Leo Strauss (1899-1973), one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, died 50 years ago. His legacy is to revive interest in the eternal truths of pre-modern political philosophers of antiquity and the Middle Ages, and to challenge the false historicism common among progressives - the belief that all measures of justice and right are merely relative to time and place, The European Conservative reported.

Leo Strauss stressed that without political philosophy, no real understanding of practical politics is possible. The modern divorce between philosophy and politics betrays a human nature that is permanent and unchanging. While modern liberalism emphasized the pursuit of individual freedom as the ultimate goal, Strauss wanted to return attention to human excellence and political virtue. He was a harsh critic of positivism, relativism, and historicism, for without transhistorical standards and truths, all values are subjective and in danger of slipping into nihilism.

Born in Germany to an Orthodox Jewish family, Strauss emigrated to the United States in 1937 and spent three decades as a research fellow in political philosophy at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, and finally the University of Chicago. He wrote 15 books, including the celebrated works The City and the Man, What is Political Philosophy?, Thoughts on Machiavelli, and Natural Law and History.

A conference on the 50th anniversary of Leo Strauss's death, Philosophy as Knowledge of the Whole, was held on 12 October 2023 at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest. The keynote address was given by Michael Anton, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and former senior security official in the Trump administration, entitled Strauss on the Ancient and Modern in Thinking about Machiavelli.

Anton, himself an avowed Straussian, summarized the basic ideas of Strauss, emphasizing that the ancients (especially Plato and Aristotle) were good while the modernists were bad. The fundamental break with the ancients came in the early 16th century with Machiavelli, whom Strauss called "the teacher of evil." According to Strauss, Machiavelli lowered the goal from the pursuit of virtue and reduced political problems to technical issues. Strauss wanted to return to antiquity to show how bad the modernists were and that antiquity was by no means obsolete.

Andreas Kinneging, Professor of Philosophy of Law at Leiden University, in his lecture evaluated the conservatism of Leo Strauss. Kinneging said that conservatism was the opposite of progressivism and Strauss was the opposite of a progressivist. Strauss preferred ancient rationalists to believers in divine revelation. Although Strauss had no anti-religious sentiments, he did not consider himself a believer. Yet he considered religion an ally of philosophy in the search for truth.

Zbigniew Janowski, a former professor at Towson University in Maryland, USA, gave a lecture entitled "Is it still worth reading Leo Strauss?". Janowski emphasized the "noble lie" of equality in modern democratic societies and that Strauss saw the need for religion as a guarantee of social order. According to Strauss, philosophers have a moral obligation to tell the "noble lie."

Timothy Burns, professor of political science at Baylor University in Texas, discussed democracy in Strauss's writings. Burns explained that Strauss believed that the Enlightenment as a whole was a civilizing force whose goal was the rejection of revelation in favor of exclusive reliance on human reason. Strauss considered Spinoza to be the first philosopher who was both a democrat and a liberal, and this was the origin of modern republicanism.

Overall, the conference on Leo Strauss shows that his ideas are still relevant and influencing conservative thinkers today. Strauss's focus on the crisis of the West and the importance of political philosophy in this period makes his work still relevant.