Leo Strauss on culture, religion and the political

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Philipp von Wussow
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy ; History of Philosophy
• Term: from 2015 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262463122

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the first to make the interrelations between culture, religion and politics a key topic of philosophy. His political philosophy was formed in an ongoing dispute with the systematics of neo-Kantian philosophy of culture, and later with American Cultural Anthropology. In this dispute he argued for the universality that religion and politics claim vis-à-vis culture. At the same time, however, his writings show how the openly illiberal consequences of the double return of religion and the political can be avoided. Thus the work of Leo Strauss is an important source for a thorough understanding of one of the most important topics of practical philosophy in the 21st century: the interrelations between culture, religion and the political in modern societies. For this purpose one must reconstruct a sometimes rather technical layer in his writings, in which the systematic dispositions of the respective authors are being discussed. The proposed study is divided into seven chapters, each of which starts from Strauss´s critique of the concept of culture: 1. Early Zionist writings; 2. Critique of neo-Kantianism; 3. Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt; 4. Strauss´s Philosophy and Law; 5. National Socialism and German philosophy; 6. Strauss on modern relativism; 7. Jerusalem and Athens.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants