Abstract

This volume of essays shows Leo Strauss to be one of the few living Americans who has succeeded in educating a generation of students. This is not surprising, for Strauss is one of the few who know what is relevant to thoughts about education. Strauss is commonly known for having revived the classics. These essays show, as indeed his own writings show, that he has also revived the moderns, or that he has made modern political philosophy intelligible to itself. It would be going too far to say that these essays move on Strauss' level, but, with perhaps one or two exceptions, they exhibit that tightness and cogency of argumentation that comes from knowing what questions are important for a given subject matter. Three of the fifteen essays are by Strauss' colleagues, and two are especially remarkable—Jacob Klein's "Aristotle, an Introduction," and Alexandre Kojève's "The Emperor Julian and His Art of Writing." Kojève is the only contributor who explicitly discusses Strauss' views on the art of writing, and while he begins with praise, he in fact continues the debate printed in On Tyranny. Kojève's praise of irony, one may say, is ironical, for he succeeds in trivializing Strauss' view by pretending that Strauss' surface presentation of it is the whole of it. As for Klein's essay, suffice it to say that its quality is the same as his other published writings. Of the essays by Strauss' students, Seth Benardette's "Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus" and Joseph Cropsey's "Hobbes and the Transition to Modernity" both excel in the treatment of broad questions, although if one looks closely it seems that both divorce wisdom from moderation.—H. C.