Description

BA Thesis: This paper proposes that Leo Strauss’s political philosophy shares a more than casual relationship with Hegel’s philosophy. It begins by looking at Strauss’ own stated views and chosen themes, so as to distil important similarities and differences in Hegel’s work. With this in mind, it endeavors to wield in a similar manner the hermeneutic method Strauss says to have discovered in the “esoteric-exoteric” tradition: the practice of “reading between the lines” based on a serious appreciation of the limitations of thought and language. But more than anything it will attempt to bring to the fore the conscientiousness (as opposed to deviousness) with which Strauss stressed the political and philosophical problems surrounding this ‘art of writing’, making it more than just a literary idiosyncrasy.