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Leo Strauss [a] (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy.Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States.
History of Political Philosophy is a textbook edited by American political philosophers Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. The book is intended primarily to introduce undergraduate students of political science to political philosophy. It is currently in its third edition.
Thoughts on Machiavelli is a book by Leo Strauss first published in 1958. The book is a collection of lectures he gave at the University of Chicago in which he dissects the work of Niccolò Machiavelli. The book contains commentary on Machiavelli's The Prince and the Discourses on Livy. [1]
For Strauss, political community is defined by convictions about justice and happiness rather than by sovereignty and force. A classical liberal, he repudiated the philosophy of John Locke as a bridge to 20th-century historicism and nihilism and instead defended liberal democracy as closer to the spirit of the classics than other modern regimes ...
In the essay, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss posits that information needs to be kept secret from the masses by "writing between the lines". However, this seems like a false premise, as most authors Strauss refers to in his work lived in times when only the social elites were literate enough to understand works of philosophy. [10]
Leo Strauss famously rejected modernity, mostly on the grounds of what he perceived to be modern political philosophy's excessive self-sufficiency of reason and flawed philosophical grounds for moral and political normativity. He argued instead that we should return to pre-modern thinkers for answers to contemporary issues.
Leo Strauss used the term historicism and reportedly termed it the single greatest threat to intellectual freedom insofar as it denies any attempt to address injustice-pure-and-simple (such is the significance of historicism's rejection of "natural right" or "right by nature"). Strauss argued that historicism "rejects political philosophy ...
The Concept of the Political was first published in 1932 by Duncker & Humblot (Munich). It was an elaboration of a journal article of the same title, published in 1927. [7] The 1932 version has significant, and controversial, revisions, likely made in response to the reaction of Leo Strauss. [6]