Straussophobia

Author : Peter Minowitz
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 692 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2009-08-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780739140192

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Straussophobia by Peter Minowitz Pdf

Leo Strauss and his students have long been accused of mendacity, elitism, and militarism, but the Iraq War has prompted unprecedented levels of caustic and inaccurate denunciations. Inappropriate criticisms have issued from artists (Tim Robbins), politicians (Ron Paul), journalists (Joe Klein), and even highly lauded scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Gordon Wood, Douglas Massey, Stephen Holmes, Anne Norton, Shadia Drury, Sheldon Wolin, John Pocock, John Yolton, Nicholas Xenos, and Brian Leiter. In Straussophobia, Peter Minowitz provides a methodical and detailed critique of the major offenders, especially of Drury, who maintains that Strauss established a 'covert tyranny' that would keep the Western world 'mired in perpetual war.' In replying to such charges_and to various authors who belittle Strauss's contributions as a scholar_Minowitz highlights the imaginative yet meticulous manner in which Strauss interpreted Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, Farabi, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Carl Schmitt. Straussophobia also provides both a comprehensive assessment of Strauss's 1933 letter that commended 'fascist, authoritarian, and imperial' principles, and a compelling account of Strauss's influence, or lack of influence, on neoconservative promoters of the Iraq War (e.g., Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Lewis Libby). The book likewise breaks new ground in employing diversity discourse to explain and combat the bigotry and buffoonery that pervade attacks against Strauss and Straussians_and in drawing on Strauss to illuminate the distortions that mar some widely-used arguments for affirmative action.

Author : Michael P. Zuckert,Catherine H. Zuckert
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2014-06-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226135878

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Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy by Michael P. Zuckert,Catherine H. Zuckert Pdf

This critical study of the influential political theorist dispels popular myths and reveals the inner logic of his varied and notoriously complex writings. Political theorist Leo Strauss was unexpectedly thrust into the media spotlight for his alleged influence on neoconservative politics. With The Truth about Leo Strauss, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this complex thinker. Now, with Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, they offer a more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss’s thought, using the many manifestations of the “problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone. Strauss, they argue, sought to restore political philosophy to its original Socratic form. This is demonstrated through his critique of positivism and historicism, two intellectual currents that undermined his Socratic project. The authors also explore Strauss’s interpretation of both ancient and modern political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Finally, they examine Strauss’s thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy is the most in-depth treatment of this often misunderstood thinker, examining his ideas across his long career. It reveals Strauss’s overall intellectual project: to decode how ancient and modern theory attempted to solve the problem of political philosophy. And it shows why Strauss considered the ancient solution both philosophically and politically superior.

Author : Paul E. Gottfried
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2011-12-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781139505482

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Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America by Paul E. Gottfried Pdf

This book offers an original interpretation of the achievement of Leo Strauss, stressing how his ideas and followers reshaped the American conservative movement. The conservative movement that reached out to Strauss and his legacy was extremely fluid and lacked a self-confident leadership. Conservative activists and journalists felt a desperate need for academic acceptability, which they thought Strauss and his disciples would furnish. They also became deeply concerned with the problem of 'value relativism', which self-described conservatives thought Strauss had effectively addressed. But until recently, neither Strauss nor his disciples have considered themselves to be 'conservatives'. Contrary to another misconception, Straussians have never wished to convert Americans to ancient political ideals and practices, except in a very selective rhetorical fashion. Strauss and his disciples have been avid champions of American modernity, and 'timeless' values as interpreted by Strauss and his followers often look starkly contemporary.

Author : Tony Burns,James Connelly
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2016-12-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781845406615

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The Legacy of Leo Strauss by Tony Burns,James Connelly Pdf

Leo Strauss was a political philosopher who died in 1973 but came to came to prominent attention in the United States and also Britain around the beginning of the War in Iraq. Charges began emerging that architects of the war such as Paul Wolfowitz and large numbers of staff in the US State and Defense Departments had studied with, or been influenced by, the academic work of Strauss and his followers. A vague, but powerful, idea was generated in the popular press that a group known as the Straussians had been instrumental in the long-range strategic planning of American foreign policy, both to advance American interests and to encourage democratic revolutions outside the West. This volume of essays opens up the topic of Leo Strauss and the Straussians to those outside the relatively narrow circles who have been concerned with him and his followers up to now.

Author : Grant Havers
Publisher : Northern Illinois University Press
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781501757228

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Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy by Grant Havers Pdf

Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy critically interprets Strauss's political philosophy from a conservative perspective. Most mainstream readers of Strauss have either condemned him from the Left as an extreme right-wing opponent of liberal democracy or celebrated him from the Right as a traditional defender of Western civilization. Rejecting both portrayals, Grant Havers shifts the debate beyond the conventional parameters stating that Strauss was neither a man of the Far Right nor a conservative but. in fact a secular Cold War liberal. In Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy Havers contends that the most troubling implication of Straussianism is that it provides an ideological rationale for the aggressive spread of democratic values on a global basis while ignoring the preconditions that make these values possible. Concepts such as the rule of law, constitutional government, Christian morality, and the separation of church and state are not easily transplanted beyond the historic confines of Anglo-American civilization, as recent wars to spread democracy have demonstrated.

Author : Gabriel R. Ricci
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-12
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781351498272

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Politics in Theology by Gabriel R. Ricci Pdf

This new volume examines the relationship between religion and politics from a historical perspective. Contributors address specific moments in which political governance intersects with religious ideals in dramatic ways. These moments question the relationship between religious sentiments and political solutions and threaten to reorder the geopolitical landscape. These essays discuss the tensions produced by secularism in an Islamic culture, the influence of Catholic theology in workers' political movements, and how Hinduism has been transformed by the political process. Also featured are essays that emphasize how civil religion coincides with constitutional order, and how the drama of religious tolerance and legitimization of the power of Christian hierarchy originated in the political power of the Roman emperor. This volume is an interdisciplinary effort from up-and-coming and cutting-edge scholars. Contents include: "Something as Yet Unfinished," Adam Stauffer; "Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and the Necessity of Political Theology," Grant N. Havers; "Escape from Theology," Peter Grosvenor; "The Persistence of Civil Religion in Modern Canada," John von Heyking; "The Politicization of Hinduism and the Hinduization of Politics," Jeffery D. Long; "Ontology, Plurality, and Roman Catholic Social Teaching," Roland Boer; "The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and Church-State Conflict," Mary Sommar; "Thomas Aquinas on Providence, Prudence, and Natural Law," Christopher S. Morrissey; "The Mystical Body of Christ and French Catholic Action, 1926-1949," W. Brian Newsome; and "Secularism in Turkey," Oya Dursun-Ozkanca.

Author : Jason W. Stevens
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 449 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2010-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674055551

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God-Fearing and Free by Jason W. Stevens Pdf

Religion has been on the rise in America for decades—which strikes many as a shocking new development. To the contrary, Jason Stevens asserts, the rumors of the death of God were premature. Americans have always conducted their cultural life through religious symbols, never more so than during the Cold War. In God-Fearing and Free, Stevens discloses how the nation, on top of the world and torn between grandiose self-congratulation and doubt about the future, opened the way for a new master narrative. The book shows how the American public, powered by a national religious revival, was purposefully disillusioned regarding the country’s mythical innocence and fortified for an epochal struggle with totalitarianism. Stevens reveals how the Augustinian doctrine of original sin was refurbished and then mobilized in a variety of cultural discourses that aimed to shore up democratic society against threats preying on the nation’s internal weaknesses. Suddenly, innocence no longer meant a clear conscience. Instead it became synonymous with totalitarian ideologies of the fascist right or the communist left, whose notions of perfectability were dangerously close to millenarian ideals at the heart of American Protestant tradition. As America became riddled with self-doubt, ruminations on the meaning of power and the future of the globe during the “American Century” renewed the impetus to religion. Covering a wide selection of narrative and cultural forms, Stevens shows how writers, artists, and intellectuals, the devout as well as the nonreligious, disseminated the terms of this cultural dialogue, disputing, refining, and challenging it—effectively making the conservative case against modernity as liberals floundered.

Author : Michael Harland
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2013-10-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780739179703

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Democratic Vanguardism by Michael Harland Pdf

Democratic Vanguardism explores the origins, development, and implication of the United States’ policy after 9/11 to promote democracy by force and thereby advance its national security. It explores disputes among political theorists, elected statesmen, and public intellectuals to help enrich our understanding of this most fraught period in American foreign relations, and it provides a novel account on the discourse of historical teleology that underpinned the Bush Doctrine.

Author : William H. F. Altman
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 618 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2012-06-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780739177693

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The German Stranger by William H. F. Altman Pdf

The German Stranger provides a guide to Leo Strauss that situates his thought in the context of National Socialism; by destroying any middle ground between 'Athens' and 'Jerusalem,' Strauss undermined modernity's secular bulwark against political theology. Once National Socialism is understood as an atheistic religion re-enacted by post-Revelation 'philosophers,' the German avatar of Plato's Athenian Stranger can be recognized as its principal theoretician.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 854 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Political science
ISBN : UCBK:C088451703

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Ratthasātsān by Anonim Pdf

Author : Adi Armon
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2019-09-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030243890

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Leo Strauss Between Weimar and America by Adi Armon Pdf

This is the first book-length examination of the impact Leo Strauss’ immigration to the United States had on this thinking. Adi Armon weaves together a close reading of unpublished seminars Strauss taught at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s with an interpretation of his later works, all of which were of course written against the backdrop of the Cold War. First, the book describes the intellectual environment that shaped the young Strauss’ worldview in the Weimar Republic, tracing those aspects of his thought that changed and others that remained consistent up until his immigration to America. Armon then goes on to explore the centrality of Karl Marx to Strauss’s intellectual biography. By analyzing an unpublished seminar Strauss taught with Joseph Cropsey at the University of Chicago in 1960, Armon shows how Strauss’ fragmentary, partial engagement with Marx in writing obscured the important role that Marxism actually played as an intellectual challenge to his later political thinking. Finally, the book explores the manifestations of Straussian doctrine in postwar America through reading Strauss’ The City and Man (1964) as a representative of his political teaching.

Author : Arthur M. Melzer
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2014-09-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226175096

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Philosophy Between the Lines by Arthur M. Melzer Pdf

"Philosophical esotericism--the practice of communicating one's unorthodox thoughts 'between the lines'--was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others'. Despite this long and well-documented history, however, esotericism is often dismissed today as a rare occurrence. But by ignoring esotericism, we risk cutting ourselves off from a full understanding of Western philosophical thought ... Philosophy Between the Lines is the first comprehensive, book-length study of the history and theoretical basis of philosophical esotericism, and it provides a crucial guide to how many major writings--philosophical, but also theological, political, and literary--were composed prior to the nineteenth century."--Publisher's Web site.

Author : Leo Strauss
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2018-03-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226512242

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Toward Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss Pdf

Natural Right and History is widely recognized as Strauss’s most influential work. The six lectures, written while Strauss was at the New School, and a full transcript of the 1949 Walgreen Lectures show Strauss working toward the ideas he would present in fully matured form in his landmark work. In them, he explores natural right and the relationship between modern philosophers and the thought of the ancient Greek philosophers, as well as the relation of political philosophy to contemporary political science and to major political and historical events, especially the Holocaust and World War II. Previously unpublished in book form, Strauss’s lectures are presented here in a thematic order that mirrors Natural Right and History and with interpretive essays by J. A. Colen, Christopher Lynch, Svetozar Minkov, Daniel Tanguay, Nathan Tarcov, and Michael Zuckert that establish their relation to the work. Rounding out the book are copious annotations and notes to facilitate further study.

Author : Richard Taruskin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 798 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1996-07-15
Category : Art
ISBN : 0520070992

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Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions by Richard Taruskin Pdf

Taruskin demonstrates how Stravinsky achieved his modernist technique by combining what was most characteristically Russian in his musical training with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore. The stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed Stravinsky as a composer for life, whatever the aesthetic allegiances he later professed.

Author : Adam L. Fuller
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780739167571

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Taking the Fight to the Enemy by Adam L. Fuller Pdf

Taking the Fight to the Enemy: Neoconservatism and the Age of Ideology looks at six "neoconservative" intellectuals and the influences on their thinking about the defects of communism, fascism, progressivism, the dominant American culture, and even capitalism itself. Adam L. Fuller examines the gestation of political criticism within the pages of the neoconservatives' own writing as well as the books they read and learned from in order to demonstrate how the neoconservative political strategy is to "take the fight to the enemy."