
By Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert
ISBN-10: 0226993345
ISBN-13: 9780226993348
Is Leo Strauss really an highbrow forebear of neoconservatism and a strong strength in shaping Bush management international coverage? the reality approximately Leo Strauss places this query to leisure, revealing for the 1st time how the preferred media got here to perpetuate such an oversimplified view of this kind of complicated and wide-ranging thinker. extra very important, it corrects our conception of Strauss, supplying the simplest common advent on hand to the political considered this misunderstood figure.
Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former scholars of Strauss—guide readers the following to a nuanced realizing of ways Strauss’s political concept suits into his broader philosophy. hard the information that Strauss was once an rigid conservative who within the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature notion used to be the necessity for a go back to the ancients. this concept, they express, stemmed from Strauss’s trust that smooth idea, with its relativism and nihilism, undermines fit politics or even the potential for actual philosophy. opting for this view as certainly one of Strauss’s 3 middle propositions—America is smooth, modernity is undesirable, and the USA is good—they finish that Strauss used to be a sober defender of liberal democracy, conscious of either its strengths and its weaknesses.
The Zuckerts end, correctly, via analyzing the various paintings of Strauss’s a variety of scholars and fans, revealing the origins—rooted within the tensions inside of his personal thought—of their break up into opposing camps. Balanced and obtainable, the reality approximately Leo Strauss is a must-read for an individual who desires to extra absolutely understand this enigmatic thinker and his much-disputed legacy.