| This dissertation examines Leo Strauss's teaching of natural right through a close reading of the first half of one of his masterpieces Natural Right and History. Due to the dialectic and "historical" character of its argument, "what natural right actually was for Strauss is surprisingly difficult to say". Contrary to the general impression, this dissertation finds that Leo Strauss's natural right doctrine is neither a type of natural law teaching nor any kind of absolutism, but a Socratic idea of justice which by insisting on a philosophic loyalty to "nature" avoids "cynicism" on the one hand and "idealism" on the other.;This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part, dealing with the specific properties of Strauss's natural right teaching, is divided into three sections. Firstly, the "Socratic problem" of Strauss is reinterpretated from the point of view of natural right. Secondly, the essential differences between natural right and natural law, which are on the surface blurred in NRH, are elaborated by detailed textual analysis of both NRH and Strauss's other relevant essays. In the third section, Strauss's discussion of "extreme situation" in NRH is examined in contrast with the views of Carl Schmitt on the same subject which are now becoming increasingly popular both in China and the western world.;The second part of the dissertation is devoted to three objections of natural right, i.e., conventionalism, divine revelation and historicism, while the first two of which may be regarded as eternal alternatives to natural right, the last one is characteristic of modern philosophy. Corresponding to each of the three sections, the hedonism of Epicurus, the conflict between reason and faith and the radical historicism of Heidegger are treated with special attention. |
