Leo Strauss (1899-1973) had many disciples during his career, but it was only years after his death that Allan Bloom made him known to the broader public. In the last two decades an ever growing number of publications treated Strauss's oeuvre. For some authors, the main topic of Straussian philosophy has been the so-called 'theologico-political problem', the tension between reason and faith, Athens and Jerusalem. Others, professor Lánczi among them, still hold that Straussian political theory can be organized around a variety of other issues; beyond the conflict of reason and faith, one should also take note of such dimensions as antiquity vs. modernity, philosophy vs. poetry, or philosophy vs. history, all of which are potentially fruitful approaches to understandng the political world and its phenomena.
"Philosophy is more scientific than modern science, because it understands better the world of politics." – as one of the provocative introductiory statements claimed. This claim led Lánczi to give a more detailed discussion of the nature of political knowledge, represented by the difference between the approach of ancient political philosophy and that of modern political science. Strauss, as Lánczi remarked, started out as a student of Heidegger in the Weimar Republic, and has always had a keen interest in ancient philosophy as something that had been forgotten. In "What is political philosophy?", Strauss asserted that the nature of political things could actually be known with a certainty exceeding that of simple opinion. As Lánczi stated, the divergent nature of classic political thought and modern political science can be grasped in exactly this binary opposition: the former departed from actual situations to give holistic interpretations, it raised problems, and assigned the task of political advisor to the philosopher or the political theorist; while modern political science separates facts and values, thereby depriving political concepts of their very content, and only investigating details., which also means that the latter becomes unpolitical, in fact irrational, without any real humanistic interest.
We might as well say that Strauss argued against the principal claims of modern science, since he saw it as having given up the task of understanding and not just describing politics, whereby it has become defenseless in the face of modern, twentieth century tyrannies.
