Leo Strauss
1899-1973 · Conservatism · Prominent
Strauss was a German-Jewish-American political philosopher who taught at Chicago and trained a wide cohort of students there to read between the lines. Philosophers writing where heresy could get you killed practiced esoteric writing, he held, hiding subversive conclusions under an orthodox surface. Modern thought since Machiavelli gave up any natural standard of right for the idea that values belong to their era.
Signature
The position Strauss is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- leans Vertical
- Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Strauss refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Agnosticism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Epistocracy / Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Virtue
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Authority
- Natural Law
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Political Animal
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?