Despite the controversy the name leo strauss continues to generate in current discussions of and about American politics, Strauss never drew out the implications of his thought for any practical political program. In part, we may attribute this controversy to general ignorance, willful or otherwise, of Strauss's work. Given all the talk about Strauss, not many people, outside of those called “Straussians” and a few of their severest critics actually read Strauss's work. Yet even among, or especially among, Straussians, the implications of Strauss's thought for understanding the nature of politics remains hotly contested. It would not be an overstatement to suggest that the appropriation of Strauss (by fans, critics, and the uninformed alike) in current debates about politics would be worthy of a book-length study.

The task of the third and final part of this book is at once narrower and broader than the attempt to sort out Strauss's reception in contemporary politics. Focusing only on Strauss's published work, I attempt in this chapter to draw out the contours of Strauss's notion of a rational politics, from a theoretical point of view. To this end, I maintain that it is essential to focus on the conceptual links between Strauss's work in medieval Jewish philosophy and his American work in the history of political philosophy. While the contradictory claims about Strauss among Straussians (a discussion of which I reserve mainly for the notes to this chapter) are not the main focus of what follows, the connection between Strauss's Jewish and American work may clear up certain misconceptions about Strauss's view of politics, specifically in connection with his notions of natural right and religion.