There are good reasons to study Leo Strauss. Philosophical, existential, and political reasons. Those reasons existed before Strauss's star rose on both sides of the Atlantic on the media horizon in the year 2003, and those reasons will continue to exist long after the quarrel over Strauss's alleged influence on the foreign policy of the only remaining world power has become completely a thing of the past. I do not want to discuss that short-lived quarrel more closely here. Instead, I want to give an answer to the question “Why Leo Strauss?,” a question that can most definitely be separated from the latest Strauss boom. In fact, it was not only after Strauss came to be on so many people's lips that the question was put to me; no, I have come up against it as long as I have seriously studied his work and his thought. It may be appropriate for someone coming from Old Europe to address this question as the opening question at the first conference on Strauss taking place in what once was called New Europe.

The question “Why Leo Strauss?” can be the expression of either dismissive surprise or open-minded wonder. First of all and most often it is the result of insufficient knowledge. Strauss, who was born in Kirchhain, Germany in 1899 and died in Annapolis, USA in 1973, was long the great unknown among the thinkers of the twentieth century.