Must God be a Conversation-stopper for the Political Philosopher? Leo Strauss on Philosophy, Religion and Legality

These three books offer a fairly accurate reflection of the current trends in Strauss scholarship. All three authors wish to depart from the highly charged “Strauss wars” of the previous decade. One of the unintended consequences of this departure is that Strauss’s actual politics recede into a sphere of indeterminacy. Though all three authors imply that if it were at all possible to fix Strauss’s politics, then they would most likely fall on the moderate Left rather than on the hard Right of the political spectrum, the focus of their concern lies elsewhere. I would say it concerns Strauss’s approach to religion and its significance for philosophy as well as for politics. Put another way, Strauss is queried here in order to propose some reasonable approaches to the problem of inevitable disagreement about absolute matters, in societies where freedom of thought is most valued.