|
Showing 1 - 25 of
41 matches in All Departments
In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political
philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in
individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for
sacrificing oneself for the state--a critique as cogent today as
when it first appeared. George Schwab's introduction to his
translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt's
intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history
leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis
by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy B. Strong placing Schmitt's
work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes
a translation of Schmitt's 1929 lecture "The Age of Neutralizations
and Depoliticizations," which the author himself added to the 1932
edition of the book. An essential update on a modern classic, "The
Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition" belongs on the
bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or
philosophy.
In the winter of 1965, Leo Strauss taught a seminar on Hegel at the
University of Chicago. While Strauss did not consider himself a
Hegelian nor write about Hegel at any length, his writings contain
intriguing references to the philosopher, particularly in
connection with his studies of Hobbes, in his debate in On Tyranny
with Alexandre Koje ve; and in his account of the "three waves" of
modern political philosophy. Leo Strauss on Hegel reconstructs
Strauss's seminar on Hegel, supplemented by passages from an
earlier version of the seminar from which only fragments of a
transcript remain. Strauss focused in his seminar on the lectures
collected in The Philosophy of History, which he considered more
accessible than Hegel's written works. In his own lectures on
Hegel, Strauss continues his project of demonstrating how modern
philosophers related to ancient thought and explores the
development and weaknesses of modern political theory. Strauss is
especially concerned with the relationship in Hegel between
empirical history and his philosophy of history, and he argues for
the primacy of religion in Hegel's understanding of history and
society. In addition to a relatively complete transcript, Leo
Strauss on Hegel also includes annotations, which bring context and
clarity to the text.
In the winter of 1965, Leo Strauss taught a seminar on Hegel at the
University of Chicago. While Strauss neither considered himself a
Hegelian nor wrote about Hegel at any length, his writings contain
intriguing references to the philosopher, particularly in
connection with his studies of Hobbes, in his debate in On Tyranny
with Alexandre Koje ve; and in his account of the "three waves" of
modern political philosophy. Leo Strauss on Hegel reconstructs
Strauss's seminar on Hegel, supplemented by passages from an
earlier version of the seminar from which only fragments of a
transcript remain. Strauss focused his seminar on the lectures
collected in The Philosophy of History, which he considered more
accessible than Hegel's written works. In his own lectures on
Hegel, Strauss continues his project of demonstrating how modern
philosophers related to ancient thought and explores the
development and weaknesses of modern political theory. Strauss is
especially concerned with the relationship in Hegel between
empirical history and his philosophy of history, and he argues for
the primacy of religion in Hegel's understanding of history and
society. In addition to a relatively complete transcript, Leo
Strauss on Hegel also includes annotations, which bring context and
clarity to the text.
A transcript of Leo Strauss's key seminars on Plato's Protagoras.
This book offers a transcript of Strauss's seminar on Plato's
Protagoras taught at the University of Chicago in the spring
quarter of 1965, edited and introduced by renowned scholar Robert
C. Bartlett. These lectures have several important features. Unlike
his published writings, they are less dense and more
conversational. Additionally, while Strauss regarded himself as a
Platonist and published some work on Plato, he published little on
individual dialogues. In these lectures Strauss treats many of the
great Platonic and Straussian themes: the difference between the
Socratic political science or art and the Sophistic political
science or art of Protagoras; the character and teachability of
virtue, its relation to knowledge, and the relations among the
virtues, courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom; the good and the
pleasant; frankness and concealment; the role of myth; and the
relation between freedom of thought and freedom of speech. In these
lectures, Strauss examines Protagoras and the sophists, providing a
detailed discussion of Protagoras as it relates to Plato's other
dialogues and the work of modern thinkers. This book should be of
special interest to students both of Plato and of Strauss.
In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural
right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the
distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the
centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the
Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, Natural Right and History
remains as controversial and essential as ever. "Strauss ...makes a
significant contribution towards an understanding of the
intellectual crisis in which we find ourselves ...[and] brings to
his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive
mind."--John H. Hallowell, American Political Science Review Leo
Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished
Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University
of Chicago.
Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political
philosophy through careful analyses of works by ancient thinkers.
As with his published writings, Strauss's seminars devoted to
specific philosophers were notoriously dense, accessible only to
graduate students and scholars with a good command of the subject.
In 1965, however, Strauss offered an introductory course on
political philosophy at the University of Chicago. Using a
conversational style, he sought to make political philosophy, as
well as his own ideas and methods, understandable to those with
little background on the subject. Leo Strauss on Political
Philosophy brings together the lectures that comprise Strauss's
"Introduction to Political Philosophy." Strauss begins by
emphasizing the importance of political philosophy in determining
the common good of society and critically examining the two most
powerful contemporary challenges to the possibility of using
political theory to learn about and develop the best political
order: positivism and historicism. In seeking the common good,
classical political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle did not
distinguish between political philosophy and political science.
Today, however, political philosophy must contend with the
contemporary belief that it is impossible to know what the good
society really is. Strauss emphasizes the need to study the history
of political philosophy to see whether the changes in the
understanding of nature and conceptions of justice that gradually
led people to believe that it is not possible to determine what the
best political society is are either necessary or valid. In doing
so, he ranges across the entire history of political philosophy,
providing a valuable, thematically coherent foundation, including
explications of many canonical thinkers, such as Auguste Comte and
Immanuel Kant, about whom Strauss did not write extensively in his
published writings.
The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear
in more than thirty years, "Leo Strauss On Plato's "Symposium""
offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this
renowned scholar as his students did. Given as a course in autumn
1959 under the title "Plato's Political Philosophy," at the
University of Chicago, these transcripts previously had circulated
in "samizdat" fashion, passed down from one generation of students
to the next. They show Strauss at his best, in his subtle and
sometimes indirect style of analysis, which has attracted almost as
much commentary as has the content of his thought.
Strauss presents a coherent and complete interpretation of the
"Symposium," proceeding by a meticulous reading from beginning to
end. Operating on the once common hypothesis that commentary is an
excellent method of expounding the truth, Strauss sheds light not
only on the meaning of the dialogue and its place in the Platonic
corpus, but also on a host of important topics, including the
nature of eros and its place in the overall economy of human life;
the perennial quarrel between poetry and philosophy, and the
relation of both to piety, politics, and morality; the character of
Socrates and the questions of his trial; and many other matters.
As provocative as they were a half century ago, these important
lectures will be welcomed by students of classics, philosophy,
politics, psychology, and political philosophy.
This volume provides an unequaled introduction to the thought of
chief contributors to the Western tradition of political philosophy
from classical Greek antiquity to the twentieth century. Written by
specialists on the various philosophers, this third edition has
been expanded significantly to include both new and revised essays.
One of the outstanding thinkers of our time offers in this book his
final words to posterity. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy
was well underway at the time of Leo Strauss's death in 1973.
Having chosen the title for the book, he selected the most
important writings of his later years and arranged them to clarify
the issues in political philosophy that occupied his attention
throughout his life. As his choice of title indicates, the heart of
Strauss's work is Platonism--a Platonism that is altogether
unorthodox and highly controversial. These essays consider, among
others, Heidegger, Husserl, Nietzsche, Marx, Moses Maimonides,
Machiavelli, and of course Plato himself to test the Platonic
understanding of the conflict between philosophy and political
society. Strauss argues that an awesome spritual impoverishment has
engulfed modernity because of our dimming awareness of that
conflict. Thomas Pangle's Introduction places the work within the
context of the entire Straussian corpus and focuses especially on
Strauss's late Socratic writings as a key to his mature thought.
For those already familiar with Strauss, Pangle's essay will
provoke thought and debate; for beginning readers of Strauss, it
provides a fine introduction. A complete bibliography of Strauss's
writings if included.
Although Leo Strauss published little on Nietzsche, his lectures
and correspondence demonstrate a deep critical engagement with
Nietzsche's thought. One of the richest contributions is a seminar
on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, taught in 1959 during
Strauss's tenure at the University of Chicago. In the lectures,
Strauss draws important parallels between Nietzsche's most
important project and his own ongoing efforts to restore classical
political philosophy. With Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke
Zarathustra," eminent Strauss scholar Richard L. Velkley presents
Strauss's lectures on Zarathustra with superb annotations that
bring context and clarity to the critical role played by Nietzsche
in shaping Strauss's thought. In addition to the broad relationship
between Nietzsche and political philosophy, Strauss adeptly guides
readers through Heidegger's confrontations with Nietzsche, laying
out Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche's "will to power" while also
showing how Heidegger can be read as a foil for his own reading of
Nietzsche. The lectures also shed light on the relationship between
Heidegger and Strauss, as both philosophers saw Nietzsche as a
central figure for understanding the crisis of philosophy and
Western civilization. Strauss's reading of Nietzsche is one of the
important-yet little appreciated-philosophical inquiries of the
past century, both an original interpretation of Nietzsche's
thought and a deep engagement with the core problems that modernity
posed for political philosophy. It will be welcomed by anyone
interested in the work of either philosopher.
Although Leo Strauss published little on Nietzsche, his lectures
and correspondence demonstrate a deep critical engagement with
Nietzsche's thought. One of the richest contributions is a seminar
on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, taught in 1959 during
Strauss's tenure at the University of Chicago. In the lectures,
Strauss draws important parallels between Nietzsche's most
important project and his own ongoing efforts to restore classical
political philosophy. With Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke
Zarathustra," preeminent Strauss scholar Richard L. Velkley
presents Strauss's lectures on Zarathustra with superb annotations
that bring context and clarity to the critical role played by
Nietzsche in shaping Strauss's thought. In addition to the broad
relationship between Nietzsche and political philosophy, Strauss
adeptly guides readers through Heidegger's confrontations with
Nietzsche, laying out Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche's "will to
power" while also showing how Heidegger can be read as a foil for
his own reading of Nietzsche. The lectures also shed light on the
relationship between Heidegger and Strauss, as both philosophers
saw Nietzsche as a central figure for understanding the crisis of
philosophy and Western civilization. Strauss's reading of Nietzsche
is one of the important--yet little appreciated--philosophical
inquiries of the past century, both an original interpretation of
Nietzsche's thought and a deep engagement with the core problems
that modernity posed for political philosophy. It will be welcomed
by anyone interested in the work of either philosopher.
"The City and Man" consists of provocative essays by the late Leo
Strauss on Aristotle's "Politics," Plato's "Republic," and
Thucydides' "Peloponnesian Wars." Together, the essays constitute a
brilliant attempt to use classical political philosophy as a means
of liberating modern political philosophy from the stranglehold of
ideology. The essays are based on a long and intimate familiarity
with the works, but the essay on Aristotle is especially important
as one of Strauss's few writings on the philosopher who largely
shaped Strauss's conception of antiquity. The essay on Plato is a
full-scale discussion of Platonic political philosophy, wide in
scope yet compact in execution. When discussing Thucydides, Strauss
succeeds not only in presenting the historian as a moral thinker of
high rank, but in drawing his thought into the orbit of philosophy,
and thus indicating a relation of history and philosophy that does
not presuppose the absorption of philosophy by history.
Leo Strauss is widely recognized as one of the foremost
interpreters of Maimonides. His studies of the medieval Jewish
philosopher led to his rediscovery of esotericism and deepened his
sense that the tension between reason and revelation was central to
modern political thought. His writings throughout the twentieth
century were chiefly responsible for restoring Maimonides as a
philosophical thinker of the first rank. Yet, to appreciate the
extent of Strauss' contribution to the scholarship on Maimonides,
one has traditionally had to seek out essays he published
separately spanning almost fifty years. With "Leo Strauss on
Maimonides", Kenneth Hart Green presents for the first time a
comprehensive, annotated collection of Strauss' writings on
Maimonides, comprising sixteen essays, three of which appear in
English for the first time. Green has also provided careful
translations of materials originally quoted in Hebrew, Arabic,
Latin, German, and French; written an informative introduction
highlighting the contributions found in each essay; and brought
references to out-of-print editions fully up to date. The result
will become the standard edition of Strauss' writings on
Maimonides.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) was the leading Jewish thinker of the
German Enlightenment and the founder of modern Jewish philosophy.
His writings, especially his attempt during the Pantheism
Controversy to defend the philosophical legacies of Spinoza and
Leibniz against F. H. Jacobi's philosophy of faith, captured the
attention of a young Leo Strauss and played a critical role in the
development of his thought on one of the fundamental themes of his
life's work: the conflicting demands of reason and revelation. "Leo
Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn" is a superbly annotated translation
of ten introductions written by Strauss to a multivolume critical
edition of Mendelssohn's work. Commissioned in Weimar Germany in
the 1920s, the project was suppressed and nearly destroyed during
Nazi rule and was not revived until the 1960s. In addition to
Strauss' introductions, Martin D. Yaffe has translated various
editorial annotations Strauss makes on key passages in
Mendelssohn's texts. Yaffe has also contributed an extensive
interpretive essay that both analyzes the introductions on their
own terms and discusses what Strauss writes elsewhere about the
broader themes broached in his Mendelssohnian studies. "Strauss'
critique of Mendelssohn" represents one of the largest bodies of
work by the young Strauss on a single thinker to be made available
in English. It illuminates not only a formerly obscure phase in the
emergence of his thought but also a critical moment in the history
of the German Enlightenment.
In this classic analysis, Leo Strauss pinpoints what is original
and innovative in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. He
argues that Hobbes's ideas arose not from tradition or science but
from his own deep knowledge and experience of human nature. Tracing
the development of Hobbes's moral doctrine from his early writings
to his major work The Leviathan, Strauss explains contradictions in
the body of Hobbes's work and discovers startling connections
between Hobbes and the thought of Plato, Thucydides, Aristotle,
Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel. Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was Robert
Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in
political science at the University of Chicago. Among his works
published by the University of Chicago Press are Thoughts on
Machiavelli, The City and Man, and Natural Right and History.
Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's
doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a
teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in
his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust
his exegesis of "The Prince" and the "Discourses on the First Ten
Books of Livy." "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple
opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching],
not only because it is wholesome, but above all because a failure
to take that opinion seriously prevents one from doing justice to
what is truly admirable in Machiavelli: the intrepidity of his
thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of
his speech." This critique of the founder of modern political
philosophy by this prominent twentieth-century scholar is an
essential text for students of both authors.
The essays collected in "Persecution and the Art of Writing" all
deal with one problem--the relation between philosophy and
politics. Here, Strauss sets forth the thesis that many
philosophers, especially political philosophers, have reacted to
the threat of persecution by disguising their most controversial
and heterodox ideas.
"On Tyranny" is Leo Strauss' classic reading of Xenophon's dialogue
Hiero, or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet
Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising
tyranny. Included are a translation of the dialogue from its
original Greek, a critique of Strauss' commentary by the French
philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, and the complete correspondence
between the two. This corrected and expanded edition introduces
important revisions throughout and expands Strauss' restatement of
his position in light of Kojeve's commentary to bring it into
conformity with the text as it was originally published in France.
Natural Right and History is widely recognized as Strauss's most
influential work. The six lectures, written while Strauss was at
the New School, and a full transcript of the 1949 Walgreen Lectures
show Strauss working toward the ideas he would present in fully
matured form in his landmark work. In them, he explores natural
right and the relationship between modern philosophers and the
thought of the ancient Greek philosophers, as well as the relation
of political philosophy to contemporary political science and to
major political and historical events, especially the Holocaust and
World War II. Previously unpublished in book form, Strauss's
lectures are presented here in a thematic order that mirrors
Natural Right and History and with interpretive essays by J. A.
Colen, Christopher Lynch, Svetozar Minkov, Daniel Tanguay, Nathan
Tarcov, and Michael Zuckert that establish their relation to the
work. Rounding out the book are copious annotations and notes to
facilitate further study.
This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.
All political action has . . . in itself a directedness towards
knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society.
For the good society is the complete political good. If this
directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal
to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society,
political philosophy emerges. . . . The theme of political
philosophy is mankind's great objectives, freedom and government or
empire--objectives which are capable of lifting all men beyond
their poor selves. Political philosophy is that branch of
philosophy which is closest to political life, to non-philosophic
life, to human life.--From What Is Political Philosophy? What Is
Political Philosophy?--a collection of ten essays and lectures and
sixteen book reviews written between 1943 and 1957--contains some
of Leo Strauss's most famous writings and some of his most explicit
statements of the themes that made him famous. The title essay
records Strauss's sole extended articulation of the meaning of
political philosophy itself. Other essays discuss the relation of
political philosophy to history, give an account of the political
philosophy of the non-Christian Middle Ages and of classic European
modernity, and present his theory of esoteric writing.
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
|
You may like...
Tenet
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, …
DVD
R53
Discovery Miles 530
|