Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought

Description

Leo Strauss's readings of historical figures in the philosophical tradition have been justly well explored; however, his relation to contemporary thinkers has not enjoyed the same coverage. In Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought, an international group of scholars examines the possible conversations between Strauss and figures such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, and Hans Blumenberg. The contributors examine topics including religious liberty, the political function of comedy, law, and the relation between the Ancients and the Moderns, and bring Strauss into many new and original discussions that will be of use to those interested in the thought of Strauss, the history of philosophy and political theory, and contemporary continental thought.
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Jeffrey A. Bernstein

Part I: Arts of Reading and Seeing

1. Liberalism and the Question: Strauss and Derrida on Politics and Philosophy
Jade Larissa Schiff

2. Purloined Letters—Lacan avec Strauss
Matthew J. Sharpe

3. Seeing through Law: Phenomenological Thought in Soloveitchik and Strauss
Jeffrey A. Bernstein

4. Claude Lefort and Leo Strauss: On A Philosophical Discourse
Isabel Rollandi

Part II: History And Politics

5. A Civil Encounter: Leo Strauss and Charles Taylor on Religious Pluralism
Jessica L. Radin

6. Care of the Self and the Invention of Legitimate Government: Foucault and Strauss on Platonic Political Philosophy
Miguel Vatter

7. A Fruitful Disagreement: The Philosophical Encounter between George P. Grant and Leo Strauss
Waller R. Newell

8. Strauss and Blumenberg on the Caves of the Moderns
Danilo Manca

9. Writing the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes: Leo Strauss and Ferdinand Tönnies on Hobbes and the Sociology of Philosophy
Peter Gostmann

Part III: Culture and Critique

10. Leo Strauss and Jürgen Habermas: The Quest for Reason in Twentieth-Century Lifeworlds
Rodrigo Chacón

11. Heidegger's Challenge to the Renaissance of Socratic Political Rationalism
Alexander S. Duff

12. The Wheel of History: Nihilism as Moral Protest and Destruction of the Present in Leo Strauss and Albert Camus
Ingrid L. Anderson

13. Who's Laughing? Leo Strauss on Comedy and Mockery
Menachem Feuer

14. Leo Strauss and Walter Benjamin: Thinking "In a Moment of Danger"
Philipp von Wussow

About the Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438483962
• Langue: English

Extrait

Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought
SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss

Kenneth Hart Green, editor
Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought
Reading Strauss Outside the Lines
Edited by
Jeffrey A. Bernstein and Jade L. Schiff
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bernstein, Jeffrey A., editor. | Schiff, Jade L., editor.
Title: Leo Strauss and contemporary thought : reading Strauss outside the lines / edited by Jeffrey A. Bernstein and Jade L. Schiff.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series: SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438483955 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438483962 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937135
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Jeffrey dedicates this volume to Ingrid Rasmussen, Zachary Bernstein, and Nathaniel Bernstein. Jade dedicates this volume to the memory of her father, Bernard Baruch Schiff, and to the memory of her mother, Gissa Schiff.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
I. ARTS OF READING AND SEEING
1 Liberalism and the Question: Strauss and Derrida on Politics and Philosophy
Jade Larissa Schiff
2 Purloined Letters—Lacan avec Strauss
Matthew J. Sharpe
3 Seeing through Law: Phenomenological Thought in Soloveitchik and Strauss
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
4 Claude Lefort and Leo Strauss: On A Philosophical Discourse
Isabel Rollandi
II. HISTORY AND POLITICS
5 A Civil Encounter: Leo Strauss and Charles Taylor on Religious Pluralism
Jessica L. Radin
6 Care of the Self and the Invention of Legitimate Government: Foucault and Strauss on Platonic Political Philosophy
Miguel Vatter
7 A Fruitful Disagreement: The Philosophical Encounter between George P. Grant and Leo Strauss
Waller R. Newell
8 Strauss and Blumenberg on the Caves of the Moderns
Danilo Manca
9 Writing the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes: Leo Strauss and Ferdinand Tönnies on Hobbes and the Sociology of Philosophy
Peter Gostmann
III. CULTURE AND CRITIQUE
10 Leo Strauss and Jürgen Habermas: The Quest for Reason in Twentieth-Century Lifeworlds
Rodrigo Chacón
11 Heidegger’s Challenge to the Renaissance of Socratic Political Rationalism
Alexander S. Duff
12 The Wheel of History: Nihilism as Moral Protest and Destruction of the Present in Leo Strauss and Albert Camus
Ingrid L. Anderson
13 Who’s Laughing? Leo Strauss on Comedy and Mockery
Menachem Feuer
14 Leo Strauss and Walter Benjamin: Thinking “In a Moment of Danger”
Philipp von Wussow
About the Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of Jade Schiff’s essay “ Liberalism and the Question: Strauss and Derrida on Politics and Philosophy ” appeared in Telos 166 (Spring 2014): 143–160.
Isabel Rollandi’s essay “ Claude Lefort and Leo Strauss: On a Philosophical Discourse ” was written during a semester in Munich with assistance from a scholarship from the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation.
Introduction
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
I n The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss , 1 Laurence Lampert tells a compelling story of Strauss’s engagement with the esotericism of Maimonides as exemplified in the former’s correspondence with Jacob Klein between the years 1937 and 1939. In these letters, and in Lampert’s engagement of them, one sees clearly the captivating excitement that held the young Strauss as he discovered both Maimonides’s writing between the lines as well as the influences and analogous instances of esoteric writers that preceded him. Before Strauss’s eyes, a philosophical world was opening up—one that included Homer, Hesiod, Xenophon, Plato, Aristophanes, Farabi, and Averroes. 2 As the Second World War raged on, and in the midst of professional and financial insecurities, Strauss lived in the urgent wonder of the philosophical life.
This excitement and wonder is doubtless present to all readers who try to engage seriously and thoughtfully with Strauss’s own work. Perhaps one of Strauss’s many virtues is to have conveyed precisely the excitement that he felt during his formative period to his readers during their/our own. To have shown, for example, that the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, the relation of the philosopher to the city, and the distinction between Jerusalem and Athens were living topics for reflection is no mean feat. From his early writings on Spinoza and on Medieval Jewish and Islamic thought, through the great lectures on natural right, Machiavelli, and the relation of the city to man in the 1950s and 1960s, up to the intensely difficult later works on Plato and Xenophon, Strauss successfully re-originates such excitement for all parties interested in the history of philosophy. Recent scholarly endeavors have continued this excitement as concerns the thought of Strauss himself. The inauguration of the Gesammelte Schriften —with its inclusion of Strauss’s correspondence, unpublished drafts, and marginalia—has so far given readers a clear view of Strauss’s intellectual trajectory from Weimar Germany, through Great Britain, and into the beginning of his time in the United States. Similarly, the publication of Strauss’s University of Chicago course transcripts by the Leo Strauss Center (both online and in book form) have given readers a good sense of Strauss the teacher, who engaged students’ questions and worked closely through texts of thinkers familiar (Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes) and less-familiar (Grotius, Vico) to readers of Strauss’s publications. This has, in turn, created vital thematic and historical avenues for scholarly monographs and articles on Strauss. Be it the early Weimar Strauss, the Strauss of the re-orienting 1930s, the Strauss of political philosophy, or Strauss as close reader of philosophical texts, the quality and quantity of secondary literature has decisively established Strauss as a fixed star in the realm of philosophical research. Put differently, the original excitement over the history of philosophy has continued into Strauss’s own thoughts about that history and has led to several divergent lines of interest within Strauss studies—one such line being, not surprisingly, Strauss’s relation to the very practice of writing between the lines that he discovered in premodern thought. Moreover, this continuous transmission of excitement surrounding the lines of Strauss’s work and thought shows no signs of abating any time soon.
If the present volume makes a contribution to the excitement of Strauss studies, we hope it will be by paradoxically continuing to transmit the excitement of Strauss’s thought by reading him (to a certain extent) outside the lines already established by the current receptions of Strauss’s oeuvre. In placing Strauss’s thought in conversation with other contemporary 3 thinkers and topics, we hope that this volume extends Strauss’s thought to hitherto unexplored areas of research. This extension seems a natural one to us insofar as many of the other thinkers (e.g., Foucault, Lefort, Tönnies, Derrida, Lacan, and Blumenberg) have been in conversation with similar thinkers in the history of philosophy. Similarly, many thinkers have a thematic affinity with Strauss (e.g., the question of religion in public life, the concern over law). Finally, certain topics (comedy) have been underexplored in Strauss circles. We believe that inaugurating a conversation between Strauss and these thinkers/topics can only highlight the excitement and reach of Strauss’s thought going forward.

That Strauss’s oeuvre amounts to a sustained argument favoring (in Hans Jonas’s Aristotelian coinage) “the nobility of sight” hardly comes as a surprise, and the contributors to part 1 (“ Arts of Seeing and Reading ”) all address this aspect of Strauss’s thought. Jade Schiff argues in favor of an affinity between Strauss’s and Derrida’s practices of reading—their “shared awareness of the perpetually problematic character of politico-philosophical and deconstructive inquiry points to their shared affinity for the Socratic style of investigation that calls into question what we think we know—about ourselves, our political commitments, our world.” Matthew Sharpe similarly highlights the readerly qualities that Straussian and Lacanian inquiry share: “there is the near-psychoanalytic attention Strauss asks his readers to pay to ‘ambiguous words’ like ‘rank,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘secret,’ ‘tyranny,’ ‘the wise,’ ‘wisdom,’ or ‘moderation’ and ‘courage’ in revered think