Leo Strauss, Conservative Mastermind

When leftists today feel obliged to denounce Great Books curricula, it is because they know, consciously or unconsciously, that classical thought is very much alive and is a real threat to them. The holy grail of Straussian scholarship has been to understand the ancient philosophers not from a modern point of view but from their own point of view. The implication is that then we become free to adopt the ancient point of view towards modern political affairs, freeing us from the narrowness of the modern perspective and enabling us to step back from the distortions and corruptions of modernity. Strauss contends that the modern view of politics is artificial and that the ancient one is direct and honest about the experience of political things.

Robert Locke