Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thrasymachean-Dionysian Socrates: Philosophy, Politics, Science, and Religion in the Modern Age

Drawing on published and unpublished material by Leo Strauss, this dissertation shows that Strauss reads Nietzsche as a political philosopher. Nietzsche's thought, it is argued, elaborates on the friendship which develops between Socrates and Thrasymachus in the course of The Republic. By putting forward the philosophy of the will to power, Strauss´s Nietzsche advanced the Thrasymachean idea that the philosophers are "commanders and legislators." This is the meaning of Nietzsche´s "philosophers of the future," who will liberate man from ecclesiastical tutelage, and defend the philosophical way of life. At the same time, Strauss's Nietzsche avowed "the eternal return of the same," which points to a conception of philosophy as "contemplative," rather than "legislative." The contemplative disposition takes its bearings from the acceptance of the world as it is rather than as political actions aimed at transforming it. Nietzsche´s contemplative disposition is a key to understand his conception of the "good" - the love of the world -and his notion of "natural justice.".