The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy | 
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Product Description
Is Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? The Truth about Leo Strauss puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate an oversimplified view of a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. In doing so, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure.
Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former students of Strauss—guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss’s political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the ideas that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. Through their work, they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses.
Balanced and accessible, The Truth about Leo Strauss is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy.
“The Truth about Leo Strauss is the most balanced and insightful book yet written about Strauss’s thought, students, and political influence. It dispels myths promulgated by both friends and foes and persuasively traces the conflicting paths that American thinkers indebted to Strauss have taken.”—William Galston, Brookings Institution
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Customer Reviews:
• Leoconservativism 27 October, 2006
The Zuckert's appear to be enamored of their former teacher, which blinds them to see the obvious connection between Strauss and the most recent disasters in American foreign policy. They fail to really examine the primary question of whether Strauss himself wrote esoterically and blithely condemn even his most intellectually challenging critic, Shadia Drury, for causing such a fuss about their Guru. It would be curious to read a transript of Strauss' non-published comments during his many lectures to find out the real Truth About Leo Strauss.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1MJ9NV6UMXVXJ
• Wrestling History From The Standpoint Of Eternity 05 February, 2008
Catherine and Michael Zuckert, in their Preface, describe this fine book as "accidental". It arose as a project from the conjunction of being asked to give a lecture on Strauss at the same time that there were a lot of mainstream media articles outlining the connections between Strauss and the foreign policy moves of the Bush administration.
As a result of that conjunction, their book has a somewhat odd structure. In the introduction, they describe the attack on Strauss and trace it to the works of the Lyndon LaRouche organization and the writings of Shadia Drury. The subsequent five chapters are organized around various themes that serve to systematically answer Strauss' critics.
The fact that the Zuckerts chose this format for countering those critics is my one problem with this book. I would much rather have had them write a straight forward exposition of the thought of their teacher.
The Zuckerts give an excellent overview of Strauss' thought as organized around the differences between ancient and modern (post-Machiavelli) philosophy. They argue that Strauss came to see the history of philosophy as having four main periods: the pre-Socratic, Socratic or classical philosophy (this period includes Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero, Farabi, Maimonides on up to that trouble maker Machiavelli), modern (starting with Machiavelli and Bacon) and postmodern (starting with Husserl and including people as diverse as Ayer, Derrida, Heidegger and Weber. Strauss in his essay, "The Three Waves of Modernity" subdivided the modern period into three "waves" or phases. The first wave of modernity ran from Machiavelli through Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume. These thinkers "reduced `the moral and political problem to a technical problem'" (68 of the Zs' book; they are quoting Natural Right and History). To these thinkers, the political problem was to be solved not by moral education and by relying on virtuous leaders but by institutions designed to channel and control mankind's base passions. The second wave was initiated by Rousseau (and including Marx and Hegel) who critiqued the first wave of thinkers on the basis of theories of history. The final wave of modernity was initiated by everybody's favorite philosophical bad boy, Nietzsche. This final wave culminates in the work of thinkers like Heidegger who banish all traces of the eternal in the name of a radical historicism.
For Strauss, the crux of the matter came down to the moment that Machiavelli decided that the ancients (with their focus on virtue and the fostering of excellence) had given us a political philosophy that was inevitably utopian. The moderns, starting with Machiavelli focused on the concept of what was attainable (Strauss uses the term "actualizable").
In order to do so, they "lowered their sights" to ground their philosophies on `man-as-he-is' not `man-as-he-could-be' (see pp. 66-71 for a good discussion of the turn to modernity). The Zuckerts also devote an excellent chapter to Strauss' concept of esoteric writing. Hopefully, this chapter should clear up the nonsense about Strauss himself being an esoteric writer. Anybody who believes that should actually read Persecution and the Art of Writing. The Zuckerts bring one of the main functions that the idea of esoteric writing plays in the thought of Strauss. They argue that it was one of the ways that Strauss tried to contradict "the alleged empirical evidence in favor of historicism...The so-called evidence of agreement between all previous thinkers and their times, or of the domination of thought by history, is an artifact of the conscious accommodation thinkers made to dominant opinion in their times" (123).
I suspect that much of the paranoia surrounding this idea comes from what I see as one of the essential insights of Strauss. His early research into Spinoza and Hobbes led him to the belief that revealed religion had not been successfully overturned by the Enlightenment. Indeed, the actual result of the confrontation of Spinoza-Hobbes-Locke with revealed religion was to reveal the weakness of reason. And Strauss feels that revealed religion is equally impotent against reason. To make a long story somewhat shorter, these insights are seen by Strauss to impose certain responsibilities of moderation on political philosophers throughout history. Philosophers like Plato or Farabi felt the need to write esoterically largely to avoid persecution but also to behave with self-awareness and responsibility. They might be able to subject fournding mythologies to scathing critique but could they justify that if they could not honestly suggest alternatives? Of course, the moderns felt otherwise. In their sureness that they understood human nature or history or unfolding of being, the moderns saw their responsibility to be the spreading of truth.
I could go on trying to summarize this book but I think you will be better served by reading it. I would like to make several comments on what I see to be some basic strengths and weaknesses of Strauss along with some comments on the Zuckerts presentation of Strauss.
First, I have come to appreciate the way that Strauss presents his philosophy around clusters of problems rather than around solutions. Reason and revelation, the city and man, Athens and Jerusalem are well-known cruxes of Straussian thought. I would add the longing for eternity from a particular history as another way of seeing his themes.
Strauss also strikes me as being very honest about the limitations of his answers. Somewhere he says that it is impossible to think long on these issues without leaning in favor of one of the traditional solutions. Strauss is clear as to which solutions he leans toward and to the provisional nature of his solutions.
Which leads me to what I see as Strauss' weakness. He believes (assumes) that the highest in man is our longing for eternity. Strauss believes that our politics should be such as to encourage and support this longing. He also believes that only a minority will want to follow this path of philosophy. Thus our politics should be organized so as to support and encourage a minority in the highest pursuit of humanity: the philosophical quest for what are probably unresolvable conundrums. As such, Strauss takes his place with the ancients. All I am going to say on this issue is that it is at least arguable that as many historical atrocities took place in the name of such philosophies as have taken place in the name of modern philosophies. I am not at all sure that Strauss has taken seriously enough the critical side of modern philosophy.
The Zuckerts would answer that Strauss was a supporter of liberal democratic regimes like our own and that his philosophy fits somewhat within the confines of a Madisonian politics. I think this is a good start as an answer but needs to be fleshed out. I tend to believe that Strauss would have been more comfortable as a High Federalist then any other type of politico in our history.
I am also not sure about Strauss' methodolgy as a historian. I think that his own interpretation of Locke was off (although Thomas Pangle and Michael Zuckert have improved mightily on it). I would LOVE to see someone write a book on Esoteric Reading that listed what are thought to be esoteric techniques with examples. You could collect the techniques and examples from the writings of various Straussians.
What I have no doubts about is the quality of the Zuckert's exposition. When reading this book, I could almost feel my brain lighting up. As a bonus to their writing on Strauss, they provide (I think this part is largely Catherine's work) very fair and lucid presentations of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and Schmidt. Then they (largely Michael) give a really nice exposition of the various fault lines within Strauss' students. All in all, this is outstanding expository writing.
For anyone approaching Strauss for the first time, I would recommend the following reading list:
Strauss' essay "What is Political Philosophy" (available both in the collection of the same name and in An Introduction to Political Philosophy).
This book by the Zuckerts.
Natural Right and History.
The City and Man.
Thomas Pangle's book, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy.
After that you will know where you want to go on your own in your reading of Strauss.
Leo Strauss is a thinker well worth wrestling with in forming your own thought. As someone firmly on the left side of politics, I believe that he is worthy of the company of other thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Ernst Cassirer and Theodore Adorno (by the way, I kept finding myself thinking about some of the similarities of the critique of modernity to be found in Strauss and in The Dialectic of Enlightenment). I don't believe that you will (or should) find any final answers in any of that list but they are all worthy opponents. Strauss was incredibly learned, thoughtful and very very careful. How can you not learn from such a thinker?
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1D4PVZ0QWEAW1
• A Powerful Antidote 09 October, 2008
All too often today, one hears mindless carping against "the neocons" and their alleged "Straussian conspiracy." Need it be said that most of these critics have never read a word of Strauss? Happily, the Zuckerts have given us this powerful antidote to such cant. Highly recommended.
Also see:
Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)
&
Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism
And if you haven't read any Strauss, you might begin here:
The City and Man
&
What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3JTN7DLFCJ38O
• Good Introduction To Strauss 03 September, 2006
The Zuckerts do a good job of giving a fairly comprehensive introduction to Strauss's complex and wide ranging thought. A notable and distinguishing feature of the Zuckerts' book in comparison with other recent works on Strauss is a historical analysis of the causes for the recent attention given to Strauss in some popular media outlets. The Zuckerts show, by means of actual quotation of the sources (a novel idea for some of the media which have made inaccurate pronouncements on Strauss's thought), that the flurry was spawned by a combination of LaRouchite propoganda and the bad and misleading scholarship of Shadia Drury. Also noteworthy for those a bit more familiar with Strauss is a history of the division of "Straussianism" into East coast and West coast Straussians (the Zuckerts describe themselves as "Midwest" Straussians) and a very thoughtful and penetrating analysis of Strauss's theory and use of esotericism. The book itself also stands as an outstanding example of Straussian scholarship by giving a first-hand illustration of Strauss's method of close reading. Along with the recent offerings of Pangle, Smith, Sorensen and Meier, the work shows just how inadequate and misleading the media treatment of Strauss has been.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Mr. Strauss Goes to Washington? 1
Part I: Strauss
Chapter One 27
The Return to the Ancients: An Overview of the Straussian Project
Strauss's Philosophical Project 30, Strauss's Departure From Heidegger and Nietzsche 32, Strauss's Analysis of the Contemporary Crisis 35, Strauss's Way Back to Ancient Political Philosophy 36, Strauss's Reading of the History of Philosophy 46, Political Philosophy and Politics 49
Chapter Two 58
Strauss--Modernity--America
Proposition 1: America is Modern 58, Proposition 2: Modernity is Bad 64, Proposition 3: America is Good 74, Straussian Ambiguities 79
Chapter Three 80
Leo Strauss as a Postmodern Political Thinker
The Problem of the Postmodern 81, Strauss's Postmodernism: After Nietzsche 83, Strauss's Postmodernism: After Heidegger 91, Derridean Postmodernism 102, Contrasting the Two Forms of Postmodernism 111
Chapter Four 115
The Man Who Gave Away the Secrets: On Esotericism
How Shadia Drury Read Leo Strauss 116, On Esotericism and Noble Lies 120, Looking For Secrets in the All the Wrong Places 136
Chapter Five 155
Leo Strauss--Teacher of Evil?
Strauss and the "Tyrannical Teaching" 158, The Thrasymachean Thesis 166, The Machiavellian Moment 177, Strauss and Schmitt 184
Part II: Straussians
Chapter Six 197
The Emergence of the Straussian Study of America
Walter Berns: The Virtuous Republic 202, Martin Diamond: Finding the Founding 209, Harry Jaffa: Aristotelianizing America 217
Chapter Seven 228
Straussian Geography
East Coast 231, West Coast 239, Midwest 252
Conclusion 261
Notes 269
Index 301
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1W7B84XMPGA6G
• Classic As Well As Timely 28 December, 2008
The political thought of Leo Strauss has been used and misused to legitimize or provide grounds for condemning neo-conservative policies in the US and abroad. Yet Strauss's work, complex and difficult to grasp in any schematic way, defies immediate politicization. This book by Zuckert and Zuckert offers a sympathetic account of Strauss' work and relevance. Lucid and stimulating, will provoke debate.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3TO31DE0UKZSX
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