Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Leo Strauss notes the ancient city's link between political/sacred. Christianity shattered this by distancing religion from the public realm. As Christianity's influence wanes, Strauss considers the ancient city's political/sacred link will return.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: "Edmund Burke and Leo Strauss and the Charge of 'Historicism'"_x000d__x000d_In Natural Right and History Leo Strauss finds reason to place Edmund Burke among both the classical political philosophers, due to Burke's emphasis on the virtue of prudence, and yet as a precursor of Hegel. Burke's emphasis on circumstances, customs, and habits. and the prevailing political order is sufficient, according to Strauss, to locate his thought within the pale of 'historicism.' There is an appreciation of Burke by Strauss, and yet at a fundamental level, he finds an anticipation of the plight of modernism mired in 'historicism,' rendering references by Burke to 'natural law' suspect, if not specious. In this paper I wish to give a nuanced reading of Strauss on Burke, and yet challenge his claim that Burke succumbs to 'historicism,' basing my defense of Burke on a sustained reading of his understanding of 'prudence' and 'political reason' as succeeding in maintaining a classical reading of 'natural law' as prudentially applied to changing historical circumstances.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is a chapter out of a dissertation on the first generation of the neoconservatives and their teachers. Journalists and scholars have exaggerated the influence of Leo Strauss on the neoconservative political movement, while many of Strauss’s students have written books and articles debunking Strauss’s impact on neoconservatism. What is fact and what is fiction in all of this? This paper examines the writings of Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and other neocon writers and compares them with Strauss and some of Strauss’s most influential students (such as Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield) and shows that while the link between Strauss and neoconservatism is largely overstated, there is indeed some Straussian influence, particularly in their fear of political utopianism, particularly in regards to left-leaning radical ideologies, their criticism of modernity, their skepticism about social reforms and their positives views of national patriotism. At the same time, the paper also debunks many of the overstated linkages between Strauss, his students, and neoconservative foreign policy and their readings of ancient political thought, but reasserting Strauss’s influence in a more accurate and precise way.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What I will try to do in this essay is to show how the work of Leo Strauss developed in response to Heidegger’s theoretical challenges. Biographically speaking, Strauss fits neatly into the group of scholars Richard Wolin once called Heidegger’s children. Strauss understood himself as taking the opposite view of Heidegger regarding the greatest tensions explored by Strauss: the quarrel between the ancient and moderns; the quarrel between poetry and philosophy; and the relationship between Jerusalem and Athens._x000d_Strauss developed a set of concepts which allowed him to face and overcome the challenges posed by Heideggerian radical historicism. Such concepts –hermeneutic openness (the idea that one can understand a thinker as he understood himself), the esoteric-exoteric double-face, and the concentration on political philosophy served Strauss to avoid the danger of falling under the Heideggerian spell. _x000d_In relation to Heidegger, Strauss grappled with the tension between Jerusalem and Athens, dealt with the quarrel between ancients and moderns, and copied with the quarrel between poetry and philosophy. _x000d_In this essay I will explore these issues.