Leo Strauss Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German twentieth-century political philosopher whose writings continue to echo through present-day debates on modernity and its prospects. Lamenting the onslaught by liberal relativism on tradition, customs, and moral principle, Strauss emphasized the message of ancient political philosophy as a remedy for the wastefulness and nihilism characteristic of the modern era. His work pitting modern reason against spiritual revelation has compelled many contemporary political philosophers and scholars to examine the role of classical political society in the nature of the state and to reevaluate the path to the “good life” prized by thinkers such as ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.

Strauss was born in Hesse, Germany, in September 1899. Growing up Jewish in Weimer Germany, he struggled with the fraught status of his religion in a society that vilified it. He immersed himself at a young age in the philosophy of another Jewish thinker, Baruch Spinoza, while also grappling with the atheism espoused in the philosophy of fellow German theorists Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. Not satisfied with modernity’s supposed refutation of orthodoxy, Strauss, in his formative years at the Gymnasium Philippinum and the University of Hamburg, abandoned his political Zionism for the Islamic Aristotelianism of Muslim philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi.

This point marked the transition for Strauss toward the philosophic way of life understood in the Platonic sense. Defending the tradition of ancient philosophy against radical historicism and modern claims to natural rights, Strauss began to wrestle with what he would later articulate to be the conflict between “Jerusalem and Athens”: the tension between the revelation of biblical truths and the primacy of reason for the Greeks. Motivating his research was the belief that he had been unlucky enough to be born in a period of civic decline where man’s path to the truth—indeed, his understanding of his permanent place outside of his temporal existence—was inhibited by modern superficiality. Strauss saw the need to return to classical philosophy’s message of knowledge that transcended its place in Greek society and conveyed a message of truth for all generations.

Strauss led a mostly itinerant life while in Europe until the late 1930s when he moved to the United States with his wife, Miriam Bernsohn. After teaching a number of years in New York City, he spent the bulk of his academic career at the University of Chicago, where he lectured for twenty years on political philosophy prior to two brief stints at Claremont McKenna College and St. John’s College. During this period he produced a number of critical commentaries, including What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (1959) and Liberalism, Ancient and Modern (1968). His pupils included a number of prominent future intellectuals, such as philosopher Allen Bloom and political author Harry Jaffa, as well as former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz. Many of his followers and former students credit him today for his novel impact on how political philosophy should be read and studied in the modern era. He died in October 1973 of pneumonia.

Bibliography:

Pangle,Thomas L. Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Sheppard, Eugene R. Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2006.
Tanguay, Daniel. Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007.
Udoff, Alan, ed. Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991.

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