Alfarabi as Leo Strauss’s Teacher of Platonic Esoteric Writing. Leo Strauss’s Rediscovery of Esotericism and its Islamic Origin

Rasoul Namazi's research focuses on the comparative analysis of Islamic and Western political thought. His book, Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2022), received the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science and was the subject of a symposium in The Review of Politics. This work offers a comprehensive study of Leo Strauss’s writings on Islamic political thought. He is also the co-editor of Leo Strauss on Religion: Writings and Interpretations (SUNY Press, 2024) and is currently working on a book-length study of early Islamic political thought in the Quran.

Namazi's research has appeared in Comparative Political Theory, Review of Politics, Journal of Religion, Perspectives on Political Science, American Political Thought, Iranian Studies, Interpretation, Renaissance & Reformation, and Eurorient, as well as in several edited volumes.

A laureate of the Prix Raymond Aron, Namazi received his Ph.D. in Political Theory from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Before joining Duke Kunshan University, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2019–2021) and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago (2016–2018).