Modernity and What Has Been Lost: Considerations on the Legacy of Leo Strauss

by Paweł Armada, Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz

Modernity and What Has Been Lost  comes out of a conference held at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, on June 4-5, 2009 that sought to identify Leo Strauss's intellectual background in the repudiation of a modern idea of homogenous, universal state (considered as an illegitimate synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, i.e., the claims of Reason and Revelation). The world we live in, molded by science and historical relativism, may be described as hostile to human dignity or perfection, or abhorrent to those who love the search for wisdom. Straussian teaching consisted in the steady effort to reopen "the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns," and refers to the esoteric way of writing practiced by the most profound thinkers of the past which has been apparently forgotten in the last three centuries. Strauss binds the concept of natural right with the question of maintenance of conditions for philosophizing, and it probably seems to him that such defense of philosophy is the highest task in our times.

Contents

Heinrich Meier, Why Leo Strauss? Four Answers and One Consideration concerning the Uses and Disadvantages of the School for the Philosophical Life

Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss and the Contemporary Return to Political Philosophy

Nathan Tarcov, Philosophy as the Right Way of Life in Natural Right and History

David Janssens, The Philosopher's Ancient Leo Strauss on Philosophy and Poetry

Paweł Armada, Leo Strauss as The Defense of the Philosophical Life or the Defense of Life against Philosophy

Jürgen Gebhardt, Modern Challenges - Platonic Strauss, Arendt, Voegelin

Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz, Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss on Modernity, Secularization, and Nihilism

Emmanuel Patard, Remarks on the Strauss-Kojève Dialogue and Its Presuppositions

Piotr Nowak, Carl Schmitt and His Critic

Till Kinzel, Postmodernism and the Art of The Importance of Leo Strauss for the 21st Century

Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss's Gynaikologia

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010