Abstract

Leo Strauss»s Natural Right and History and Eric Voegelin»s New Science of Politics represented both a continuation of the Weimar conversation and a projection into the American context of the issues that defined that conversation. They each chose Max Weber as the pivotal figure in their animadversions regarding historicism, relativism, and the condition of social science, but, as in the case of Weber himself, the underlying issue, which animated the emigres across the ideological spectrum, was the relationship between theory and practice or philosophy and politics.