THE PHILOSOPHER'S DISENCHANTMENT. KARL LOEWITH AND LEO STRAUSS ON THE UNPOLITICAL NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY

This article aims to bring to light the unpolitical nature of the philosophical investigation. To pursue this goal, I will focus on the disenchantment before modern conception of philosophy that led Karl Lowith and Leo Strauss to diagnose the crisis of modernity. In the first section, I will present the problem of human nature and its historicity as opening the debate on the crisis of modernity in their correspondence. In the second section, 1 will comipare the two contrasting models thev adopt for describing the disenchantinent of the philosopher before the cave of modernity, nanelv Burckhardt for Lowith and Socrates for Strauss. In the third section, 1 will show that Strauss's rediscovery of a Socratian political philosophy is one with the recognition of the unpolitical origin of philosophizing. In the fourth, focusing on Lowith's interpretation of Valery, I will argue that L6with defends himself from Strauss's accuse of reiaining in the perspective of historicism, by adopting a new fori of conventionalisin.