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The Myth of the Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John G. Gunnell
John G. Gunnell*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
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Abstract

Leo Strauss's epic rendition of the history of Western political philosophy has been a principal factor in the establishment and perpetuation of the myth of the tradition or the belief that the conventional series of classic works from Plato to Nietzsche represents the development of modern political ideas and constitutes the core of an inherited pattern of thought which, in turn, provides the basic context for interpreting particular texts. Much of the scholarly commentary on the history of political philosophy has been directed toward a critique of contemporary political thought and action, and the idea of the tradition has served as a vehicle for this historical etiology. In Strauss's argument, the concept of the tradition plays a strategic rhetorical function, but the myth of the tradition in its various forms has become a pervasive regulative assumption in both teaching and research.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 122 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

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References

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Despite the importance of the issues raised, these studies, for the most part, do not explore the intentions of the historian of political theory, and they assume that his endeavor can be comprehended and evaluated as a species of intellectual history. For a discussion of these problems as well as an analysis of other secondary literature on the history of political theory, see Gunnell, John G., Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation (Cambridge: Winthrop, 1978)Google Scholar.

2 Strauss, Leo, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), p. 1Google Scholar.

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33 Ibid., p. 59.

34 The City and Man, p. 11.

35 Ibid., p. 8.

36 City and Man, p. 9.

37 Ibid., p. 9.

38 On Tyranny, p. 24; What is Political Philosophy?, p. 67.

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46 What is Political Philosophy?, pp. 68, 69.

47 City and Man, p. 9.

48 ”Political Philosophy and the Crisis of Our Time, ” pp. 217–18.

49 What is Political Philosophy?, p. 172.

50 Ibid., p. 74.

51 What is Political Philosophy?, p. 27.

52 Ibid., p. 28.

53 ”Social Science and Humanism, ” p. 417.

54 What is Political Philosophy?, p. 75.

55 What is Political Philosophy?, p. 75.

56 The City and Man, p. 12.

57 What is Political Philosophy?, p. 40.

58 Ibid., p. 40.

59 On Tyranny, p. 23.

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69 What is Political Philosophy?, pp. 47–48.

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80 Strauss, Leo, “Farabi's Plato,” in Louis Ginsberg Jubilee Volume (New York: The American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), pp. 376–77Google Scholar.

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