Leo Strauss

Quick Facts

• Name: Leo Strauss
• Lived: 1899-1973
• Born: Kirchhain, Germany
• Later home: United States
• Main fields: political philosophy, Jewish philosophy, history of philosophy
• Best known for: ancient political philosophy, natural right, esoteric writing, and the critique of modern relativism

The Big Question

Can political philosophy still ask what is truly just, or has modern thought reduced all moral and political judgment to history, culture, preference, or power?

In One Minute

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish political philosopher who became one of the most influential teachers of political theory in the United States. He argued that old books on politics should not be treated as museum pieces. Writers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Moses Maimonides may still teach us about justice, virtue, law, and the best life.

Strauss is famous for two connected claims. First, classical political philosophy asked deeper questions than much modern political thought: not just how to secure rights or peace, but what kind of life is good for human beings. Second, many premodern philosophers wrote carefully under political and religious pressure. Their books often have an exoteric teaching, the public surface, and an esoteric teaching, a deeper argument meant for careful readers.

What They Taught

Strauss taught that political philosophy begins with ordinary political disagreement. People argue about justice, law, courage, piety, freedom, and tyranny. These arguments are not just noise. They point to real questions: What is justice? What is the best regime? What does a human being need in order to live well?

For Strauss, ancient political philosophy took these questions more seriously than many modern approaches. In the Greek city, politics was not only about protecting private rights. It was about shaping character and asking what kind of life deserves honor. The "city" in Strauss's vocabulary means the political community as a whole: its laws, customs, gods, heroes, offices, and shared opinions. A city teaches people what to admire. A modern country that honors wealth, military service, scientific progress, or individual freedom is doing something similar.

Strauss thought Plato and Aristotle kept the question of the good life open. In Plato's Republic, Socrates asks what justice is by imagining a city in speech. Strauss reads this as a way to test political claims, not as a simple blueprint for a real state. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, virtue means stable excellence of character, such as courage, moderation, and practical judgment. Strauss takes that classical concern with virtue to be a serious alternative to modern theories that begin from fear, self-preservation, or individual rights.

Natural right is Strauss's name for the possibility that some standards of right and wrong are grounded in human nature, not merely in local custom. This is not the same as saying every political rule is obvious or unchanging. Strauss's classical natural right is more searching and less formulaic than many later versions of Natural Law Theory. It asks whether there are better and worse ways of life for beings like us. For example, if a regime rewards cowardice, lies, and cruelty, Strauss thinks we can ask whether that regime is bad by nature, not merely unpopular in our time.

Strauss's critique of modernity is a critique of a shift in political ambition. He thought modern political philosophy, especially after Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, often lowered the goal of politics. Instead of asking about virtue and the best life, it asked how to secure peace, comfort, power, property, and rights. Strauss did not deny that peace and rights matter. His worry was that a politics built only on security and preference may lose the language needed to judge noble and base, just and unjust.

He also criticized historicism and positivism. Historicism is the view that human thought is so shaped by its historical setting that there are no permanent questions or standards. Positivism, in Strauss's target sense, is the idea that social science should describe facts without judging values. Strauss thought both views weaken political philosophy. If justice is only "what this age happens to believe," then we cannot rationally condemn tyranny except by saying we dislike it. Strauss wanted to reopen the older question: can reason discover anything about what is good for human beings?

Another major theme is the tension between philosophy and revelation. Philosophy asks questions without accepting an answer just because an authority gives it. Revelation means divine teaching received through scripture, law, or prophecy. Strauss thought Judaism and Islam made this tension especially visible because revealed law governs public life, not only private belief. His studies of Maimonides and the Guide for the Perplexed ask how a philosopher can live under sacred law while still pursuing free inquiry.

Key Ideas With Examples

• Political philosophy: the search for rational answers to political questions. Example: not just "What does the constitution say?" but "What is justice, and what kind of regime best serves it?"
• Natural right: the idea that some things are right or wrong because of what human beings are, not only because a society voted for them. Example: a legal system may permit persecution, but that does not settle whether persecution is just.
• Ancient political philosophy: the approach Strauss found in Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Thucydides. It asks about virtue, the best regime, the education of citizens, and the relation between philosophy and the city.
• Modernity critique: Strauss's argument that modern political thought often trades the question of the highest life for more manageable goals such as security, prosperity, and control over nature.
• Historicism: the claim that ideas are products of their historical moment. Strauss objected when this became the stronger claim that no question or standard can reach beyond its time.
• Relativism: the view that moral truth depends on a person, culture, or era. Example: if one society praises tyranny and another condemns it, relativism says there may be no truth beyond the disagreement.
• Exoteric writing: the public surface of a text. A philosopher may praise the city's official beliefs in a way that ordinary readers accept.
• Esoteric writing: a deeper teaching hidden through hints, tensions, irony, silence, or deliberate oddities. Example: a writer under censorship might publicly defend an official doctrine while arranging the argument so careful readers see its problems.
• Persecution and writing: Strauss's claim that fear of punishment shaped how philosophers wrote. The threat might be prison, exile, religious condemnation, or loss of public standing.
• The theological-political problem: the conflict between political order, revealed religion, and free philosophical questioning. A city needs shared laws and loyalties; philosophy asks whether those loyalties are true.

Major Works

• Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1930): Strauss studies Baruch Spinoza and biblical criticism. The book sets up his lifelong concern with reason, revelation, and the political role of religion.
• The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (1936): Strauss reads Hobbes as a founder of modern political philosophy. The book argues that modern natural right begins by focusing on fear, self-preservation, and human power.
• On Tyranny (1948): A close reading of Xenophon's dialogue Hiero. Strauss uses a conversation between a tyrant and a poet to ask whether wise rule, happiness, and political power can fit together.
• Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952): Strauss's most famous statement on esoteric writing. The essays argue that philosophers such as Maimonides and Spinoza sometimes wrote with a public surface and a hidden argument.
• Natural Right and History (1953): Strauss's best-known American book. It attacks relativism and historicism, compares ancient and modern natural right, and asks whether reason can still speak about justice by nature.
• Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958): Strauss treats Machiavelli as a decisive break with classical political philosophy. The book argues that Machiavelli changes the moral horizon of politics by giving necessity, force, and effective rule a new dignity.
• What Is Political Philosophy? (1959): A collection centered on the meaning of political philosophy. Strauss defends the older search for the best regime against the narrowing of politics into social science or ideology.
• The City and Man (1964): Essays on Aristotle's Politics, Plato's Republic, and Thucydides. The book shows Strauss reading classical texts as living arguments about the city, war, justice, and philosophy.

Why It Matters

Strauss helped bring ancient political philosophy back into the center of American political theory. He pushed students to read old texts slowly, as if the authors might be smarter than their modern interpreters. That method changed how many people studied Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

His work also matters because it names a real modern problem. Liberal societies often defend freedom by saying people should choose their own values. Strauss asks whether that answer is strong enough when a society faces tyranny, fanaticism, or moral collapse. If all values are just preferences, why prefer justice to cruelty? Strauss's answer is not a simple program. It is a return to political philosophy as an open, disciplined search for the good.

Proponents, Critics, and Opponents

Strauss's students and readers are often called Straussians, though they disagree with one another. Important students included Allan Bloom, Joseph Cropsey, Harry Jaffa, and Thomas Pangle. Some used Strauss to renew the study of ancient philosophy. Others applied his questions to American constitutionalism, civic education, or modern political theory.

Strauss's main intellectual opponents were not simply particular people. They were positions: value-free social science, relativism, historicism, and modern theories that reduce politics to security or preference. He criticized parts of Liberalism, but he also lived and taught inside liberal democracy and did not write a party platform.

Critics argue that Straussian reading can become too suspicious, finding hidden messages where a text may just be difficult or inconsistent. Others object that Strauss underrates modern rights, equality, and democracy. A separate public controversy links Strauss to neoconservatism, but that link is disputed. Strauss himself wrote mainly about political philosophy, not foreign policy.

Related Pages

• Plato
• Aristotle
• Moses Maimonides
• Republic
• Nicomachean Ethics
• Guide for the Perplexed
• Natural Law Theory
• Liberalism
• Machiavelli
• Thomas Hobbes
• John Locke
• Baruch Spinoza
• Martin Heidegger