Harry Jaffa
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Harry V. Jaffa PhD |
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| Born |
October 7, 1918 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | January 10, 2015 (aged 96) Pomona, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Oak Park Cemetery, 410 Sycamore Avenue, Claremont, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
The New School (PhD) Yale University |
| Spouse | Marjorie Etta Butler (m. 1942) |
| Children | 1 daughter, 2 sons |
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Website web |
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Harry Victor Jaffa (October 7, 1918 – January 10, 2015) was an American historian and professor. He was the Professor Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University and a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. Robert P. Kraynak says his "life work was to develop an American application of Leo Strauss's revival of natural-right philosophy against the relativism and nihilism of our times."
Jaffa wrote topics ranging from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and natural law. He has been published in the Claremont Review of Books, the Review of Politics, National Review, and the New York Times. His most famous work, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, written in 1959, has been described as "the greatest Lincoln book ever."
Jaffa was a formative influence on the American conservative movement, challenging notable conservative thinkers including Russell Kirk, Richard M. Weaver, and Willmoore Kendall on Abraham Lincoln and the founding of the United States. He debated Robert Bork on American constitutionalism. He died in 2015.
Jaffa was born in New York City in 1918 to Arthur Solomon Jaffa and Frances Landau Jaffa; his middle name is a reference to World War I, which ended with the same year he was born. His sister was Lillian Anne Jaffa; his grandmother was from Poland. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Yale University and a PhD in Political Philosophy from The New School. As a Ph.D. student, he became interested in Abraham Lincoln after discovering a copy of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in a used bookshop.
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