ABSTRACT
Raymond Aron admits that the modernist intellectual enterprise is in fundamental difficulties. He excuses himself for participating in it by claiming that its difficulties are endemic in all human thought. Leo Strauss holds that the crisis of modernity is essentially one but that it is progressive insofar as the wisdoms of ancient teachings come to be more and more radically subverted. The conflict between Aron and Strauss is an intellectual conflict between one who both believes in the modernist enterprise and despairs of it and another who, in seeking to return to pre-modern wisdom, returns without real hope. With regard to world society, there is a profound ambiguity concerning the meaning of Strauss's utopianism, Strauss seems to insist, at one and the same time, on both the necessity and the impossibility of the "world-State". In denying world society in terms of practical politics, Strauss is proceeding in a way which is connected with his utopianism.
