The example of Socrates
the correspondence between Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger
pp. 105-123
in: The Strauss-Krüger correspondence, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
The publication of the correspondence with his contemporaries Gerhard Krüger, Jacob Klein and Gerschom Scholem in 2001 offered readers of Leo Strauss a new and in many ways surprising perspective on the genesis of his thought. The epistolary exchanges reveal both the intensity and the scope of Strauss's engagement with the "theological-political problem," which he later identified as "the theme" of his investigations. This chapter focuses on Strauss's correspondence with Gerhard Krüger. More specifically, it aims to clarify an issue that is at once central to it while remaining partially implicit: Strauss's attempt to recover the Socratic question concerning the good and just life as the viable foundation for a human life, after his critical dismissal of the two alternatives that initially presented themselves to him: the modern Enlightenment and revealed religion.
