Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss

About this book

Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigres and American Political Thought after World War II is an examination of intellectual migration from Europe to the United States and the resulting influence of European scholars on both the American academy and their home countries after 1945. This collection presents essays by German and American political scientists on Hannah Arendt's and Strauss's emigre experience and their philosophical work in the United States. The authors discuss Arendt's and Strauss's intellectual contributions to American political science as well as the evolution of their respective oeuvres that grew out of the emigration experience. As demonstrated here, the flight from totalitarianism, the Jewish experience of National Socialism and the Holocaust, and the critical transference of German political philosophy to the United States furthered a distinctive interpretation of American political philosophy. . This volume, which concludes with a roundtable discussion, also suggests common themes in the work of the two philosophers. Though in different ways and not uncritically, both of these philosophers viewed the contemporary American system as the antithesis to European totalitarianism. Finally, their emigre experience not only influenced their American work but also had a fundamental impact on the formation of the discipline of political science in Germany after the war.