Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire

From Publishers Weekly
Punchy, personal and passionate, this book aims to explain "how an unlikely group of academics came to power in Washington and provided the philosophical justification for the war on Iraq." The German-born Strauss (1899–1973) came to the United States as a Jewish refugee in 1938, ultimately teaching political philosophy at the University of Chicago. In sketching his life and the legacy of his ideas, Norton (95 Theses on Politics, Culture and Method) argues that Strauss’s method of closely reading great books (à la late disciple Allan Bloom) does not presuppose the neoconservative politics with which the method has come to be associated. Strauss’s readings of Islamic texts, in particular, she says, are contrary to the "clash of civilizations" that has been constructed by Straussians William Kristol and Robert Kagan in their collection Present Dangers. Norton, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, was trained by Chicago Straussians herself, and she writes less as a turncoat than as a watchdog. She tracks Paul Wolfowitz’s years at the University of Chicago and decries the culture of clubby, masculine power that she says Bloom created there. She also traces the series of Strauss-related political appointments that brought Wolfowitz to the Bush administration. Straussians, Norton claims, admire Lincoln for his willingness to act dictatorially on behalf of democracy; Strauss himself, she suggests, was far less Machiavellian. Some strands could be better woven together to explain how Straussians directly undergird the war, but this book should nonetheless stimulate debate.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
This enlightening book examines the thinking of political theorist Leo Strauss and how his ideas have been appropriated—or misappropriated—for various conservative agendas. Anne Norton tells the story of the Jewish German-born émigré, his philosophic heirs, and why they are advocates of an American imperialism.-->


Book Description
How an unlikely group of academics came to power in Washington and provided the philosophical justification for the war on Iraq

The teachings of political theorist Leo Strauss (1899–1973) have recently received new attention, as political observers have become aware of the influence Strauss’s students have had in shaping conservative agendas of the Bush administration--including the war on Iraq. This provocative book examines Strauss’s ideas and the ways in which they have been appropriated, or misappropriated, by senior policymakers.

Anne Norton, a political theorist trained by some of Strauss’s most famous students, is well equipped to write on Strauss and Straussians. She tells three interwoven narratives: the story of Leo Strauss, a Jewish German-born émigré, who carried European philosophy into a new world; the story of the philosophic lineage that came from Leo Strauss; and the story of how America has been made a moral battleground by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Leon Kass, Carnes Lord, and Irving Kristol--Straussian conservatives committed to an American imperialism they believe will usher in a new world order.



From the Inside Flap
"An honest, wise, and beautifully written account of an astonishing political phenomenon that has profoundly reshaped politics in our times." - Rogers Smith, author of 'Civic Ideals'

About the Author
Anne Norton is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.



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Many neoconservative intellectuals and Bush Administration officials claim Leo Strauss, the philosopher who fled Nazi Germany for the United States in the nineteen-thirties, as their political forebear. Norton studied at Chicago, the center of the Straussian academic universe, and the book has the flavor of an amusing tell-all. (When she moves to Brown and discovers Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, one horrified Straussian says, “You have gone over to the dark side of the Force.”) Norton’s account is a sort of critical field guide to Straussians, taxonomizing their “variants and subspecies” and assessing the ways in which some of them have affected U.S. foreign policy. She points out that, whereas neoconservatives talk of clashes between Islam and the West, Strauss was a close reader of medieval Muslim political theory and decried Western intellectuals for their ignorance of the non-Western world: “The Straussians have set themselves to guard the gates Strauss opened.”


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