Thoughts on Leo Strauss's Interpretation of Aristotle's Natural Right Teaching

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Luiz Cruz Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe essay discusses the interpretation of Aristotle's natural right teaching by Leo Strauss. This interpretation ought to be seen as the result of an investigation into the history of philosophy and of an attempt to philosophically address political problems. By virtue of this twofold origin, the Straussian commentary is unorthodox: it deviates from traditional Aristotelianism (Aquinas and Averroes) and it seems alien to the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. Strauss's criticism of medieval variants results from their incapacity—shared by contemporary political thought—to address a perplexing issue: political exception. He sees in Aristotle's political teaching a way to escape from this failure: the unification, in natural right, of the requirements of statesmanship and ethics. The discovery of this way allowed Strauss to produce an interpretation of natural right that articulates important points pertaining to Aristotelian political science.

Aristotle and Theories of Justice

1978 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1201-1216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delba Winthrop
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Looking Back

Today it is all the rage for political theorists and even philosophers to have theories of justice. Looking back on the history of political thought, we cannot help but notice that not all previous philosophers have taken justice and theories of justice so seriously. Among those who did not was Aristotle. To be sure, he had a theory of justice, and from this fact we might infer that he thought it necessary to have one. But I shall presently argue, primarily from Aristotle's treatment of the problem in the Nicomachean Ethics, that Aristotle thought all theories of justice, including his own, to be unsatisfactory. In his opinion, a politics that understands its highest purpose as justice and a political science that attempts to comprehend all political phenomena within a theory of justice are practically and theoretically unsound.

The History of Political Thought: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cambridge School

‘A History of Political Thought: A Very Short Introduction’ explores the core concerns and questions in the history of political thought, considering the field as a branch of political philosophy and political science. The approaches of core theorists, such as Reinhart Koselleck, Leo Strauss, Michel Foucault, and the so-called Cambridge School of Quentin Skinner and John Pocock are important to this topic. There is ongoing relevance for current politics which can be seen by assessing the current relationship between political history, theory, and action. There are some areas of political thinking that tend to draw on history because of the comparisons and contrasts that the past can offer to contemporary dilemmas.

Roger Boesche: The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 419-422
Author(s):  
James Schleifer
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
History Of

Roger Boesche, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, lias already written several thoughtful articles about Tocqueville, each marked by clarity of thought and expression: ’The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (December 1980):550-63; “The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville,” History of Political Thought 2 (Winter 1981): 495-524; “Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?” Political Theory 11 (February 1983): 79-104; “Tocqueville and Le Commerce’. A Newspaper Expressing His Unusual Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (April-June 1983): 277-92; and “Hedonism and Nihilism: The Predictions of Tocqueville and Nietzsche,” The Tocqueville Review 8 (1986/87): 165-84.

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Balot
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Philosophical Dialogue ◽  
Rational Order ◽  
Stated Purpose

This chapter evaluates the arguments and intentions of Leo Strauss’s most ambitious political text, Natural Right and History. Strauss’s stated purpose is to rehabilitate the ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of “natural right”—a term of art by which he referred to the justice inherent in the rational order of nature. His express motivation was to rebut the relativism and historicism that, in his view, characterized twentieth-century political thought. This chapter contends that the book’s core lies in its implicit presentation of philosophical inquiry as the highest human vocation. This idea is presented less through systematic argument than through Strauss’s own engagement with canonical political texts—an engagement designed to illustrate both the excitement and the fulfillment of philosophical dialogue. The political virtues, while defended on the surface of the text, remain as unsettled by the end as they were in the introduction.

: Contextual and Non-Contextual Histories of Political Thought

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Post War

This chapter focuses on how the history of political ideas has been approached in the context of British political science. This has the consequence that the discussion ranges over commentators who are explicitly not historians. It claims that the current British approaches to the study of past political thought have domestic origins in the development of the study of politics in British Universities, especially Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE. The first section accounts for different approaches to the study of political ideas in British political science by examining conceptions of the history of political thought. It shows how institutional history is connected to the development of a genre, and how this history has not been dependent on the direct import of Continental or American intellectual fashions or personalities. The second section delineates the three main British approaches to the study of the history of political ideas in the post-war period.

Without Malice But with Forethought: A Response to Burnyeat

1991 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lawrence Levlne
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of

The work of Leo Strauss is not typical of American academics. He has explicitly rejected the premises and methodologies of modern scholarship. In its stead, he claims to have rediscovered other, more ancient methods of discovery to guide his research. As a result, his conclusions do not necessarily reconfirm what we think we already know. Hence his work represents a challenge to current scholarship. For if Strauss 's conclusions are true, then a radical rethinking of the history of philosophy, political philosophy and psychology is required. It would be much easier if we could simply say that Strauss's methods and conclusions are wholly misguided.

Empty Esotericisms: Doctrines of Secret Writing and the Politics of a Platonic Code

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-82
Author(s):  
Sean Noah Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
History Of

The aim of this article is to address the recently renewed debate pertaining to esotericism, secret messages encoded within writings from antiquity, especially in the writings of Plato. The question of esotericism has assumed a prominent role within debates concerning the history of political thought. Ever since Leo Strauss offered his suspicion that there were secrets ‘buried in the writings of the rhetoricians of antiquity’, the idea that philosophers deliberately concealed their true beliefs in a way that few could detect has been fiercely debated. More recently, the research of J.B. Kennedy has made international headlines for discovering a musical pattern embedded within Platonic writings, a pattern that Kennedy insists is evidence of Plato’s Pythagorean allegiance. The theses proffered by Strauss and Kennedy are empty doctrines of esotericism, or empty esotericisms. These doctrines insinuate the presence of secret or coded writing within Platonic dialogues but reveal no actual secret. These theses of esotericism falsely represent Plato as hyper-cryptic.Without actually providing substantive content, these notions of esotericism compel the reader to merely negate the exoteric writings of Plato, which actually render his already heterodox writings as commonplace and orthodox.

The Revival of Classical Political Philosophy: A Critique

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Rothman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Study ◽  
The University ◽  
Moral Nihilism

Perhaps no single individual has had as much impact on the discipline of political science during the past several years as has Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago. Both he and his disciples (and they are disciples in the “classical” sense) have engaged in a full scale attack upon the premises underlying the contemporary study of politics.Strauss argues that these premises are illfounded and self-contradictory, and, if taken seriously, lead to moral nihilism. He contends, further, that another set of premises, those of “classical natural right,” which treat man in terms of his natural end and his relation to the “mysterious whole,” are capable of providing a more adequate foundation for the study of politics.

Leo Strauss's Confrontation with Max Weber: A Search for a Genuine Social Science

1997 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasser Behnegar
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Human Situation ◽  
Valid Knowledge ◽  
History Of

An analysis of Leo Strauss's difficult and relatively neglected criticism of Max Weber in Natural Right and History reveals the fundamental difficulties that political science, and social science more generally, must overcome in order to be a genuine science. In Strauss's view, the inadequacy of the fact-value distinction, which is now widely acknowledged, compels a re-examination of Weber's denial of the possibility of valid knowledge of values. Strauss identifies the serious ground of this denial as Weber's insight that modern philosophy or science cannot refute religion. Believing that philosophy or science cannot ultimately give an account of itself that meets the challenge of religion, Weber maintained a “tragic” view of the human situation. Strauss also expresses profound doubt about the possibility of philosophy or science, but ultimately he suggests that a certain kind of study of the history of political philosophy might resolve the conflict between philosophy and divine revelation, and, therewith, the “value problem.”

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