How can Leo Strauss's critique of modernity and his return to tradition, especially Maimonides, help us to save democracy from its inner dangers? In this book, Corine Pelluchon examines Strauss's provocative claim that the conception of man and reason in the thought of the Enlightenment is self-destructive and leads to a new tyranny. Writing in a direct and lucid style, Pelluchon avoids the polemics that have characterized recent debates concerning the links between Strauss and neoconservatives, particularly concerns over Strauss's relation to the extreme right in Germany. Instead she aims to demystify the origins of Strauss's thought and present his relationship to German and Jewish thought in the early twentieth century in a manner accessible not just to the small circles devoted to the study of Strauss, but to a larger public. Strauss's critique of modernity is, she argues, constructive; he neither condemns modernity as a whole nor does he desire a retreat back to the Ancients, where slaves existed and women were not considered citizens. The question is to know whether we can learn something from the Ancients and from Maimonides—and not merely about them.

Examines the German and Jewish sources of Strauss’s thought and the extent to which his philosophy can shed light on the crisis of liberal democracy. How can Leo Strauss’s critique of modernity and his return to tradition, especially Maimonides, help us to save democracy from its inner dangers? In this book, Corine Pelluchon examines Strauss’s provocative claim that the conception of man and reason in the thought of the Enlightenment is self-destructive and leads to a new tyranny. Writing in a direct and lucid style, Pelluchon avoids the polemics that have characterized recent debates concerning the links between Strauss and neoconservatives, particularly concerns over Strauss’s relation to the extreme right in Germany. Instead she aims to demystify the origins of Strauss’s thought and present his relationship to German and Jewish thought in the early twentieth century in a manner accessible not just to the small circles devoted to the study of Strauss, but to a larger public. Strauss’s critique of modernity is, she argues, constructive; he neither condemns modernity as a whole nor does he desire a retreat back to the Ancients, where slaves existed and women were not considered citizens. The question is to know whether we can learn something from the Ancients and from Maimonides—and not merely about them.

This concise and accessible introduction to Strauss's thought provides, for wider audience, a bridge to his more complex theoretical work. Editor Pangle has gathered five of Strauss's previously unpublished lectures and five hard-to-find published writings and has arranged them so as to demonstrate the systematic progression of the major themes that underlay Strauss's mature work. "[These essays] display the incomparable insight and remarkable range of knowledge that set Strauss's works apart from any other twentieth-century philosopher's."—Charles R. Kesler, National Review

Liberal democracy is today under unprecedented attack from both the left and the right. Offering a fresh and penetrating examination of how Leo Strauss understood the emergence of liberal democracy and what is necessary to sustain and elevate it, Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education explores Strauss' view of the intimate (and troubling) relation between the philosophic promotion of liberal democracy and the turn to the modern scientific-technological project of the "conquest of nature." Timothy W. Burns explicates the political reasoning behind Strauss' recommendation of reminders of genuine political greatness within democracy over and against the failure of nihilistic youth to recognize it. Elucidating what Strauss envisaged by a liberally-educated sub-political or cultural-level aristocracy—one that could elevate and sustain liberal democracy—and the roles that both philosophy and divine-law traditions should have in that education, Burns also lays out Strauss' frequent (though often tacit) engagement with the thought of Heidegger on these issues.

2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title In this book, Philipp von Wussow argues that the philosophical project of Leo Strauss must be located in the intersection of culture, religion, and the political. Based on archival research on the philosophy of Strauss, von Wussow provides in-depth interpretations of key texts and their larger theoretical contexts. Presenting the necessary background in German-Jewish philosophy of the interwar period, von Wussow then offers detailed accounts and comprehensive interpretations of Strauss's early masterwork, Philosophy and Law, his wartime lecture "German Nihilism," the sources and the scope of Strauss's critique of modern "relativism," and a close commentary on the late text "Jerusalem and Athens." With its rare blend of close reading and larger perspectives, this book is valuable for students of political philosophy, continental thought, and twentieth-century Jewish philosophy alike. It is indispensable as a guide to Strauss's philosophical project, as well as to some of the most intricate details of his writings.

Leo Strauss’s lifelong intellectual mission was to recover ‘classical rationalism’, a pursuit that has made him a controversial figure to this day. While his critics see him as responsible for a troubling anti-democratic strain in modern politics, others argue that his thought is in fact the best defence of responsible democracy. Neil Robertson’s new introduction to Strauss aims to transcend these divides and present a non-partisan account of his thought. He shows how Strauss’ intellectual formation in Weimar Germany and flight from Nazism led him to develop a critique of modernity that tended to support a conservative politics, while embracing a radical sense of what philosophy is and can be. He examines the way in which Strauss built upon the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger in order to show how their 'nihilism' led not to a standpoint beyond western rationality, but to a recovery of its roots. This skillful reconstruction of the coherence and unity of Strauss’ thought is the essential guide for anyone wishing to fully grasp the contribution of one of the most contentious and intriguing figures in 20th century intellectual history.

Proposes a post-Straussian reading of Plato to advance a reconciliation of ancient and modern theories of natural right. Few thinkers of the twentieth century studied the fundamental questions of ethics and politics, or penetrated further into the philosophical sources of the moral relativism of our times, more deeply than Leo Strauss. After Leo Strauss is not yet another attempt to explicate, critique, or defend Strauss. Instead, it encourages us to look in new directions, and to escape certain aspects of Strauss’s powerful influence, in order to revisit classic texts and make our own judgments about what those texts might mean. Tucker Landy proposes a post-Straussian reading of the Platonic dialogues that is non-esoteric yet respectful of their subtle dramatic-pedagogic form and urges us, in a spirit of Socratic humility, to reexamine ancient and modern theories of natural right to seek possible grounds for reconciliation between them. Landy puts forth a Socratic theory of democratic liberalism as an example of such reconciliation. “This book is a breath of fresh air for people like me, who were influenced by Strauss early in their philosophic careers but who refuse to dismiss metaphysics and cosmology, who are wary of the potentially narrowing effects of ‘political philosophy,’ and who are open, in their philosophical eros, to the possible truth of revelation and the wisdom of the poets. Tucker Landy gives us a new beginning—a Socrates made young and beautiful.” — Peter Kalkavage, author of The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit