Straussophiles and Straussophobes Unite

. . . in loving this new issue (really, every issue) of PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE—America’s leading political and philosophical journal.

There’s a symposium on WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? (the book by Strauss, of course). It includes contributions by Rafe Major, Nasser Behnegar, Nathan Tarcov, Christopher Nadon, Josh Parens, Devin Stauffer, and Michael Zuckert. Needless to say, these are various first-rate Straussophiliac efforts to understand various parts of this path breaking book. Nadon’s central chapter makes the case for Strauss using Xenophon as ” a useful counterweight” to both “the classical tradition” and Machiavelli. Strauss, in fact, presents his “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero ” as  ”a concise indictment of that tradition and a remarkably sympathetic account of the political and philosophical motives that led to the [modern] rupture.” Nadon also gives a fascinating account of Strauss’s agreement with and criticism of Voegelin in that “Restatement.”

Yes, there’s more. David Schaefer has written a long, perceptive, and very positive review of Peter Minowitz’s Straussophobia .

So, you might say, all that doesn’t seem very fair and balanced! But there’s still more! You can read William H. F. Altman’s most erudite and penetrating (not to mention provocative and questionable) “Leo Strauss in 1962.” Altman offers “a refutation of the view recently advanced by his defenders that Leo Strauss moderated his youthful atheism and anti-liberalism after emigrating to the United States.” A careful reader of Straussophobia will notice that Peter M. praised Will A. for being a critic of Strauss who deserves much more attention than he could give him in his polemical book.

There’s EVEN more, including Joe Fornieri’s “Lincoln’s Reflective Patriotism” and our Carl Scott’s review of “Xenophon’s most immediately accessible and engaging book.”