Leo Strauss: Between Athens and Jerusalem

Abstract

Harold Bloom, the Yale literary critic, once described Leo Strauss as “political philosopher and Hebraic sage.” This always seemed to me unusually prescient. For Strauss is most frequently understood as an interpreter and critic of a number of thinkers, both ancient and modern, who belong to the history of political philosophy. But far less often is he regarded as a contributor to Jewish thought. It is neither as a historian nor as a philosopher but as a Jew that I want to consider him here. At first blush this approach to Strauss seems relatively unproblematical. Even a superficial perusal of his major works shows that Jewish themes were a continual preoccupation of his from the earliest times onwards.

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