Well, there's a lot of academic snobbery. Analytical philosophy departments don't think that continental philosophers or people whose work lacks Seriousness and Gravitas are real philosophers. Continental types think that analytical philosophers are soullness hacks without depth or vision. Political theorists consider peoplew like Machiavelli and Montesquieu and Madisona nd Arendt who have not made it into the philosophical canon.
Me, I think this game is boring. I even think that Ayn Rand is a Real Philosopher, just a very bad one. But not because I think her political views are reprehensible. I respect the work of a lot of people whose politics I despise. Nietzsche. Plato. Hobbes. Lenin. Schmitt. Heidegger. Hayek. Posner.
Strauss is another one. I never read him without profit, especially when he is in his scholarly mode. He was and is taken seriously by lots of smart people, and he was interlocutor and correspondant with Alexandre Kojeve evenw hen K was a leftie.
If you only stick to the people you agree with, you're gonna have narrow horizons. Russell used to say that you should subscribe to a paper whose political views are the opposite of your own, and reflect that while you cannot both be right at the same time, you can both be wrong.
jks
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