Leo Strauss Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Steven J. Lenzner

Critical Essay by Steven J. Lenzner

SOURCE: Lenzner, Steven. J. “Strauss's Fârâbî, Scholarly Prejudice, and Philosophic Politics.” Perspectives on Political Science 28, no. 4 (fall 1999): 194-202.

In the following essay, Lenzner analyzes Strauss's rhetorical attempts to paint Muslim philosopher Fârâbî as an unbeliever and a Machiavellian, despite Strauss's admiration for much of Fârâbi's work.

Leo Strauss is famous as a political philosopher who attempted to revive classical political philosophy in our time. Perhaps he is equally famous for the thesis that many of the great works of the past are “esoteric”; that is, they provide one salutary, “exoteric” teaching to the many who read with little care or thought, and a different, true, “esoteric” teaching to those able to “read between the lines.” Fârâbî was a tenth-century Islamic philosopher who, like Strauss, attempted to revive Platonic political philosophy in an age when philosophy “had been blurred or destroyed.”¹ Also like Strauss, Fârâbî presented many of...
(read more)