Leo Strauss Foundation @ls_foundation Twitter profile

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

Strauss's final exam on Machiavelli (Political Science 303, University of Chicago, Spring quarter 1952)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

Strauss final exam for Nietzsche's Zarathustra course (University of Chicago, Spring Quarter, 1959) – dictated a week in advance because it is "a bit more difficult than in other quarters": "There is a great variety of opinions as to the meaning of natural right or natural law.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 month

Strauss on “publish or perish”

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

A slightly corrected and much lower priced paperback of Strauss's Euthyphro notebook ⤵️ @HannesKerber @PSUPress

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Strauss introducing his first students (New School for Social Research, Greenwich Village NYC, Spring 1939, Wednesdays 5-7 pm) to "the problem of happiness" in Aristotle's Ethics. "The virtuous man will, by virtue of his virtue, steadfastly bear all misfortunes and by this very

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Strauss's proposal (to U of Washington Press) for his book on Plato's Laws

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

7 months

Strauss on Aristotle's de anima III.5 and "Active Intellect" "De anima is terribly difficult. As for the active intellect, I try to understand it by starting as follows: a new-born human baby exposed in the wood and brought up by wolves or monkeys—here, the potential intellect

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Strauss and The Three Waves of Modernity The evening after the lecture (Cornell, March 25, 1964), Strauss had an informal discussion. Q: Must man forgo the mastery of nature to recover a sense of the purpose of man? LS: Rephrased: How can we live as thoughtful individuals in

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Cornell Daily Sun article on Strauss's Three Waves of Modernity (David L. Schaefer) March '64

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Strauss on Herodotus (to Klein, Oct 1938) "...as for Herodotus, I am really overwhelmed and prostrate before such art (= skill). My lucky star would have it that his work is indeed the only model of Plato's I am aware of (perhaps, however, everything we have learned about the

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

A fuller table of contents for the Strauss collection

Jack Guipre

@jguipre

3 months

@RUphilosophy 👀 ToC

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Strauss, syllabus on Rousseau and Lucretius (Autumn 1951, Chicago)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

More Benardete from his Chicago/Strauss days. The modern novel in relation to ancient poetry (see also the preface to Joseph Andrews, a novel much enjoyed by Strauss)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Seth Benardete (while studying with Strauss) on Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι: ὑμεῖς γὰρ θεαί ἐστε πάρεστέ τε ἴστέ τε πάντα, ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν: οἵ τινες ἡγεμόνες Δαναῶν καὶ

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Gadamer-Strauss exchange re: Plato’s Lysis

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

New York Times, Nov 16, 1941 (though Time Machine doesn't seem to have it)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

8 months

Leo Strauss on Philosophy (and not Books) "We assume that training in reading books is an essential part of the philosophic training. Practically every intellectual activity is today inseparable from the ability to read and write, and in particular from the ability to read

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

Strauss intended to write a study on causality (on the unsolved Humean problem; determinism; and ex nihilo nihil gignit) near the end of his life. It was going to include Kant on Lucretius and L himself; Hume's critique of Hobbes's de Corpore; causality in Leibniz, Wolff, Hobbes,

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

Strauss: the greatest document in the English language of the twofoldness of the poet is Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Screwtape on historicism

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Cornell Daily Sun article on Strauss's Three Waves of Modernity (David L. Schaefer) March '64

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

At the reopening of Marburg University on Sept 25, 1945, Julius Ludwig Ebbinghaus, the US-appointed rector, gave an address Strauss more than two decades later called "most thoughtful and decent." More than two decades earlier LS had attended E's courses and was still grateful

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Here is the video of today's discussion of Strauss Thank you @alexpriou @Aliocha24 @HannesKerber Rasoul Namazi, Marco Menon, and Eric Buzzetti and the 100+ attendees! Order of speakers (about 30 min each): Eric Buzzetti, Concordia University, Montréal,

A webinar -- "Future Directions in Strauss Studies" (April 26, 2024)

An international panel on Strauss, Friday April 26, 2024, 10-1 pm ET Hosts: Svetozar Minkov, Roosevelt University & Hannes Kerber, University of Modena and ...

www.youtube.com

Hannes Kerber

@HannesKerber

5 months

Fascinating discussions on 𝗙𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗟𝗘𝗢 𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗨𝗦𝗦 𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗦! International panel with Alex Priou, @alexpriou , Alexis Carré ( @Aliocha24 ), Zarko Minkov ( @ls_foundation ), Marco Menon, Eric Buzzetti, Rasoul Namazi, and yours truly.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

An international 💫 panel on Strauss, Friday April 26, 2024, 10-1 pm ET Hosts: Svetozar Minkov, Roosevelt University Hannes Kerber, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia 🔜 Speakers: 👉Eric Buzzetti, Concordia University, Montréal, "The Theologico-Political Problem: Xenophon's

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Patočka letter to Jacob Klein (July 22, 1933) [transl.]: 'I see little of Professor Husserl these days. He's gone to Schlucksee for a summer stay... Heidegger goes forth into sharp attacks against phenomenology, albeit mostly in a veiled form. Have you read his rectoral address?

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Tales from Shakespeare. Just like he did for his 1966 Socrates and Aristophanes, Strauss says that his model for a book he was planning in 1938 (Deeds and Speeches: An Introduction into Greek Political Thought) was Charles and Mary Lamb's Tale from Shakespeare (paraphrase,

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

19 days

Allan Bloom’s notes from Strauss’s Works of the Mind lecture on the Book of Genesis

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

The "peroration" of Strauss' Walgreen lectures on Machiavelli (Nov 6, 1953), to become Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

10 months

A provisional list of all of Strauss's courses:

Strauss's Courses — a Provisional List*

(*Includes University of Judaism, UC Berkeley, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem — see below) [Includes a few syllabi]

leostraussfoundation.org

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Leo Strauss on Shakespeare (Part ½) In 1941 Leo Strauss taught a course focusing on Shakespeare, but the poet appears infrequently in his published writings. A Shakespeare play and a Platonic dialogue share unique interpretive difficulties (e.g. City and Man), but there is scant

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Strauss compared Hobbes to Sherlock Holmes and Machiavelli to Professor Moriarty. He had also considered comparing Hobbes to ox-like Inspector Bull of Scotland Yard (Eel Pie Murders, 1933).

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Strauss on Engels' Socialism, Utopian and Scientific "Marxism is based on a very definite notion of a truly human life. The truly human life may be 'trans-moral' in the sense that it transcends morality as traditionally understood. Nevertheless, Marxism agrees with all moral

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

A few of the many differences between the Plato chapter in History of Political Philosophy (1963) and that in City and Man (1964)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Strauss' "must resist in our life encroachments due, not to law, but to anonymous influences" is comparable to a reflection by Josef Pieper: "education means making people immune to the mass media" from Exercises in the Elements (St. Augustine Press)

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Strauss and The Three Waves of Modernity The evening after the lecture (Cornell, March 25, 1964), Strauss had an informal discussion. Q: Must man forgo the mastery of nature to recover a sense of the purpose of man? LS: Rephrased: How can we live as thoughtful individuals in

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Joseph Cropsey's marginalia to Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Rémi Brague on exotericism: "Joyce’s Ulysses is a difficult and subtly composed book, as much as the Book of Kells. But we possess the keys, which is enough to then need in order to see the stages emerge of the Odyssey, body parts, arts, colors, etc. Joyce supplied the keys in

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

Audio of Jacob Klein's "Speech: Its Strength and Its Weaknesses"!

Speech: Its Strength and Its Weaknesses (Jacob Klein)

Episode · St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures · Recording of a lecture delivered on February 23, 1973, by Jacob Klein as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

open.spotify.com

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Rare Strauss on Plato's Ion (1948) "the poet is not able to make poems as long as the νοῦς is in him - he must be empty - the God takes away, and takes out of them, their νοῦς and He is speaking in them. In the case of the τέχναι the man is the speaker; in the case of the

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Leo Strauss on Shakespeare (2/2) [a provisional transcript of the letter] April 5, 1964 Dear Mr. Bloom, I have just

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

From Strauss' lecture on Rousseau at University of Chicago in the summer of 1949: How can materialistic physics have given rise to political idealism? In Hobbes, there is already a combination of materialistic cosmology and concern with the right social order; but the concern

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 month

"The highest, the only true form of immortalizing oneself is learning, understanding. And of course that no longer means as an individual, because the understander as understander is not Mr. X or Y but the intellect in him. Since this is not sufficient for man, there are two

David P Deavel

@davidpdeavel

1 month

I've related this before, but I do return to a memory of a discussion with a distinguished philosopher who told me, "Tenure should be given for not publishing." Hyperbolic, perhaps, but a good deal of truth embedded.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

Register below for the💥 panel on Future Themes in Strauss Studies - April 26, 2024, 10am-1pm ET: Co-organized with @HannesKerber

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

Strauss led a discussion for Allan Bloom’s Cornell class (April 1964, either Government 462, Origins of Western Political Thought or Government 561-62, Seminar in Political Theory) – on C.S. Lewis’ “men without chests” and “the heart”: θυμός (thumos/spiritedness), ἔρως (eros);

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

1939 New School for Social Research

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Farabi’s Philosophy of Aristotle

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

7 months

Strauss on Aristotle's de anima III.5 and "Active Intellect" "De anima is terribly difficult. As for the active intellect, I try to understand it by starting as follows: a new-born human baby exposed in the wood and brought up by wolves or monkeys—here, the potential intellect

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

More Strauss to Klein on Herodotus (Oct 15, 1938) "οὗτος δὴ ὦν ὁ Κανδαύλης ἠράσθη τῆς ἑωυτοῦ γυναικός, ἐρασθεὶς δὲ ἐνόμιζέ οἱ εἶναι γυναῖκα πολλὸν πασέων καλλίστην....χρῆν γὰρ Κανδαύλῃ γενέσθαι κακῶς, (it was this Candaules who fell in love with his own wife

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Strauss to Scholem, Jan 27, 1973 "I cannot help sharing your admiration for the intelligence of Hamann while detesting his lousy character. Did you ever read Hegel’s review of Hamann’s writings (now conveniently accessible in Hoffmeister’s ed. of the Berlina writings)? Luther,

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

When Benardete taught this passage (the center of the Statesman) in 1967, he focused on "one should be incapable of being discountenanced [δυσωπέω*] and stopping before one confines all the family kin within a single similarity and comprehends them with the being of some genus."

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

More from

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Willmoore Kendall conceived of the Ph.D. program at the University of Dallas – The Institute of Philosophic Studies (IPS) – as an interdisciplinary degree consisting of courses in Politics, Philosophy, Literature, and Theology. Another unique

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

13 days

"Our Constitution secures the rights of individuals to seek satisfaction for their desires, but it is compelled to distinguish lawful from lawless desires. Exclusive reliance on rights generates irritable litigiousness and empty yearning. Our public discourse is impoverished if

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

“Machiavelli's characters in his Florentine Histories speak as a matter of course explicitly of God's justice as the cause of their actual or hoped for successes against their enemies as well as of their own misfortunes, and of their successes as proofs of the justice of their

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Strauss on "das Problem des Schönen" (1950) But is there not a radical difference between καλόν (beautiful) and ἀγαθόν (good) such that things are καλά (beautiful) in themselves—and not merely for us—i.e. a gentle landscape, a stern landscape, a dull landscape— —or are these

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

Joe Sachs translates βαυκοπανοῦργοι at NE 1127b26 as "hyperprecious" and notes: “It has a first half that means prissily fastidious (baukos), jammed onto a word for shameless people who stop at nothing (panourgoi). The sort of person meant might claim, in a self-satisfied tone,

Hannes Kerber

@HannesKerber

2 months

"I hate the telephone. I am of the old fashioned type." Gadamer, 1976

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

In an Oct 10 '39 letter to Jacob Klein, Strauss, having reported on Hesiod's Theogony ("indispensable for understanding the Timaeus....esoterically the Muses are the daughters of Ocean"), writes: "what Plato says in the Theaetetus about the poets of the past, namely that they

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

While Strauss was still alive, Hans Jonas taught a seminar on Strauss's reading of Spinoza (New School, Spring 1971).

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

18 days

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

19 days

One of these days, a large comet will hit Earth and destroy almost all life, as has happened many times in the past. Eventually, the Sun will expand enough to boil the oceans and destroy all life. Either become a spacefaring civilization or die – those all the two choices.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Bloom: Strauss: "That the Houy. have no gods can also be explained by the fact that they are the gods, i.e. the only beings surpassing men in wisdom and goodness. The Horse-Men also take the place of the God-Man."

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

Strauss: the greatest document in the English language of the twofoldness of the poet is Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Regarding what Strauss means by his "interpretation of Plato's Gorgias," an interpretation put into doubt by the section of the Symposium where Socrates appears as a Jeremiah (215d6-216a2): "The philosophers and the demos in the sense indicated are separated by a gulf; their

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Strauss on Plato's Symposium 215d6-216a2: "the religious effect of S' rhetoric: S. successfully preaches repentance - S. as Jeremiah [contradicts my interpretation of Gorgias? - but also Alcibiades' assertion of S' hubris]" A supplement to p. 265 of

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Leo Strauss Foundation

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2 months

“Now as long as we cannot live and take our bearings in the world without a notion of the health of the mind—we mean of course that to be of healthy mind is good—this question doesn’t arise. Perhaps it should arise, but somehow a certain instinct tells us, no matter what

m.mcdonald77

@Mcdonald77M

2 months

@ls_foundation P.S.- I have still not found the place in the Cicero class where Strauss addresses the health of the soul. In the most serious sense, the illness of the soul is injustice. We like to say, "What if justice is, or is necessary to, the health of the soul?

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Strauss to Albert Salomon (Jan '40), in response to the Salomon's Oct '39 Tocqueville piece Strauss comments on only a couple of sentences in Salomon's article. Re: "The demonry of nature in the ancient and medieval world is supplanted by the demonry of social institutions to

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

A list of books on Strauss: the quickly compiled list has not been ordered in any way and doesn't include yet Chinese, Russian, Central Asian, Japanese (except 1), Korean, Indian, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic books, but please tell us of books that are

Books on Leo Strauss

The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss books.google.com › books Laurence Lampert · 2013 The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss takes on the crucial task of separating what is truly important in the...

docs.google.com

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Strauss on Pegis, Thomism, and science Social Research, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1946), 260-62; reprinted in What is Political Philosophy, 284-86 Also: Pegis "believes, however, that as regards the central question- the question of creation- the Aristotelian doctrine is not opposed

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

"Regarding paintings, I didn’t know that at all until I read a marvelous analysis of a painting of Picasso by Mr. von Blanckenhagen, who was formerly at this university, and where I saw that it is possible to interpret a painting as exactly as a literary text. And I suppose that

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

Bloom toasting Bellow "...it is not easy to honor Saul. With such high aspirations, he Is all too aware of the ambiguities of honor. He expresses how little he rests on his laurels with a favorite joke, which I shall pre-empt. It concerns a young American tenor who gets a job as

The New Thinkery

@thenewthinkery

6 months

Bad Friend.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

2/2 To Salomon's "This freedom in asceticism is the last and ultimate opportunity for human self-realization in disintegrating periods" and similar passages in his 1939 Tocqueville piece, Strauss writes: "But what does 'a natural world' mean? I find that you make too great a

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

Strauss to Albert Salomon (Jan '40), in response to the Salomon's Oct '39 Tocqueville piece Strauss comments on only a couple of sentences in Salomon's article. Re: "The demonry of nature in the ancient and medieval world is supplanted by the demonry of social institutions to

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Part 2 (Before America) de Alvarez: What was your first acquaintance with Strauss's work? Gadamer: I hope I am right in saying that the first was the introductions to the work of Moses Mendelssohn. That he sent me when he was in Berlin. And

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Willmoore Kendall conceived of the Ph.D. program at the University of Dallas – The Institute of Philosophic Studies (IPS) – as an interdisciplinary degree consisting of courses in Politics, Philosophy, Literature, and Theology. Another unique

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

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Strauss on Bertrand Russell's "The Science to Save us from Science" Strauss challenges several things in Russell's piece (e.g. why the exclusion of lunatics? and the implication of a natural hierarchy to which Russell otherwise objects), but above all he asks what if there is a

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

In his review of Walker's Machiavelli, Strauss says, "All moralists who are worth their salt have always felt that pure, intransigent justice is the road to the hemlock, the cross, and the stake, rather than to advantage in this world. 'The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's

The New Thinkery

@thenewthinkery

9 months

🐷🇩🇰🐝🇩🇰🐷 OUT NOW SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, ACT III To be or not to be—that is the question. Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Part'ly Examin'd Life, or to listen to TNT, bare bodkin out, swilling thine premium hooch? LISTEN:

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"Kouzma Proutkov": "The moon is more useful than the sun because it gives light at night when you can trip and fall into ditch while the sun shines during the day when it is bright anyway."

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

From an early version of the Epilogue on the scientific study of politics «Let us try to state the first impression which an altogether uninitiated and innocent but otherwise properly qualified youth is likely to receive from the new political science. The world conjured by the

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Memorial addresses for Strauss at the New School (his colleague at the New School, Erich Hula, with whom LS claimed to share a moral taste, and Strauss's students: Seth Benardete, Richard Kennington, and Howard White) "Thirty and more years ago already, he would agree to meet

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

“Plato” in History of Political Philosophy “Oligarchy must give to each the unqualified right to dispose of his property as he sees fit. It thus renders inevitable the emergence of 'drones,' i.e., of members of the ruling class who are either burdened with debt or already

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Strauss on Reinhold Niebuhr (a favorite thinker of Kennedy's, Obama's et al). Strauss analyzed N's Nature and the Destiny of Man: a Christian Interpretation [1943] and Faith and History: a Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History [1949] in early courses at Chicago

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

6 months

Strauss on Kierkegaard There is a line in paragraph 15 of Strauss's so-called autobiographical preface (Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 232, lines 6-7): "The need for external credentials of revelation (tradition and miracles) disappears as its internal credentials come to

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Prometheus, Zeus as a "cruel tyrant," and the Bible Havelock: "Aeschylus' Prometheus is the embodiment of intelligence" LS: "Yet P. says that he put blind hopes in men." H: "Greatest invention is art of medicine to ward off all disease" LS: "Can medicine heal all mortal diseases

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

7 months

Jacobi's conversation with Lessing refers to a poem by Goethe, "Prometheus." Strauss notes that Mendelssohn calls the poem "wretchedness" ("Armseeligkeit") in To the Friends of Lessing but in a private letter M. finds it a pleasing persiflage exposing Spinozism in its

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

10 months

Snippets from Strauss' reading group on Plato's Laches at Stanford (1960-61): 195d ff - Nikias indicates that good things may be bad (because leading to hybris) and bad things may be good (because leading to humility). (Compared Aristotle on good things being good for the good

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

8 months

Leo Strauss on 'Thinking Machines' and Prudence And the project of which you surely have heard, if only from the daily papers, of thinking machines which “quote think unquote” as well as man, or perhaps better than man, is a necessary consequence of it. If there is no essential

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

4 months

Strauss on Aristotle's Politics “A. lists five causes of change in oligarchies. The first is the unjust treatment of the masses by the government, i.e., resistance which generally begins outside the ruling class (e.g., the exclusion of some wealthy persons from office, or the

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

This from the 1963 Gorgias course is a pithy summary of Strauss on Prometheus: "Prometheus is of course not wise. You only have to read [Aeschylus'] Prometheus to see that he is not wise. He is a great inventor, sure. Almost a man who could have built an atomic bomb if technology

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

@alexpriou @HarrisonGarlic1 Good pointers by @alexpriou . LS reread the play for his Aristophanes book (see the chapters on the Knights, the Birds, & the Thesmophoriazusai). Agree is extremely stimulating as is Bacon's interpretation ( #26 in Wisdom of the Ancients)

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months

A bit earlier in the same session: "Aristotle: man generates man; the world always goes its course, sensibly; [there are] no fantastic things.... [but] what we swallow, and perhaps are forced to swallow, are absolutely fantastic things. For me, the most telling example is the

Thomas Cleveland

@tcleveland4real

2 months

Strauss discussing this passage (and alluding to Heidegger) in his St. John's course on the Laws, Session 23.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

Nixon responded to a draft of a collection on US military policy edited by Strauss's student Robert Goldwin. Nixon took exception to the stated implications of the word "unthinkable" ("don't give thought to the awesome problems") and Goldwin revised his preface (finding a way to

SamuelGoldman

@SWGoldman

3 months

For those interested in such things, here's the 1972 NYT ad where Oscar Handlin, Milton Friedman, W.V. Quine, William Riker, Leo Strauss and other bigtime academics endorse Nixon.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Part 5 (Why political philosophy? ... and death) de Alvarez: I wonder if you have any further impressions about his work in general? Gadamer: You know that every scholar has a time of real openness and so it was especially with me in his book

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Part 4 (Germany and Heidegger) de Alvarez: If he had been in Europe, what do you think the effect of his work would have been? Do you think that it would have been much more weakened than its effect in America? Gadamer: There I am not so sure.

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

5 months

A rich conference on Nietzsche, including Strauss's reading... Human, All-Too-Human #628 "Seriousness in Play. - In Genoa, I heard from a tower at the time of twilight a long bell play: it did not want to end and sounded, as if

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

11 months

Strauss on Descartes. D. begins the Discourse modestly (“Toutefois il se peut faire que je me trompe, & ce n’est peut-être qu’un peu de cuivre & de verre que je prends pour de l’or & des diamants” and “la mediocrité de mon esprit & courte durée de ma vie”) and arrives at almost

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

In his commentary on ch. V of Xenophon's Symposium, Strauss had ended his account of the action with the riddlesome: "There is a connection between these two very different reasons [for the irreducibility of the beautiful/noble to the good/useful] and the two alternatives

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

From a (famous) reader’s report to Bernhard Kendler @CornellPress on Strauss’ Xenophon’s Socrates (1972)

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

3 months

In his commentary on ch. V of Xenophon's Symposium, Strauss had ended his account of the action with the riddlesome: "There is a connection between these two very different reasons [for the irreducibility of the beautiful/noble to the good/useful] and the two alternatives

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

10 days

Bloom on Rawls

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

1 year

From Strauss's description of paragraph 12 of the Peace chapter in his Socrates and Aristophanes, pp. 68-70, using the language of the § itself (≠ Greek shorthand): "Boastfulness is a vice that comedy hits and hurts more directly than any other vice… Comedy would be powerless

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Part 3 (America and Irony) de Alvarez: You also said something about his special relationship with America, when he came to the United States. How do you think that influenced his work? Gadamer: Of course that is what I realized immediately in

Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

9 months

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Leo Strauss Part 2 (Before America) de Alvarez: What was your first acquaintance with Strauss's work? Gadamer: I hope I am right in saying that the first was the introductions to the work of Moses Mendelssohn. That he sent me when he was in Berlin. And

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Leo Strauss Foundation

@ls_foundation

2 months