Abstract

On Tyranny, by Leo Strauss and Alexander Kojève, is now available in Italian. The article examines the debate between the two philosophers, focussing primarily on their respective views of political philosophy and the opposition between ancients and moderns concerning such issues as the role of luck, the gap between theory and practice, and whether or not history is meaningful, teleologically oriented, able to prove political theory or, on the contrary, itself subject to theoretical judgment. The author explains how the debate centres around two fundamentally different views of the relationship between philosophy and love of recognition. While for Kojève subjective certainty becomes knowledge only when widely recognized , Strauss, whose starting points are Xenophon’s and Plato’s views on the relationship between love of honour and philosophy, maintains that recognition is no guarantee of truth, and philosophy, in its most authentic form, is sceptical or zetetic