Abstract

Through an accurate reading of Leo Strauss’ essay Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy, the paper aims to provide a contribution to raise the principled question of the relationship between philosophy and politics. Strauss states that there is an “intimate connection” between the “facts” occurred in Germany in 1933 and “the core” of Heidegger’s philosophical thought. Now, it's difficult to let this statement about Heidegger fit within the well-known Strauss' critique of the historicistic vision, accordingly to which every philosophy is conditioned from its historical time. An accurate, i. e., a critical reading of Strauss’ essay, forces us to answer to the following question: What does properly mean Strauss’ statement? Does it imply something like a reductio ad Hitlerum of Heidegger’s thought, i.e., an essentially historicistic interpretation of the issue? My paper supports the idea that Strauss’ interpretation of the relation between thought and politics is not historical, but phenomenological, assuming the word in a Husserlian way. In fact, according to Strauss, Heidegger’s thought – like every modern “philosophy of history” as for example those of Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche – is basically a renunciation of the “infinite philosophical task” in favour of what Husserl called Weltanschauungsphilosophie, that is, in favour of time-conditioned practical solutions of the riddles of life and the world. Seen in this way, Heidegger’s political engagement is a consequence, not of his philosophy, but rather of his essentially non-philosophical incapacity to resist the temptation of Weltanschauungsphilosophie, i. e., the desire of satisfying the human need of exaltation and consolation. The roots of Heidegger’s political choices are therefore to be understood within a specific cultural-political framework, and not within his philosophical thinking