Heinrich Meier 's careful and illuminating study of the relation between Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss should come as something of a revelation to many* Through a painstaking analysis of the three editions of Schmitt's influential Concept of the Political, Meier uncovers a heretofore largely overlooked “dialogue,” albeit one partly conducted “in absentia.”

As Meier observes Schmitt is one of a relatively small number of contemporaries whose work Strauss publicly reviewed. The first edition of Schmitt's essay appeared in 1927; a second was published in 1932, and it is to this that Strauss's 1932 “Comments” is (openly) addressed. A second was published in 1932. A third edition, published in 1933, presents, on Meier's reading, Schmitt's implicit response. For a variety of reasons, not the least being Schmitt's increasing involvement with the National Socialists, Strauss's role as interlocutor went largely unacknowledged, it being “impossible,” as Strauss would later write, for Schmitt to admit his “dependence on a Jew” (p. 138).