 In Leo Strauss’ 1941 lecture on German Nihilism, he argues Nazism arose from a nihilism he defines as ultimately in opposition to modern civilization. This was provoked by progressive educators who, instead of taking seriously the worries about the immorality and debasement of tradition that progressivism wrought, and reminding their pupils of the strengths of the past, merely chided them for insufficient appreciation of modernity. But this was counter-productive. It only reinforced their anxiety over loss of moral rootedness and the spiritual comfort found in transcending the individual for the glory of the state. Instead of turning to the modern, “open society”, they saw only two paths – either the “closed society” of communism, or nihilistic destruction and war against civilization.
For the Open Society meant a state of disintegration, a denial of human nature (covered over by sly fictions), and moral respectability only to the extent society remained closed. Closed Society on the other hand meant a flag to whom one might pledge an oath, the constant awareness of sacrifice and self-denial, known facts about human nature, and connection to the sublime. Yet since the only path to the latter form of society they could see ended in communism (which they despised) they felt their only option was destruction. Strauss finds much to fault these young Nazis. He views them as naïve and errant in their thinking, failing to see beyond their current provincial predicament. Writing in 1941, he had yet to witness just how devastating their plan would come to be. With historical hindsight, he delivers one of maybe the most absurdly wrong statements written in the 20th century. Of Hitler, “He will soon be forgotten.” A better scholar than I might know better what provoked this grave miscalculation. A Jew born in 1899, who lived in Germany until 1932, he no doubt grasped their virulent antisemitism (although one wonders why he mentions it only in passing “Their anti-Jewish policy does seem to be taken seriously by the Nazis.”), and may have had good reason to avoid grappling with its enormity. But a better explanation might instead be that Strauss himself has strong reactionary sympathies. He spends a good deal of the lecture laying out just how right the Nazis were about the moral depravity of progressivism. While it is not mentioned, one hardly need to imagine what Strauss has in mind when he cites approvingly the Nazi critiques of modern civilization. He argues that civilization is defined by science and reason, and dismisses non-western cultures: “The term civilization designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian. A tribal community may possess a culture, i.e. produce, and enjoy, hymns, songs, ornament of their clothes, of their weapons and pottery, dances, fairy tales and what not; it cannot however be civilized.” Strauss seems to be in agreement that progressivism is decadent and immoral, with its “planetary societies” devoted only to production and consumption, and above all else, an almost narcissistic devotion to individual rights and personal satisfactions. While not mentioned in the lecture, Weimar Germany was known for its liberalism. While maybe not quite tolerant, it at least seemed to look the other way at expanding views of traditional hierarchies of race, gender and class. This fact could not have been lost on Strauss. The basic claim of the piece is not that the Nazis were nihilist reactionaries, but that they were the wrong kind of reactionaries. He suggests at the end that the British, being of a different temperament than the French who gave in to their progressive passions, and the Germans, who clung to a fanciful pre-modern ideal, were able to weather this predicament of modern civilization and its discontentedness. He ends with the line, “it is the English, and not the Germans, who deserve to be, and to remain, an imperial nation.” In evoking imperialism as something to be deserved, Strauss reminds us just where his real allegiances lie.
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