Chambers, Samuel A. Review of Stephen B. Smith, ed. CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO LEO STRAUSS. NDPR (June 2010).

Smith, Stephen B., ed. Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. Readers looking for a fight, or the next round of an on-going fight, will not find it here. And by "here" I mean to refer both to the book under review and this review itself. In just the past six years there have been at least a dozen books published on Strauss and Straussians, on the work of the thinker and on the politics of his putative influence over his students. A student of philosophy who somehow missed the entirety of the past decade might pick up Smith's collection of essays and see nothing more than a standard, rigorous academic treatment of a philosopher in the Cambridge Series. Yet anyone who has paid even scant attention to the recent literature would see something else as well: a careful and purposive choice to avoid rehashing the debate between, on the one hand, those who wish to draw the link between Strauss and neoconservatism and/or the Iraq War and, on the other, those who wish to break that connection, to defend Strauss (and sometimes, but not always, his students as well) from those charges. Instead, and keeping well with the mission statement of the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy series -- to overcome "intimidation" and "serve as a reference for students and non specialists" -- Smith has assembled a very sober volume. As Smith says in his lucid and succinct introduction, he has brought together the ten essays in the volume (plus his intro and his own brief biographical overview of Strauss's life and work, for a total of 12 chapters) in order "to canvass the wide range of Strauss's interests" (6). Some might question whether the term "wide-ranging" can aptly be applied to the group of contributing authors, most of whom are either self-identified Straussians, students of Strauss, or scholars who have taught or studied at the University of Chicago. Yet I use this passive construction not to smuggle in my own criticism on this front, but rather to displace it. Many recent works on Strauss and contemporary politics have become caught up in a hopeless and seemingly endless process of name calling, and I have no interest in playing that game. More importantly, it should not come as a surprise that when faced with the editorial task of finding experts on Strauss to contribute to an edited volume, Smith would wind up choosing many individuals who fall into one of these three groups. Finally, Smith has, in fact, brought together a wide array of approaches to Strauss – including some criticisms. More importantly, the book proves broad in terms of themes (from the problem of modernity, to religion and reason, to social science method, to political regimes), time periods (from early writings and letters, some still not translated into English, through the well-known and widely-read books, to late essays and spoken remarks), and approaches (some authors treat Strauss as a scholar and actor in his own right, some take him as a teacher, and some address him as a philosopher engaging with timeless questions). . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19673.