These two lectures by Leo Strauss, “What Can We Learn from Political Theory?” delivered in July 1942, and “The Re-education of Axis Countries Concerning the Jews,” delivered November 7, 1943, include not only Strauss's most elaborate statement about the relation of political philosophy and political practice (in the first), but what may well be his fullest written public statements about matters of contemporary foreign policy. Both lectures obviously were carefully considered, composed, and corrected, but Strauss did not attempt to publish either. He may have had second thoughts about some of the arguments he advanced in these lectures, or he may simply have chosen to concentrate his literary efforts elsewhere. Other lectures he prepared during this period but did not publish himself have since been published: “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” delivered April 1940 at Syracuse University, and “Reason and Revelation,” delivered January 1948 at Hartford Theological Seminary, both in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (Cambridge University Press, 2006); “German Nihilism,” delivered to the New School's General Seminar February 26, 1941, is in Interpretation 26:3 (Spring 1999).

The title of this lecture is not entirely of my own choosing. I do not like very much the term political theory; I would prefer to speak of political philosophy. Since this terminological question is not entirely verbal, I beg leave to say a few words about it.

The Cyropaedia is a biographical account of what Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, knew in order to rule human beings. This essay focuses on Cyrus's twofold Persian education, which consisted of his conventional and heterodox educations. The former emphasized the rule of law, while the latter stressed the need for absolute rule by a single leader. In order to evaluate Cyrus's revolution, one must grasp the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Persian regime that educated him, especially in light of the impressive but short-lived empire he founded. In the end, the Cyropaedia unfolds as a deeply ironic work. Despite Cyrus's prodigious wisdom, the empire he founded was for Xenophon neither unequivocally lasting nor good. In this sense, Xenophon's own knowledge rivals and supercedes that of Cyrus, insofar as Xenophon realized that wisdom is no match for the chaotic world of politics, a sobering and realistic outlook still applicable today.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison agreed in the Federalist that the Constitution authorizes both political and judicial processes to define and safeguard the boundaries of federalism, but disagreed on public opinion's role in a republic and how to cultivate public sentiment for the Constitution. Hamilton preferred resolving intergovernmental disputes via political and public processes because public endorsement would legitimize broad national powers. Madison favored building public sentiment for the Constitution through strict limits on the national government enforced in part by the judiciary. He thought resolving intergovernmental disputes via public processes would confirm widespread suspicions of imperium in imperio and might provoke a popular backlash that would upset the constitutional equilibrium and undermine even legitimate national powers. This difference foreshadows Hamilton and Madison's later constitutional disagreements, reveals fundamental ambiguities in America's federal system, and confirms the need to consider how institutions and policies affect public sentiment for the constitutional order.

Through his modern “Yankee,” Mark Twain reveals to his readers the underlying desire to overcome the very material world he seems to want to instantiate. Although the Yankee seems a modern man who simply wants to create the conditions in Arthurian England by which his body will be most comfortable, both his zeal for this project and the trajectory of his soul's course during the book betray an underlying hope to overcome his “mortal coil” through first technological and then political projects. In charting the impetus and evolution of the Yankee's psychology for us, Twain teaches us much about the nature of the “modern project”—its underlying hopes and its potential for dangerous, even totalitarian, excesses. As appealing as the starkly contrasting Arthurians might be, given this insight, Twain does not ultimately endorse this position but shows that its explicit claim does not ultimately satisfy our desire for noninstrumental goods.

Popular and prize-winning writer Norman Mailer has advanced a view of American politics and society that he calls “left conservatism.” This paper analyzes elements of Mailer's critique and describes how the parts fit together. Special attention is given to his interpretation of economic history and social psychology, his vision of moral health that he associates with the term “hipster,” and his fear of a new political mentality in the United States that he conveys through a neologism, the “wad.” The paper closes with a sketch of the ways Mailer's left conservatism both dovetails with and departs from the concerns and arguments of other contemporary American conservative thinkers.