Amazon.com description: Product Description: Leo Strauss (1899 1973), one of the preeminent political philosophers of the twentieth century, was an astute interpreter of Maimonides s medieval masterpiece, "The Guide of the Perplexed." In "Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics," Aryeh Tepper overturns the conventional view of Strauss s interpretation and of Strauss s own mature thought. According to the scholarly consensus, Strauss traced the well-known contradictions in the "Guide" to the fundamental tension in Maimonides s mind between reason and revelation, going so far as to suggest that while the Jewish philosopher s overt position was religiously pious (i.e., on the side of Jerusalem ), secretly he was on the side of reason, or Athens. In Tepper s analysis, Strauss s judgments emerge as much more complex than this and also more open to revision. In his later writings, Tepper shows, Strauss pointed to contradictions in Maimonides s thought not only between but also within both Jerusalem and Athens. Moreover, Strauss identified, and identified himself with, an esoteric Maimonidean teaching on progress: progress within the Bible, beyond the Bible, and even beyond the rabbinic sages. Politically a conservative thinker, Strauss, like Maimonides, located man s deepest satisfaction in progressing in the discernment of the truth. In the fullness of his career, Strauss thus pointed to a third way beyond the modern alternatives of conservatism and progressivism."