Download or read book After Leo Strauss written by Tucker Landy and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposes a post-Straussian reading of Plato to advance a reconciliation of ancient and modern theories of natural right. Few thinkers of the twentieth century studied the fundamental questions of ethics and politics, or penetrated further into the philosophical sources of the moral relativism of our times, more deeply than Leo Strauss. After Leo Strauss is not yet another attempt to explicate, critique, or defend Strauss. Instead, it encourages us to look in new directions, and to escape certain aspects of Strauss’s powerful influence, in order to revisit classic texts and make our own judgments about what those texts might mean. Tucker Landy proposes a post-Straussian reading of the Platonic dialogues that is non-esoteric yet respectful of their subtle dramatic-pedagogic form and urges us, in a spirit of Socratic humility, to reexamine ancient and modern theories of natural right to seek possible grounds for reconciliation between them. Landy puts forth a Socratic theory of democratic liberalism as an example of such reconciliation. “This book is a breath of fresh air for people like me, who were influenced by Strauss early in their philosophic careers but who refuse to dismiss metaphysics and cosmology, who are wary of the potentially narrowing effects of ‘political philosophy,’ and who are open, in their philosophical eros, to the possible truth of revelation and the wisdom of the poets. Tucker Landy gives us a new beginning—a Socrates made young and beautiful.” — Peter Kalkavage, author of The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

Download or read book Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile written by Eugene Sheppard and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A probing study that demystifies the common portrayal of Leo Strauss as the inspiration for American neo-conservativism by tracing his philosophy to its German Jewish roots.

Download or read book Natural Right and History written by Leo Strauss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-12-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, Natural Right and History remains as controversial and essential as ever. "Strauss . . . makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find ourselves . . . [and] brings to his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive mind."—John H. Hallowell, American Political Science Review Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Download or read book Leo Strauss and the Theologico Political Problem written by Heinrich Meier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-25 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, by one of the most prominent interpreters of Leo Strauss's thought, was the first to address the problem that Leo Strauss himself said was the theme of his studies: the theologico-political problem or the confrontation with the theological and the political alternative to philosophy as a way of life. In his theologico-political treatise, which comprises four parts and an appendix, Heinrich Meier clarifies the distinction between political theology and political philosophy and reappraises the unifying center of Strauss's philosophical enterprise. The book is the culmination of Meier's work on the theologico-political problem. It will interest anyone who seeks to understand both the problem caused by revelation for philosophy and the challenge posed by political-religious radicalism. The appendix makes available for the first time two lectures by Strauss that are immediately relevant to the subject of this book and that will open the way for future research and debate on the legacy of Strauss.

Download or read book Leo Strauss written by Robert Howse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-08 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes Leo Strauss's writings on political violence, considering also what he taught in the classroom on this subject.

Download or read book Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy written by Michael P. Zuckert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical study of the influential political theorist dispels popular myths and reveals the inner logic of his varied and notoriously complex writings. Political theorist Leo Strauss was unexpectedly thrust into the media spotlight for his alleged influence on neoconservative politics. With The Truth about Leo Strauss, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this complex thinker. Now, with Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, they offer a more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss’s thought, using the many manifestations of the “problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone. Strauss, they argue, sought to restore political philosophy to its original Socratic form. This is demonstrated through his critique of positivism and historicism, two intellectual currents that undermined his Socratic project. The authors also explore Strauss’s interpretation of both ancient and modern political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Finally, they examine Strauss’s thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy is the most in-depth treatment of this often misunderstood thinker, examining his ideas across his long career. It reveals Strauss’s overall intellectual project: to decode how ancient and modern theory attempted to solve the problem of political philosophy. And it shows why Strauss considered the ancient solution both philosophically and politically superior.

Download or read book Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy written by Leo Strauss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the outstanding thinkers of our time offers in this book his final words to posterity. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy was well underway at the time of Leo Strauss's death in 1973. Having chosen the title for the book, he selected the most important writings of his later years and arranged them to clarify the issues in political philosophy that occupied his attention throughout his life. As his choice of title indicates, the heart of Strauss's work is Platonism—a Platonism that is altogether unorthodox and highly controversial. These essays consider, among others, Heidegger, Husserl, Nietzsche, Marx, Moses Maimonides, Machiavelli, and of course Plato himself to test the Platonic understanding of the conflict between philosophy and political society. Strauss argues that an awesome spritual impoverishment has engulfed modernity because of our dimming awareness of that conflict. Thomas Pangle's Introduction places the work within the context of the entire Straussian corpus and focuses especially on Strauss's late Socratic writings as a key to his mature thought. For those already familiar with Strauss, Pangle's essay will provoke thought and debate; for beginning readers of Strauss, it provides a fine introduction. A complete bibliography of Strauss's writings if included.

Download or read book Leo Strauss Max Weber and the Scientific Study of Politics written by Nasser Behnegar and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-07 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can politics be studied scientifically, and if so, how? Assuming it is impossible to justify values by human reason alone, social science has come to consider an unreflective relativism the only viable basis, not only for its own operations, but for liberal societies more generally. Although the experience of the sixties has made social scientists more sensitive to the importance of values, it has not led to a fundamental reexamination of value relativism, which remains the basis of contemporary social science. Almost three decades after Leo Strauss's death, Nasser Behnegar offers the first sustained exposition of what Strauss was best known for: his radical critique of contemporary social science, and particularly of political science. Behnegar's impressive book argues that Strauss was not against the scientific study of politics, but he did reject the idea that it could be built upon political science's unexamined assumption of the distinction between facts and values. Max Weber was, for Strauss, the most profound exponent of values relativism in social science, and Behnegar's explication artfully illuminates Strauss's critique of Weber's belief in the ultimate insolubility of all value conflicts. Strauss's polemic against contemporary political science was meant to make clear the contradiction between its claim of value-free premises and its commitment to democratic principles. As Behnegar ultimately shows, values—the ethical component lacking in a contemporary social science—are essential to Strauss's project of constructing a genuinely scientific study of politics.

Download or read book What is Political Philosophy And Other Studies written by Leo Strauss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988-10-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All political action has . . . in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society. For the good society is the complete political good. If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges. . . . The theme of political philosophy is mankind's great objectives, freedom and government or empire—objectives which are capable of lifting all men beyond their poor selves. Political philosophy is that branch of philosophy which is closest to political life, to non-philosophic life, to human life."—From "What Is Political Philosophy?" What Is Political Philosophy?—a collection of ten essays and lectures and sixteen book reviews written between 1943 and 1957—contains some of Leo Strauss's most famous writings and some of his most explicit statements of the themes that made him famous. The title essay records Strauss's sole extended articulation of the meaning of political philosophy itself. Other essays discuss the relation of political philosophy to history, give an account of the political philosophy of the non-Christian Middle Ages and of classic European modernity, and present his theory of esoteric writing.

Download or read book Leo Strauss on Science written by Svetozar Y. Minkov and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, Leo Strauss on Science brings to light the thoughts of Leo Strauss on the problem of science. Introducing us to Strauss's reflections on the meaning and perplexities of the scientific adventure, Svetozar Y. Minkov explores questions such as: Is there a human wisdom independent of science? What is the relation between poetry and mathematics, or between self-knowledge and theoretical physics? And how necessary is it for the human species to exist immutably in order for the classical analysis of human life to be correct? In pursuing these questions, Minkov aims to change the conversation about Strauss, one of the great thinkers of the past century.

Download or read book The Truth about Leo Strauss written by Catherine H. Zuckert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? The Truth about Leo Strauss puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate such an oversimplified view of such a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. More important, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure. Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former students of Strauss—guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss’s political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the ideas that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. This idea, they show, stemmed from Strauss’s belief that modern thought, with its relativism and nihilism, undermines healthy politics and even the possibility of real philosophy. Identifying this view as one of Strauss’s three core propositions—America is modern, modernity is bad, and America is good—they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses. The Zuckerts finish, appropriately, by examining the varied work of Strauss’s numerous students and followers, revealing the origins—rooted in the tensions within his own thought—oftheir split into opposing camps. Balanced and accessible, The Truth about Leo Strauss is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss written by Steven B. Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-11 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leo Strauss was a central figure in the twentieth century renaissance of political philosophy. The essays of The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss provide a comprehensive and non-partisan survey of the major themes and problems that constituted Strauss's work. These include his revival of the great 'quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,' his examination of tension between Jerusalem and Athens, and most controversially his recovery of the tradition of esoteric writing. The volume also examines Strauss's complex relation to a range of contemporary political movements and thinkers, including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Gershom Scholem, as well as the creation of a distinctive school of 'Straussian' political philosophy.

Download or read book Liberalism Ancient and Modern written by Leo Strauss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revered and reviled, Leo Strauss has left a rich legacy of work that continues to spark discussion and controversy. This volume of essays ranges over critical themes that define Strauss's thought: the tension between reason and revelation in the Western tradition, the philsophical roots of liberal democracy, and especially the conflicting yet complementary relationship between ancient and modern liberalism. For those seeking to become acquainted with this provocative thinker, one need look no further.

Download or read book Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism written by Corine Pelluchon and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can Leo Strauss's critique of modernity and his return to tradition, especially Maimonides, help us to save democracy from its inner dangers? In this book, Corine Pelluchon examines Strauss's provocative claim that the conception of man and reason in the thought of the Enlightenment is self-destructive and leads to a new tyranny. Writing in a direct and lucid style, Pelluchon avoids the polemics that have characterized recent debates concerning the links between Strauss and neoconservatives, particularly concerns over Strauss's relation to the extreme right in Germany. Instead she aims to demystify the origins of Strauss's thought and present his relationship to German and Jewish thought in the early twentieth century in a manner accessible not just to the small circles devoted to the study of Strauss, but to a larger public. Strauss's critique of modernity is, she argues, constructive; he neither condemns modernity as a whole nor does he desire a retreat back to the Ancients, where slaves existed and women were not considered citizens. The question is to know whether we can learn something from the Ancients and from Maimonides—and not merely about them.

Download or read book The German Stranger written by William H. F. Altman and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leo Strauss's connection with Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt suggests a troubling proximity to National Socialism but a serious critique of Strauss must begin with F. H. Jacobi. While writing his dissertation on this apparently Christian opponent of the Enlightenment, Strauss discovered the tactical principles that would characterize his lifework: writing between the lines, a faith-based critique of rationalism, the deliberate secularization of religious language for irreligious purposes, and an "all or nothing" antagonism to middling solutions. Especially the latter is distinctive of his Zionist writings in the 1920s where Strauss engaged in an ongoing polemic against Cultural Zionism, attacking it first from an orthodox, and then from an atheist's perspective. In his last Zionist article (1929), Strauss mentions "the Machiavellian Zionism of a Nordau that would not fear to use the traditional hope for a Messiah as dynamite." By the time of his "change of orientation," National Socialism was being led by a nihilistic "Messiah" while Strauss had already radicalized Schmitt's "political theology" and Heidegger's deconstruction of the ontological Tradition. Central to Strauss's advance beyond the smartest Nazis is his "Second Cave" in which he claimed modern thought is imprisoned: only by escaping Revelation can we recover "natural ignorance." By using pseudo-Platonic imagery to illustrate what anti-Semites called "Jewification," Strauss attempted to annihilate the common ground, celebrated by Hermann Cohen, between Judaism and Platonism. Unlike those who attacked Plato for devaluing nature at the expense of the transcendent Idea, the émigré Strauss effectively employed a new "Plato" who was no more a Platonist than Nietzsche or Heidegger had been. Central to Strauss's "Platonic political philosophy" is the mysterious protagonist of Plato's Laws whom Strauss accurately recognized as the kind of Socrates whose fear of death would have caused him to flee the hemlock. Any reader who recognizes the unbridgeable gap between the real Socrates and Plato’s Athenian Stranger will understand why “the German Stranger” is the principal theoretician of an atheistic re-enactment of religion, of which genus National Socialism is an ultra-modern species.

Download or read book The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss written by Laurence Lampert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-08-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss takes on the crucial task of separating what is truly important in the work of Leo Strauss from the ephemeral politics associated with his school. Laurence Lampert focuses on exotericism: the use of artful rhetoric to simultaneously communicate a socially responsible message to the public at large and a more radical message of philosophic truth to a smaller, more intellectually inclined audience. Largely forgotten after the Enlightenment, exotericism, he shows, deeply informed Strauss both as a reader and as a philosophic writer—indeed, Lampert argues, Strauss learned from the finest practitioners of exoteric writing how to become one himself. Examining some of Strauss’s most important books and essays through this exoteric lens, Lampert reevaluates not only Strauss but the philosophers—from Plato to Halevi to Nietzsche—with whom Strauss most deeply engaged. Ultimately Lampert shows that Strauss’s famous distinction between ancient and modern thinkers is primarily rhetorical, one of the great examples of Strauss’s exoteric craft. Celebrating Strauss’s achievements while recognizing one main shortcoming—unlike Nietzsche, he failed to appreciate the ramifications of modern natural science for philosophy and its public presentation—Lampert illuminates Strauss as having even greater philosophic importance than we have thought before.

Download or read book The Legacy of Leo Strauss written by Tony Burns and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leo Strauss was a political philosopher who died in 1973 but came to came to prominent attention in the United States and also Britain around the beginning of the War in Iraq. Charges began emerging that architects of the war such as Paul Wolfowitz and large numbers of staff in the US State and Defense Departments had studied with, or been influenced by, the academic work of Strauss and his followers. A vague, but powerful, idea was generated in the popular press that a group known as the Straussians had been instrumental in the long-range strategic planning of American foreign policy, both to advance American interests and to encourage democratic revolutions outside the West. This volume of essays opens up the topic of Leo Strauss and the Straussians to those outside the relatively narrow circles who have been concerned with him and his followers up to now.