Drury regards the political problems of the modern world to be thoroughly Biblical. In the politics of the 21st century, we find two equally arrogant and self-righteous civilizations confronting one another. Each is convinced that it is on the side of God, truth and justice, while its enemy is allied with Satan, wickedness, and barbarism. The language of diplomacy and compromise has been replaced by the language of jihad or the struggle against the cosmic forces of evil. Life is radicalized; and all choices are polarized. Politics properly understood is eclipsed. Drury urges us to transcend the Biblical view of the world. Instead, she argues in favor of a genuinely liberal, secular, and pluralistic understanding of politics.

Alexandre Kojve (1902-1968) was Hegel's most famous interpreter, reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously. The result was a wild if not hypnotic mlange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had on French postmodernists on the left (Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, and Michel Foucault) and American postmodernists on the right (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and Francis Fukuyama). According to Drury, Kojve followed Hegel in thinking that reason has triumphed in the course of history, but it is a cold, soulless, instrumental, and uninspired rationalism that has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojve's picture of the world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion, and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterize the postmodern world.

Now in paperback, this book explores the political thought of Leo Strauss, a philosopher most noted for playing a key role in neoconservative thought in America. Drury explores Strauss's thought and its role in American politics, exposing what she argues are the elitist, nearly authoritarian strains within it and those who follow it. A polemic against Strauss and his followers, the original edition has won Drury little friendship from the neoconservative camp and this revised edition with a new introduction is sure to continue the controversy among political theorists.

Drury regards the political problems of the modern world to be thoroughly Biblical. In the politics of the 21st century, we find two equally arrogant and self-righteous civilizations confronting one another. Each is convinced that it is on the side of God, truth and justice, while its enemy is allied with Satan, wickedness, and barbarism. The language of diplomacy and compromise has been replaced by the language of jihad or the struggle against the cosmic forces of evil. Life is radicalized; and all choices are polarized. Politics properly understood is eclipsed. Drury urges us to transcend the Biblical view of the world. Instead, she argues in favor of a genuinely liberal, secular, and pluralistic understanding of politics.