Filosofia politica e “storicismo”. A margine di una polemica epistolare su Husserl

It is well known that the critique of (modern) historicism is key problem of Leo Strauss analysis in political philosophy. Strauss, in What is Political Philosophy, states that historicism must be understood as a serious antagonist of political philosophy; he defines historicism as the (erroneous) claim of «understanding a thinker better than He under- stood himself». It is remarkable that such a definition was proposed by Eric Voegelin, in a letter to Alfred Schütz (1943), to mean Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of history – while He does not imply the term “historicism”, He states the concept of quite clearly –: Schütz shared Voegelin’s critique of Husserl with Leo Strauss, the thesis that is supported in this article is that the definition of historicism proposed by Strauss is borrowed from Voege- lin’s critique of Husserl, and that – for philosophical-political reasons – that Strauss took the same critiques by Voegelin, to address such criticisms to Heidegger.