Discourses on Strauss : revelation and reason in Leo Strauss and his critical study of Machiavelli / Kim A. Sorensen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sorensen, Kim A., 1974-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Strauss, Leo.

Religion and politics.

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Strauss, Leo. Thoughts on Machiavelli.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527.

Machiavelli, Niccolò.

Physical Description:

xvi, 266 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, [2006]

Summary:

Leo Strauss has perhaps been more cited-and alternately vilified or revered-in the last ten years than during the productive years of his scholarly life. He has been blamed (or credited) for providing the intellectual underpinnings of a generation of neoconservatives in political philosophy and foreign policy. But though he may be cast as a conservative thinker who critiques modernity, to interpret him exclusively in this light is to reduce him in ways that his self-definition, as a political theorist open to both religion and philosophy, does not justify.

Kim A. Sorensen clearly lays out the debate surrounding Strauss by reviewing his published work and legacy since his death in 1973. He then turns to a key distinction in Strauss's thought-between revelation and reason, or religion and philosophy-and maintains that Strauss used their mutual opposition to modernity as a central theme in his oeuvre. For Sorensen, Strauss considered revelation and reason both as fundamentally different worldviews and as alternate ways of understanding the good life.

Sorensen explores Strauss's views on the revelation/reason distinction through a close examination of the final chapter in Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli. Here Strauss weighs Machiavelli's critique of religion in general and Christianity in particular, and Machiavelli's departure from the classical tradition of political philosophy dating from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. For Strauss, "the crisis of our time" has its point of origin in Machiavelli's rejection of both biblical and classical morality as guides to the efficacy of political virtue.

For Strauss, Sorensen claims, a recovery of the ancient virtues of classical political philosophy is essential. Sorensen also shows that while Strauss is accepting of reason, he is open to revelation. In the end, he is a philosopher both of Athens and of Jerusalem.

Contents:

Introduction: Leo Strauss on the Permanent Problems and the Predicaments of Modernity 1

Part 1 Approaching Leo Strauss

Chapter 1 Leo Strauss's Idea of History 17

Chapter 2 Revelation and Reason in Leo Strauss 30

Part 2 Strauss's Machiavelli on Religion: Neither Christian Nor Pagan

Chapter 3 Christianity and the Bible 57

Chapter 4 Cosmology and the Utility of Religion 79

Part 3 Strauss's Machiavelli on Philosophy: Political Virtue

Chapter 5 Moral Virtue and Human Action 99

Chapter 6 Virtue and Governance 122

Chapter 7 The Legacy of Machiavelli's Moral-Political Teaching 146

Appendix On the Surface of Thoughts on Machiavelli, chapter 4: An Outline of Strauss's Critical Study of Machiavelli's Teaching 167.

Notes:

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Adelaide.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-247) and index.

ISBN:

0268041172

OCLC:

63679987

Publisher Number:

9780268041175