The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographic Essay: Forrest Mcdonald, a Founding Father's Library
• Bibliographic Essay: Murray N. Rothbard, Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution
• I: Paradigms of Freedom
• Conflicting Paradigms
• Paradigms As Procrustes' Bed
• Interest and Ambition
• Thesis and Antithesis
• Freedom and Authority
• Sin and Society
• Autonomy and Authority
• Virtue and Status
• Utility and Progress
• Diversity and Equality
• II: Nonspontaneous Order
• State Vs Society
• The Therapeutic State
• Order and Elites
• Order and Virtue
• Self-perfection
• Socialism and Freedom
• Market Socialism
• Centralism Vs Decentralism
• Voluntary Servitude
• Authority and Obedience
• Social Control
• Power and Ideology
• Hegemony
• III: Spontaneous Order
• Freedom and Knowledge
• The Case For Government
• The Case Against Government
• Community Vs. State
• State and Morality
• Freedom and Creativity
• Order Without State
• IV: Individual and Social Good
• The Right to Privacy
• Autonomy and Psychiatry
• Personal Choice
• Individuals, Groups, and States
• Social Dynamics
• Social Engineering
• Individuals and Groups
• Personal Vs. Social Goods
• Individual Rationality
• Self-interest and Social Good
• Self-interest Vs. Slavery
• Art and Autonomy
• Radical Individualism
• V: Ethics, Rights, and Freedom
• Objective Values
• Natural Law
• Preambles to Freedom
• Social Sciences and Values
• Reason and Change
• Reason and Choice
• Economics and Values
• Legal Naturalism
• Justice As Restitution
• Justice As Punishment
• Rights and Contract
• Virtue In the Market
• Justice Under Capitalism
• Profits and Choice
• Social Framework and Prosperity
• Ecology and Rights
• Business' Social Ethics
• VI: Equality
• Problems With Inequality
• Equality, Power, and Values
• Unequal Income
• Equal Opportunity
• Equal Liberty
• Equality of Condition
• The Egalitarian State
• Sexual Equality
• VII: Power
• Empire, Equality, and Envy
• Imperial Presidency
• Empire and Inflation
• Watergate As a Symptom of Empire
• The Pragmatic Presidency
• “absolute Power” and Corruption
• VIII: Planning Vs. Choice
• Origins of Planning
• Bureaucratic Growth
• Prediction and Control
• Government Planning
• Government Experts
• Useless Usury Laws
• Wartime Regulation
• Government Inflation
• Neomercantilism
• Compulsory Schooling
• Planning In Nonprofit Agencies
• Private Capital and Education
• Choice and Spontaneous Order

Social Sciences and Values

Cropsey, Joseph

• University of Chicago

“Leo Strauss: A Bibliography and Memorial, 1899–1973.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy (Holland), 5 (1975); 133–147.

Leo Strauss's achievements in political philosophy are imposing and difficult to exaggerate. In numerous books, articles, and reviews he explored the key moral and political concepts of both ancient and modern thinkers.

Strauss sharply criticized the moral aridity in the modern social sciences, especially political science. He insistently pointed out that in a quest for behavioristic and value-free scientific validity, these disciplines ignored human concerns of good, evil, and value. His whole lifework focused on the normative dimensions of moral and political philosophy. He opposed relativistic historicism and advocated a return to a deeper study of natural right theory in his book Natural Right and History (1953) and in his “Natural Law” article in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968). A good introduction to Strauss's chief themes and deeply moral approach to ideas appears in his volume What is Political Philosophy (1959).

His scholarly career advanced our understanding of a wide range of authors including Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Thucydides, Lucretius, Moses Maimonides, Marsilius of Padua, Hobbes, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Locke. Between 1930 (Die Religionskritik Spinozas) and 1958 (Thoughts on Machiavelli) his books centered on the moderns. From 1964 until his death in 1973 his scholarship concentrated on the ancient classics and included such studies as The City and Man in 1964 (analyses of the political philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides); Socrates and Aristophanes (1966); Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), including a detailed essay on Lucretius and a reprint of a review article on E. A. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics; and Xenophon's Socrates (1972), a study of Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates. A posthumous work published in 1975, The Argument and Action of Plato's Laws, rounded out his detailed explication of Plato whom he also dealt with in a chapter of his credited useful volume, History of Political Philosophy (second edition, 1972).

Strauss also advanced a controversial but stimulating thesis in Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952) on the relation of political-cultural freedom to the degree of candor and directness displayed by various authors. Socially and politically oppressive epochs often compel skillful, independent thinkers to practice a stylistically indirect “secret writing” to communicate their politically or religiously unorthodox views. Such persecuted authors demanded careful interpretation to unravel their writings and inner thoughts.

Strauss taught and practiced the virtue of moderation by insisting on the relevance of ancient wisdom to modernity. He balanced the importance of the here and now with the universal and timeless, and he supplemented mere scientific fact with value-laden and humanistic concerns. Throughout his scholarship he also demonstrated the demanding art of “careful reading” and detailed explication of ancient and modern texts. His scholarly virtues and insights have stamped many minds with his intellectual integrity.