Philosophy as a Way of Life

The Case of Leo Strauss

Bibliographic Data

ID6402271
AuthorsSteven B Smith (corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume71
Issue1
Pages37-53
Publication date2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670509000047
OpenAlexW1983243413
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited16

In this paper I consider Strauss's case for philosophy as a “way of life.” Strauss's case rests, I believe, on a view of philosophy first as a quest—an erotic aspiration—for knowledge of the whole and second as committed to a skeptical view of our ability ever to attain to such knowledge. Moreover, can the philosophic life defend itself against its most powerful alternative, namely, the case for revealed religion or does philosophy itself rest upon an act of faith of its own? I argue that philosophy has the resources to defend itself but only once it is understood as an open-ended (“zetetic”) search for truth. Only by returning to a conception of philosophy as “skeptic in the original sense of the term” can philosophy avoid the twin dogmatisms of faith and unbelief

Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · Faith · Modern philosophy · Philosophy of religion · Skepticism · Western philosophy · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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