# History of Political Philosophy Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, Editors **URL:** **By** Tibor Machan **Published:** February 1, 1974 --- “Not everyone has the time to dig into the masters in the history of political thought, nor are all translations going to give a good rendition of them.” Not everyone has the time to dig into the masters in the history of political thought, nor are all translations going to give a good rendition of them. In such matters, as in many others, it is a good idea to get some trustworthy guidance. The Strauss/Cropsey volume, a favorite of most Strauss admirers, has just been reissued, with some changes and additions. It is one of the best, though by no means the most simplified, introductions to the ideas of the great minds of political philosophy. Strauss himself starts the volume with Plato, with Harry V. Jaffa following on Aristotle and others on the standard bearers of Western political thought (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Hegel and Marx). But this is not all. In this work you will find close attention paid to such usually ignored thinkers as Cicero, Alfarabi, the great Maimonides, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker, Hugo Grotius, John Milton and William Blackstone. How unjustified it is to study—and especially to teach—political thought without some attention to these rarely-mentioned figures will become evident by how the present volume integrates their thought with the broad strains of political philosophy and how the various authors show the significance of these individuals in reference to specific, unusual, but often very powerful influences in political affairs. Of the essays that benefitted me the most, both in intellectual content and unexpected enlightenment, none matches Professor Werner J. Dannhauser’s discussion of the political thought of Friedrich Neitzsche. The one with which I find most fault is the essay on John Locke by Robert A. Goldwin; it shows something I have often found with the Strausseans—their disdain for Locke’s apparent egoism and their distrust of him as a careful philosopher. They lack what I would call enough generosity to him in his effort to argue a moral case for egoism in an era of altruism or mechanism. Locke is made out to be more of a Hobbesian than I think is warranted and his Aristotelian strains are entirely de-emphasized. A few complaints, however, should not detract from the great value of this _History of Political Philosophy_. What the reader will get from each essay is a serious effort to identify the thought and importance of the thinker being discussed, under the leadership of the late Professor Leo Strauss and one of his best students, Joseph Cropsey. If not for education as such, then for sheer pleasure of mind, one ought to read what these outstanding scholars have said about the ideas and purposes of the greatest philosophers concerned with mankind’s political affairs. The Introduction to this volume provides as good a reason as any why citizens of America ought to focus their minds on the great thinkers of the past when they attempt to gain an understanding of their own _polis_ (or whatever is left of it): “let us… remember that the authors of the _Federalist Papers_ signed themselves ‘Publius’: republicanism points back to classical antiquity and therefore also to classical political philosophy.” _Reviewed by Tibor R. Machan / Political Philosophy (849 pages, indexed) / BFL Price $11.95_