Leo Strauss, Paul Kraus e la riscoperta di al-Fārābī nella prima metà del XX secolo

This paper highlights an almost entirely unknown aspect of Leo Strauss’s biography, namely his discovery and decisive impulse to publish certain unknown Arabic works of al-Fārābī in collaboration with his brother-in-law, the Arabic philologist Paul Kraus. The paper also discusses unpublished archival materials demonstrating a fruitful cooperation hidden in the footnotes of their studies. The collaboration and friendship between Strauss and Kraus tragically ended in 1944 when the latter was found dead in Cairo, but their work lived on thanks to the efforts of their pupils and to some extent thanks to the Warburgian project of the Plato Arabus in which Kraus and Strauss were involved (although their contribution was subsequently downplayed for many reasons). The interpretation of al-Fārābī’s political philosophy and his legacy in the history of Arabic and Jewish philosophy, especially with regards to Maimonides, has since become contentious terrain upon which a long chain of masters and pupils – most of them of Jewish background – continue to wage battle.