Product Description

In this classic analysis, Leo Strauss pinpoints what is original and innovative in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. He argues that Hobbes's ideas arose not from tradition or science but from his own deep knowledge and experience of human nature. Tracing the development of Hobbes's moral doctrine from his early writings to his major work The Leviathan, Strauss explains contradictions in the body of Hobbes's work and discovers startling connections between Hobbes and the thought of Plato, Thucydides, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel.

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in political science at the University of Chicago. Among his works published by the University of Chicago Press are Thoughts on Machiavelli, The City and Man, and Natural Right and History.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #887340 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 190 pages

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Customer Reviews

Strauss before Strauss
I read somewhere that Strauss carried this book in a water-tight container when he crossed the channel to England so that, even if the ship went down, his work would survive. However that may be, it is the rare opportunity to see Strauss genuinely struggle with a problem. The prevailing opinion, I am told, is that Hobbes' science, or the discovery of Galileo's analytic-synthetic method, was the origin of Hobbes political philosophy (the analysis of the prevailing order (state of nature), the synthesis or construction of a new order (Leviathan)). Strauss makes the convincing argument that not the scientific method, but instead Aristotelian humanism (in particular, the anthropology of the Rhetoric) was the "source" for Hobbes' Staatslehre. Central to this is a critique of aristocratism, and the aristocratic valorization of courage. Not courage but cowardice and the fear of death is the ruling passion of the Hobbesian bourgeois (if Bloom learned anything from Strauss, it was that). In particular, Hobbes borrowed from the Rhetoric the treatment of anger, in which the most asocial human passion is the desire for revenge (and justice). Strauss later repudiated (in Natural Right) the argument against Hobbes scientism, but the point was made.

Know Your Hobbes
Leo Strauss, in his first printed work, does a superb job of distilling Hobbes essential ideas on man. By showing us the educational background of Hobbes and the philosophers he read Strauss, shows how Hobbes comes to believe that "man acts out of fear of death". The preservation of life is the primary goal of man in the "Hobbesean" world. "Vanity is the force that makes men blind, fear is the force which makes men see".

Strauss points out that Hobbes started out as a classical political philosopher who was influenced by his readings of Aristotle and Plato. Not until Hobbes was forty years old and he discovered the works of Euclid did Hobbes move away from the "humanist" view to a more "scientific" approach to political philosophy. Euclid teaches Hobbes that politics must have a philosophy; it can't just be studied through history. Hobbes criticism of Aristotle and historism was; "that the historian takes the great as his standard, while the philosopher is concerned with the right and true". Hobbes is the first to see clearly between "right" and "law" the state is founded on the "right" "law" is a mere consequence. Strauss points out that, "Hobbes becomes the first philosopher to realize that politics can be raised to the rank of science".

This book is not an easy read for the casual reader but is essential for one to understand the concept of political philosophy.

a note on latin
I just want to note that quotations from Latin in this book are left untranslated so if you are not familiar with this language, a scholarly reading may require additonal work on your part.