Leo Strauss

Six lectures delivered at the University of Chicago, Autumn, 1949, under the auspices of the Charles R. Walgreen Foundation for the Study of American Institutions.

Natural Right and History

Donald

Absolutely incredible work of scholarship. Strauss gives a detailed and spirited reading of the history of natural right and natural law. A lot of his readings of classic and modern philosophers are contentious (e.g. this book contains several well argued cases for esoteric readings of Locke and Rousseau), but Strauss offers the most thorough citations I have ever seen. With the footnotes as one's guide, this book could serve as a syllabus for the reading of political philosophy, from the pre-Socratics to Burke. As with most of his work, Strauss keeps his cards close to his chest and writes with the "caution" that he observes in Locke. (Strauss' caution did not prevent the posthumous campaigns against him.)

I wish he'd written about Marx, and I wish he'd looked at Talmudic conceptions of law, rather than only Christian understandings of Biblical law and revelation. But that would require an entirely new volume.

The intellectual project begun by Strauss is far from complete, and it would be a worthy pursuit to begin where he left off.

Bob Simone

I remember liking this a lot when I was in college, but I couldn't tell you what it was about now to save my life.

Natural Right and History

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