Commentary

• Farabi’s Plato

  - Strauss, Leo, "Farabi's Plato," Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945.  Reprinted, revised and abbreviated, in Persecution and the Art of Writing.
  Excerpt: Farabi followed Plato not merely as regards the manner in which he presented the philosophic teaching in his most important books.  He held the view that Plato’s philosophy was the true philosophy.  To reconcile his Platonism with his… More

• How Farabi Read Plato’s Laws

  - Strauss, Leo, "How Farabi Read Plato's Laws," Mélanges Louis Massignon, Institut Francais de Damas, 1957, Vol. 3.  Reprinted in What Is Political Philosophy?
  Excerpt: At first it seems as if Farabi meant to say that all insights which he ascribed to Plato were peculiar to Plato. What he actually says however is that Plato did not find the science which he desired among the sciences and arts which are known to the… More

• The Problem of Socrates: Five Lectures

  - Strauss, Leo, "The Problem of Socrates: Five Lectures," The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, Thomas L. Pangle, ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Published, complete and unedited, as Strauss, Leo, "The Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates: Six Public Lectures," Interpretation 23, no. 2 (Winter 1996).
  Excerpt: For according to Plato as well as to Aristotle, to the extent to which the human problem cannot be solved by political means it can be solved only by philosophy, by and through the philosophic way of life. Plato too presents men who are not good or… More