Challenges of democracy under the waves of modernity, critical reading of Leo Strauss vision

Abstract

This article seeks to clarify the radical change that has occurred in the nature of political philosophy, between folds of the hidden philosophies that have obstructed the path of democratic paradigm, and wich has entailed on the culture of the modern era, all that in the context of the following problem: How can a crisis in the field of political theorizing affect a whole culture: modern Western culture? And what challenges did this crisis pose to democracy? Our researches in the most prominent philosophies of the Enlightenment era, based on the historical method on the one hand and the critical analytical method on the other, have led to several results, the most important of which are the crisis of values that shook the positive view of democracy, since the denial of considering the criteria of good and evil, right and wrong in evaluating judgments and excessive belief in progress has caused a crisis not only in democracy but in the culture of the modern era as a whole, and that some of these philosophies confined life to making human work related to the simple vocabulary of effectiveness, that is what We see in the model of Hobbesian philosophy, which robbed the idea of ends from human nature. To overcome this crisis, Strauss requires a re-consideration of many concepts and principles as well as the basic goals in democracy that were crystallized by classical Greek political philosophy and Islamic medievalthinkers as well