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A Latitude for Statesmanship? Strauss on St. Thomas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

James V. Schulh
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Extract

Leo Strauss often spoke of Jerusalem and Athens. He never spoke of Rome in the same context, never of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. Western civilization, in his view, was fertilized by the dynamic tension between only two, not three, cities. This theoretically unresolvable stress between Jerusalem and Athens was what made this culture unique. Western civilization stood between reason and revelation. For Strauss, it seemed self-evident that this tension, which initially arose when the pious Jews encountered the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, was incapable of intellectual reconciliation but still it remained the font of its cultural vitality.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , Winter 1991 , pp. 126 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1991

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References

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45. Translations from St. Thomas are the author's.

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