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7 - Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Robert Howse
Affiliation:
New York University
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Summary

Leo Strauss famously wrote that, while philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying (as Hegel said), it is intrinsically edifying (TOM, p. 299). What can we, as scholars and as citizens, learn from the dramatic encounter between philosophy and political violence in Strauss’s own thought, and the reactions it has engendered?

We might begin by comparing Strauss’s case with that of Heidegger. In her essay “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” Hannah Arendt writes, with Heidegger’s Nazism in mind:

We who wish to honor the thinkers, even if our own residence lies in the midst of the world, can hardly help finding it striking and perhaps exasperating that Plato and Heidegger, when they entered into human affairs, turned to tyrants and Führers. This should be imputed not just to the circumstances of the times and even less to preformed character but rather to what the French call a deformation professionelle [a weakness or vice that goes along with the profession]. For the attraction to the tyrannical can be demonstrated theoretically in many of the great thinkers

(Kant is the great exception).

Arendt tells us that “we” mere mortals might be exasperated about the deformation professionelle, but, for true thinkers, Heidegger’s legacy is “something perfect.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Leo Strauss
Man of Peace
, pp. 173 - 182
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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References

Arendt, Hannah, “Heidegger at Eighty,” tr. Albert Hofstadter, The New York Review of Books, October 21, 1971
Arendt, Hannah, “Reflections on Little Rock,” Dissent 6 no. 1 (Winter 1959), pp. 45–56Google Scholar
Clay, Jenny Strauss, “The Real Leo Strauss,” The New York Times, June 7, 2003, A29
Kristol, Irving, “An Autobiographical Memoir,” in Kristol, , Neo-Conservativism: The Autobiography of an Idea: Selected Essays 1949–1995 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 89Google Scholar
Bloom, Allan, “Leo Strauss: September 20, 1899–October 18, 1973” in Bloom, , Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 235–255Google Scholar
Fackenheim, Emil, “Leo Strauss and Modern Judaism,” Claremont Review of Books, Vol. IV, No. 4, Autumn 2004Google Scholar

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  • Conclusion
  • Robert Howse, New York University
  • Book: Leo Strauss
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139871440.008
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  • Conclusion
  • Robert Howse, New York University
  • Book: Leo Strauss
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139871440.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Robert Howse, New York University
  • Book: Leo Strauss
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139871440.008
Available formats
×