SOURCE: Gunnell, John G. “Political Theory and Politics: The Case of Leo Strauss and Liberal Democracy.” In The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, edited by Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Soffer, pp. 68-88. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Gunnell analyzes “Political Philosophy and the Crisis of Our Time” in order to gain insight into Strauss's notion of the relationship between political philosophy and politics.

Leo Strauss was the greatest writer of epic political theory in our century. Yet what he was saying, what he was doing by saying what he said, and what he hoped to accomplish remain open issues. If there is a single theme that gives coherency to his work, it is his account of the decline of the tradition of political philosophy and the entailed crisis of the West that is manifest in the crisis of liberal...