Obscure in his lifetime, Leo Strauss came to posthumous notoriety as the house philosopher of the George W. Bush administration. The more malevolently the administration behaved, the more sinister Strauss appeared, his name becoming a byword for reactionary esoterica—for reading philosophy “between the lines” for meanings deliberately concealed from the benighted masses. Yet, to reduce Strauss to his supposed method is to overlook a depth of thought that took as its object nothing less than (what Strauss saw as) the fundamental crisis of modernity. For Strauss, Enlightenment rationality had dissolved the theological foundation of politics, substituting faith in revelation with a far more malign illusion—the belief in progress. But what are the consequences of our “theologico-political predicament?” How can we understand the alleged tension between what Strauss calls “Jerusalem and Athens”—i.e., religion and philosophy? How does Strauss’s diagnosis of modernity connect to his (in)famous practice of esoteric reading and its emphasis on the “noble lie?” And given its deep critique of liberalism, is there anything Strauss’s work can offer for not only conservative thought, but for left-wing political theory as well?
This course is a rigorous introduction to Leo Strauss’s most provocative ideas. We will situate Strauss’s work in its Weimar German context, especially as it shaped his attitude toward “Jerusalem and Athens”—the dual metaphorical foundations for his political thinking. We will consider how the rise of Nazism and Zionism impacted Strauss’s political thought, including his critique of modernity and liberalism. And, as we range over Strauss’s corpus, we’ll examine his “great conversation” with the canonical Western philosophers—from Plato and Machiavelli to Spinoza, Hobbes, Hegel, and Nietzsche—and how (and why) he “reads between the lines” with the aim of discovering a thinker’s secret teaching. Can Strauss himself be read esoterically? Finally, we’ll consider Strauss’s revival of the old quarrel between ancient and modern philosophy, as well as his critique of historicism, relativism, and liberal democracy in that context. Why, for Strauss, was the Enlightenment critique of religion the very cause of rationality’s self-destruction? Is nihilism the inevitable condition of modernity? And, as we ourselves read Strauss, what are we to make of his legacy and continued influence, from the invasion of Iraq to the pervasive presence of “west-” and “east-coast” Straussians in the hallways and recesses of right-wing U.S. politics and power?
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