Leo Strauss on Science

Thoughts on the Relation between Natural Science and Political Philosophy

By Svetozar Y. Minkov

Subjects: Philosophy Of Science, Philosophy, Political Science
Series: SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss
Paperback : 9781438463124, 240 pages, July 2017
Hardcover : 9781438463117, 240 pages, December 2016

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Table of contents

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Relation between Political Philosophy and Natural Science

Part I. Political and Psychological Preconditions for Recovering Socratic Science

1. The Rediscovery of Socratic Dialectic: Strauss on Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political

2. The “Fundamental Political Predicament”: Strauss on Plato’s Laws, Book III

Part II. The Origin and Nature of Philosophy

3. The Natural Frame of Reference and the Possibility of a Comprehensive Science

4. Natural Right and History (ch. 3) on the Origin and Nature of Philosophy

Part III. Divine Revelation and the Possibility of Science

5. Strauss’s Introduction to “Platonic Studies” in Modern Times

6. Revelation and the Problem of Knowledge

Part IV. The Foundations and Directions of Modern Philosophy and Science

7. Science and Politics in Strauss’s Course on Natural Right (1962)

8. “An Irony Beyond Machiavelli’s Irony”: A Reading of the Concluding Six Paragraphs of Thoughts on Machiavelli

Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

The first study of Strauss’s confrontation with modern science and its methods.

Description

Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, Leo Strauss on Science brings to light the thoughts of Leo Strauss on the problem of science. Introducing us to Strauss's reflections on the meaning and perplexities of the scientific adventure, Svetozar Y. Minkov explores questions such as: Is there a human wisdom independent of science? What is the relation between poetry and mathematics, or between self-knowledge and theoretical physics? And how necessary is it for the human species to exist immutably in order for the classical analysis of human life to be correct? In pursuing these questions, Minkov aims to change the conversation about Strauss, one of the great thinkers of the past century.

Svetozar Y. Minkov is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Roosevelt University and the author of Francis Bacon's "Inquiry Touching Human Nature": Virtue, Philosophy, and the Relief of Man's Estate.