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Articles

Leo Strauss: Neoconservative?

Tibor R. Machan gets to grips with a perplexing thinker.

When Leo Strauss was near death, I called him in Annapolis, MD, where he had his last teaching post, at St John’s College. I said that I appreciated all he had taught me. He thanked me, and that’s the only conversation we ever had.

Yet Strauss was an important teacher to me, mainly by means of his major book, Natural Right and History (1950). I had known of Strauss and the Straussian school from when I entered Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna College) in the Fall of 1962, since several of his students and friends taught there, including Werner Dannhauser.

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