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
The Philosopher's Ancient Clothes: Leo Strauss on Philosophy and Poetry
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
Underlying and animating Leo Strauss's work, three “quarrels” or tensions are often distinguished: 1) between Athens and Jerusalem, or reason and revelation; 2) between Ancients and Moderns; and 3) between philosophy and poetry. The latter refers to a well-known passage in Plato's Republic, where Socrates criticizes poetry for its doubtful relationship to the truth, as well as for its deleterious effects on human life. While most scholarship has focused on the first two quarrels, the third has received proportionally less attention. This is somewhat surprising, given what is often regarded as one of Strauss's most innovative and most controversial accomplishments: his rediscovery of the “art of writing” of pre-modern and early modern authors. When it comes to writing, it would seem that at least the relationship between philosophy and poetry merits closer scrutiny. In this paper, I will argue that understanding the philosophic ramifications of Strauss's rediscovery does indeed require us to be more attentive to the third quarrel in his work. The first part (sections 1 and 2) will argue that Strauss himself, from the very beginning, took it no less seriously than the other two quarrels. In the second part (sections 3 and 4), I will try to show that, as his understanding of the subject deepened, he became increasingly doubtful whether what Plato called the “ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy” really is a quarrel. As he came to see it, ancient philosophy was fundamentally indebted to ancient poetry, not only as regards form, but also with regard to content.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Modernity and What Has Been LostConsiderations on the Legacy of Leo Strauss, pp. 53 - 72Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2010