Strauss, Leo (1899–1973)

AbstractStrauss was one of the pre‐eminent political philosophers of the twentieth century. Most of his work took the form of investigations in the history of political philosophy, but his intentions were not simply those of a historian of ideas. His investigations had a philosophical purpose and even, to a degree, a political purpose. His chief goal in both his historical and his more strictly philosophical writings was the restoration of political philosophy as a meaningful or even urgent enterprise. To that end, he delivered stinging critiques of two modern intellectual movements, positivism and historicism, that made political philosophy impossible. Strauss's historical inquiries led him to put forward a number of highly controversial theses about the course of western philosophical history.