Leo Strauss Quotes

“Nietzsche’s atheism is characterized by an element of gratitude; it is not simply a rebellion.”

“One can state Descartes’s view by saying: nature may be bad, reason cannot be bad. Not nature but reason supplies the standard. Only such knowledge as is purely rational is certainly and evidently true. We possess purely rational knowledge— not of nature, because our knowledge of nature depends on sense perception. Nor do we possess purely rational knowledge of the soul, because what we know of the soul depends very much on internal perception, on what Locke and other men called reflection, and looking back at you. Purely rational knowledge, knowledge depending in no way on events or any other experience, we have only of the moral law, which is to say the law of freedom in opposition to the law of nature. This is the Kantian view: reason takes the place of nature for supplying standards.”