About the Leo Strauss Center
The Leo Strauss Center seeks to promote the serious study of Leo Strauss's thought primarily through the preservation and publication of the unpublished written and audio record that he left behind.
Leo Strauss is increasingly recognized as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His research stimulated significant developments in the study of ancient and modern political philosophy, American political thought (especially the founding), classics, Jewish studies, and Islamic studies, among other fields. He is widely known for defending natural right, especially in its classical form, against the challenges of relativism and historicism, reopening the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns in political philosophy, sharply criticizing value-free social science, stressing the centrality of the theological-political problem, and distinguishing between the exoteric and esoteric teachings of writers of the past. Strauss published penetrating interpretations of writings by a wide range of figures, poets as well as philosophers, going far beyond the conventional canon of figures studied in the field of Western political theory, including not only Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Marsilius of Padua, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Nietzsche, Weber, and Carl Schmitt, but also the Bible, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Lucretius, Al-Farabi, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn, Herman Cohen, and Heidegger. Scholars for generations to come will respond to his challenging interpretations of fundamental texts.
Strauss left behind a large collection of unpublished papers. The Leo Strauss archive in the Special Collection Research Center of the University of Chicago library holds an estimated 25,000 pages, including correspondence, manuscripts and typescripts of lectures and papers, and notes. A summary guide to the collection can be consulted online. An extensive record of Strauss's teaching exists in the form of audiotapes of classes, transcripts made from the tapes, and notes compiled by students of his classes. Tapes for 21 courses are known to exist and tapes for two other courses are believed to exist. Provided the missing tapes are located and transcribed, there will be transcripts for 44 of Strauss's courses and class notes for three others.
Efforts to preserve and preparations for publishing the unpublished Strauss papers began in 1998. The John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago began word processing the typescripts of the class transcripts and notes and the digital remastering of 14 and part of a fifteenth of the original audiotapes of the Strauss courses. This effort was carried forward by the Center for Study of the Principles of the American Founding at the University, which arranged in 2006 for the completion of the digital remastering of the tapes of one course of Strauss's.
The Leo Strauss Center intends to:
- Edit the class transcripts and class notes for publication, using digitally remastered audiotapes or audio files when they are available to improve the accuracy of the transcript.
- Seek publication of selected transcripts in print.
- Publish all of the course transcripts and notes on the Center's Web site.
- Publish digitally remastered audiofiles made from the original audiotapes on the Center's Web site.
- Digitally remaster audiotapes of occasional lectures given by Strauss and publish them on the Center's Web site.
- Scan documents in the Leo Strauss archive in the Special Collections Research Center.
- Publish the scanned copies of documents in the Leo Strauss archive on the Center's Web site.
- Enhance the Leo Strauss archive by providing an improved finding aid, and by rehousing and improving the storage of the original documents.
- Preserve the digitally remastered audio recordings of Strauss's courses and occasional lectures, the text files of the transcripts, and the scanned copies of the documents in the Leo Strauss archive by depositing them in the University of Chicago Library Digital Archive.
- As conditions allow, conduct programs to support and encourage the scholarly study of Strauss's thought and publicize the availability of the materials on the Web site and in the archive, including occasional conferences or lectures and research projects devoted to Strauss's thought.
The Leo Strauss Center is currently funded by a major gift from the Winiarski Family Foundation and two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities: a $30,000 start-up grant that runs through April 30, 2010 and a $350,000 grant from the Preservation and Access program for the period April 1, 2009 through March 31, 2011. This latter grant will be used primarily to digitally remaster tapes of Strauss's courses and publish them on the Web. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Web site do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by numerous individual contributors.
The Leo Strauss Center is actively seeking funding for its other projects.
