Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy . Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago , where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.
110-485: Trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger , Strauss authored books on Spinoza and Hobbes , and articles on Maimonides and Al-Farabi . In the late 1930s, his research focused on the texts of Plato and Aristotle , retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy , and encouraging
220-562: A "conservative, even orthodox Jewish home", but one which knew little about Judaism except strict adherence to ceremonial laws. His father and uncle operated a farm supply and livestock business that they inherited from their father, Meyer (1835–1919), a leading member of the local Jewish community. After attending the Kirchhain Volksschule and the Protestant Rektoratsschule, Leo Strauss was enrolled at
330-642: A Jewish fraternity and worked for the German Zionist movement, which introduced him to various German Jewish intellectuals, such as Norbert Elias , Leo Löwenthal , Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin . Benjamin was and remained an admirer of Strauss and his work throughout his life. Strauss's closest friend was Jacob Klein but he also was intellectually engaged with Gerhard Krüger—and also Karl Löwith , Julius Guttmann , Hans-Georg Gadamer , and Franz Rosenzweig (to whom Strauss dedicated his first book), as well as Gershom Scholem , Alexander Altmann , and
440-401: A Kantian turn in contemporary analytic philosophy has been taken up by his student Robert Brandom . Brandom's work has transformed Sellars' project to introducing a Hegelian phase in analytic philosophy. In the 1980s, interest in neo-Kantianism has revived in the wake of the work of Gillian Rose , who is a critic of this movement's influence on modern philosophy, and because of its influence on
550-424: A careful and respectful reading of the classical texts, arguing that their authors wrote in an esoteric manner, which he called " the art of writing " and which he practiced in his own works. He suggested that the classical authors hid their true teachings behind a surface layer of conventional opinions, in order to avoid persecution and to educate only the few who were capable of grasping them, and that they engaged in
660-650: A close friend of R. H. Tawney and was on less friendly terms with Isaiah Berlin . Unable to find permanent employment in England, Strauss moved to the United States in 1937, under the patronage of Harold Laski , who made introductions and helped him obtain a brief lectureship. After a short stint as a research fellow in the Department of History at Columbia University , Strauss secured a position at The New School , where, between 1938 and 1948, he worked in
770-558: A close relationship with Rockefeller University (also known as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research) with many faculty holding overlapping positions between the institutions. The Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease was a Rockefeller-funded campaign from 1909 to 1914 to study and treat hookworm disease in 11 Southern states. Hookworm was known as the "germ of laziness". In 1913,
880-897: A common movement, often saw massive fundamental disagreements. Hermann Cohen became the leader of the Marburg School (centered in the town of the same name ), the other prominent representatives of which were Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer . Another important group, the Southwest ( German ) School (also known as the Heidelberg School or Baden School , centered in Heidelberg , Baden in Southwest Germany ) included Wilhelm Windelband , Heinrich Rickert and Ernst Troeltsch . The Marburg School emphasized epistemology and philosophical logic , whereas
990-413: A dialogue with each other across the ages. Strauss called this dialogue " the great conversation ", and invited his readers to join it. Strauss's interpretation of the classical political philosophy was influenced by his own Jewish background and his encounter with Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophy, especially the works of Al-Farabi and Maimonides . He argued that these philosophers, who lived under
1100-532: A discourse with Carl Schmitt . However, after Strauss left Germany, he broke off the discourse when Schmitt failed to respond to his letters. After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1932, Strauss left his position at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin for Paris . He returned to Germany only once, for a few short days twenty years later. In Paris, he married Marie (Miriam) Bernsohn,
1210-474: A discussion of the evolution of natural rights via an analysis of the thought of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke . He concludes by critiquing Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke . At the heart of the book are excerpts from Plato , Aristotle , and Cicero . Much of his philosophy is a reaction to the works of Heidegger . Indeed, Strauss wrote that Heidegger's thinking must be understood and confronted before any complete formulation of modern political theory
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#17327879893671320-619: A haven for scholars threatened by the Nazis. After World War II the foundation sent a team to West Germany to investigate how it could become involved in reconstructing the country. They focused on restoring democracy, especially regarding education and scientific research, with the long-term goal of reintegrating Germany into the Western world. The foundation also supported the early initiatives of Henry Kissinger , such as his directorship of Harvard's International Seminars (funded as well by
1430-465: A large part of Senior's fortune was insulated from inheritance taxes. The first secretary of the foundation was Jerome Davis Greene , the former secretary of Harvard University , who wrote a "memorandum on principles and policies" for an early meeting of the trustees that established a rough framework for the foundation's work. It was initially located within the family office at Standard Oil 's headquarters at 26 Broadway , later (in 1933) shifting to
1540-545: A play on reductio ad absurdum , suggesting that comparing an argument to one of Hitler 's, or "playing the Nazi card", is often a fallacy of irrelevance. In 1954, he met Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg and delivered a public speech on Socrates . He had received a call for a temporary lectureship in Hamburg in 1965 (which he declined for health reasons) and received and accepted an honorary doctorate from
1650-427: A product of modernity, for its lack of moral and spiritual foundations, and for its tendency to undermine the authority of religion, tradition, and natural law . To overcome the crisis of modernity, Strauss proposed a return to the classical political philosophy of the ancient Greeks and the medieval thinkers , who he believed had a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of human nature and society. He advocated
1760-506: A revised notion of Judaism , particularly in Cohen's seminal work, one of the few works of the movement available in English translation. The neo-Kantian school was of importance in devising a division of philosophy that has had durable influence well beyond Germany. It made early use of terms such as epistemology and upheld its prominence over ontology . Natorp had a decisive influence on
1870-475: A scholar. He wrote that most self-described philosophers are in actuality scholars, cautious and methodical. Great thinkers, in contrast, boldly and creatively address big problems. Scholars deal with these problems only indirectly by reasoning about the great thinkers' differences. In Natural Right and History , Strauss begins with a critique of Max Weber 's epistemology , briefly engages the relativism of Martin Heidegger (who goes unnamed) and continues with
1980-607: A short time, the chief jurist of Nazi Germany, was one of the first important German academics to review Strauss's early work positively. Schmitt's positive reference for, and approval of, Strauss's work on Hobbes was instrumental in winning Strauss the scholarship funding that allowed him to leave Germany. Strauss's critique and clarifications of The Concept of the Political led Schmitt to make significant emendations in its second edition. Writing to Schmitt in 1932, Strauss summarised Schmitt's political theology that "because man
2090-420: A solution to an old political or philosophical problem. He spoke of the danger in trying finally to resolve the debate between rationalism and traditionalism in politics. In particular, along with many in the pre-World War II German Right, he feared people trying to force a world state to come into being in the future, thinking that it would inevitably become a tyranny . Hence he kept his distance from
2200-406: A value-free scientific eye, for Strauss, was self-deluded. Positivism , the heir to both Auguste Comte and Max Weber in the quest to make purportedly value-free judgments, failed to justify its own existence, which would require a value judgment. While modern-era liberalism had stressed the pursuit of individual liberty as its highest goal, Strauss felt that there should be a greater interest in
2310-531: A widow with a young child, whom he had known previously in Germany. He adopted his wife's son, Thomas, and later his sister's child, Jenny Strauss Clay (later a professor of classics at the University of Virginia); he and Miriam had no biological children of their own. At his death, he was survived by Thomas, Jenny Strauss Clay, and three grandchildren. Strauss became a lifelong friend of Alexandre Kojève and
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#17327879893672420-589: Is a pilot grant program that is overseen by the Lincoln Center . The grants are to be used towards art and cultural opportunities in the underserved areas of Brooklyn and the South Bronx with three overarching goals. The Rockefeller Foundation supported the art scene in Haiti in 1948 and a literacy project with UNESCO . Rusk was involved with funding the humanities and the social sciences during
2530-479: Is by nature evil, he, therefore, needs dominion . But dominion can be established, that is, men can be unified only in a unity against—against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men ... the political thus understood is not the constitutive principle of the state, of order, but a condition of the state." Strauss, however, directly opposed Schmitt's position. For Strauss, Schmitt and his return to Thomas Hobbes helpfully clarified
2640-562: Is flawed because it assumes the fact–value distinction , a concept which Strauss found dubious. He traced its roots in Enlightenment philosophy to Max Weber , a thinker whom Strauss described as a "serious and noble mind". Weber wanted to separate values from science but, according to Strauss, was really a derivative thinker, deeply influenced by Nietzsche's relativism . Strauss treated politics as something that could not be studied from afar. A political scientist examining politics with
2750-427: Is oriented toward universal freedom as opposed to "ancient liberalism" which is oriented toward human excellence ), contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards extreme relativism , which in turn led to two types of nihilism : In the belief that 20th-century relativism, scientism , historicism , and nihilism were all implicated in the deterioration of modern society and philosophy, Strauss sought to uncover
2860-485: Is possible, and this means that political thought has to engage with issues of ontology and the history of metaphysics. Strauss wrote that Friedrich Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand historicism , an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian philosophy of history . Heidegger, in Strauss's view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche, whereas Nietzsche believed "our own principles, including
2970-556: Is sometimes referred to as the " Villa Serbelloni ", the property bequeathed to the foundation in 1959 under the presidency of Dean Rusk (who was later to become U.S. President Kennedy 's secretary of state). The Bellagio Center operates both a conference center and a residency program . Numerous Nobel laureates , Pulitzer winners, National Book Award recipients, Prince Mahidol Award winners, and MacArthur fellows , as well as several acting and former heads of state and government, have been in residence at Bellagio. Agriculture
3080-720: The Phaedrus , Strauss proposed that the classical and medieval art of esoteric writing is the proper medium for philosophic learning: rather than displaying philosophers' thoughts superficially, classical and medieval philosophical texts guide their readers in thinking and learning independently of imparted knowledge. Thus, Strauss agrees with the Socrates of the Phaedrus , where the Greek indicates that, insofar as writing does not respond when questioned, good writing provokes questions in
3190-635: The Central Intelligence Agency ) and the early foreign policy magazine Confluence , both established by him while he was still a graduate student. In 2021, Rajiv J. Shah , president of the Rockefeller Foundation, released a statement condemning eugenics and supporting the anti-eugenics movement. He stated that "[...]we commend the Anti-Eugenics Project for their essential work to understand[...]
3300-663: The China Medical Board , which established the first public health university in China, the Peking Union Medical College , in 1921; this was subsequently nationalized when the Communists took over the country in 1949. In the same year it began a program of international fellowships to train scholars at many of the world's universities at the post-doctoral level . The Foundation also maintained
3410-769: The Cold War period, including study of the Soviet Union . In July 2022, the Rockefeller Foundation granted $ 1m to the Wikimedia Foundation . The foundation also owns and operates the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy . The center has several buildings, spread across a 50-acre (200,000 m ) property, on the peninsula between lakes Como and Lecco in Northern Italy . The center
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3520-527: The GE Building (then RCA ), along with the newly named family office, Room 5600 , at Rockefeller Center ; later it moved to the Time-Life Building in the center, before shifting to its current Fifth Avenue address. In 1914, the trustees set up a new Department of Industrial Relations, inviting William Lyon Mackenzie King to head it. He became a close and key advisor to Junior through
3630-729: The Gymnasium Philippinum (affiliated with the University of Marburg ) in nearby Marburg (from which Johannes Althusius and Carl Joachim Friedrich also graduated) in 1912, graduating in 1917. He boarded with the Marburg cantor Strauss (no relation), whose residence served as a meeting place for followers of the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen . Strauss served in the German army from World War I from July 5, 1917, to December 1918. Strauss subsequently enrolled in
3740-880: The International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines . Part of the original program, the funding of the IRRI was later taken over by the Ford Foundation. The International Rice Research Institute and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center are part of a consortium of agricultural research organizations known as CGIAR . Costing around $ 600 million, over 50 years, the revolution brought new farming technology, increased productivity, expanded crop yields and mass fertilization to many countries throughout
3850-1171: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics , (also known as the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research ) which conducted eugenics experiments in Nazi Germany and influenced the development of Nazi racial scientific ideology. Rockefeller spent almost $ 3 million between 1925 and 1935, and also funded other German eugenicists, Herman Poll , Alfred Grotjahn , Eugen Fischer , and Hans Nachsteim , continuing even after Hitler's ascent to power in 1933; Rüdin's work influenced compulsory sterilisation in Nazi Germany . Josef Mengele worked as an assistant in Verschuer's lab, though Rockefeller executives did not know of Mengele and stopped funding that specific research before World War II started in 1939. The Rockefeller Foundation continued funding German eugenics research even after it
3960-634: The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM), established by Senior in 1918 and named after his wife, the Rockefeller fortune was for the first time directed to supporting research by social scientists. During its first few years of work, the LSRM awarded funds primarily to social workers, with its funding decisions guided primarily by Junior. In 1922, Beardsley Ruml was hired to direct the LSRM, and he most decisively shifted
4070-625: The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. they spent more than $ 25 million in developing other public health schools in the US and in 21 foreign countries. In 1913, it also began a 20-year support program of the Bureau of Social Hygiene , whose mission was research and education on birth control, maternal health and sex education. In 1914, the foundation set up
4180-524: The Ludlow Massacre , turning around his attitude to unions ; however the foundation's involvement in IR was criticized for advancing the family's business interests. The foundation henceforth confined itself to funding responsible organizations involved in this and other controversial fields, which were beyond the control of the foundation itself. Junior became the foundation chairman in 1917. Through
4290-653: The OECD , the foundation provided $ 284 million for development in 2021. The foundation has given more than $ 14 billion in current dollars. The foundation has had an international reach since the 1930s and major influence on global non-governmental organizations . The World Health Organization is modeled on the International Health Division of the foundation, which sent doctors abroad to study and treat human subjects. The National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health are also modeled on
4400-730: The University of Hamburg and the [[[Bundesverdienstkreuz]]] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) (German Order of Merit) via the German representative in Chicago. In 1969, Strauss moved to Claremont McKenna College (formerly Claremont Men's College) in California for a year, and then to St. John's College, Annapolis in 1970, where he was the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence until his death from pneumonia in 1973. He
4510-610: The University of Hamburg , where he received his doctorate in 1921; his thesis, On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi ( Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H. Jacobis ), was supervised by Ernst Cassirer . He also attended courses at the Universities of Freiburg and Marburg, including some taught by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger . Strauss joined
Leo Strauss - Misplaced Pages Continue
4620-495: The categorical imperative . In the analytic tradition, the revival of interest in the work of Kant that has been underway since Peter Strawson 's work The Bounds of Sense (1966) can also be viewed as effectively neo-Kantian, not least due to its continuing emphasis on epistemology at the expense of ontology. Around the same time as Strawson, Wilfrid Sellars also renewed interest in Kant's philosophy. His project of introducing
4730-400: The rule of Islam , faced similar challenges as the ancient Greeks. He also claimed that these philosophers, who were both faithful to their revealed religions and loyal to the rational pursuit of philosophy, offered a model of how to reconcile reason and revelation , philosophy and theology, Athens and Jerusalem. For Strauss, politics and philosophy were necessarily intertwined. He regarded
4840-501: The 100 Resilient Cities program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. In January 2016, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development announced winners of its National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC), awarding three 100RC member cities – New York, NY ; Norfolk, VA ; and New Orleans, LA – with more than $ 437 million in disaster resilience funding. The grant was the largest ever received by
4950-718: The 1930s. Even into the 1950s, Rockefeller continued to provide some funding for research borne out of German eugenics. The foundation also funded the relocation of scholars threatened by the Nazis to America in the 1930s, known as the Refugee Scholar Program and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. Some of the notable figures relocated or saved, among a total of 303 scholars, were Thomas Mann , Claude Lévi-Strauss and Leó Szilárd . The foundation helped The New School provide
5060-533: The 19th century, Western scholars commonly understood that philosophical writing is not at home in any polity, no matter how liberal. Insofar as it questions conventional wisdom at its roots, philosophy must guard itself especially against those readers who believe themselves authoritative, wise, and liberal defenders of the status quo. In questioning established opinions, or in investigating the principles of morality, philosophers of old found it necessary to convey their messages in an oblique manner. Their "art of writing"
5170-874: The American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut , Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Karamu House in Cleveland , and Lincoln Center in New York. The foundation underwrote Spike Lee 's documentary on New Orleans , When the Levees Broke . The film has been used as the basis for a curriculum on poverty, developed by the Teachers College at Columbia University for their students. The Cultural Innovation Fund
5280-621: The Arabist Paul Kraus , who married Strauss's sister Bettina (Strauss and his wife later adopted Paul and Bettina Kraus's child when both parents died in the Middle East ). With several of these friends, Strauss carried on vigorous epistolary exchanges later in life, many of which are published in the Gesammelte Schriften ( Collected Writings ), some in translation from the German. Strauss had also been engaged in
5390-648: The Caribbean including Italy , France , Venezuela , Mexico , and Puerto Rico , totaling fifty-two countries on six continents and twenty-nine islands. The first director was Wickliffe Rose , followed by F.F. Russell in 1923, Wilbur Sawyer in 1935, and George Strode in 1944. A number of notable physicians and field scientists worked on the international campaigns, including Lewis Hackett , Hideyo Noguchi , Juan Guiteras , George C. Payne , Livingston Farrand , Cornelius P. Rhoads , and William Bosworth Castle . In 1936, The Rockefeller Foundation received one of
5500-503: The Kantian understandings of the transcendental include Jean-François Lyotard and Jean-Luc Nancy . Classical conservative thinker Roger Scruton has been greatly influenced by Kantian ethics and aesthetics. Rockefeller Fellowship The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue , New York City. The foundation
5610-546: The Mexican Government and derail any possible communist infiltration, in order to protect the Rockefeller family's investments. By 1943, this program, under the foundation's Mexican Agriculture Project , had proved such a success with the science of corn propagation and general principles of agronomy that it was exported to other Latin American countries; in 1956, the program was then taken to India; again with
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#17327879893675720-406: The Southwest school emphasized issues of culture and value theory (notably the fact–value distinction ). A third group, mainly represented by Leonard Nelson , established the neo-Friesian School (named after post-Kantian philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries ) which emphasized philosophy of science . The neo-Kantian schools tended to emphasize scientific readings of Kant, often downplaying
5830-502: The application of those ideas to contemporary political theory. Strauss was born on September 20, 1899, in the small town of Kirchhain in Hesse-Nassau , a province of the Kingdom of Prussia (part of the German Empire ), to Hugo Strauss and Jennie Strauss, née David. According to Allan Bloom 's 1974 obituary in Political Theory , Strauss "was raised as an Orthodox Jew ", but the family does not appear to have completely embraced Orthodox practice. Strauss himself noted that he came from
5940-536: The belief in progress, will become as unconvincing and alien as all earlier principles (essences) had shown themselves to be" and "the only way out seems to be ... that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth." Heidegger believed that the tragic nihilism of Nietzsche was itself a "myth" guided by a defective Western conception of Being that Heidegger traced to Plato. In his published correspondence with Alexandre Kojève , Strauss wrote that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
6050-434: The best possible regime but rather the nature of political things—the nature of the city." Strauss argued that the city-in-speech was unnatural, precisely because "it is rendered possible by the abstraction from eros ". Though skeptical of "progress," Strauss was equally skeptical about political agendas of "return"—that is, going backward instead of forward. In fact, he was consistently suspicious of anything claiming to be
6160-510: The center of all our work: [...] confronting the hateful legacies of the past [...] we understand that the work we engage in today does not absolve us of yesterday's mistakes. [...]" Although the United States never joined the League of Nations , the Rockefeller Foundation was involved, and by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a "Parliament of Nations" to a modern think tank that used specialized expertise to provide in-depth impartial analysis of international issues. After
6270-461: The city of Norfolk. In April 2019, it was announced that the foundation would no longer be funding the 100 Resilient Cities program as a whole. Some elements of the initiative's work, most prominently the funding of several cities' Chief Resilience Officer roles, continues to be managed and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, while other aspects of the program continue in the form of two independent organizations, Resilient Cities Catalyst (RCC) and
6380-462: The direct family link and becoming the sixth family member to serve on the board. C. Douglas Dillon , the United States Secretary of the Treasury under both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson , served as chairman of the foundation. Stock in the family's oil companies had been a major part of the foundation's assets, beginning with Standard Oil and later with its corporate descendants, including ExxonMobil . In December 2020,
6490-628: The eugenics movement. The Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Carnegie Institution , was the primary financier for the Eugenics Record Office , until 1939. The foundation also provided grants to Margaret Sanger and Alexis Carrel , who supported birth control, compulsory sterilization and eugenics . Sanger went to Japan in 1922 and influenced the birth control movement there. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated over $ 400,000, which would be almost $ 4 million adjusted for inflation in 2003, to hundreds of German researchers, including Ernst Rüdin and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer , through funding
6600-616: The fields of social and political philosophy . Towards the end of 1898 G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell rebelled against Kant and Hegel who were the leading philosophers within British and American universities at that time. Neo-Kantianism was banned out of them for the following fifty years and continued to survive solely in the Continental Philosophy. In the 1960s Strawson published The Bounds of Sense , which relaunched Neo-Kantianism while proposing to deny its doctrine of transcendental idealism . John Rawls ' A Theory of Justice (1971) restored Kantian practical philosophy of
6710-504: The first awarded Walter Reed Medals from The American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene to recognize its study and control of Yellow Fever . The World Health Organization , seen as a successor to the IHD, was formed in 1948, and the IHD was subsumed by the larger Rockefeller Foundation in 1951, discontinuing its overseas work. While the Rockefeller doctors working in tropical locales such as Mexico emphasized scientific neutrality, they had political and economic aims to promote
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#17327879893676820-415: The focus of Rockefeller philanthropy into the social sciences , stimulating the founding of university research centers, and creating the Social Science Research Council . In January 1929, LSRM funds were folded into the Rockefeller Foundation, in a major reorganization. The Rockefeller family helped lead the foundation in its early years, but later limited itself to one or two representatives, to maintain
6930-414: The foundation expanded its work with the Sanitary Commission abroad and set up the International Health Division (also known as International Health Board), which began the foundation's first international public health activities. The International Health Division conducted campaigns in public health and sanitation against malaria , yellow fever , and hookworm in areas throughout Europe, Latin America and
7040-476: The foundation granted $ 100000 to the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago. This grant was renewed in 1938, with payments extending into the early-1940s. This division funded women's contraception and the human reproductive system in general, but also was involved in funding controversial eugenics research. Other funding went into endocrinology departments in American universities, human heredity, mammalian biology, human physiology and anatomy, psychology , and
7150-425: The foundation pledged to dump their fossil fuel holdings. With a $ 5 billion endowment, the Rockefeller Foundation was "the largest US foundation to embrace the rapidly growing divestment movement." CNN writer Matt Egan noted, "This divestment is especially symbolic because the Rockefeller Foundation was founded by oil money." Public health , health aid , and medical research are the most prominent areas of work of
7260-432: The foundation's independence and avoid charges of undue family influence. These representatives have included the former president John D. Rockefeller III , and then his son John D. Rockefeller, IV , who gave up the trusteeship in 1981. In 1989, David Rockefeller 's daughter, Peggy Dulany , was appointed to the board for a five-year term. In October 2006, David Rockefeller Jr. joined the board of trustees, re-establishing
7370-580: The foundation's president committed to reckoning with their history, and to centering equity and inclusion. John D. Rockefeller Sr. first conceived the idea of the foundation in 1901. In 1906, Rockefeller's business and philanthropic advisor, Frederick Taylor Gates , encouraged him toward "permanent corporate philanthropies for the good of Mankind" so that his heirs should not "dissipate their inheritances or become intoxicated with power." In 1909 Rockefeller signed over 73,000 Standard Oil shares worth $ 50 million, to his son, Gates and Harold Fowler McCormick as
7480-423: The foundation. On December 5, 1913, the Board made its first grant of $ 100,000 to the American Red Cross to purchase property for its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The foundation established the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Harvard School of Public Health , two of the first such institutions in the United States, and established the School of Hygiene at the University of Toronto in 1927, and
7590-472: The geopolitical imperative of providing an antidote to communism. It wasn't until 1959 that senior foundation officials succeeded in getting the Ford Foundation (and later USAID , and later still, the World Bank ) to sign on to the major philanthropic project, known now to the world as the Green Revolution . It was originally conceived in 1943 as CIMMYT , the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico. It also provided significant funding for
7700-403: The harmful legacies of eugenicist ideologies. [...] examine the role that philanthropies played in developing and perpetuating eugenics policies and practices. The Rockefeller Foundation is currently reckoning with our own history in relation to eugenics. This requires uncovering the facts and confronting uncomfortable truths, [...] The Rockefeller Foundation is putting equity and inclusion at
7810-439: The history of phenomenology and is often credited with leading Edmund Husserl to adopt the vocabulary of transcendental idealism . Emil Lask was influenced by Edmund Husserl's work, and himself exerted a remarkable influence on the young Martin Heidegger . The debate between Cassirer and Heidegger over the interpretation of Kant led the latter to formulate reasons for viewing Kant as a forerunner of phenomenology ; this view
7920-479: The identification of human viruses, techniques for virus identification, and arthropod -borne viruses. Bristol-Myers Squibb , Johns Hopkins University and the Rockefeller Foundation are currently the subject of a $ 1 billion lawsuit from Guatemala for "roles in a 1940s U.S. government experiment that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis ". A previous suit against the United States government
8030-696: The interpretation of the results of the Transcendental Aesthetic , a dispute that prompted Hermann Cohen 's 1871 seminal work Kants Theorie der Erfahrung ( Kant's Theory of Experience ), a book often regarded as the foundation of 20th-century neo-Kantianism. It is in reference to the Fischer–Trendelenburg debate and Cohen's work that Hans Vaihinger started his massive commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason . The several schools of thought, in spite of seeing themselves as united by
8140-568: The many regarded as the most righteous guardians of morality. It was precisely these righteous personalities who would be most inclined to persecute/ostracize anyone who was in the business of exposing the noble or great lie upon which the authority of the few over the many stands or falls. Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other According to Strauss, modern social science
8250-479: The movement were Kuno Fischer 's works on Kant and Friedrich Albert Lange 's History of Materialism ( Geschichte des Materialismus , 1873–75), the latter of which argued that transcendental idealism superseded the historic struggle between material idealism and mechanistic materialism. Fischer was earlier involved in a dispute with the Aristotelian idealist Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg concerning
8360-509: The nature of our political existence and our modern self-understanding. Schmitt's position was therefore symptomatic of the modern-era liberal self-understanding. Strauss believed that such an analysis, as in Hobbes's time, served as a useful "preparatory action," revealing our contemporary orientation towards the eternal problems of politics (social existence). However, Strauss believed that Schmitt's reification of our modern self-understanding of
8470-411: The philosopher from the retribution of the regime, and protecting the regime from the corrosion of philosophy; it attracts the right kind of reader and repels the wrong kind; and ferreting out the interior message is in itself an exercise of philosophic reasoning. Taking his bearings from his study of Maimonides and Al-Farabi , and pointing further back to Plato's discussion of writing as contained in
8580-538: The philosophical pathways that had led to this situation. The resultant study led him to advocate a tentative return to classical political philosophy as a starting point for judging political action. According to Strauss, the Republic by Plato is not "a blueprint for regime reform" (a play on words from Karl Popper 's The Open Society and Its Enemies , which attacks The Republic for being just that). Strauss quotes Cicero : " The Republic does not bring to light
8690-543: The political science faculty and also took on adjunct jobs. In 1939, he served for a short term as a visiting professor at Hamilton College . He became a U.S. citizen in 1944, and in 1949 became a professor of political science at the University of Chicago , holding the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professorship until he left in 1969. In 1953, Strauss coined the phrase reductio ad Hitlerum ,
8800-560: The problem of human excellence and political virtue. Through his writings, Strauss constantly raised the question of how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence can coexist. Strauss refused to make do with any simplistic or one-sided resolutions of the Socratic question: What is the good for the city and man? Two significant political-philosophical dialogues Strauss had with living thinkers were those he held with Carl Schmitt and Alexandre Kojève . Schmitt, who would later become, for
8910-688: The problem of politics into a political theology was not an adequate solution. Strauss instead advocated a return to a broader classical understanding of human nature and a tentative return to political philosophy, in the tradition of the ancient philosophers. With Kojève, Strauss had a close and lifelong philosophical friendship. They had first met as students in Berlin. The two thinkers shared boundless philosophical respect for each other. Kojève would later write that, without befriending Strauss, "I never would have known ... what philosophy is". The political-philosophical dispute between Kojève and Strauss centered on
9020-587: The reader—questions that orient the reader towards an understanding of problems the author thought about with utmost seriousness. Strauss thus, in Persecution and the Art of Writing , presents Maimonides "as a closet nonbeliever obfuscating his message for political reasons". Strauss's hermeneutical argument—rearticulated throughout his subsequent writings (most notably in The City and Man [1964])—is that, before
9130-422: The role of intuition in favour of concepts. However, the ethical aspects of neo-Kantian thought often drew them within the orbit of socialism , and they had an important influence on Austromarxism and the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein . Lange and Cohen in particular were keen on this connection between Kantian thought and socialism. Another important aspect of the neo-Kantian movement was its attempt to promote
9240-705: The role that philosophy should and can be allowed to play in politics. Kojève, a senior civil servant in the French government, was instrumental in the creation of the European Economic Community . He argued that philosophers should have an active role in shaping political events. Strauss, on the contrary, believed that philosophers should play a role in politics only to the extent that they can ensure that philosophy, which he saw as mankind's highest activity, can be free from political intervention. Strauss argued that liberalism in its modern form (which
9350-584: The studies of human sexual behavior by Alfred Kinsey . In the interwar years, the foundation funded public health, nursing, and social work in Eastern and Central Europe. In 1950, the foundation expanded their international program of virus research, establishing field laboratories in Poona , India, Trinidad , Belém , Brazil, Johannesburg , South Africa, Cairo , Egypt, Ibadan , Nigeria, and Cali , Colombia, among others. The foundation funded research into
9460-463: The tacit heart of their writings—a heart or message irreducible to "the letter" or historical dimension of texts. Explicitly following Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 's lead, Strauss indicates that medieval political philosophers, no less than their ancient counterparts, carefully adapted their wording to the dominant moral views of their time, lest their writings be condemned as heretical or unjust, not by "the many" (who did not read), but by those "few" whom
9570-472: The third inaugural trustee, in the first installment of a projected $ 100 million endowment. The nascent foundation applied for a federal charter in the US Senate in 1910, with at one stage Junior even secretly meeting with President William Howard Taft , through the aegis of Senator Nelson Aldrich , to hammer out concessions. However, because of the ongoing (1911) antitrust suit against Standard Oil at
9680-401: The time, along with deep suspicion in some quarters of undue Rockefeller influence on the spending of the endowment, the result was that Senior and Gates withdrew the bill from Congress in order to seek a state charter from New York. On May 14, 1913, New York Governor William Sulzer approved a charter for the foundation with Junior becoming the first president. With its large-scale endowment,
9790-468: The tradition of Western civilization , and that it led to a crisis of nihilism , relativism , historicism , and scientism . He claimed that modern political and social sciences, which were based on empirical observation and rational analysis, failed to grasp the essential questions of human nature, morality, and justice, and that they reduced human beings to mere objects of manipulation and calculation. He also criticized modern liberalism , which he saw as
9900-562: The trial and death of Socrates as the moment when political philosophy came into existence. Strauss considered one of the most important moments in the history of philosophy Socrates' argument that philosophers could not study nature without considering their own human nature , which, in the words of Aristotle , is that of "a political animal." However, he also held that the ends of politics and philosophy were inherently irreconcilable and irreducible to one another. Strauss distinguished "scholars" from "great thinkers," identifying himself as
10010-613: The two totalitarianisms that he denounced in his century, both fascists and communists. Strauss actively rejected Karl Popper 's views as illogical. He agreed with a letter of response to his request of Eric Voegelin to look into the issue. In the response, Voegelin wrote that studying Popper's views was a waste of precious time, and "an annoyance". Specifically about The Open Society and Its Enemies and Popper's understanding of Plato's The Republic , after giving some examples, Voegelin wrote: Neo-Kantian In late modern philosophy , neo-Kantianism ( German : Neukantianismus )
10120-817: The use of so-called terminator genes; the company later complied. In the 1990s, the foundation shifted its agriculture work and emphasis to Africa; in 2006, it joined with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in a $ 150 million effort to fight hunger in the continent through improved agricultural productivity. In an interview marking the 100 year anniversary of the Rockefeller Foundation, Judith Rodin explained to This Is Africa that Rockefeller has been involved in Africa since their beginning in three main areas – health, agriculture and education, though agriculture has been and continues to be their largest investment in Africa. A total of 100 cities across six continents were part of
10230-456: The value of public health to improve American relations with the host country. Although they claimed the banner of public health and humanitarian medicine, they often engaged with politics and business interests. Rhoads was involved in a racism whitewashing scandal in the 1930s during which he joked about injecting cancer cells into Puerto Rican patients, inspiring Puerto Rican nationalist and anti-colonialist leader Pedro Albizu Campos . Noguchi
10340-623: The war, the foundation was involved in the establishment of the United Nations . Senate House (University of London) was built on donation from Rockefeller Foundation in 1926 and a foundation stone laid by King George V in 1933. It is the headquarters of the University of London since 1937. In the arts, the Rockefeller Foundation has supported the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario , Canada, and
10450-417: The work funded by Rockefeller. It has also been a supporter of and influence on the United Nations . In 2020, the foundation pledged that it would divest from fossil fuel , notable since the endowment was largely funded by Standard Oil. The foundation also has a controversial past, including support of eugenics in the 1930s, as well as several scandals arising from their international field work. In 2021,
10560-410: The work of Max Weber . The Kantian concern for the limits of perception strongly influenced the antipositivist sociological movement in late 19th-century Germany, particularly in the work of Georg Simmel (Simmel's question 'What is society?' is a direct allusion to Kant's own: 'What is nature'?). The current work of Michael Friedman is explicitly neo-Kantian. Continental philosophers drawing on
10670-569: The world. Later it funded over $ 100 million of plant biotechnology research and trained over four hundred scientists from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It also invested in the production of transgenic crops, including rice and maize. In 1999, the then president Gordon Conway addressed the Monsanto Company board of directors, warning of the possible social and environmental dangers of this biotechnology, and requesting them to disavow
10780-469: Was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant . The neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the thing-in-itself and his moral philosophy . The "back to Kant" movement began in the 1860s, as a reaction to the German materialist controversy in the 1850s. In addition to the work of Hermann von Helmholtz and Eduard Zeller , early fruits of
10890-430: Was also involved in an unethical human experimentation scandal. Susan Lederer , Elizabeth Fee , and Jay Katz are among the modern scholars who have researched this period. Researchers with the foundation including Noguchi developed the vaccine to prevent yellow fever . Rhoads later became a significant cancer researcher and director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering , though his eponymous award for oncological excellence
11000-486: Was buried in Annapolis Hebrew Cemetery, with his wife Miriam Bernsohn Strauss, who died in 1985. Psalm 114 was read in the funeral service at the request of family and friends. Strauss's thought can be characterized by two main themes: the critique of modernity and the recovery of classical political philosophy. He argued that modernity, which began with the Enlightenment , was a radical break from
11110-531: Was clear that it was being used to rationalize discrimination against Jewish people and other groups, after the Nuremberg laws in 1935 . In 1936, Rockefeller fulfilled pledges of $ 655,000 to Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, even though several distinguished Jewish scientists had been dropped from the institute at the time. The Rockefeller Foundation did not alert the world about the racist implications of Nazi ideology , but furthered and funded eugenic research through
11220-597: Was correct when he postulated that an end of history implies an end to philosophy as understood by classical political philosophy. In the late 1930s, Strauss called for the first time for a reconsideration of the "distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching." In 1952 he published Persecution and the Art of Writing , arguing that serious writers write esoterically, that is, with multiple or layered meanings, often disguised within irony or paradox, obscure references, even deliberate self-contradiction. Esoteric writing serves several purposes: protecting
11330-509: Was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller ("Senior") and son " Junior ", and their primary business advisor, Frederick Taylor Gates , on May 14, 1913, when its charter was granted by New York . It is the second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America (after the Carnegie Corporation ) and ranks as the 30th largest foundation globally by endowment, with assets of over $ 6.3 billion in 2022. According to
11440-551: Was dismissed in 2011 for the Guatemala syphilis experiments when a judge determined that the U.S. government could not be held liable for actions committed outside of the U.S. An experiment was conducted by Vanderbilt University in the 1940s where they gave 800 pregnant women radioactive iron , 751 of which were pills, without their consent. In a 1969 article published in the American Journal of Epidemiology , it
11550-530: Was disputed in important respects by Eugen Fink . An abiding achievement of the neo-Kantians was the founding of the journal Kant-Studien , which still survives today. By 1933 (after the rise of Nazism ), the various neo-Kantian circles in Germany had dispersed. The Neo-Kantian movement had a significant impact on the development of 20th-century philosophy, particularly in the areas of epistemology , metaphysics , and ethics . It continues to be an important influence on contemporary philosophy , particularly in
11660-481: Was estimated that three children had died from the experiment. With significant post-war activity John D. Rockefeller Jr. was an outspoken supporter of eugenics. Even as late as 1951, John D. Rockefeller III and John Foster Dulles , who was chairman of the foundation at the time, established the Population Council to advance family planning , birth control , and population control , and goals of
11770-471: Was introduced to the Natural Sciences division of the foundation in the major reorganization of 1928. In 1941, the foundation gave a small grant to Mexico for maize research, in collaboration with the then new president, Manuel Ávila Camacho . This was done after the intervention of Vice President Henry Wallace and the involvement of Nelson Rockefeller ; the primary intention being to stabilise
11880-410: Was on friendly terms with Raymond Aron and Étienne Gilson . Because of the Nazis' rise to power, he chose not to return to his native country. Strauss found shelter, after some vicissitudes, in England, where, in 1935 he gained temporary employment at the University of Cambridge with the help of his in-law David Daube , who was affiliated with Gonville and Caius College . While in England, he became
11990-573: Was renamed after the scandal reemerged. During the late-1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation created the Medical Sciences Division, which emerged from the former Division of Medical Education. The division was led by Richard M. Pearce until his death in 1930, to which Alan Gregg succeeded him until 1945. During this period, the Division of Medical Sciences made contributions to research across several fields of psychiatry. In 1935
12100-577: Was the art of esoteric communication. This was especially apparent in medieval times when heterodox political thinkers wrote under the threat of the Inquisition or comparably obtuse tribunals. Strauss's argument is not that the medieval writers he studies reserved one exoteric meaning for the many ( hoi polloi ) and an esoteric, hidden one for the few (hoi oligoi), but that, through rhetorical stratagems including self-contradiction and hyperboles, these writers succeeded in conveying their proper meaning at
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