A Chilling Prediction by Leo Strauss
Today’s post-liberals hate liberalism but lack a coherent alternative.
We are reproducing below excerpts from a lecture given by Leo Strauss in 1941 at the New School for Social Research on “German Nihilism.” Strauss, a German Jew, was at that time a refugee from Hitler’s Europe; he would go on to become one of the most important teachers and interpreters of philosophy at, among other places, the University of Chicago.
The reproduced excerpt is chilling because it seems to describe perfectly many of the intellectual trends going on in America today on the extreme right. Many more intellectual conservatives are not unhappy just with policies or outcomes like inflation or migration, but have much deeper reservations about liberalism as a doctrine, and have been searching for a set of “post-liberal” principles that would replace a current order they believe to be fundamentally rotten and corrupt. What they hate about the present, just like the young Germans described by Strauss, is the kind of society where people are content with peace and prosperity, where there is no striving for anything greater than comfort, where liberal tolerance forces everyone to be non-judgmental, and where language itself is perverted in the interest of not offending the dignity of any group or individual in society. For them, the problem was not the unworkability of socialism as an economic doctrine. The problem was that it might succeed, and produce, as Plato’s brother Glaukon suggested, a “city of pigs” in which all noble virtue was lost. (For a useful survey of post-liberal writers, see Matthew Rose’s book A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right.)
The intellectual godfather of this attitude was, as Strauss points out, Friedrich Nietzsche. What he and his nihilistic followers hated above all was the world of the “Last Man”: the contented, unambitious, equality-seeking creature who emerged at the end of history, an end characterized by the global victory of liberal democracy. Nietzsche attacked Christianity and its doctrine of the equal dignity of all human beings as the ultimate source of modern liberalism, but noted that in his age Christianity no longer attracted belief: God had once lived, but now was dead.
Strauss describes this attitude as nihilistic, not because its adherents are anarchists, but because their critique of modern liberalism did not yield a coherent vision of what would replace the existing consensus. In the Germany that Strauss had just fled, this led many to National Socialism. Nietzsche’s relationship to the Nazis was complicated, but his ideas paved the way for their rise. For if God is dead and the religion that elevates slaves to be the equals of their masters is discredited, why not sign up with the doctrine that unapologetically promised to make you and your friends masters?
Strauss’ 1941 lecture prefigures the current moment in eerie ways. Today’s “post-liberals” do not have a coherent vision of what should replace liberalism. Some, like Patrick Deneen or Adrian Vermeule, seem to hope for some form of Catholic integralism where society would agree on a set of strong moral principles defined by religion. Others like Curtis Yarvin or Costin Vlad Alamariu (a.k.a “Bronze Age Pervert”) discard religion and long for a return of hierarchy and strong government. What they all have in common is a hatred of a form of liberalism that forces everyone to declare their pronouns at the end of emails to show the world that they are respectful of transgender people.
Strauss, speaking in 1941, dismisses National Socialism as the “lowest, most provincial, most unenlightened and most dishonourable form” of German nihilism. But, as he points out, “its very vulgarity accounts for its great, if appalling, successes.” The United States of 2025 is not Germany in 1941. But there are enough warning signs for today’s liberals to play close attention. Strauss’ point is that liberals needed to understand much better the deeper roots of illiberal politics, and to look beyond the horizon defined by liberalism to see the power of the critiques of their doctrine.
—Francis Fukuyama
What is nihilism? And how far can nihilism be said to be a specifically German phenomenon? I am not able to answer these questions; I can merely try to elaborate them a little. For the phenomenon which I am going to discuss is much too complex, and much too little explored, to permit an adequate description within the short time at my disposal. I cannot do more than to scratch its surface.
When we hear at the present time the expression “German nihilism,” most of us naturally think at once of National Socialism. It must however be understood from the outset that National Socialism is only the most famous form of German nihilism—its lowest, most provincial, most unenlightened and most dishonourable form. It is probable that its very vulgarity accounts for its great, if appalling, successes. These successes may be followed by failures, and ultimately by complete defeat. Yet the defeat of National Socialism will not necessarily mean the end of German nihilism. For that nihilism has deeper roots than the preachings of Hitler, Germany’s defeat in the World War and all that…
The fact of the matter is that German nihilism is not absolute nihilism, desire for the destruction of everything including oneself, but a desire for the destruction of something specific: of modern civilization. That, if I may say so, limited nihilism becomes an almost absolute nihilism only for this reason: because the negation of modern civilization, the No, is not guided, or accompanied, by any clear positive conception.
German nihilism desires the destruction of modern civilization as far as modern civilization has a moral meaning. As everyone knows, it does not object so much to modern technical devices. That moral meaning of modern civilization to which the German nihilists object is expressed in formulations such as these: to relieve man’s estate; or: to safeguard the rights of man; or: the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. What is the motive underlying the protest against modern civilization, against the spirit of the West, and in particular of the Anglo-Saxon West?
The answer must be: it is a moral protest. That protest proceeds from the conviction that the internationalism inherent in modern civilization, or, more precisely, that the establishment of a perfectly open society which is as it were the goal of modern civilization, and therefore all aspirations directed toward that goal, are irreconcilable with the basic demands of moral life. That protest proceeds from the conviction that the root of all moral life is essentially and therefore eternally the closed society; from the conviction that the open society is bound to be, if not immoral, at least amoral: the meeting ground of seekers of pleasure, of gain, of irresponsible power, indeed of any kind of irresponsibility and lack of seriousness.
Moral life, it is asserted, means serious life. Seriousness, and the ceremonial of seriousness—the flag and the oath to the flag—are the distinctive features of the closed society, of the society which by its very nature is constantly confronted with, and basically oriented toward, the Ernstfall, the serious moment, M-day, war. Only life in such a tense atmosphere, only a life which is based on constant awareness of the sacrifices to which it owes its existence, and of the necessity, the duty of sacrifice of life and all worldly goods, is truly human: the sublime is unknown to the open society. The societies of the West which claim to aspire toward the open society are actually closed societies in a state of disintegration: their moral value, their respectability, depends entirely on their still being closed societies.
Let us pursue this argument a little further. The open society, it is asserted, is actually impossible. Its possibility is not proved at all by what is called the progress toward the open society. For that progress is largely fictitious or merely verbal. Certain basic facts of human nature which have been honestly recognized by earlier generations, who used to call a spade a spade, are at the present time verbally denied, superficially covered over by fictions legal and otherwise, for example, by the belief that one can abolish war by pacts not backed by military forces punishing him who breaks the pact, or by calling ministries of war ministries of defence, or by calling punishment sanctions, or by calling capital punishment das hochste Strafmass. The open society is morally inferior to the closed society also because the former is based on hypocrisy.
The conviction underlying the protest against modern civilization has basically nothing to do with bellicism, with love of war; nor with nationalism: for there were closed societies which were not nations; it has indeed something to do with what is called the sovereign state, insofar as the sovereign state offers the best modern example of a closed society in the sense indicated. The conviction I am trying to describe, is not, to repeat, in its origin a love of war: it is rather a love of morality, a sense of responsibility for endangered morality. The historians in our midst know that conviction, or passion, from Glaukon’s, Plato’s brother’s, passionate protest against the “city of pigs” in the name of noble virtue. They know it, above all, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s passionate protest against the easy-going and somewhat rotten civilization of the century of taste, and from Friedrich Nietzsche’s passionate protest against the easy-going and somewhat rotten civilization of the century of industry. It was the same passion—let there be no mistake about that—which turned, if in a much more passionate and infinitely less intelligent form, against the alleged or real corruption of post-war Germany: against “the subhuman beings of the big cities (die Untermenschen der Grossstadt),” against “cultural bolshevism (Kulturbolschewismus),” etc.
One would have to possess a gift which I totally lack, the gift of a lyrical reporter, in order to give those of you who have not lived for many years in post-war Germany an adequate idea of the emotions underlying German nihilism. Let me tentatively define nihilism as the desire to destroy the present world and its potentialities, a desire not accompanied by any clear conception of what one wants to put in its place. And let us try to understand how such a desire could develop.
No one could be satisfied with the post-war world. German liberal democracy of all descriptions seemed to many people to be absolutely unable to cope with the difficulties with which Germany was confronted. This created a profound prejudice, or confirmed a profound prejudice already in existence, against liberal democracy as such…
The older ones in our midst still remember the time when certain people asserted that the conflicts inherent in the present situation would necessarily lead to a revolution, accompanying or following another World War—a rising of the proletariat and of the proletarianized strata of society which would usher in the withering away of the State, the classless society, the abolition of all exploitation and injustice, the era of final peace. It was this prospect, at least as much as the desperate present, which led to nihilism. The prospect of a pacified planet, without rulers and ruled, of a planetary society devoted to production and consumption only, to the production and consumption of spiritual as well as material merchandise, was positively horrifying to quite a few very intelligent and very decent, if very young, Germans. They did not object to that prospect because they were worrying about their own economic and social position; for certainly in that respect they had no longer anything to lose. Nor did they object to it for religious reasons; for, as one of their spokesmen (E. Jünger) said, they knew that they were the sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of godless men.
What they hated was the very prospect of a world in which everyone would be happy and satisfied, in which everyone would have his little pleasure by day and his little pleasure by night, a world in which no great heart could beat and no great soul could breathe, a world without real, unmetaphoric, sacrifice, i.e. a world without blood, sweat, and tears. What to the communists appeared to be the fulfilment of the dream of mankind, appeared to those young Germans as the greatest debasement of humanity, as the coming of the end of humanity, as the arrival of the latest man. They did not really know, and thus they were unable to express in a tolerably clear language, what they desired to put in the place of the present world and its allegedly necessary future or sequel: the only thing of which they were absolutely certain was that the present world, and all the potentialities of the present world as such, must be destroyed in order to prevent the otherwise necessary coming of the communist final order: literally anything, the nothing, the chaos, the jungle, the Wild West, the Hobbesian state of nature, seemed to them infinitely better than the communist anarchist-pacifist future. Their Yes was inarticulate—they were unable to say more than: No! This No proved however sufficient as the preface to action, to the action of destruction…
I have alluded to the fact that the young nihilists were atheists. Broadly speaking, prior to the World War, atheism was a preserve of the radical left, just as throughout history atheism had been connected with philosophic materialism. German philosophy was predominantly idealistic, and the German idealists were theists or pantheists. Schopenhauer was, to my knowledge, the first non-materialist and conservative German philosopher who openly professed his atheism. But Schopenhauer's influence fades into insignificance if compared with that of Nietzsche. Nietzsche asserted that the atheist assumption is not only reconcilable with, but indispensable for, a radical anti-democratic, anti-socialist, and anti-pacifist policy: according to him, even the communist creed is only a secularized form of theism, of the belief in providence. There is no other philosopher whose influence on postwar German thought is comparable to that of Nietzsche, of the atheist Nietzsche…
The adolescents I am speaking of were in need of teachers who could explain to them in articulate language the positive, and not merely destructive, meaning of their aspirations. They believed to have found such teachers in that group of professors and writers who knowingly or ignorantly paved the way for Hitler (Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, Bäumler, Ernst Jünger, Heidegger). If we want to understand the singular success, not of Hitler, but of those writers, we must cast a quick glance at their opponents who were at the same time the opponents of the young nihilists. Those opponents committed frequently a grave mistake. They believed they had refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men. But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many opponents did not even try to understand the ardent passion underlying the negation of the present world and its potentialities…
Those young men had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modern civilization; the great authorities of that civilization did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponents would have been listened to who knew that doubt from their own experience, who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it. Many opponents did not meet that condition. They had been brought up in the belief in the principles of modern civilization; and a belief in which one is brought up is apt to degenerate into prejudice. Consequently, the attitude of the opponents of the young nihilists tended to become apologetic.
Reprinted with permission from Jenny Strauss Clay, who retains all rights.
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Forgive my ignorance of great philosophical traditions, and the somewhat crass take I have on all of this. But from the way Strauss describes them, these post-liberal adolescents sound like what today we might charitably call "drama queens".
Strauss is, of course, much more eloquent in his illustration of their thinking, decscribing their objection to, "a world in which no great heart could beat and no great soul could breathe, a world without real, unmetaphoric, sacrifice, i.e. a world without blood, sweat, and tears."
Such overwrought patter, to me, bears the foul odor of the over-privileged life. The one whose material needs are all so thoroughly provided for that they want for crisis, conflict, and cause. That Strauss should describe them as young and economically secure is no surprise.
To them, newly inebriated with the strength and vigor of young adulthood, who can scarcely bother to notice the profound suffering inherent even in everday peaceful life and the myriad challenges it presents without the introduction of novel ones to satiate the nihilist's appetite for human theater, the only answer to such existential ennui is the raw exercise of power. Such is the danger in societies which fail to adequately corral and redirect the destructive passions of young men.
Most people in the world endure a daily, uphill struggle with only the dream of simple happiness to placate them. The ideal of material security remains just far enough out of reach that we have enough to occupy the bulk of our lives chasing it.
That we should have to, at the same time, contend with the destructive boredom of pampered aristocrats is perhaps the best argument one can make for an antagonistic posture toward the accumulation of wealth. Let's go back to soaking the rich like we did in the mid-20th century, if for no other reason to spare us all from the sociopathic whims of the otherwise idle minds of their progeny.
This is a very interesting and thought-provoking excerpt. I think the fact that Strauss emphasizes these thinkers' atheism is quite significant. My own view (quite contrary to contemporary Christian post-liberals) is that *only* religious believers can be satisfied with the limited aspirations of liberal government and its refusal to satisfy, or to try to satisfy, these people's yearnings for a higher, inspiring, soul-filling purpose. Religious believers can cherish and protect temporal peace and prosperity as genuinely valuable goods, without supposing that they are the highest goods. People whose hearts find rest elsewhere (to paraphrase Augustine) do not need to insist that political society still their restlessness. In any case, thanks for sharing this.