It’s said that the Chicago philosophy professor Leo Strauss liked to drop his smoking paraphernalia from the table to test whether his doctoral students would pick it up for him. If this doesn’t cast him as the best person, a wider contempt for the masses shines through from his work itself. But Strauss was also one of the cleverest enemies of equality, freedom, and democracy. His critique of liberalism was razor-sharp — and earned him the respect of socialist opponents Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem.
Born 125 years ago in the small town of Kirchhain, near Marburg, Strauss was the son of an Orthodox Jewish merchant family. After studying philosophy in Hamburg, he completed his doctorate under the…