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. "[For] those interested in Strauss the political philosopher, and also those who doubt whether we have achieved the 'final solution' in respect to either the character of political science or the problem of the relation of religion to the state." -- Journal of Politics "A substantial contribution to the thinking of all those interested in the ageless problems of faith, revelation, and reason." -- Kirkus Reviews Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago. His contributions to political science include The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, The City and the Man, What is Political Philosophy?, and Liberalism Ancient and Modern. (shrink)

A reissue of the 1975 edition, with four added essays, this collection offers a clear introduction to Strauss' views regarding the nature of political ...

Leo Strauss's introductions to ten writings of Moses Mendelssohn -- Preliminary remark by Alexander Altmann -- Introduction to Pope a metaphysician! -- Introduction to "Epistle to Mr. Lessing in Leipzig" -- Introduction to Commentary on Moses Maimonides' "Logical terms" -- Introduction to Treatise on evidence in metaphysical sciences -- Introduction to Phädon -- Introduction to Treatise on the incorporeality of the human soul -- Introduction to "On a handwritten essay of Mr. de Luc's" -- Introduction to The soul -- (...) Introduction to Morning hours and to the friends of Lessing -- Introduction to God's cause, or providence vindicated. (shrink)

This volume provides an unequaled introduction to the thought of chief contributors to the Western tradition of political philosophy from classical Greek antiquity to the twentieth century. Written by specialists on the various philosophers, this third edition has been expanded significantly to include both new and revised essays.

'At last one of the most famous generalizing works in anthropology by the field's most stimulating and controversial contemporary figure has been translated, beautifully, and with the enlightening preface of the second French edition.

The Leo Strauss transcript project -- Editor's introduction: Strauss, Nietzsche, and the history of political philosophy -- Editorial headnote -- Introduction: Nietzsche's philosophy, existentialism, and the problem of our age -- Restoring nature as ethical principle: Zarathustra, prologue -- The creative self: Zarathustra, part 1, 1-8 -- The true individual as the highest goal: Zarathustra, part 1, 9-15 -- Postulated nature and final truth: Zarathustra, part 1, 16-22 -- Truth, interpretation, and intelligibility: Zarathustra, part 2, 1-12 -- Will (...) to power and self-overcoming: Zarathustra, part 2, 15-20 -- Summary and review: fusing Plato and the creative self -- Greek philosophy and the Bible; nature and history: Zarathustra, part 2, 20-22 -- Eternal recurrence: Zarathustra, part 2, 21; part 3, 1-13 -- Survey: Nietzsche and political philosophy -- The goodness of the whole, Socratic and Heideggerian critiques: Zarathustra, part 4-12 -- Creative contemplation: Zarathustra, part 3, 13 -- Restoring the sacred and the final question: Zarathustra, part 4. (shrink)

Presents the early published writings of the distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss, available here for the first time in English. “Zank places at the reader’s disposal the young Strauss’s passionate advocacy of political Zionism and his early confrontations with Spinoza, consideration of whom helped lead Strauss to formulate his teaching on ‘the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.’” — National Review.

מאז יצא לאור 'הזכות הטבעית וההיסטוריה' לפני כחצי מאה, נעשתה הגותו של ליאו שטראוס אחד הנושאים המסעירים ביותר בפילוסופיה המדינית, והשפעתו ניכרת גם מחוץ לכותלי האקדמיה. בספר זה שטראוס קורא תיגר על הדרך המקובלת להבנת הפילוסופיה המדינית ותולדותיה. הוא מבקר בחריפות את הגישה ההיסטוריציסטית השואפת להבין את הפילוסופיה כביטוי של רוח זמנה. לדעתו, גישה זו הביאה לאבדן המעמד הרם שהיה שמור לפילוסופיה המדינית עד למאה השמונה-עשרה, מעמד של "מלכת" מדעי האדם או "הלימוד המקיף של העניינים האנושיים". לדידו של שטראוס, ירידת (...) מעמדה של הפילוסופיה המדינית היא אחד מתסמיני המשבר הפוליטי והמוסרי של הליברליזם המודרני ושל תרבות המערב בכללותה. שטראוס מציע לחזור לשאלות שנשכחו מאז הובס, לוק ורוסו: האם יש לבני אדם זכויות טבעיות? האם יש אמות מידה בלתי משתנות של הצודק והנכון? ומהו הקשר בין הטוב לנעים, בין הנאצל לצודק? התשובות לשאלות הללו מוליכות לחיפוש אחר הנכון הטבעי, ואילו דחיקתן מביאה לאבדן ההבנה של האדם כיצור המסוגל לחרוג מעצמו למען תכלית נעלה ממנו - חריגה המאצילה עליו גדוּלה ואצילות. (shrink)

Le bilan d'une vie marquée par la littérature, la peinture et la musique, et une introduction à l'oeuvre de l'anthropologue. Il évoque son itinéraire intellectuel, ses voyages et ses rencontres, ses goûts et ses aversions. Publié à l'occasion de son centenaire.

Last year, more than seven million Americans participated in yoga or tai chi classes.Yet despite its popularity the real nature of yoga remains shrouded in mystery. A diverse range of practitioners range from white-bearded Indian mystics to celebrities like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. Positioning Yoga provides an overview of the development of yoga, from its introduction to Western audiences by the Indian Swami Vivekananda at the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago to forms of modern practice. What makes (...) yoga practitioners affiliated with Swami Sivananda's Divine Life Society of Rishikesh, India unique--whether they hail from Indian, North America, or Europe? What values around the world have supported the surging popularity of yoga over the past century? This absorbing book considers how lifestyle values have made yoga a global industry and shows how this popular "lifestyle" is produced and disseminated across boundaries. (shrink)

Enth.: Race et histoire / Claude Lévi-Strauss. suivi de: L'oeuvre de Claude Lévi-Strauss / par Jean Pouillon.

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.

In spite of differences the thought of Bernays, Dooyeweerd and Gödel evinces a remarkable convergence. This is particularly the case in respect of the acknowledgement of the difference between the discrete and the continuous, the foundational position of number and the fact that the idea of continuity is derived from space (geometry – Bernays). What is furthermore similar is the recognition of what is primitive (and indefinable) as well as the account of the coherence of what is unique, such as (...) when Gödel observes something quasi-spatial character of sets. It is shown that Dooyeweerd’s theory of modal aspects provides a philosophical framework that exceeds his own restrictive understanding of infinity )to the potential infinite) and at the same time makes it possible to account for key insights found in the thought of Bernays and Gödel. When Laugwitz says that discreteness rules within the sphere of the numerical, he says nothing more than what Dooyeweerd had in mind with his idea that discrete quantity, as the meaning-nucleus of the arithmetical aspect, qualifies every element within the structure of the quantitative aspect. And when Bernays says that analysis expresses the idea of the continuum in arithmetical language his mode of speech is equivalent to saying that mathematical analysis could seen as being founded upon the spatial anticipation within the modal structure of the arithmetical aspect. The view of the actual infinite (the at once infinite) in terms of an “as if” approach (Bernays), that is, as appreciated as a regulative hypothesis through which every successively infinite multiplicity of numbers could be envisaged as being giving all at once, as an infinite totality, provides a sound understanding of the at once infinite and makes it plain why every form of arithmeticism fails. Such attempts have to call upon Cantor’s proof on the non-denumerability of the real numbers – and this proof pre-supposes the use of the at once infinite which, in turn, pre-supposes the (irreducibile) spatial order of simultaneity and the patial whole-parts relation. (shrink)

What sort of public speech is appropriate for a republic at war? At any time, public speech in a republic should be clear, simple, rational, and focused on the public interest. In the heat of war, the speaker must be not merely moral, but cunning; he should employ a rhetoric that is restrained and unemotional, realistic and hard-headed, yet also decent and principled. The study of Thucydides, particularly of his so-called Mytilenian Debate, underlines this lesson.

The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was one of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work has had a profound impact not only within anthropology but also linguistics, sociology and philosophy. In this short book he examines the nature and role of myth in human history, distilling a lifetime of writing into a few sharp insights. It is a crystalline overview of many of the basic ideas underlying his work, including the theory of structuralism and the difference between 'primitive' (...) and 'scientific' thought and shows why Levi-Strauss remains a hugely important intellectual figure. With a new foreword by Patrick Wilcken. (shrink)

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 ...

At the age of eighty, one of the most influential yet reclusive intellectuals of the twentieth century consented to his first interviews in nearly thirty years. Hailed by Le Figaro as "an event," the resulting conversations between Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon (a correspondent for Le Nouvel Observateur) reveal the great anthropologist speaking of his life and work with ease and humor. Now available in English, the conversations are rich in Lévi-Strauss's candid appraisals of some of the best-known (...) figures of the Parisian intelligentsia: surrealists André Breton and Max Ernst, with whom Lévi-Strauss shared a bohemian life in 1940s Manhattan; de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus, the stars of existentialism; Leiris, Foucault, Dumézil, Jacob, Lacan, and others. His long friendships with Jakobson and Merleau-Ponty are recalled, as well as his encounters with prominent figures in American anthropology: Lowie, Boas (who suddenly died in his chair beside Lévi-Strauss at a banquet at Columbia University), Benedict, Linton, Mead, and Kroeber. Lévi-Strauss speaks frankly about how circumstances and his own inclinations, after his early fieldwork in Brazil, led him to embrace theoretical work. His straightforward answers to Eribon's penetrating questions—What is a myth? What is structuralism? Are you a philosopher?—clarify his intellectual motives and the development of his research; his influential role as an administrator, including the founding of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and of the journal L'Homme; the course of his writings, from Elementary Structures of Kinship to The Jealous Potter; and his thoughts on the conduct of anthropology today. Never before has Lévi-Strauss spoken so freely on so many aspects of his life: his initial failure to be elected to the Collège de France; his reaction to the events of May 1968; his regrets at not being a great investigative reporter or playwright; his deep identification with Wagner, Proust, and Rousseau. This is a rare opportunity to become acquainted with a great thinker in all his dimensions. (shrink)

In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, _Natural Right and History_ remains as controversial and essential as ever. "Strauss... makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find (...) ourselves... [and] brings to his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive mind."—John H. Hallowell, _American Political Science Review_ Leo Strauss was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

The _Maimonides Review_ is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles, which seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies.

The essays collected in Persecution and the Art of Writing all deal with one problem--the relation between philosophy and politics. Here, Strauss sets forth the thesis that many philosophers, especially political philosophers, have reacted to the threat of persecution by disguising their most controversial and heterodox ideas.

"Every word, like a sacred object, has its place. No _précis_ is possible. This extraordinary book must be read."—Edmund Carpenter, _New York Times Book Review _ "No outline is possible; I can only say that reading this book is a most exciting intellectual exercise in which dialectic, wit, and imagination combine to stimulate and provoke at every page."—Edmund Leach, _Man _ "Lévi-Strauss's books are tough: very scholarly, very dense, very rapid in argument. But once you have mastered him, human (...) history can never be the same, nor indeed can one's view of contemporary society. And his latest book, _The Savage Mind_, is his most comprehensive and certainly his most profound. Everyone interested in the history of ideas _must_ read it; everyone interested in human institutions _should _read it."—J. H. Plumb, _Saturday Review_ "A constantly stimulating, informative and suggestive intellectual challenge."—Geoffrey Gorer, _The Observer_, London. (shrink)

Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy . "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching], not only because it (...) is wholesome, but above all because a failure to take that opinion seriously prevents one from doing justice to what is truly admirable in Machiavelli: the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech." This critique of the founder of modern political philosophy by this prominent twentieth-century scholar is an essential text for students of both authors. (shrink)