Thoughts on Leo Strauss's Interpretation of Aristotle's Natural Right Teaching

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6402141
AutoresAndré Luiz Cruz Sousa (0000-0002-6321-6904, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen78
Número3
Páginas419-442
Fecha de publicación2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670516000334
OpenAlexW2469275582
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas3

The essay discusses the interpretation of Aristotle's natural right teaching by Leo Strauss. This interpretation ought to be seen as the result of an investigation into the history of philosophy and of an attempt to philosophically address political problems. By virtue of this twofold origin, the Straussian commentary is unorthodox: it deviates from traditional Aristotelianism (Aquinas and Averroes) and it seems alien to the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. Strauss's criticism of medieval variants results from their incapacity—shared by contemporary political thought—to address a perplexing issue: political exception. He sees in Aristotle's political teaching a way to escape from this failure: the unification, in natural right, of the requirements of statesmanship and ethics. The discovery of this way allowed Strauss to produce an interpretation of natural right that articulates important points pertaining to Aristotelian political science

Aristotelianism · Criticism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Natural (archaeology · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Unification · Virtue · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification