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Thanks, Ken. It helps put another piece in the mosaic horror that is Leo (ugh) Strauss. Strauss was such a foul little prick, but geese he knew some great people. At a guess Gadamer appropriated Heidegger's `being-in-the-world', `thrown' as consciousness conditioned by history---a view that Strauss absolutely rejects.
If your interested or if you still face trying to teach theology (without laughing), I found a pretty good book on Judaism: The Philosophy of Judaism, Julius Guttmann. I am reading it to get ready to read Strauss on Spinoza. So I'll have to read Spinoza too... What Guttman does is an intellectual history (via history of ideas in theology) of Judaism. It is very clear, very eloquant, very smoothly written---made for lectures (probably compiled from his lectures). Naturally Strauss hated it.
Yet it was Guttmann who showed him the trace from Mendelssohn, Spinoza, Maimonides, Averroes back to Aristotelianism and the medieval Neoplatonists and put together the basic historical outline that Strauss would follow back---despite Strauss's supposed rejection of historicism.
Let no good deed go un-shit-upon--that's Leo's motto.
Chuck Grimes