Neoconservatism and Leo Strauss: the place of a liberal education

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the work of Leo Strauss, specifically his two essays on liberal education. Strauss is often claimed to be a founding thinker of neoconservatism and while much scholarship has been produced analyzing his work, very little discusses his essays on liberal education and how these fit within his larger project. This essay begins to fill that void by outlining the two essays and discussing their relation to his projects of critiquing both modernity and Western liberal democracy. The essay further draws out some tentative connections between these essays of Strauss’s and the larger landscape of neoconservative thinkers currently in favor within the United States government