Historical Debates of Leo Strauss’s Political Philosophy and Martin Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being

Leo Strauss probably remains the single most influential and controversial writer of the history of political philosophy. The “enduring importance” of Strauss as a political philosopher does lie in his debates through his academic career with Heidegger, “the first philosopher” of the contemporary West. Today, the controversy surrounding Strauss’s political philosophy has already gone beyond the scope of Western academics and profoundly affected Chinese academics. China has not succumbed and will never “succumb to Western rationalism” as Strauss thinks: Strauss proposes to “begin to understand the possibility of a world religion”, and Heidegger advocates to prepare “for the great moment of the passing of the last god”, but the teaching of the ancient Chinese Sage Confucius is “human beings can promote the Tao, but not the Tao can promote human beings.”