The truth about Leo Strauss: political philosophy and American democracy

2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (06) ◽  
pp. 44-3544-44-3544
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
American Democracy

Leo Strauss and the Concrete Order of Law

Living Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 191-236
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Mosaic Law

This chapter is dedicated to Leo Strauss’s attempt to recover the medieval Islamic and Jewish conceptions of the prophet as a political founder of the perfect legal order. The chapter situates Strauss’s political theology within the Weimar debate between proponents of legality and defenders of an extra-legal conception of legitimacy. It argues that Strauss turns back to the ancient conception of law as nomos in order to give a philosophical foundation to legality beyond Christian conceptions of legitimacy. Christian political theology has always pivoted around the polemical claim that Mosaic law was “tyrannical” in some way. Strauss’s contribution to Jewish political theology consists in examining Jewish and Islamic prophetology by formulating it in terms of the so-called tyrannical teaching of Platonic political philosophy. The chapter shows that Strauss ultimately held to the view of a profound compatibility and mutual need between the traditions of Greek philosophy and biblical prophecy.

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