Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German-American political philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago. He's best known for a few interconnected contributions:

What he's best known for: Strauss revived the study of classical political philosophy — Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Maimonides, Al-Farabi — as a living intellectual tradition rather than a historical curiosity. He argued that the ancients weren't simply "outdated" but had grasped something about politics and human nature that modernity had obscured or forgotten. His central provocation was that the modern turn (beginning roughly with Machiavelli and Hobbes) represented not simply progress but a series of "waves" that progressively lowered the horizon of political thought, culminating in nihilism and historicism. He's also famous for his recovery of the tradition of esoteric writing — the idea that great philosophers deliberately wrote on two levels: an exoteric surface for the general reader and a hidden teaching for the careful few. This wasn't conspiracy but, Strauss argued, a rational response to the permanent tension between philosophy and political society.

His greatest work: This is debated, but the two strongest candidates are Natural Right and History (1953) and Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952). Natural Right and History is probably his most influential single book — it's a sustained argument against historicism and positivism, and a defense of the idea that there is a natural standard of right accessible to reason. Persecution and the Art of Writing lays out his hermeneutic method most explicitly. Some Straussians would also point to The City and Man (1964), which contains his deepest readings of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides. If forced to choose one: Natural Right and History is the gateway text and arguably the masterwork.

The best way to understand his thinking: This is the real question, and Strauss himself would say it matters enormously how you approach it. A few suggestions: First, read Natural Right and History slowly and with a pencil. The introduction alone — on the crisis of the West and the challenge of Weber's fact-value distinction — frames everything that follows. Don't rush past the chapters on historicism and positivism; they're not throat-clearing but the core negative argument. Second, read Strauss reading other thinkers. His method is inseparable from his practice. His essays on Machiavelli (Thoughts on Machiavelli), on Plato's Republic (in The City and Man), and on Xenophon show you what "careful reading" means in action. You learn Strauss by watching him work. Third, take seriously his claim that understanding a thinker means understanding them as they understood themselves before you criticize them from the outside. This is his methodological principle, and it applies to reading Strauss himself. Fourth, be aware that there's a large secondary literature, but much of it is polemical (either hagiographic or hostile). The best secondary introduction is probably Heinrich Meier's work, or Thomas Pangle's introductions. Catherine and Michael Zuckert's The Truth about Leo Strauss is a fair-minded overview. But Strauss himself would insist: read the primary texts, not the commentaries. Finally, if you're drawn to Strauss's world, read what he read — start with Plato's Republic, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses. Strauss's thinking lives in his engagement with these books, and you can't fully grasp his arguments without engaging the same texts.