Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editors' Introduction: The Question of Modernity Meets the Question of Leo Strauss
- Why Leo Strauss? Four Answers and One Consideration concerning the Uses and Disadvantages of the School for the Philosophical Life
- Leo Strauss and the Contemporary Return to Political Philosophy
- Philosophy as the Right Way of Life in Natural Right and History
- The Philosopher's Ancient Clothes: Leo Strauss on Philosophy and Poetry
- Leo Strauss as Erzieher: The Defense of the Philosophical Life or the Defense of Life Against Philosophy?
- Modern Challenges – Platonic Responses: Strauss, Arendt, Voegelin
- Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss on Modernity, Secularization, and Nihilism
- Remarks on the Strauss-Kojève Dialogue and its Presuppositions
- Carl Schmitt and his Critic
- Postmodernism and the Art of Writing: The Importance of Leo Strauss for the 21st Century
- Leo Strauss's Gynaikologia
- Contributors
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Leo Strauss as Erzieher: The Defense of the Philosophical Life or the Defense of Life Against Philosophy?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editors' Introduction: The Question of Modernity Meets the Question of Leo Strauss
- Why Leo Strauss? Four Answers and One Consideration concerning the Uses and Disadvantages of the School for the Philosophical Life
- Leo Strauss and the Contemporary Return to Political Philosophy
- Philosophy as the Right Way of Life in Natural Right and History
- The Philosopher's Ancient Clothes: Leo Strauss on Philosophy and Poetry
- Leo Strauss as Erzieher: The Defense of the Philosophical Life or the Defense of Life Against Philosophy?
- Modern Challenges – Platonic Responses: Strauss, Arendt, Voegelin
- Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss on Modernity, Secularization, and Nihilism
- Remarks on the Strauss-Kojève Dialogue and its Presuppositions
- Carl Schmitt and his Critic
- Postmodernism and the Art of Writing: The Importance of Leo Strauss for the 21st Century
- Leo Strauss's Gynaikologia
- Contributors
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
As we have all experienced it there is a growing interest in the legacy of Leo Strauss. This is partly due to some political matters. Especially since the beginning of the so-called War on Terror, when the intellectual as well as personal background of the American foreign policy was being meticulously investigated, many significant books have been published in order to explain the core of the Straussian thought or reveal a putative scale of Leo Strauss's influence on academic and also political discourse. At the same time the author of the Natural Right and History had been recognized as a godfather of the neo-conservative movement and this meant a despicable figure from the point of view of most of those who found themselves in opposition to some decisions coming from Washington. There was even a kind of accusation leveled against Leo Strauss that he was a nihilist, or someone akin to the Grand Inquisitor, who deliberately concealed his real face of an extremely modern thinker, and who denied any standards of judgment concerning political life preparing, instead, a set of “noble lies” addressed to the masses. In response to this, there has emerged a powerful defense of a Straussian position, especially on the part of those who identify themselves with a school of political thinking of which Strauss was a founder, telling now what they consider to be the truth about his work, that it was animated by a steady adherence to liberal democracy accompanied by a constant effort to revive the political philosophy of the classics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modernity and What Has Been LostConsiderations on the Legacy of Leo Strauss, pp. 73 - 82Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2010