The Necessity of Ancient Political Philosophy; Part One, Liberal Democracy and the Meaning Crisis

Modernity is always swift to sing its own praises. The Enlightenment called out proclaiming the triumph of rationality over the regime of mythology that had once clouded the Western mind. And soon, French revolutionaries joined in, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!’ was their victory cry. Liberalism, the pinnacle of political organization, was established, and quickly dominated the Western world. Gone were the days of the monarchy, and gone were the days of despotism, we had figured it out. Two centuries later we heard its echo, in 1992 Francis Fukiyama declared the end of history. Only Liberal Democracy had emerged from the Cold War, outlasting its ideological rivals, Fascism and Communism. We are meant to believe that this is it. Looking out, the free market lies sprawled out before us like a vast, endless desert, and there is nothing beyond the horizon of modernity. 

Without a doubt, modernity has brought significant improvements to the collective human experience, we have made undeniable progress in science, healthcare, and overall standard of living. Even as someone who is the first to critique capitalism, its feats of wealth creation and global economic and political unity are impressive. At least on the surface. Below the veneer of prosperity, freedom and rationality, modern political life is hollow, there is a crisis of meaning in Liberal Democracy. 

This crisis is not a fluke, it is not the result of outside factors, or an independent societal disposition. Liberalism, in doing away with the perceived mythology of the past, lost something that it cannot replace; transcendence. As Leo Strauss puts it, “Transcendence is not a preserve of revealed religion. In a very important sense it was implied in the original meaning of political philosophy as the quest for the natural or best political order.” (Natural Right and History, 15). The transcendence of politics, or the ‘quest for the best political order,’ has been abandoned, there is no set of universal, absolute ideals we strive for as a political collective. Instead, this responsibility is placed wholly on the individual in the name of freedom; he must create his own meaning in some fool hearted pursuit of personal pleasure. We are told that man’s efforts to find the good, and the true are futile, we are told that there is no universal ideal, or set of universal set of virtues, so it is best that everyone live how they personally see fit. 

This denial of the transcendental nature of politics, this abandonment of universals and of virtue has real consequences. If we deny an objective good, we grant everyone equal footing,

“If principles are sufficiently justified by the fact that they are accepted by a society, the principles of cannibalism are as defensible or sound as those of civilized life. From this point of view, the former principles can certainly not be rejected as simply bad. And, since the ideal of our society is admittedly changing, nothing except dull and stale habit could prevent us from placidly accepting a societal change in the direction of cannibalism. If there is no standard higher than the ideal of our society, we are utterly unable to take a critical distance from that ideal.” (Strauss, 3)

One may object, “but my values, and my beliefs are better than others,” appealing to some notion of justice, or well being, but if we cannot access truth, or goodness, this assertion rests only on your opinion. You may believe cannibalism to be wrong, but your value of human life is but another axiom in your subjective moral outlook. 

There is no solution for this but to look back towards the traditional political ideal, to the Socratic political method, tracing it through Plato, and Aristotle, and applying it to the contemporary condition. And this will be my mission in future essays, the establishment of an Ancient Political Philosophy, one that can restore teleology to the modern world, recovering what was forgotten.