Leo Strauss’s Utopia of ‘Return’ as an Anti-Modern Anti-Utopia

Abstrakt

This paper deals with Leo Strauss’s “recipe” for overcoming the present crisis of the West which consist, in his opinion, in its losing faith in its own ideals and values and follows from our inability of their metaphysical grounding. My aim is to identify and discuss the most characteristic and, I think, highly original elements of this project: the diagnosis that the general crisis of our civilization is closely connected with the crisis of political philosophy which, in turn, results from the revolutionary changes that were initiated by the founders of its modern version; the call for the “return” to the philosophical idea of natural law; Strauss’s declaration that the essential feature of this idea and of each authentic philosophy is its anti-dogmatism which stands in opposition both to the dogmatism of religion and to some fundamental dogmas of modern politics.