Discourses on Strauss

About this book

"Kim A. Sorensen clearly lays out the debate surrounding Leo Strauss by reviewing his published work and legacy since his death in 1973. He then turns to a key distinction in Strauss's thought - between revelation and reason, or religion and philosophy - and maintains that Strauss used their mutual opposition to modernity as a central theme in his oeuvre. For Sorensen, Strauss considered revelation and reason both as fundamentally different worldviews and as alternate ways of understanding the good life." "Sorensen explores Strauss's views on the revelation/reason distinction through a close examination of the final chapter in Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli. Here Strauss weighs Machiavelli's critique of religion in general and Christianity in particular, and Machiavelli's departure from the classical tradition of political philosophy dating from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. For Strauss, the "crisis of our time" has its point of origin in Machiavelli's rejection of both biblical and classical morality as guides to the efficacy of political virtue."--Jacket.