There have been several recent attempts to explicate and defend the work of Leo Strauss (e.g., Steven Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 2006; Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert, The Truth About Leo Strauss, 2006; Thomas Pangle, Leo Strauss, 2006). Peter Minowitz, however, is accurate in claiming that his effort represents the most systematic and comprehensive response to what he refers to as Shadia Drury's “inflammatory” statements and “diatribes,” as well as the aspersions cast by Tim Robbins (Embedded, 2003), Anne Norton (Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, 2004), Nicholas Xenos (Cloaked in Virtue: Unraveling Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy, 2008), and a variety of others. Most of the book is devoted to defending Strauss against the charge that his ideas were “fascistic” and “authoritarian,” countering the claim that Straussians and their teachings were complicit in, if not the real author of, the Iraq war and other dimensions of neoconservative public policy, and that Strauss's writings both concealed, and reveal, that he was deeply hostile to democracy. Minowitz emphasizes that his “apologetics” for Straussianism and his “deconstruction” of the criticisms are in the “largest portion” devoted to “dethroning” Drury, because he claims that she is “the world's best known critic of Leo Strauss” and the “chief culprit,” “accuser,” and “prosecutor,” whose account of Strauss and his influence is characterized by “vilification, sloppiness, and paranoia.”

I may be able to claim a certain measure of objectivity for this review. Even though Minowitz notes that Drury credits me in her book on The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988), and despite the fact that he describes me as claiming that Strauss's dramatic rendition of the history of political philosophy “fatally compromises his efforts as an interpreter,” he absolves my “accusations” from what he claims to be the “foolish” criticisms that characterize Drury's work (e.g., Leo Strauss and the American Right, 1997), as well as other “demonizing” treatments of Strauss and Straussianism (p. 17). He recognizes, however, that Drury is not the average critic. Although he maintains that she “contaminates” her treatment with “misquotation, exaggeration, contradiction, and paltry documentation” (p. 113), he refers to her as “brilliant” and to her work as “elegant, insightful, and highly imaginative” and manifesting distinct “intelligence” (p. 188). It would be impossible within the scope of this review to assess adequately all the alleged distortions and mistreatments of Strauss and Straussians, but Minowitz does at least agree with the critics that Straussianism is not a mere specter.

Minowitz fully accepts the assumption, and some might say prejudice, that despite internal differences, conflicts, and variations among individuals and generations associated with Strauss's work, it is reasonable to distinguish Straussians as an integral group of “disciples” who manifest certain rather doctrinal commitments. He counts himself as a “Straussian professor” (p. 1), and defines a “Straussian” as a person who has carefully studied Strauss's major works; been “impressed, and often dazzled by the power of his reasoning”; found him to be a “dexterous if not virtuosic interpreter” whose exegesis should be the principal guide to understanding the classic canon; believes that it is important to “read between the lines” in many texts; insists on a decisive difference between the “ancients and moderns”; accords particular importance to Plato and Aristotle; is definitely not Marxist and probably not enthusiastic about Rawls or liberal political theory in general; and is critical of what is claimed to be the pervasive modern forces of historicism and positivism (p. 23). This image of solidarity may belie some very deep divisions among Straussians that have sometimes produced quite radically different accounts of Strauss's basic philosophy, as well as, on occasion, internally directed invectives that have sometimes rivaled the intensity of external criticism. It is arguably, nevertheless, a representative portrait.

Minowitz, however, claims that, as a whole, Straussians have become a beleaguered “tiny minority” within the academic world and that the time has come for them to reap, like so many others, the benefits of “playing the diversity card.” He likens their condition to that of gays, bisexuals, transgendered, and others, who are often afraid of “coming out” and have been subjected to “stereotyping,” treated as “scapegoats,” and “routinely excoriated,” and who have become the target of “heinous accusations,” “sporadic blacklisting,” and widespread “intolerance.” He does not go quite as far as to suggest that Straussians should be legally defined as a protected class, but he argues that “insofar as dominant sectors of U.S. society—political, corporate, legal, medical, and academic—are rapturous in celebrating diversity, Straussians too are entitled to grouse” (p. 8). This picture is, however, hard to square with the status of Straussians in many major university departments and their prevalence in many smaller colleges. Although it is possible to find instances in which Straussians have arguably been discriminated against because of their scholarly stance, political science journals and professional meetings have by and large treated their work with respect.

The author does not, for the most part, challenge Drury's knowledge of Strauss's work and the Straussian literature. What he is concerned about is her extrapolations, the underlying intent she attributes to Strauss, and the practical implications she imputes to Straussianism. There have been some reasonably documented connections between Strauss and people in political power, but nothing that matches the salacious scene in Robbins's punk satire drama. It is difficult to engage seriously Norton's anecdotal oracular treatment, but the polemics of Drury and Xenos have attempted a more systematic textual account of Strauss as an archconservative, antiliberal, and antimodernist whose ideas were deeply influential in right-wing American politics. These claims are open to challenge, and Minowitz confronts them in detail, but one may very well wonder what is really behind this fierce and morally charged debate and what it has added to the conversation of political theory.

Despite the various ways in which Strauss may be interpreted and judged, his work directs attention to significant and persistent questions in political theory. It is worthwhile noting that Drury's animus emanates in part from her belief that Strauss distorted the authentic meaning and promise of natural law. The concept of influence is, however, a slippery one, which sometimes amounts to little more than putting two things side by side and noting a family resemblance. Given the fact that many Straussians are, as was Strauss himself, politically conservative, it should not be surprising that either certain political actors would have been drawn to Straussian ideas or that Straussians would have been attracted to the seat of conservative power. In the United States, however, most instances of either academic intellectuals seeking political influence or politicians attempting to enact philosophical ideas primarily represent stories of unrequited hope. Talk show hosts are probably much more effective than someone such as Strauss or the kinds of intellectuals that Mark Lilla has dubbed Reckless Minds (2001). The vast negative influence sometimes attributed to Strauss may, to some degree, be inspired by the same impulse that led Strauss to argue that Machiavelli was the founder of modernity. It may reflect the academic dream that relatively obscure intellectuals can aspire to world-historical significance.

The case of Strauss and Straussianism is, however, in many ways a unique, and certainly interesting, phenomenon in the American academy, and the full story, whether as fact or—in the case of Saul Bellow's Ravelstein (2000)—fiction, has yet to be written. Although Strauss was especially successful in adapting to the American university, he is best understood in the context of Weimar philosophy and in the company of the émigré scholars who entered the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Eric Voegelin, and various lesser-known figures and fellow travelers confronted American politics and the American academy from perspectives formed in Europe. In their narratives of Western political thought, they claimed to have found crucial intellectual junctures where liberalism, pluralism, positivistic science, the loss of transcendental criteria of knowledge, and the idea of historical progress were all implicated in the decline of Western political philosophy, which produced an epoch of political and cultural crisis.

If we wish to understand Strauss, it is necessary to look to figures ranging from Friedrich Jacobi (the subject of his doctoral dissertation) to Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Strauss is a fascinating historical figure, but his rhetorical story of the classic canon, as well as his idiosyncratic interpretations of some of the thinkers who represented the dramatis personae, are difficult to either defend or attack. Although it is easy to find indications of unsettling ideas in his writings, one might be skeptical that this obscure, and sometimes obscurantist, corpus was a fundamental cause of the putative debasement of American politics. Many political theorists, including both Straussians and anti-Straussians, continue to find it difficult to believe that politics has its own logic.