Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors

The German-born political philosopher Leo Strauss came to the United States in 1937 after failing to find an academic position in England, where he had fled to escape Nazism. He taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City from 1938 to 1948 and then at the University of Chicago, where his impact on the development of political philosophy in the United States was enormous. He was particularly influential in shaping the study of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. In his Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), he argued that there was a tradition of philosophers not stating their views openly but wrapping them instead in ostensibly orthodox language. This approach resonated in particular with Maimonidean scholars, who searched The Guide of the Perplexed for heterodox ideas that might be hidden in conventional terms.