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Brings together the most remarkable essays on classical and modern philosophy by noted political philosopher Christopher Bruell.
Christopher Bruell (1942–2024) was one of the great modern interpreters of classical and modern political philosophy. This volume includes almost all the essays, lectures, and book chapters that he published during a remarkable scholarly career that spanned more than four decades. Five of these writings focus on Leo Strauss, with whom Bruell studied as a young man. But the scope of the collection extends beyond Bruell's work on Strauss. The essays take up a wide range of topics, including liberal education, the problem of relativism, the American Founding, the nature of citizenship, and the question of happiness. Above all, the collection focuses on the recovery of classical political philosophy and includes pathbreaking essays on Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. Also included in this volume are three previously unpublished essays.
"This book will be of compelling interest to all students and scholars of political science, political philosophy, and philosophy. Bruell's essays are rich with the most thought-provoking surprises, the most challenging perplexities, and the most far-reaching philosophic insights. They are works to be read and reread, debated and discussed, and pondered over and over again." — Peter Ahrensdorf, Davidson College
"This volume is an outstanding introduction to the work of Christopher Bruell, who was not only one of the finest students of Leo Strauss but also one of the few truly great thinkers of our time." — Nasser Behnegar, Boston College
"This well-crafted and instructive collection will make Christopher Bruell's extraordinarily thoughtful way of teaching and thinking widely available and provide a serious conduit to Strauss’s thought as well." — Svetozar Minkov, Roosevelt University
Editors' Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Manuscript
Introduction: Socratic Educations: On the Writings of Christopher Bruell
James W. Guest II
Part I. Introductions
1. Liberal Education and Education for Citizenship
2. On Reading Plato Today
3. Plato and Relativism
Part II. Beginnings
4. Thucydides' View of Athenian Imperialism
5. Socratic Politics and Self-Knowledge: An Interpretation of Plato's Charmides
6. On the Original Meaning of Political Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato's Lovers
Part III. Writings on Strauss
7. Strauss on Xenophon's Socrates
8. A Return to Classical Political Philosophy and the Understanding of the American Founding
9. "True Esotericism"
10. On the Place of the Treatment of Classical Philosophy in the Plan of Natural Right and History as a Whole
11. The Question of Nature and the Thought of Leo Strauss
Part IV. Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle
12. Xenophon
13. On Plato's Political Philosophy
14. Aristotle on Theory and Practice
Part V. Death and Happiness
15. Death in the Perspective of Philosophy
16. Happiness in the Perspective of Philosophy
17. What Xenophon Learned from Socrates about Philosophy and the Philosophic Life
Part VI. An Undelivered Lecture
18. Theses Bearing on the Understanding of Aristotle's Natural Science
Index