Leo Strauss: Nutty Numerologist

I haven’t read Tibor’s article yet, but it seems unlikey that Leo Straus would have considered himself to be a libertarian. If so, why is Tibor the first person to ever “discover” this?!

Regardless of what you think of Rand’s ideas, or how she cultivated a cult of personality around herself,or her contemporary followers, she was a brilliant woman. She introduced millions of people to libertarian ideas.

Leo Strauss, on the other hand, was a quack. How else could one describe his belief that numerology is useful in “interpreting” books? From his book, Persecution and the Art of Writing:

“The Prince [by Machavelli] consists of 26 chapters. Twenty-six is the numerical value of the letters of the sacred name of God in Hebrew, of the Tetragrammaton. But did Machiavelli know this? I do not know. Twenty-six equals 2 times 13. Thirteen is now and for quite sometime has been considered an unlucky number, but in former times it was also and even primarily considered a lucky number. So ‘twice 13’ might mean both good luck and bad luck, and hence altogether, luck fortuna.”

Was the man insane?

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