Tracy Strong

From Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has left us effectively “thinking without a banister.” _Politics without Vision_ takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all to a greater or lesser extent shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse. Confronting the widespread belief that political thought is on the decline, Strong puts forth a brilliant and provocative counterargument that in fact it has endured—without the benefit of outside support. A compelling rendering of contemporary political theory, _Politics without Vision_ is sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.

A central argument of the _Leviathan_ has to do with the political importance of education. Hobbes wants his book to be taught in universities and expounded much in the manner that Scripture was. Only thus will citizens realize what is in their hearts as to the nature of good political order. Glory affects this process in two ways. The pursuit of glory _by a citizen_ leads to political chaos and disorder. On the other hand, _God’s_ glory is such that one can do nothing but acquiesce to it. The Hobbesian sovereign shares some of the effects of glory that God has naturally; this, however, has to be supplemented by awe and that but fear.

This article explores the political, as opposed to the philosophical, impact of Leo Strauss’s exile in America on his thought. After a consideration of anti-Semitism and the importance Strauss attached to being a Jew, I argue that the fact that in America he no longer wrote in his Muttersprache but in English was central to his becoming a political theorist rather than a philosopher. Whereas as a philosopher he was unable to speak to the demos, as a political theorist what he needed was a group of “rhetors” who would carry a particular message to the demos.

From the immemorial humans have lived together in groups. What it means to be a human being has no other basis than the interactions that take place in these groups. Politics then is the shaping of the necessary fact of social interaction. This volume concerns itself with the role of the individual in this social and political order. Including selections from both classical writers such as Plato, and contemporary scholars such as George Kareb, Michael Sandel, and Donna Haraway, the work examines one of the most fundemental questions of human society: what part do individual desires and concerns play, and what part should they play, in political society? How can we negotiate the relation between individuals and society, between the will of one and the mandate of the multitude? Strong's lengthy introduction provides an excellent framework that serves to unify these semial writings.