Catherine H. Zuckert

In September 2011, AEI honored longtime AEI colleague Walter Berns with a panel dedicated to discussing his scholarship on the Constitution and the republican polity it supports. At this event, former AEI President Arthur C. Brooks announced that henceforth, AEI's annual Constitution Day celebration would be named in honor of Walter. This volume is a collection of the 13 Walter Berns Constitution Day Lectures given since 2012. Walter's own work ranged widely, addressing issues on such diverse topics as civil and religious liberties, free speech, capital punishment, political philosophy, political science, presidential selection, and patriotism. It's fitting that the lectures named after him cover an equally broad array of topics related to the Constitution and the American republic.

Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous "Machiavellian" politics laid down in his landmark political treatise The Prince. Others cite the Discourses on Livy to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With Machiavelli's Politics, Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a major reinterpretation of Machiavelli's prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics. Starting with Machiavelli's two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in The Prince lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the Discourses. Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in The Prince that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the Discourses, he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In The Art of War, for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in The Prince and the Discourses ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results. A stunning and ambitious analysis, Machiavelli's Politics brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli's teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained.

Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention, including stories in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Time magazine even called him one of the most influential men in American politics. With The Truth about Leo Strauss, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this notoriously complex thinker. Now, with Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, they turn their attention to a searching and more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss's thought as a whole, using the many manifestations of the problem of political philosophy as their touchstone.

Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention, including stories in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Time even called him "one of the most influential men in American politics." With The Truth about Leo Strauss, Michael P. and Catherine H. Zuckert challenged the many claims about this notoriously complex thinker. Now, with Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, they turn their attention to a more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss' thought as a whole. For Strauss, political philosophy presented a "problem" to which there have been a variety of solutions proposed over the course of Western history. Strauss' work, they show, revolved around recovering - and restoring-political philosophy to its original Socratic form. Since positivism and historicism represented two intellectual currents that undermined the possibility of a Socratic political philosophy, the first part of the book is devoted to Strauss' critique of these two positions. Then the authors explore Strauss' interpretation of both ancient and modern canonical political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Strauss' often-unconventional readings of these philosophers, they argue, pointed to solutions to the problem of political philosophy. Finally, the authors examine Strauss' thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. The book ultimately shows Strauss' writings as an attempt to reveal how characteristics of ancient and modern thought derive from different modes of solving the problem of political philosophy and why he considered the ancient solution superior.

Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato's true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the magisterial "Plato's Philosophers", Catherine H. Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama's earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And, finally, the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy's limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues' central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: What is the best way to live?

Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato's true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In "The Magisterial Plato's Philosophers", Catherine H. Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama's earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy's limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues' central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: what is the best way to live? Plato's dramatization of Socratic imperfections suggests, moreover, that he recognized the apparently unbridgeable gap between our understandings of human life and the nonhuman world. At a time when this gap continues to raise questions - about the division between sciences and the humanities and the potentially dehumanizing effects of scientific progress - Zuckert's brilliant interpretation of the entire Platonic corpus offers genuinely new insights into worlds past and present.

Is Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? "The Truth about Leo Strauss" puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate an oversimplified view of a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. In doing so, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure. Catherine and Michael Zuckert - both former students of Strauss - guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss' political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the idea that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the foot-steps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss' signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. Through their work, they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses. Balanced and accessible, "The Truth about Leo Strauss" is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy.

Is Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? "The Truth about Leo Strauss" puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate an oversimplified view of a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. In doing so, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure. Catherine and Michael Zuckert - both former students of Strauss - guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss' political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the idea that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the foot-steps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss' signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. Through their work, they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses. Balanced and accessible, "The Truth about Leo Strauss" is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy.

This study examines the work of five key philosophical figures from the 19th and 20th centuries through the lens of their own decidedly postmodern readings of Plato. The author argues that Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss and Derrida, convinced that modern rationalism had exhausted its possibilities, all turned to Plato in order to rediscover the original character of philosophy and to reconceive the Western tradition as a whole. Zuckert's juxtaposition of these seemingly disparate bodies of thought furnishes a synoptic view, not merely of these individual thinkers, but of the broad postmodern landscape as well. The result is a work that offers a perspective on the relation between the Western philosophical tradition and the evolving postmodern enterprise.