Preface to this Special Issue

Extract

Interest in Leo Strauss has grown considerably since his death in 1973. His incisive commentaries on the great texts of the Western political tradition have contributed to the revival of scholarly attention to the quarrels between Athens and Jerusalem, poetry and philosophy, the ancients and the moderns, the philosopher and the city as well as to the crisis of liberal democracy. Strauss's teachings that bear on the problem of liberal education have encouraged many of his students and others to write and speak boldly about “the closing of the American mind.”