Through an accurate reading of Leo Strauss’ essay Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political
Philosophy, the paper aims to provide a contribution to raise the principled question
of the relationship between philosophy and politics. Strauss states that there is an “intimate
connection” between the “facts” occurred in Germany in 1933 and “the core” of Heidegger’s
philosophical thought. Now, it's difficult to let this statement about Heidegger fit
within the well-known Strauss' critique of the historicistic vision, accordingly to which
every philosophy is conditioned from its historical time. An accurate, i. e., a critical reading
of Strauss’ essay, forces us to answer to the following question: What does properly
mean Strauss’ statement? Does it imply something like a reductio ad Hitlerum of Heidegger’s
thought, i.e., an essentially historicistic interpretation of the issue? My paper supports
the idea that Strauss’ interpretation of the relation between thought and politics is
not historical, but phenomenological, assuming the word in a Husserlian way. In fact, according
to Strauss, Heidegger’s thought – like every modern “philosophy of history” as for
example those of Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche – is basically a renunciation of the “infinite
philosophical task” in favour of what Husserl called Weltanschauungsphilosophie, that is, in
favour of time-conditioned practical solutions of the riddles of life and the world. Seen in
this way, Heidegger’s political engagement is a consequence, not of his philosophy, but
rather of his essentially non-philosophical incapacity to resist the temptation of Weltanschauungsphilosophie,
i. e., the desire of satisfying the human need of exaltation and consolation.
The roots of Heidegger’s political choices are therefore to be understood within a
specific cultural-political framework, and not within his philosophical thinking.
