ABSTRACT
Writing and teaching during the peak of mid-20th century positivism in the US academy, Leo Strauss’s preoccupation with the abyssal condition of modernity predates the more recent engagement of post-positivist thinkers from the later part of the century. A German-Jewish political philosopher, Strauss migrated to the US in 1937, becoming a member of the University in Exile at the New School for Social Research in 1938 before joining the University of Chicago in 1949, where he spent the majority of his working life until his retirement in 1967 (Norton 2004: 5; Xenos 2008: 1). 1 During his life, Strauss published numerous books, essays and articles, most focusing explicitly on ancient and modern political philosophy, in particular the thought of Plato, Xenophon, Al Farabi, Maimonedes, Spinoza, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The following will explore a series of concerns that play important roles in his political philosophy, with a view to demonstrating the centrality of the spectre of the abyss within it, arguing that it may be read as a project of securitisation against the dangers Strauss perceived as immanent to it.
