Leo Strauss

The purpose of the following remarks is to discuss especially
those characteristic features of classical political philosophy which are
in particular danger of being overlooked or insufficiently stressed by
the schools that are most influential in our time. These remarks are
not intended to sketch the outlines of an adequate interpretation of
classical political philosophy. They will have fulfilled their purpose
if they point to the way which, as it seems to me, is the only one
whereby such an interpretation can eventually be reached by us.

Classical political philosophy is characterized by the fact that it
was related to political life directly. It was only after the classical
philosophers had done their work that political philosophy became
definitely "established" and thus acquired a certain remoteness from
political life. Since that time the relationship of political philosophers
to political life, and their grasp of it, has been determined by the
existence of an inherited political philosophy: since then political
philosophy has been related to political life through the medium of
a tradition of political philosophy. The tradition of political philoso-
phy, being a tradition, took for granted the necessity and possibility
of political philosophy. The tradition that originated in classical
Greece was rejected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in
favor of a new political philosophy. But this "revolution" did not

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