It has often been noted that Leo Strauss developed his understanding of political philosophy through a critical engagement with Heidegger. Yet most analyses focus on Strauss’s American works while neglecting his earlier response during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic. The article seeks to overcome this limitation by ‘deconstructing’ Strauss’s American definitions of political philosophy in light of both his Weimar understanding of politische Wissenschaft and his 1922 discovery of Heidegger’s Aristotle. I argue that Strauss’s conception of political philosophy originated in Heidegger’s subversion of the traditional distinction between theory and praxis. I thus propose a way to read Strauss from the start following his own changing views of that distinction.
Leo Strauss ( 1953) Natural Right and History, p. 31. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ( 1959) ‘Political Philosophy and History’, in What is Political Philosophy?, p. 76. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
Heinrich Meier ( 2006) Leo Strauss and the Theological-Political Problem, pp. xvii-xviii. New York: Cambridge University Press.
3.
See Catherine and Michael Zuckert (2006) The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy, pp. 29-30. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
4.
Meier (n. 2), p. xviii.
5.
See, for instance, Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet (2004) L’Amérique messianique: Les guerres des néo-conservateurs . Paris: Éditions du Seuil .
6.
Strauss (1959, in n. 1), p. 77.
7.
Strauss (1953, in n. 1), p. 31.
8.
Strauss (1997) ‘An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John’s College in Honor of Jacob Klein’, in K. H. Green (ed.) Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity , p. 450. New York: SUNY Press.
9.
Heinrich Meier ( 2006) ‘How Strauss Became Strauss’, in Svetozar Minkov (ed.) Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, p. 363. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
10.
Strauss (n. 8), p. 450.
11.
For a comprehensive study of the rehabilitation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy in the 20th century see Thomas Gutschker (2002) Aristotelische Diskurse: Aristoteles in der Politischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler.
12.
As Strauss would perhaps have put it. Cf. Strauss (1997) Philosophie und Gesetz, in Heinrich Meier (ed.) Leo Strauss: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2., p. 12. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag.
13.
‘Das eigentliche Umgehen ist die theoria, der eigentliche bios praktikos ist der bios theoretikos’. Martin Heidegger (2005) Phänomenologische Interpretationen Ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik, p. 309. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
14.
John Wild ( 1946) Plato’s Theory of Man: An Introduction to the Realistic Philosophy of Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
15.
Leo Strauss (1946) ‘On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy’, Social Research13(3): 326-67, p. 326.
16.
See Löwith’s letter to Strauss of 14 Aug. 1946 in Heinrich Meier (ed.) (2001) Leo Strauss: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 659. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag.
17.
Strauss to Löwith, 15 Aug. 1946, ibid. pp. 660-1. See Nathan Tarcov (1991) ‘On a Certain Critique of "Straussianism"’, The Review of Politics 53(1): 3-18, 8f.
18.
See Benjamin R. Barber (2006) ‘The Politics of Political Science: "Value-Free" Theory and the Wolin-Strauss Dust-Up of 1963’, American Political Science Review 100(4): 539-45.
19.
Richard Lacayo and Ratu Kamlani (1996) ‘You’ve Read about Who’s Influential, But Who has the Power?, Time147(25): 80.
20.
See Meier (n. 2), p. xii.
21.
Strauss, ‘What is Political Philosophy?’ in (1959, n. 1), pp. 10, 12.
22.
Ibid. p. 10.
23.
Strauss (1953, in n. 1), p. 2.
24.
Ibid. pp. 35-6.
25.
Strauss, ‘On Classical Political Philosophy’, in (1959, n. 1), pp. 93-4.
26.
See e.g. Franco Volpi (2007) ‘Heidegger und der Neoaristotelismus’, in Alfred Denker (ed.) Heidegger und Aristoteles, p. 233. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber.
27.
On this distinction introduced by Aristotle and the interpretive questions it raises, see Richard Bodéüs (1993) The Political Dimensions of Aristotle’s Ethics, pp. 25-6. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
28.
As Heinrich Meier points out, ‘[t]he concept does not occur in Plato’s and Xenophon’s writings. In Aristotle, we find philosophia politike just once in Politics III, 12, 1282b23.’ Meier (n. 2), p. xii.
29.
Leo Strauss, ‘On Aristotle’s Politics’, in (1964) The City and Man, p. 17. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strauss is referring to Hippodamus’ attempt to derive the best political order ‘which is entirely according to nature’ from an account of ‘"the whole of nature" - an account which used the number 3 as the key to all things’: thus, ‘the citizen body is to consist of 10,000 men and of 3 parts; the land is to be divided into 3 parts; there are only 3 kinds of laws’. Ibid. p. 19. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 2. 8, esp. 1267b30- 1268a6; 1268b3-4.
30.
Ibid. p. 18.
31.
Ibid. p. 26.
32.
Strauss (n. 21), p. 39.
33.
See esp. Nicomachean Ethics 1. 2. Of course, various other passages may suggest otherwise (e.g. Met. 982b4ff.) - as indeed that is precisely the question for Aristotle (namely, if there is a highest human good to what science it belongs). This is merely to suggest that Strauss’s thesis here is not his final view (as his own references make clear; cf. esp. On the Soul 432b27-30).
34.
See esp. Nicomachean Ethics 1141b2-8. Again, this is not to deny the limitations of this view stressed by Aristotle himself - especially the fact that the human good that is ‘practically’ disclosed is not the good without qualification (NE 1141a22 ff.)
35.
Plato, Gorgias 521d5-7; 503a6.
36.
Ibid. 503e.
37.
Strauss (n. 21), pp. 38-9.
38.
Strauss, ‘Cohen und Maimuni’, in Strauss (n. 12), p. 429.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid. p. 412.
41.
Ibid. p. 414.
42.
Ibid. p. 412.
43.
See e.g. Strauss (n. 29), p. 27.
44.
Strauss (n. 38), p. 412 (my emphasis).
45.
Ibid. p. 414.
46.
Strauss (1953 in n. 1), p. 36.
47.
See Strauss’s letter to Gerhard Krüger of 16 Dec. 1932 in Meier (n. 16), p. 417.
48.
Strauss (n. 21), p. 39.
49.
See Strauss’s letter to Gerhard Krüger of 17 Nov. 1932 in Meier (n. 16), p. 405.
50.
Ibid., p. 273. Strauss consistently defined political science in this or similar terms throughout his writings of the early1930s. Ibid. pp. xviii, 13, 201, 211-12, 274, 404; Meier (n. 12), pp. 412-13, 427.
51.
Leo Strauss, ‘Die Religionskritik des Hobbes: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Aufklärung’, in Meier (n. 16), p. 274.
52.
See, for instance, Strauss’s letter to Krüger of 16 Dec. 1932. Ibid. p. 417.
53.
Most notably with neo-orthodox ‘Dialectical Theology’. For a recent account see Mark Lilla (2007) The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. New York: Knopf.
54.
Cf. Gerhard Krüger’s understanding of Strauss’s project in 1932 as a ‘search for an atheistic philosophy of the deuteros plous [or second sailing] that knows that it cannot ignore the old agathon in its rank’. 12 Dec. 1932, in Meier (n. 16), pp. 422-5. See also Strauss’s earlier letter where he claims that he no longer considers Hobbes sufficient for the possibility of natural right in a world without providence - but instead Plato. 15 Oct. 1931, ibid. p. 394.
55.
This note stems from Strauss’s first manuscript on Hobbes, which was written between 1931 and 1932. Though it remains unpublished, it is striking to note that its plan (which has been published) foresees several sections dedicated to a critical engagement with Heidegger. See the preface to Meier (n. 16), p. xix. The plan in question is published as ‘Disposition: Die politische Wissenschaft des Hobbes. Eine Einführung in das Naturrecht’, ibid. pp. 193-201.
56.
12 Dec. 1932, ibid. p. 415.
57.
17 Nov. 1932, ibid. p. 406.
58.
Leo Strauss (1997) ‘A Giving of Accounts’ , in Green (n. 8), p. 461.
59.
As Paul Natorp reported to Husserl on 30 Oct. 1922, ‘Herr Strauss from Kirchhain’ was one of the young philosophers who were deeply impressed by Heidegger’s early Freiburg lectures. Karl Schuhmann (ed.) (1994) Edmund Husserl: Briefwechsel, vol. 5, Die Neukantianer, p. 161. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. For Gadamer’s recollection see Hans-Georg Gadamer (2003) ‘Heideggers "theologische" Jugendschrift’, in Günther Neumann (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles, p. 83. Stuttgart: Reclam.
60.
See Franz Rosenzweig ( 2000) ‘Transposed Fronts’, in Paul W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan (eds) Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings, pp. 146-52. Indianapolis: Hackett .
61.
See Günther Neuman’s epilogue to Heidegger (n. 13), pp. 440-1.
62.
Strauss (n. 58), p. 462.
63.
Leo Strauss (2006) ‘Living Issues in German Postwar Philosophy’, in Meier (n. 2), p. 134.
64.
Heidegger (n. 13), pp. 10, 13, 15, 47. (Hereafter cited in parentheses in the text.)
65.
Martin Heidegger (1993) Phänomenologie der Anschauung und des Ausdrucks, p. 8; see also pp. 4, 9, 28. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
66.
Martin Heidegger (1987) Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, vol. 1, Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem, p. 59. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
67.
Martin Heidegger (1994) Einführung in die Phänomenologische Forschung, p. 90. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
68.
Martin Heidegger (1988) Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizität), p. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
69.
Aristotle, Metaphysics A2, 982b9 ff.
70.
See G.W.F. Hegel (1995) Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 166-7. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
71.
See e.g. Martin Heidegger (1992) Platon, Sophistes , pp. 11-12. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
72.
See e.g., Martin Heidegger (2001) Sein und Zeit, p. 171. Tübingen : Max Niemeyer Verlag.
73.
Martin Heidegger (2002) Grundbegriffe der Aristotelischen Philosophie, p. 4. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
74.
See Strauss (n. 63), p. 134: ‘under the guidance of Heidegger, people came to see that Aristotle and Plato had not been understood’.
75.
Werner Jaeger (1948) Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Development, p. 234; see also pp. 19, 56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
76.
Hermann Cohen (1924) ‘Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis’, in Bruno Strauss (ed.) Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, vol. 3, pp. 230, 228. Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn. See Strauss’s critique of Cohen in Strauss (n. 38).
77.
Heidegger (n. 73), p. 82.
78.
See e.g. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1989) Truth and Method, 2nd rev. edn, p. 312. New York: Continuum. Cf. Strauss (n. 29), p. 25.
79.
Martin Heidegger, ‘Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der Hermeneutischen Situation)’, in Heidegger (n. 13), p. 389.
80.
Ibid. pp. 358, 363, 367, 356.
81.
Cf. Heidegger (n. 73), p. 79.
82.
See Heidegger (n. 72) and, generally, William McNeill (1999) The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
83.
See esp. Heidegger (n. 73).
84.
Steven B. Smith (2006) Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism , p. 256. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
85.
Stanley Rosen (2000) ‘Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Philosophy’, Review of Metaphysics, 53: 542.
86.
The publication of the young Heidegger’s Aristotle interpretations began in 1989 with what is known as the 1922 ‘Natorp Report’ (Heidegger (n. 79)). This was followed by the 1992 publication of the lectures on Plato’s Sophist of 1924/5 (whose first part is dedicated to the Nicomachean Ethics) (Heidegger (n. 71)). However, this made the picture far from complete as the lecture that Strauss attended was only published in 2005 (Heidegger (n.13)), while the culminating Aristotle interpretation of 1924 only appeared in 2002 (Heidegger (n. 73)).
87.
Strauss (n. 58), p. 461.
88.
Jacques Taminiaux ( 2002) Sillages Phénoménologiques: Auditeurs et Lecteurs de Heidegger, pp. 212, 219. Brussels: OUSIA.
89.
See Leo Strauss (1997) ‘Preface to Hobbes’ Politische Wissenschaft’, in Green (n. 8), p. 453; Strauss (n. 58), p. 460. Karl Löwith (1994) reports that ‘[e]ven in 1925, [Heidegger] saw spiritual substance in theology alone, in Barth and [Friedrich] Gogarten’. My Life in Germany before and After I933: A Report, p. 31. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
90.
Leo Strauss (2001) ‘Zur Bibelwissenschaft Spinozas und seiner Vorläufer’, in Heinrich Meier (ed.) Leo Strauss: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, p. 395. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag.
91.
Leo Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas, ibid. p. 288. See also pp. 76-8, 138, 142, 155, 249, as well as Strauss (n. 16), p. xvii, n. 27.
92.
Strauss refers to Heidegger explicitly only in his critique of Cassirer. But that reference, taken in conjunction with other thinly veiled allusions, makes clear that Heidegger’s critique of the possibility of ethical or political science is the position from which Strauss sets out to challenge the thought of his time. See Strauss’s critique of Cassirer in (1989) ‘An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism’, in Thomas L. Pangle (ed.) The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, p. 28. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. See also his allusions to Heidegger in ‘Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart’, in Meier (n. 12), p. 383, and ‘Der Konspektivismus’, ibid. pp. 372- 3. For Strauss’s critique of Kelsen, see ‘Vorwort zu einem geplantem Buch über Hobbes’, in Meier (n. 16), pp. 201-15. For his critique of neo-Kantianism see ‘Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen’, ibid. pp. 217-38 (esp. 220) and ‘Vorwort zu einem geplantem Buch über Hobbes’, ibid. p. 210.
93.
See e.g. Strauss’s letter to Krüger of 15 Oct. 1931, in Meier (n. 16), p. 394, as well as the ‘Preface’ to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft, ibid. p. 9. Compare, more generally, the references in n. 50 above.
94.
See Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz, in Meier (n. 12), pp. 9-10, as well as Meier (n. 16), pp. 404, 426, 442, 516.
95.
Strauss (n. 38), p. 414.
96.
Ibid.
97.
In his 1931 ‘Cohen und Maimuni’ Strauss argued that ‘as phenomenology has become an all-determining power . . . so this means a decisive step towards the rehabilitation [Wiederherstellung] of Aristotelianism’. Ibid. p. 410. By phenomenology Strauss understands the ‘Schulbegriff’ of which Rosenzweig’s ‘new thinking’ is the ‘Weltbegriff’. The designation of Heidegger’s thought as an expression of the ‘new thinking’ had been made by Rosenzweig two years earlier (in 1929) (see n. 60 above). Strauss refers explicitly to Heidegger’s thought as ‘another form of the new thinking’ in his ‘Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion’, in Green (n. 8), p. 147.
98.
Strauss (n. 38), p. 410. According to Strauss, ‘Aristotelianism and generally non-idealized and non-modernized Greek philosophy is not only a threat and therefore of present interest’; it is also an opportunity in that ‘one day . . . [it] could show us a way out of the modern anarchy’.
99.
Strauss (n. 8), p. 450.
100.
See the epilogue to Heidegger (n. 73), pp. 409-10. That Strauss knew this lecture is confirmed by Stanley Rosen (2004) ‘Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger’, in Riccardo Pozzo (ed.) The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, p. 11. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
101.
See Daniel M. Gross and Ansgar Kemmann (eds) (2005) Heidegger and Rhetoric . Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
102.
Heidegger (n. 72), pp. 25-6.
103.
Strauss (n. 38), p. 410. See Hans-Georg Gadamer (1991) Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, pp. 21 and 70-83. New Haven: Yale University Press.
104.
Meier (n. 16), p. 409; see also pp. 407, 416. Cf. also Strauss’s critique of Spinoza who ‘constructs the political world from the distance of contemplation’. Strauss (n. 91), p.288.
105.
Meier (n. 16), p. 419.
106.
Ibid., p. 407.
107.
Ibid., p. 199.
108.
Ibid., p. 529 (see also p. 650).
109.
Martin Heidegger (2000) ‘Die Selbstbehauptung der Deutschen Universität’, in Hermann Heidegger (ed.) Reden und Andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, I9I0-I976, p. 110. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Strauss refers to that specific part of Heidegger’s Address in a letter to Kojève of 16 Jan. 1934. In V. Gourevitch and M. S. Roth (eds) (2000) Leo Strauss: On Tyranny, p. 223. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
110.
5 Sept. 1933, in Meier (n. 16), p. 636.
111.
See e.g. Neumann (n. 59), p. 28. Heidegger (n. 73), p. 6; (n. 68), p. 26. Martin Heidegger (1998) ‘Phenomenology and Theology’, in William McNeill (ed.) Pathmarks, p. 53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
112.
See Strauss’s letter to Krüger of 7 Jan. 1930 in Meier (n. 16), p. 398. Cf. Meier (n. 2), pp. 47-8. On Strauss’s atheistic persuasions see, more generally, pp. 414, 516, 742-3, and Meier (n. 90), pp. 442-4.
113.
Strauss (n. 38), p. 398.
114.
Strauss (n. 12), p. 26.
115.
Heidegger (n. 109), p. 111.
116.
See Strauss (1953, in n. 1), pp. 319-21 (see also p. 26), as well as Strauss’s letter to Eric Voegelin of 3 March 1950 in Peter C. Emberley and Cooper Barry (eds) (2004) Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, I934- I964, pp. 65-6. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
117.
This begins with Strauss’s critique of a way of reading Aristotle that is strikingly close to Heidegger’s - namely Hobbes’. See Meier (n. 16), p. 50. Hobbes and Heidegger are for Strauss the great ‘dismantlers’ of the Aristotelian tradition who nevertheless recovered the ‘humanistic’ Aristotle of the Rhetoric.
118.
Strauss (n. 90), p. 288; Gourevitch and Roth (n. 109), p. 212.
119.
Meier (n. 12), p. 308, and Meier (n. 90), pp. 432, 442-4.
120.
Strauss (n. 12), p. 25; Meier (n. 16), p. 414; ‘Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion’, in Green (n. 8), p. 172.
121.
See esp. Strauss’s 1939, ‘Exoteric Teaching’, in Interpretation 14(1) (Jan. 1986): 52, and Gourevitch and Roth (eds) (n. 109), pp. 182, 208.
122.
Thus Heidegger concluded his final interpretation of Aristotle in 1924. See Heidegger (n. 73), p. 329.
123.
See, respectively, Heidegger (n. 73), p. 136; (n. 71), p. 134; (n. 73), pp. 110, 68.
