Leo Strauss on the Crisis of Our Time

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss and analyze two less known works by Leo Strauss, which are records of lectures he gave during the conference held on March 28-29, 1963 at the University of Detroit. Both texts, The Crisis of Our Time and The Crisis of Political Philosophy, were published the following year in a small collective monograph entitled The Predicament of Modern Politics edited by Harold J. Spaeth next to two other texts (by Charles E. Schutz and Anton Donoso) and the record of the discussion in which he participated, among others i.e. Russell Kirk. Both texts are unusual because they show Strauss not as a commentator of the great works of the past, but as a philosopher discussing the problems of the present day, of course in relation to fundamental problems of political philosophy. The article is an attempt to reconstruct Strauss's diagnosis of crisis of our time as the crisis of political philosophy.