Philosopher · Contemporary
Leo Strauss
1899–1973 · Classical political philosophy; Athens and Jerusalem
A non-observant Jew who held that neither philosophy (Athens) nor revelation (Jerusalem) can refute the other.
Strauss recovered classical natural right against historicism and relativism, argued that the great philosophers wrote esoterically under persecution, traced modernity's decline through three “waves” (Machiavelli-Hobbes, Rousseau, Nietzsche), and insisted that the “theologico-political problem” of reason and revelation cannot be dissolved. He kept the tension between philosophy and faith open rather than resolving it as Aquinas did.
Why he matters: Catholic Straussians (Ernest Fortin, James Schall, Pierre Manent) made him a resource for Catholic political philosophy; his defense of nature and objective truth against historicism is shared, and his refusal of the Thomist synthesis is the sharpest friendly challenge to Fides et Ratio.
Where to be careful
His view that reason and revelation stand in irreducible tension denies the harmony taught in Dei Filius ch. 4 and Fides et Ratio 43–44; his “natural right” is deliberately thinner than the natural law, which he thought too dependent on revelation; his philosopher stands apart from the city's religion in a way no believer can.
Reading
-
Natural Right and HistoryLeo Strauss · Against historicism; the classical and modern natural right.
-
Jerusalem and AthensLeo Strauss · The lecture on reason and revelation (in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy).
-
Reason, Revelation, and the Foundations of Political PhilosophyJames V. Schall, SJ · A Jesuit's Catholic engagement with Strauss.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.