L’ateismo radicale e il significato originario della filosofia. A proposito del Socrate delle Nuvole nella lettura di Leo Strauss

This contribution offers an analysis of Leo Strauss’s recovery of the radically atheistic character of “Socratic” philosophy. It is divided in four parts. In the first one, I will reconstruct the historical-philosophical context that prompted Strauss to question the historical triumph of modern atheism over revealed religion. In the second part, I present what Strauss identified as the “original meaning” of philosophy. I show how it must be distinguished from the attitude of dogmatic atheism that characterizes instead modern philosophical thought. The third part will be dedicated to the analysis of a literary figure which highlights the main defects of the “original philosophical atheism,” namely Aristophanes’ Socrates. As I will argue, this comical portrait is almost paradigmatic in the way it articulates the problems related to a strict rejection of any opinion based on authority or tradition. In the fourth and last part I will explain why it is of fundamental importance that even today, after Nietzsche, we raise the issue of the radically atheist nature of philosophy, and consider it in its social and political consequences.