What is (and what can be) political philosophy?

A typology from (and against) Leo Strauss’s thought

Abstract

In this essay I address the metaphilosophical question of the concept of political
philosophy. After analyzing some alternatives, I critically reconstruct
Leo Strauss’s conceptualization strategy to show its heuristic potential in the
development of a typology of political philosophy. The essay will be divided
into three parts: first I present the problem and analyze some alternatives
that I consider insufficient to define political philosophy, then I describe the
straussian strategy to conceptualize it from the interpretation of the original
meaning of philosophia, finally I analyze four types of political philosophy
that I identify in Strauss’s work and then I propose two others based on
his own assumptions. I conclude by pointing out the usefulness of these conceptual
models for the interpretation, assessment, and orientation of a political
philosophy.