posted January 5, 2009
updated January 7, 2009
Write a 5-7-page report on a piece of secondary literature on Leo Strauss. Following is a list of items to choose from - feel free to suggest other titles that seem to be important, but that I may have missed.
Each seminar participant should choose a different item to review. Please be prepared to make your selection by January 26, so that we can coordinate among participants. The reports are due on February 13. In addition to a printed copy, please also send your report to me by e-mail attachment. The reports will be distributed to all participants. The work people have done on Strauss secondary literature will then serve as the basis of our "Strauss revisited" class meeting (February 23).
Your report should give a basic characterization of the work you're discussing: What are its scope, its aim, its disciplinary approach, and its agenda with respect to the study of Strauss - in particular in light of the themes we are pursuing in our seminar, Judaism and (theo-)politics? In what sort of a context or framework does the author place Strauss? (Here, you will have to consider, for chapters of books, the books in which they are appearing, and the overall aims of those books, in order to assess the role of the discussions of Strauss within them.) What larger phenomena or issues does the author take Strauss to represent or illustrate? How is the author intervening in the previous scholarship? Are there assumptions guiding the interpretations that are worth highlighting? Are you able to say whether the account is persuasive? Whether it is original or represents a creative approach? Does it raise new questions that ought to be pursued further? Are there significant limitations to the approach?
Be sure to discuss your choice with me well in advance; I will be able to make some comments about the work you've chosen, and about why I've included it in this list.
Note that some items might not (yet) be available in Mills Library (though all are on order for reserve), so be sure to allow plenty of time to obtain your selection by Interlibrary Loan.
(in roughly reverse chronological order:)
Benjamin Lazier, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination Between the World Wars (Princeton UP, 2008): part 2 (chaps. 5-8)
David Janssens, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophy, Prophecy, and Politics in Leo Strauss's Early Thought (2001; Albany: SUNY Press, 2008)
Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Christopher Nadon (2003; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)
Leora F. Batnitzky, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
Eugene R. Sheppard, Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2006)
- in conjunction with: Michael Zank, "Introduction" to Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921-1932)Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard (2003; Cambridge UP, 2006)
Kenneth Hart Green, Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993)