4 Quotes & Sayings By Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was a German-American academic of Jewish descent who fled to the United States in 1938. His educational career began with studies at the University of Berlin, where he was taught by the great Martin Heidegger. In 1930, Strauss received his doctorate from Heidelberg University, where he had written his Habilitationsschrift. A year later he accepted a position as instructor in political science at the University of Chicago Read more

At Chicago, Strauss took up his most significant line of academic work, the study of ancient Greek philosophy in its relation to modern politics and politics in general. His research centered on three thinkers who were central to the history of western thought: Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. He also published works on various other Greek philosophers including Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Zeno of Elea, Democritus, Themistius , Diogenes of Apollonia , Cratylus , Plato's Parmenides , On the Sophist , Phaedrus , Theages , Menexenus , Gorgias , Meno .

1
But dogmatism–or the inclination "to identify the goal of our thinking with the point at which we have become tired of thinking"–is so natural to man that it is not likely to be a preserve of the past. [Citing Lessing's January 9, 1771 letter to Mendelssohn.] Leo Strauss
2
But dogmatism--or the inclination 'to identify the goal of our thinking with the point at which we have become tired of thinking'--is so natural to man that it is not likely to be a preserve of the past. [Citing "Ame, " Dictionnaire philosophique, ed. J. Benda, I, 19] Leo Strauss
3
If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom. Leo Strauss