Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism

Interest in Leo Strauss is greater now than at any time since his death, mostly because of the purported link between his thought and the political movement known as neoconservatism. Steven B. Smith, though, surprisingly depicts Strauss not as the high priest of neoconservatism but as a friend of liberal democracyOCoperhaps the best defender democracy has ever had. Moreover, in "Reading Leo Strauss, "Smith shows that StraussOCOs defense of liberal democracy was closely connected to his skepticism of bothathe extreme Left and extreme Right. Smith asserts that this philosophical skepticism defined StraussOCOs thought. It was as a skeptic, Smith argues, that Strauss considered the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between reason and revelationOCoa conflict Strauss dubbed the OC theologico-political problem.OCO Calling this problem OC "the" theme of my investigations, OCO Strauss asked the same fundamental question throughout his life: what is the relation of the political order to revelation in general and Judaism in particular?a Smith organizes his book with this question, first addressing StraussOCOs views on religion and then examining his thought on philosophical and political issues. In his investigation of these philosophical and political issues, Smith assesses StraussOCOs attempt to direct the teaching of political science away from the examination of mass behavior and interest group politics and toward the study of the philosophical principles on which politics are based. With his provocative, lucid essays, Smith goes a long way toward establishing a distinctive form of Straussian liberalism."