Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger

In "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism" (1956), Leo Strauss tells us: "The only question of importance, of course, is the question whether Heidegger's teaching is true or not".

As the years pass that slowly but steadily distance us from the lifetime of Leo Strauss (1899–1973), his thought grows into the future with a reach and significance rivaled by very few of his twentieth-century contemporaries. This is the case precisely because Strauss’s philosophic enterprise does not express, is not at home in—does not even unambiguously belong to—the twentieth century. Strauss exemplifies Nietzsche’s observation that genuinely independent thinkers are never the ‘‘children of their times’’: they are (at most) the subversive and rebellious, the despised or decried, the troublesome and trouble-making ‘‘stepchildren’’ of their times.