Author's Response - Timothy W. Burns: Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education. (New York: State University of New York Press, 2021. Pp. 201.)

Abstract

he could still remark that the Nazis did not seem "serious" 11 about their anti-Jewish policies, were not the Americans he addressed in his 1968 volume on liberalism; nor are the youth of today entirely like those of '68 (of which I myself once was one). Might his description, in 1941, of the danger at hand have been modified by a fuller awareness that the Nazis' sole positive principle was, as Strauss later put it, "murderous hatred of the Jews"? 12 And would he give the same counsel today that he gave in 1968, when the triumph of world communism still seemed possible?Strauss's own restoration of classic liberal education in a modern setting partly rested on a reassertion of the intellectual plausibility of religious traditions in which, according to him, we no longer trust, or no longer trust as a matter of public belief. And yet those religious traditions were arguably made mutually compatible only on the basis of a modern transformation of religion's own self-understanding. Indeed, the desirability of liberal-democratic constitutionalism is increasingly questioned by some religious conservatives for this very reason. Nor are contemporary progressive creeds exempt from such doubts. What are the implications of these and other changes (including the rise of postmodernism or what calls itself such) for those who wish to carry forward the task or tasks Strauss sets?

Can philosophy benefit nurses and/or nursing? Heidegger and Strauss, problems of knowledge and context

“…Strauss, however, is famously difficult to pin‐down. Like Heidegger, different interpretations of Strauss' writing are held by dissenting groups each of which claims the superiority of their insight, and to supplement understanding I therefore engaged with a limited number of secondary texts and online resources (Burns, 2021; Intellectual Deep Web, 2023; Leo Strauss Center, 2011; Robertson, 2021). Yet this means I have barely grazed the surface of Strauss' thought and we must then ask, is my situation any different from that presented in the opening vignette?…”