Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (born September 20, 1899, Kirchhain, Germany—died October 18, 1973, Annapolis, Maryland, U.S.) was a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States and an influential political philosopher and interpreter of classical political theory.

Strauss served in the German army during World War I. After receiving a doctoral degree from the University of Hamburg (1921), he was a research assistant at the Academy for Jewish Research, Berlin (1925–32), and then worked as a Rockefeller fellow in England and France. He immigrated to the United States in 1938 (naturalized in 1944) and served as a professor of political science at the New School for Social Research (now The New School), New York City (1938–49), the University of Chicago (1949–68), Claremont (California) Men’s College (1968–69), and St. John’s College, Annapolis (1969–73).

He wrote a number of books on such political philosophers as Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, Benedict de Spinoza, and Socrates. Among his more noted works are On Tyranny (1948; rev. ed. 1991); Natural Right and History (1950), widely praised for its scholarly incisiveness; Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952); and What Is Political Philosophy? (1959). He also coedited History of Political Philosophy (1963).

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Philosophy 101

Strauss’s scholarship is known for differentiating between the explicit (or exoteric) and hidden (or esoteric) meaning of a text. In Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss argued that, since the time of Plato, philosophers have often been forced to conceal to most readers the most controversial elements of their discourse for fear of censorship and persecution. Strauss advocated a close exegesis of those texts and maintained, against historical relativism, that great works of philosophy can provide the careful reader with universal and eternal truths.

Strauss’s books—lucid, insightful, and challenging—were written more for other scholars than for the general public, but he played an eminent role in American academic history. He was largely credited with having revived and maintained the study of classical political philosophers in college curricula at a time when such studies were overshadowed by quantitative and behavioral political scientists.

His legacy in American political theory is also an important and lasting one, and the term Straussian is often used to categorize those associated with his thought. Notable students of Strauss included the philosopher and classicist Allan Bloom and the political scientists Thomas L. Pangle and Henry V. Jaffa. More controversially, Strauss was often depicted as an influential figure in neoconservative policy circles, notably in connection with U.S. foreign policy during the George W. Bush administration (2001–09). Connections between neoconservatism and Straussianism were drawn partly on the basis of the educational pedigree of some neoconservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz, and partly because both schools of thought viewed relativism as a threat to the survival of Western culture. This assessment was disputed, however, and it is clear that Strauss himself was more interested in the study of political philosophy—and in the pursuit of civic virtue associated with it—than with policy debates.