Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought: Reading Strauss Outside the Lines

362 Pages·2021·1.889 MB·English

by  Jeffrey A. Bernstein and Jade L. Schiff

Leo Strauss
and Contemporary Thought
SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss
——————
Kenneth Hart Green, editor
Leo Strauss and
Contemporary Thought
Reading Strauss Outside the Lines
Edited by
Jeffrey A. Bernstein and Jade L. Schiff
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without
the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bernstein, Jeffrey A., editor. | Schiff, Jade L., editor.
Title: Leo Strauss and contemporary thought : reading Strauss outside the lines /
edited by Jeffrey A. Bernstein and Jade L. Schiff.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series:
SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438483955 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438483962
(ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937135
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Jeffrey dedicates this volume to
Ingrid Rasmussen, Zachary Bernstein, and Nathaniel Bernstein.
Jade dedicates this volume to
the memory of her father, Bernard Baruch Schiff,
and to the memory of her mother, Gissa Schiff.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
I. ARTS OF READING AND SEEING
1 Liberalism and the Question: Strauss and Derrida on Politics
and Philosophy 11
Jade Larissa Schiff
2 Purloined Letters—Lacan avec Strauss 29
Matthew J. Sharpe
3 Seeing through Law: Phenomenological Thought in
Soloveitchik and Strauss 51
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
4 Claude Lefort and Leo Strauss: On A Philosophical Discourse 75
Isabel Rollandi
II. HISTORY AND POLITICS
5 A Civil Encounter: Leo Strauss and Charles Taylor on
Religious Pluralism 111
Jessica L. Radin
viii Contents
6 Care of the Self and the Invention of Legitimate Government:
Foucault and Strauss on Platonic Political Philosophy 135
Miguel Vatter
7 A Fruitful Disagreement: The Philosophical Encounter
between George P. Grant and Leo Strauss 161
Waller R. Newell
8 Strauss and Blumenberg on the Caves of the Moderns 187
Danilo Manca
9 Writing the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes: Leo Strauss
and Ferdinand Tönnies on Hobbes and the Sociology
of Philosophy 209
Peter Gostmann
III. CULTURE AND CRITIQUE
10 Leo Strauss and Jürgen Habermas: The Quest for Reason in
Twentieth-Century Lifeworlds 237
Rodrigo Chacón
11 Heidegger’s Challenge to the Renaissance of Socratic
Political Rationalism 259
Alexander S. Duff
12 The Wheel of History: Nihilism as Moral Protest and
Destruction of the Present in Leo Strauss and Albert Camus 281
Ingrid L. Anderson
13 Who’s Laughing? Leo Strauss on Comedy and Mockery 295
Menachem Feuer
14 Leo Strauss and Walter Benjamin: Thinking “In a Moment
of Danger” 333
Philipp von Wussow
About the Contributors 353
Index 357
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of Jade Schiff’s essay “Liberalism and the Question:
Strauss and Derrida on Politics and Philosophy” appeared in Telos 166
(Spring 2014): 143–160.
Isabel Rollandi’s essay “Claude Lefort and Leo Strauss: On a Philosophical
Discourse” was written during a semester in Munich with assistance from
a scholarship from the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation.
ix