In Natural Right and History, Leo Strauss argues for the continuing “relevance” of the classical understanding of natural right. Since this relevance is not a matter of a direct return or a renewed appreciation that a neglected doctrine is simply true, the meaning of this claim is somewhat elusive. But it is clear enough that the core of Strauss's argument for that relevance is a claim about the relation between human experience and philosophy. Strauss argues that the classical understanding articulates and is continuous with the “lived experience” of engaged participants in political life. He appears to mean by this the everyday experience of choices, conflicts, and of other human beings as these appear from the participant point of view, “within” some sort of horizon established by their various engagements and practical projects. In the modern world, by contrast, he claims that we have manufactured a kind of artificial experience, have created by education and training over the course of time habits of heart and mind that have obscured and distorted how the human things originally make sense just as matters of praxis. Because of this we have been left disoriented and at a loss with respect to the basic questions about how to live that unavoidably appear within this participant point of view. This is the heart of our “crisis.”