Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss
Born(1899-09-20)20 September 1899
Kirchhain, Regierungsbezirk Kassel, Province of Hesse-Nassau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died18 October 1973(1973-10-18) (aged 74)
SpouseMiriam Bernsohn Strauss
AwardsOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Academic background
Education
ThesisOn the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi (1921)
Doctoral advisorErnst Cassirer
Academic work
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School or tradition
Institutions
Notable studentsStanley Rosen
Main interests
  • Political philosophy
  • History of philosophy (especially Greek, Islamic, Jewish and continental philosophy)
  • Philosophy of religion
Notable works
  • Persecution and the Art of Writing
  • Thoughts on Machiavelli
  • History of Political Philosophy
Notable ideas
List

Leo Strauss[a] (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.

Trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss authored books on Spinoza and Hobbes, and articles on Maimonides and Al-Farabi. In the late 1930s, his research focused on the texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and encouraging the application of those ideas to contemporary political theory.

  1. ^ Kenneth L. Deutsch, John Albert Murley (eds.), Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, p. 134.


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