SOURCE: Dallmayr, Fred. “Leo Strauss, Peregrinus.” Social Research 61, no. 4 (winter 1994): 877-906.

In the following essay, Dallmayr explores Strauss's perspective on two prominent thematic concerns in his work: the tension between ancient and modern thought and the relationship between “Athens and Jerusalem.”

The foreigner allows you to be yourself by making a foreigner of you.

—Edmond Jabès

More perhaps than ever before, the stranger, the alien, the displaced or exiled stands today in the forefront of both theoretical and political concerns. The shrinkage of our world coupled with the upsurge of powerful national or ethnic particularisms multiplies the chances of displacement, while at the same time saddling it with unprecedented risks. On the theoretical plane, this situation is reflected in the attention paid by contemporary philosophy—chiefly its Continental variant—to the theme of otherness, alterity, and dispossession. Among displaced people, the role of the emigré scholar or...