Revolt Against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Search for a Post-Liberal Order

by Ted V. McAllister

Overview

Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss are two of the most provocative and durable political philosophers of this century. Ted McAllister’s superbly written study provides the first comprehensive comparison of their thought and its profound influence on contemporary American conservatism.

Since the appearance in the 1950s of Strauss’s Natural Right and History and Voegelin’s Order and History, conservatives like Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Allan Bloom have increasingly turned to these thinkers to support their attacks on liberalism and the modernist mindset.

Like so many conservatives, Strauss and Voegelin rebelled against modernity’s amorality—personified by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche—and its promotion of individualism and materialism over communal and spiritual responsibility. While both disdained the reductionist “conservative” label, conservatives nevertheless appropriated their philosophy, in part because it restored theology and classical tradition to the moral core of civil society.

For both men, modernity’s debilitating disorder revealed surprising and disturbing relations among liberal, communist, and Nazi ideologies. In their eyes, modernity’s insidious virus, so apparent in the Nazi and communist regimes, lies incubating within liberal democracy itself.

McAllister’s thorough reevaluation of Strauss and Voegelin expands our understanding of their thought and restores balance to a literature that has been dominated by political theorists and disciples of Strauss and Voegelin. Neither reverential nor dismissive, he reveals the social, historical, political, and philosophical foundations of their work and effectively decodes their frequently opaque or esoteric thinking.

Well written and persuasively argued, McAllister’s study will appeal to anyone engaged in the volatile debates over liberalism’s demise and conservatism’s rise.

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700631087
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	10/12/2023
Series:	American Political Thought
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	340
Sales rank:	88,311
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ted V. McAllister is Edward L. Gaylord Chair and associate professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. An intellectual historian, he has lectured frequently on the nature and future of American conservatism and is one of the series editors for Rowman&Littlefield’s book series, American Intellectual Culture.

Table of Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Prologue

1. Labels, Definitions, and Other Forms of Coercion

-Labels

-The Meanings of Modernity

-Eric Voegelin

-Leo Strauss

2. Liberal American and Its Discontents

-The Problem of Totalitarianism

-American and the Liberal Tradition

-Liberalism and the Modern World

3. From Philosophy to Positivism

4. The Nature of Modernity

-Machiavelli and Chiron

-Hegel and the Egophanic Revolt

5. The Crisis of Modernity

-The End of Modernity

-The Problem with Liberalism: Leo Strauss

-The Problem with Liberalism: Eric Voegelin

6. The Philosopher

-Plato in Search of Jerusalem

-Nature and Natural Right

7. The Mystic

-The Discovery of Consciousness

-The Structure of Consciousness

-A Story Told by God

-Philosophy of Politics

8. Strauss, Voegelin, and the Conservative Imagination

-The Charms of Strauss and Voegelin

-The Conservative Imagination

-Strauss, Voegelin, and the Conservatives

-The Conservative Predicament

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Stanley Rosen

This book is fair and thoughtful. There is no ideological distortion in McAllister's readings; he illuminates rather than obscures.
—author of The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity

Jean Bethke Elshtain

McAllister traces an American counter-tradition in the work of thinkers for whom modernity was as much tragedy as triumph. An important contribution to our self-understanding as well as to the history of ideas.
—author of Democracy on Trial

George W. Carey

A beautifully written book that lucidly examines the major works of Strauss and Voegelin for an understanding of the origins and nature of our modern predicament. It is 'must' reading for an appreciation of the theoretical foundations of modern American conservative thought which, as McAllister makes clear, owes so much to these two giants.
—editor of The Political Science Reviewer

Kenneth L. Deutsch

A lucid and powerful account.
—coeditor of Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker and The Crisis of Liberal Democracy

Ellis Sandoz

A lively, nuanced, and insightful account of the two contemporary giants of political philosophy. Warmly recommended.
—Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies and editor of Eric Voegelin's Significance for the Modern Mind

Editorial Reviews

This is a thoughtful book that not only usefully maps out some of the more obscure and neglected territory in twentieth-century intellectual history, but itself constitutes, to some extent, an inquiry into the problems and pathologies of modernity, and of contemporary American conservatism.

Reviews in American History

McAllister has performed a real service in delineating so clearly the civic dimensions of Strauss's and Voegelin's thought.

Washington Times

Provides the first comparison of the thought of these two political philosophers and its influence on contemporary American conservatism. Since the appearance in 1950 of Strauss's Natural Right and History and Voegelin's Order and History, conservatives have frequently turned to these thinkers to support their attacks on liberalism and the modernist mind set. McAllister's (history, Vanderbilt U.) reevaluation reveals the social, historical, political, and philosophical foundations of their work and decodes their frequently opaque or esoteric thinking.

Booknews

"McAllister has performed a real service in delineating so clearly the civic dimensions of Strauss’s and Voegelin’s thought."—Washington Times

"This is a thoughtful book that not only usefully maps out some of the more obscure and neglected territory in twentieth-century intellectual history, but itself constitutes, to some extent, an inquiry into the problems and pathologies of modernity, and of contemporary American conservatism."—Reviews in American History

"McAllister provides an insightful critique of the ambiguities and tensions that divide the modern American conservative movement into mutually antagonistic camps of cultural traditionalists, economic libertarians, and populists."—Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

"McAllister traces an American counter-tradition in the work of thinkers for whom modernity was as much tragedy as triumph. An important contribution to our self-understanding as well as to the history of ideas."—Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Democracy on Trial

"A lively, nuanced, and insightful account of the two contemporary giants of political philosophy. Warmly recommended."—Ellis Sandoz, Director, Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies and editor of Eric Voegelin’s Significance for the Modern Mind

"A beautifully written book that lucidly examines the major works of Strauss and Voegelin for an understanding of the origins and nature of our modern predicament. It is ‘must’ reading for an appreciation of the theoretical foundations of modern American conservative thought which, as McAllister makes clear, owes so much to these two giants."—George W. Carey, editor of The Political Science Reviewer

"This book is fair and thoughtful. There is no ideological distortion in McAllister’s readings; he illuminates rather than obscures."—Stanley Rosen, author of The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity

"A lucid and powerful account."—Kenneth L. Deutsch, coeditor of Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker and The Crisis of Liberal Democracy

From the Publisher