Preliminaries for a Critique of Modern Concepts of Political Science. A Study of the Intellectual Formation of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt.

Abstract:

More than half a century has passed since Arendt and Strauss presented what was to become the content of their most renowned books, The Human Condition and Natural Right and History , respectively, within the series of Walgreen lectures hosted by the University of Chicago . Ever since, their efforts became integrated within the tradition(s) of Western political thought, even if mostly within the confines of American academia. Yet, in what tradition did they exactly belong? On the one hand, both Arendt and Strauss were uneasy to refer to their own writings as descending from a conspicuous lineage. This gesture is no mere indulgence in secretive originality, but an expression of their lived, reflective experience. On the other hand, the books that earned their fame as political theorists are results not only in the trivial sense that they represent the mature form of their previous scholarship. Their critiques of contemporary concepts of political science, their shared aversion to historicism and determinism in social sciences, as well as to understanding human agency in terms of exercise of arbitrary will, their doubts regarding the powers of philosophical ideas within politics and social sphere are to be understood as discourses within a particular tradition, even if also as attempts to overcome it. Recent research – emphasizing biographical aspects or intellectual indebtedness – has greatly contributed to clarification and contextualization, capturing more accurately intentions oftentimes only alluded to within the texts. However, accounts of the context of emergence together with Arendt's and Strauss's intellectual trajectories and reflected experiences within it exhibit still striking gaps.