SOURCE: Rosen, Stanley. Review of Xenophon's Socrates, by Leo Strauss. Classical World 66, no. 8 (May 1973): 470-71.

In the following review, Rosen provides a mixed assessment of Xenophon's Socrates.

There are two main reasons for Xenophon's bad reputation today. The first is a radical change in taste and perception, associated with the rise of Romanticism, and connected at a deeper level with the “transcendental turn” in philosophy, which takes its bearings by the twin stars of subjectivity and linguistic construction. The second is a denial of the natural difference between philosophers and non-philosophers. These two dogmas are by no means simply compatible, but this is not the place to analyze them in detail. Suffice it to say that they combine to obscure our awareness of the natural origins of philosophy in everyday life. This natural or everyday origin is Xenophon's central concern. Since we ourselves find theoretical access to the...