Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, Leo Strauss on Science brings to light the thoughts of Leo Strauss on the problem of science. Introducing us to Strauss's reflections on the meaning and perplexities of the scientific adventure, Svetozar Y. Minkov explores questions such as: Is there a human wisdom independent of science? What is the relation between poetry and mathematics, or between self-knowledge and theoretical physics? And how necessary is it for the human species to exist immutably in order for the classical analysis of human life to be correct?...

On Tyranny remains a perennial favorite, possessing a timelessness that few philosophical or scholarly debates have ever achieved. On one hand, On Tyranny is the first book-length work in Leo Strauss's extended study of Xenophon, and his "Restatement" retains a vivacity and directness that is sometimes absent in his later works. On the other, "Tyranny and Wisdom" is perhaps the most succinct yet fullest articulation of Alexandre Kojeve's overall political thought, and it presents what may be the most uncompromising alternative to Strauss's position as a whole. This volume...

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...

In Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History, Jeffrey A. Bernstein explores how the thought of Leo Strauss amounts to a model for thinking about the connection between philosophy, Jewish thought, and history. For Bernstein, Strauss shows that a close study of the history of philosophy--from the "ancients" to "medievals" to "moderns"--is necessary for one to appreciate the fundamental distinction between the forms of life Strauss terms "Jerusalem" and "Athens," that is, order through revealed Law and free philosophical thought, respectively. Through an investigation...

Discussions of the place of moral principle in political practice are haunted by the abstract and misleading distinction between realism and its various principled or "idealist" alternatives. This volume argues that such discussions must be recast in terms of the relationship between principle and prudence: as Nathan Tarcov maintains, that relationship is "not dichotomous but complementary." In a substantive introduction, the editors investigate Leo Strauss's attack on contemporary political thought for its failure to account for both principle and prudence in politics. Leading commentators...

This volume presents, for the first time in English, the approaches to Leo Strauss being pursued by European scholars in Spain, Italy, and Germany. Whereas the traditions of Strauss interpretation have, until recently, focused on issues of interest to political science and, to a lesser extent, religious studies, this collection makes a powerful contribution to the recent philosophical consideration of Strauss. Each essay treats a unique thread emerging from the tapestry of Straussian thought, illustrating Strauss's thinking on the reading of ancient texts and on the relationship between...

In Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History, Jeffrey A. Bernstein explores how the thought of Leo Strauss amounts to a model for thinking about the connection between philosophy, Jewish thought, and history. For Bernstein, Strauss shows that a close study of the history of philosophy--from the "ancients" to "medievals" to "moderns"--is necessary for one to appreciate the fundamental distinction between the forms of life Strauss terms "Jerusalem" and "Athens," that is, order through revealed Law and free philosophical thought, respectively. Through an investigation...