Leo Strauss: Man of Peace by Robert Howse, (Cambridge University Press, 200 pages) The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. —Exodus 15:3 There is an old story that the Archangel Michael and the devil feuded over Moses’ remains. While Michael aimed to convey the prophet’s body up to heaven, Satan was [...]
Liberal education, which consists in the constant intercourse with the greatest minds, is a training in the highest form of modesty, not to say of humility. It is at the same time a training in boldness: It demands from us the complete break with the noise, the rush, the thoughtlessness, the cheapness of the Vanity [...]
One difference between postmodern conservatives and other contributors to First Thoughts has to do with being influenced by Leo Strauss. Each pomoncon can speak for himself (or herself). But I would say that we all regard that influence as making us better and especially more astute thinkers and readers of first-rate books than we would otherwise be. So [...]
Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried, Cambridge University Press (2011) When writing about the work of an academic historian or philosopher—as opposed to a polemicist, a politician, or a popularizer—there is an obvious threshold question with which to begin: Is the writer’s work intrinsically interesting or compelling in some way? If [...]
Walter Berns and Harry Jaffa, two legendary teachers and scholars, died within hours of each other. What tied them together is that they were both students of Leo Strauss, and all of their writing was fundamentally indebted to “disruptive innovations” that Strauss introduced into our understanding of thought and politics. Jaffa (born in 1918) and [...]
I recently reviewed Paul Gottfried’s Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America for the University Bookman. Paul responds to my review here. Note that in addition to Paul’s book being available as an affordable paperback, the Kindle edition is now going for just $12.49—if you’re interested in this topic, be sure to read it [...]
I recently attended a conference in Claremont on Strauss and Burke–or what Strauss says about Edmund Burke to close Natural Right and History. For anyone who really checks out what he says there, it’s the strangest part of a strange book. Here are some obvious points that might turn out to be wrong: Burke is an [...]
Leo Strauss So far I have examined a set of thinkers that could be classified in the same school of thought as “Voegelinian”: Eric Voegelin, Ellis Sandoz, Gerhart Niemeyer, and John H. Hallowell. In their different styles and approaches to teaching, each of them sought to show their students the true, the beautiful, [...]
In recent years a heated debate has erupted about American foreign policy and about what moral purpose should inform our conduct of international relations. While analysts Robert Kagan, Michael Mandelbaum, and Stephen Schwartz insist the United States should use its power, where possible, on behalf of “democracy,” other commentators have rejected this approach. James Kurth, [...]
(WARNING: Contains Neo-Conservatism and saucy language) Well, here’s a big buon giorno to our National Public Radio audience, because it’s time for Impariamo Opera and I’m your co-host, Angela Tedioso. And I’m Hans-Dieter Langweilig. But today we stray from the shores of sunny Italy to the magical, musical world of Strauss. […]
In introducing his new book, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried identifies a fundamental divide between neoconservatives and the traditional right. The divide is over the question: What is this nation, America? Straussians, writes Gottfried, “wish to present the construction of government as an open-ended rationalist process. All children of the [...]
Leo Strauss Far from Amazon and bookshops here in Kabul, I can only suggest a good article by Paul Gottfried on his newest book and hope that someone reviews it here. Dr. Gottfried, a prolific conservative author who teaches at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, has written Leo Strauss and the American Conservative Movement: [...]
Leo Strauss My close friend and colleague, Mickey Craig, chair of the Department of Political Science at Hillsdale, has given me a couple of pointers as well as sources to consider regarding Russell Kirk’s relationship to Leo Strauss’s students. As frequent The Imaginative Conservative readers know, we’ve had a discussion—but only, thus far, a [...]