German Nihilism Leo Strauss
The following lecture by Leo Strauss was delivered, according to internal textual evidence, on February 26, 1941, in the General Seminar of the Graduate
Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research in New York. The text will prove to be of particular interest both for students of Leo Strauss's thought and for those more generally interested in the intellectual climate of prewar Germany.
For the former, the lecture presents itself as one of
the rare occasions on which Professor Strauss suspended his customary reti
directly addressed an important contemporary issue. For the latter, it offers an interesting and compelling outlook on the intellectual currents of one of this century's key periods. Finally, both audiences will find that Professor cence and
Strauss combines his philosophical rigor and perspicacity with firsthand knowl edge of the problem under Germany,"
man
discussion. As "a young Jew, bom
and raised
in
he was without doubt well acquainted with the phenomenon of Ger
nihilism, the influence it exerted in postwar and prewar Germany, its key
representatives and
its historical origins.
The basis of this edition is a typewritten manuscript which can be found in Strauss Papers (Box 8, Folder 15) at the Regenstein Library of The
the Leo
University of Chicago. The manuscript consists of twenty-five mostly typewrit ten pages. It bears many corrections and additions, some of them inserted by typewriter, some by hand. In preparing the text, we have systematically incor porated the changes and additions made by Professor Strauss so that the present edition might faithfully reflect his actual presentation. We note the few in stances in which we have edited for readability. We have also taken the liberty of correcting, without
comment, a few misspellings in the typescript. At some
in the text Professor Strauss made a more substantial addition in hand writing: these are mentioned in the text, with a short comment. In some cases points
the
i
handwriting was difficult to read or altogether illegible: this is indicated
interpretation,
Spring 1999, Vol. 26, No. 3