Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss Quotes

“Strauss expressly refers to the “Notes.” He continues: “If ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ are the facts that transcend ‘culture’ or, to speak more exactly, are the original facts, then the radical critique of the concept of ‘culture’ is possible only in the form of a ‘theological-political treatise,’ which must, however, if it is not to lead again to the foundation of ‘culture,’ have the very opposite tendency to that of seventeenth-century theological-political treatises, especially those of Hobbes and Spinoza.”
― Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue

“When Leo Strauss disparages a world that is merely entertaining and interesting, he does so because the men in that world remain far beneath the potential of their nature and are capable of actualizing neither their most noble nor their most excellent faculties. He rejects the illusory security of a status quo of comfort and ease because a life that does not subject itself to the danger of radical questioning and the exertion of self-examination appears to him to be not worth living. A comfortable, cosy interior hinders liberation from the cave and ascent into the open. Strauss rejects the homogeneous world-state because he recognizes it as the state of Nietzsche's "last man" and because he sees the end of the particular political community as followed by the end of philosophy on earth.”
― Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue