Leo Strauss: A life in the light of Martin Heidegger

Angel Jaramillo

This dissertation will be an intellectual portrait of the philosopher and historian of ideas Leo Strauss.
As of today, no one has written an intellectual biography of the sage of Hess[1]. There are plenty of
books and papers devoted to his philosophical work, his political ideas, and his debates with other
intellectual figures. There are also collections of letters that Strauss exchanged with Alexander
Kojeve, Eric Voegelin, Carl Schmitt, and other figures. However, no one has attempted to publish a
comprehensive work concerning his life[2]. Specifically, this dissertation will respond to the question
of what Leo Strauss’s political philosophy was actually about. I will suggest that, since very early
and over the course of his life, Strauss tried to propose an alternative to Heidegger’s existentialist
response not only to “the crisis of western civilization,”[3] but also to the problem of whether or not it
is possible to determine the “best political order” (the question of how man ought to live)[4].

I.

Before discussing Strauss’s relationship with Heidegger’s philosophy, it is necessary to explain why
a biographical approach can be said to have its proper place within current Straussian scholarship.
My contention is that the biographical approach actually fits Strauss’s philosophical standards.
Intellectual biography as a genre is a branch of the history of ideas, but it is also a way, if oblique, to
grasp concepts and theories. By examining Strauss’s intellectual journey, I hope to understand his
political theory and his influence in current political thought.

There has been a long-standing polemic as to whether Strauss’s political thought leaves room for a
biographical approach as a way to grasp political ideas. One branch of Straussian scholarship
assumes that any analysis of a political thinker ought to be only textual. According to this view, a
non-textual examination robs the thought of its eternal validity by making it merely the product of a
given set of historical situations. Those who support this notion believe that nothing significant can
be found outside of a textual work. However, this viewpoint does not go unchallenged[5]. In
contradistinction to the Straussian textual school, I will argue that not only does Strauss’s thought
allow for contextual approach, it actually requires it. I offer two reasons:

1. Strauss is well known, inter alia, for having proposed that a philosopher must be understood in
his own terms[6]. I suggest that Leo Strauss can be better understood if we attempt to understand
him in his own terms. We do not do justice to Strauss by treating him in a non-straussian way. As
paradoxical as it may be, Strauss understood himself in a contextual sense: in his autobiographical
essay, Strauss presents himself as an author who “was a young Jew born and raised in Germany
who found himself in the grip of the theological-political predicament”[7]. More importantly, he
believed that any mistakes he made in his work should be explained in light of his life: “I for one will
have to say something about my life. But this is of interest even to me only as a starting point. Why
then speak of one life at all? Because the considerations at which I arrived are not necessarily true
or correct; my life may explain my pitfalls.” [8]

In his work, Leo Strauss was always interested in the social and historical conditions of a political
thinker. In his essay “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Strauss advances the notion of sociology
of philosophy, in itself a branch of the sociology of knowledge, as the best way to understand the
relationship between a philosopher and his social context[9]. Unlike the sociology of knowledge, the
sociology of philosophy considers the possibility that philosophers as a group form a class by
themselves. Leo Strauss himself attempted to apply the sociology of philosophy to the Jewish and
Islamic philosophy of the Middle Ages. This dissertation will make use of the sociology of
philosophy in analyzing the work and life of Leo Strauss[10].

II.
Leo Strauss heard Martin Heidegger first in Freiburg[11] and later in Marburg[12]. Strauss’s
response to Heidegger’s philosophy was not explicit: instead of focusing directly on Heidegger’s
philosophy, Strauss decided to deal with it implicitly[13]. Strauss’s disagreement with Heidegger can
be found in his esoteric teaching as well as in his books, his published papers, his private
correspondence, and the courses he thought during his lifetime as a professor.

There is no doubt that Strauss considered Heidegger the greatest modern philosopher[14].
However, his admiration for Heidegger’s philosophical profundity did not prevent him from realizing
the metaphysical impasse and the hideous political consequences of Heidegger’s intellectual
enterprise. For Strauss, Heidegger’s historicism entailed the impossibility of philosophy in the full
sense of the term[15]. What I will try to do in this dissertation is to show how the work of Strauss
developed in response to Heidegger’s theoretical challenges.

I hope to prove that Strauss’s theoretical enterprise might be better understood if we take into
account the progression of his intellectual career. That is why, instead of analyzing Strauss’s
critique of the aforementioned problems synchronically, I will discuss it diachronically, that is, as it
developed over time. I am interested not only in Strauss’s objections to Heidegger’s positions, but
above all in how Strauss kept himself in conversation with Heidegger over the course of his life[16].
The sage of Hesse shared Heidegger’s uneasiness with modernity, but drew different conclusions.
As the main representative of what Strauss called “the third wave of modernity”, Heidegger’s radical
historicism[17] was at once the ultimate manifestation of the crisis of the modern condition and an
opportunity to overcome it. The consequences of Heidegger’s ontology were clear for Strauss:
because of his radical historicism, Heidegger was able to uproot the tradition and open the
possibility of a genuine recovery of classical philosophy. However, such a recovery, as attempted
by Heidegger, put him at odds with modern liberal democracy. What Strauss saw about Heidegger
was that the latter’s attempt to interpret Ancient Greek philosophy was so important for Heidegger’s
purposes that a refutation of it would mean the total debunking of his project. The consequences of
this assertion will be examined in the last two chapters of this dissertation. I will try to probe whether
or not Strauss’s outright rejection of Heidegger’s existentialist historicism was made in the name of
natural right. What is true is that this clash of philosophies was not only theoretical; it entailed above
all political engagement on both parts. In the central part of this dissertation, I will argue that by
criticizing Heidegger’s engagement with the Nazis, Strauss found himself engaged with the political
principles of the American republic. Further, I will suggest that in order to understand Strauss’s
support for the American republic, we must consider not only his textual work but also his contextual
life[18].

As far as I know, no one has argued that the key to grasping Strauss’s philosophical endeavors lies
in his life-long quarrel with Heidegger’s existentialist outlook. And yet, after 1935, there may be not
a single book by Strauss that does not tackle Heideggerian ideas.

III.

The dissertation will be divided into five chapters, the first of which will have two parts. In the first
part, I will talk about Strauss’s education as a philosopher in Germany prior to his encounter with
Heidegger. At first Strauss was influenced by both the German-Jewish Zionist youth
movement[19] and the Neokantian thinkers. He found in the neokantianism of Hermann Cohen[20],
the foundation for his ideas about the theological-political dilemma. Later on, however, Strauss
himself would fall under the spell of Edmund Husserl. Husserl’s critique of Neokantianism provided
Strauss with the theoretical basis that would allow him to face Heidegger’s ideas without
naïvete[21]. His encounter with Husserl would reveal to him an unknown and fascinating world:
classical political philosophy[22]. If neokantianism provided him with an introduction to “Jerusalem”,
Husserl helped him to find “Athens”[23]. I will argue that the phenomenologist slogan to the Sachen
selbst, championed by Husserl, was understood by Strauss as something that would help him to
grasp classical political philosophy. In this part of the first chapter, I will follow Strauss’s life during
the years of the Weimar Republic. In his last letter to Gershom Sholem, Leo Strauss wrote, his
fingers trembling, that he had just finished “an essay on Jenseits von Gut und Böse, on the gods in
Thucydides and on Xenophon´s Anabasis”[24]. At the end of his life, the sage of Hesse seemed to
have maintained the same interests thoughout his life: the theological-political problem, the
relationship between Platonic rationalism and Revelation, Nietzsche’s political philosophy, and the
clash of Natural Right and History. In this part, I will suggest that Leo Strauss’s main features and
themes were present in an embryonic stage before his encounter with Heidegger[25]. The second
part of the chapter will be an attempt to make sense of Strauss’s first encounter with Heidegger. My
hypothesis will be that while keenly aware of Heidegger’s powerful philosophical thought, Strauss
was, from the very beginning, interested in the philosophical truth or lack thereof of Heidegger’s
existential historicism[26].

The second chapter will examine one of the least-known phases in Strauss’s intellectual biography:
his European days in France[27] and England. This chapter will be divided into two parts. The first
starts with the publication in 1930 of Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner
Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch Politischen Traktat and ended with
the publication of Hobbes politische Wissenschaft, which was his last work written originally in
German[28]. Strauss is utterly devoted to the theological-political predicament in this period. At that
point, such a predicament was widened into one that concerned not just the German Jew but
modern man in general. In this part I will try to make sense of Strauss’s conclusions concerning the
theological-political problem. In this connection, there are three schools of thought. The first argues
that Strauss enthusiastically embraced the possibility of a return to Orthodox faith[29]. The second
claims that he concluded that atheism was the best position in regards to the problem of the
relationship between reason and revelation[30]. The third suggests that Strauss’s philosophy at this
point was beyond atheism and orthodoxy[31]. Not only will I agree with the third position, but I will
also advance the idea that Strauss’s agnosticism was his response to Heidegger’s standpoint on
the theological-political problem[32]. In the second part of this chapter, I will attempt to grasp what is
considered the great shift in Strauss’s scholarship[33]: his discovery via Al Farabi and
Maimonides[34] of the role played by Platonic political philosophy in medieval as well as modern
thinking. Strauss sought in a renewed study of ancient Greek sources a way out of the modern
predicament, that is to say, out of the “theological political problem”. What started as the Jewish
quest for historical orientation in a specific new situation turned into the question of whether it is
possible to recover the problem of the right life[35]. What will be discussed here is to what extent
the genealogy of political philosophy replaced --as the central issue in Strauss’s early scholarship--
the problem of the relation between religion and politics. My contention will be that Strauss was able
to keep in mind both quests over his lifetime and that, due to this, his attempt to recover ancient
Greek philosophy led him to advance a different approach from that of Heidegger. Biographically
speaking, this period ended in 1936 when Strauss crossed the Atlantic Ocean, dressed in a navy
blue suit, with an oilskin manuscript under his arms, and stepped off from the Queen Mary to touch
American soil for the first time.

The third chapter will cover Strauss’s works written between his arrival to America and his massive
heart attack in 1956[36]. This chapter will be divided into three parts. The first will take as its starting
point Strauss’s early impressions of the American political tradition. I will try to show why the
conservative political tradition in the United States was akin to Strauss’s political philosophy.
Although the solution adopted by Strauss, in the light of the specific circumstances of mid-twentieth
century America, was to effect a rapprochement with American conservatism[37], he was keenly
aware of the liberal heritage of this tradition in the United States[38]. Furthermore, I will argue that
for Strauss the American polity (in either its liberal or conservative incarnation) was akin to political
moderation (sophrosune), virtue advanced by the classical political thought. Even at this point of his
life, Strauss had Heidegger’s ideas in mind. It is tempting to point out that what Strauss attempted
was to counter Heidegger’s notion of “resoluteness” with the Aristotelian concept of moderation. If
the former was said to have been a Nazi quality, the latter was supposed to be an American virtue. I
will also discuss the unfolding of the political ideas of Leo Strauss concerning the American
Republic. My contention will be that Strauss turned his eyes to the American political tradition
because he was eagerly seeking an antidote to what he thought was the prime modern infirmity: the
Nazi regime, which for him was akin to Heidegger’s existential historicism. The second part will deal
with Leo Strauss’s direct attack on Heideggerian historicism as laid out in his essays collected
in Natural Right and History[39]. Although this work dwells on both Heidegger´s historicism and Max
Weber’s positivism, Strauss makes clear that the latter was actually an epiphenomenon of the
former[40]. Strauss’s main goal in Natural Right and History is to show us how the three waves of
modernity[41] have led us to a philosophical and political impasse, which was clearly expressed in
Heidegger´s existential historicism. In this section, I will argue that for Strauss the American political
founding and the kind of liberal republic that was created in the United States was the best
alternative in the light of the modern condition. I will point out, however, that Strauss believed that
the American political tradition could not solve the dilemmas of modernity. This conclusion paves
the way for a new solution to be found in the Socratic tradition as opposed to the Heideggerian pre-
Socratic tradition[42].

In the third part of this chapter, I will discuss at length Strauss’s debate with Alexander Kojeve
regarding tyranny[43]. My contention will be that Strauss’s polemic with one of the most profound
existentialists was also a debate with the foremost inheritor of Heidegger’s thought, Alexander
Kojeve[44]. After World War II, Leo Strauss was interested in the problem of tyranny (which he
defines as “absolute power without law”) and the relationship between the philosopher and the
tyrant. Heidegger’s relationship with Nazism throughout World War II, left a strong impression on
Strauss. Clearly, he decided to embark upon a meticulous study of Xenophon’s Hiero[45] as a bold
rebuttal to Heidegger’s embarrassing association with the Nazis.

Strauss’s main purpose in writing On Tyranny was to show that tyranny in itself is a long-standing
problem for humanity since its inception. At the beginning of his essay on Xenophon’s Hiero,
Strauss points out that “Tyranny is a danger coeval with political life”[46]. The problem of tyranny in
itself is more important than that of its incarnations at different stages of history. Any adequate
condemnation of the tyrannical rule must show it to be unsatisfying in itself.

Kojeve’s rebuttal was not wanting. The classical project depended essentially on the autonomy and
superiority of the philosophical life, a distinction between theory and praxis that the Hegelian-
Heideggerian Kojeve rejects. The roots of Kojeve’s historical view of human action rely on his
philosophical combination of Hegel and Heidegger. Kojeve asserts that Heidegger is the only
philosopher since Hegel to have made any significant progress. He sees Heidegger as the heir to
the anthropocentric philosophy of Hegel’s phenomenology. The advance that Heidegger makes
over Hegel is his development of a dualistic ontology. Whereas Hegel sketched all the possibilities
for monism, Heidegger opens the possibility of forging distinct ontological bases for Nature and
Humanity. A rigorous dualism seems to Kojeve to leave open the possibility of anthropocentric
philosophy in which human action will have no basis outside itself and in which history can be fully
described in its own terms[47].

Instead of resorting to the values of classical political thought, Kojeve has found out that the project
of modernity, in order to be fulfilled, calls for a final stage in which human beings will be recognized
as equally valued. Strauss despised such a standard because it lowers the highest human
standards[48]. For Strauss the conflict between philosophy and society is inevitable because
society rests on a shared trust in shared beliefs, and philosophy questions every trust and authority.
He sides with Plato against Kojeve’s Hegel in holding that philosophy cannot cease to be a quest
and simply become wisdom.

The need to separate politics and philosophy is an old liberal claim. Since its inception, modern
liberalism has sought to put a wall between the interests and ambitions of the powerful and the
freedom of conscience of the individual. The theme of the inviolability of conscience has been a
powerful contribution to the liberal creed. In Strauss’s On Tyranny the case for freedom of
conscience and opinion is made convincingly. For Strauss it was of the utmost importance that the
republic of letters keeps itself at distance from the Prince or the tyrant not only because
philosophers would rather talk with their own peers, but also because they turn out to be the first
line of defense against the arbitrariness of the rulers. In the end, Strauss believed that the classical
project was akin to modern liberalism precisely in the sense that the two of them create an
autonomous setting for the philosophical task[49].

The fourth chapter, which can be called the “Socratic Synthesis”, will be divided into two parts. In
the first part I will attempt to determine why Strauss devoted his last years to the study of
Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes[50]. I will point out that after having discussed the crisis of the
modern condition, Strauss must have realized that he needed to undertake a serious and detailed
study of Socrates in order to provide liberal democracy with a metaphysical and moral
basis. Strauss’s attempt to recover classical political thought could not be more anti-Heideggerian.
Whereas Strauss turned to Socrates in order to “cure” liberal modernity of its diseases, Heidegger’s
“archeological rediscovery” of Ancient Greek philosophy put him at odds with modern liberal
democracy. In his opposition to modernity, Strauss follows in the foot of Rousseau. Like the author
of The Social Contract, Strauss opposes modernity from the standpoint of classical antiquity. Unlike
Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss takes his bearings by Socrates. More clearly, Strauss, like
Rousseau, praises classical virtue and not archaic poetry. “To the extent that Nietzsche and
Heidegger are disciples of Rousseau, they follow the author of the Reveries of a Solitary
Promenade and not that of the Political Discourses”[51]. I will argue that Strauss attempted to
overcome Heidegger not so much on the philosophical level as on the interpretative level. In other
words, Heidegger’s phrase “griechisch gedacht” was so crucial to his interpretation of the world that
a refutation of it could be more effective than a more direct approach, which would criticize, for
example, Heidegger’s notion of Dasein[52]. Whereas Heidegger wanted to return to pre-Socratic
wisdom in order to come to terms with the idea of being, Strauss wanted to see what philosophy
originally meant and what the city was in classical political thinking. For Heidegger the truth lies
somehow in Heraclitus´s and Parmenides´s mysterious aphorisms; for Leo Strauss the most
notable incident in Ancient Greece was the execution of Socrates. In the end, I will argue, the main
difference between Heidegger and Strauss lies in their discrepancy about the “problem of
Socrates”.

In the second part, I will contend that Strauss was neither an enemy of modern democracy nor a
political reactionary, but an original critic of the modern liberal order who nevertheless considered
himself a friend of such an order. In his famous long critique of Isaiah Berlin[53], Strauss’s argument
was not against the practice of political liberalism, rather it was an argument about how liberalism
needs to understand itself. He argues that modern liberalism has not always understood its own
achievements, and that any attempt to understand liberalism has to be free of liberal prejudices
because it is an appreciation of what liberalism has achieved.[54]

The fifth chapter will try to make sense of Leo Strauss’s Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy[55],
which he undertook just prior to his death in 1973. In this chapter, I will contend that upon reviving
ancient rationalism and addressing “the problem of Socrates”, Strauss turned to the question of the
Western philosophic tradition explicitly set in the context of Heideggerian existential historicism. I
will argue that by dramatizing the life and death of Socrates, Strauss was able to show that the
philosopher’s desire for wisdom (Eros) was the alternative to Heidegger’s visionary hope for the
emergence of the new god[56]. Strauss showed in his last work how the problem of “Jerusalem and
Athens” that he had analyzed since his days in the Weimar Republic was actually discussed at
length in Plato’s dialogues. The re-evaluation of the theological-political problem led Strauss to
revive the premodern understanding of the tension between philosophy and politics[57]. Strauss
realized that in the twentieth century the roots of Western intellectual life were in danger of
extinction. For that reason, he sought to mount a defensive action and show us the fundamental
political and philosophical alternatives in their pure form.
IV.

The goal of this dissertation will be twofold: on the one hand, as has been outlined above, it will
show how Leo Strauss’s political philosophy was developed largely as a response to Heidegger’s
ideas. On the other hand, however, this dissertation will be an intellectual biography. As such, it will
attempt to reveal certain aspects of Leo Strauss’s life that have not hitherto been known by the
public. To undertake the project of writing about someone like Leo Strauss is challenging because
he was a very private person who mainly led the quite life of a scholar in the United States. Most of
the people who knew him have agreed that he devoted his life to the serious study of the
permanent questions posed to us by the political philosophical tradition. Although this picture might
contain more than one grain of truth, Strauss was also an exiled intellectual Jew. As such, he
witnessed firsthand the events that led to the First[58] and Second World Wars[59]. Furthermore, he
was in good terms with key intellectual players of these events. Despite his minute work on classical
political thought, he was never detached from practical affairs, particularly from what can be called
Grand Politics[60]. It is, therefore, very difficult not to believe that there were no interesting facts
about the life of Leo Strauss[61]. More importantly, in this dissertation I will argue that the
importance of Heidegger’s ideas in the development of Leo Strauss’s thought can be better
understood in the light of his life. Since 1973, the year of Strauss’s death, a great deal of
information about his work and life has been uncovered. In addition, biographies of important
figures and Strauss’s friends have recently been published. It is perhaps time to gather all the
information currently available and to undertake the writing of the story of one of the most influential
and yet unknown philosophers of our age: Leo Strauss.

V.

To undertake this project I will use four sources of information:

Primary Sources

Consultation of personal archives and recently published letters

(1) In this dissertation I intend to rely mostly on primary sources. The most important archive
concerning Leo Strauss can be found in the University of Chicago, where Strauss taught between
1948 and 1967. Currently, Joseph Cropsey is the literary executor of Strauss’s personal papers. The
archive is not yet open to the public; however scholars are able to see the archive by permission of
Strauss’s executor. I may be able to look at this archive because Mark Lilla[62] has offered to talk to
Joseph Cropsey and the Director of the Committee on Social Thought, Nathan Tarcov, about this
dissertation.

(2) As has been said earlier, currently the German scholar Heinrich Meier, from Carl Friedrich von
Siemens Stiftung, is preparing the collected works of Leo Strauss, a great part of which are personal
papers and letters. As of today, three volumes have been published. The third contains a great
number of letters that had hitherto been unpublished. One can read for the first time the
correspondence of Leo Strauss with Gerhard Krüger, Jacob Klein, Karl Löwith, and Gershom
Scholem. In addition, there are already available part of Leo Strauss’s correspondence with
Alexander Kojeve, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Carl Schmitt,[63] and Eric Voegelin[64].

(3) As is well known, Leo Strauss was a member of the Graduate Faculty at the New School for Social
Research between 1938 and 1948. At this institution, he met famous scholars and taught courses to
students that later on became famous. Among them, was Seth Benardete, a leading scholar on
classical Greek philosophy, who was one of the few people who actually understood Strauss as a
man, a teacher, and a philosopher. The importance of Benardete for this dissertation rests on the fact
that currently there is an effort to collect his papers in the Graduate Faculty at the New School
University. Much valuable information regarding Strauss’s life may be available in Bernadette’s
archive.

Interviews with friends and former students of Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss was a great teacher and a man who maintained long-term relationship with his friends,
many of whom were important philosophers and thinkers in their own right. Although many of his
friends and students have already passed away, some of them are still teaching in colleges and
universities, writing for influential magazines and newspapers, or are retired. In the spirit of an
investigative journalist, I will try to gather information, instrumental in understanding Leo Strauss, by
interviewing some of his remaining friends and students.

Books and works published by Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss is the author of fifteen books, the first three in German and the rest in English. In these
books, he interpreted a wide range of texts and authors and set about investigating the fundamental
problems of political philosophy. Moreover, in many of these books Strauss provides the reader with
information about his intellectual projects and philosophical quests. I hold that a careful reader will be
surprised at how much valuable information about Strauss’s life can be found in his philosophical
works. Leo Strauss was also the author of many articles and reviews that were published in the most
important magazines and journals devoted to political philosophy. These could also be prime sources
of information about both Heidegger’s ideas and Strauss’s life.

Secondary Sources

The enormous volume of secondary critical literature about Strauss’s political philosophy
Few political philosophers have been subject to such devotion by their students as Leo Strauss. Since
his death, a great number of books and articles concerning his ideas have been published by
Straussians. There are also critical studies by scholars who do not consider
themselves Straussians[65]. Despite the enormous amount of critical works about Strauss’s ideas,
no work solely devoted to his intellectual biography exists. This dissertation will try to fill that void.

[1] Daniel Tanguay has entitled his new book in French, Leo Strauss une biographie
intellectuelle. However, this is not an intellectual biography, for the author never discusses Leo
Strauss’s life. Grasset, Paris, 2003.

[2] One of the problems that scholars have faced when dealing with Strauss’s life is that most of his
private documents and letters are very difficult to see. Fortunately, the scholar Heinrich Meier from
the Siemens Stiftung has started to publish Strauss’s collected works, which include a great number
of letters that had hitherto been unavailable to scholars. In addition, Strauss’s recorded lectures in
Chicago will probably soon be published by the University of Chicago.

[3] George Steiner may have given the clearest description of Heidegger’s understanding of this
crisis: “To Heidegger, the history of Western civilization, seen from the crucial vantage points of
metaphysics after Plato, and of science and technology after Aristotle and Descartes, is no more and
no less than the story of how being came to be forgotten. The twentieth century is the culminating but
perfectly logical product of this amnesia.” Martin Heidegger, Chicago, the University of Chicago
Press, p. 38.
[4] Later on it will be shown that for Strauss, classical political philosophers intended to leave open
the question of what is the best political regime.

[5] Most of Strauss’s students have devoted their work to a detailed discussion of the main works in
the history of political philosophy. These works seldom touch on biographical issues. However, some
scholars have talked about the need to take into consideration Strauss’s biography in order to
understand his work. See: “Leo Strauss: the Philosopher as Weimar Jew”, David Biale, “The
Philosophy as Weimar Jew”, Leo Strauss’s Thought: toward a critical engagement, Ed. Alan Udof,
Lynne Rienner Publishers, London, pp. 31-40. There is also a Ph. D. Dissertation, which deals with
the early years of Leo Strauss. See Eugene R. Sheppard, “Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile”
(Ph.D., dissertation, UCLA, 2001), written under the supervision of David Myers

[6] That we must understand a philosopher as he understood himself was a method that Leo
Strauss took from Spinoza’s demand that we should read the Bible according to the Bible. “How to
study Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity,
Leo Strauss, Ed. Kenneth Hart Green, New York SUNY, University Pr3ess, 1997, pp. 182-183.

[7] Leo Strauss, “Preface to the English translation”, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Chicago, Chicago
University Press, 1997, p. 1.

[8] In his discussion with Jacob Klein, which took place at Saint John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland
on 30 January 1970, Leo Strauss gave the audience a brief account of his life. In it, he dwells on the
importance of his life in order to understand his thought. In “A Giving of Accounts”, Jewish Philosophy
and the Crisis of Modernity, p. 459.

[9] Leo Strauss’s The Political Philosophy of Hobbes can actually be read as though it were an
intellectual biography. The book is admittedly full of biographical details on Hobbes’s life in relation
to his intellectual endeavors.

[10] For a brief description of what Strauss means by the sociology of philosophy. See Leo
Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 7-9.

[11] Originally, Leo Strauss had gone to Freiburg in order to hear Edmund Husserl, but instead he
was completely charmed by Heidegger, Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss’s Thought: toward a critical
engagement, Ed. Alan Udof

[12] It was in Marburg that Strauss met for the first time his friends Hans-George Gadamer and Karl
Lowith. See Leo Strauss, The Early Writings (1921-1923), Ed. Michael Zank, New York, State
University of New York Press, 2002, p. 7.

[13] Later on it will be shown how Leo Strauss thought that the debunking of Heidegger’s existential
historicism would be succesful only on the interpretative level but not on the philosophical level

[14]

“Gradually the breadth of the revolution of thought which Heidegger was preparing dawned upon me
and my generation. We saw with our own eyes that there had been such phenomenon since Hegel”,
“An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism” in Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political
Rationalism, Ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Chicago, Chicago University Press, p. 28

[15] Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 35
[16] “The matter of Strauss’s relationship to Heidegger’s thinking is one of the philosophical issues
most in need of being raised in order to arrive at a proper understanding of Strauss’s thought. The
dismissal of the one, for whatever reason, results in a fundamental dilution of the other”, See Alan
Udoff, “On Leo Strauss: An Introductory Account”, Leo Strauss’s thought: toward a critical
engagement, Lynne Rienner Publishers, London, p. 27

[17] In his essay devoted to Heidegger´s existentialism, Strauss talked about both the young
author of Sein und Zeit and the later Heidegger of the Letters on Humanism in which he
shifted from stressing the problem to Dassein to emphasizing the dilemma of Sein. My
contention will be that Strauss was keenly aware of this shift and analyzed the two
Heideggers.