The paasage is mish-mash. The master-slave was a criticism of Hobbes and social contract theory in general based in part on the impossibility/irrecuperability of a meaningful "state of nature", as well as, of the attempt to construct sociality/rationality on the basis of atomic individuals. What goes by the wayside, then, is not just "natural right", but "natural law", which Strauss attempts to resussicate by fiat. But since when is theory ever not a "construction"? A fixed and given (human) nature and a sacred thought, that is, an hypostasization of the classical notion of theoria to immunize it from the very processes of reflection that it itself initiated, is itself the most artificial of constructions.

John,
I agree about Hegel--his political philosophy was a criticism of the social contract theory, natural desire and natural right.

Hegel is seen by Strauss in Natural Right and History as a historicist who asserts the absolute truth of his own system. He understands historicism to be the assertion that natural right is impossible. Hegel stands for the rejection of nature as a standard, and the negation of nature.

I disagree. Hegel, in both Phil. of Right and Phil. of History, affirms Spirit, will, heroics, along with the metaphysics and the dialectic. Hobbes never touches upon those sorts of grand subjects; starting from materialist, if not biological premises (and asserting that knowledge derives from experience, which Hegel, post-Kantian, never claims, does he), Hobbes dismisses nearly all metaphysics; marxism in fact probably owes as much to Hobbes and Lockean sensationism as it does to Hegelian dialectic. The state of nature, pre-covenants, is a state of war, more or less--and contra-Lockean/Rousseauian/Marxist beulah-land visions of pastoral bliss.

Machiavellianism could conceivably be a result of either HObbes or Hegel--but in Hobbes, one starts with the assumption of furthering one's best interests, but intentionally sacrifices some liberty (to rob someone, say) in hopes of ensuring peaceful co-existence; Hegel seems much more the champion of the strong man, militarism, and a proto-Nietzschean. One has no duty to honor covenants; one seizes the opportunity more or less (at least Phil. of history reads like that). Hobbes was a peacenik, in both person and writing: the sovereign merely there to ensure the initial covenants are carried out. The first 15 or so chapters of Leviathan are nearly socialist; he argues for a sort of Rawlsian equal distribution of goods and egalitarianism in principle, and that men honor the covenants they enter into. IN theory Hobbesianism is as workable as marxism ever was.

J.
We can see Hobbes and Locke as early moderns who sought to ground political authority in individual interest and consent.

In the natural right teachings of Hobbes and Locke right and ethical life can be looked upon as having their foundation in the present will of men. Their political philosophy can be seen as securing the individual freedom of individuals, leaving the achievement of positive freedom or autonomy to the realm of morality and ethics.

Hegel's Philosophy of Right can be read as a critique of this liberal political philosophical tradition based on the social constract as a kind of trade off with respect to human freedom, whilst accepting modernity's principle of individual freedom and grounding right on freedom.

Hegel argues that recognition is crucial because free individuality rests upon the intersubjective recognition and so underpins the formation of community and social institutions. It is an account of the shift from natural self-preservation to political/ethical life of a people in the polis; an account based on contesting the individualism of the social contract tradition.

Strauss was very much invested in the view that Hobbes (and/or Machiavelli, there's an equivalence that is especially clear in this passage) was the first modern political philosopher. What Strauss here skips over in describing Hegel's teaching as "much more sophisticated" than Hobbes' is treated as though it were of no importance, though Strauss himself must have realized it makes all the difference, in that it is Hegel's teleology that ties him to Socrates, and is just one of many things distinguishing his work from Hobbes'.

Most of Strauss' critique of liberalism is pretty standard stuff, representing the view of educated Germans of his day of Manchester school liberalism. Here Strauss mixes Hegel in with Hobbes, enabling him to use the same tactics against Hegel that he originally levels against Hobbes' "liberal heirs," imposing a relationship between German and Anglo-Saxon liberalism I'm not sure is really there. Quite naturally, he has to be vague in doing so, because the connection's... indirect, based on a loose similarity, at best.

Scott,
is there not a difference--a break or rupture-- between classical and modern natural right?

Doesn't Hobbes establish his political philosophy on mechanistic metaphysics, explicitly rejects classical political philosophy,grounds natural law on the desire or interest for self-preservation, and makes the shift from duties (with rights conditional) to rights (with duties conditional).

Hence Strauss's claim that Hobbes is the 'classic and founder of the specifically modern natural law doctrine.'

On the other point re liberalism--Strauss says there a tension between natural right and diversity in liberalism. He argues that when liberals are faced by a choice between the two they choose the uncultivated cultivation of individuality (he seems to have social liberalism in mind?) He adds that:

Liberal relativism has its roots in natural right tradition of toleranceor in the notion that that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness.

I have to admit I struggle to understand this argument---Strauss says:

One we realize that out principles of action having no other support than our blind choice, we really do not belive in them anymore. We cannot live any more as responsible beings...The more we cultivate reason the more we cultivate nihilism ...The inescapable practical consequence of nihilism is fanatical obscurantism.

I struggle to get the links between modern natural right and nihlism.