Synopses & Reviews
Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention, including stories in the
Wall Street Journal and
New York Times.Time magazine even called him one of the most influential men in American politics.” With
The Truth about Leo Strauss, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this notoriously complex thinker. Now, with
Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, they turn their attention to a searching and more comprehensive interpretation of Strausss thought as a whole, using the many manifestations of the problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone.
For Strauss, political philosophy presented a problem” to which there have been a variety of solutions proposed over the course of Western history. Strausss work, they show, revolved around recoveringand restoringpolitical philosophy to its original Socratic form. Since positivism and historicism represented two intellectual currents that undermined the possibility of a Socratic political philosophy, the first part of the book is devoted to Strausss critique of these two positions. Then, the authors explore Strausss interpretation of the history of philosophy and both ancient and modern canonical political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Strausss often-unconventional readings of these philosophers, they argue, pointed to solutions to the problem of political philosophy. Finally, the authors examine Strausss thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche.
The most penetrating and capacious treatment of the political philosophy of this complex and often misunderstood thinker, from his early years to his last works, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy reveals Strausss writings as an attempt to show that the distinctive characteristics of ancient and modern thought derive from different modes of solving the problem of political philosophy and reveal why he considered the ancient solution both philosophically and politically superior.
Review
“The Zuckerts have done it again! Their new book establishes Strauss as being at the forefront of the great philosophic minds of the twentieth century. This book not only makes Strausss writings clear and accessible, but raises him above the shabby polemics to which his thought has too often been subject. Their careful readings, together with a mastery of the entire corpus of Strausss work, will put this book on the top shelf for those interested in a serious engagement with Strauss the thinker.”
Review
“Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy offers a welcome exposition and defense of Strauss as a political philosopher. Given the considerable range and depth of Strausss writings, serious readers could use a reliable overview and a connecting thread for seeing their way through them. These the Zuckerts seek to provide. Of the recent books on Strauss, none matches this one in scope or detail.”
Review
“In 2008 the Zuckerts published The Truth about Leo Strauss primarily to defend Strauss against the charge of being the ideological source behind unpopular initiatives within American foreign policy. This book seeks rather to explain Strauss’s political philosophy from within by showing the various influences to which he was responding and to test his philosophy for completeness and coherence. In this second project, they succeed admirably. . . . A fascinating study.”
Review
“Essential. . . . Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert have taken on the ambitious task of analyzing Leo Strauss’s entire intellectual career. The result is a very good introduction to Strauss’s published works. It is more than a summary of one of the twentieth century's most influential political theorists, however, as the Zuckerts attempt the even more ambitious goal of trying to reconcile Strauss's entire career into a coherent statement of his ultimate view of philosophy.”
Review
“Schabert’s interest in political creativity or the creativity of political power began with his 1989 study of Boston mayor Kevin White. It continued in his masterly 2002 account of the role of François Mitterrand in the unification of Germany. In his latest book, Schabert looks not at specific examples of political creativity but at the problem of the foundation of creativity in the political form of human existence. Schabert understands politics as creative action, an uncaused initiative that provides human beings with their unique dignity. His narrative combines a subtle analytic exegesis of a wide range of textual materials with a meditative essay of the nature of political reality. The result is political science of the very highest order.”
Review
“Schabert presents an inspiring, learned, wise, and impassioned call to return to the basic facts of human existence, to the basic wisdom of the (s)ages, and to an understanding of politics as a necessary and immanent expression of human creativity. This is Schabert’s starting point for a ‘Second Birth.’ His turn to the thoughtful and experienced origins of contemporary civilization is at once radical and conservative: he evokes the reason of philosophy and the conviction of faith, the freedom of thought and the call of the divine, the crisis of the political hour and the hope of eternal being. I enjoyed this short and wonderfully rich ‘feast of thought.’ Indeed, I found myself processing Schabert’s profound meditation on being and the creativity of politics (and arguing with it!) long after reading this unique rendering of the ‘Gestalt of humanity.’”
Review
“This masterly essay in political foundations unfolds in a dialogue with a huge range of Greco-Roman, Islamic, and classic Chinese authors too rich to summarize here, but it has also emerged from a lifetime of keen observation of contemporary politics.”
Review
“Rarely do we find in contemporary political science the courage to consider and discuss the preconditions and the particularity of the political existence of human beings. One of the few who muster this courage is Tilo Schabert.”
Synopsis
In their latest book, the Zuckert's turn their attention to a searching and more comprehensive interpretation of Strausss thought as a whole, using the many manifestations of the problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone. Strausss life work, they argue, revolved around recovering, and then restoring, political philosophy to its originalSocraticform. And, just as political philosophy has multiple meanings within Strausss thought, so too does the problem of political philosophy. In Part Two, they take up Strausss novel understanding of the history of philosophy and the thinkers who comprise it. Strauss offered unconventional readings of canonical political philosophers, both ancient and modernPlato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. The chapters in the third part examine Strausss thought in its twentieth century context. The Zuckerts consider his debts to, and disagreements with, Husserl, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, his relationship to Carl Schmitt and his response to the theologico-political problem,” and his contention that liberal democracy is the best regime for our time. The Zuckerts conclude their analysis by highlighting some of the more controversial aspects of Strausss thought and offering their own reservations and unanswered questions about Strausss philosophic activity.
Synopsis
First published in German in 2009, The Second Birth of Human Beings, by the distinguished political philosopher Tilo Schabert, is a masterpiece of fundamental reflection on human freedom, power, and bodily existence. Whereas the origin of politics is usually identified with the formation of societies here Schabert argues that human existence is a political one from its very beginning in bodily birth. There are figurations of power in human existence in this fact alone, such as numbers, time, thought, eros, the body. And it is these figurations of power that are the forces which render the life of humans political. The book studies them and hence the presence of politics in the existence of humans prior to the establishment of societies and the political institutions and processes shaping human societies. It is shown that the world into which we are born imposes on humans the need for government. Their bodies teach them politics. The human experience of being "subjects to government" starts with the experience of their existence. However, through this experience, humans also learn that within the figurations of power that form their existence they can institute their own government, with the given political forces in their life. They can initiate their "second birth,” a civilization of politics whose own essential figuration of power will be freedom. Into the world which they did not build they can insert a world of which they are the builders. In a cosmos thoroughly political ("God is a politician", Schabert says), they become, through governments of their own, co-creators. This immensely learned and profound book establishes Schabert as a direct intellectual descendant of Hannah Arendt, Eric Voegelin, and Leo Strauss. Now available for the first time in English, this book will be essential reading for political and social philosophers.
Synopsis
Most scholars link the origin of politics to the formation of human societies, but in this innovative work, Tilo Schabert takes it even further back: to our very births. Drawing on mythical, philosophical, religious, and political thought from around the globe—including America, Europe, the Middle East, and China—
The Second Birth proposes a transhistorical and transcultural theory of politics rooted in political cosmology. With impressive erudition, Schabert explores the physical fundamentals of political life, unveiling a profound new insight: our bodies actually teach us politics.
Schabert traces different figurations of power inherent to our singular existence, things such as numbers, time, thought, and desire, showing how they render our lives political ones—and, thus, how politics exists in us individually, long before it plays a role in the establishment of societies and institutions. Through these figurations of power, Schabert argues, we learn how to institute our own government within the political forces that already surround us—to create our own world within the one into which we have been born. In a stunning vision of human agency, this book ultimately sketches a political cosmos in which we are all builders, in which we can be at once political and free.
About the Author
Tilo Schabert is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Erlangen in Germany and has taught at several other institutions around the world. A former secretary general for the International Council for Philosophy and the Humanities at UNESCO, he is the author of many books in several different languages, including, in English, Boston Politics and How World Politics Is Made.Javier Ibáñez-Noé is associate professor of philosophy at Marquette University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Prologue
Part I. Positivism and Historicism
Chapter One Introductory: Political Philosophy and Its Enemies
Chapter Two The Problem of Historicism and the Fusion of Philosophy and History
Part II. Strauss and the Philosophers
Chapter Three Strausss Rereading of the History of Political Philosophy: An Overview
Chapter Four Reviving Western Civilization from Its Roots: Strausss Return to Premodern Thought
Chapter Five Strausss New Reading of Plato
Chapter Six Why Strauss Is Not an Aristotelian
Chapter Seven At the Crossroads: Strauss on the Coming of Modernity
Chapter Eight Strauss on Locke and the Law of Nature
Part III. Strauss in the Twentieth Century
Chapter Nine Strausss Practical Politics: From Weimar to America
Chapter Ten Strauss and His Contemporaries
Chapter Eleven Strauss as Educator: The Great Books in the Modern World
Chapter Twelve Straussians
Conclusion Strausss Project: Reviving Socratic Political Philosophy
Notes
Index