Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss BVO
Born	(1899-09-20)September 20, 1899 Kirchhain, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died	October 18, 1973(1973-10-18) (aged 74) Annapolis, Maryland, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Marburg University of Hamburg University of Freiburg Columbia University
Notable work	Persecution and the Art of Writing Thoughts on Machiavelli History of Political Philosophy
Spouse	Miriam Bernsohn Strauss
Awards	Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Neo-Kantianism (early) Modern Platonism (later) Straussian hermeneutics Classical republicanism Modern republicanism
Institutions	Higher Institute for Jewish Studies Columbia University University of Cambridge The New School Hamilton College University of Chicago Claremont McKenna College St. John's College
Thesis	Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H. Jacobis (On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi) (1921)
Doctoral advisor	Ernst Cassirer
Main interests	Metaphysics Epistemology History of philosophy (especially Greek, Islamic, Jewish and continental philosophy) Philosophy of religion Political philosophy
Notable ideas	List Noetic heterogeneity The ends of politics and philosophy as irreducible to one another The unresolvable tension between reason and revelation Criticism of positivism, moral relativism, historicism, and nihilism The distinction between esoteric and exoteric writing Reopening the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns Reductio ad Hitlerum

Leo Strauss (/straʊs/ STROWSS, German: [ˈleːoː ˈʃtʁaʊs]; September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a 20th century German-American scholar of political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.

Trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss authored books on Spinoza and Hobbes, and articles on Maimonides and Al-Farabi. In the late 1930s, his research focused on the texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and encouraging the application of those ideas to contemporary political theory.