Whitehead and Leo Strauss
On Eternal Ideals, Philosophic Humility, the Crisis of Modernity,
The Re-enchantment of Nature, and the Rescue of Democracy
Personal Preface: Gratitude to Larry P. Arnn
Many years ago, while I was a graduate student at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, I met a fellow student named Larry Arnn. He would go on to become a leading figure in conservative intellectual circles and is now best known as the president of Hillsdale College, an independent Christian liberal arts college with a deservedly powerful reputation for its unwavering commitment to classical education, the Constitution, and the moral and philosophical foundations of Western civilization. You can learn more about Larry by turning to his Wikipedia entry (click here).
At the time, however, Larry and I were simply two graduate students, each drawn to different philosophical mentors. I was studying Alfred North Whitehead, while Larry was deeply influenced by Leo Strauss. Larry studied under Harry V. Jaffa, a prominent student of Strauss, and I studied under John Cobb, a prominent student of Whitehead.
The Claremont Institute, of which Larry was a founder, did not yet exist, but it later became a primary intellectual source for politically engaged, deeply conservative, anti-liberal thought. Larry was at the helm. But even in those graduate school days, the spirit of lively debate was already in the air, at least when we worked together as waiters at a local restaurant. Larry and I had a few short but memorable conversations—interesting exchanges in which the differences between our orientations were already clear. To be honest, I found Larry too conservative,, and I’m quite sure he found me too liberal. More than that, I was not a very good listener. I was too eager to explain Whitehead and not nearly curious enough about Strauss.
Time has changed me. I'm not vehemently anti-left the way Larry is; it is sometimes said that there are two poles of contemporary political philosophy, one emphasizing participatory democracy and one emphasizing a return to traditional virtues and the classics. I lean toward the left. But I’ve come to recognize the enduring questions Strauss asked and the seriousness with which he approached philosophy. I also realize, much more than I did then, that my own philosophical mentor, Alfred North Whitehead, had much in common with Strauss, in their respective love of the classics and the Platonic tradition. Whitehead famously remarked that the history of Western philosophy is "a series of footnotes to Plato," and he incorporated many Platonic insights into his own speculative vision—not least the conviction that ideals such as truth, goodness, and beauty are timeless, part of the very structure of the universe and not just human projections. For Whitehead, as for Strauss, human life finds its deepest meaning when it is oriented toward these ideals and shaped by the effort to seek them and live by them.
This short essay is, in part, an act of philosophical reconciliation—and a gesture of respect. It is not a work of Straussian scholarship, nor does it speak for Larry. But it is written in gratitude for the role he plays in my life: a student of Strauss whose path once crossed mine, and whose commitments helped nudge me toward a broader, more generous understanding.
- Jay McDaniel
Notes on Whitehead and Strauss
Whitehead’s philosophy can be seen as a generous and creative companion to several core insights in Leo Strauss’s critique of modernity. Strauss, a German-American political philosopher best known for his studies of classical political thought and his critiques of modern relativism, sought to recover the enduring wisdom of ancient philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle, as a remedy for the moral and intellectual crises of modern liberalism. He argued that modern philosophy, beginning with Machiavelli, had turned away from the pursuit of virtue and truth, embracing power, skepticism, and historical relativism. Strauss believed that a serious return to classical texts, read with care and humility, could renew our understanding of justice, natural right, and the philosophic life.
While their intellectual styles differ—Strauss the cautious, text-rooted classicist; Whitehead the speculative cosmologist—they share a fundamental concern: that modern thought has lost its grip on transcendent ideals, reduced nature to a commodity lacking value in its own right, overemphasized individualism at the expense of social relations, fallen into a will-to-mastery at the expense of community and tradition, a reduced philosophy to either skepticism or ideology under the rubric of what Whitehead called "scientific materialism." For both thinkers, recovering the dignity of thought and the reality of value is crucial—not just for the health of philosophy, but for the future of civilization.
Below are five areas where Whitehead’s process philosophy may affirm, and in some cases expand upon, Strauss’s key ideas.
Critique of Modernity
Strauss famously identifies three “waves” of modernity: beginning with Machiavelli and Hobbes, who sought to ground politics in power and self-preservation rather than virtue; moving through Rousseau and Kant, who aimed to restore moral meaning through autonomy and historical progress; and culminating in Nietzsche and Heidegger, whose radical critiques of reason and morality lead to relativism, nihilism, and ultimately the crisis of liberal democracy. He argues that these developments severed philosophy from nature, virtue, and metaphysical truth, replacing the pursuit of wisdom with the pursuit of mastery.
Whitehead, writing from a different angle but with shared concerns, offers a parallel critique of modernity, especially in Science and the Modern World. He focuses less on political theory and more on the scientific worldview, which he believes has distorted Western thought by reducing nature to mere matter in motion—a mechanistic system governed by efficient causes, stripped of intrinsic value, purpose, and subjectivity. This “bifurcation of nature” creates a split between mind and body, fact and value, subject and object, leaving modern thought unable to speak meaningfully about beauty, morality, or even consciousness.
Like Strauss, Whitehead sees modernity’s turn away from metaphysical depth as spiritually and culturally devastating. But where Strauss looks backward to recover the insights of the ancients, Whitehead seeks a forward path: a re-enchanted metaphysics that integrates scientific insight with a renewed sense of value and purpose in the cosmos. He calls for a worldview in which nature is alive, relational, and value-laden, not dead, disconnected, and morally neutral.
In both thinkers, modernity is not just an intellectual failure—it is a moral and civilizational crisis. It leaves individuals spiritually disoriented and societies politically unstable.
Crucially, in both Strauss and Whitehead, the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty are not merely human inventions or historical accidents—they are real, transcendent, and enduring. For Strauss, they are grounded in nature and reason, discoverable as ideals, not possessions, through philosophical inquiry. For Whitehead, they are likewise transcendent, residing in the primordial nature of God. They take the form of divine aims, felt in experience as lures for feeling—a kind of beckoning toward richness, harmony, and depth. We may be unconscious of their presence, but they guide the becoming of the world and the unfolding of moral and aesthetic life.
In this shared conviction, both thinkers resist the reduction of value to opinion and affirm that genuine standards of judgment are possible—standards that call us toward lives of greater meaning and coherence.
Return to the Classics and Eternal Ideals
Strauss calls for a return to classical thinkers—especially Plato and Aristotle—because they ground ethics and politics in nature, not convention or will. They assume that human beings have a discernible essence and a proper end (telos) that reason can investigate. In a world of moral confusion, these classical sources offer a needed standard.
Whitehead would agree with much of this, as is evident in his discussions of what makes for a healthy human civilization in Adventures of Ideas, but with an important expansion. He sees the entire cosmos as suffused with aim and value, not just human life. In Process and Reality, he proposes that ideals such as truth, goodness, and beauty are not only thinkable but operative within reality itself—not always as technical eternal objects, but as divine possibilities that shape the becoming of each moment. These ideals reside in the mind of God, and they are felt, not merely known—experienced as lures that attract us toward more satisfying and harmonious forms of existence.
Whitehead does not merely retrieve classical ideals; he re-situates them cosmologically, showing that our longing for the good, the true, and the beautiful is rooted not in cultural projection but in the very structure of the universe’s becoming.
Philosophy as Humble Inquiry
Strauss prizes Socratic humility: the insight that we do not fully know what justice or the good is, and that philosophy is a lifelong inquiry, not a settled possession. He sees modern ideologies—whether Enlightenment rationalism or Nietzschean will-to-power—as arrogant and dangerous replacements for this humility.
Whitehead shares this spirit. He insists that philosophy begins in wonder, and that even after all rational analysis, “the wonder remains.” Though Whitehead does construct a speculative system, it is offered modestly—as a framework for further exploration, not a final truth. His metaphysical vision includes indeterminacy, relationality, and open-ended novelty. Ideals such as truth and goodness are not nailed down but are felt as possibilities calling to each becoming occasion, never exhausted or complete.
Like Strauss’s Socrates, Whitehead’s philosopher is a learner, always responding to the lures of possibility with openness, care, and a willingness to revise.
Socrates as Exemplar
Strauss presents Socrates as the model of the philosophic life—ironic, dialogical, morally serious, and politically cautious. Socrates does not write treatises or build systems; he asks questions and lives among his fellow citizens as a gadfly, committed to the examined life.
Whitehead, though more systematic, shares this vision of philosophy as a way of life. He does not focus on Socrates as a figure, but his conception of each moment of experience as a creative response to value gives every actual occasion a kind of Socratic agency. The philosopher, in Whitehead’s sense, is someone who lives consciously in the tension between what is and what might be—someone who listens, questions, and seeks truth within the flow of becoming. Socratic philosophy is here transformed into cosmic participation: a mode of living attentively and receptively in a world that is always more than we understand.
For Whitehead, the lure of wisdom is not abstract—it is woven into the very rhythms of reality, inviting a life of reflective and creative engagement.
Saving Democracy from Relativism and Tyranny
Strauss warns that without grounding in permanent values, liberal democracy risks collapsing into relativism on one side, or authoritarianism on the other. Democratic life depends on more than procedure—it requires a culture rooted in truth, virtue, and the dignity of thought.
Whitehead echoes this concern, especially in his critiques of utilitarianism, materialism, and industrialism. He envisions a democratic order not based on power or preference, but on sensitivity to value, respect for difference, and cooperation through persuasion rather than coercion. The ideals that nourish democratic life—truth, justice, beauty—are not arbitrary. They are, as noted above, divine lures, shaping the social order when we are open to their call. His God is not a cosmic legislator but a source of potentiality, ever inviting us to respond to the better possibility—a lure toward peace and creative harmony.
In this shared view, democracy can only flourish if it is animated by something deeper than opinion—namely, by a living relationship to transcendent ideals that beckon us toward the common good. A vital democracy not be "liberal" democracy as it prioritizes individual rights over community well-being, or "fascist" democracy as it subordinates individuals to a collective identity, but rather "common good" democracy. The key is to help citizens of such a democracy awaken to the virtues, recognizing that their well-being and that of communities are inseparable, and live their lives in service to ideals greater than themselves.
The Re-enchantment of Nature: Beyond Scientific Materialism
One of the most profound losses of the modern project, both Strauss and Whitehead agree, is the evacuation of meaning from nature. In the wake of scientific materialism and Enlightenment rationalism, nature came to be seen as inert, mechanical, and value-neutral—something to be used, not contemplated; managed, not revered.
Strauss, drawing on classical natural right theory, does not offer a romantic vision of nature, but he does insist that nature is intelligible—that there is a natural order to things, including human nature, which reason can discern and toward which ethics and politics must be oriented. For Strauss, to speak of natural right is to affirm that the cosmos is not chaos but ordered, and that this order carries normative weight. Nature is not enchanted in a mystical sense, but it is meaningful, directive, and worthy of philosophical reverence. A disenchanted view of nature, in his eyes, leads to moral relativism and cultural decay.
Whitehead, by contrast, offers a more radical metaphysical reenchantment. He explicitly rejects the modern “bifurcation of nature,” which separates mind from matter, value from fact, and subjective from objective. In Process and Reality and Science and the Modern World, he offers a vision in which nature is alive with experience, relationality, and value. Every actual entity—even a rock or a wave—has some degree of interiority, of becoming, of “feeling.” Nature is not just structured but suffused with potential and value. For Whitehead, reenchantment is not nostalgia but an epistemological and ontological necessity. Without it, we cannot meaningfully speak of beauty, morality, or even consciousness.
Thus, while Strauss and Whitehead diverge in tone and metaphysical commitment, both resist the nihilistic flattening of nature into mere resource. Each in his own way seeks to restore depth, meaning, and intelligibility to the natural world. And in doing so, both offer philosophical grounds for renewing our ethical and spiritual relationship with the cosmos.
A Final Note
While Strauss is deeply cautious about system-building, Whitehead sees it as a necessary risk—speculative boldness controlled by critical caution. He finds in Plato’s later dialogues, and in his own metaphysical vision, a legitimate path toward deeper understanding. Yet even here, Whitehead’s tone is often more Socratic than Platonic: his system is offered, not imposed. It is an invitation to thought, not a closure of inquiry. Perhaps two quotes from Process and Reality can make this point:
'There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.'
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
In the latter quote, Whitehead acknowledged this lineage not in servitude but in creative fidelity—adding his own footnote in a spirit of ongoing dialogue with Plato and the eternal questions.
In this way, Whitehead may represent not a departure from Strauss’s Socrates, but an expansion—a Socratic metaphysician in a pluralistic, evolving, and normative universe. in which timeless ideals, and the human apprehension of them, are our vest and only hope.
While their intellectual styles differ—Strauss the cautious, text-rooted classicist; Whitehead the speculative cosmologist—they share a fundamental concern: that modern thought has lost its grip on transcendent ideals, reduced nature to a commodity lacking value in its own right, overemphasized individualism at the expense of social relations, fallen into a will-to-mastery at the expense of community and tradition, a reduced philosophy to either skepticism or ideology under the rubric of what Whitehead called "scientific materialism." For both thinkers, recovering the dignity of thought and the reality of value is crucial—not just for the health of philosophy, but for the future of civilization.
Below are five areas where Whitehead’s process philosophy may affirm, and in some cases expand upon, Strauss’s key ideas.
Critique of Modernity
Strauss famously identifies three “waves” of modernity: beginning with Machiavelli and Hobbes, who sought to ground politics in power and self-preservation rather than virtue; moving through Rousseau and Kant, who aimed to restore moral meaning through autonomy and historical progress; and culminating in Nietzsche and Heidegger, whose radical critiques of reason and morality lead to relativism, nihilism, and ultimately the crisis of liberal democracy. He argues that these developments severed philosophy from nature, virtue, and metaphysical truth, replacing the pursuit of wisdom with the pursuit of mastery.
Whitehead, writing from a different angle but with shared concerns, offers a parallel critique of modernity, especially in Science and the Modern World. He focuses less on political theory and more on the scientific worldview, which he believes has distorted Western thought by reducing nature to mere matter in motion—a mechanistic system governed by efficient causes, stripped of intrinsic value, purpose, and subjectivity. This “bifurcation of nature” creates a split between mind and body, fact and value, subject and object, leaving modern thought unable to speak meaningfully about beauty, morality, or even consciousness.
Like Strauss, Whitehead sees modernity’s turn away from metaphysical depth as spiritually and culturally devastating. But where Strauss looks backward to recover the insights of the ancients, Whitehead seeks a forward path: a re-enchanted metaphysics that integrates scientific insight with a renewed sense of value and purpose in the cosmos. He calls for a worldview in which nature is alive, relational, and value-laden, not dead, disconnected, and morally neutral.
In both thinkers, modernity is not just an intellectual failure—it is a moral and civilizational crisis. It leaves individuals spiritually disoriented and societies politically unstable.
Crucially, in both Strauss and Whitehead, the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty are not merely human inventions or historical accidents—they are real, transcendent, and enduring. For Strauss, they are grounded in nature and reason, discoverable as ideals, not possessions, through philosophical inquiry. For Whitehead, they are likewise transcendent, residing in the primordial nature of God. They take the form of divine aims, felt in experience as lures for feeling—a kind of beckoning toward richness, harmony, and depth. We may be unconscious of their presence, but they guide the becoming of the world and the unfolding of moral and aesthetic life.
In this shared conviction, both thinkers resist the reduction of value to opinion and affirm that genuine standards of judgment are possible—standards that call us toward lives of greater meaning and coherence.
Return to the Classics and Eternal Ideals
Strauss calls for a return to classical thinkers—especially Plato and Aristotle—because they ground ethics and politics in nature, not convention or will. They assume that human beings have a discernible essence and a proper end (telos) that reason can investigate. In a world of moral confusion, these classical sources offer a needed standard.
Whitehead would agree with much of this, as is evident in his discussions of what makes for a healthy human civilization in Adventures of Ideas, but with an important expansion. He sees the entire cosmos as suffused with aim and value, not just human life. In Process and Reality, he proposes that ideals such as truth, goodness, and beauty are not only thinkable but operative within reality itself—not always as technical eternal objects, but as divine possibilities that shape the becoming of each moment. These ideals reside in the mind of God, and they are felt, not merely known—experienced as lures that attract us toward more satisfying and harmonious forms of existence.
Whitehead does not merely retrieve classical ideals; he re-situates them cosmologically, showing that our longing for the good, the true, and the beautiful is rooted not in cultural projection but in the very structure of the universe’s becoming.
Philosophy as Humble Inquiry
Strauss prizes Socratic humility: the insight that we do not fully know what justice or the good is, and that philosophy is a lifelong inquiry, not a settled possession. He sees modern ideologies—whether Enlightenment rationalism or Nietzschean will-to-power—as arrogant and dangerous replacements for this humility.
Whitehead shares this spirit. He insists that philosophy begins in wonder, and that even after all rational analysis, “the wonder remains.” Though Whitehead does construct a speculative system, it is offered modestly—as a framework for further exploration, not a final truth. His metaphysical vision includes indeterminacy, relationality, and open-ended novelty. Ideals such as truth and goodness are not nailed down but are felt as possibilities calling to each becoming occasion, never exhausted or complete.
Like Strauss’s Socrates, Whitehead’s philosopher is a learner, always responding to the lures of possibility with openness, care, and a willingness to revise.
Socrates as Exemplar
Strauss presents Socrates as the model of the philosophic life—ironic, dialogical, morally serious, and politically cautious. Socrates does not write treatises or build systems; he asks questions and lives among his fellow citizens as a gadfly, committed to the examined life.
Whitehead, though more systematic, shares this vision of philosophy as a way of life. He does not focus on Socrates as a figure, but his conception of each moment of experience as a creative response to value gives every actual occasion a kind of Socratic agency. The philosopher, in Whitehead’s sense, is someone who lives consciously in the tension between what is and what might be—someone who listens, questions, and seeks truth within the flow of becoming. Socratic philosophy is here transformed into cosmic participation: a mode of living attentively and receptively in a world that is always more than we understand.
For Whitehead, the lure of wisdom is not abstract—it is woven into the very rhythms of reality, inviting a life of reflective and creative engagement.
Saving Democracy from Relativism and Tyranny
Strauss warns that without grounding in permanent values, liberal democracy risks collapsing into relativism on one side, or authoritarianism on the other. Democratic life depends on more than procedure—it requires a culture rooted in truth, virtue, and the dignity of thought.
Whitehead echoes this concern, especially in his critiques of utilitarianism, materialism, and industrialism. He envisions a democratic order not based on power or preference, but on sensitivity to value, respect for difference, and cooperation through persuasion rather than coercion. The ideals that nourish democratic life—truth, justice, beauty—are not arbitrary. They are, as noted above, divine lures, shaping the social order when we are open to their call. His God is not a cosmic legislator but a source of potentiality, ever inviting us to respond to the better possibility—a lure toward peace and creative harmony.
In this shared view, democracy can only flourish if it is animated by something deeper than opinion—namely, by a living relationship to transcendent ideals that beckon us toward the common good. A vital democracy not be "liberal" democracy as it prioritizes individual rights over community well-being, or "fascist" democracy as it subordinates individuals to a collective identity, but rather "common good" democracy. The key is to help citizens of such a democracy awaken to the virtues, recognizing that their well-being and that of communities are inseparable, and live their lives in service to ideals greater than themselves.
The Re-enchantment of Nature: Beyond Scientific Materialism
One of the most profound losses of the modern project, both Strauss and Whitehead agree, is the evacuation of meaning from nature. In the wake of scientific materialism and Enlightenment rationalism, nature came to be seen as inert, mechanical, and value-neutral—something to be used, not contemplated; managed, not revered.
Strauss, drawing on classical natural right theory, does not offer a romantic vision of nature, but he does insist that nature is intelligible—that there is a natural order to things, including human nature, which reason can discern and toward which ethics and politics must be oriented. For Strauss, to speak of natural right is to affirm that the cosmos is not chaos but ordered, and that this order carries normative weight. Nature is not enchanted in a mystical sense, but it is meaningful, directive, and worthy of philosophical reverence. A disenchanted view of nature, in his eyes, leads to moral relativism and cultural decay.
Whitehead, by contrast, offers a more radical metaphysical reenchantment. He explicitly rejects the modern “bifurcation of nature,” which separates mind from matter, value from fact, and subjective from objective. In Process and Reality and Science and the Modern World, he offers a vision in which nature is alive with experience, relationality, and value. Every actual entity—even a rock or a wave—has some degree of interiority, of becoming, of “feeling.” Nature is not just structured but suffused with potential and value. For Whitehead, reenchantment is not nostalgia but an epistemological and ontological necessity. Without it, we cannot meaningfully speak of beauty, morality, or even consciousness.
Thus, while Strauss and Whitehead diverge in tone and metaphysical commitment, both resist the nihilistic flattening of nature into mere resource. Each in his own way seeks to restore depth, meaning, and intelligibility to the natural world. And in doing so, both offer philosophical grounds for renewing our ethical and spiritual relationship with the cosmos.
A Final Note
While Strauss is deeply cautious about system-building, Whitehead sees it as a necessary risk—speculative boldness controlled by critical caution. He finds in Plato’s later dialogues, and in his own metaphysical vision, a legitimate path toward deeper understanding. Yet even here, Whitehead’s tone is often more Socratic than Platonic: his system is offered, not imposed. It is an invitation to thought, not a closure of inquiry. Perhaps two quotes from Process and Reality can make this point:
'There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.'
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
In the latter quote, Whitehead acknowledged this lineage not in servitude but in creative fidelity—adding his own footnote in a spirit of ongoing dialogue with Plato and the eternal questions.
In this way, Whitehead may represent not a departure from Strauss’s Socrates, but an expansion—a Socratic metaphysician in a pluralistic, evolving, and normative universe. in which timeless ideals, and the human apprehension of them, are our vest and only hope.
Introducing Strauss'
The Three Waves of Modernity
Powerpoint slides for this lecture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/177vY.
Leo Strauss's essay, "The Three Waves of Modernity": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y85I...