The Strauss-Krüger Correspondence

This book presents the first full translation of the correspondence of Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger, showing for each the development of key and influential ideas, along with seven interpretative essays by leading Strauss scholars. During the early to mid-1930's, Leo Strauss carried on an intense, and sometimes deeply personal, correspondence with one of the leading intellectual lights among Heidegger's circle of recent students and younger associates. A fellow traveler in the effort to return to Plato and reject neo-Kantian conventions of the day, Krüger was also a serious student of Rudolf Bultmann and the neo-orthodox movement in which Strauss also took an early interest. During the most intense years of their correspondence, each underwent significant intellectual development: in Krüger's case, through a penetrating series of studies of Kant and Descartes, respectively, ultimately leading to Krüger's conversion to Catholicism; and, in Strauss's case, through the complex stagesof what he subsequently called his reorientation, involving what he for the first time calls political philosophy. Readers interested in tracing the development of Strauss's thoughts regarding a theological alternative that he found helpfully challengingif not ultimately compellingwill find this correspondence to be an accessible point of entry.

Offers an accessible entry point to understanding the development of Leo Strauss' influential political philosophy Presents the first translation of Leo Strauss' letters with Gerhard Krüger, a student of Heidegger and fellow modern Platonist, with commentary by leading Strauss scholars Sheds new light on Leo Strauss' connection with the Kantian tradition Casts new and important light on the broader question of the conflict between reason and revelation, as well as the possibility of a philosophical theology relevant to the present Focuses on an exceptionally fraught period of 20th century political and intellectual European history

Autorentext

Susan M. Shell is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Boston College, USA. She is the author of Kant and the Limits of Autonomy (2009), The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation and Community (1996), The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant's Philosophy and Politics (1980). She is also the co-editor (with Robert Faulkner) of America at Risk: Threats to Liberal Self-Government in an Age of Uncertainty (2009).

Inhalt

1. Editor's Introduction.- 2. The Correspondence of Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger, 1928-1962 (Complete Text).- 3. The Light Shed on the Crucial Development of Strauss's Thought by his Correspondence with Gerhard Krüger.- 4. The Example of Socrates: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger.- 5. Zurück zu Plato! But, which Plato?: The return to Plato by Gerhard Krüger and Leo Strauss.- 6. Moral Finitude and the Ontology of Creation: The Kantian Interpretation of Gerhard Krüger.- 7. Gerhard Krüger and Leo Strauss: The Kant motif.- 8. Natural Right and Historical Consciousness in Strauss and Krüger's Exchange.- 9. History and Modernity in the Strauss-Krüger Correspondence.-10. Appendix I: Gerhard Krüger, Review of Strauss's Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft.- 11. Appendix II: Leo Strauss, Preface, Hobbes politische Wissenschaft.