Today, Leo Strauss’s claim that philosophers used to communicate nonconformist ideas “between the lines” of their “exoterically” written books is often seen as highly controversial. When Strauss first presented his views in the late 1930s, however, many readers knew from personal experience that “persecution” may give birth to a subtle “art of writing.”
In Dr. Hannes Kerber’s lecture, he will show how the oppression of free speech in the totalitarian regimes of Germany and Europe provided Strauss a timely occasion to think through the relationship between politics, society, and philosophy.
Dr. Hannes Kerber is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University. His research and teaching focus on the tension between philosophy, politics, and religion in ancient and early-modern thought. His first book, Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums (“The Enlightenment of the Enlightenment: Lessing and the Challenge of Christianity”), was published in 2021 by Wallstein Verlag, and won the 2022 Chodowiecki Prize by Interdisziplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies. His second book, Leo Strauss on Plato’s “Euthyphro”: the 1948 Notebook, with Lectures and Critical Writings, is forthcoming with Penn State University Press in April 2023.
