Leo Strauss's Thought

Leo Strauss is perhaps the only important theorist of our time who sought to revive political philosophy as it was practiced by thinkers like Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Montesquieu. His penetrating studies of the masters of both classical political philosophy and modern political thought have suggested that philosophical and political issues long thought dead and buried may be not only alive, but at the root of contemporary uncertainties and perplexities. This work provides a picture of Strauss's philosophy and intellectual impact. The dozen essays, arranged in contrasting pairs, analyze his early development; his life-long work on Maimonides; his ideas on the issues of Athens versus Jerusalem, the Ancients versus the Moderns, and the discontinuity or linkage between politics and theology; and finally, his literary hermeneutics.