Philosophy as Knowledge of the Whole. Essays in Honour of Leo Strauss by William Wood

2023 was the 50th anniversary of the death of Leo Strauss (1899–1973). Strauss was an extraordinary scholar whose books and essays covered a wide range of figures in the history of political philosophy, from Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon in the ancient world, to Alfarabi, Averroes, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Marsilius of Padua in the medieval world, to Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger in the modern world. Strauss transformed our understanding of the transition from the medieval period to the modern era, offering novel, insightful, and often unsettling perspectives on the history of political philosophy. Both reviled and celebrated as a conservative thinker, but difficult to understand by means of conventional categories, Strauss is a polarising figure. This volume compiles essays by leading scholars and thinkers that evaluate his achievements. Most of these essays were presented at a conference to mark the anniversary of his death, which was held at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, Hungary on 12th October 2023. Strauss said that positivism is a mode of thought that “is reminiscent of death but utterly lacks the majesty of death.” Although Strauss is no longer with us, his legacy is very much alive.

CONTRIBUTORS: Iraj Azafazar, Timothy W. Burns, Andreas Kinneging, Laurence Lampert, András Lánczi, Zbigniew Janowski, Jakub Jinek, Till Kinzel, Mark Shiffman, William Wood