Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was a German-born Jewish American political philosopher who has been called the father of neoconservatism.

The neoconservative Irving Kristol has acknowledged Strauss's influence. Ronald Bailey writes in an article for Reason magazine:

Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay. "What made him [Strauss] so controversial within the academic community was his disbelief in the Enlightenment dogma that 'the truth will make men free.'" Kristol adds that "Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some [emphasis Kristol's] minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences."

Kristol agrees with this view. "There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people," he says in an interview. "There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."

Biographical Information

History

Strauss was heavily influenced by his German contemporaries, Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. With Schmitt's help he secured a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study in Paris, which enabled him to escape Germany as the Nazis were coming to power.He ultimately settled in the United States in 1938.

While in Paris in 1933 he wrote a letter to his friend Karl Löwith which underlined the authoritarian nature of his political philosophy at this time:

And, what concerns this matter: the fact that the new right-wing Germany does not tolerate us says nothing against the principles of the right. To the contrary: only from the principles of the right, that is from fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles, is it possible with seemliness, that is, without resort to the ludicrous and despicable appeal to the droits imprescriptibles de l’homme(5) to protest against the shabby abomination.(6) I am reading Caesar’s Commentaries with deep understanding, and I think of Virgil’s Tu regere imperio… parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.(7) There is no reason to crawl to the cross, neither to the cross of liberalism, as long as somewhere in the world there is a glimmer of the spark of the Roman thought. And even then: rather than any cross, I’ll take the ghetto.

As Scott Horton has noted, Strauss was writing at a time when liberalism was a marginal force in Weimar Germany.

Influence

In the mid-1990s, Political theorist Shadia Drury noted that a number of students and admirers of Strauss had become leading spokesmen of the American Conservative movement, including Harry V. Jaffa, Joseph Cropsey, Allan Bloom, Harvey Mansfield, Willmoore Kendall, and Irving Kristol.

According to Drury, figures on the American political scene influenced by Strauss, included Paul Wolfowitz, Caspar Weinberger, Seth Cropsey, John T. Agresto, Carnes Lord, Alan Keyes, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, William Bennett and William Kristol.

Neoconservatives Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt sought in their 1999 essay Leo Strauss and the world of intelligence to apply the philosopher's ideas to the theory of intelligence analysis.

According to Thomas J. DiLorenzo, other influential Straussians include William Allen, Joseph Bessette, Mark Blitz, David Epstein, Charles Fairbanks, Robert Goldwin, Michael Mablin, John Marini, Ken Masugi, Gary McDowell, James Nichols, Ralph Rossum, Steven Schlesinger, Jeffrey Schram, Nathan Tarcov, Michael Uhlman, Jeffery Wallin, Bradford Wilson, Leon Kass, John Waters, Francis Fukuyama and Robert Kagan.

Publications, Resources and Notes

Resources

• Jim Lobe The Strong Must Rule the Weak: A Philosopher for an Empire Foreign Policy In Focus | May 12, 2003

Articles, books, and parts of books (online)

• Brague, Rémi. Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss's "Muslim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy, Poetics Today 19.2 (Summer 1998): 235–59.
• Drury, Shadia B. "Leo Strauss and the Neoconservatives". Evatt Foundation, September 11, 2004.
• ———. "The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss", Political Theory 13, no. 3 (Aug 1985): 315–337.
• ———. "Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor". Free Inquiry 24, no. 4 (June 2004).
• ———. "Strauss, Leo (1899–1973)". Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (New York: Routledge, 1998). Accessed October 5, 2007.
• Gottfried, Paul. "Strauss and the Straussians". Humanitas 18.1&2 (2005): 26–29.
• Levine, Peter. "A 'Right' Nietzschean: Leo Strauss and his Followers". 152–67 in Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. Inc. notes to chap. 8: 260–65. (Published version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation; online posting on author's personal website, PeterLevine.ws.)
• Novak, David Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisited
• Perreau-Saussine, Emile. "Athéisme et politique". Critique n° 728–729 (Jan–Feb 2008): 121–35.
• Piccinini, Irene Abigail. "Leo Strauss and Hermann Cohen's "arch-enemy:" a quasi-Cohenian apology of Baruch Spinoza" The Journal of Textual Reasoning 3.1 (June 2004).
• Pippin, Robert B. "The Modern World of Leo Strauss". Political Theory 20.3 (August 1992): 448–72.
• Robertson, Neil G. "The Closing of the Early Modern Mind: Leo Strauss and Early Modern Political Thought". Animus: A Philosophical Journal for Our Time 3 (1998). [Vol. 3 (1998) is on Modernity.]
• Ryn, Claes G. "Leo Strauss and History: The Philosopher As Conspirator". Humanitas 18.1&2 (2005): 31–58.
• Smith, Gregory Bruce. "Leo Strauss and the Straussians: An Anti-Democratic Cult?" Political Science and Politics 30.2 (June 1997): 180–89.
• Verskin, Alan. "Reading Strauss on Maimonides: A New Approach". Journal of Textual Reasoning 3, no. 1 (June 2004).
• West, Thomas G. "Jaffa Versus Mansfield: Does America Have a Constitutional or a 'Declaration of Independence' Soul?" Perspectives on Political Science 31 (September 2002). "Jaffa Versus Mansfield". ("What were the original principles of the American Constitution? Are those principles true?") Online posting. The Claremont Institute, November 29, 2002. Accessed June 1, 2007.
• Xenos, Nicholas. "Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror". Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture 3.2 (Spring 2004): 1–19. (Printable PDF.)
• Zuckert, Catherine, and Michael Zuckert. "Introduction: Mr. Strauss Goes to Washington?" 1–26 in The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. ISBN 978-0-226-99332-4. Online posting of "Excerpt" (1–20), www.press.uchicago.edu. (Book website updated May 21, 2007. Accessed June 1, 2007.)

Related commentary, other articles, and parts of books (online)

• Ashbrook, Tom, with guests Harvey Mansfield, Shadia B. Drury, and Jack Beatty. "Leo Strauss and the American Right". On Point. WBUR Radio (Boston, Massachusetts), May 15, 2003. Accessed May 26, 2007. (Interviews. Inc. audio link to radio program.)
• Barry, Tom. "Leo Strauss and Intelligence Strategy". International Relations Center, February 12, 2004. Accessed June 1, 2007.
• Berkowitz, Peter. What Hath Strauss Wrought? Weekly Standard, June 2, 2003.
• Cronkrite, Al. "Judeo-Christian Decadence at the Fount of Power". EtherZone, May 15, 2003.
• Desch, Michael C. What Would Strauss Do, The American Conservative, 17 January 2005.</ref>
• Doliner, Michael. Book Review: Leo Strauss and the American Right. Swans.com, October 10, 2005.
• Drury, Shadia B., and Matthew Rothschild. "Political Ideas of Leo Strauss". Interview of Shadia Drury. Progressive Radio (2005).
• Drury, Shadia B., and Michael Enright. "The New Machiavelli: Leo Strauss and the Politics of Fear". Interview of Shadia Drury. CBC, April 27, 2005.
• Franchon, Alain, and Daniel Vernet. "The Strategist and the Philosopher: Leo Strauss and Albert Wohlstetter". Trans. (for CounterPunch) Norman Madarasz. Online posting. CounterPunch. June 2, 2003. Originally published in French. Le Monde, April 16, 2003. Rpt. with permission.
• Goldstein, Yoni. "A Platonic Love Affair: Strauss in the White House". Moment (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor undergraduate student publication), Issue 3 (February–March 2004). Cf. Critical Moment; issue 3 of the previous series, entitled Moment (on "Empire"), is not currently available online. (This article was written by an undergraduate student.)
• Hersh, Seymour M. "Selective Intelligence". The New Yorker, May 12, 2003. Accessed June 1, 2007.
• "Leo Strauss". SourceWatch (A project of the Center for Media and Democracy), November 14, 2006. Accessed June 1, 2007.
• Leupp, Gary. "The Philosopher Kings: Leo Strauss and the Neocons". CounterPunch, May 24, 2003.
• Lobe, Jim. "Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception", Alternet, May 2003.
• Madarasz, Norman. "Behind the Neocon Curtain: Plato, Leo Strauss & Allan Bloom". CounterPunch, June 2, 2003.
• McBryde, David. "Leo Strauss". N.d. Accessed June 1, 2007. (Self-published essay posted on author's website.)
• Pfaff, William. The Long Reach of Leo Strauss, International Herald Tribune, May 15, 2003.
• Shulsky, Abram N., and Gary J. Schmitt. "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)". Originally published in Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime. Ed. Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Rpt. Sic Semper Tyrannis 2007 (personal blog of W. Patrick Lang.) N.d. Accessed June 1, 2007.
• Silva, Jim. "Strauss and the Neocon Takeover". The Lompoc Record, February 6, 2006.
• Skidelsky, Edward. "No More Heroes". Prospect, March 2006.
• Wolin, Richard. "Leo Strauss, Judaism, and Liberalism". The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 14, 2006. Accessed May 22, 2007.
• Xenos, Nicholas. Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror