Leo Strauss and the Theopolitics of Culture (SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss)

Contents
Preface
Introduction: Leo Strauss and the Theopolitics of Culture
Part I: The Return of Religion, the Remnants of Neo-Kantianism, and the Systematic Place of “the Political”
	Introduction
	1. Hermann Cohen on the Systematic Place of Religion
	2. Post-Cohenian Quarrels: Rosenzweig, Natorp, Strauss
	3. Strauss on Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer
	4. Returning to Cohen: “Cohen and Maimonides” on Ethics and Politics
	5. Strauss and Carl Schmitt: Vanquishing the “Systematics of Liberal Thought”
Part II: The Argument and the Action of Philosophy and Law
	6. A Hidden Masterpiece of Twentieth-Century Philosophy
	7. Strauss’s Introduction
	8. Leo Strauss and Julius Guttmann on the History of Jewish Philosophy
		Strauss’s Initial Argument (Philosophy and Law, chapter 1, part 1)
		Culture, Religion, and the Quest for a “Resolute Return” (chapter 1, part 2)
		Introducing Exotericism (chapter 1, part 3)
		Refuting Exotericism (chapter 2)
		Theoretical Difficulties (chapter 1, part 3 continued)
		Maimonides’s Critique of Reason (chapter 1, part 4)
		Introducing the Scholarly Argument (chapter 1, part 5)
		The Scholarly Argument (chapter 3)
		Strauss’s Conclusions (chapter 1, part 5)
	9. A Complex Afterlife: Julius Guttmann, the “Jewish Thomism” Affair, and the Turn to Exotericism
		Building a Straw Man: Guttmann’s Reply
		“Jewish Thomism”
		“Returning” to Maimonides: Strauss’s Turn to Exotericism
Part III: “German Nihilism” and the Intellectual Origins of National Socialism
	10. Genealogies of National Socialism
		A Brief Outline of the Genre
		The Cases of Lutheranism and Romanticism
		German Idealism: Santayana, Dewey, and Beyond
		Nietzsche and National Socialism
		Two Interpretations of German Philosophy and Politics
	11. Strauss’s Argument
		German Nihilism as Anticommunism
		A Parable of Liberal Education
		A Second Narrative on German Philosophy and Politics
		Conclusion
Part IV: Strauss on Modern Relativism
	12. From “Culture” to “Cultures”: Émigré Scholars, the Rise of Cultural Anthropology, and the Americanization of Leo Strauss
	13. Cannibalism: Leo Strauss and Cultural Anthropology
	14. Irrationalism and the Remnants of the Social Question
	15. Two Types of Relativism
Part V: Jerusalem and Athens
	16. Jerusalem and Athens or Jerusalem versus Athens?
		The Setting
		Education “Toward Culture”
		Two Concepts of Culture: The Starting Point
		A Third Concept of Culture
		Jerusalem and Athens: Western Universalism Redefined
		Jerusalem versus Athens
		Dissolving the Binary
Conclusion: Leo Strauss and “the Natural Way” of Reading
Notes
Bibliography
Index