Title: From Political Theory to Political Practice
Abstract: The study of political theory among Strauss and his disciples does not begin and end with reflections on dead white thinkers. Their studies have mandated political commitments, and it would be hard to ignore the transition from theory to practice already evident in the movement’s founder. In the 1960s, Strauss engaged in a prolonged, bitter battle with the American Political Science Association and his colleagues in the political science profession. He accused them of shirking their responsibility to defend the United States during the Cold War. In a controversial epilogue to Essays on the Scientific Studies of Politics (1962), edited by his student Herbert J. Storing, Strauss excoriates his profession for eschewing the struggle against Soviet totalitarianism: “The crisis of liberal democracy has become concealed by a ritual which calls itself methodology or logic. This almost willful blindness to the crisis of liberal democracy is part of that crisis. No wonder that the new political science has nothing to say against those who unhesitatingly prefer surrender, that is, the abandonment of liberal democracy, to war.”
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-12-29
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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