SOURCE: Hallowell, John H. Review of Natural Right and History, by Leo Strauss. American Political Science Review 48, no. 2 (June 1954): 538-41.

In the following review, Hallowell explores Strauss's conception of natural right and its place in ethics and politics.

Is there any foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics? Professor Strauss believes that there is and in presenting his case [in Natural Right and History] makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find ourselves. Based upon a series of lectures which Professor Strauss delivered at the University of Chicago in 1949 under the auspices of the Charles R. Walgreen Foundation, this book presents a formidable challenge to a positivistically oriented social science.

Modern social science not only admits its inability to help us in discriminating between legitimate and illegitimate, just and unjust objectives but denies that...