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On Cropsey's World: Joseph Cropsey and the Tradition of Political Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Gregory Bruce Smith
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Extract

Throughout his corpus, Joseph Cropsey reflects upon the tradition of political philosophy. Those reflections can be fruitfully approached under four headings. First, Cropsey questions the nature and origins of political philosophy as well as its cosmological or metaphysical foundations. Second, Cropsey questions the customary periodizations of the tradition of political philosophy. He especially questions the usefulness of the ancients-moderns distinction. Third, Cropsey reflects upon the relation between the tradition of political philosophy and concrete political life past and present. In the process, he tries to show the ways in which comprehensive constellations of ideas work their way into and inform everyday life. Fourth, Cropsey reflects upon the nature of the American regime and its prospects for the future. Throughout, it becomes clear that Cropsey has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with his mentor Leo Strauss. Finally, it also becomes clear, contrary to recent assertions made in response to Plato's World, that Cropsey engages in a series of subtle critiques of Nietzschean and Heideggerian historicism and thereby of contemporary postmodernism as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , Spring 1998 , pp. 307 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1998

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