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Leo Strauss on Social and Natural Science: Two Previously Unpublished Papers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2014
Extract
The two papers published here for the first time were written by Leo Strauss (1899–1973) in or around 1945, when he was teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City. One of Strauss's colleagues at the New School was Kurt Riezler (1882–1955). Riezler had earned a PhD in classics, but had an even more distinguished career as a practical politician; he had been a high-ranking cabinet member in both Imperial and Weimar Germany and a drafter of the Weimar constitution. He had wide-ranging scholarly interests, having written books on the theoretical foundations of politics, art, ancient philosophy, and the fundamental structure of social life. Because they shared an interest in the foundations of social science, he and Strauss co-taught a couple of courses in the mid-1940s (on Aristotle's De anima and Descartes's Passions of the Soul [along with Solomon Asch], and on Plato's Theaetetus [along with Alexandre Koyré]). Strauss indicated the enduring respect he had for Riezler in a eulogy he wrote for him in 1955 and republished as the concluding essay in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies in 1959.
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References
1 Riezler, Kurt, “Some Critical Remarks on Man's Science of Man,” Social Research 12, no. 4 (1945): 481–505Google Scholar.
2 Strauss had written by hand but then crossed out the following sentence: “What is essential is that in dictatorship the idiosyncrasies of a single man have a terrible effect.”
3 Strauss has crossed out “and.”
4 The square brackets are Strauss's.
5 “An anthropologist reports that the Andaman Islanders collect (empty) tin cans. He can be said to describe the life of the Andaman Islanders in terms of his own environment. But these are tin cans, ‘objectively’; they are manufactured in Philadelphia, as tin cans. Yes, but this kind of objectivity is irrelevant. They are what they are in the environment of the Andaman Islanders—rare, round, shiny objects—by virtue of the role they play in Andaman life” (Riezler, “Some Critical Remarks,” 490).
6 A handwritten “famous” replaces a crossed out “[a]n earlier.”
7 This reference to Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme, act II, scene 4 has been added by hand.
8 The square brackets are Strauss's.
9 The square brackets are Strauss's.
10 Strauss has crossed out “Jo” and “Jesaya.” Strauss may be referring to Joshua (of Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua) as a peak in the sense of entering the promised land as Moses's successor; another possibility is that the reference is to Jesus.
11 Strauss has crossed out “between.”
12 Numbers in parentheses indicate pages in Riezler article cited above, note 1. A footnote marked by an “x” next to the title reads (editorial insertions in brackets): “cf. Summer Course on Historicism sheet 4. cf. Landgrebe [The World as a Phenomenological Problem, 38–48] in the phenomenological journal [Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1, no. 1 (Sept. 1940)Google Scholar], 47, p[aragraph] 1 etc.: the trans-historical invariants as also historicist (‘Welt’ [world], ‘Unendlichkeit’ [infinity]…)—fundamentally because modern natural science is assumed (implied in idea of Verstehen [understanding] ≠ unverständliche Natur [unintelligible nature]) → the hidden cosmological foundation: no cosmologically relevant position.” In the upper left corner: “24–26.12.1945; cf. [Aquinas], S[umma] Th[eologica] I q. 75.78.84 princ. [beginning].”
13 “Restoration to its integrity,” a term of Roman contract law.
14 Strauss has “a” instead of “the one.”
15 See What Is Political Philosophy?, 72.
16 Strauss has crossed out “For if.”
17 Square brackets by Strauss.
18 Strauss typed over the words “to begin” after “consider.”
19 Strauss has, either typed or handwritten, both “the Andaman” and “Riezler's Andaman.”
20 Strauss has crossed out “any.”
21 E.g., Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, sections 1 and 25; “Absolute Knowledge,” section 803.
22 The word “to” is repeated.
23 Perhaps a reference to Husserl, Edmund, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, Part I, section 3.
24 “See Advancement of Learning, Everyman's Library ed., pp. 85, 88, and 94 [Book II, chap. 6, par. 1]. Cf. also the plan of Hobbes's De homine. Cf. on the other hand Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica I-II, Prologue [‘Since, as Damascene states (De Fide Orthod. ii. 12), man is said to be made to God's image, in so far as the image implies an intelligent being endowed with free will and self-movement: now that we have treated of the exemplar, i.e., God, and of those things which came forth from the power of God in accordance with His will; it remains for us to treat of His image, i.e., man, inasmuch as he too is the principle of his actions, as having free will and control of his actions’].”
25 Strauss previously had “color” for this and the next occurrence of “body.”
26 The words that follow are handwritten.