History of Political Philosophy

The standard Straussian survey: an edited volume of commissioned essays running from Thucydides and Plato through Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke to Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, each chapter written by a specialist. Its method is the editors’ argument — every thinker is read on his own terms, as someone making a claim that might be true, rather than as an expression of his period. First published 1963; the third edition of 1987 is the one usually cited.

McCord’s list prints this as “Strauss/Cropsey”. Joseph Cropsey is the co-editor, not a translator: he and Strauss were colleagues at the University of Chicago, and Cropsey was Strauss’s literary executor.

Why it’s on the list: It anchors the curriculum’s history-of-political-philosophy and natural-right section, and doubles as the section’s map — the volume a reader uses to find which of the primary texts elsewhere on this list to open next.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on History of Political Philosophy and the Natural Right Tradition. The entry carries a ☑️ on the source page; the page gives no legend for that mark, so it is recorded here literally and not interpreted. The full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Leo Strauss — co-editor, and the source of the volume’s reading method.
• Politics — the subject.
• Ideology — what the Straussian method sets itself against.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.