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Leo Strauss - Pluto Huji Ac Il

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31<br />

Abstract<br />

The Exile of Interpretation Anti-totalitarianism and exile motivated (or<br />

at least powerfully influenced) <strong>Leo</strong> <strong>Strauss</strong>’ anti-historicism, which, in<br />

turn, informed his equally idiosyncratic method of textual interpretation.<br />

<strong>Strauss</strong> wrote his political anxieties into his history of political thought and,<br />

less obviously but hardly less significantly, into his theory of how to go<br />

about correctly telling it. For <strong>Strauss</strong>, as for many other Jewish exiles of<br />

his generation, the crisis of totalitarianism was the crisis of modernity,<br />

which he viewed as a crisis of intellectual history and its interpretation,<br />

particularly the history and interpretation of political thought. And as a<br />

crisis of interpretation, it was no less than the crisis of its exile.

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