Straussianism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Leo Strauss was born and educated in Germany. Fleeing from the Nazis in the early 1930s, he emigrated first to England and then to the United States. He was a professor of political philosophy at the New School for Social Research until Robert Maynard Hutchins brought him to the University of Chicago in 1948.

More than most thinkers of the twentieth century, Leo Strauss polarized his audience. One was either for him or against him, influenced by him or repelled by him. Thus has arisen the phenomenon, nearly unique among the twentieth century’s academic thinkers, of a recognized group of followers, called Straussians. Where and when the label arose, and what exactly it means, are uncertain. It seems originally to have been a label invented by the opponents of Strauss and applied to individuals who had studied with or were manifestly influenced by him.

Over time, and somewhat reluctantly, the label has been accepted by many if not all of those to whom it has been applied.

The label was originally proposed in a spirit of enmity because it was intended to suggest, at the extreme, something like a cult, or, more moderately, a group with a unified set of views, views that were decidedly not those of mainstream academics in the fields of political science or philosophy. It was meant, in other words, to designate an “unorthodox orthodoxy.” That original attribution of unity of outlook has since given way to recognition that little such unity exists. The so-called Straussians have broken into different, sometimes warring, camps and to a discerning eye embody much less unity of viewpoint than, say, rational choice theorists or inter-national relations realists in political science.

Indeed, it is now a question, as it always was, whether there is any real content to the label Straussian. Contrary to what is often said, those who have followed Strauss are far from single-minded in what they take from him, except perhaps for some threshold or methodological commitments: that philosophy is important; that political philosophy is a viable enterprise; that philosophic texts must be read in a particularly attentive manner; that the distinction between ancients and moderns means something, although what it means is not clear or universally agreed upon. To this list of common characteristics must be added a self-conscious orientation toward, but by no means comprehensive agreement with, Strauss himself. A Straussian then is one who works to a degree that cannot be entirely specified within a framework of Strauss’s questions and chief concepts, and, if the scholar in question is concerned with textual studies, deploys Strauss’s methods of close reading.

According to these very loose criteria, the number of Straussians is quite large and the studies they pursue extremely diverse and varied in character. The large number and the diversity of subject matter make it quite impossible to canvass or catalogue the universe of Straussians, but there are several major lines of cleavage discernable among them. These lines of cleavage often are characterized in terms of East Coast and West Coast, and even Midwest, Straussians. This classification serves some rough and ready purposes, but it is probably more revealing to identify the actual substantive disagreements. Straussians disagree, for example, on how to read Plato’s Phaedrus or how to understand Locke. They disagree over whether the U.S. Supreme Court is a good or bad political institution. More significant, however, are a series of disagreements that are closer to the core of Strauss’s own thinking. These disagreements arise as a result of certain puzzles in Strauss’s thinking concerning the status of religion, the status of morality, and the status of modern liberal democracy.

What is perhaps most striking at the end of the day is how diverse the Straussians are. Strauss himself worried that schools were dangerous things for philosophy for they were breeding grounds for dogmatism. Among the Straussians it would be fair to say that intellectual vigor and disagreement are more apparent than hardening of the intellectual arteries. This result is largely the outcome of Strauss’s way of presenting his thought. To the chagrin of the professionals, he left much unsaid and thus left ambiguities and puzzles. His aim was not to transform the world, but to understand it, and to encourage the young, the ones he called “the puppies of the race,” toward philosophy. The vibrant disagreements among the Straussians are testimony to the degree to which he succeeded in not inspiring a set of dogmas and orthodoxies that would straitjacket those who follow him.

Bibliography:

Deutsch, Kenneth L., and John A. Murley, eds. Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.
Pangle,Thomas L. Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2006.
Smith, Steven B., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Zuckert, Catherine, and Michael Zuckert. The Truth about Leo Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

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