According to Drury, the ‘only aspect of neoconservatism that is not indebted to Strauss is its economics - Strauss had a European contempt for commerce and no interest in economics’ (p. xxv). One must wonder why Drury deems it fit to discuss a subject that has in her view nothing to do with Strauss in a book about Strauss’s ideas and, more interestingly, what is meant by ‘a European contempt for commerce’.
2.
As Meier puts it: ‘The exoteric-esoteric double-face is the attempt to protect philosophers from society and nonphilosophers from philosophy’ (p. 65).
3.
L. Strauss ( 1959) What is Political Philosophy?, p. 93. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Cf. Pangle, p. 71.
4.
Strauss (n. 3), p. 92.
5.
Cf. Tanguay, p. 84.
6.
Strauss (n. 3), p. 92.
7.
InStrauss (1989[1968]) Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 224. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
8.
Cf. Tanguay, p. 108.
9.
L. Strauss ( 1995 [1935]) Philosophy and Law, tr. Eve Adler, p. 38. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Cited by Tanguay, p. 48.
10.
‘Reason and Revelation’ (1948), published as an appendix to Meier’s Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, fo. 4 verso; cited by Meier, p. 6. An almost identical formulation can be found in Strauss (1953) Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cited by Tanguay, p. 192; cited by Pangle, p. 27.
11.
See L. Strauss (1989) ‘How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy’, in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, pp. 221-3. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
12.
On the influence of Avicenna’s reading of Plato on Strauss, see Tanguay, p. 57; Meier, pp. 12-13; cf. Strauss (n. 11), p. 224.
13.
Cf. Tanguay, pp. 62-3, 65. Tanguay suggests (p. 62) that Strauss’s ‘altogether political interpretation of Maimonides’ prophetology’ was not yet fully developed in Philosophy and Law but it is clearly acknowledged as early as 1936, notably in Strauss (1990) ‘Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi’, Interpretation 18(1) .
14.
See Strauss (n. 11), p. 223.
15.
On the Arabic reception of the Politics, see Rémi Brague (1993) ‘Note sur la traduction arabe de la Politique, derechef, qu’elle n’existe pas’, in Aristote politique: Études sur la ‘Politique’ d’Aristote, pp. 423-33. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
16.
Cf. Tanguay, p. 64.
17.
Strauss (1945) ‘Farabi’s Plato’, in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, p. 381. New York: American Academy for Jewish Research. Cited by Tanguay, p. 91.
18.
Cf. Pangle, p. 127.
19.
Tanguay suggests that ‘for Strauss the Ideas, far from being separate substances or ideals, are the eternal problems of philosophy’ (p. 91). Pangle makes the same argument in his Introduction to Strauss (1984) Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, pp. 3, 5-6. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
20.
Strauss (1953, in n. 10), p. 32; cited by Tanguay, p. 201. Cf. Strauss (1989) ‘Progress or Return’, in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, p. 259. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
21.
Cf. Zuckerts, p. 45.
22.
For Pangle’s thematic treatment of the confrontation between reason and revelation, see (2003) Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
23.
Cf. Zuckerts, p. 45; Tanguay, p. 215.
24.
Strauss (n. 20), p. 259.
25.
Ibid.; emphasis added.
26.
Cf. Tanguay, p. 165.
27.
Cf. Tanguay, p. 210.
28.
Strauss (n. 20), p. 269.
29.
Cf. the following remark which appears in the Foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas Pangle (2001 [1962]) to Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, tr. Muhsin Mahdi, p. ix. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: ‘Alfarabi made it his chief purpose to indicate how the theological-political thought of Plato fully anticipated and completely accounted for the core of the new challenge offered by scriptural revelations.’
30.
Strauss (n. 20), p. 270; cited by the Zuckerts, p. 45.
