Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 290
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-4422-1711-9 • Hardback • August 2012 • $82.00 • (£63.00)
978-1-4422-1713-3 • eBook • August 2012 • $77.50 • (£60.00)
Harry V. Jaffa is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Political Philosophy Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University, a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute, and the author of ten books.
Introduction
Preface
Chapter 1: Straussian Geography: A Memoir and Commentary
Chapter 2: Leo Strauss Remembered
Chapter 3: Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award
Chapter 4: The Legacy of Leo Strauss: Review of Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy
Chapter 5: The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa
Chapter 6: “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” Defended
Chapter 7: The Politics of Moderation: Strauss’s Esotericism
Chapter 8: Leo Strauss’s Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West
Chapter 9: Response to M.F. Burnyeat’s “Sphinx Without a Secret,” A Review of Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy in the New York Review of Books
Chapter 10: “Dear Professor Drury”
Chapter 11: Crisis of the Strauss Divided: The Legacy Reconsidered
Chapter 12: Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy
Chapter 13: A Letter to the Editor of the New York Review of Books, 1992
Chapter 14: “Relativism”
Chapter 15: Strauss at 100
Chapter 16: Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria
Chapter 17: Too Good to be True? A Reply to Robert Kraynak’s “Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria”
Chapter 18: Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety
Chapter 19: A Reply to Michael Zuckert’s “Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety”
Chapter 20: Epilogue to Crisis of the Strauss Divided
Among Straussian publications on American politics (to say nothing of non-Straussian), none excels Harry Jaffa’s masterpiece, A New Birth of Freedom. In Crisis of the Strauss Divided, Jaffa explains to his critics why a defense of Lincoln and the Founders is, paradoxically, consistent with political philosophy — which many equate with an apolitical interpretation of Great Books. Political philosophy means nothing without a lively concern with the problems of life here and now.
— Thomas G. West
This is some very intricate stuff, and requires setting aside a good chunk to time to work through. But worth it.
— Powerline
Crisis of the Strauss Divided gathers together 19 essays. Readers. . .will be pleasantly surprised by the later entries' civil, engaging tone. . . .Harry Jaffa has developed a distinctive political philosophy, one that places political and moral questions a the center of its concerns. Though sharing certain characteristics with the sweeping philosophies of history, Jaffa's account puts reason, rather than History, firmly in the driver's seat.
— Claremont Review of Books
Jaffa is almost single-handedly the creator of what has been known as West Coast Straussianism. . . .Crisis of the Strauss Divided consists of 19 essays, the most revealing of which is the semi-autobiographal "Straussian Geography."
— The New York Times