Leo Strauss and the Problem of Socrates：Between Philosophy and Politics

• Main Authors: Wen-PO Hsu, 許文柏
• Other Authors: 陳思賢
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23273662804627174522

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 政治學研究所 === 96 === This dissertation demonstrates ‘’the problem of Socrates’’ in Strauss’s own writings. In the works of Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon, Strauss found out the main thesis of the problem of Socrates: the tension between philosophy and politics. Leo Strauss was devoted to the problem of Socrates in the last decade of his academic career, and he tried to capture the whole picture of Socrates by considering Aristophanes’ Socrates, Xenophon’s Socrates, and Plato’s Socrates, respectively. In Aristophanes’ comedy Clouds, Socrates was a sophist and a natural philosopher. As a philosopher, the characteristic of Socrates was insanity and madness. According to Strauss, the poet Aristophanes was a friend of Socrates, and the poet had warned Socrates of philosophical life having a potential danger to politics. In response to Aristophanes’ critique, Xenophon’s and Plato’s Socrates both tried to defend the primacy of the philosophical life. In the interpretation of Xenophon’s Hiero, Strauss argued that the poet Simonides tamed a tyrant by confirming the debase of political life when compared to philosophical life. In the Republic of Plato, the philosopher-king was the best representation of tension between Philosopher and political community. ‘Polis or city in speech’ showed that two ways of life, philosophical and political, were difficult to reconcile, which is the immanent predicament in human world. To explore the possibilities of reconciling the tension between philosophy and politics, I introduce three theses respectively: the Aristotle’s thesis, Kojeve’s thesis, and the Strauss’s thesis. Aristotle tried to combine the philosophy and political action. On the one hand, he thought that we had to put philosophy into practice in the political life; on the other hand, the political rule must guild by philosophy. In Kojeve’s mind, when the time of ‘the universal and homogeneous state’ comes true, History has come to its end. If so, as Strauss said, the completion of History will reveal that the problem of the relation of philosophy and politics is insoluble. By means of ‘liberal education,’ I think that Leo Strauss did provide a viable solution to overcome the tension between philosophical life and political life in the modern time.