Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

With the publication of Harry Jaffaʹs New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth redeems a forty-year-old promise for a sequel to Crisis of the House Divided. One problem, however, is that the sequel contradicts many of the claims in Crisis. These differences provide an ingress for reconsidering Jaffaʹs overall project and, in particular, his relation with his teacher, Leo Strauss.