Abstract
McIlwain concludes his comparison between the thought of Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss by examining the two thinkers in terms of the quarrel of poetry and philosophy, drawing out the connections between the themes of religious and national inheritances, history, and the problem of theory and practice. The nub of contention comes to center on the question of the passions and whether they are guided and elevated by reason as eros (as Strauss argued) or require the autonomy of will and artifice to reach their full virtuosity (Oakeshott’s position). This leads to a final confrontation with “the problem of Socrates” involving an engagement with the tragic worldview of Nietzsche and its relation to the comedy of Aristophanes and the character of Don Quixote.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 184.
- 2.
Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 138.
- 3.
“[T]he conflict between unbelief and belief.” See Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 107 n. 35.
- 4.
Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return?” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 270.
- 5.
Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 324.
- 6.
Michael Oakeshott, “Leviathan: a Myth,” in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 160–161.
- 7.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 150 n. 24.
- 8.
Ibid., 18.
- 9.
Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 33.
- 10.
See Ibid., 232: “…‘the passion for right acting’ as distinguished from ‘the passion for right seeing and thinking,’ requires a peculiar nation as its bearer.”
- 11.
Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 230.
- 12.
Michael Zank, introduction to Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), ed. Michael Zank (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 27.
- 13.
Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Corrected and Expanded Edition, Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 185.
- 14.
Oakeshott, “Leviathan: a Myth,” 163. On the false novelty of the problem of death in modern philosophy see Timothy W. Burns, “Philosophy and Poetry: A New Look at an Old Quarrel,” American Political Science Review 109, no. 2 (2015): 326–338.
- 15.
Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism,” ed. David Janssens and Daniel Tanguay, Interpretation 26, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 363.
- 16.
Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays: new and expanded edition, ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 6.
- 17.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 42.
- 18.
Nathan A. Scott Jr., Negative Capability: Studies in the New Literature and the Religious Situation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), xiii.
- 19.
Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” 6.
- 20.
Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 417.
- 21.
Laurence Lampert, The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 234.
- 22.
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Kieth Ansell-Pearson and trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 17.
- 23.
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001), 426.
- 24.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 172.
- 25.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 117–118.
- 26.
Leo Strauss, “The Problem of Socrates” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 180, 183.
- 27.
Ibid., 119.
- 28.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 40.
- 29.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 241.
- 30.
Michael Oakeshott, “Introduction to Leviathan,” in Hobbes on Civil Association, 78.
- 31.
Michael Oakeshott, Notebooks, 1922–86, Selected Writings, Volume VI, ed. Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2014), 426.
- 32.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 324.
- 33.
Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” in Rationalism in Politics, 416–417.
- 34.
Oakeshott, “Voice of Poetry,” 513.
- 35.
Leo Strauss, “The Problem of Socrates,” ed. David Bolotin, Christopher Bruell, and Thomas L. Pangle, Interpretation 22, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 324.
- 36.
Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 41.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McIlwain, D. (2019). Conclusion. In: Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13380-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13381-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)