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From Heresy to Nature: Leo Strauss’s History of Modern Epicureanism

Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft

in Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism

Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, with his paper “From Heresy to Nature: Leo Strauss’s History of Modern Epicureanism,” traces the varying roles of the “Epicurean” throughout Strauss’s ... More

Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, with his paper “From Heresy to Nature: Leo Strauss’s History of Modern Epicureanism,” traces the varying roles of the “Epicurean” throughout Strauss’s corpus. Wurgaft shows that, despite Strauss’s leanings towards and frequent association with Platonism, Epicureanism nonetheless plays a substantial role in defining his conception of philosophy. In particular, Strauss’s early reflection on Epicureanism as heretical religious critique seems to bear a certain attraction (if only by implication) for Strauss, who denies philosophers the ability to submit to the “salutary law” of religion. At the heart of this attraction lies a particular cross-linguistic pun: apikores (Hbr. “heretic”) phonetically (and perhaps etymologically) suggests Epicurean.Less

Leo Strauss’s Machiavelli and the Querelle between the Few and the Many

John P. McCormick

in Reading Machiavelli

This chapter analyzes Leo Strauss' engagement with the democratic elements of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought; specifically, Machiavelli's self-avowed departure from the ancients in favoring ... More

This chapter analyzes Leo Strauss' engagement with the democratic elements of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought; specifically, Machiavelli's self-avowed departure from the ancients in favoring the political judgment and participation of the many over the few, and in recommending the people, rather than the nobles, as the ultimate foundation for political authority. It identifies several of Strauss' misinterpretations of Machiavelli's democratic, anti-elitist republicanism and explores tensions and discrepancies within Strauss' reconstruction of Machiavelli's political-philosophical project. Furthermore, Strauss exaggerates Machiavelli's criticisms of peoples and underplays his criticisms of the nobilities within republics. Strauss marshals instances of elite-popular interactions in the Discourses that purportedly demonstrate Machiavelli's preference for elite intervention and manipulation over popular participation and judgment.Less

Beyond Strauss, Lies and the War in Iraq: A Critique of Neoconservatism

Patricia Owens

in Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Arendt articulated the dangers of moralism in the political realm that avoids realist cynicism. She is better placed to challenge the neoconservative vision of international affairs, ideological ... More

Arendt articulated the dangers of moralism in the political realm that avoids realist cynicism. She is better placed to challenge the neoconservative vision of international affairs, ideological conviction, and their relationship to democratic society. Reading Arendt against Leo Strauss suggests that the fundamental problem with neoconservative ideology concerns its understanding of the place of philosophy in the public realm, the relationship between political thought and practice, ideas, and action. This sheds light on contemporary neoconservative claims about the power of ideas to change the world (through the invasion and occupation of Iraq), and widespread, but misguided, claims about their propensity to condone political lies. There is always a temptation to lie in politics because the lie is an intervention into the common world. This is only made worse by ideological thinking. Neoconservatives may be experts at selling wars but seem less adept at winning them.Less

Leo Strauss and American Conservative Thought and Politics

Nathan Tarcov

in American Conservatism: NOMOS LVI

This chapter determines Leo Strauss’s own stance toward American conservative thought and politics. Strauss addresses American conservatism most explicitly and extensively in his preface to ... More

This chapter determines Leo Strauss’s own stance toward American conservative thought and politics. Strauss addresses American conservatism most explicitly and extensively in his preface to Liberalism, Ancient and Modern. He notes that liberalism and conservatism have a common basis in liberal democracy and therefore share an antagonism to Communism. Elsewhere in that book, Strauss affirms that the most important concern for political scientists in his time would not be the opposition between liberalism and conservatism but “the qualitative difference which amounts to a conflict, between liberal democracy and Communism.” Nonetheless, he discerns a profound difference between liberal and conservative opposition to Communism. The chapter then studies the possible implications of his thought for American conservative thought and politics.Less

A Republic of Letters in the Modern Age

Bradley J. Birzer

in Russell Kirk: American Conservative

This chapter examines Kirk’s friendships with Robert Nisbet, Leo Strauss, Flannery O’Connor, Eric Voegelin, and Ray Bradbury. It also tells the disastrous story of Kirk’s creation and editing of a ... More

This chapter examines Kirk’s friendships with Robert Nisbet, Leo Strauss, Flannery O’Connor, Eric Voegelin, and Ray Bradbury. It also tells the disastrous story of Kirk’s creation and editing of a nonideological journal of thought and scholarship, Modern Age, only to be thwarted by bigotry and editorial disagreements with the publisher.Less

The Renewal of Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion: On the Intention of Leo Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli

Heinrich Meier

in Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion

This chapter studies Leo Strauss's most complex and controversial book, Thoughts on Machiavelli. Strauss—who introduced the term “political philosophy” into philosophic discussion—links in his ... More

This chapter studies Leo Strauss's most complex and controversial book, Thoughts on Machiavelli. Strauss—who introduced the term “political philosophy” into philosophic discussion—links in his longest work the problem of Socrates, which designates the starting point of political philosophy, with the problem of Machiavelli, which names the beginning of modern political philosophy. Between Socrates and Machiavelli stands the theological and the political challenges of revealed religion, about which Strauss has presented with Thoughts on Machiavelli the most astonishing treatise. It concerns first the historical answer to the altered political situation that the rule of revealed religion created. Above all, however, it pertains to the philosophic answer to the challenge implied by the claim of truth of revealed religion.Less

Historicism, Judgment, and the Limits of Liberalism: The Case of Leo Strauss

Linda M. G. Zerilli

in A Democratic Theory of Judgment

Examines Leo Strauss's well-know critique of historicism with an eye to his central concern with judgment and the easy acceptance of authority in the absence of reasons. By contrast with much of the ... More

Examines Leo Strauss's well-know critique of historicism with an eye to his central concern with judgment and the easy acceptance of authority in the absence of reasons. By contrast with much of the polemic surrounding Strauss and his influence on neoconservative thinkers blamed for the foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration, the chapter tries to recover from Strauss a clearer idea of what critical judgment would be. Like Arendt, Strauss accepts the fact that the thread of tradition has been broken and there is no way back to older forms of political or theological authority. Hence, the capacity to judge critically and reflectively comes into its own in modernity. Unlike Arendt, he cannot quite bring himself to imagine that ordinary citizens would be capable of a practice of judgment that did not resort to a modern version of Plato's "noble lie."Less

Spinoza and Liberal Culture: Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt

Victoria Kahn

in The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts

This chapter explores Leo Strauss’s reading of Spinoza in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. It then argues that Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise offers a critique of political theology that is ... More

This chapter explores Leo Strauss’s reading of Spinoza in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. It then argues that Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise offers a critique of political theology that is influenced by Machiavelli’s notion of civil religion. Finally, it suggests that Spinoza advances a notion of textuality that has much in common with the modern notion that literature enacts the critique of ideology.Less

Introduction: Why Strauss, Why Now?

in Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism

This chapter focuses on Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish émigré and the product of the pre-World War I Gymnasium. Strauss studied at several universities, finally taking his doctorate at Hamburg in 1921. ... More

This chapter focuses on Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish émigré and the product of the pre-World War I Gymnasium. Strauss studied at several universities, finally taking his doctorate at Hamburg in 1921. He was a research assistant at an institute for Jewish research in Berlin before leaving Germany in 1932 to settle first in England and later in the United States, where he taught principally at the New School for Social Research in New York and later at the University of Chicago. It was during his period in Chicago that Strauss had his greatest influence. He was, by most accounts, a compelling teacher, and, like all good teachers, attracted students, many of whom came to regard themselves as part of a distinctive school. By the time of his death in 1973, Strauss had written more than a dozen books and around one hundred articles and reviews.Less

Destruktion or Recovery? On Strauss's Critique of Heidegger

in Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism

The one partial exception to Strauss's generally curt treatment of German philosophy is Martin Heidegger. He described how, upon hearing Heidegger in 1922, he slowly came to recognize that Heidegger ... More

The one partial exception to Strauss's generally curt treatment of German philosophy is Martin Heidegger. He described how, upon hearing Heidegger in 1922, he slowly came to recognize that Heidegger was preparing a “revolution” in thought the likes of which had not been experienced since Hegel. Heidegger brought to the study of philosophy a “passion” for the problems which showed up the “lostness” and emptiness of the then-regnant academic orthodoxies, including that of his erstwhile dissertation adviser, the neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer. The meaning of Heidegger's “radical historicism” was not void of political consequences. Heidegger was not the only thinker but certainly the greatest thinker to embrace Hitler's 1933 revolution. The “Heidegger problem” has become something of a public scandal, one that Strauss pointed to long ago. “One is bound to misunderstand Heidegger's thought radically,” he wrote, if one does not see its “intimate connection” to the events of 1933.Less

Strauss's America

in Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism

This chapter discusses the philosophical significance of politics in Strauss's view. The expression “political philosophy” has two distinct meanings: it can mean the philosophical examination of ... More

This chapter discusses the philosophical significance of politics in Strauss's view. The expression “political philosophy” has two distinct meanings: it can mean the philosophical examination of politics or it can mean the political treatment of philosophy. In the first case, it denotes an object of inquiry and in the second, a distinctive manner of writing or rhetoric. Strauss wrote to strengthen those aspects of American public life that would prevent constitutional democracy from devolving into mass democracy. At its most basic level, he treated the American polity as a product of modernity and the Enlightenment. In Natural Right and History, his first book to address a large audience of American social scientists, Strauss accepts the view that Locke's theory of property is at the root of the modern “spirit of capitalism.” He also acknowledges that contemporary tyranny has its source in the Machiavellian dictum that the ends justify the means.Less

Political Theology and Liberal Culture: Strauss, Schmitt, Spinoza, and Arendt

Victoria Kahn

in Political Theology and Early Modernity

This chapter explores the meaning of culture and why it was anathema to both defenders (e.g., Schmitt) and critics (e.g., Strauss) of political theology in early twentieth-century Germany. It ... More

This chapter explores the meaning of culture and why it was anathema to both defenders (e.g., Schmitt) and critics (e.g., Strauss) of political theology in early twentieth-century Germany. It suggests that culture was seen by these writers as a product of early modern hermeneutics and the Enlightenment critique of religion. While its critics saw culture as a symptom of historicism and relativism, its defenders made culture a bulwark against political theology. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 briefly discusses the stakes of the idea of culture in early twentieth-century debates about history and political theology. Section 2 offers an account of the early work of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss on political theology and its relation to modern culture. Section 3 reads Spinoza as elaborating a defense of culture in response to Strauss. Finally, Section 4 looks at a modern defense of the idea of culture (that of Hannah Arendt) and a modern defense of the relevance of Spinoza for thinking about literature (Althusser and Macherey), both of which help us to understand what it might mean to think of literary culture as a bulwark against political theology and a model of political judgment.Less

Straussians

Michael P. Zuckert and Catherine H. Zuckert

in Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy

More than most thinkers of the 20th Century, Leo Strauss polarized his audience. Thus has arisen the phenomenon, nearly unique among the century’s academic thinkers, of a recognized group of ... More

More than most thinkers of the 20th Century, Leo Strauss polarized his audience. Thus has arisen the phenomenon, nearly unique among the century’s academic thinkers, of a recognized group of “followers,” called “Straussians.” But that label suggests much greater unity than exists among those influenced by Strauss. The number and the diversity of subject matter studied make it impossible to canvass or catalogue the universe of “Straussians.” The principle of selection to be followed here is to focus on some of the major lines of cleavage discernible among the “Straussians.” The disagreements in question here center on certain puzzles or now-familiar ambiguities in Strauss’s thinking. The two most fundamental puzzles are: (1) what is the status of religion, or the problem of Athens and Jerusalem, and (2) what is the status of morality, or the problem of Plato and Aristotle.Less

How Jewish was Leo Strauss?

in Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism

The author insists that the political problems faced by Jews are different from those faced by any other people. At the risk of arbitrariness, it is suggested that Jewish political thought is ... More

The author insists that the political problems faced by Jews are different from those faced by any other people. At the risk of arbitrariness, it is suggested that Jewish political thought is uniquely marked by a preoccupation with such themes as exile, homelessness, and marginality. The position of Jews in modern, enlightened, liberal society is the most tangible contemporary expression of the theologico-political problem. Strauss traces his own preoccupation with this problem back to his experiences as “a young Jew born and raised in Germany.” For him, this problem became a conflict between assimilation and eventual absorption in a universal humanity, or the assertion of a stubborn loyalty to a particular tradition. When the particular tradition in question claims divine or revealed origins, as Judaism does, this conflict is made all the more difficult.Less

Leo Strauss's Platonic Liberalism

in Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism

The conjunction of the terms “Platonic” and “liberalism” may seem oxymoronic. The most influential interpretation of Plato in the second half of the twentieth century held him to be an intransigent ... More

The conjunction of the terms “Platonic” and “liberalism” may seem oxymoronic. The most influential interpretation of Plato in the second half of the twentieth century held him to be an intransigent enemy of liberalism and the “open society.” His harsh proposals for a closed caste system and for the censorship of poetry and literature, his radical measures to eliminate the family and private property, and his investiture of political authority in an all-wise and all-powerful philosopher-king must strike even a sympathetic reader as radically opposed to liberal beliefs in freedom of thought and expression, a robust sphere of civil society and private life, the importance of limited constitutional government supported by a system of checks and balances, and a skeptical disposition toward the rule of experts. Critics of Strauss's Plato have attacked the methodological premises of Straussian hermeneutics. The method of esoteric reading, taken originally from the Jewish and Arabic Platonists of the middle ages, is said to be inherently arbitrary and nonverifiable.Less

Reviving Western Civilization from Its Roots: Strauss’s Return to Premodern Thought

Michael P. Zuckert and Catherine H. Zuckert

in Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy

Among the most widely known of Strauss’s ideas was his call for a return to pre-modern thought. That call for return was understood by him to stand in contrast to the intellectual orientation of our ... More

Among the most widely known of Strauss’s ideas was his call for a return to pre-modern thought. That call for return was understood by him to stand in contrast to the intellectual orientation of our day toward progress. He made the contrast between these two orientations thematic in lectures called, appropriately, “Progress or Return?” He made two main points. He held, first, that the modern idea of progress is fundamentally incoherent, because based on an untenable combination of concepts drawn from the two fundamentally incompatible “roots” of the Western tradition: ancient or classical philosophy and Biblical revelation. Second, in light of the failure of the modern project, he urged his contemporaries to return to and “live the tension between” the two “roots” of the Western tradition, each of which is more coherent than later attempts to synthesize them.Less

Exotericism Exposed: Letters to Jacob Klein

Laurence Lampert

in The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss

Strauss’s 1938-39 letters to Jacob Klein contain the most explicit examples of exoteric writing in all of Strauss’s work. Strauss also discusses directly the explosive character of a practice that ... More

Strauss’s 1938-39 letters to Jacob Klein contain the most explicit examples of exoteric writing in all of Strauss’s work. Strauss also discusses directly the explosive character of a practice that shows the great thinkers to be systematic dissemblers who misrepresent their true views for rational reasons. His discoveries begin with Maimonides and lead back to the Greek teachers of the later practitioners of exotericism. Strauss’s letters treat the historians Herodotus and Thucydides and then Xenophon who takes on special importance for Strauss. Plato becomes a constant presence in the letters as the master practitioner of the writing art. Xenophon and Plato provide dual access to their teacher Socrates who becomes the uniquely important source of philosophic exotericism. Strauss shows how Hesiod practices the exoteric art and he suspects the same of Homer. Theological-political themes are of special importance, as is the issue of the rational status of morality.Less