Leo Strauss (1899–1973)
German-Jewish political philosopher; émigré to America; intellectual grandfather of the Claremonter movement
Biography
Born 1899 in a Jewish household in Prussia. Served with the German army in World War I. Earned his doctorate at the University of Hamburg, where he studied under Ernst Cassirer and attended seminars with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
When the Nazis gained power, Strauss sought opportunities elsewhere. After a period in England, he arrived in the United States in 1937. He taught at the New School in New York for ten years (where Harry V. Jaffa was among his students), then for twenty years at the University of Chicago. Before his death in 1973, he spent time at Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna) and at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
Key Ideas
Esotericism: Strauss’s most distinctive and controversial claim is that the great works of political philosophy are intentionally multilayered — written to speak to different readers in different ways, concealing heterodox or politically dangerous teachings from the many while revealing them to the few capable of reading carefully. He called this the tradition of “esotericism.”
This idea has obvious political implications: it suggests that surface-level readings of texts are naive, that there are hidden truths in old books, and that sophisticated political actors should cultivate an ability to conceal and reveal selectively. Field notes the resemblance to conspiracy thinking — though she also notes it’s a standard literary device.
The “ancients vs. moderns” quarrel: Strauss believed that modern political philosophy (from Machiavelli onward) represented a decisive break from ancient philosophy — a “lowering of the horizon” that traded excellence and virtue for security, comfort, and power. He was deeply critical of modernity’s relativism, historicism, and nihilism.
Natural right: Against historicism (the view that all standards are relative to historical context), Strauss argued for the possibility of natural right — standards of justice that transcend historical circumstance.
The “theological-political problem”: The tension between reason (philosophy) and revelation (religion) — “Athens vs. Jerusalem” — was a central preoccupation. Strauss believed this tension was irresolvable but generative.
Strauss’s Political Stance
Strauss himself declined to identify as a conservative. He was not a political activist and generally avoided direct political intervention. His mind was anchored in Europe; he largely left the subject of America to students like Jaffa. His legacy in the academy is, however, conservative — and West Coast Straussians (the Claremonters) built explicitly political institutions on his methods.
In the early 2000s there was speculation about a “Straussian neoconservative cabal” in Washington during the George W. Bush administration. Field: the speculation was “fanciful and overheated,” but the influence of Strauss on Washington insiders “was undeniable.”
Strauss’s Reading of Plato’s Republic
The Republic is the central text of Straussian political philosophy, and Strauss’s reading of it is the most politically consequential interpretation of an ancient text in modern American conservatism.
The esoteric reading: Strauss argued that the Republic’s most radical proposals — guardian communism, philosopher-kings, the Noble Lie — are deliberately absurd. Plato is showing the impossibility of the ideal city, not prescribing it. The philosopher-king passage (473c-d) is not a political program but a demonstration that philosophy and politics are ultimately incompatible: perfect justice requires eliminating the family, private property, and private life — which would destroy everything that makes politics possible. The ideal city exists only “in heaven” (592b) as a theoretical standard.
Natural right from the Form of the Good: Strauss’s doctrine of “natural right” — the claim that there are knowable standards of justice transcending historical circumstance — is a secularization of Plato’s Form of the Good (504e-509b). The philosopher who ascends from the Cave to see the Sun has access to a transcendent standard of justice. For Strauss, this standard is not supernatural but rational: accessible through political philosophy, not faith.
The esoteric/exoteric distinction in practice: Strauss’s claim that the Republic has two teachings — one for the many (justice is good because it produces social stability and divine reward) and one for the few (the philosopher’s life is intrinsically best regardless of social consequences) — is the model for his general doctrine of Esotericism. The many need the Noble Lie (414b); the philosophers know it is a lie.
The philosopher’s political role: Strauss read the Republic as establishing that the philosopher is compelled to govern (519d-521b) but does not want to — and that this reluctance is precisely what makes the philosopher-king the best ruler. He explicitly did not endorse political activism or the West Coast Straussian turn toward electoral politics.
Strauss and the New Right
Strauss himself would not have recognized the MAGA New Right, and not all Straussians are New Right figures — many prominent Never Trumpers and anti-Trump liberals have Straussian backgrounds. But West Coast Straussians (the Claremonters) form the Claremonter core of the New Right, and Straussian methods and preoccupations pervade the movement:
- The “Ideas First” approach (“politics is downstream from culture”)
- The emphasis on the American founding as the key political text
- The use of esoteric writing and pseudonymous publication (e.g., Michael Anton’s “Publius Decius Mus”)
- The catastrophism — the sense that modernity has taken a wrong turn and that a radical recovery is necessary
Legacy and Controversy
The Straussian tradition has always been feuding. Jaffa’s West Coast school disagreed sharply with East Coast Straussians over the meaning of the American founding. Within the New Right, some of the Hard Right figures (e.g., Curtis Yarvin) have a Straussian intellectual lineage while being far more radical than anything Strauss contemplated.
Strauss’s esotericism also bears a troubling resemblance to the political “noble lie” — the idea that a ruling class might need to tell the people something other than the truth. Whether this is an unfair reading of Strauss is disputed; the relevance of the concern, given what the New Right has actually done with power, is not.
Cross-References
- Harry V. Jaffa — West Coast Straussian; Strauss’s most politically influential student
- Allan Bloom — Strauss’s most culturally influential student; The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
- Harvey Mansfield — Straussian; Harvard professor
- Michael Anton — Claremonter who uses Straussian esotericism (pseudonymous writing)
- The Claremonters — movement rooted in West Coast Straussianism
- West Coast Straussianism — the Claremonter philosophical tradition
- Esotericism — Strauss’s key methodological concept
- Claremont Institute — founded by Jaffa’s students in 1979
- Republic — the central Platonic text for Straussian political philosophy; Strauss’s esoteric reading is the most politically consequential interpretation in American conservatism
- Plato — the philosopher Strauss centered his work on