Leo Strauss
(1899 - 1973)
Timothy H. Wilson
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Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was an important 20th Century political philosopher. He is largely responsible for raising once again the importance of political philosophy (as opposed to “political science”). He attended the University of Marburg for his Doctorate, where he was exposed to the influence of Neo-Kantianism. However, more formative for his subsequent studies was the year he spent as a post-doctoral student in the University of Freiburg under Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), where he attended the inspiring lectures on Aristotle of the young Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Under the influence of Heidegger, Strauss broke from his early Neo-Kantian leanings and undertook his own brand of a Heideggerian "hermeneutic phenomenology".
For Heidegger, the primary horizon for understanding Being is Dasein, as "Being-in-the-World", most fundamentally in relation to the Dasein's Being-toward-Death -- wherein Dasein is what it is as a "whole" in relation to its fundamental finitude
For Strauss, the primary horizon in which a "world" arises is the political horizon.
The point of departure for Strauss, the "hermeneutic situation" that guides all of Strauss's studies, is the "crisis of modernity". This is the same crisis of meaning, the same advent of nihilism (the withdrawal of Being), that guides Heidegger's inquiries. In the context of this crisis Strauss advocates historical studies of the tradition so that we can trace a path to the alternatives to modernity harboured within classical philosophy. This return to the classics takes the form of a number of thematic directions:
the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns -- an attempt to return to this 18th century debate in order to call into question the victory of the moderns
Jerusalem and Athens, or the dialogue of Reason and Revelation -- wherein Strauss insists that the vibrancy of the West resides in the eternal tension between these two incommensurable claims
the discovery of Esoteric Writing -- Strauss's insistence that many thoughtful writers before the Age of Enlightenment practiced an art of writing that sheltered the community from the harmful insights of philosophical inquiry into the nature of things
the critique of Positivism and the philosophy of Historicism, as leading to the relativism and nihilism that marks the modern age
the Quarrel of Philosophy and Poetry -- the eternal debate between philosophers and poets as to which art can best know and guide the soul of man
Due to his probing thinking and scholarship, many of his major works are is included in my list of 1001 Great Books of the Western Canon.
Course Materials
Course Materials
Leo Strauss: An Introduction
An introduction to Leo Strauss's key concepts. The lecture focuses on Strauss's early beginnings within the Neo-Kantian school and his subsequent break from that school as a result of his encounter with the thought of Martin Heidegger. The point is made that Strauss's political philosophy is in large measure a "political phenomenology": an attempt to uncover the natural standpoint of political affairs, within which things arise as inherently good or bad, in contradistinction to the relativism and nihilism that marks the crisis of modernity.
Leo Strauss: The Three Waves of Modernity
An introductory lecture on Strauss's analysis of the "The Three Waves of Modernity" in the essay of the same name. The essay provides an excellent starting point for students beginning to understand Strauss, as well as modernity itself.
The Straussian Reading of Plato's Republic
Detailed notes on Plato's dialogue based on Strauss's interpretation of The Republic presented in The City and Man.
Locke and the First Wave of Modernity
Part of an undergraduate course on the history of the "Self" in Western literature, it includes lecture notes on the modern revolution in thinking, including an overview of the Straussian interpretation of modernity as having "three waves". Locke's epistemology is explored as forming the foundation of the conception of the self within this first wave of modernity
Rousseau and the Second Wave of Modernity
Lecture slides for a course on "Time and Narrative in Prose Fiction" (2020) -- covering the historical context of the "Second Wave" of modernity and the rise of "historical" thinking. This shift in thinking is explored in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel.
The Third Wave of Modernity: Nietzsche's Critique of Historicism
Lecture slides for a course on "Time and Narrative in Prose Fiction" (2020) -- covering the historical context of the "Third Wave" of modernity in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's critique of historicism in "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" (1874) is discussed in relation to his overall philosophy concerning: the Death of God, the History of Nihilism and the "completion" of the latter in the affirmation of the Eternal Return.
Reflections on the Great Books
Reflections on the Great Books
Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1930)
Philosophy and Law (1935)
On Tyranny (1948)
Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)
Natural Right and History (1953)
What is Political Philosophy? (1959)
The City and Man (1964)
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
Xenophon's Socratic Discourse (1970)
Plato's Symposium (1970)
Xenophon's Socrates (1972)
Socrates and Aristophanes (1972)
The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws (1973)
Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (1973)
Introduction to Political Philosophy (1975)
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (1989)
Online Texts
Online Texts
Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Eds.). History of Political Philosophy. (PDF). Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987.
Leo Strauss. "Relativism". (PDF).
Leo Strauss. "Historicism". (PDF). (1941).
Leo Strauss. "Natural Right and the Historical Approach". (1950). The Review of Politics 12.4
Leo Strauss. "What is Political Philosophy?" (1957). Journal of Politics. 19.3.
Leo Strauss. "On the Interpretation of Genesis". (1957). Published in L'Homme. 21.1, 1981.
Leo Strauss. Thoughts on Machiavelli. (PDF). (1958). Glencoe: The Free Press.
Leo Strauss. "The Crisis of Our Time." (1963).
Leo Strauss. "Introduction to Political Philosophy". (PDF). (1965). Winter Semester, Course Transcript.
Leo Strauss. "The Three Waves of Modernity". (PDF). (1975).
Further Reading
Further Reading
“Leo Strauss” entry at Wikipedia
“Leo Strauss” entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (by Leora Batnitzky)
"Phenomenology" entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"The Leo Strauss Center" containing transcripts and audio recordings of many of Leo Strauss's courses
Rodrigo Chacon. "Reading Strauss from the Start: On the Heideggerian Origins of Political Philosophy". (PDF). European Journal of Political Theory. 9.3 (2010).
Laurence Lampert. Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.
Peter Levine. "A 'Right' Nietzschean: Leo Strauss and his Followers". 152–67 in Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. Inc. notes to chap. 8: 260–65
Heinrich Meier. Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Robert B. Pippin. "The Modern World of Leo Strauss". Political Theory 20.3 (August 1992): 448–72.
Neil G. Robertson (1998). "The Closing of the Early Modern Mind: Leo Strauss and Early Modern Political Thought" (PDF). Animus. 3.
Claes G. Ryn. "Leo Strauss and History: The Philosopher As Conspirator". Humanitas 18.1&2 (2005): 31–58.
Steven B. Smith. "Destruktion or recovery: Leo Strauss's critique of Heidegger". The Review of Metaphysics. 51.2 (1997).
Steven B. Smith (editor). The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009.
Nathan Tarcov. "Philosophy and History: Tradition and Interpretation in the Work of Leo Strauss". Polity 16, no. 1 (Autumn 1983): 5–29.
David Tkach. "Leo Strauss's Critique of Martin Heidegger." PhD Thesis, University of Ottawa, 2011.
Richard Velkley. "On the Roots of Rationalism: Natural Right and History as a Response to Heidegger". (PDF). The Review of Politics. 70 (2008).
Richard Velkley. Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Alan Verskin. "Reading Strauss on Maimonides: A New Approach". Journal of Textual Reasoning 3, no. 1 (June 2004).
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