[Music] strauss starts his lecture with the famous passage from the declaration of independence we hold those truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness strauss considers the dedication of americans to this proposition as one of the cardinal reasons for their power and prosperity however as he observes americans do not cherish the faith in those wars anymore if a generation ago the natural and the divine foundation of the rights of men was self-evident to all americans today the very notion of natural right has become almost incomprehensible hence the principles of declaration of independence are not interpreted as expressions of natural right but merely as an ideal if not as an ideology or a myth straus traces this phenomenon to present a american social sciences which have adopted the very attitude towards natural rights characteristic to german thought more precisely its historical sense strauss remarks that germany although defeated on the battlefield has imposed on its conqueror i.e america the yoke of its own thought depriving it of the most sublime fruit of victory before discussing the very essence of the historicist attitude towards the problem of natural rights first of all let us give a comprehensive definition of natural right per se natural right claims to be a right that is discernible by human reason and is universally acknowledged in its classical form it presupposes a teriological view of universe according to which all natural beings have a natural end a natural destiny which determines what kind of operation is good for them and since man is endowed with reason he can have the knowledge of his end and thus of the general principles that govern his conduct principles that constitute a law promulgated by nature itself which enables him to discriminate between right and wrong in opposition historical school of thought that emerged in 18th century germany believed that no such universal right existed instead insisting on the ethnic character of all genuine right it trailed all natural rights to unique folk minds in other words according to historicism what claimed to be universal appealed eventually as derivative from something locally and temporarily confined astralis himself puts it radicalizing the tendency of men like rousseau the historical school asserted that the local and the temporal have a higher value than the universal in this manner historicism does not deny the notion of natural right all at once as does for example positivism another powerful enemy of natural right alongside historicism instead historicism had preserved natural right only in a historical guise on the one hand by assuming history as a process ruled by intelligible necessity i.e trans-historical principle and on the other hand by reducing universality of genuine right to individual cultures i.e folk minds according to strauss the historical school of thoughts with its aforementioned tendencies emerged in reaction to french revolution and to the natural right doctrines that had prepared that cataclysm founders of the historical school somehow assumed that the acceptance of any universal or abstract principles has necessarily a revolutionary disturbing unsettling effect similar to the french revolution thus in opposing the violent break with the past the historical school insisted on the wisdom and on the need of preserving or continuing the traditional order according to the historical school the recognition of universal principles such as natural rights tend to alienate men from their place on the earth making them strangers in their social orders and even strangers on the earth recognizing this historicism intended to make men absolutely at home in this world since any universal principles make at least most men potentially homeless historicism depreciated universal principles in favor of historical principles it believed that by understanding their past their heritage their historical situation men could arrive at principles that will be as objective as those of the older pre-historicist political philosophy had claimed to be and in addition would not be abstract or universal and hence harmful to wise action or to a truly human life but concrete or particular principles fitting the particular age or particular nation principles relative to the particular age or particular nation hence for historical school historical studies became the main spring of knowledge for history was thought to supply the only empirical and hence the only solid knowledge of what is truly human of man as men of his greatness and misery in other words establishing his end divorced from all dubious or metaphysical assumptions however as trust puts it history proved utterly unable to keep the promise that had been held out by the historical school this was evident already from the contradiction between basic premises of historicist paradigm on the one hand by perceiving nations or ethnic groups as natural units as independent organisms historicism encloses nations in their own cultural and historical boundaries making the existence of transcultural and trans-historical principles impossible yet on the other hand by claiming to have discovered the existence of general laws of historical evolution historicism recognizes the transcultural and trans-historical principles that govern historical process moreover any sincere member of the historicist school of thought must admit that his view too is as temporary local and ephemeral like any other paradigm that has been replaced before hence historicism not only relativizes universal truth but also makes truth inaccessible to men as men it asserts that the basic insight into the essential limitations of all human thought is not accessible to men as men or it is an unforeseeable gift of unfathomable faith according to the ancient and medieval philosophy straw says the whole is knowable or intelligible which presupposes that the whole has a permanent structure or that the whole is unchangeable in contradiction according to historicism what is called the whole is actually always incomplete and therefore not truly a whole the whole is essentially changing in such a manner that its future cannot be predicted the whole as it is in itself can never be grasped consequently it is no surprise that historicism ends up denying natural right since without the accessibility of truth and the whole the notion of natural right falls apart thus in the face of valueless universe historicism's last hope lies in the absolute moment of history when the ultimate truth is revealed but the irony of historicism consists in the fact that the absolute moment is nothing but the moment in which insoluble character of the fundamental riddles has become fully manifest or in which the fundamental delusion of the human mind has been dispelled moment in which historicism culminates in nihilism as trust puts it the attempt to make men absolutely at home in this world ended in men's becoming absolutely homeless historicism has revealed nothing but absolute meaninglessness of the historical process that history is merely a tale told by an idiot however surprisingly enough despite all its consequences historicism did not lose its prestige the mood created by historicism and its practical failure was interpreted as the authentic experience of the true situation of men as men of a situation which earlier man had concealed from himself by believing in universal and unchangeable principles the nihilistic consequence of historicism could have suggested a return to the older prehistoricist view according to which classical notion of natural rights reign nevertheless modern intellectual trends in social sciences hold enough proof that historicist trend has only become more powerful in the west [Music] [Music] you