Leo Strauss 101

Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, by Steven B. Smith (Chicago, 256 pp., $32.50)

AN enormous amount of nonsense has been written about Leo Strauss over the last several years. Liberal journalists who appear never to have read a word of the long-dead philosopher’s work assure us that the war in Iraq is a practical application of his ideas. Tim Robbins’s antiwar play Embedded portrays Strauss as a sinister ideologue who promoted deception of the masses as a means of fostering a militant nationalism. Nor has the nonsense all come from the political left. Conservative writer Daniel Flynn suggests, in his book Intellectual Morons, that Straussian methods of textual analysis may have led the Defense Department into a faulty reading of pre-war intelligence vis-à-vis Saddam’s purported WMD stockpiles.

EF

About the Author

Edward Feser

Mr. Feser is the author of Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide and The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.

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Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, by Steven B. Smith (Chicago, 256 pp., $32.50)

AN enormous amount of nonsense has been written about Leo Strauss over the last several years. Liberal journalists who appear never to have read a word of the long-dead philosopher’s work assure us that the war in Iraq is a practical application of his ideas. Tim Robbins’s antiwar play Embedded portrays Strauss as a sinister ideologue who promoted deception of the masses as a means of fostering a militant nationalism. Nor has the nonsense all come from the political left. Conservative writer Daniel Flynn suggests, in his book Intellectual Morons, that Straussian methods of textual analysis may have led the Defense Department into a faulty reading of pre-war intelligence vis-à-vis Saddam’s purported WMD stockpiles.