Essential Leo Strauss?

>guys, Plato WASN'T REALLY the Christian/Idealist par excellence, he was a psychological egoist and pre-socratic all along!

lel
refer to pic

I think his essay on German Nihilism specifically in the strand of the National Socialists is rather insightful.

>Actually that was Plato, the real criminal

Plato is very smart right? Plato says that the government should lie to the people.

The Government: Yeah.. we lied... but you dont think you are smarter than Plato do you!?!?!

If Plato told you to jump off a bridge?

The guy was engaged with first-rate thinkers too like Heidegger, Husserl, and Gadamer. Too bad that like Heidegger, although Heidegger is a more severe case ofc, his name is soiled by association with certain groups of people thus leaving his philosophy to fall by the wayside.

It should have been Eric Voegelin the one to become popular. But Voegelin wasn't Jewish, he couldn't count on ethnic nepotism.

Well, to start with, Strauss is probably easiest to get into if you're also reading the works of one of the authors he comments on, since it's the power of his commentaries and close readings that have excited (at least initially) a good many of his students. That said, I can say outright that Thoughts On Machiavelli is very hard, as are the late works generally (Studies on Platonic Political Philosophy, the Xenophon books, The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws).

So, I'd suggest taking a look at his lectures courses that are getting put up at leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/courses (just look for the ones with transcripts available).

Otherwise, as far as books are concerned, City and Man is a great start, though the "theological-political problem" of his thought is described at an angle. But you get lots of great material dealing with the Ancients v. Moderns differences and conflict, the differences between political science, political philosophy, and political phenomena, the attention necessary to pay to the way an author says something, and so on. It's truly great, and rewarding both initially and on subsequent reads.

On Tyranny, his commentary on Xenophon's dialogue, "Hiero", is essential for understanding the difference between tyranny and authoritarianism/totalitarianism/fascism/Nazism, etc. The editions containing the dialogue with Kojeve are also great for an opportunity to understand the differences between the ancient and modern political projects, and their relationship to philosophy.

City and Man is an inversion (arguably) of Natural Right and History, which seems like an essential read in light of modern concerns over rights and our possible blindness to their grounds. It's a very subtle work though that requires attending to the footnotes.

Then Thoughts on Machiavelli, which, as per above, is difficult, but also Strauss's most sustained inquiry into the work of a modern thinker, and especially the one Strauss is convinced modern liberalism and political thought has its roots in.

1) If there are any "Straussians" you might want to direct your ire at, one good target would be Abram Shulsky, who, for whatever reason, applies Strauss's *reading of Plato's discussion of the noble lie in Plato's Republic* to intelligence. He's a good target to be furious at.

2) Noble lies? Literally discussed as such only when he's discussing *Plato's notion of the noble lie in the Republic*, in the context of *commenting on the Republic*. The issue of esotericism/exotericism is seemingly similar but unrelated.

3) Wolfowitz took classes with Strauss (one on Plato's Laws, another on Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws), and both doesn't identify as a Straussian, and doesn't seem to hold the Strauss or his students with much regard with the sole notable exception of Allan Bloom. Wolfowitz's big mentor was Albert Wohlstetter, and that's the real story that gets missed when people focus on Strauss, who's influence on politics (understood as the application of his "ideas" to politics) is negligible to not quite non-existent (because, again, Shulsky).

4) Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Pearle, Rove, etc. have nothing to do with Strauss.

5) Strauss was admired strongly by Irving Kristol, and his son Bill, but the neocons are themselves a diverse enough movement to make the more general claim about Strauss as their godfather to be either a massive exaggeration, or false to some large degree.

Very nice summary, user.

Voegelin's plenty interesting, I do agree, but I've never been able to get over his bad tendency to conflate modern and ancient concepts (i.e., his tendency to discuss ancient ideas with modern ones as if they're the same). In that respect, Strauss was more philosophically sound.

Power of nightmares - Adam curtis

What about it?

You should read this for context:
newrepublic.com/article/137410/pro-trump-intellectuals-want-overthrow-america

Strauss is politically relevant.