The problem of natural right is one of the most controversial and important issues in contemporary political and social philosophy. In this classical work, Leo Strauss examines the status of the issue in contemporary thought and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the Charles R. Walgreen Lectures at the University of Chicago, where Strauss first presented the work, the book remains as controversial and essential as ever.

本书收入学者刘小枫学习施特劳斯学述的五篇心得，写于1999至2009年间。作者说：施特劳斯与价值相对主义和虚无主义的不懈斗争，其实就是《拯救与消遥》的立场。还说：对于我自己来说，本书告别的绝非仅仅是1999，而是1919以来的文化精神，甚至1781以来的哲学精神。本书之重要性由此可见。本书是刘小枫系列著作集最新的一种。

"All political action has . . . in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society. For the good society is the complete political good. If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges. . . . The theme of political philosophy is mankind's great objectives, freedom and government or empire—objectives which are capable of lifting all men beyond their poor selves. Political philosophy is that branch of philosophy which is closest to political life, to non-philosophic life, to human life."—From "What Is Political Philosophy?" What Is Political Philosophy?—a collection of ten essays and lectures and sixteen book reviews written between 1943 and 1957—contains some of Leo Strauss's most famous writings and some of his most explicit statements of the themes that made him famous. The title essay records Strauss's sole extended articulation of the meaning of political philosophy itself. Other essays discuss the relation of political philosophy to history, give an account of the political philosophy of the non-Christian Middle Ages and of classic European modernity, and present his theory of esoteric writing.

From Library Journal In fall 1959, Strauss offered a course at the University of Chicago titled "Plato's Political Philosophy," during which he lectured on the Symposium. It was suggested shortly after that the lectures be reworked and published, and Strauss agreed. Benardete (classics, New York Univ.) worked on the manuscript, but Strauss was not satisfied with the results, and the project languished until 1999, when Benardete picked it up again and completed it. The resulting publication is not only an excellent analysis of, and introduction to, the Symposium but a text that mirrors the mind and skills of a renowned teacher. Strauss provides a detailed and careful reading of the dialog, together with a cogent analysis of its place in Plato's work, the nature of Eros, the tension between philosophy and poetry, and other related topics. This is a valuable addition to libraries that support programs in philosophy and/or political studies. Terry Skeats, Bishop's Univ. Lib., Lennoxville, Quebec Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Product Description The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear in more than thirty years, this volume offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this renowned scholar as his students did. Given as a course in autumn 1959 under the title "Plato's Political Philosophy," these provocative lectures—until now, never published, but instead passed down from one generation of students to the next—show Strauss at his subtle and insightful best.

【内容提要】 本书试图全面把握施特劳斯的思想，却得到一些施特劳斯弟子的称赞，有人甚至认为，朗佩特对施特劳斯的理解胜于诸多施特劳斯弟子。 问题不在于解释者是否是施特劳斯的弟子，而在于如何理解施特劳斯。朗佩特的方式是：按施特劳斯所教诲的如何理解思想史上的大思想家的方式来理解施特劳斯——要像施特劳斯理解自己那样理解施特劳斯。本书的写作方式就是施特劳斯式的：对一篇幅短小的文本作精细的识读和理解——通过理解施特劳斯对尼采的理解，把握施特劳斯思想的基本特征，并对施特劳斯一生中发表的主要论著作出解释。作者似乎并不完全认同施特劳斯的哲学立场，但他强调，无论如何首先得理解施特劳斯，而要理解施特劳斯，就必须像他理解自己那样理解他。 【目录】 中译本说明 导言 第一章 施特劳斯的尼采研究 第二章 施特劳斯如何读《善恶的彼岸》 第三章 尼采在柏拉图政治哲学史上的位置 第四章 施特劳斯在柏拉图政治哲学史上的地位 第五章 尼采的启蒙 附录 注意尼采《善恶的彼岸》的谋篇（施特劳斯） 尼采主要著作缩名表 施特劳斯主要著和缩名表 参考文献

"The City and Man" consists of provocative essays by the late Leo Strauss on Aristotle's "Politics, " Plato's "Republic," and Thucydides' "Peloponnesian Wars." Together, the essays constitute a brilliant attempt to use classical political philosophy as a means of liberating modern political philosophy from the strangehold of ideology. The essays are based on a long and intimate familiarity with the works, but the essay on Aristotle is especially important as one of Strauss's few writings on the philosopher who largely shaped Strauss's conception of antiquity. The essay on Plato is a full-scale discussion of Platonic political philosophy, wide in scope yet compact in execution. When discussing Thucydides, Strauss scceeds not only in presenting the historian as a moral thinker of high rank, but in drawing his thought into the orbit of philosophy, and thus indicating a relation of history and philosophy that does not presuppose the absorption of philosphy by history.

德裔美籍著名政治思想家列奥•施特劳斯等人编撰的这部《政治哲学史》，系统全面地介绍了自古希腊至现代主要政治哲学家的政治哲学思想和著作，广泛深入地探讨了人的本性或本质，国家的起源和基础，社会经济制度的原理，道德或价值取向的根据，公平或正义的实质，以及人类最好的政治制度和最好的生活方式等政治哲学的基本问题。随着施特劳斯作为著名政治哲学家地位的确立，并由于本书问世后产生的影响，本书已被奉为政治哲学的经典著作和权威教本。