoretical investigation,” which applies to philosophy as well as science. This statement better approximates the problem of political philosophy as Strauss defined it.[26]

Strauss concludes his discussion of “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science” by listing Husserl’s political assumptions, which seem to be naïvely liberal:

He seems to have taken it for granted that there will always be a variety of Weltanschauungsphilosophien that peacefully coexist within one and the same society. He did not pay attention to societies that impose a single Weltanschauung or Weltanschauungsphilosophie on all their members and for this reason will not tolerate philosophy as rigorous science. Nor did he consider that even a society that tolerates indefinitely many Weltanschauungen does this by virtue of one particular Weltanschauung.[27]

Strauss concludes with a paragraph arguing that more than two decades later, Husserl fully and accurately formulated the problem of Platonic political philosophy:

In a lecture delivered in Prague in 1935 he said, “Those who are conservatively contented with the tradition and the circle of philosophic human beings will fight one another, and surely the fight will take place in the sphere of political power. Already in the beginnings of philosophy persecution sets in. The men who live toward those ideas [of philosophy] are outlawed. And yet: ideas are stronger than all empirical powers.”[28]

This paragraph begins with an exceptionally odd run-on sentence: “Husserl in a manner continued, he surely modified the reflection we have been speaking about, under the impact of events which could not be overlooked or overheard.” The reference to events that could not be “overlooked or overheard” is odd, because the two “over” words aren’t really parallel. Not overlooking events is to observe them, but not overhearing events is not to hear them. Strauss is surely alluding to the rise of National Socialism in 1933, which certainly confronted Husserl with the question of the relationship of philosophy and politics, both because Husserl and other Jewish academics faced repression and because his student Heidegger joined the National Socialist Party. But in what sense were these events seen but not heard by Husserl?

The final two sentences are also enigmatic:

In order to see the relation between philosophy as rigorous science and the alternative to it clearly, one must look at the political conflict between the two antagonists, i.e., at the essential character of that conflict. If one fails to do so, one cannot reach clarity on the essential character of what Husserl calls “philosophy as rigorous science.”[29]

Who are the antagonists here? Are they simply scientific and worldview philosophy? Or, given Strauss’ likely allusion to the rise of National Socialism at the beginning of the paragraph, are the antagonists National Socialism and phenomenology? Or Husserl and Heidegger? Or more specifically Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s? Or are the opponents Germans and Jews? Obviously, the “essential character” of “philosophy as rigorous science” takes on different aspects depending on what its true antagonist is.

The Origin of Political Philosophy?

What is the point of “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy”? At the very least, we can say that Strauss looks back at Husserl and sees him groping toward Platonic political philosophy. But that doesn’t seem like a very important thesis. So why would Strauss place such an essay in a very important place, at the beginning of a book on “Platonic political philosophy,” indeed his last book on the subject?

Before we answer that question, we need to know what Strauss means by “Platonic political philosophy.” Let’s take a look at the table of contents. Of the fourteen essays that follow, only the first two deal with Plato. There are, by contrast, three essays dealing with Maimonides, in addition to essays on Thucydides, Xenophon, natural law, Athens vs. Jerusalem, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and Hermann Cohen, plus reviews of two books, one on Hobbes and Locke, the other on Jewish history. In short, the book touches on the full range of Strauss’ interests.

What is the common Platonic-political-philosophical thread? I believe it is the relationship of philosophy to “the city.” In grappling with this issue, Strauss rediscovered “esoteric” writing, one of his signature concepts. If opinion holds society together, if philosophy undermines society by questioning opinion, and if society strikes back by persecuting philosophers, then philosophers need to conceal their most unorthodox ideas. One way of doing this is “esotericism”: paying lip service to orthodoxy while conveying heterodox ideas with subtle hints that only careful readers will notice.

Why place an essay on Husserl at the beginning of an overview of all of Strauss’s interests? One tempting answer is that Husserl taught Strauss to philosophize. But that is false. Strauss’ first and greatest philosophical influence was Nietzsche. Strauss’ Nietzsche essay is number eight of fifteen, i.e., the dead center of the book, which for Strauss is highly significant.

But if Husserl was not Strauss’s introduction to philosophy as such, could he still have been Strauss’s introduction to political philosophy, specifically Platonic political philosophy? In other words, could Strauss’ first inklings of his idea of political philosophy have arisen from grappling with Husserl’s essay? If so, that really would merit the first essay in Strauss’s last overview of his work.

But absent a clear statement by Strauss in an essay or letter, this thesis may be unprovable. It is, however, at least consistent with the broad chronology of Strauss’ philosophical development.

Strauss formulated his specific conception of political philosophy, as well as his concept of esoteric writing, in 1935 and 1936 while working on Maimonides and Farabi.[30] Strauss’ correspondence with Jacob Klein documents that the idea of esoteric writing took further shape in 1938 and 1939.[31]

Strauss had ample motive and opportunity to read “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” before 1935. After completing his Ph.D., Strauss went to study with Husserl at the University of Freiberg in 1922. We also know that Klein took Husserl very seriously, maintained contact with Husserl into the 1930s (Husserl died in 1938), and mentioned Husserl to Strauss in his letters.[32]

Beyond that, in 1939, Strauss wrote an essay called “Exoteric Teaching,” the second outline of which includes fourteen topics, the second being, “Husserl: Philos. als Strenge Wiss. und Philos. als Weltanschauung,” meaning “Husserl: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy as Worldview,” a clear reference to the essay in question.[33]

So we know that Strauss read “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” no later than 1939 and regarded it as relevant to esotericism, the Platonic solution to the problem of political philosophy.[34] Of course, this does not prove the influence thesis, only that Strauss saw parallels between Platonic political philosophy and Husserl, which we already know.

Thus my thesis remains interesting but unproven. But given that Husserl helped Strauss rediscover esotericism and the classical experience of nature, I would not be surprised if evidence comes to light that he also helped Strauss rediscover the problem of political philosophy.

Notes

[1] Greg Johnson, “Notes on Strauss and Husserl,” Counter-Currents, May 30, 2023.

[2] First published in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 2, no. 1 (1971), reprinted in Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

[3] Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Logos 1 (Tübingen, 1910-11): 289–341; “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” trans. Quentin Lauer, in Husserl: Shorter Works, ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick A. Elliston (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). I cite the Lauer translation.

[4] Husserl, p. 166.

[5] Husserl, p. 167.

[6] Husserl, p. 168.

[7] Husserl, p. 191.

[8] Husserl, p. 168.

[9] Husserl, pp. 168, 193.

[10] Husserl, p. 168.

[11] Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism,” Interpretation 26 (1999): 352–78, p. 366.

[12] Husserl, p. 186.

[13] Husserl, p. 189.

[14] Husserl, p. 189.

[15] Husserl, p. 192.

[16] Husserl, p. 191.

[17] Husserl, pp. 190, 192.

[18] Greg Johnson, “The Most Important Thing in the World: A Platonic Introduction to Philosophy,” in The Philosopher Is In (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2026).

[19] Strauss, p. 193.

[20] Strauss, p. 193.

[21] Strauss, p. 36. This is a reference to Heidegger’s radically historicist turn, as well as to his political engagement with National Socialism.

[22] Greg Johnson, “Idle Thoughts: Aristotle on the Contemplative Life,” in The Philosopher Is In.

[23] Strauss, p. 36.

[24] Strauss, p. 37.

[25] Strauss, p. 37.

[26] Husserl, p. 166.

[27] Strauss, p. 37.

[28] Strauss, p. 37. Cf. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 288.

[29] Strauss, p. 37.

[30] See Strauss’ 1935 book Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and his Predecessors, trans. Eve Adler (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995) and his 1936 essay “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” trans. Robert Bartlett, Interpretation 18 (1990): pp. 3–30. See also Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Christopher Nadon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), ch. 2, “Philosophy and Prophetology.”

[31] See Laurence Lampert, “Esotericism Exposed,” in The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

[32] Strauss–Klein Correspondence, Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, 2nd ed., ed. Heinrich and Wiebke Meier (Stuttgart: Meltzer, 2008), pp.  459, 462, 463, 480, 481, 485, 533, 548, 579, 583.

[33] Leo Strauss, Appendix F, Supplement 2, Later Plan of “Exoteric Teaching,” in Reorientations: Leo Strauss in the 1930s, ed. Martin D. Yaffee and Richard S. Ruderman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 29q.

[34] The final essay drops Husserl and the whole second part of the outline and focuses almost entirely on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.