Harold Bloom, the Yale literary critic, once described Leo Strauss as “political philosopher and Hebraic sage.” This always seemed to me unusually prescient. For Strauss is most frequently understood as an interpreter and critic of a number of thinkers, both ancient and modern, who belong to the history of political philosophy. But far less often is he regarded as a contributor to Jewish thought. It is neither as a historian nor as a philosopher but as a Jew that I want to consider him here.

At first blush this approach to Strauss seems relatively unproblematical. Even a superficial perusal of his major works shows that Jewish themes were a continual preoccupation of his from the earliest times onwards.

The philosophic correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, stretching over thirty years, sheds some helpful light on each of the thinkers’ philosophic positions. To be sure, only a few of the letters seem truly significant, and it would of course be a mistake to allow the rather informal and ad hoc remarks in any of the letters to eclipse either theorist's considered and matured published reflections. Moreover, the correspondence peters out in the mid-fifties, after which each thinker arguably made important modifications in his respective outlook. But the letters, or at least the most significant, do not seem careless; the principal issues addressed go to the very heart of things; and if the letters are interpreted with careful attention to the contemporary published, as well as some unpublished, writings, then, it seems to me, the engagement between the two theorists does indeed clarify some of the more obscure but weighty premises and implications of the two philosophic positions.

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.

In 1966, I published a review article hailing Leo Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli as an instant classic. I also expressed some reservations or “second thoughts” about its conclusions. In the intervening years my appreciation for the profundity and originality of Strauss's interpretation has only increased, but many of my doubts have also remained. Here I wish to restate both my admiration and reservations with particular attention to parts of Strauss's chapter on Machiavelli published in the 1972 edition of his History of Political Philosophy, co-edited with Joseph Cropsey.

Let me at the outset state the obvious: Strauss's interpretation of Machiavelli is well — indeed overwhelmingly — supported by textual evidence, given Strauss's manner of reading between the lines. No interpreter, therefore, is entitled to dismiss it out of hand, even if he or she disagrees with Strauss's methodology, in whole or in part. In this respect, Claude Lefort has provided a model for scholars whose philosophical orientation differs widely from that of Strauss. Strauss has given us a truly fresh look at the great Florentine.

Strauss devoted his life to the recovery of classical political philosophy. The incentive for this enterprise was what Strauss called “the crisis of the West.” That crisis “consists in the West's having become uncertain of its purpose,” which was to establish the good society on the basis of reason and science. Twentith-century history revealed that the progressive spread of democracy throughout the world was hardly assured. Moreover, the “good society” of Western liberalism no longer looked unquestionably good. Modern philosophy eventually concluded that reason itself was to blame: not only could reason not establish the good society; it could not even say what the good society is.