Лучшие книги Лео Штрауса

Предлагаемый вниманию читателя сборник работ известного философа, создателя американской политической философии Лео Штрауса посвящен ключевым проблемам классической и современной политической мысли. Требовательная постановка принципиальных проблем сочетается у Штрауса с глубоким анализом классических политических произведений Платона, Аристотеля, Макиавелли, Гоббса, Локка, Спинозы, Руссо, Гегеля, Маркса, Ницше.

Работа известного историка политической философии, одного из наиболее влиятельных консервативных мыслителей XX столетия представляет собой обширный комментарий к диалогу Ксенофонта "Гиерон или Слово о тирании". В книгу входят также критическая рецензия А.Кожева и ответ на нее Л.Штрауса. Сочинения Л.Штрауса в русском переводе публикуются впервые.

Книга известного политолога Лео Штрауса посвящена анализу понятия естественного права в истории политической философии от Сократа до Берка. В присущей ему ясной и острой манере Штраус выявляет причины и основания, заставляющие мыслителей разных эпох

Книга политического философа Лео Штрауса, опубликованная в 1964 году и сразу заработавшая у рецензентов репутацию «провокационной» из-за демонстративного нежелания автора считаться с догмами и предрассудками современной политической и исторической науки, является важной частью штраусовского проекта реставрации классической политической философии. В центре внимания автора находятся три фигуры, важные для понимания сути классического политического мышления: Аристотель, Платон и Фукидид. Штраус предлагает глубокую и крайне своеобразную интерпретацию аристотелевской «Политики», платоновского «Государства» и «Истории Пелопоннесской войны» Фукидида. Находя корни аристотелевской концепции политики в ранних философских и даже предфилософских воззрениях и глубоко анализируя диалог Платона, Штраус собирает все три части книги во впечатляющую своей целостностью картину, не просто прочитывая «Историю» Фукидида как историческое и моральное сочинение, но встраивая его мысль в пространство философии.

For according to Plato as well as to Aristotle, to the extent to which the human problem cannot be solved by political means it can be solved only by philosophy, by and through the philosophic way of life. Plato too presents men who are not good or who are then bad, but he does this only to present all the more clearly the character of the good men, and this is his chief theme. Poetry, however, presents only such human beings for whom the philosophic life is not a possibility. From Plato’s point of view the life which is not philosophic is either obviously incapable of solving the human problem or else it does solve the human problem in a wholly inadequate or in an absurd manner. In the first case it is the theme of tragedy. In the second case it is a theme of comedy. From here we may understand why it is according to nature that philosophy delegate to poetry a ministerial function, a function which philosophy itself cannot fulfill. Poetry presents human life as human life appears if it is not seen to be directed toward philosophy. Autonomous poetry presents non-philosophic life as autonomous. Yet by articulating the cardinal problem of human life as it comes to sight within the non-philosophic life, poetry prepares for the philosophic life. Poetry is legitimate only as ministerial to the Platonic dialogue which in its turn is ministerial to the life of understanding. Autonomous poetry is blind in the decisive respect. It lives in the element of imagination and of passion, of passionate images, of passion expressing itself in images which arouse passion and yet modify passion. It ennobles passion and purifies passion. But autonomous poetry does not know the end for the sake of which the purification of passion is required.

This concise and accessible introduction to Strauss's thought provides, for wider audience, a bridge to his more complex theoretical work. Editor Pangle has gathered five of Strauss's previously unpublished lectures and five hard-to-find published writings and has arranged them so as to demonstrate the systematic progression of the major themes that underlay Strauss's mature work.

"[These essays] display the incomparable insight and remarkable range of knowledge that set Strauss's works apart from any other twentieth-century philosopher's."—Charles R. Kesler, National Review

On Tyranny is Leo Strauss’s classic reading of Xenophon’s dialogue Hiero, or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. Included are a translation of the dialogue from its original Greek, a critique of Strauss’s commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, and the complete correspondence between the two.

This revised and expanded edition introduces important corrections throughout and expands Strauss’s restatement of his position in light of Kojève’s commentary to bring it into conformity with the text as it was originally published in France.

Leo Strauss articulates the conflict between reason and revelation as he explores Spinoza's scientific, comparative, and textual treatment of the Bible. Strauss compares Spinoza's Theologico-political Treatise and the Epistles, showing their relation to critical controversy on religion from Epicurus and Lucretius through Uriel da Costa and Isaac Peyrere to Thomas Hobbes. Strauss's autobiographical Preface, traces his dilemmas as a young liberal intellectual in Germany during the Weimar Republic, as a scholar in exile, and as a leader of American philosophical thought.

Explores the impact on Jews and Judaism of the crisis of modernity, analyzing modern Jewish dilemmas and providing a prescription for their resolution.

This is the first book to bring together the major essays and lectures of Leo Strauss in the field of modern Jewish thought. It contains some of his most famous published writings, as well as significant writings which were previously unpublished. Spanning almost 30 years of continuously deepening reflection, the book presents the full range of Strauss's contributions as a modern Jewish thinker.

These essays and lectures also offer Strauss's mature considerations of some of the great figures in modern Jewish thought, such as Baruch Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Theodor Herzl, and Sigmund Freud. They also encompass his incisive analyses and original explorations of modern Judaism (which he viewed as caught in the grip of the "theological-political crisis"): from German Jewry, anti-semitism, and the Holocaust to Zionism and the State of Israel; from the question of assimilation to the meaning and value of Jewish history. In addition Strauss's two sustained interpretations of the Hebrew Bible are also reprinted.

These essays and lectures cumulatively point toward the "postcritical" reconstruction of Judaism which Strauss envisioned, suggesting it rebuild along Maimonidean lines. Thus, the book lends credence to the view that Strauss was able to uncover and probe the crisis at the heart of modern Jewish thought and history, perhaps with greater profundity than any other contemporary Jewish thinker.

Xenophon's only true Socratic discourse, the Oeconomicus is a dialogue between Socrates and a gentleman-farmer on the art of household management and the art of farming as practiced on a gentleman's estate. It is generally acknowledged to be the oldest surviving work devoted to "economics" and it constitutes the classic statement of "economic" thought in ancient Greece. This book offers a new, literal translation of the discourse by Carnes Lord, followed by a detailed commaentary by the well-known political theorist Leo Strauss.

Relying exclusively on the texts, Professor Strauss analyzes and compares every seemingly casual utterance as well as the more formal statements to recover the true Socrates and to determine the character of political philosophy. He investigates its origins, possibilities, and intention against the nonphilosophical background from which it emerged.

Interpretation, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring 1975)

The author starts from the premiss that “the most important aspect of the study of history is . . . historiography.” He means by this that the most important aspect of the study of the political history of classical Greece is the critical study of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon. He selected Xenophon because “the problems of the composition” of the Hellenica–in contradistinction apparently to the corresponding problems of Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ histories would seem to have been settled: a critical study of the characteristic theories proposed as solutions to those problems would reveal the greatness of “our modern approach to the historical writing of ancient Greece,” but perhaps also its limitations.

The bulk of Henry’s book is devoted to such a critical study. It has led him to a “singular disappointment” (p. 191) and to the conclusion that “we are not yet ready to interpret ancient histories, like the Hellenica (p. 210). There is a general and a particular cause of the failure of nineteenth and twentieth century study of Greek historical writing. The general cause is insufficient attention to the peculiarity of Greek historiography as distinguished from its modern counterpart: the ancients did not study history “for its own sake,” since their approach was “esthetic” (p. 193). A moment’s reflection on the historical origin of this meaning of “esthetic” would show the inadequacy of Henry’s characterization of classical historiography. For the classical Greek, “history was a form of literature. . . .History is literature when an artist perceives the genius of an age and reveals it through the facts of history” (p. 193). This seems to be Henry’s interpretation of a saying of Quintilian which he renders “History has a certain affinity to poetry” (p. 191). Granting for a moment that the three classical historians perceived the spirit of the ages which they described, was their primary intention to reveal those spirits? A glance at the openings of Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ works would show the impropriety of this suggestion. This is to say nothing of the fact that the suggestion could not be expressed in their language. However justified Henry’s criticism of nineteenth and twentieth century students of classical Greek historiography may be, he shares with them (or most of them) the prejudice that “we know today” the meaning of historiography in general and of classical historiography in particular.

In one of his last books, Socrates and Aristophanes, Leo Strauss's examines the confrontation between Socrates and Aristophanes in Aristophanes' comedies. Looking at eleven plays, Strauss shows that this confrontation is essentially one between poetry and philosophy, and that poetry emerges as an autonomous wisdom capable of rivaling philosophy.

"Strauss gives us an impressive addition to his life's work—the recovery of the Great Tradition in political philosophy. The problem the book proposes centers formally upon Socrates. As is typical of Strauss, he raises profound issues with great courage. . . . [He addresses] a problem that has been inherent in Western life ever since [Socrates'] execution: the tension between reason and religion. . . . Thus, we come to Aristophanes, the great comic poet, and his attack on Socrates in the play The Clouds. . . [Strauss] translates it into the basic problem of the relation between poetry and philosophy, and resolves this by an analysis of the function of comedy in the life of the city." —Stanley Parry, National Review

The City and Man consists of provocative essays by the late Leo Strauss on Aristotle's Politics, Plato's Republic, and Thucydides' Peloponnesian Wars. Together, the essays constitute a brilliant attempt to use classical political philosophy as a means of liberating modern political philosophy from the stranglehold of ideology. The essays are based on a long and intimate familiarity with the works, but the essay on Aristotle is especially important as one of Strauss's few writings on the philosopher who largely shaped Strauss's conception of antiquity. The essay on Plato is a full-scale discussion of Platonic political philosophy, wide in scope yet compact in execution. When discussing Thucydides, Strauss succeeds not only in presenting the historian as a moral thinker of high rank, but in drawing his thought into the orbit of philosophy, and thus indicating a relation of history and philosophy that does not presuppose the absorption of philosophy by history.

Xenophon's only true Socratic discourse, the Oeconomicus, is a dialogue between Socrates and a gentleman-farmer on the art of household management and the art of farming as practiced on a gentleman's estate. It is generally acknowledged to be the oldest surviving work devoted to "economics," and it constitutes the classic statement of "economic" thought in ancient Greece. The dialogue examines the roles of husband and wife in the household and the division of labor between them, and considers the duties of the farm steward and the housekeeper. It discusses the goals of efficient management and the means for attaining these goals.

Social Research, Vol. 6, No. 4 (November 1939)

Текст «Преследование и искусства письма» Лео Штрауса является одним из самых важных философских и философско-политических текстов в ХХ веке. Эта статья 1941 года, впоследствии вошедшая как ключевая глава в одноименную книгу 1952 года, стала важнейшим источником специальной методологии работы с «великими текстами» Платона, Аристотеля, Макиавелли, Гоббса, Локка и т. д. В этой статье Лео Штраус предложил читать «великие тексты» экзотерически и эзотерически, то есть вчитываться «между строк», чтобы лучше понять замысел автора. Конечно, авторы не всегда прибегают к этому методу тайного письма, но Лео Штраус доказывает, почему у великих философов были причины писать «между строк», и пытается дать инструментарий, чтобы понимать, в каких случаях это могло иметь место. Этот текст впоследствии не только многие историки политической философии приняли за главную установку при работе с источниками, но статью неоднократно вспоминали и самому Штраусу, обвиняя его в том, что он и сам писал «между строк».