Liberal Education as the Recovery of Classical Moral and Political Reasoning

Abstract Tim Burns’ Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education presents a new dimension of Leo Strauss’ treatment of liberal education. Namely, he shows that for Strauss liberal education meant not only liberation from conventional opinions, but also, especially in modernity, a reawakening of a gentlemanly moral seriousness, which both supports political life and provides a foundation for a philosophic education in the strict sense. In this essay, I articulate the key features of Burns’ argument and raise critical questions about his picture of this kind of liberal education in the modern world.