one of the most distinguished interpreters to Americans of the non-liberal streams of European thought,-- American Political Science Review

    And so Chodorov set out to do something implausible: to rework the Nock book in his own style.Rothbard wrote of this book: "Frank's final flowering was his last ideological testament, the brilliantly written The Rise and Fall of Society, published in 1959, at the age of 72."One reason it was overlooked is that it appeared after the takeover of the American right by statists and warmongers. The Old Right, of which Chodorov was a last survivor, had died out, so there was no one to promote this work. It is amazing that it was published at all. But thank goodness it was!The book is short (194 pages) but pithy and enormously powerful. Indeed, for a book so overlooked, the reader will be surprised to find that it might be Chodorov's best work overall. Certainly it is suitable for classroom use, or as a primer on economics and society. Insight abounds herein.

    . . 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.

    Students of political science and the history of Western philosophy will appreciate its insights into the sources of state power, the nature of political organization, the aims of the state, citizenship, justice, law, and related concepts. In addition to point-by-point discussions of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics, this survey presents critical examinations of several of Plato's other dialogues along with Aristotle's Ethics. Further, it considers the origin of these ideas in the Greek political experience and in the contributions of other Greek theorists, including Heraclitus, Pythagoras, the Cyrenaics, and the Encyclopaedists. This classic of scholarship also includes epilogues that discuss the influence of Greek political ideas on such thinkers as Aquinas, Marsilio of Padua, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hegel.