Natural Right and History

Strauss’s 1949 Walgreen Lectures, arguing that modern social science’s commitment to value-neutrality collapses into historicism and relativism, and tracing how the classical idea of natural right — a standard of justice available to reason and not merely to convention — was progressively narrowed by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Burke into something the modern mind can no longer take seriously. The book is as much a diagnosis of the contemporary academy as a history of an idea.

Why it’s on the list: It is the anchor of the section on the natural right tradition, which is where the curriculum poses its sharpest question: whether there is any standard for judging regimes that is not simply the standard of one’s own time and place.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on History of Political Philosophy and the Natural Right Tradition. A structured curriculum shared March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Leo Strauss — the author.
• Justice — the natural-right standard the book is about.
• Liberalism — the modern tradition whose foundations the book examines.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.