Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss (b. 20 September 1899 Kirchhain, Regierungsbezirk Kassel, Province of Hesse-Nassau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire; d. 18 October 1973 in Annapolis, Maryland, U.S.) was a Jewish philosopher, university professor and Zionist.
Life
Born in Germany to Jewish parents, he attended the humanistic Philippinum Gymnasium in Marburg and achieved his Abitur on 1 March 1917. Strauss served in the Imperial German Army from 5 July 1917 to December 1918 in the First World War, among other things as a translator in occupied Belgium. At Easter 1917, he already had begun studying philosophy in Marburg, later, after the war, at the University of Hamburg; he also devoted himself to mathematics and natural sciences.
In February 1922 (date according to Berlin State Library, although other sources state December 1921), Leo Strauss received his doctorate under Ernst Cassirer on Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in Hamburg with the dissertation Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H. Jacobis (On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi).
- Without going into individual writings by Jacobi, Strauss presents his teachings along the lines of fundamental problems. This means – following the usage of language – the ‘theory’. Today we would say that he reconstructs Jacobi’s theory. He proceeds in three steps: first, attitudes and methods are compared, then the theory of knowledge is differentiated, followed by considerations on the theory of being. The main point is that, in contrast to ‘disintegrating relativism’, Jacobi seeks the truth, that is, ‘does not create it, but seeks it out, finds it and recognises it’. Jacobi’s fundamental insight is: ‘The rationalising tendency of all system philosophy is bound to destroy natural certainty and what is given in it.’ Strauss skilfully presents the cognitive faculties (intellect, reason, logic of the heart) that Jacobi knows. The theory of being is well outlined in sections on knowledge and life as well as on substance, time and causality; However, Strauss often remains conventional in these parts.[1]
He then continued his studies at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and again at the Philipps University of Marburg until 1925, under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, among others. In Marburg, he was able to make friends with Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hans Jonas, Jacob Klein and Karl Löwith.
Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. After stops in Berlin, Paris and Cambridge, he came to the New School for Social Research and the University of Chicago in 1938. In 1948, he became an American citizen. 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. He is most known for his association with neoconservatism. In 1965, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg. He retired as professor in Chicago in 1967, after which he taught at Claremont Men’s College and at St. John’s College in Annapolis in 1969 until his death.
External links
- Review of Paul Gottfried’s “Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America,” Part 1
- Paul Gottfried and Claes Ryn on Leo Strauss
