SOURCE: Drury, Shadia B. “Esoteric Philosophy and Ancient Wisdom.” In The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, pp. 18-36. London: Macmillan Press, 1988.

In the following essay, Drury traces the impact of Islamic philosophers, particularly Al Fârâbî, on Strauss's concept of the relationship between philosophy and science.

Strauss begins with the assumption that there exists an inevitable conflict between philosophy and the political domain, or as Strauss says, ‘the city’. Understanding this conflict is the key to understanding Strauss's political ideas.

Strauss describes his Persecution and the Art of Writing as a ‘sociology of philosophy’. He distinguishes the latter from the sociology of knowledge. The sociology of knowledge begins with the assumption that there is a harmony between thought and the world; either thought ‘determines’ political institutions and social relations (idealism), or political institutions and social relations ‘determine’ thought (materialism). In contrast to the sociology of knowledge, Strauss's...