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Platonic Theocracy, Liberalism, and Authoritarianism in Leo Strauss’s Philosophy and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2020

JOHN P. McCORMICK Open the ORCID record for JOHN P. McCORMICK [Opens in a new window]
JOHN P. McCORMICK*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
*
John P. McCormick, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, jpmccorm@uchicago.edu.
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Abstract

Leo Strauss, in Philosophy and Law (1935), offers Platonic theocracy as a more just and stable political alternative to both liberalism and authoritarianism. Rather than merely a scholastic investigation of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, I read the book as a programmatic endorsement of a morally perfectionist political order: a divinely legitimated and rationally justified “true” or “beautiful” state. Since human beings require political community to suppress their evil inclinations and promote their disposition toward the good, Strauss criticizes liberalism for contending that government should remain neutral regarding good and evil and modern authoritarianism for effectively committing idolatry by politically instrumentalizing theology. I demonstrate that Strauss’s long-neglected book is particularly relevant for our own “postsecular age,” an age when adherents of religious orthodoxy increasingly demand concessions from liberal democracies and resurgent state authoritarianism frequently cloaks itself in religious trappings.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 615 - 628
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

For comments and criticisms I thank Will Altman, Julie Cooper, Steven Harvey, Deme Kasimis, Liisi Keedus, Matt Landauer, Georges Tamer, Miguel Vatter, Ben Wurgaft, Linda Zerilli, three anonymous reviewers, and the Editors of APSR. Financial support for this research was provided by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

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