The essays are based on a long and intimate familiarity with the works, but the essay on Aristotle is especially important as one of Strauss's few writings on ...

On the life and philosophy of Kundakunda, 2nd century exponent of Jainism.

Enth.: Race et histoire / Claude Lévi-Strauss. suivi de: L'oeuvre de Claude Lévi-Strauss / par Jean Pouillon.

This essay is conceived as a contribution to the academic debate on the ethical status of mystical traditions with regard to Jain asceticism in particular and—through comparison of Jain with Advaita Vedanta asceticism—to ideologies of radical quietism more generally. For both Jain and Advaita Vedantic ascetic traditions, the material world, and particularly the body, are the primary obstacles to spiritual development. We deal with the social, physical, and environmental implications of such a worldview, rather than with the practice or the (...) phenomenology or the doctrine of mysticism, which we grant to be an accurate reflection of a particular kind of cosmic experience. We address ethical issues, not metaphysical ones. In our discussion of Jain asceticism, we demonstrate that the basic problem (and promise) of quietism, in almost any cultural form, is the shocking realization it can occasion that the Real has absolutely nothing to do with the social or with any sort of ethical action. We argue that Jain asceticism cannot function as an adequate resource for contemporary ethics. Our normative concerns lie exclusively with the adequacy of Jain quietism in supporting a stable global community and a sustainable natural environment. One can be mystical without being ethical, and ethical without being a mystic. We conclude that the truths of quietism are both very profound and profoundly nonethical. (shrink)

Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political philosophy through careful analyses of works by ancient thinkers. As with his published writings, Strauss’s seminars devoted to specific philosophers were notoriously dense, accessible only to graduate students and scholars with a good command of the subject. In 1965, however, Strauss offered an introductory course on political philosophy at the University of Chicago. Using a conversational style, he sought to make political philosophy, as well as his own ideas (...) and methods, understandable to those with little background on the subject. Leo Strauss on Political Philosophy brings together the lectures that comprise Strauss’s “Introduction to Political Philosophy.” Strauss begins by emphasizing the importance of political philosophy in determining the common good of society and critically examining the two most powerful contemporary challenges to the possibility of using political theory to learn about and develop the best political order: positivism and historicism. In seeking the common good, classical political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle did not distinguish between political philosophy and political science. Today, however, political philosophy must contend with the contemporary belief that it is impossible to know what the good society really is. Strauss emphasizes the need to study the history of political philosophy to see whether the changes in the understanding of nature and conceptions of justice that gradually led people to believe that it is not possible to determine what the best political society is are either necessary or valid. In doing so, he ranges across the entire history of political philosophy, providing a valuable, thematically coherent foundation, including explications of many canonical thinkers, such as Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant, about whom Strauss did not write extensively in his published writings. (shrink)

An examination of Leo Strauss's 1948 notebook and other writings on the Euthyphro, Plato's dialogue on piety, using close analysis and line-by-line commentary.

Although Indic perspectives toward nature are now well documented, climate engineering discussions seem to still lack the views from Indic or other non‐Western sources. In this article, I will apply some of the Hindu and Jain concepts such as karma, nonviolence (Ahiṃsā ), humility (Vinaya ), and renunciation (Saṃnyāsa ) to analyze the two primary climate geoengineering strategies of solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). I suggest that Indic philosophical and religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and (...) Jainism offer ethical concepts to call for humility in all acts of climate engineering leading to a favoring of CDR over SRM and a favoring of lifestyle changes (particularly vegetarianism) over both. I demonstrate these concepts by introducing the five great elements from the Hindu philosophy, two Hindu legends from Hindu mythology, the Indic ethical ideas of karma, renunciation, and humility, and the moral authority of Gandhi. (shrink)

The Leo Strauss transcript project -- Editor's introduction: Strauss, Nietzsche, and the history of political philosophy -- Editorial headnote -- Introduction: Nietzsche's philosophy, existentialism, and the problem of our age -- Restoring nature as ethical principle: Zarathustra, prologue -- The creative self: Zarathustra, part 1, 1-8 -- The true individual as the highest goal: Zarathustra, part 1, 9-15 -- Postulated nature and final truth: Zarathustra, part 1, 16-22 -- Truth, interpretation, and intelligibility: Zarathustra, part 2, 1-12 -- Will (...) to power and self-overcoming: Zarathustra, part 2, 15-20 -- Summary and review: fusing Plato and the creative self -- Greek philosophy and the Bible; nature and history: Zarathustra, part 2, 20-22 -- Eternal recurrence: Zarathustra, part 2, 21; part 3, 1-13 -- Survey: Nietzsche and political philosophy -- The goodness of the whole, Socratic and Heideggerian critiques: Zarathustra, part 4-12 -- Creative contemplation: Zarathustra, part 3, 13 -- Restoring the sacred and the final question: Zarathustra, part 4. (shrink)

The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear in more than thirty years, "Leo Strauss On Plato's "Symposium"" offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this renowned scholar as his students did.

A transcript of Leo Strauss’s key seminars on Plato’s Protagoras. This book offers a transcript of Strauss’s seminar on Plato’s Protagoras taught at the University of Chicago in the spring quarter of 1965, edited and introduced by renowned scholar Robert C. Bartlett. These lectures have several important features. Unlike his published writings, they are less dense and more conversational. Additionally, while Strauss regarded himself as a Platonist and published some work on Plato, he published little on individual (...) dialogues. In these lectures Strauss treats many of the great Platonic and Straussian themes: the difference between the Socratic political science or art and the Sophistic political science or art of Protagoras; the character and teachability of virtue, its relation to knowledge, and the relations among the virtues, courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom; the good and the pleasant; frankness and concealment; the role of myth; and the relation between freedom of thought and freedom of speech. In these lectures, Strauss examines Protagoras and the sophists, providing a detailed discussion of Protagoras as it relates to Plato’s other dialogues and the work of modern thinkers. This book should be of special interest to students both of Plato and of Strauss. (shrink)

Leo Strauss's essays and lectures on Maimonides -- Point of departure: why study medieval thinkers? -- How to study medieval philosophy (1944) -- On Maimonides -- Spinoza's critique of Maimonides (1930) -- Cohen and Maimonides (1931) -- The philosophic foundation of the law: Maimonides' doctrine of prophecy and its sources.

Leo Strauss's introductions to ten writings of Moses Mendelssohn -- Preliminary remark by Alexander Altmann -- Introduction to Pope a metaphysician! -- Introduction to "Epistle to Mr. Lessing in Leipzig" -- Introduction to Commentary on Moses Maimonides' "Logical terms" -- Introduction to Treatise on evidence in metaphysical sciences -- Introduction to Phädon -- Introduction to Treatise on the incorporeality of the human soul -- Introduction to "On a handwritten essay of Mr. de Luc's" -- Introduction to The soul -- (...) Introduction to Morning hours and to the friends of Lessing -- Introduction to God's cause, or providence vindicated. (shrink)

In the winter of 1965, Leo Strauss taught a seminar on Hegel at the University of Chicago. While Strauss neither considered himself a Hegelian nor wrote about Hegel at any length, his writings contain intriguing references to the philosopher, particularly in connection with his studies of Hobbes, in his debate in On Tyranny with Alexandre Kojève; and in his account of the “three waves” of modern political philosophy. Leo Strauss on Hegel reconstructs Strauss’s seminar on Hegel, (...) supplemented by passages from an earlier version of the seminar from which only fragments of a transcript remain. Strauss focused his seminar on the lectures collected in The Philosophy of History, which he considered more accessible than Hegel’s written works. In his own lectures on Hegel, Strauss continues his project of demonstrating how modern philosophers related to ancient thought and explores the development and weaknesses of modern political theory. Strauss is especially concerned with the relationship in Hegel between empirical history and his philosophy of history, and he argues for the primacy of religion in Hegel’s understanding of history and society. In addition to a relatively complete transcript, Leo Strauss on Hegel also includes annotations, which bring context and clarity to the text. (shrink)

Presents the early published writings of the distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss, available here for the first time in English. “Zank places at the reader’s disposal the young Strauss’s passionate advocacy of political Zionism and his early confrontations with Spinoza, consideration of whom helped lead Strauss to formulate his teaching on ‘the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.’” — National Review.

Presents the early published writings of the distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss, available here for the first time in English. “Zank places at the reader’s disposal the young Strauss’s passionate advocacy of political Zionism and his early confrontations with Spinoza, consideration of whom helped lead Strauss to formulate his teaching on ‘the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.’” — National Review.

At the age of eighty, one of the most influential yet reclusive intellectuals of the twentieth century consented to his first interviews in nearly thirty years. Hailed by Le Figaro as "an event," the resulting conversations between Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon (a correspondent for Le Nouvel Observateur) reveal the great anthropologist speaking of his life and work with ease and humor. Now available in English, the conversations are rich in Lévi-Strauss's candid appraisals of some of the best-known (...) figures of the Parisian intelligentsia: surrealists André Breton and Max Ernst, with whom Lévi-Strauss shared a bohemian life in 1940s Manhattan; de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus, the stars of existentialism; Leiris, Foucault, Dumézil, Jacob, Lacan, and others. His long friendships with Jakobson and Merleau-Ponty are recalled, as well as his encounters with prominent figures in American anthropology: Lowie, Boas (who suddenly died in his chair beside Lévi-Strauss at a banquet at Columbia University), Benedict, Linton, Mead, and Kroeber. Lévi-Strauss speaks frankly about how circumstances and his own inclinations, after his early fieldwork in Brazil, led him to embrace theoretical work. His straightforward answers to Eribon's penetrating questions—What is a myth? What is structuralism? Are you a philosopher?—clarify his intellectual motives and the development of his research; his influential role as an administrator, including the founding of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and of the journal L'Homme; the course of his writings, from Elementary Structures of Kinship to The Jealous Potter; and his thoughts on the conduct of anthropology today. Never before has Lévi-Strauss spoken so freely on so many aspects of his life: his initial failure to be elected to the Collège de France; his reaction to the events of May 1968; his regrets at not being a great investigative reporter or playwright; his deep identification with Wagner, Proust, and Rousseau. This is a rare opportunity to become acquainted with a great thinker in all his dimensions. (shrink)

On Tyranny is Leo Strauss's classic reading of Xenophon's dialogue, Hiero or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. This edition includes a translation of the dialogue, a critique of the commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, Strauss's restatement of his position in light of Kojève's comments, and finally, the complete Strauss-Kojève correspondence. "Through [Strauss's] interpretation Xenophon appears to us as no longer the somewhat (...) dull and flat author we know, but as a brilliant and subtle writer, an original and profound thinker. What is more, in interpreting this forgotten dialogue, Strauss lays bare great moral and political problems that are still ours." —Alexandre Kojève, Critique "On Tyranny is a complex and stimulating book with its 'parallel dialogue' made all the more striking since both participants take such unusual, highly provocative positions, and so force readers to face substantial problems in what are often wholly unfamiliar, even shocking ways." —Robert Pippin, History and Theory "Every political scientist who tries to disentangle himself from the contemporary confusion over the problems of tyranny will be much indebted to this study and inevitably use it as a starting point."—Eric Voegelin, The Review of Politics Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

On Tyranny is Leo Strauss’s classic reading of Xenophon’s dialogue Hiero, or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. Included are a translation of the dialogue from its original Greek, a critique of Strauss’s commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, and the complete correspondence between the two. This revised and expanded edition introduces important corrections throughout and expands Strauss’s restatement of his position in light of (...) Kojève’s commentary to bring it into conformity with the text as it was originally published in France. (shrink)

America now is home to approximately three million Hindus and Jains. Their contribution to the economic and intellectual growth of the country is unquestionable. Dharma in America aims to explore the role of Hindu and Jain Americans in diverse fields such as: education and civic engagements medicine and healthcare music. Providing a concise history of Hindus and Jains in the Americas over the last two centuries, Dharma in America also gives some insights into the ongoing issues and challenges these important (...) ethnic and religious groups face in the America today. (shrink)

This Is A Concise Narrative Of The Beginnings, History, Schisms, Social Organization And Cosmology Of The Living Jain Tradition. The Study Is Covered In 7 Chapters - Atheistic Jainism? - Textual Sources And Ethnographic Literature - The Grand Transition In Jainism: Digambar And Shvetambar As Continuity And Change - The Shvetambar `Church` - The Digambar Case Reconsidered: Contemporary Period - The Digambar Jains Of North India: Society And Religion In Baraut, Uttar Pradesh - The Kanji Swami Panth: Contestation, Cosmology And (...) Confrontation. Condition Good. (shrink)

"This book... is the English translation of the Hindi book Tattvārthasūtra with Upādhyāya (now Ailācārya) Srutasāgarji, as the principal commentator and edited by Dr Sudeep Jain in Hindi"--P. 3.

Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy . "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching], not only because it (...) is wholesome, but above all because a failure to take that opinion seriously prevents one from doing justice to what is truly admirable in Machiavelli: the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech." This critique of the founder of modern political philosophy by this prominent twentieth-century scholar is an essential text for students of both authors. (shrink)

Human perception has long been a critical subject of design thinking. While various studies have stressed the link between thinking and acting, particularly in spatial experience, the term “design thinking” seems to disconnect conceptual thinking from physical expression or process. Spatial perception is multimodal and fundamentally bound to the body that is not a mere receptor of sensory stimuli but an active agent engaged with the perceivable environment. The body apprehends the experience in which one’s kinesthetic engagement and knowledge play (...) an essential role. Although design disciplines have integrated the abstract, metaphoric, and visual aspects of the body and its movement into conceptual thinking, studies have pointed out that design disciplines have emphasized visuality above the other sensory domains and heavily engaged with the perception of visual configurations, relying on the Gestalt principles. Gestalt psychology must be valued for its attention to a whole. However, the theories of design elements and principles over-empathizing such visuality posit the aesthetics of design mainly as visual value and understate other sensorial and perceptual aspects. Although the visual approach may provide a practical means to represent and communicate ideas, a design process heavily driven by visuality can exhibit weaknesses undermining certain aspects of spatial experience despite the complexity. Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s notion of multisensory perception, this article discusses the relationship between body awareness and spatial perception and its implication for design disciplines concerning built environments. Special attention is given to the concepts of kinesthetic and synesthetic phenomena known as multisensory and cross-sensory, respectively. This discussion integrates the corporeal and spatiotemporal realms of human experience into the discourse of kinesthetic and synesthetic perceptions. Based on the conceptual, theoretical, and precedent analyses, this article proposes three models for design thinking: Synesthetic Translation, Kinesthetic Resonance, and Kinesthetic Engagement. To discuss the concepts rooted in action-based perception and embodied cognition, this study borrows the neurological interpretation of haptic perception, interoception, and proprioception of space. This article suggests how consideration of the kinesthetic or synesthetic body can deepen and challenge the existing models of the perceptual aspects of environmental psychology adopted in design disciplines. (shrink)

We appreciated the important commentary provided by Michelle Oberman on our paper, “Discontinuing Life Support in an Infant of a Drug-Addicted Mother: Whose Decision Is It?” . For the most part we agree with Oberman's analysis of the issues, but there are seven points of variance, either of conception, emphasis, or accuracy. We wish to clarify these and welcome the chance her commentary provided to offer aspects of the social situation surrounding the case we presented.

Natural Right and History is widely recognized as Strauss’s most influential work. The six lectures, written while Strauss was at the New School, and a full transcript of the 1949 Walgreen Lectures show Strauss working toward the ideas he would present in fully matured form in his landmark work. In them, he explores natural right and the relationship between modern philosophers and the thought of the ancient Greek philosophers, as well as the relation of political philosophy to (...) contemporary political science and to major political and historical events, especially the Holocaust and World War II. Previously unpublished in book form, Strauss’s lectures are presented here in a thematic order that mirrors Natural Right and History and with interpretive essays by J. A. Colen, Christopher Lynch, Svetozar Minkov, Daniel Tanguay, Nathan Tarcov, and Michael Zuckert that establish their relation to the work. Rounding out the book are copious annotations and notes to facilitate further study. (shrink)

Les époques d'instabilité et de désordre politique coïncident généralement avec un développement de la science politique. En atteste une fois de plus la Correspondance qu'entretinrent ces " deux géants de la science politique ", Leo Strauss et Eric Voegelin, tous deux contraints par la révolution national-socialiste à s'exiler aux Etats-Unis. Dans la cinquantaine de lettres échangées, dont le cœur se constitue au cours des années 1942-1953, le lecteur assiste à la gestation des deux grands théoriciens politiques de ce début (...) de siècle. L'échange de vues concernant la restauration du niveau de questionnement platonicoaristotélicien, leur lecture divergente des dialogues de Platon, la critique virulente qu'adresse Voegelin à l'egologie husserlienne ainsi qu'à sa réduction de l'Humanité incarnée par l'homme occidental ou encore à son interprétation de l'histoire à travers le telos qui se révèle en elle, la divergence d'appréciation concernant la tyrannie moderne, enfin leurs critiques réciproques de l'existentialisme retiendront particulièrement l'attention. Mais le désaccord irréductible entre les deux penseurs porte bien évidemment sur le rôle de la foi et de la philosophie politique, ainsi qu'en témoigne le sous-titre de cette Correspondance, désaccord dont le lecteur trouvera témoignage dans les quatre essais, datant de la période de la maturité des deux auteurs, dont trois inédits, qui composent la seconde partie de ce volume. La troisième partie rassemble huit essais d'éminents spécialistes de l'un ou l'autre penseur, commentant les problèmes soulevés dans la Correspondance et, plus généralement dans l'œuvre des deux auteurs. (shrink)

This concise and accessible introduction to Strauss's thought provides, for wider audience, a bridge to his more complex theoretical work. Editor Pangle has gathered five of Strauss's previously unpublished lectures and five hard-to-find published writings and has arranged them so as to demonstrate the systematic progression of the major themes that underlay Strauss's mature work. "[These essays] display the incomparable insight and remarkable range of knowledge that set Strauss's works apart from any other twentieth-century philosopher's."—Charles R. (...) Kesler, National Review. (shrink)

In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, _Natural Right and History_ remains as controversial and essential as ever. "Strauss... makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find (...) ourselves... [and] brings to his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive mind."—John H. Hallowell, _American Political Science Review_ Leo Strauss was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Leo Strauss articulates the conflict between reason and revelation as he explores Spinoza's scientific, comparative, and textual treatment of the Bible. Strauss compares Spinoza's Theologico-political Treatise and the Epistles, showing their relation to critical controversy on religion from Epicurus and Lucretius through Uriel da Costa and Isaac Peyrere to Thomas Hobbes. Strauss's autobiographical Preface, traces his dilemmas as a young liberal intellectual in Germany during the Weimar Republic, as a scholar in exile, and as a leader of (...) American philosophical thought. "[For] those interested in Strauss the political philosopher, and also those who doubt whether we have achieved the 'final solution' in respect to either the character of political science or the problem of the relation of religion to the state." -- Journal of Politics "A substantial contribution to the thinking of all those interested in the ageless problems of faith, revelation, and reason." -- Kirkus Reviews Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago. His contributions to political science include The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, The City and the Man, What is Political Philosophy?, and Liberalism Ancient and Modern. (shrink)

'At last one of the most famous generalizing works in anthropology by the field's most stimulating and controversial contemporary figure has been translated, beautifully, and with the enlightening preface of the second French edition.

"All political action has . . . in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society. For the good society is the complete political good. If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges. . . . The theme of political philosophy is mankind's great objectives, freedom and government or empire--objectives which are capable (...) of lifting all men beyond their poor selves. Political philosophy is that branch of philosophy which is closest to political life, to non-philosophic life, to human life."--From "What Is Political Philosophy?" What Is Political Philosophy? --a collection of ten essays and lectures and sixteen book reviews written between 1943 and 1957--contains some of Leo Strauss's most famous writings and some of his most explicit statements of the themes that made him famous. The title essay records Strauss's sole extended articulation of the meaning of political philosophy itself. Other essays discuss the relation of political philosophy to history, give an account of the political philosophy of the non-Christian Middle Ages and of classic European modernity, and present his theory of esoteric writing. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a comprehensive concept that aims at the promotion of responsible business practices closely linked to the strategy of enterprises. Although there is no single accepted definition of CSR, it remains an inspiring, challenging and strategic development that is becoming an increasingly important priority for companies of all sizes and types, particularly in Europe. Promotion of well-being at work is an essential component of CSR; however, the link between CSR, working conditions and work organisation is still (...) found to be unfamiliar to stakeholders. As CSR is strategic and is regarded by many companies and corporate leaders as an important development, it offers opportunities for psychosocial risk management, an area that is currently among the top priorities in working environment and well-being at work debates. However, the link between CSR and psychosocial risk management has not been addressed clearly before. This paper aims to explore the potential role of CSR in promoting well-being at work through the development of a framework for the management of psychosocial risks. As part of the research, key stakeholders [including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), the European Commission (EC), employers’ associations, trade unions and other policy experts] across Europe participated in a survey, interviews and focus groups to assess and clarify the link between CSR and psychosocial risk management. On the basis of the findings, a CSR-inspired approach to the management of psychosocial issues at work is proposed. Such an approach can be a useful tool in contexts where, up until now, expertise and tradition in dealing with psychosocial issues have been lacking. (shrink)

As Acharya Vidyanand writes in the Foreword of Samayasara, it is the ultimate conscious reality. The enlightened soul has infinite glory. It has the innate ability to demolish the power of karmas, both auspicious as well as inauspicious, which constitute the cycle of births and deaths, and are an obstacle in the path of liberation of the soul. Samayasara is an essential reading for anyone who wishes to lead a purposeful and contented life. It provides irrefutable and lasting solutions to (...) all our problems, concerning worldly ways as well as spiritual curiosities and misgivings. (shrink)

Nationwide, almost 11% of women abuse drugs during their pregnancy. In some communities, these numbers are as high as 25–30%. Drug abuse is not limited to the poor or to African Americans, but is seen among affluent and white Americans as well. It is widespread, irrespective of race or social class. Annually, nearly 375,000 infants are exposed to drugs in America. Because of the terrible suffering caused by these births, and the conflicts caregivers experience in the treatment of these infants, (...) Trollope's quote is very apropos. Although caregivers have good motives in trying to rescue these babies and helping place them in a nurturing environment, despair about this objective is always close to the surface. (shrink)

The essays collected in Persecution and the Art of Writing all deal with one problem--the relation between philosophy and politics. Here, Strauss sets forth the thesis that many philosophers, especially political philosophers, have reacted to the threat of persecution by disguising their most controversial and heterodox ideas.