Contra Strauss: Theological-Political Problem | Methexis Institute Seminar

Contra Strauss Seminar II : The Theological-Political Problem

5-9 pm CST, Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th, January 2026

Register to join online and in-person
Readings distributed in advance

The Methexis Institute invites you to participate in a critical reassessment of the 'Theological-Political Problem' in Leo Strauss and his successors.

The first Straussian project has failed. For, as a political alternative to Martin Heidegger's 'Destruktion' of metaphysics, it failed to secure the surreptitiously metaphysical ground of universal 'natural rights', exemplary personalities, and esoteric codes of meaning against the more advanced historicisms and hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Alexandre Kojève, and Eric Voegelin.

Yet despite its theoretical obsolescence, the Straussian School has continued to expand under the guise of developing political theory as first philosophy. In the past two decades, a second Straussian project has been sponsored by a political alliance of techno-oligarchs with the populist Right. Their signature 'esoteric' readings of primary texts is critically paralyzing, yet nonetheless provides a classical veneer for Schmittean decisions of power.

The site of this debate has thus shifted from the transcendental ground of hermeneutics to the emerging technical conditions of digital capitalism. It is this techno-oligarchic sponsorship of esoteric writing at the crossroads of democracy that Peter Thiel recommends in his essay "The Straussian Moment". Yet if, not only the correct way of reading, but also the concept of power is more ultimately theological at its principle source, then this second Straussian project remains open to popular and religious contestation.

The 'Theological-Political problem' names Leo Strauss's signature belief in the unresolvable conflict between reason and revelation. Against Cassirer and Heidegger, it is dogmatically upheld as timeless and quasi-biblical truth. It emerges, however, neither in Athens nor in Jerusalem, but specifically in his Jacobian reading of Spinoza, and his Al-Farabian reading of Plato. And it operates under a Jewish religious belief of the inexplicability of divine Law.

The decisive critique of Straussianism today should, accordingly, be not only philosophical but theological. For if this esoteric style of reading classical texts is authorized by a higher belief in the derationalization of revelation in history, how can we again recall the formative events that have shaped our shared political imaginaries? And if Strauss and his successors covertly hold theological assumptions, yet dissimulate their beliefs in the guise of binary dualities - such as those of reason and revelation, Athens, and Jerusalem - how should political theologians respond to this ever-deepening crisis?

We invite anyone with an interest in the 'Theological-Political Problem' in the writings of Leo Strauss to join us for a two-day dinner seminar reflecting on Leo Strauss’s book Natural Right and History and his leading critics.