Books
Thomism and Aristotelianism
–Jaffa, Harry V. Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011.
This edition is a reprint of the original 1952 publication by the University of Chicago Press.
Summary from Publisher: Dubbed a “minor classic” by Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaffa’s Thomism and Aristotelianism, that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, analyzes Thomas’… More
Review: Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace
– Social Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1952), pp. 117-121.Review of Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace. Vol. I: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth.
Review: The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity
– The American Political Science Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (June 1956), pp. 515-519.Review of The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas by Kurt von Fritz.
The Case Against Political Theory
– The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 259-275. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Strauss on Political Philosophy
– American Political Science Review 55:3 (September 1961).Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition
– Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 274-278.Aristotle
– In Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).Political Philosophy and Honor
– Modern Age, Fall 1977, pp. 387-394.Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award
– Modern Age 21:4 (Fall 1977). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).In Defense of Political Philosophy
– National Review, January 22, 1982, pp. 36-37. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Leo Strauss, 1952, ’53
– Modern Age, Summer 1982, pp. 266-269. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).“In Defense of Political Philosophy” Defended: A Rejoinder to Walter Berns
– Modern Age 27:3 (Summer/Fall 1983). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa
– Thomas B. Silver and Peter W. Schramm, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Dante and the Rediscovery of Political Philosophy by Ernest L. Fortin 2. Jefferson and the Practice of Empire by David Tucker 3. Elements of Ancient and… More
Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz
– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss
– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984.Excerpt: In 1974, the year following Leo Strauss’s death, the American Political Science Association established an annual award, in his honor, for the best dissertation in the… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss Defended
– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: Thomas Pangle declares that, in “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984), I am “guilty of gross misinterpretation” of his… More
The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa
– Thomas L. Pangle, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: The editor has invited me to respond to Harry Jaffa’s attack in his “Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books,vol. III, no. 3, Fall 1984). I do so after… More
The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange
– Letters, New York Review of Books, October 10, 1985.Excerpt: Before I met Strauss this is what I had been taught, and had never been given any reason to question. I had spent five years at Yale in the 1930s, as undergraduate and graduate… More
Leo Strauss’s Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West
– Teaching Political Science 12:2 (Winter 1985).On the Education of the Guardians of Freedom
– Modern Age, Spring 1986, pp. 131-140. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Dear Professor Drury
– Political Theory, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 316-325.Crisis of the Strauss Divided: The Legacy Reconsidered
– Social Research, Vol. 54, No. 3, Bicentennial of the Constitution (Autumn 1987), pp. 579-603.What is Political Science? Or How to Deal with the Lemming (or Gadarene Swine) Instinct
– Claremont, CA: Salvatori Center for the Study of Freedom, 1988.Humanizing Certitudes and Impoverishing Doubts: A Critique of The Closing of the American Mind
– Interpretation Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall 1988).Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy." Claremont Review of Books, October 7, 1991. Also found in: Deutsch, Kenneth L., and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994.Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More
Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion
– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More
Shakespeare’s Politics
– Ed. by Harry V. Jaffa and Alan Bloom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.Summary from the Publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist.… More
Strauss at 100
– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).Excerpt: It is almost routine in the scholarship of greatness, whether philosophic or political, to discover fathomless complexity in its subjects. Certainly this has been true about… More
A New Birth of Freedom
– Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. With a new foreword by Allen C. Guelzo. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More
Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe
– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More
Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety
– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More
Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria
– Robert P. Kraynak, The Review of Politics 71:02 (Spring 2009).Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa has inspired a generation of students in American political thought by defending the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence and of Abraham… More
Aristotle and the Higher Good
– New York Times, July 1, 2011.Excerpt: Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so… More
Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West
– Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012Summary from the Publisher: Crisis of the Strauss Divided brings together a collection of Jaffa’s published arguments defending and explaining that judgment, written during the 40 years… More
Straussian Civil Wars
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty, August 25, 2013.Excerpt: Jaffa’s achievement was to revolutionize the serious study of American politics and political history and as well to goad American conservatism into an examination of founding… More
Remembering Harry Jaffa
– W. B. Allen, Hillsdale College, 2015.Excerpt: Remember Harry Jaffa as he remembered himself: Leo Strauss’s best student. In nothing did Jaffa so powerfully affect the imaginations of near colleagues as in that claim of… More
The End of History Means the End of Freedom
– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.Excerpt: Mr. Fukuyama is a disciple of the late Alexander Kojeve, who re-interpreted Hegel’s version of the “end of history” to justify his support of the regime of Josef… More
Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace." Claremont Review of Books, July 18, 2012. Excerpt: Our lives were twined and intertwined in many ways. Joe entered the doctoral program in economics at Columbia soon after receiving his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1939.… More
Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker by Ken Masugi
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law & Liberty, January 15, 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most… More
Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding
– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More
Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy
– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More
The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited
– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More
Full Bloom
– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More
Essays
Thomism and Aristotelianism
–Jaffa, Harry V. Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011.
This edition is a reprint of the original 1952 publication by the University of Chicago Press.
Summary from Publisher: Dubbed a “minor classic” by Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaffa’s Thomism and Aristotelianism, that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, analyzes Thomas’… More
Review: Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace
– Social Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1952), pp. 117-121.Review of Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace. Vol. I: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth.
Review: The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity
– The American Political Science Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (June 1956), pp. 515-519.Review of The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas by Kurt von Fritz.
The Case Against Political Theory
– The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 259-275. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Strauss on Political Philosophy
– American Political Science Review 55:3 (September 1961).Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition
– Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 274-278.Aristotle
– In Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).Political Philosophy and Honor
– Modern Age, Fall 1977, pp. 387-394.Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award
– Modern Age 21:4 (Fall 1977). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).In Defense of Political Philosophy
– National Review, January 22, 1982, pp. 36-37. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Leo Strauss, 1952, ’53
– Modern Age, Summer 1982, pp. 266-269. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).“In Defense of Political Philosophy” Defended: A Rejoinder to Walter Berns
– Modern Age 27:3 (Summer/Fall 1983). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa
– Thomas B. Silver and Peter W. Schramm, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Dante and the Rediscovery of Political Philosophy by Ernest L. Fortin 2. Jefferson and the Practice of Empire by David Tucker 3. Elements of Ancient and… More
Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz
– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss
– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984.Excerpt: In 1974, the year following Leo Strauss’s death, the American Political Science Association established an annual award, in his honor, for the best dissertation in the… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss Defended
– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: Thomas Pangle declares that, in “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984), I am “guilty of gross misinterpretation” of his… More
The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa
– Thomas L. Pangle, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: The editor has invited me to respond to Harry Jaffa’s attack in his “Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books,vol. III, no. 3, Fall 1984). I do so after… More
The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange
– Letters, New York Review of Books, October 10, 1985.Excerpt: Before I met Strauss this is what I had been taught, and had never been given any reason to question. I had spent five years at Yale in the 1930s, as undergraduate and graduate… More
Leo Strauss’s Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West
– Teaching Political Science 12:2 (Winter 1985).On the Education of the Guardians of Freedom
– Modern Age, Spring 1986, pp. 131-140. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Dear Professor Drury
– Political Theory, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 316-325.Crisis of the Strauss Divided: The Legacy Reconsidered
– Social Research, Vol. 54, No. 3, Bicentennial of the Constitution (Autumn 1987), pp. 579-603.What is Political Science? Or How to Deal with the Lemming (or Gadarene Swine) Instinct
– Claremont, CA: Salvatori Center for the Study of Freedom, 1988.Humanizing Certitudes and Impoverishing Doubts: A Critique of The Closing of the American Mind
– Interpretation Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall 1988).Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy." Claremont Review of Books, October 7, 1991. Also found in: Deutsch, Kenneth L., and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994.Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More
Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion
– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More
Shakespeare’s Politics
– Ed. by Harry V. Jaffa and Alan Bloom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.Summary from the Publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist.… More
Strauss at 100
– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).Excerpt: It is almost routine in the scholarship of greatness, whether philosophic or political, to discover fathomless complexity in its subjects. Certainly this has been true about… More
A New Birth of Freedom
– Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. With a new foreword by Allen C. Guelzo. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More
Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe
– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More
Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety
– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More
Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria
– Robert P. Kraynak, The Review of Politics 71:02 (Spring 2009).Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa has inspired a generation of students in American political thought by defending the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence and of Abraham… More
Aristotle and the Higher Good
– New York Times, July 1, 2011.Excerpt: Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so… More
Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West
– Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012Summary from the Publisher: Crisis of the Strauss Divided brings together a collection of Jaffa’s published arguments defending and explaining that judgment, written during the 40 years… More
Straussian Civil Wars
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty, August 25, 2013.Excerpt: Jaffa’s achievement was to revolutionize the serious study of American politics and political history and as well to goad American conservatism into an examination of founding… More
Remembering Harry Jaffa
– W. B. Allen, Hillsdale College, 2015.Excerpt: Remember Harry Jaffa as he remembered himself: Leo Strauss’s best student. In nothing did Jaffa so powerfully affect the imaginations of near colleagues as in that claim of… More
The End of History Means the End of Freedom
– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.Excerpt: Mr. Fukuyama is a disciple of the late Alexander Kojeve, who re-interpreted Hegel’s version of the “end of history” to justify his support of the regime of Josef… More
Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace." Claremont Review of Books, July 18, 2012. Excerpt: Our lives were twined and intertwined in many ways. Joe entered the doctoral program in economics at Columbia soon after receiving his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1939.… More
Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker by Ken Masugi
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law & Liberty, January 15, 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most… More
Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding
– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More
Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy
– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More
The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited
– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More
Full Bloom
– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More
Commentary
Thomism and Aristotelianism
–Jaffa, Harry V. Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011.
This edition is a reprint of the original 1952 publication by the University of Chicago Press.
Summary from Publisher: Dubbed a “minor classic” by Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaffa’s Thomism and Aristotelianism, that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, analyzes Thomas’… More
Review: Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace
– Social Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1952), pp. 117-121.Review of Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace. Vol. I: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth.
Review: The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity
– The American Political Science Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (June 1956), pp. 515-519.Review of The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas by Kurt von Fritz.
The Case Against Political Theory
– The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 259-275. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Strauss on Political Philosophy
– American Political Science Review 55:3 (September 1961).Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition
– Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 274-278.Aristotle
– In Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).Political Philosophy and Honor
– Modern Age, Fall 1977, pp. 387-394.Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award
– Modern Age 21:4 (Fall 1977). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).In Defense of Political Philosophy
– National Review, January 22, 1982, pp. 36-37. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Leo Strauss, 1952, ’53
– Modern Age, Summer 1982, pp. 266-269. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).“In Defense of Political Philosophy” Defended: A Rejoinder to Walter Berns
– Modern Age 27:3 (Summer/Fall 1983). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa
– Thomas B. Silver and Peter W. Schramm, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Dante and the Rediscovery of Political Philosophy by Ernest L. Fortin 2. Jefferson and the Practice of Empire by David Tucker 3. Elements of Ancient and… More
Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz
– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss
– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984.Excerpt: In 1974, the year following Leo Strauss’s death, the American Political Science Association established an annual award, in his honor, for the best dissertation in the… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss Defended
– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: Thomas Pangle declares that, in “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984), I am “guilty of gross misinterpretation” of his… More
The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa
– Thomas L. Pangle, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: The editor has invited me to respond to Harry Jaffa’s attack in his “Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books,vol. III, no. 3, Fall 1984). I do so after… More
The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange
– Letters, New York Review of Books, October 10, 1985.Excerpt: Before I met Strauss this is what I had been taught, and had never been given any reason to question. I had spent five years at Yale in the 1930s, as undergraduate and graduate… More
Leo Strauss’s Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West
– Teaching Political Science 12:2 (Winter 1985).On the Education of the Guardians of Freedom
– Modern Age, Spring 1986, pp. 131-140. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Dear Professor Drury
– Political Theory, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 316-325.Crisis of the Strauss Divided: The Legacy Reconsidered
– Social Research, Vol. 54, No. 3, Bicentennial of the Constitution (Autumn 1987), pp. 579-603.What is Political Science? Or How to Deal with the Lemming (or Gadarene Swine) Instinct
– Claremont, CA: Salvatori Center for the Study of Freedom, 1988.Humanizing Certitudes and Impoverishing Doubts: A Critique of The Closing of the American Mind
– Interpretation Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall 1988).Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy." Claremont Review of Books, October 7, 1991. Also found in: Deutsch, Kenneth L., and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994.Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More
Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion
– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More
Shakespeare’s Politics
– Ed. by Harry V. Jaffa and Alan Bloom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.Summary from the Publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist.… More
Strauss at 100
– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).Excerpt: It is almost routine in the scholarship of greatness, whether philosophic or political, to discover fathomless complexity in its subjects. Certainly this has been true about… More
A New Birth of Freedom
– Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. With a new foreword by Allen C. Guelzo. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More
Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe
– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More
Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety
– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More
Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria
– Robert P. Kraynak, The Review of Politics 71:02 (Spring 2009).Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa has inspired a generation of students in American political thought by defending the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence and of Abraham… More
Aristotle and the Higher Good
– New York Times, July 1, 2011.Excerpt: Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so… More
Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West
– Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012Summary from the Publisher: Crisis of the Strauss Divided brings together a collection of Jaffa’s published arguments defending and explaining that judgment, written during the 40 years… More
Straussian Civil Wars
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty, August 25, 2013.Excerpt: Jaffa’s achievement was to revolutionize the serious study of American politics and political history and as well to goad American conservatism into an examination of founding… More
Remembering Harry Jaffa
– W. B. Allen, Hillsdale College, 2015.Excerpt: Remember Harry Jaffa as he remembered himself: Leo Strauss’s best student. In nothing did Jaffa so powerfully affect the imaginations of near colleagues as in that claim of… More
The End of History Means the End of Freedom
– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.Excerpt: Mr. Fukuyama is a disciple of the late Alexander Kojeve, who re-interpreted Hegel’s version of the “end of history” to justify his support of the regime of Josef… More
Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace." Claremont Review of Books, July 18, 2012. Excerpt: Our lives were twined and intertwined in many ways. Joe entered the doctoral program in economics at Columbia soon after receiving his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1939.… More
Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker by Ken Masugi
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law & Liberty, January 15, 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most… More
Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding
– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More
Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy
– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More
The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited
– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More
Full Bloom
– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More
Multimedia
Thomism and Aristotelianism
–Jaffa, Harry V. Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011.
This edition is a reprint of the original 1952 publication by the University of Chicago Press.
Summary from Publisher: Dubbed a “minor classic” by Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaffa’s Thomism and Aristotelianism, that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, analyzes Thomas’… More
Review: Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace
– Social Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1952), pp. 117-121.Review of Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace. Vol. I: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth.
Review: The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity
– The American Political Science Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (June 1956), pp. 515-519.Review of The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas by Kurt von Fritz.
The Case Against Political Theory
– The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 259-275. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Strauss on Political Philosophy
– American Political Science Review 55:3 (September 1961).Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition
– Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 274-278.Aristotle
– In Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).Political Philosophy and Honor
– Modern Age, Fall 1977, pp. 387-394.Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award
– Modern Age 21:4 (Fall 1977). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).In Defense of Political Philosophy
– National Review, January 22, 1982, pp. 36-37. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Leo Strauss, 1952, ’53
– Modern Age, Summer 1982, pp. 266-269. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).“In Defense of Political Philosophy” Defended: A Rejoinder to Walter Berns
– Modern Age 27:3 (Summer/Fall 1983). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa
– Thomas B. Silver and Peter W. Schramm, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Dante and the Rediscovery of Political Philosophy by Ernest L. Fortin 2. Jefferson and the Practice of Empire by David Tucker 3. Elements of Ancient and… More
Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz
– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss
– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984.Excerpt: In 1974, the year following Leo Strauss’s death, the American Political Science Association established an annual award, in his honor, for the best dissertation in the… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss Defended
– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: Thomas Pangle declares that, in “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984), I am “guilty of gross misinterpretation” of his… More
The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa
– Thomas L. Pangle, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: The editor has invited me to respond to Harry Jaffa’s attack in his “Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books,vol. III, no. 3, Fall 1984). I do so after… More
The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange
– Letters, New York Review of Books, October 10, 1985.Excerpt: Before I met Strauss this is what I had been taught, and had never been given any reason to question. I had spent five years at Yale in the 1930s, as undergraduate and graduate… More
Leo Strauss’s Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West
– Teaching Political Science 12:2 (Winter 1985).On the Education of the Guardians of Freedom
– Modern Age, Spring 1986, pp. 131-140. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Dear Professor Drury
– Political Theory, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 316-325.Crisis of the Strauss Divided: The Legacy Reconsidered
– Social Research, Vol. 54, No. 3, Bicentennial of the Constitution (Autumn 1987), pp. 579-603.What is Political Science? Or How to Deal with the Lemming (or Gadarene Swine) Instinct
– Claremont, CA: Salvatori Center for the Study of Freedom, 1988.Humanizing Certitudes and Impoverishing Doubts: A Critique of The Closing of the American Mind
– Interpretation Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall 1988).Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy." Claremont Review of Books, October 7, 1991. Also found in: Deutsch, Kenneth L., and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994.Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More
Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion
– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More
Shakespeare’s Politics
– Ed. by Harry V. Jaffa and Alan Bloom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.Summary from the Publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist.… More
Strauss at 100
– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).Excerpt: It is almost routine in the scholarship of greatness, whether philosophic or political, to discover fathomless complexity in its subjects. Certainly this has been true about… More
A New Birth of Freedom
– Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. With a new foreword by Allen C. Guelzo. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More
Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe
– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More
Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety
– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More
Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria
– Robert P. Kraynak, The Review of Politics 71:02 (Spring 2009).Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa has inspired a generation of students in American political thought by defending the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence and of Abraham… More
Aristotle and the Higher Good
– New York Times, July 1, 2011.Excerpt: Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so… More
Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West
– Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012Summary from the Publisher: Crisis of the Strauss Divided brings together a collection of Jaffa’s published arguments defending and explaining that judgment, written during the 40 years… More
Straussian Civil Wars
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty, August 25, 2013.Excerpt: Jaffa’s achievement was to revolutionize the serious study of American politics and political history and as well to goad American conservatism into an examination of founding… More
Remembering Harry Jaffa
– W. B. Allen, Hillsdale College, 2015.Excerpt: Remember Harry Jaffa as he remembered himself: Leo Strauss’s best student. In nothing did Jaffa so powerfully affect the imaginations of near colleagues as in that claim of… More
The End of History Means the End of Freedom
– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.Excerpt: Mr. Fukuyama is a disciple of the late Alexander Kojeve, who re-interpreted Hegel’s version of the “end of history” to justify his support of the regime of Josef… More
Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace." Claremont Review of Books, July 18, 2012. Excerpt: Our lives were twined and intertwined in many ways. Joe entered the doctoral program in economics at Columbia soon after receiving his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1939.… More
Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker by Ken Masugi
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law & Liberty, January 15, 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most… More
Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding
– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More
Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy
– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More
The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited
– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More
Full Bloom
– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More
Teaching
Thomism and Aristotelianism
–Jaffa, Harry V. Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011.
This edition is a reprint of the original 1952 publication by the University of Chicago Press.
Summary from Publisher: Dubbed a “minor classic” by Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaffa’s Thomism and Aristotelianism, that grew out of his doctoral dissertation, analyzes Thomas’… More
Review: Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace
– Social Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 1952), pp. 117-121.Review of Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace. Vol. I: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth.
Review: The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity
– The American Political Science Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (June 1956), pp. 515-519.Review of The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas by Kurt von Fritz.
The Case Against Political Theory
– The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 259-275. Reprinted in Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Strauss on Political Philosophy
– American Political Science Review 55:3 (September 1961).Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition
– Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 274-278.Aristotle
– In Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). Reprinted in The Conditions of Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).Political Philosophy and Honor
– Modern Age, Fall 1977, pp. 387-394.Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award
– Modern Age 21:4 (Fall 1977). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).In Defense of Political Philosophy
– National Review, January 22, 1982, pp. 36-37. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Leo Strauss, 1952, ’53
– Modern Age, Summer 1982, pp. 266-269. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).“In Defense of Political Philosophy” Defended: A Rejoinder to Walter Berns
– Modern Age 27:3 (Summer/Fall 1983). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa
– Thomas B. Silver and Peter W. Schramm, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Dante and the Rediscovery of Political Philosophy by Ernest L. Fortin 2. Jefferson and the Practice of Empire by David Tucker 3. Elements of Ancient and… More
Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz
– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss
– Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984.Excerpt: In 1974, the year following Leo Strauss’s death, the American Political Science Association established an annual award, in his honor, for the best dissertation in the… More
The Legacy of Leo Strauss Defended
– Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: Thomas Pangle declares that, in “The Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books, Fall 1984), I am “guilty of gross misinterpretation” of his… More
The Platonism of Leo Strauss: A Reply to Harry Jaffa
– Thomas L. Pangle, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 1985.Excerpt: The editor has invited me to respond to Harry Jaffa’s attack in his “Legacy of Leo Strauss” (Claremont Review of Books,vol. III, no. 3, Fall 1984). I do so after… More
The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange
– Letters, New York Review of Books, October 10, 1985.Excerpt: Before I met Strauss this is what I had been taught, and had never been given any reason to question. I had spent five years at Yale in the 1930s, as undergraduate and graduate… More
Leo Strauss’s Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West
– Teaching Political Science 12:2 (Winter 1985).On the Education of the Guardians of Freedom
– Modern Age, Spring 1986, pp. 131-140. Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).Dear Professor Drury
– Political Theory, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 316-325.Crisis of the Strauss Divided: The Legacy Reconsidered
– Social Research, Vol. 54, No. 3, Bicentennial of the Constitution (Autumn 1987), pp. 579-603.What is Political Science? Or How to Deal with the Lemming (or Gadarene Swine) Instinct
– Claremont, CA: Salvatori Center for the Study of Freedom, 1988.Humanizing Certitudes and Impoverishing Doubts: A Critique of The Closing of the American Mind
– Interpretation Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall 1988).Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy." Claremont Review of Books, October 7, 1991. Also found in: Deutsch, Kenneth L., and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994.Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More
Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion
– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More
Shakespeare’s Politics
– Ed. by Harry V. Jaffa and Alan Bloom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.Summary from the Publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist.… More
Strauss at 100
– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).Excerpt: It is almost routine in the scholarship of greatness, whether philosophic or political, to discover fathomless complexity in its subjects. Certainly this has been true about… More
A New Birth of Freedom
– Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. With a new foreword by Allen C. Guelzo. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More
Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe
– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More
Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety
– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More
Moral Order in the Western Tradition: Harry Jaffa’s Grand Synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria
– Robert P. Kraynak, The Review of Politics 71:02 (Spring 2009).Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa has inspired a generation of students in American political thought by defending the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence and of Abraham… More
Aristotle and the Higher Good
– New York Times, July 1, 2011.Excerpt: Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so… More
Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West
– Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012Summary from the Publisher: Crisis of the Strauss Divided brings together a collection of Jaffa’s published arguments defending and explaining that judgment, written during the 40 years… More
Straussian Civil Wars
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty, August 25, 2013.Excerpt: Jaffa’s achievement was to revolutionize the serious study of American politics and political history and as well to goad American conservatism into an examination of founding… More
Remembering Harry Jaffa
– W. B. Allen, Hillsdale College, 2015.Excerpt: Remember Harry Jaffa as he remembered himself: Leo Strauss’s best student. In nothing did Jaffa so powerfully affect the imaginations of near colleagues as in that claim of… More
The End of History Means the End of Freedom
– The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015.Excerpt: Mr. Fukuyama is a disciple of the late Alexander Kojeve, who re-interpreted Hegel’s version of the “end of history” to justify his support of the regime of Josef… More
Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace
– Jaffa, Harry V. "Joseph Cropsey, Rest in Peace." Claremont Review of Books, July 18, 2012. Excerpt: Our lives were twined and intertwined in many ways. Joe entered the doctoral program in economics at Columbia soon after receiving his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1939.… More
Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker by Ken Masugi
– Ken Masugi, Library of Law & Liberty, January 15, 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most… More
Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding
– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More
Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy
– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More
The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited
– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More
Full Bloom
– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More