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Strauss, Leo
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German-born, Jewish American political philosopher who revived the study of political philosophy in the twentieth century. His complex philosophical reflections exercise a quietly growing, deep influence in America, Europe, and Asia.
Strauss was born in the rural town of Kirchhain in Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, on September 20, 1899, to Hugo and Jenny David Strauss. He attended Kirchhain’s Volksschule and the Rektoratsschule before enrolling, in 1912, at the Gymnasium Philippinum in Marburg, graduating in 1917. The adolescent Strauss was immersed in Hermann Cohen’s neo-Kantianism, the most progressive German-Jewish thinking. “Cohen,” Strauss states, “was the center of attraction for philosophically minded Jews who were devoted to Judaism” (Strauss 1972, 267). After serving in the German army for a year and a half, Strauss began ...
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