Leo Strauss Foundation
@ls_foundation
On the thought and legacy of Leo Strauss https://leostrauss.substack.com/
“For by concerning themselves only with the best that the world has produced, and considering the lower, nay, the worse, only in relation to that excellence, their knowledge attains such fullness, their judgments such certainty, their taste such consistency, that within their…
“Yet, as the events of recent times float before our minds, an observation is well-placed here, which we can make on our path through life: that no scholar has gone unpunished for dismissing, opposing, or despising that great philosophical movement begun by Kant, except perhaps…
“Yet, as the events of recent times float before our minds, an observation is well-placed here, which we can make on our path through life: that no scholar has gone unpunished for dismissing, opposing, or despising that great philosophical movement begun by Kant, except perhaps…
A source that helped me a great deal in preparing for this is the new-ishly published edition of Leo Strauss's 1948 notebook on the Euthyphro for a course he taught. The book was edited by Svetozar Minkov of the @ls_foundation and @HannesKerber It contains, among other…
Next weekend, I'll offer the first installment in a series on Plato's Euthyphro, beginning with Strauss's interpretation of it. Strauss's lecture shows how carefully we ought to read Plato and articulates the tension between reason and revelation. x.com/i/spaces/1BdxY…
Strauss on the structure and "the law" of Halevi's Kuzari (from amazon.com/Leo-Strauss-Re…)
His point may be that the two Germans render al-nawāmīs al-ʿaqlīya in a kind of Kantian way while Touati and Kogan are closer to Strauss's reading of it (which, however, is itself twofold). The great poet Halevi himself uses the phrase in two confusingly different ways (PAW…
A remarkable new photo courtesy of Ralph Lerner
😊 Forthcoming in August: Heinrich Meier's 𝘓𝘦𝘰 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘴.
Harvard will publish the English translation
😊 Forthcoming in August: Heinrich Meier's 𝘓𝘦𝘰 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘴.
In On Tyranny, Strauss contrasts Xenophon's Cyrus, who steers clear of the beautiful Panthea to stay focused on what he needs to do, with Socrates, whose philosophical passion lets him fearlessly (or safely?) visit "speech-surpassing" Theodote (unlike Diotima, unable to teach…
Thomas Aquinas (Aristoteles librum de caelo, XXII, §228:) on whether Plato and Aristotle concealed, beneath fables and enigmatic locutions, their Heraclitean-Empedoclean view that the world is perishable...and on why he doesn't care so much about the question of exotericism
Strauss helped a student (Clark Bouton) read carefully Thomas Smith's De Republica Anglorum NOW it doth appeare, that it is profitable to euerie common wealth (as it is to euery thing generally and particularly) to be kept in her most perfect estate. Then if that part which doth…
Strauss on Georg Simmel (Autumn 1961, Basic Principles of Classical Political Philosophy) I think one must make a great distinction between Weber and Simmel. Simmel was technically a philosopher, Weber was not. And I don’t believe that so-called technical philosophers are as…
Strauss quoting Crossman's "The more I read [the Republic], the more I hate it," Strauss's near conclusion of the Havelock essay ("... absolute tolerance is altogether impossible; the allegedly absolute tolerance turns into ferocious hatred of those who have stated most clearly…
See Zoom link below. And here is the half-title page of Strauss’s copy of Persian Letters.
Tomorrow, Wed, July 2, at 11:30 am Chicago time, Professor Stuart Warner will present "Montesquieu's 'Milken Way': Reflections from the 'Persian Letters'" in the History of Ideas series, the Institute of Historical Research (London) us06web.zoom.us/j/89375292431?… history.ac.uk/events/montesq…
Strauss considered editing and publishing as "the three waves of modernity" his introductory lecture (March 30, 1960) to the Marx course he co-taught with Joseph Cropsey in spring 1960 at the University of Chicago. Audio here: wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leostrauss/s3f…
“Unfortunately, there seems to be no self-parody in it in the direction of the buffoon-like, but rather a stylistic pretension in the sense of a willed simplicity [eine Stil-Prätension im Sinn gewollter Schlichtheit]. Well, she has drawn him for me at my request: his…
Checking the galley proofs for an Italian volume on Leo Strauss that will come out with @EdizioniETS this summer! Off to the printer!