Zuckert, Catherine, and Michael Zuckert. The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.
Smith, Stephen. Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.
Strauss's challenge both to philosophical relativism and to historicism remains as incisive today as when it was first enunciated. But the repercussions of Strauss's work move well beyond an immanent critique of Weber and the methodology of the social sciences. His legacy remains and pushes us to ask difficult questions about how we understand the emergence of European tyranny in the twentieth century, and about how we live in relation to such events, which Hannah Arendt argued destroyed all prior categories of thought.[5] Nassar Behnegar, author of Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the Scientific Study of Politics (2003), argues that "Strauss turned away from the 'value free' social science of his time, which could not understand Hitler's and Stalin's regimes as tyrannies, and turned towards classical political philosophy out of a desire for a genuine social science."[6] Due to many factors—some of his own making, especially in regard to his striking anti-liberal leanings, and also others basically beyond his control—Strauss's role in the remaking of political and social science is not widely appreciated today. His writings represent a serious controversy primarily for political reasons with those philosophers and social critics who have encountered him in one forum or another. Just the mention of Strauss today can stir animosity and resistance to actually reading his texts, which are allegedly tainted with justifications of inequality and elitism. At least as far as his philosophical insights are tied to his controversial "political" legacy as a so-called "neo-conservative," perhaps the neo-conservative theorist of our time, his deep and positive impact on philosophy and the social sciences risks being lost in the context of various claims that attempts to directly associate him with the protracted war in Iraq, the "war on terror" more generally, or the Bush Administration and its history of "noble lies" in the name of democratic freedoms. . . .
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