Leo Strauss's Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement 9781685852139

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
On Leo Strauss: An Introductory Account
THE APPRENTICE YEARS
1 Leo Strauss: The Philosopher as Weimar Jew
2 "In the Grip of the Theological- Political Predicament": The Turn to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss
THE PLACE OF MAIMONIDES
3 Leo Strauss on Maimonides
4 Leo Strauss and Maimonides
ATHENS AND JERUSALEM
5 Juxtapositions: Aristotle, Aquinas, Strauss
6 Laying Down the Law: The Theological-Political Matrix of Spinoza's Physics
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
7 Leo Strauss and the Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns
8 The Prescientific World and Historicism: Some Reflections on Strauss, Heidegger, and Husserl
THE THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL PROBLEM
9 Leo Strauss's Philosophie und Gesetz
10 Strauss's Natural Right and History
APPREHENSIVE READING
11 On a Forgotten Kind of Reading
12 Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics
The Contributors
Index
About the Book

Citation preview

LEO STRAUSS'S THOUGHT

LEO STRAUSS'S THOUGHT Toward a Critical Engagement edited by

Alan Udoff

Lynne Rienner Publishers

•

Boulder & London

Published in the United States of America in 1991 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 1991 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leo Strauss's thought : toward a critical engagement / [edited] by Alan Udoff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55587-232-8 (alk. paper) 1. Strauss, Leo—Contributions in political science. 2. Strauss, Leo. I. Udoff, Alan, 1943J C 2 5 1 . S 8 L 4 6 1990 320'.01—dc20 90-24002 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Contents Acknowledgments

On Leo Strauss: An Introductory Account Alan Udoff THE APPRENTICE YEARS 1

Leo Strauss: The Philosopher as Weimar Jew David Biale

2

"In the Grip of the Theological-Political Predicament": The Turn to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss Kenneth Hart Green THE PLACE OF MAIMONIDES

3

Leo Strauss on Maimonides Alfred L. Ivry

4

Leo Strauss and Maimonides Rémi Brague ATHENS AND JERUSALEM

5

Juxtapositions: Aristotle, Aquinas, Strauss Thomas Prufer

6

Laying Down the Law: The Theological-Political Matrix of Spinoza's Physics David R. Lachterman

VI

CONTENTS

ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

Leo Strauss and the Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns Stanley Rosen

155

The Prescientific World and Historicism: Some Reflections on Strauss, Heidegger, and Husserl Laurence Berns

169

T H E THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL

9

10

PROBLEM

Leo Strauss's Philosophie und Gesetz Eve Adler

183

Strauss's Natural Right and History Richard H. Kennington

227

APPREHENSIVE READING

11

12

On a Forgotten Kind of Reading Diskin Clay

253

Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics Paul A. Cantor

267

The Contributors Index About the Book

315 317 327

Acknowledgments This volume grew out of a conference, "The Humanistic Legacy of Leo Strauss," held at the Baltimore Hebrew University and the Johns Hopkins University in April 1986. I would like to thank these institutions and the Maryland Humanities Council, Inc., for the support that they provided through the efforts of Leivy Smolar, Judy Meltzer, Richard Macksey, Neil Hertz, Michael Fried, Lowell Edmunds, and Jerry Cooper. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the exemplary generosity of Sidney and Yvette Breitbart, Alfred S. Oppenheimer, and Dr. and Mrs. Robert I. Levy for endowing individual lectures at the conference. I am grateful, as well, to Robert A. Mandel and Lynne Rienner for their faith in the promise of this volume. In making its way from promise to fulfillment, the book and its authors drew on the good cheer and patient dedication of Martha Peacock and especially— indispensably—Gia Hamilton at Lynne Rienner Publishers. I trust that they will accept my sincere thanks in partial payment on that overdrawn account. Lastly, I wish to express my appreciation to Diane Kempler and Martin Lampner for accommodating the logos of this work to the demands of its technological production. A. U.

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On Leo Strauss: An Introductory Account ALAN IJDOFF

For Francis X. Slade: 1 felt becalmed like one who, after many toils and tedious expectations, finally sees his dearest wishes gratified (Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe).

Our place of departure is the account that opens Leo Strauss's "Introductory Essay" to Hermann C o h e n ' s Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. I doubt whether I am the best mediator between Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and the present-day American reader. I grew up in an environment in which Cohen was the center of attraction for philosophically minded Jews who were devoted to Judaism; he was the master whom they revered. But it is more than forty years since I last studied or even read the Religion of Reason, and within the last twenty years I have only from time to time read or looked into some of his other writings. I write this Introduction at the request of the publisher and of the translator. I can do no more than to give an account of the thoughts that occurred to me at a renewed reading of Religion of Reason. Perhaps they will be helpful to some readers. Present-day readers can hardly avoid feeling that Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism is a philosophic book and at the same time a Jewish book. 1 A s w i t h all o f S t r a u s s ' s writings, this p a s s a g e requires careful c o n s i d e r a t i o n . W h a t e v e r s e n s e o f hesitancy it m a y c o n v e y must be w e i g h e d against his decision to include it, without alteration, as the final chapter o f Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. T h e e s s a y stands, then, not only as the introduction to o n e work but as the c o n c l u s i o n of another, and it must be read independently o f the special circumstances

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that surrounded its initial appearance. Yet it is precisely for this reason that the opening account of the essay should be read with particular attentiveness. Strauss perceives his role as that of a mediator. His place is between Cohen, once a "center of attraction," and readers at a culturally distant periphery. The audience to whom Strauss directs his essay is the "present-day American reader," or the "present-day readers" generally. Only "some readers," Strauss ventures, will find his thoughts helpful. It is altogether shocking, and profoundly saddening, to realize that no mention whatever is made of a contemporary Jewish readership. The loss of such readers, one would think, is explained simply as a consequence of Nazism. The closing lines of the essay address this question and render its judgment with incomparable delicacy. Strauss's situation contrasts with that of the others whom he mentions, the readers who are to be introduced to Cohen for the first time. Strauss emphasizes that his is a "renewed reading" of a work he once studied. Strauss's neglect of Cohen cannot be compared, then, to that of readers who are largely ignorant of his works. Moreover, we cannot ignore the circumstances that resulted in his own "renewed reading." It is not necessary for Strauss to elaborate on the demands of these circumstances. It suffices to indicate the genre to which the work that eventuates belongs: the giving of an account. 2 Placing to one side the complex matter of his relation to Cohen, 3 Strauss's relationship to his own readers remains in his estimation problematical. In expanding on his doubt, Strauss describes the reaction of Cohen's contemporary German-Jewish admirers or, more exactly, of some of them: the "philosophically minded Jews who were devoted to Judaism." To these Jews Cohen was "the center of attraction," "the master they revered" (emphasis added). Strauss, thus, does not indicate directly his own place within this generation, for whom Cohen "symbolized more than anyone else the union of Jewish faith and German culture." 4 His own reverence for Cohen is evident in the pronouncement that he makes at the conclusion of the essay: "It is a blessing for us that Hermann Cohen lived and wrote." But there is nothing in Strauss's writings that portrays Cohen as "the master" in his eyes. (The closest statement to that effect—that Cohen was, "to say the least, the one who far surpassed in spiritual power all the other German professors of philosophy of his generation" 5 —will be taken up in due course.) Nor is it possible to identify Cohen, for Strauss, as "the center of attraction." To the young Strauss, "who found himself in the grip of the theological-political p r e d i c a m e n t , " 6 the Jewish foothold on that path, if not indeed its philosophical center, would be found not in Cohen but in Spinoza and Maimonides: in the Treatise that succeeds to "the center of attention" against the claims of its successors, 7 and in The Guide, whose "study," while "frequently interrupted," was "never abandoned" 8 by Strauss. Moreover, insofar as centrality may be assigned to figures who were Strauss's

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contemporaries in Weimar Germany, the divisions in his intellectual autobiography (his "Preface" to the Spinoza book) suggest a different emphasis: Zionism; the new thinking—i.e., Rosenzweig and Heidegger; Spinoza and Cohen. Beyond these particulars, the general question of Strauss's relationship to the generation of Cohen's admirers remains. It is to this question that we, unmotivated by biographical interest, must now turn our attention. For Strauss, there is an utterly fundamental difference between philosophy and Judaism, 9 when conceived properly as ways of life rather than conventionally as an opposition of systems. 10 The way of life, however, of those who are "philosophically minded" and yet "devoted to Judaism" does not abide by this difference. The inclinations and passions accommodate themselves to the differences that underlie them by being cultured. "Culture," in what Strauss denominates as its "present-day usage," 11 is the mask— neither truly comic, nor truly tragic—that faith and philosophy are given to wear. Culture proclaims the union of faith and philosophy, Jerusalem and Athens; indeed, it claims to be that union. 12 Insofar as culture is able to achieve this end, it succeeds by bringing down those whom they would wed from the heights of their separation. 13 Modem Western culture in general and high German-Jewish culture especially are the offspring of precisely such a union. The hardness that is needed to effectuate this union, or face sternly its impossibility, is not found in the medium of culture—which lives at the lower levels of edification, in the softness and comfort of rhetoric. Cohen, Strauss emphasizes, was "a faithful wamer and comforter of many Jews." 14 For cultured Jews of his time he was the object of reverence, a feeling deeply akin to humility. Not the end of contemplation, but the edifying image of the thinker himself—not logos, but mythos—becomes the source of inspiration. Strauss, in contrast to the humility of Cohen's admirers, appears modestly in the guise of a reader of Cohen. 15 The radical virtues of Jerusalem and the moderate virtues of Athens come to light thereby in Strauss's subtle positioning of readers or listeners. When that light is cast upon Cohen's own work, its limits, too, are decisively revealed. 16 What has been conjectured thus far is, in part, a supplement to Strauss's own depiction of Heidegger's reception. One has to go back to Hegel until one finds another professor of philosophy who affected in a comparable manner the thought of Germany, nay, of Europe. But Hegel had some contemporaries whose power equalled his or at any rate whom one could compare to him without being manifestly foolish. Heidegger surpasses all his contemporaries by far. This could be seen long before he became known to the general public. As soon as he appeared on the scene, he stood at its center and began to dominate it. His domination grew almost continuously in extent and in intensity. . . . Eventually a state has been reached which the outsider is inclined to describe as paralysis of the critical faculties; philosophizing seems to have been

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transformed into listening with reverence to the incipient mythoi Heidegger. 1 7

of

The parallels that can be drawn at this point are too numerous and exact to be ignored. Cohen "by far surpassed in spiritual power all the other German professors of philosophy of his generation" : "one has to go back to Hegel until one finds another professor of philosophy . . . [comparable to] Heidegger who surpasses all his contemporaries by far"; "Cohen was the center of attraction" : "as soon as he appeared on the scene, he [Heidegger] stood at its center"; Cohen "was the master whom they revered" : "philosophizing seems to have been transformed into listening with reverence to . . . Heidegger"; "Cohen, the founder of the Neo-Kantian school of Marburg . . . was a Jew of rare dedication, the faithful guide, defender, and wamer of German Jewry . . . who far surpassed in spiritual power [etc.]" : "Heidegger's new thinking led far away from any charity as well as from any humanity." 18 The similarities and differences that make up the parallels are such that in light of the one the other is rendered more extreme. The proper articulation of the issues requires, however, that the field of similarities and differences be extended to include others. The lines along which Strauss draws that extension are as follows: Whereas Strauss compares Spinoza and Cohen directly,19 the comparison with Heidegger is established at a distance. That distance is bridged, in a way, by Rosenzweig, "who is thought to be the greatest Jewish thinker whom German Jewry has brought forth." 2 0 Rosenzweig and Heidegger are compared directly in the context of a discussion of the "new thinking." The center has shifted, as it were, from Cohen to Rosenzweig. At the center of that discussion, however, the focus on the "new thinking" is narrowed to the matter of the security and terror of man's condition. 21 It becomes thereby a comparison of Buber and Heidegger. 22 It is here that Strauss observes that with Heidegger "hope is replaced by thinking."23 Strauss's own position can be indicated, in part, by comparing his disillusionment with regard to modern culture and Cohen's faith in it.24 The progression of these comparisons and parallels makes clear in the end the difference between edification and philosophy, and the difference in the dangers that each holds out. The difference in danger is the measure of the difference in salvation that each may extend.25 *

*

*

In reflecting upon Strauss's mediation of Cohen, we are brought gradually to the place, or topos, of reading itself as mediation: the interpretive mediation that is eros (Symposium, 202e). We are thus brought back to Socrates, whom we—"compelled to live with books" for the short span of our lives— are "to take as our model." 26 No sooner do we attempt this turn than we find our way blocked. "Let us assume," Strauss proposes,

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that the Platonic dialogues do not convey a teaching, but being a monument to Socrates, present the Socratic way of life as a model. Yet they cannot tell us: live as Socrates lived. For Socrates' life was rendered possible by his possession of a "demonic" gift and we do not possess such a gift. The dialogues must then tell us: live as Socrates tells you to live; live as Socrates teaches you to live. The assumption that the Platonic dialogues do not convey a teaching is absurd.27

It appears, then, that we cannot turn to Socrates as a model (Republic, 496c). We must turn instead from his daimonic being—which Strauss understands as one with his eros—to his speeches, or the logoi to which Socrates took flight as the place of refuge before the blinding presence of that which is (Phaedo, 99d-e). Yet (Socrates') speeches require interpretation. Interpretation is the occasion for the reappearance or resurgence of eros. Insofar as we speak of the interpretation of the speeches of Socrates we must speak of eros as an ascent—at the very least this must be said of that speech of Socrates which is itself an ascent, i.e., the Republic. In its ascent, the eros of Socrates' speeches and the eros of their philosophical interpretation both turn toward the blinding presence of that which is highest, notwithstanding the evident danger in this turn. In attempting to follow the model of Socrates by turning to or following the logoi of Socrates, we necessarily abandon that model: for, unlike Socrates, we cannot rely for protection upon a daimonic gift. In order to turn to Socrates as our model, it is necessary for the relationship between the erotic and daimonic to assume a qualitatively different yet analogous form, one that may be shared in common with others. Strauss brings about this transformation by appealing to Socrates as "that one among the greatest minds who because of his common sense is the mediator between us and the greatest minds." 28 Strauss then cites two examples. The first (Memorabilia, I.vi. 14) tells of Socrates' reading with his friends the books of the wise men of old, regarding it as a great gain if they are able to find something good and thereby be of use to each other. Strauss remarks that "this passage is defective since it does not tell us anything as to what Socrates did regarding those passages . . . of which he did not know whether they were good." 29 The second (The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, 11.22) records Socrates' reaction to Heraclitus: "What I have understood is great and noble; I believe this is also true of what I have not understood; but one surely needs for understanding that writing some special sort of diver." The second passage carries the defectiveness of the first to a different level, as it were. The first passage "does not tell us anything" about the way of ascent to that which is good. The second passage tells us that the ascent requires assistance; it is told metaphorically; it tells of dangers. In the second passage Socrates may be said to appear in the figure of a warner or comforter of those who would make the ascent. The warning may be said to consist in likening the search for the good to a descent into its depths; the comfort may be said to consist in the knowledge that the end of this

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descent—even if it requires assistance—is not necessarily beyond reach. In the first passage, the reference to Socrates' instruction of his friends has been deleted. In the second passage, therefore, it is perforce underscored: That is, Socrates' instruction of Euripides, by presenting us with a conversation between philosopher and poet, teaches us about the ascent and leaves no doubt concerning the seriousness of the warning and wherein true comfort lies. 30 The model of Socrates, then, is expressed here as the relationship of eros and the surefootedness of what Strauss calls "common sense": or eros as it is revealed in the reading of logoi, and "common sense" in its moderation of the dangers to which eros is thereby exposed. 31 It is necessary in this case, too, to descend more deeply into the nature of this relationship as Strauss suggestively re-presents it. Strauss's representation parodistically follows the texts that he has selected: It is a mimesis of the model of reading or mediation that it intends to consider. The manner of reference itself is a measure of the faithfulness of its inquiry. The texts are cited without identifying their sources; that is to say, the authoritativeness of the texts is to rest on their instruction, not their authorship. For Strauss, anonymity is a sign and preserve of philosophy. 32 The first text, Xenophon's recorded speech of Socrates, is described by Strauss as one "which says almost everything that has to be said on our subject, 33 with the noble simplicity and quiet greatness of the ancients." 34 Socrates' speech, then, is bom of simplicity and greatness modified in such ways as to produce that form of the mixture of great-spiritedness and gentility that is displayed in the figure of the philosopher (Republic, 375c). Socrates' speech is the mediation of these ends, the place in which the philosophical eros shows itself: "Just as others are pleased by a good horse or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an even higher degree by good friends. . . . And the treasures of the wise men of old which they left behind by writing them in books, I unfold and go through them with my friends, and if we see something good, we pick it out [eklegometha] and regard it as a great gain if we thus become useful to one another." The man who reports this utterance adds the remark: "When I heard this, it seemed to me both that Socrates was blessed and that he was leading those listening to him toward perfect gentlemanship." This report is defective since it does not tell us anything as to what Socrates did regarding those passages in the books of the wise men of old of which he did not know whether they were good. 3 5

Strauss's report of these utterances is, of course, in one sense defective as well. That is, Strauss omits the line that may be translated: "And if I have anything good I teach it and recommend them to others from whom I believe they will be benefited somehow in regard to virtue." Let us say that Strauss has faithfully followed this passage by selecting (ek-legein) a part of what has been said (legein) by which means the whole may be brought into greater

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clarity. The line that Strauss omits portrays Socrates as instructing his friends in the good—an instruction that includes recommending them to others. The rest of the passage depicts Socrates and his friends as searching after the good, in common with each other. Strauss's purpose, it appears, is to emphasize not the possession of the good as displayed in teaching but, rather, the desire to possess it as displayed in its being sought. Hence Strauss's explicit conclusion: Socrates remains in possession of, or has come to possess, part of the good. The partial nature of Socrates' possession is reflected not in the fact that he does not understand the rest of the good that is spoken of in the books of the wise, but that he does not know if this rest is good. In this way, Strauss appears to emphasize the intermediate, erotic character of Socrates' inquiry, while pointing at the same time to the dangers to which its limitations are exposed. We are able to see more clearly the nature of both the dangers and the limitations by concentrating on the differences within the thematic sameness of the complementary texts Strauss has selected or sorted out in order to represent the Socratic paradigm (cf. Meno, 79a-c). The reputed conversation between Socrates and Euripides that Strauss cites next differs in important respects from the narrative of Xenophon and may be said to advance beyond it. In citing this passage, Strauss offers no comment regarding its character. It is not said to have "noble simplicity" or "quiet greatness." Both that which is spoken (the report that Euripides once gave Socrates . . .) and that which is spoken about (the writing of Heraclitus) are, thus, different. We have (been) moved in this understated way from simplicity to obscurity, from quiet to the turbulence of the deep—the proverbial obscurity and depth of Heraclitus. Socrates is alone; we learn of his thoughts only in response to a question of Euripides; there is no mention of others or the usefulness of its teaching for others (cf. Republic, 490a-b). The distance that separates Socrates from Heraclitus is clearly greater and more emphatically expressed than the distance that separates him from the wise men as displayed in Xenophon. The abyss of the logos is so deep that unassisted one may be lost within it, or lost to sight within it. Socrates conveys the sense of both these heights and depths by responding, not in fear, but in amazement or wonder at Heraclitus' noble (gennaios) teaching. As Strauss reminds us, "According to the Bible, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers, the beginning of wisdom is wonder." 36 Socrates' mediation restores the beginnings, or at least permits us to see what they resemble in their heights and depths. To the extent that our limitations permit, he is the diver that leads us, for our own vision is too weak. How may this be understood? Strauss's reading of Socrates' reading, Strauss's mediation of Socrates' mediation, is a model of Strauss's reading generally: i.e., Strauss's philosophical way of reading. This way of reading must be distinguished from the conventional standards by which Strauss's work—most often

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negatively—has been judged: the method {hodoslapproach, or way) of historical and philological research, on the one hand, and the amalgam that otherwise makes up the academic reading of the history of philosophy, on the other. 37 In reflecting on this distinction, we should have before us Strauss's glosses on the manner of its determination by Heidegger. The latter cannot be dealt with directly at present. Instead, we take our bearings only epigraphically from it. Heidegger made a distinction between philosophers and those for whom philosophy is identical with the history of philosophy. He made a distinction, in other words, between the thinker and the scholar. I know that I am only a scholar. But I know also that most people who call themselves philosophers are mostly, at best, scholars. The scholar is radically dependent on the work of the great thinkers, of men who faced the problems without being overpowered by any authority. 38 The scholar is cautious: methodic, not bold. He does not become lost to our sight in, to us, inaccessible heights and mists, as the great thinkers do. Yet, while the great thinkers are so bold, they are also much more cautious than we are; they see pitfalls where we are sure of our ground. We scholars live in a charmed circle, light-living, like the Homeric gods—protected against the problems by the great thinkers. 39 *

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Strauss's way of reading, particularly in the case of Socrates, can be illuminated by thinking about it in conjunction with his own reflections on the Torah (without, thereby, intending a comparison): Let us grant that the Bible and in particular the Torah consists to a considerable extent of "memories of ancient histories," even of memories of memories; but memories of memories are not necessarily distorting or pale reflections of the original; they may be re-collections of re-collections, deepenings through meditation of the primary experiences. 4 0

Strauss's paraphrastic readings belong to the question of original to copy, i.e., the philosophical matter of the relation of original to copy, which may be thought of as the question of the relation of being to logos and their respective deepening. It is this matter that underlies the question of representation in writing, and in the end representation as logos. In Xenophon's Socrates, Strauss points to these questions by making the following distinction when speaking of the treasures of the wise: "The treasures of the wise men of old which they have left behind in their writings—the treasures are not the writings—he reads together with his friends and if they discover in them something good he and his friends cull it 0eklegometha); they regard it as a great gain when they thus become friends" (emphasis added). The Memorabilia of Xenophon are the logoi that gather

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together or re-collect other logoi, i.e., they are (for us) the original of that of which they are copies—at once the memorabilia of Xenophon and Socrates. To the extent that these writings and speeches—for us, ancient treasures—are originary, their re-collection is of being itself. These writings, then, both preserve and threaten us as we read. Our situation is mortally dangerous if for this reason alone: Because the great thinkers "become lost to our sight in . . . inaccessible heights and mists"—seeing "pitfalls where we are sure of our ground"—while we look emulously at them, at the logoi in and through which they become visible to us in their descent, we are unable to distinguish as necessary between boldness and caution. The logoi, thus, are the wax that bears the impression of being—and the temptation to forge wings for the perilous ascent. To read philosophically is to re-collect within the logoi the logos41 that re-collects and that is the place of refuge from the blinding immediacy of that which is (ta onta: Phaedo, 99d-100a). Reading, in its mediation, repeats the traces that logos bears of the forgetfulness or self-concealment within truth (a/leth/eia). Paraphrastic writing, completely aside from its efficacy as a device of esotericism, brings to surface, to light, to presence while preserving as such—through the alongsidedness (para-) of writing and thinking—the depth, the darkness, the hiddenness of the being that it thinks. If the measure of reading as Strauss conceives it is to be accorded its proper height, it is necessary to hold it up before the end that it serves: the "quest for wisdom or quest for knowledge regarding the most important, the highest, or the most comprehensive things." 42 Insofar as the attainment of this end is "inaccessible to man," it will take the form of the "love" of this quest and the heroic attempt 43 to persevere in it. For Strauss, this "consists at any rate primarily and in a way chiefly in listening to the conversation between the great philosophers or, more generally and more cautiously, between the greatest minds, and therefore in studying the great books." 44 This listening, whose apparent docility or passiveness must not blind us to the eros of its origination, confronts us with the overwhelming difficulty that this conversation does not take place without our help—that in fact we must bring about that conversation. The greatest minds utter monologues. We must transform their monologues into a dialogue, their "side by side" into a "together." . . . Since the greatest minds contradict one another regarding the most important things, they compel us to judge of their monologues; we cannot take on trust what any one of them says. On the other hand, we cannot but notice that we are not competent to be judges. 45

The listening to the conversation that takes place among the greatest minds requires of us to listen philosophically. That we are to make this attempt is indicated in two ways: We may not select (ek-legein) "on trust," any more than in the parallel case of the multiplicity of revelations, or theioi

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nomoi, one from among the many of the things said (legein)\ in place of trust or faith, we must establish a dialogue—in the original sense of sorting out in discussion 46 —between the monologues, or that which has the form of oneness (Phaedo, 83d-e), that speech which in its form may be said to summon up the highest that may be spoken of: that which is "alone by itself and with itself, forever being of a single form" (Symposium, 211a-b). In place of "trust," then, we must make the "side by side" of the monologues into a "together"—that is, we must read in terms of the dialectic of wholes and parts, 47 or the "unity of oneness and variety" that is the substance of education. 48 Strauss denominates this making a "transforming." In speaking this way of a transformation or metamorphosis, Strauss points ahead, as it were, to the discussion that follows: the "facile delusions" that conceal our inadequacy as judges or interpreters. These historicist delusions, Strauss continues, "which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios or lion-tamers." 49 The act of transformation that signifies philosophical listening as the act of lion taming recalls Zarathustra's inaugural speech on "the three transformations of the spirit": camel, lion, and child. The difference between camel and lion may be epitomized in terms of the way in which the second brings to destructive completion the work of liberation of the first. The sacrifices of the camel for the sake of difficulty are brought to their destructive end in the rejection of the reverence that finds rest or home in the topos of denial. The strength of negation must re-originate itself as the positivity of freedom: the disavowal of tradition for the sake of new values— the right to affirm for oneself that which is beyond one's power to create. Freedom appears in the disowning of ancestral millennia for the sake of living dispossessed in the "sacred ' N o ' " that points beyond itself. That to which it points is the lion-taming spirit likened to the child that is innocence and forgetting, that is a "sacred 'Yes'," the threshold and home of spirit willing its own will and conquering its own world. The transformation of spirit is, in a way, the movement beyond continence and its caution or moderation with respect to the human things. Strauss's remarks at this point may be sketched as follows: "we have lost all authoritative traditions in which we could trust, the nomos which gave us authoritative guidance." 50 We are the heirs of modernity and its Enlightenment project. In finding our "bearings"—in restoring the common sense of footing in the human world—we must avoid the false "comfort" that alternatives to this search hold out to us. The ultimate refinement of the pleasure that begins in the indifferent selection of nature and the possibilities conferred by circumstance on some, must be pursued in place of the pleasures of or the things taken as real by the many. The intrinsic edification of philosophy in its highest form, the understanding of understanding (noesis

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noeseos), irrespective of the rarity of its occurrence, is to be our end. Striking at the core of Nietzsche's speech, Strauss avers: "By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whether we understand it [i.e., the "true ground"] as created or uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind" (emphasis added). 51 To read as listening to the great philosophers or greatest minds, on Strauss's understanding, involves in the end a confrontation with the last stage of the metamorphosis of the spirit that constitutes modernity, or the claims that are made on behalf of that metamorphosis. The two most profound expressions of the latter are found in the works of Nietzsche and Heidegger. "Heidegger's philosophy of history," Strauss observes, "has the same structure as Marx's and Nietzsche's: the moment in which the final insight is arriving opens the eschatological prospect." 52 In Heidegger, it culminates in or aims at "a being at home beyond the most extreme homelessness." 5 3 The attainment of this end involves dialogue between Occident and Orient. To whatever extent the homelessness or alienation of modern man had been thought by Marx and Nietzsche, neither thought it through to the world-encompassing ends of dialogue that Heidegger did. 54 If Heidegger goes beyond the latter in this regard, he exceeds them as well in another: "Heidegger severs the connection of the [historical eschatological] vision with politics more radically than either Marx or Nietzsche." 55 Strauss provides us with a more expansive text by means of which the precise nature of this comparison may be seen: Karl Marx, the father of communism, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the stepgrandfather of fascism, were liberally educated on a level to which we cannot even hope to aspire. But perhaps one can say that their grandiose failures make it easier for us who have experienced those failures to understand again the old saying that wisdom cannot be separated from moderation. . . . Moderation will protect us against the twin dangers of visionary expectations from politics and unmanly contempt for politics. 5 6

Heidegger, in Strauss's view, is the extreme case of philosophical greatness exposed without the protection of the commonsense wisdom that secures our place—even if we mean by that taking refuge in the city wall— amid the human things. In what may be described as his ultimate statement on this matter, Strauss compares Heidegger with Rosenzweig and observes that in contrast to the latter, "Heidegger's new thinking led far away from any charity as well as from any humanity." 57 That observation is immediately followed by noting the "deeper understanding" that Heidegger possessed in regard to the weightiest matters. The intention in recalling these observations is to think about the nature of theoretical virtue or excellence, rather than about its relationship to moral excellence or practical wisdom. That

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relationship, in any case, can only be thought through from the vantage of the former. The ends or objects of theoria are in themselves dangerous or blinding for the same reason that they secure that which is and suffuse it with light. It is in the ascent from the cave that our eyes are at greatest risk—a risk, moreover, that is fundamentally different from, hence not understandable on the basis of, the descent back into the cave. To undergo thinking is to be threatened with the blindness of looking in wonder (Theatetus, 155d). Strauss warns us of this primarily through the example of Socrates—whom we cannot remember without at the same time remembering, if not feeling, the power of his spell or charm. For that reason alone, Strauss's reading both warns and comforts us. The novelty of his interpretations must not be allowed to obscure, then, their underlying faithfulness to that which is oldest and most deeply attested in the tradition of what the Greeks designated philosophy and what persists today by that name. In following the logos of Strauss's reading, our way seemingly has veered from the one announced at the place of departure—or, rather, stayed its course to a destination at first unseen. In the effort to return to that place, the course of Strauss's own life and the reception of his work will be looked at selectively for the instruction they provide. *

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Leo Strauss was born on September 20, 1899, in Kirchhain, Hesse. Upon graduation from the Gymnasium Philippinum in Marburg in 1917, he served in the German army of occupation in Belgium. Of the intervening years, Strauss wrote: I was brought up in a conservative, even orthodox Jewish home somewhere in a rural district of Germany. The "ceremonial" laws were rather strictly observed but there was very little Jewish knowledge. In the Gymnasium I became exposed to the message of German humanism. Furtively, I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. When I was 16 and we read the Laches in school, I formed the plan, or rather the wish, to spend my life reading Plato and breeding rabbits while earning my living as a rural postmaster. Without being aware of it, I had moved rather far away from my Jewish home, without any rebellion. When I was 17, I was converted to Zionism—to simple, straightforward political Zionism. 58

Directly following the war, Strauss took advantage of the possibilities of academic freedom that the German university system offered 5 9 and studied philosophy, mathematics, and natural science at Marburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Hamburg. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the last, writing his dissertation ("Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H. Jacobis") under the direction of Ernst Cassirer. 60 In his postdoctoral years of study (1922-1925) at Freiburg, Giessen, and Marburg, Strauss's central concern was with "the resurgence of theology, of what sometimes is even

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called o r t h o d o x y . " 6 1 T h e stay at Freiburg was dictated by the presence of Husserl, although it was the experience of H e i d e g g e r — " o n e of the u n k n o w n y o u n g m e n in H u s s e r l ' s e n t o u r a g e " 6 2 — t h a t w o u l d in the end, in certain respects, p r o v e m o s t c o m p e l l i n g . 6 3 A quarter of a century would have to pass, however, before these streams could converge critically. M o t i v a t e d at this time by a need to r e e x a m i n e the a d e q u a c y of the E n l i g h t e n m e n t ' s critique of orthodoxy, Strauss concentrated on the analysis of S p i n o z a ' s Theological-Political Treatise and its criticism by Cohen. T h e resulting publication, " C o h e n s Analyse der B i b e l w i s s e n s c h a f t S p i n o z a s " (1924), secured f o r him a research p o s i t i o n at the A k a d e m i e fiir die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1925. Strauss maintained this position until 1932 and d u r i n g his tenure c o m p l e t e d Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischem Traktat (1930; translated in English as Spinoza's Critique of Religion, 1965). E x t e n s i v e work o n M e n d e l s s o h n ( f o r the a c a d e m y ' s j u b i l e e edition of his writings) and on H o b b e s (culminating in 1936 in The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: its Basis and Its Genesis) f u r t h e r m a r k e d this period. In 1932, assisted by r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s f r o m Cassirer and Carl Schmitt, Strauss successfully applied for a fellowship to the Rockefeller Foundation for the Social Sciences in G e r m a n y . 6 4 Thus, the financial exigency of the academy would set Strauss on a westward coursc of travel and study that would lead from Paris in 1932 (medieval Jewish and Arabic thought), to C a m b r i d g e in 1933 (Hobbes), and thence to American shores. What m a y be designated the "European Strauss" has yet to receive proper attention. W h e n that happens, Strauss's Philosophic und Gesetz (1935) will e m e r g e in its o w n right as a foundational work. For the present, however, even the elementary bibliographical research remains incomplete. As a partial contribution to the latter and, m o r e especially, for the instruction that it provides about Strauss's self-understanding as a Jewish scholar and thinker, the following memorial text, written on the occasion of R o s e n z w e i g ' s death, must be brought to the shores of the N e w World as well. The real founding document of the Academy for the Science of Judaism is the open letter "It Is Time—Thoughts Concerning the Educational Problem of the Moment," which Franz Rosenzweig had addressed to Hermann Cohen during the war. In this letter the concept of the academy was developed for the first time, so developed that the way to its materialization immediately could be paved. Franz Rosenzweig is the founder of the Academy. Franz Rosenzweig's idea was, in accordance with his avowed purpose, politically intended. This man, who earned for himself such great rewards as a thinker and scholar in the service of Wissenschaft, was not concerned with Wissenschaft as something "taken for granted," as something that did not require legitimation before an other, superior tribunal; he was concerned with Judaism. He maintained the vindication

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of our existence as Jews as the norm of any science of Judaism with a forcefulness that we are not able to forget. Franz Rosenzweig will always remain for all who strive after this science the admonisher [Mahner] of their proper duty. Franz R o s e n z w e i g , w h o b e l o n g e d to the P h i l o s o p h i c a l Commission of the Academy and the Curatorium of the Hermann Cohen Foundation of the Academy until he died, welcomed the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen as a "great gift" of the Academy to German and world Jewry. This work will always remain linked with the name Franz Rosenzweig: in his "Introduction" to these Writings, Franz Rosenzweig erected a monument that will hand down the memory of these two illustrious men, of the one who was praised and the one who praised, in fitting union, to all who come later.

The subsequent course of Strauss's academic life may be summarily reviewed: a temporary appointment as research fellow in the Department of History at Columbia University (1937); an eventual professorship in political science and philosophy at the New School for Social Research (1938-1948); professorial appointment to the University of Chicago (19491968), where he was designated Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Professor of Political Science (1960); a brief stay at Claremont Men's College before accepting (1968) the position of Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence at St. John's College, which he held until his death. To Strauss's sojourn in the United States belong the titles of a number of major works and collected studies. These may be listed, for the purposes of survey and approximation, under three general headings: Jewish thought, political philosophy, and Greek thought. 66 Leo Strauss died in Annapolis on October 18, 1973. He had requested that the 114th Psalm be read at his funeral. 67

The itinerarium of Strauss's intellectual life, that for which he sought philosophical understanding, is generally viewed as following the course of three questions—the quarrel between the ancients and moderns, the theological-political problem, and the question of Athens and Jerusalem— while coming to rest principally in various subsidiary themes: positivism, historicism, and esotericism. There are, however, among Strauss's students, interpreters, and critics differences of opinion as to the place of intersection for the convergence of these paths: 1. It is not an accident that already one of Leo Strauss's first works, Die Religionskritik Spinozas (1930), was concerned with this quarrel [between the ancients and moderns]. His entire imposing, scholarly life's work is devoted to the task of rekindling this quarrel in a more radical sense, i.e., to set against the modern historical selfconsciousness the clear rightness of classical philosophy. 6 8

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2. Strauss absolutely denied that the theological-political problem . . . arose with the advent of monotheism or of the biblical religions and the "holy" God. . . . The heart of revelation is the phenomenon of the "prophet," the human lawgiver who through his oratory or poetic speech orders the community and the nation or nations in the name of divine authority; and Strauss learned . . . to appreciate the words of Avicenna, "the treatment of prophecy and the Divine Law is contained in . . . the Laws." Strauss did not overlook, he rather brought out and stressed, the enormous differences between biblical thought and the thought of the Greek poets; but he regarded those differences as, in the final analysis, secondary. What is most essential in the quarrel between Plato and the Bible is already present in the quarrel between Plato and the poets or in the muted dispute between Socrates and Ischomachus. 69 3. Philosophy, either in its quest to understand itself, or simply as full open-mindedness, is obliged to examine, to articulate, the serious alternatives to philosophy. Philosophy, as the quest for the rational account of the whole, is always faced by the rival accounts of the whole laid down by the revealed religions. Both revealed religion and philosophy look upon such accounts as indispensable to the guidance of human life. The most impressive alternative to philosophy in the life of Leo Strauss is summoned up by the name of a city, Jerusalem, the holy city. What if the one thing most needful is not philosophic wisdom, but righteousness? This notion of the one thing most needful, Mr. Strauss argued, is not defensible if the world is not the creation of the just and loving God, the holy God. Neither philosophy nor revealed religion, he argued, can refute one another; for, among other reasons, they disagree about the very principles or criteria of proof. . . . This mutual irrefutability and tension between philosophy and Biblical revelation appeared to him to be the secret of the vitality of Western civilization. 70 A s is evident from these formulations, the fixed center in Strauss's universe o f d i s c o u r s e — a s s u m i n g the need to establish such a center—is difficult to locate by its exact name. 7 1 N o r is such s u m m o n i n g merely formulaic. The f u n d a m e n t a l l y of questioning as such is absolutely crucial to Strauss's strategic intent; 7 2 for, "if the fundamental problems persist in all historical change, human thought is capable o f transcending its historical limitation or grasping something trans-historical." 73 The preservation of "the fundamental and permanent problems" 7 4 in the face of the leveling effects of (e.g.) positivism or historicism is, then, a critical liberating step o n the pathway to a return to "the original meaning of philosophy." 7 5 The need to provide for this liberation has been occasioned anew by these movements; it is not c o e v a l w i t h them. T h e latter stand, in Strauss's v i e w , as the r e i g n i n g — i f not c u l m i n a t i n g — e x p r e s s i o n s o f a history o f thought that o c c l u d e s the originary and founding questions from w h i c h p h i l o s o p h y descends, and w h o s e birthmark it bears. It is the return through the history of philosophy to these questions, to the "original meaning o f philosophy," to

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the dis-covery of the hiddenness or withdrawal that characterizes being as such, and the logos of its inquiry, that is Strauss's actual destination. The unweaving of the fabric of the relation of being and logos, the severing of the strands of origin and generation, eventuates in the merely political understanding of the latter. This truncation is what is commonly or vulgarly understood, especially with reference to Strauss, as the question of esotericism. The vulgar reading of Strauss—in both senses of the word: that which is common or general; that which brings things down to their common or mean denominator, understanding the high in terms of the low—is presented in its most sophisticated form in "Dialogue and Dialogism" as the contrast between "the textual model" of persecution and the model of celebration,76 Paul de Man understands (Strauss's reading of) the "philosophic distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric" in terms of "the most obvious and the crudest reason why this antiquated or forgotten distinction was needed. Philosophy and the philosophers were 'in grave danger.'" 77 In the concluding lines of the essay "Persecution and the Art of Writing"—i.e., persecution and that art that exists independently of and within a different order of necessity than persecution—Strauss, in effect, anticipates this understanding and redirects the course of the reading it engenders: Exoteric literature presupposes . . . that freedom of inquiry, and of publication of all results of inquiry, is not guaranteed as a basic right. This literature is then essentially related to a society which is not liberal. Thus one may very well raise the question of what use it could be in a truly liberal society. The answer is simple. In Plato's Banquet, Alcibiades . . . compares Socrates and his speeches to certain sculptures which are very ugly from the outside, but within have most beautiful images of things divine. The works of the great writers of the past are very beautiful even from without. And yet their visible beauty is sheer ugliness, compared with the beauty of those hidden treasures which disclose themselves only after very long, never easy, but always pleasant work. This always difficult but always pleasant work is, I believe, what the philosophers had in mind when they recommended education. Education, they felt, is the only answer to the always pressing question, to the political question par excellence, of how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license.

Strauss's way of reading cannot be separated from the "political question." This question, notwithstanding the prisms of abstraction through which it has passed, remains fundamentally the question of the appearance or disclosure of the specifically human things (ta anthropina) in their concreteness—that is to say, the logos that both reflects and reflects upon the political arises from and remains concerned about life as given in its irreducibly human presence: as action (Nicomachean Ethics, 1095a3; Politics, 1254a8). However, in taking this question to its end, in following

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the logos of this question as it leads through the various orders or domains of presence and the different ends for which sake action is undertaken, we are made to look beyond the city and the love of one's own to a different form of beauty, and toward a different nature of the good. It is there that our eyes, opened by a different form of love, may light upon "most beautiful images of things divine." Irrespective of the actual regime and its practices, then, we must look away from the city and that which binds us to it if we are to see that which is highest, and thereby the highest ends for man. Strauss's way of reading moves through the eros of interpretation toward attainment of these ends as they come to light in the actuality of the philosophical life. To designate the "political question" as a topic among Strauss's thematic interests, even as its central topic, thus obscures the radicality of the place that it occupies as the topos of reading as such. Strauss's way of reading is similarly flattened out when understood in regard to esotericism—especially where the latter is understood simply as an accommodation to the demands of persecution. Rather, that way is the ascent to the place in which one may achieve "experience in beautiful things." 78 The strength of de Man's reading of Strauss lies in the level of its self-reflective critical interest—in its theoretical awareness. Its philosophical and hermeneutical weakness is revealed precisely at the point at which the opposition of persecution and celebration as textual models is theoretically extended to an opposition of hiddenness and display, the axis on which theoria as such ultimately turns. Nevertheless, it is possible on the basis of such textologies to raise some of the fundamental questions of Strauss's work. These questions may be reached, as well, by exposing certain of the underlying, in a sense theoretical, commitments of those criticisms of Strauss that on the surface limit themselves to the praxis of historical interpretation. 79 In sum, the matter may be placed as follows. Strauss's works make up a practiced restoration of the art of writing that was itself recuperated through his art of reading. He applied this art in measured response, in "the proper mixture" of the "bold and cautious," 80 to what was at stake in the texts and the questions under consideration. In the prevailing academic opinion, he practiced both arts to excess: "Whether . . . [Strauss's hermeneutics of esotericism] provides for historical interpretation or an invitation to perverse ingenuity is to my mind questionable"; 81 "The splendid line of reasoning which Strauss develops is at times weakened by his penchant for over fine points, and a species of learned gobbledegook which reminds one of the cabala"; 82 "He even ventures to read symbolical significance into the numbers designating the sequel of chapters. . . . Here he obviously enters into a realm of pure speculation, and few will follow in a credulous mood this kind of 'kabbalistic' exegesis." 8 3 These reviews are not unrepresentative of scholars who read Strauss critically and even appreciatively. In other quarters, the appraisal has been far more severe. 8 4 Irrespective of these differences, there is an

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overarching sameness determining the reception of Strauss's work, a particular understanding of philosophy and its relation to the city—be it the city of man or the city of God. No judgment on Strauss's work can be made fairly unless this premised harmony or cultural leveling off is critically questioned. For the reader who is being introduced to Strauss, then, it may be helpful to bear the following in mind: Strauss's reading is at once radical and moderate, a discourse on the course of philosophy—not, to be sure, in the sense of an academic course or class but course as a way or path toward philosophy; a reading that by virtue of its being en route toward philosophy is in some way rooted in it. Strauss's work is a measure of the care that one must exercise the farther along one moves on this path. It is at once radical and moderate writing 85 for the sake of the radicality and moderateness that is philosophical thinking. Whether the boldness and caution of Strauss's work are properly proportional can only be established when viewed from the end or height at which it aims. Strauss's writings, or rather the strategic conception that underlies them, can only be judged, then, from the place of thinking—or its celebration in wonder. With these provisions, it is possible to return to the beginning: to Strauss's introduction. *

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Strauss's writings continually return to the ground of their first nourishment: what is conventionally denominated Jewish philosophy. The cultivation of that ground, however, is not exclusively for the sake of exploring Jewish philosophy. It is not possible at present to comment further on these ends. As for the return itself, it may be said that the dwelling places of Strauss's concern were Spinoza and Maimonides. The elevation of Spinoza may be questioned from the vantage of Jewish allegiance. Strauss's own paraphrase of Cohen's criticism of Spinoza indicates the lines along which this questioning may proceed: Cohen was not concerned with Spinoza's transgression of the ceremonial law and his denial of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He condemned Spinoza because of his lack of loyalty to his own people, of his acting like an enemy of the Jews and thus giving aid and comfort to the many enemies of the Jews, of his behaving like a base traitor. Spinoza remains up to the present day the accuser par excellence of Judaism before an anti-Jewish world; the disposition of his mind and heart toward Jews and Judaism was "unnatural," he committed a "humanly incomprehensible act of treason," he was possessed by an "evil demon." 86

In commenting on this passage, Strauss observes that "one may doubt whether Spinoza's action is humanly incomprehensible or demoniac but one

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must grant that it is amazingly unscrupulous"—that is to say, in his intention "to show the way toward a liberal society," to secure "the liberation of the Jews in the only way in which he could think of it, given his philosophy. . . . The manner in which he sets forth his proposal—to say nothing of the proposal itself--is Machiavellian: the humanitarian end seems to justify every means; he plays a most dangerous game; his procedure is as much beyond good and evil as his God." 87 One may contrast these comments with the closing lines of Strauss's Cohen essay: "Cohen was a faithful warner and comforter to many Jews. At the very least he showed them effectively how Jews can live with dignity in a non-Jewish, even hostile, world while participating in that world. In showing this he assumed indeed that the state is liberal or moving toward liberalism." 88 The difference between Cohen's attitude toward liberalism and Spinoza's may be stated then in this way: Cohen's "political thought claims to be inspired by Biblical prophecy and hence is Messianic"; Spinoza's "political thought is based on the truth allegedly proven by experience that there will be vices as long as there will be human beings." 89 The genesis of these differences results in the consequence that "however justly Spinoza may deserve condemnation for his Machiavelli-inspired hard-heartedness, it is to be feared that Cohen has not remained innocent of the opposite extreme." 90 Whatever else we may leam from these differences, this lesson is clear: The elevation of one thinker over another cannot be decided by the comforting or edifying nature of his thought or allegiance. Nor is this only a question of the pragmatic. To seek spiritual comfort is natural for man. However, in seeking it, he must not be blinded by his need such that he becomes forgetful of his situation as seeker, 91 or the nature of the conditions or ends that may enable him to find consolation—even "bliss." 92 The search for consolation may lead man alternatively, that is to say, disjunctively, to the ancestral teachings (or to the good as understood as ancestral), to the traditional gods or God, to the historical particularity of revelation, on the one hand; or to nature, to the cosmic divinity, to the ubiquity of reason, on the other. 93 Nothing must be allowed to diminish the radical disjunction of these alternatives, the discovery of which Strauss once described as "in a way the greatest moment in the history of the human mind." 9 4 The whole of Strauss's teaching is directed toward the end of thinking and thinking through this disjunction; indeed, for Strauss, "the whole history of philosophy is nothing but the record of the ever repeated attempts to grasp fully what was implied in that crucial discovery which was made by some Greek twenty-six hundred years ago or before." 9 5 The reader who would follow Strauss through this thinking must allow for the understatement that is both characteristic of his expression and called for by its subject. The implications that resonate beneath the surface of Strauss's texts must then be rendered audible; by doing so, we will be in a position, as it were, to listen to Strauss's conversation with Cohen—the

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"Introductory Essay" to the Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism—with the attentiveness that is required. The "Introductory Essay" appears, in its final form, as the conclusion to Strauss's posthumously published Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. As originally designed, that work was to consist of sixteen chapters and an introduction. Chapters eight and sixteen, thus, would have corresponded to "Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections" and the "Introductory Essay for Hermann Cohen." The plan of the book, then, would have brought these essays purposefully together. Whatever Strauss may have intended thereby, there is an evident basis for their parallel. The question of the relationship of philosophy and Judaism is critical for any proper reading of Cohen's Religion of Reason. In "Jerusalem and Athens," this question is given its most developed treatment by Strauss. The essay itself is divided into two sections: "The Beginning of the Bible and Its Greek Counterparts," and "On Socrates and the Prophets." The essay, in effect, moves from Jerusalem to Athens—or, is an ascent from Jerusalem to Athens. The combined section headings themselves indicate as much: The references to what is Greek or of Greece are at the center between the references to what is biblical or of the Bible. The structure of the essay follows a pattern or paradigm that we have already encountered: "confronted with the incompatible claims of Jerusalem and Athens to our allegiance," we "listen"—forced to judge between that which we are utterly incapable of judging. 96 We proceed to the limit of our powers by bringing these claims together in the form of a dialogue, a dialectic of part and counterpart, difference and sameness. Here, the sameness consists in the common privileging of wisdom; the difference lies in the way in which wisdom is, in the end, understood. According to the Bible, the beginning of wisdom lies in the fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers, it lies in wonder. 97 What Strauss had referred to in the title as the "preliminary" character of his "reflections" may be explained with reference to this text. We stand only at the beginning. The love of wisdom and the love of God perfect what is always present in that love, i.e., wonder and fear. As the perfection of the latter, it is necessary to ascend from them to that love to which they themselves are turned. The extent to which Strauss's essay moves in this direction is the measure of its completion. The opposition of Athens and Jerusalem turns on the axis of wonder and fear. The source of wonder is that which is "accessible to man as man—to his observations and calculations." 9 8 According to the Bible, however, the "worship of the cosmic gods is not due to a natural or rational cause, to the fact that those gods are accessible to man as man but to an act of God's will." 99 At this point Strauss further observes: "It goes without saying that according to the Bible the God who manifests Himself as far as He wills, who is not universally worshipped as such, is the only true God." 1 0 0 At the source of wonder is the fear of the true God. The anonymity of reason— anonymous by virtue of its ubiquity—is replaced by authoritative tradition.

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The second, considerably shorter section of the essay begins at this place. It is introduced by a comparatively lengthy discussion of Cohen, in which Strauss expresses doubts about his view of fundamental matters. The section concludes with a discussion of "the perfectly just man." The question of metaphysics is replaced unobtrusively by considerations of moral philosophy. 101 A comparison is then made between the prophet Nathan and Socrates. In making the comparison, Strauss emphasizes that in this particular account by Xenophon the example of Socrates' virtue has no identifiable source: Socrates, we are told, "said somewhere"', "this remark was reported to Critias." The example of Socrates thus recapitulates at the level of moral virtue that anonymity which had been advanced as the preserve of theoretical virtue. Whatever limits may be placed on this notion of virtue from the vantage of its biblical counterpart, within the limits of its own exercise human excellence has a home in the habitation that is common to man as man: the cities in which speech with others arises, and the heavens to which it may turn. These themes, at this time, can only be pointed to; and this, only distantly. Nevertheless, we may take our bearings, if not instruction, from Strauss's way of indicating the question that originates with them. The "Introductory Essay" to Hermann Cohen's Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism is preceded by Strauss's review of J. L. Talmon's The Nature of Jewish History—its Universal Significance. The closing words of the latter pass seamlessly into the reading of the former, establishing the path along which it should move. After noting Talmon's reliance on Matthew Arnold's distinction between "the Jewish passion for right acting" and "the Greek passion for right seeing and thinking," Strauss concludes: "It is to be hoped that the author will develop this theme further by showing more precisely than he has hitherto done why 'the passion for right acting,' as distinguished from the 'passion for right seeing and thinking,' requires primarily a peculiar nation as its bearer." 102 The question that Strauss places before Talmon provides the brackets within which to locate the interrogation of Cohen's effort. Strauss's closing remarks, his final words on that effort, concern the role played by Cohen as "warner and comforter to many Jews." 103 Cohen, we are told, was limited in both capacities. Limited by what he could foresee, he could not know the evil of Nazism, nor warn those who would suffer most as its victims. These limits, as we have seen, are not necessarily to be isolated from his judgment of modernity and its experiment in liberalism. Nevertheless, within these limits—irrespective of the efficacy of warning— Cohen's legacy could be a source of comfort. But no such comfort—not even the surety of martyrdom—is possible for "Jews . . . who are killed spiritually by being cut off from the sources of Judaism." 104 For Jews such as these— without home or textual tradition, consumed by the earth of their habitation—the only comfort that may be offered, is the comfort for man as

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such. In Strauss's words, in both their weight and all but unendurable lightness: Each of us here is compelled to find his bearings by his own powers, however defective they may be. We have no comfort other than that inherent in this activity. Philosophy, we have learned, must be on guard against the wish to be edifying—philosophy can only be intrinsically edifying. We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and that this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is entirely independent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing, fair or ugly. It leads us to realize that all evils are in a sense necessary if there is to be understanding. It enables us to accept all evils which befall us and which may well break our hearts in the spirit of good citizens of the city of God. By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whether we understand it as created or as uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind. 105 It is a blessing that Leo Strauss lived and wrote. NOTES I am grateful to Professor Roslyn Weiss for her editorial care and sensitivity in reading this essay. Translations of texts cited, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. 1. In Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 233. Cited hereafter as "Introductory Essay," and, for the book as a whole, SPPP. 2. "Without logon dounai te kai dexasthai I, at least, cannot live." (Letter to Eric Voeglein, June 4, 1951.) See the references in Fr. Ast, Lexicon Platonicum, rep. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969) to logon didonai. Cf. Strauss's opening remarks in his "A Giving of Accounts" with Jacob Klein, The College (Annapolis and Santa Fe) 22, 1 (April 1970): pp. 1-5. 3. The matter of Strauss's relation to Cohen may be set out provisionally by citing his own formative assessment: I would like to say at the outset as emphatically as possible that I am in no way a Cohenian. . . . T h e d o u b t f u l n e s s of his teaching perhaps is not any less evident to m e than it is to you. I do not by any m e a n s want to discuss the question of whether the talk of " s u r p a s s i n g " is at once applicable to philosophical inquiries as it is perhaps to specialized scientific investigations. Whatever the case is with regard to this f u n d a m e n t a l question, C o h e n is much too original and deep a t h i n k e r that the d o u b t f u l n e s s of his teaching can r e l e a s e us thereby f r o m listening, in any event, to that which he says. . . . A s far as my linking C o h e n ' s thesis to M a i m o n ' s P l a t o n i s m is c o n c e r n e d , it is only a question of such listening, and in no way a blind following. (Letter to Dr. Gottschalk, D e c e m b e r

28, 1931.)

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I am grateful to Professor Joseph Cropsey, executor of Strauss's literary estate, for permission to examine this and other archival materials in the University of Chicago collection. Strauss's formulaic assertion of independence from Cohen ("ich in keiner W e i s e Cohenianer b i n " ) carries, for him, all the weight o f a technical construction. Ten years earlier ir. his doctoral dissertation Strauss noted: ' " I c h bin kein Cartesianer.' In dieser entschiedenen Formulierung drückt sich die systematische D i f f e r e n z — w e n n man von einer solchen auch bei einem systemfeindlichen Denker reden darf—in aller schärfe aus" (p. 9). 4. " P r e f a c e to Spinoza's Critique of Religion," in L e o Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern ( N e w Y o r k : Basic Books, 1968), p. 240. Cited hereafter as "Preface," and LAM, respectively. 5. I b i d . 6. " P r e f a c e , " p. 224. 7. " H o w to Study S p i n o z a ' s T h e o l o g i c a l - P o l i t i c a l T r e a t i s e , " in L e o Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952, and cited hereafter as PAW), p. 142. 8. " H o w to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in L A M , p. 140. The relationship of these t i t l e s — " H o w to Study . . ." and " H o w to Begin to Study . . ."—should be duly noted. 9. Strauss's discussion o f Cohen's text begins with the question o f the book's being at the same time philosophical and Jewish. In the " P r e f a c e " (p. 237) Strauss observes: "Whereas the classic work of what is called Jewish medieval philosophy, The Guide of the Perplexed, is primarily not a philosophic book, but a Jewish book, R o s e n z w e i g ' s Star of Redemption is primarily not a Jewish book, but 'a system of philosophy.'" 10. " T h e Mutual Influence o f T h e o l o g y and Philosophy," in Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1979): 111-118. See further, " Z u r Auseinandersetzung mit der europäischen W i s s e n s c h a f t , " in Der Jude 8, 10 (1924): pp. 6 1 3 617. 11. " W h a t Is Liberal Education?" in LAM, p. 4. Cited hereafter as " W L E . " 12. T o assess this claim properly, one need only recall Strauss's gloss on N i e t z s c h e ' s Übermensch, or super-man, of the future: "he is meant to unite in himself Jerusalem and Athens on the highest l e v e l " ("Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections," in SPPP, p. 149. Cited hereafter as " J A . " ) . Cruelty is of "crucial importance" for the transition to the future, and the "intellectual probity" that is its accompaniment. L e o Strauss, "Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil," in SPPP, p. 189. 13. " I f understood loosely, it [philosophy] is the same as what is now called intellectual interests. If understood strictly, it means quest for the truth about the most weighty matters or for the comprehensive truth or for the truth about the whole or for the science of the whole." "Liberal Education and Responsibility," in LAM, p. 13. Cited hereafter as " L E R . " On the difference between the intellectual and the philosopher, see L e o Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1953), p. 34. Cited hereafter as NRH. 14. "Introductory Essay," p. 246. 15. " I t is safer to believe that he [Machiavelli] has given careful thought to every word he uses than to make allowances for human weakness. Considering the d i f f e r e n c e in rank between Machiavelli and people like ourselves, the rule of reading which derives from that belief may be impracticable, since w e cannot p o s s i b l y c o m p l y with it in all cases. It is nevertheless a g o o d rule, f o r remembering it keeps us awake and modest or helps us to develop the habit of being in the proper mixture both bold and cautious." L e o Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), p. 47. C o h e n ' s

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writings, of course, are not held in the same esteem by Strauss; cf. "Introductory Essay," p. 240. 16. "In his Religion of Reason Cohen makes no distinction between modesty and humility except to say that he who is humble before God is modest toward men. In his Ethics he had said that modesty keeps unimpaired the feeling of one's own worth whereas humility makes the assumption of one's own worthlessness." "Preface," p. 246. See Karl Lôwith, "Can There Be a Christian Gentleman?" in Nature, History, and Existentialism, ed. A. Levison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 204-213. 17. "Kurt Riezler, 1882-1955," in Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (New York: Free Press, 1959), p. 246 (cited hereafter as WPP). The relationship of Strauss to Heidegger is not at all adequately suggested by the titles of his works or their indices—Natural Right and History being an outstanding example. Strauss's two autobiographical discourses ("The Preface" and "A Giving of Accounts") are sufficient to indicate what is at stake, if not always at issue, in linking their names. 18. "Preface," p. 233. 19. The comparisons, indeed the most important ones, are not always by name; cf. Strauss's remarks on "intellectual probity": "Preface," p. 256, and "Introductory Essay," p. 246. See further Rémi Brague's observations in his essay in the present work. 20. Ibid. 21. See "Preface," pp. 234-237, 256. 22. The treatment of this matter requires for its completion consideration of the question of poetry. See Strauss's "Notes on Lucretius," in LAM, pp. 84-85. 23. "Preface," p. 235. 24. "JA," p. 168. 25. "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," in SPPP, p. 33. Cf. Republic, 518d-519a; Crito, 44a. 26. "WLE," p. 6. 27. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), p. 51. 28. "WLE," p. 6. 29. A similar defectiveness is found in Strauss's account of his relationship to Nietzsche: "Nietzsche so dominated and bewitched me between my 22nd and 30th years, that I literally believed everything that I understood of him. . . ." Letter to Karl Lowith, June 23, 1935, in Independent Journal of Philosophy 5/6 (1988): p. 183. A number of related matters intersect at this juncture. Strauss draws them together in his discussion of Yehuda Halevi, where the latter's "conversion to philosophy" is portrayed as a descent ("a spiritual hell") into its "dangerous" and "beautiful" teachings. See his "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari" (cited hereafter as "LRK") in PAW, pp. 108-109. Cf. "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy" in Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (cited hereafter as RCPR), ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 211. 30. Cf. Leo Strauss, "The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy," in LAM, p. 37. 31. In Xenophon' s Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 29, Strauss specifies the moderation as "continence." The entire narrative in question is interpreted as an expression of the latter. Cited hereafter as XS. 32. See Charmides, 161b-c (ad loc., Seth Benardete, "On Interpreting Plato's Charmides," in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 11, 2, [1986]); Memorabilia, I.ii.32-33 (ad loc., "JA," pp. 172-173); The Guide of the

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Perplexed, l.xxxi (ad loc., Leo Strauss, Philosophic und Gesetz [Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1935], p. 46) and especially II.xv.32b. Cf. NRH, p. 82. The sharpest and most succinct formulation of this is given in "JA," p. 152. 33. The extension of the phrase "our subject," i.e., the relationship of part to whole, needs to be considered. 34. "WLE," p. 7. 35. Ibid. 36. "JA," p. 149. 37. Terence Irwin's review of XS (Philosophical Review, 83 [1974]: pp. 409-413) illustrates the differences: Most of his [Strauss's] philosophically inclined readers will expect some enlightenment about Socrates. Anyone who considers Xenophon's Socrates must face well-wom but inescapable questions in Socratic studies. How good a source of information is Xenophon? What is his relation to Plato? Where Xenophon's and Plato's accounts differ, which should we prefer? Unfortunately, Strauss has no clear answer, explicit or implicit; his book is almost valueless for anyone who wants to learn more about Socrates. Strauss's "interpretation" consists of a tedious paraphrase. . . . No coherent line of interpretation emerges from his enigmatic asides. His paraphrase merely reminds us how unexciting Xenophon can be. . . . (p. 409, emphasis added)

Irwin's notion of philosophical inclination is clearly revealed in the questions that he poses. These questions belong to what he designates "Socratic studies." They are the "inescapable questions" asked by anyone wanting "to learn more about Socrates." Irwin is surely correct in suggesting (if this is indeed his intention), that "philosophically inclined readers" dwell in the space of "inescapable questions." He is wrong, however, in considering the questions that he asks to be philosophical. Such an elementary misunderstanding of the nature of philosophical inquiry is bound to result in an elementary misunderstanding of the texts—ancient and modern—in which that inquiry is undergone. What is called "Socratic studies," or the learning more about Socrates, is the academically institutionalized form of this utterly fundamental misunderstanding or confusion. It is, in sum, the reduction of philosophy to a specific form of doxological research. The absence of writings in the canon of works generally designated classical philosophy that correspond to Irwin's methodological notion of Socratic studies should suffice to establish the distinction between learning about and learning from Socrates. In this respect, the "philosophically inclined" reading of Cicero—i.e., the level and concern of his inquiry into Socrates' sayings {dicta.) and their representation in Xenophon and Plato—is paradigmatic CDe Natura Deorum, I.xii.31). Strauss's paraphrase, i.e., his following of the logos wherever it leads—even to the point that results in ridicule when he is brought into the court of today's academy ( T h e a t e t u s , 172b-d)—has its beginnings in such distinctions, and its end in literally re-minding us of them. 38. The relationship of the thinker to authority should not be overdetermined by modern notions of resoluteness in the face of long-received opinion or institutionalized belief. It is adequately covered by the idea of courage. See Averroes on Republic, 486b. 39. "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," in RCPR. In publishing this essay, Pangle has emended the archival typescript in two critical ways: adding "Heideggerian" to the title, and deleting the deeply suggestive Maimonidean resonances with which the essay began: "This series of lectures—a reminder of the perplexities of modern man—should help the Jewish students in particular towards facing the perplexities of the modern Jew with somewhat greater clarity."

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40. "JA," p. 151; see "Preface," p. 250. 41. The understanding of the Socratic paradigm of definition, and the underlying dialectic of wholes and parts, ultimately depends on the understanding of this question of logos. The understanding of the rhetorical dimension of the dialogues depends in part, as well, on an understanding of the logoi in relation to re-collection—cf. Socrates' metaphoric gathering together of Phaedo and his companions on the verge of their dispersion into misology (Phaedo, 89a). 42. "WLE," p. 6. 43. See Allan Bloom's "Interpretive Essay" in his edition of The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 354. 44. "WLE," pp. 6 - 7 . 45. "WLE," p. 7 (emphasis added). 46. Memorabilia, IV.v.12. 47. It is within this dialectic that the characteristic Socratic "what is" question finds its beginning and end. The question that Strauss raises in his "way of life is presented here as commentary on the Memorabilia—Socrates' culminating, or his wisdom is presented here as consisting, in his discerning study together with his companions of the writings of the wise men of old. How this activity is related to Socrates's always conversing about the 'what is' of the human things is not stated by Xenophon" (XS, pp. 29-30)—may be said to have been answered insofar as Socratic reading and inquiry are of the same dialectical form. 48. "LER," p. 23. 49. "WLE," p. 8. 50. See Memorabilia, IV.iv.19. 51. I b i d . 52. Leo Strauss, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science," in SPPP, p. 33. Cited hereafter as "PRS." 53. I b i d . 54. This limit, while not necessarily the same as in the case of Marx and Nietzsche, can be pointed to in Strauss as well: e.g., "WLE," p. 7. In Strauss's case, the possibility that this and similar utterances are directed toward Heidegger should not be overlooked. The implications of their difference in this matter have far-reaching consequences. 55. PRS, p. 34. 56. "LER," p. 24. 57. "Preface," p. 233. 58. "A Giving of Accounts," p. 2. 59. "Academic freedom meant in Germany that one could change one's university every semester and that there were no attendance requirements nor examinations in lecture courses" (ibid). 60. The dissertation, later dismissed by Strauss (in "A Giving of Accounts") as a "disgraceful performance," contains in its accompanying biographical statement ( L e b e n s l a u f ) the confession: "Ich bin jüdischen Glaubens." 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. The matter of Strauss's relationship to Heidegger's thinking is one of the philosophical issues most in need of being raised in order to arrive at a proper understanding of Strauss's thought. The dismissal of the one, for whatever reason, results in a fundamental dilution of the other. Strauss's attraction to Heidegger during the 1920s was singularly strong. On Nehama Liebowitz's recollection, Heidegger was the only living philosopher about whom Strauss regularly spoke. (Liebowitz and Strauss participated in Jacob Guttmann's Berlin seminar on

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Maimonides' Guide between 1924 and 1925. In exchange for her instruction in the Hebrew text of Saadya Gaon's The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Strauss read with Liebowitz the Greek text of the Gorgias. Even at that time, she recalls, Strauss was uncompromisingly independent, arguing the superiority of his own understanding of Maimonides to that of Guttmann.) From the very outset, there was never a suggestion of discipleship. Even at that formative stage, "Strauss came to Heidegger with his questions fully formed" (Hans Jonas). I am grateful to Professor Liebowitz and Professor Jonas for allowing me to interview them at length regarding Strauss's student days. 64. See Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und "Der Begriff des Politischen" (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1988). 65. "Franz Rosenzweig und die Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums," in Jüdische Wochenzeitung für Kassel, Hessen und Waldeck, December 13, 1929, p. 2. 66. A virtually complete bibliography of Strauss's writings appears in SPPP. An informed vantage on these writings can be acquired from Pangle's introduction to the latter. Generally, see Allan Bloom, "Leo Strauss, September 20, 1899-October 18, 1973," Political Theory 2, 4 (November 1974): pp. 3 7 2 392; and Nathan Tarcov and Thomas L. Pangle, "Epilogue: Leo Strauss and the History of Political Philosophy," in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 907-938. The most instructive account of its kind known to this author is that of Shlomo Pines, "On Leo Strauss," Independent Journal of Philosophy 5/6 (1988): pp. 169-171. 67. For Strauss's reading of this psalm, see "JA," p. 151. 68. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1960), p. 503. 69. Pangle, "Introduction," SPPP, p. 20. However, see Strauss's discussion of textuality and authority in Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, trans. Fred Baumann (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), and that of human and divine textuality in "On the Interpretation of Genesis," L'Homme: Révue française d'anthropologie 21, 1 (1981): pp. 5-36. 70. Laurence Berns, "Leo Strauss, 1899-1973," Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): pp. 2-3. In LRK, p. 107, n. 35, Strauss observes: "One cannot recall too often this remark of Goethe . . . "Das eigentliche, einzige und tiefste Thema der Welt- und Menschengeschichte, dem alle übrigen untergeordnet sind, bleibt der Konflikt des Unglaubens und Glaubens." ["The true, singular and deepest theme of world and human history, that to which all additional ones are subordinated, remains the conflict of unbelief and belief."] 71. The decisive consideration appears, on Strauss's account, to be the question of omnipotence. On this question ultimately turns the "fundamental dualism" that Strauss posits between deed and speech, or action and thought. Only the biblical authors, according to Strauss, possess this understanding. Leo Strauss, "The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy," Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1979): p. 112. 72. Compare "On Aristotle's Politics," in Strauss, The City and Man, with his On Tyranny (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1963), p. 210. 73. NRH, p. 24. 74. Leo Strauss, "What Is Political Philosophy?" in WPP, p. 39. 75. See note 7 of this chapter, pp. 154-158. It is instructive to compare Strauss's account, especially the distinction between "historical understanding" and historicism, with Richard Rorty's gloss on Heidegger ("Heidegger and

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Dewey," in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed. Michael Murray [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978], pp. 241-242, note 7). 76. Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 108. 77. "Introduction," in PAW, p. 17. 78. "WLE," p. 8. 79. According to Strauss, esotericism must be understood in terms of "the relation between the quest for the truth (philosophy or science) and society: Philosophy or science, the highest activity of man, is the attempt to replace opinion about 'all things' by knowledge of 'all things'; but opinion is the element of society; philosophy or science is therefore the attempt to dissolve the element in which society breathes, and thus it endangers society" (p. 27). Esotericism, therefore, is not properly understood on a conventional model of secrecy. That model obtains within societies or between them by virtue of the relationship of power and knowledge. It is an expression of the inherently exclusionary economy of social order. Esotericism, in Strauss's sense, stands or falls on a particular conception of society as such (i.e., of man as such), and the nature and conditions by which this may be transcended. For Strauss, "the crucial premise of this argument is the proposition that opinion is the element of society" (p. 27)—and, correlatively, that "esotericism necessarily follows from the original meaning of philosophy" (p. 29). From this, "fundamentally . . . two questions" arise: "the historical question as to whether there ever were any great thinkers who held the view about the relation of philosophy and society . . . just sketched; and the philosophic question whether that view is simply false or simply true, or true if qualified (e.g., 'opinion is the element of all non-liberal societies')." No reading of Strauss is adequate which fails to move from the first to the second question, or which fails to ask the first question for the sake of the second. That inquiry entails, as well, what might be called a contesting of the faculties or disciplines of questioning. Leo Strauss, "On a Forgotten Kind of Writing," Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): pp. 27-31. 80. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 47. 81. See George H. Sabine's review of Persecution and the Art of Writing, Ethics (April 1953): p. 220. 82. See Carl J. Friedrich's review of Thoughts on Machiavelli, New Leader (October 12, 1959): p. 27. 83. See Alexander Altmann's review of The Guide of the Perplexed, Journal of Religion (July 1964): p. 261. 84. E.g., see in this regard Myles F. Bumyeat's review of Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, "Sphinx Without a Secret," New York Review of Books, May 30, 1985, pp. 30-36; Friedrich Niewohner's re-view, "Vom Lesen alter Biicher," in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 27, 1985, p. 35; and Aryeh Motzkin, "Anthologizing Judaica: A Bibliographical Review," Jewish Quarterly Review 76, 3 (January 1986): pp. 229-236. 85. Cf. "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed," in PAW, pp. 55-60. 86. "Preface," p. 224. 87. Ibid., pp. 244-246. 88. "Introductory Essay," pp. 246-247. 89. "Preface," p. 246. 90. "Preface," p. 247. 91. See note 7, pp. 7 - 8 . 92. NRH, p. 75. 93. "JA," p. 166.

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94. NRH, p. 74. 95. Ibid., p. 82. 96. "JA," pp. 149-150. 97. Ibid. 98. "JA," p. 166. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid. 101. "JA," p. 172. 102. In SPPP, p. 232. 103. "Introductory Essay," p. 246. 104. Ibid., p. 247. Cf. "Preface," p. 252. 105. "WLE," p. 8.

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1

Léo Strauss: The Philosopher as Weimar Jew DAVID BIALE

At the end of the introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing, Leo Strauss suggests that the philosopher at all times, and not just in the Greek city, is in grave danger. He writes: "The understanding of this danger and of the various forms which it has taken, and which it may take, is the foremost task, and indeed the sole task, of the sociology of philosophy." 1 He seeks to show that philosophers, insofar as they teach the truth, always face the same danger as Socrates, and therefore can only protect themselves by what he calls esoteric writing. Strauss's whole project in Persecution and the Art of Writing should be more properly termed the sociology of philosophy than philosophy itself. What he means by this term is something like Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, 2 namely, an understanding of the ideological function of ideas in a given social setting; only by understanding this function can one ferret out the true position of the philosopher beneath the explicit text. Strauss claims that the status of philosophy in the medieval Islamic and especially in the medieval Jewish world was fundamentally different from philosophy in the Christian sphere. While in Christianity philosophy in the form of theology was an official institutionalized discourse, which fell under ecclesiastical supervision, Islamic and Jewish philosophy remained private endeavors, devoid of official status. In this respect, Islamic and Jewish philosophy were much closer to philosophy in ancient Greece than was medieval Christian scholasticism. According to Strauss, the private character of Greek philosophy, the fact that it did not enjoy governmental sponsorship, was what gave it the potential to be heretical with respect to conventional opinion and made it a dangerous occupation; this function, which Strauss holds is the true task of philosophy, was taken over by some of the Islamic and Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages and it is therefore to these philosophers we must turn if we are to discover what is, for Strauss, true philosophy in its medieval form. 3 The purpose of my remarks here will be to apply Strauss's sociology of philosophy to Strauss himself and attempt to understand his thought in terms

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of its ideological function within its historical context. One of Strauss's favorite methodological statements, as is well known, is that we must understand a particular philosopher as he understood himself (a method he took from Spinoza's demand that we read the Bible according to the Bible). 4 Strauss devoted much of his career to denouncing historicism, the attempt to understand the past within its own context. For Strauss, this "contextualizing" robbed the thought of great thinkers of its eternal truthfulness by making it "merely" the product of a particular set of historical circumstances. Yet the way Strauss understood himself gives us an opening to place his own thought in its historical setting. In the 1962 preface to the English-language edition of Spinoza's Critique of Religion, Strauss writes: "This study on Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise was written during the years 1925-28 in Germany. The author was a young Jew bom and raised in Germany who found himself in the grip of the theologico-political predicament." 5 He goes on to spell out the political and theological context of Weimar Germany in which he wrote the work. The crisis of liberalism exemplified by Weimar led him to question the whole liberal political tradition and from this political critique to criticize the historical consciousness that lay behind liberalism. His rejection of historicism led him to theology and to an affirmation, or so he says in the preface, of Jewish orthodoxy. Thus, the problem of the Jews in Germany seemed to Strauss emblematic of the crisis of liberalism, as indeed it seemed for many other Europeans. The failure of liberalism to solve the Jewish problem symbolized in an extreme way its failure generally and the need for political and religious alternatives. Strauss therefore understood himself within the context of a particular generation, that of the Weimar Jews. Although generalizations about the mentality of a generation are always problematic, there are certain features of the thought of Weimar Jews with which Strauss's own philosophy resonates in harmony. 6 I should like to examine some elements of Strauss's thought against the background of those other Jewish intellectuals with whom he shared a common discourse, a common background, and ultimately a common fate. One key to unlocking the esoteric meaning of Strauss's thought is this intellectual context. I wish to show that, for Strauss, Jewish thought today constitutes, as it did in the Middle Ages, a mode of opposition to conventional opinion and that it preserves truth in a world dominated by the insidious philosophies of historicism and social science. If Western thought—read, Christian thought—had produced the sins of historicism, Jewish thought might provide an avenue back to truth. The crisis of Weimar prompted many Jewish intellectuals to turn to radical political alternatives. Many of those who created the Frankfurt school of critical theory were Jews, such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. 7 Marxism also attracted such iconoclastic intellectuals as Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch. On the other side of the spectrum, the Jewish theologian Hans

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Joachim Schoeps developed a version of extreme German nationalism that made him believe that he could find common ground with the Nazis. 8 For m a n y Weimar Jews, and particularly intellectuals, Zionism represented the most fundamental alternative to the German liberalism in which the Jews had placed their hopes. Zionism was not simply one alternative among several, as it was for East European Jews, but the antithesis of their whole world view. Few in the 1920s took the radical step of emigrating to Palestine, as did Gershom Scholem. 9 Zionism represented rather a theoretical challenge, so that even those like Franz Rosenzweig, who rejected it, felt compelled to grapple with it as they evolved their own philosophies. 10 Others like Martin Buber or Hannah Arendt saw in Zionism a Utopian solution to the failure of modern politics; when Zionism took a pragmatic course, which was surely inevitable given its political and nationalistic character, these thinkers became disillusioned and critical. 11 Strauss clearly shared this fascination with Zionism. In the preface to the book on Spinoza, he describes Zionism as the most authentic political response to the crisis of liberal emancipation. Strauss states that Zionism "procured a blessing for all Jews everywhere regardless of whether they admit it or not. It did not, however, solve the Jewish problem." 1 2 Zionism remained a partial political solution, a "profound modification of the Galut . . . but it is not the end of the Galut: in the religious sense and perhaps not only in the religious sense, the state of Israel is part of the Galut." 1 3 In other words, Zionism, for all its achievements, is not a Utopian movement and has no bearing on traditional messianism, a position that Strauss shared with Scholem. 1 4 Yet the failure of Zionism to fulfill messianic expectations was actually its virtue for Strauss, if we put his statements in the larger context of his political thought. He writes: Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create a society which is free of contradictions. From every point of view it looks as if the Jewish people were the chosen people in the sense, at least, that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of the human problem as a social or political problem.15 The inability of Zionism to solve the Jewish problem in an absolute sense is part and parcel and, indeed, the most symbolic expression of the universal inability of politics to effect Utopian solutions. Strauss was not alone in seeing the problems of the Jews as emblematic for the human condition in general. Strauss may well have been influenced by Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) in this regard. 1 6 In his posthumously published Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, Cohen argues that the Jewish condition of statelessness must become the messianic model for a unified mankind that will create a confederation of states. Moreover,

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Jewish suffering is a messianic sign to all mankind. (It is possible that Cohen believed that the universal suffering brought about by World War I made the world receptive to the message of historical Jewish suffering.) 17 Similar notions can be found in the writings of Strauss's contemporary, Hannah Arendt, whose fascination with the Greeks and pessimistic view of the modern state resembled Strauss's. For Arendt, the Jews represent what mankind might become, both negatively and positively. Arendt saw the Jewish refugees of the 1930s and 1940s as metaphors for the dismal political life of our times: The inability of the m o d e m state to tolerate human diversity leads to Auschwitz. The very reasons the Jews attract hatred—their natural differences from other people—must become the basis for humanity. By teaching the world the importance of national diversity, the Jews will fulfill a mission "to achieve the establishment of mankind." 1 8 For Arendt as for Strauss, the Jewish experience was not a melancholy but isolated episode in the history of mankind; rather, it contained the seeds of the true philosophy, true for all time and for all peoples. In this way, both preserved idiosyncratic versions of the Jews as the chosen people. Yet Strauss's radical opposition to a messianic politics distinguishes him from both Cohen and Arendt and, indeed, from all Jewish Utopians who resort to the same figures of thought. His rejection of Zionism as a messianic movement corresponds to his iconoclastic reading of Plato as an anti-utopian thinker. In his reading of Farabi's Plato, he writes: We may say that Farabi's Plato eventually replaces the philosopherking who rules openly in the virtuous city, by the secret kingship of the philosopher who, being "a perfect man" . . . lives privately as a member of an imperfect society which he tries to humanize within the realm of the possible. 19

Politics was not the realm in which to realize the absolute truths of philosophy; indeed, philosophy, as an endangered species, must be preserved from the interference of the political. Although this skepticism with respect to politics led some to consider Strauss a political conservative by the 1970s, it is no surprise that a philosopher who defined himself as a child of the Weimar Republic should be so suspicious of political movements that make messianic claims. Indeed, the above lines from the introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing were based on Strauss's article "Farabi's Plato" published, significantly enough, in 1945. 20 Even though Strauss rarely makes explicit references to the political context in which he wrote, a reading between the lines demonstrates, I believe, the degree to which the twentieth-century crisis of politics determined Strauss's reading of ancient authors: No one writing as the Nazi regime came to its end could be sanguine about the perfectibility of the political realm. Whether Utopians like Arendt or anti-utopians like Strauss, Weimar intellectuals shared a dominant characteristic: opposition to conventional

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ideas and discovery of suppressed or forgotten ideas that might inspire contemporary thought. Frequently coming out of secular backgrounds, many thinkers were obsessed with finding their way back to remote historical traditions. Yet this return to tradition was possible not on the highroad of "official" traditions but rather on the byways of heretical or subterranean movements. Consider the following examples: Bloch, who studied atheism and heretical movements within Christianity; Scholem, who restored Jewish mysticism to an important place in Jewish thought; Schoeps, who searched for the Jewish roots of Christianity; and Hans Jonas, who wrote on Gnosticism as the precursor to contemporary existentialism. 21 All of these thinkers engaged in what I have elsewhere called counter-history, the inversion of conventional wisdom and the explosion of unquestioned myths. 22 As Scholem put it in regard to the study of Jewish mysticism, "It is possible that what was termed degeneracy will be thought of as a revelation and light and what seemed to [the nineteenth-century historians] impotent hallucinations will be revealed as a great living myth . . . not the washing and mummification of the dead, but the discovery of hidden life by removal of the obfuscating masks." 23 Here is a call for history that searches for sources of vitality that lie hidden beneath the alien past and that challenges received wisdom with counter-traditions. Strauss's esoteric hermeneutics must be seen in the context of this counter-historical approach. Philosophical truth lies not in what a philosopher explicitly says and certainly not in what the conventional interpreters say he said; instead, it is to be found by reading between the lines, or by what Walter Benjamin, whose work is a kind of counter-history of German literature, called "brushing history against the grain." 24 Like the apocalyptic writer who decodes old prophecies or the mystic who "uncovers one handbreadth while covering two," Strauss holds that the truth is never revealed and must be discovered by the reverse process with which it had been concealed. It is in the details of the mainstream that one can find hints of the subterranean. According to Allan Bloom, Strauss said that "only by the closest attention to the surface could one get to the core; . . . the surface is the core." 2 5 By painstakingly searching through texts for details hitherto unnoticed one might find the esoteric truth. Strauss was not unique in this obsession with detail. Benjamin developed a whole hermeneutics based on collecting seemingly trivial and unrelated details and constructing out of them an entirely unexpected edifice. Scholem's extraordinary studies of the Kabbalah were a result of similar minute philology of dusty manuscripts. And it was Aby Warburg's favorite saying that "the beloved God lives in details." Only by attention to that which had previously been deemed unimportant or even heretical could this generation establish a creative relationship to the past. With all of these Weimar intellectuals, Strauss shared a belief that the

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solution to modem dilemmas, or at least a better understanding of them, was available by studying old thinkers, by returning to old traditions, reinterpreted according to their esoteric truths. For Strauss, the Greeks in particular were the old thinkers who needed to be reinterpreted and made accessible to the modern sensibility. For Strauss as for these other Weimar iconoclasts, the return to tradition was not, as I have argued, a return to orthodox interpretations but rather to sources of heterodoxy, to radical readings of the ancients. Here, however, a major question about Strauss himself arises: Was he as iconoclastic toward the orthodox Jewish tradition as he was toward the orthodox tradition of Western philosophy? In the preface to the book on Spinoza, he argues that the solution to the theological problem of the Jew lies not in Zionism or in Spinoza's historicism, but in teshuva, repentance or return to the Jewish community in a religious sense. Here, Strauss is led to Rosenzweig, who also believed Zionism to be an inadequate solution to a problem beyond the realm of politics. But while Rosenzweig and Strauss agreed that the problem of Judaism lay beyond history, Strauss rejected Rosenzweig's subjective approach to the tradition. Rosenzweig's neoorthodoxy allowed for his own experience to dictate what aspects of the tradition he would adopt; in this way, his "new thinking" became tainted with historical relativism. Against Rosenzweig, Strauss argued that a return to Judaism meant a return to the Torah in its totality, not to some part of it. The Torah, he held, must be understood and accepted as it understood itself, that is, as absolutely true. Judaism is quintessentially antihistoricist because of this adherence to absolutes that are independent of history. Strauss's critique of Rosenzweig therefore led him to an affirmation of orthodoxy as such, which he believed could withstand even the assault of Spinoza's critique of religion. In short, the preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion gives us the distinct impression that we are dealing with a spiritual descendant of Samson Raphael Hirsch, a defender of orthodoxy in the face of rationalist and existentialist alternatives. Certainly, Strauss's orthodox upbringing and education might support such an interpretation. What did Strauss mean by Jewish orthodoxy? Once again, it is necessary to understand Strauss as he understood himself. Above all, Strauss was an esoteric writer, not only in the obvious sense that his writing is obscure and hard to penetrate but in the structural sense that his true position can only be discerned between the lines, by what he may say about others: The same method that he applies to Farabi or Maimonides must be applied to himself. I would submit that what Strauss meant by a return to orthodoxy was radically different from any conventional idea of Jewish orthodoxy. In his essay, "The "Literary Character of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed," he argues that Maimonides' Guide and his Mishneh Torah are two thoroughly independent works, the first aimed at a small circle of cognoscenti (or what he calls in another essay, the "young men") and the second aimed at the

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vulgus.26 The Mishneh Torah is an orthodox work of halakhah or fiqh, to use the Arabic term that Strauss employs. Since the Guide, properly interpreted, is Maimonides' esoteric teachings of the secrets of the Bible, it must be a work with heterodox intent. It wishes to teach the identity of Greek philosophy and the secret wisdom of the Torah. In other words, the true Maimonides is the Maimonides of the Guide, rather than the Mishneh Torah, a Maimonides who taught secret truths that had heretical potential. If Strauss's inteipretation of Maimonides reveals something of his own esoteric project, his call for a return to orthodoxy in the preface must mean a return to the esoteric Maimonides, and not to the Maimonides of the Mishneh Torah. Orthodoxy for Strauss meant not halakhah but the secrets of the Torah in the Maimonidean sense (or, in the sense that Strauss understood Maimonides). Like other Jewish intellectuals of his generation, Strauss could not envision a return to Jewish orthodoxy as the orthodox would define it; instead, like Scholem, Rosenzweig, and Buber, he needed to redefine orthodoxy according to his own lights. If I am correct, then the secrets of the Torah that constitute the truth of the Jewish tradition are for Strauss none other than the truths of Greek philosophy, quite possibly the esoteric meaning of Plato: From an esoteric point of view, Athens and Jerusalem are one and the same. Thus, Jewish philosophy becomes for Strauss not just one field in the history of philosophy but an avenue to truth, just as Zionism is emblematic of the true status of political action. The case of the Jews, Strauss's own existential context, is not a mere episode in history, as it might be to the historicist, but is rather the tabbur ha'olam, "the navel of the world" or the symbolic center of history. Strauss's attack on historicism has yet another dimension. Counterhistory is history that is engagé, that seeks a living connection between the historian and his sources, as opposed to arid antiquarianism or radical historicism. What one finds in many of those who searched for hidden traditions is a complex relationship between text and exegete, in which the commentator derives his own method from the sources he studies. For instance, Scholem stood in creative ambivalence to his mystical texts: Although not a mystic, he saw in the mystical tradition a religious precursor to secular historical science. 27 The philosophical problems of the historian are identical to the theological problems of the mystic. Similarly, Rosenzweig found the basis for his existentialist approach to the Jewish tradition in statements in the tradition itself; Jonas discovered Heideggerian phenomenology in ancient Gnosticism. In all these cases, the modem thinker becomes the latest incarnation in the tradition in which he works. Strauss understood himself as the modern incarnation of the Greek, Islamic, and Jewish philosophers whose truths had to be hidden in esoteric form. He believed that the rise in modern historic consciousness came simultaneously with the interruption in the tradition of esotericism. 28 Since

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Strauss waged an unremitting war against historicism, it would appear that he believed himself to be the single-handed reviver of the esoteric tradition. Moreover, because he rejected historical relativism, he considered the methods of Plato, Farabi, and Maimonides to be not historical relics but eternally true and, therefore, methods as appropriate to the modern philosopher as to his ancient or medieval predecessors. When Strauss speaks of writing or speaking to an audience of "young men," of those capable of understanding the esoteric truths, we immediately sense that he has in mind not only Socrates' disciples or Maimonides' followers but his own circle of students. It is in the Straussian academy that the counter-tradition of philosophy that had begun with Plato and was inherited by Jews and Arabs in the Middle Ages finds its proper modem home. 29 For Strauss, the relationship of the true modem philosopher, and perhaps especially the Jewish intellectual, to the modem state is the same as the relationship of the ancient philosopher to the polis. True philosophy always stands in opposition to the established order and hides its dangerous truths in esoteric clothing. The Jewish intellectuals with whom I have grouped Strauss were all outsiders in one sense or another. Those thinkers who had particularly Jewish concerns, such as Rosenzweig and Scholem, typically came to Judaism from the outside, as assimilated Jews who could only find unconventional paths back to the tradition. Those who worked in other areas, such as Benjamin on German drama, Bloch on Christianity, or Strauss on ancient philosophy, also came to their fields as outsiders, as scholars outside the academic world. They belonged to the disciplines they studied but, by virtue of their unconventional ideas and unorthodox positions, remained foreigners. This peculiar tension, which gave such creativity to the last generation of German Jews, became even more acute after Hitler came to power and those who could were forced to flee with the true Germany in their suitcases. Exile from Germany became the most acute expression of this alienated belonging. Small wonder that their personal experiences as Jews in a hostile world could become emblematic of their general philosophies. In this sense, it is no surprise that Strauss wrote the essay "Persecution and the Art of Writing" in 1941, for although he was already in the United States and therefore no longer in danger of direct persecution, his experience as a German Jew remained seminal for the rest of his career: Like the twentiethcentury German Jew, true philosophy could never have a secure home, for it must always teach a subversive form of truth. It is thus particularly ironic that so many of the best thinkers whose thought was originally heterodox have become the sources of new forms of orthodoxy. The disciples of Scholem's great challenge to Jewish historiography have become the academic establishment in Israel; Benjamin is now the posthumous object of cult-worship; Strauss himself is accused in the pages of the New York Review of Books of having fathered a generation

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of neoconservative intellectuals. 30 Indeed, divorced from the singular context of German Jewish culture on the eve of the Holocaust, much of this radical thought has assumed entirely different functions. And although Strauss wanted to believe that truth is eternal and independent of its origins, his own thought can best be understood as he himself understood it, as a lifelong project to solve the theological-political dilemma of a Weimar Jew.

NOTES 1. Leo Strauss, Persecution

and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111., 1952), p.

21. 2. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York, 1936). 3. Persecution, pp. 19-21. 4. See, for instance, "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," in Persecution, p. 143, and, further, Wemer Dannhauser, "Leo Strauss: Becoming Naive Again," The American Scholar 44 (1974-1975), p. 638. It should be noted that Strauss distinguishes his method from Spinoza's despite a basic similarity between them. See ibid., p. 147. For an analysis of Strauss's relation to his subjects, see Allan Bloom, "Leo Strauss: September 20, 1899October 18, 1973," Political Theory 2 (1974), pp. 381-387. For a critique of Strauss's hermeneutics, see M. F. Burnyeat, Review of Strauss's Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, New York Review of Books 32:2 (May 30, 1985), pp. 30-36. 5. Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (New York, 1965), p. 1. For an analysis of Strauss as a Jewish thinker, I am indebted to an unpublished essay by Michael Morgan (Department of Philosophy, Indiana University), "The Curse of Historicity: The Role of History in Leo Strauss' Jewish Thought." 6. On Weimar culture in general, see Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York, 1968). On Weimar Jews, see Donald Niewyk, Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge, 1980). 7. See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston, 1973). 8. For Schoeps's political position, see his Wir deutschen Juden (Berlin, 1934). On Schoeps, see George Mosse, "The Influence of the Volkish Idea on German Jewry," in his Germans and Jews (New York, 1970). 9. See Scholem's autobiography, From Berlin to Jerusalem (New York, 1980). 10. In his Star of Redemption (Frankfurt, 1921), Rosenzweig argues against rooting Judaism in the soil of a state; the "eternal people" must be divorced from the politics of this world. But in constructing this argument, Rosenzweig defined Judaism not as a system of beliefs but as a "blood community." Unlike other Blut und Boden writers of the time, Rosenzweig's brand of nationalism divorced the Blut from the Boden. 11. Buber and Arendt were among the leaders of the Ichud group that opposed political Zionism in the 1940s and sought the establishment of a "binational" state in Palestine. 12. Spinoza's Critique, p. 5. 13. Ibid., p. 6. 14. For Scholem's stance on Jewish messianism, see my Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), ch. 7.

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15. Spinoza's Critique, p. 6. 16. Strauss wrote the introductory essay to the English translation of Cohen's Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York, 1972); he states there, no doubt autobiographically, "I grew up in an environment in which Cohen was the center of attraction for philosophically minded Jews who were devoted to Judaism; he was the master whom they revered" (p. xxiii). 17. Ibid., ch. 13. 18. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1952), p. 74, 240. See further ibid., p. 301. On these themes in Arendt, see my "Arendt in Jerusalem," Response 40 (Summer 1980), pp. 33-44. 19. "Introduction," Persecution, pp. 16-17. See further The City and Man (Chicago, 1964), Strauss's posthumously published Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago, 1983), and, finally, Burnyeat's critique of this reading of Plato in New York Review of Books. 20. Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York, 1945), pp. 357-393. 21. See Emst Bloch, Atheism in Christianity, trans. J. T. Swann (New York, 1972); Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd ed. (New York, 1961); Hans Joachim Schoeps, Das Judenchristentum (Bem, 1964); Hans Jonas, Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Güttingen, 1934). 22. See my Gershom Scholem, introduction and ch. 9. 23. Scholem, "Reflections on the Science of Judaism" (in Hebrew) in his Devarim be-Go (Tel Aviv, 1976), p. 399. 24. See his "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1969), pp. 253-264. 25. See Bloom, "Leo Strauss," p. 390. Bloom does not provide a source for this quotation from Strauss. 26. Persecution, pp. 38-94. 27. Scholem understood the connection between his own method and that of Strauss, as he wrote in his On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. R. Mannheim (New York, 1969), p. 51, n. 1. Scholem knew Strauss in the years before he moved to Palestine in 1923. See his Walter Benjamin—Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt, 1975), p. 126. 28. Persecution, pp. 31-32. 29. A logician might easily find severe problems of self-reference in the methods of all these thinkers, a circularity in deriving one's method from one's sources. Yet from the point of view of the sociology of philosophy, it stands to reason that the desire to appropriate an alien tradition in opposition to conventional wisdom would give rise to such paradoxes. I might add parenthetically that my own use of Strauss's categories to understand Strauss falls into the same logical sticky wicket. I have considered some of the consequences of this problem in my Gershom Scholem, ch. 9. 30.1 refer to Burnyeat's review.

2

"In the Grip of the TheologicalPolitical Predicament": The Turn to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss KENNETH HART GREEN The hero of Leo Strauss's monumental Jewish thought is undoubtedly Moses Maimonides. In fact, it may safely be said that in the entire course of Strauss's Jewish writings—beginning with Die Religionskritik Spinozas (1930) and ending with his "Introductory Essay" to Hermann Cohen's Religion of Reason (1972)—Maimonides is consistently treated with more genuine reverence, and with this receives less obvious criticism, than any other Jewish philosopher. Indeed, if there is in truth something that may rightly be called "the Jewish thought of Leo Strauss," then it should be revealed to the greatest possible degree in Strauss's works dealing with Maimonides. That this should be so, however, may seem to be a paradoxical assertion. If we should count Leo Strauss among the moderns, as seems fitting, do we not suddenly cut the ground from beneath ourselves by turning to Strauss's literary and historical exegesis of Maimonides, possibly the greatest medieval Jewish thinker, as the philosophic inspiration for Strauss as a modem Jewish thinker? For if we find that Strauss actually seeks to represent his own Jewish thought as nothing but a "return to Maimonides," can he possibly mean by this an unmediated or undialectical "return"? If this "return to Maimonides" is the case, why would a modem Jewish thinker, who clearly expresses his passionate interest in the modem theological-political crisis facing the Jews and Judaism, 1 and who has diagnosed the complex causes that brought it about, need to preoccupy himself for nonantiquarian reasons with a medieval Jewish thinker—however great—as if he were an ultramontanist simply praising the ancien régime? However "conservative" Strauss may have considered himself in regard to Jewish religion and politics, he always soberly recognized both the virtues and the limits of the modem situation, and moderately accepted it as an established fact in Jewish life and thought. His spiritual affinity for Maimonides, therefore, cannot be confused with romantic longings for a return to an idealized, noble past. But what then is there in Maimonides for a Jewish thinker of modem sensibility like Strauss?

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We cannot attempt to answer this question until we have probed some of the leading themes and issues that are at the heart of Strauss's interest in Maimonides. 2 These can only emerge from a reflection on the key texts in the modem exploration of Maimonides by Strauss, who revivified a Jewish thinker previously dismissed as obsolete. 3 However, it is evident already from the paradox inherent in Strauss's exposition that this will not be a simple and unequivocal task, and it may be further complicated by significant stages in the development of Strauss's views on Maimonides, which we cannot adequately treat in the present context. Still, it is our argument that Strauss's turn to Maimonides was determined by entirely modem motives, by a modem Jewish thought caught "in the grip of the theological-political predicament," 4 and that Strauss's view of Maimonides, which spanned forty years, manifests a substantial unity—a unity that may hold equally true for his Jewish thought as a whole. This is not to say that his views did not grow and change—they may have even passed through three distinct stages. Nevertheless, this intellectual development may be more accurately expressed in terms of "a continuous, deepening process" 5 rather than any radical transformation. Indeed, Strauss's view of Maimonides reached its crucial form in his very first works dealing with Maimonides, and even in his final, mature phase—especially familiar to us in his rediscovery of esotericism 6 — his original insight into Maimonides was not fundamentally contradicted by this further unfolding of its full ramifications. 7 However, to comprehend in its proper order Strauss's Jewish thought as it developed in his Maimonidean studies, we must begin with the simpler issues that actually preceded the rediscovery of esotericism, for Strauss wrote about Maimonides in advance of that rediscovery. This issue may be put in terms of these queries: Why did Strauss originally turn to Maimonides? What "lost wisdom" did he seek to find, especially in The Guide of the Perplexed? And what was the fundamental view of Maimonides that accompanied and supported Strauss in this turn? All of these questions may be seen to receive their preliminary but decisive answer in one crucial statement that appears in the very first line of Strauss's brief yet monumental Philosophie und Gesetz: "Maimonides is the 'classic of rationalism' in Judaism." 8 In fact, as we understand him, it does not overstate the case to say that the basic themes and issues that animated Strauss's concern and directed his attention are condensed, as it were, in this very prefatory conclusion as well as in the following twenty pages, which should be looked at as the vindication of this remark. (Indeed, the constancy of Strauss's Jewish thought is reflected in the striking similarities, even to the repetition of phrases, between this vigorously original "Einleitung" to Philosophie und Gesetz and the equally powerful "Preface to the English Translation" in Spinoza's Critique of Religion, despite the thirty years separating them.) 9 For Strauss, Maimonides was the "classic" of not just any "rationalism"; he meant the term in a very specific sense: As he puts it, Maimonides' "rationalism" is "the truly natural

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model [Vorbild], the Standard, which is to be carefully guarded from every falsification, which is thereby the stumbling block on which modern rationalism is brought to its ruin." Hence, we already encounter in Philosophie und Gesetz a sharp line drawn by Strauss between modern and premodem rationalism, especially of the theological kind. 10 In the division of these two rationalisms, Strauss categorically prefers the premodern, in its Maimonidean phase, as clearly distinguished for its moving in the sphere of the "truly natural" form of reason, which is purer in its conformity with the true and enduring requirements of man's political nature 11 yet is also surer and deeper in its treatment of, and harmonization with, primary theological motives such as creation, miracles, and prophecy. 12 Even so, why should it be necessary for us to turn for guidance in our modern perplexity to Maimonides, for even if he is the "classic" representative of medieval rationalism, even of "rationalism in Judaism," still we do not yet know, or we cannot simply assume, as Strauss was well aware, that this is also the "true rationalism," let alone the true teaching per se. 13 In Strauss's justificatory account of this provisional conclusion about what "the truly natural model, the standard" of rationalism in Judaism is, he tells us that his turn to Maimonides resulted from a genuine cognitive encounter that he staged between medieval and modem rationalisms. 14 Here, "clarity about the present" was the sole original interest motivating him, while the medieval was used as a foil, or as "a mere means" to the end of "a sharper cognition of the distinctiveness [Eigentümlichkeit] of modern rationalism." 1 5 Considering "modern rationalism as the source of the present," Strauss wanted especially to know whether it was rationalism per se that had caused the present crisis in modern philosophy and society, which were both gradually but discemibly turning against reason itself, or whether it was produced only by the modem species of rationalism. Hence, it was for this comparative diagnostic purpose that he first studied medieval Jewish rationalism. 16 In fact, it was in the course of this encounter, or perhaps as its direct consequence, that Strauss began to radically doubt modern rationalism, against his own original leaning or "prejudice" in favor of its "superiority" as reason and as a moral force. 17 What he now began to radically doubt was its theological and political adequacy to meet the present crisis. We must equally bear in mind that "clarity about the present" suggests first of all the actual historical situation Strauss himself faced, namely, the grave difficulties in which the Jews and Judaism were entangled, as reflected by the catastrophic events and revolutionary changes that occurred during Strauss's life. As a modern Jew in the Germany of the 1920s, he was caught "in the grip of the theologico-political predicament," that is, he experienced in its full intensity the Jewish crisis as well as the crisis of the West in the trial of liberal democracy, both German and otherwise. This predicament affected Jews so deeply because they had tied virtually all their hopes to modem liberalism, modem rationalism's moderate expression as interpreted

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by Spinoza in the light of classical principles. 18 In other words, since "the present situation of Judaism as such . . . is determined by the Enlightenment," 19 the crisis in which the Jews and Judaism are immersed and the contemporary crisis of modern Western civilization are, as Strauss perceived, fundamentally linked. As a result, Strauss recognized the need to reconsider modem rationalism in order to comprehend modem Judaism. 20 Thus, as we trace Strauss's turn to Maimonides and the medieval rationalist tradition, we must determine what it is about modem rationalism that Strauss rejected. I must first emphasize, however, that this concern for "the present situation of Judaism" in Strauss's view does not entail any derogation of "the basic constitution of Judaism," which for him remains "untouched" by the Enlightenment critique of orthodoxy in its Jewish form. 21 Beginning with the phrase "the [untouched] basic constitution of Judaism," Strauss reiterates this careful demonstration in Die Religionskritik Spinozas that modem philosophy has never actually "refuted" divine revelation as taught by the Hebrew Bible, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding in the methods and procedures of its leading advocates. To Strauss, the present situation not only encompasses those who marginally identify as Jews but also those passionately committed Jews who have been fundamentally affected by modem rationalism and liberalism and hence who either reject divine revelation as defining Judaism and determine its character in terms of modem political and cultural categories, that is, secular Zionism, or who accept divine revelation but make it theologically conform with modem philosophic or scientific notions and criticisms, that is, both Cohen and Rosenzweig, or what Strauss calls "the movement of return." Strauss fully respects the former as a "highly honorable" approach but not a "sufficient" one to meet the needs of the present. 22 Not only is Zionism "atheistic" in its political basis but also, as a purely political movement, Zionism ignores that its "solution" to the "Jewish problem" is inspired by liberalism while simultaneously exposing liberalism's own limitations. Hoping to be efficacious in one side of the Jewish dilemma alone, in "the restoration of [Jewish] honor through the acquisition of statehood," political Zionism "implied a profound modification of traditional Jewish hopes, a modification arrived at through a break with these hopes." In other words, in order to be preoccupied with human honor and put one's faith in the termination of the exile by purely human means, with the end in view of establishing a secular liberal state, one had to have already lost some faith in divine promises, divine chosenness, and the perfection of the divine law. However, precisely for the sake of the efficacy political Zionism had in view, it had to "make its peace" with Jewish tradition and to recognize the need for a spiritual return (teshuva). 23 For no matter how secularized one's Zionism was, if one wanted a "Jewish state" and not just a "state of Jews," one needed a Jewish culture—and hence cultural Zionism. But with his clear-eyed

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Platonic vision, Strauss saw that this secular project for creating a Jewish culture as a support and even as a guide for the Zionist political project would never be able to fully sever itself from the traditional Judaism against which it had rebelled, yet to which it cannot help but be tied if it is not to forget its roots in the very Jewish history it planned to daringly redirect. As for the latter approach, which he termed "the movement of return," Strauss did regard it as praiseworthy for radically changing in several quite significant respects the previous direction of modern Jewish life (which had been formulated in an apologetic vein by post-Mendelssohnian "religious liberalism"). 24 However, at the same time Strauss believed that this fledgling movement did not represent a sufficiently fundamental change because it had not yet squarely faced or answered the Enlightenment critique of orthodoxy, and so it carried through its "return" with serious reservations originating in the Enlightenment about the Jewish tradition. Thus, while it readily admits the source of its reservations as rooted in the Enlightenment, it does not as a "movement" justify them in any adequately systematic form but virtually presupposes their necessity. 25 Indeed, it is no exaggeration to maintain that Strauss's initial point of departure in Jewish theology was to ascertain as precisely as possible what place these reservations about the tradition should occupy in future Jewish thought, and hence also to deal with the question of whether "the movement of return" is warranted by its own premises in considering necessary this limited critique of the orthodox tradition. The crucial link between modern rationalism and the modem Jewish crisis may be further elucidated if we consider what the primary cause of the crisis is, from Strauss's perspective. To Strauss, modern Jews and Judaism, as well as modem Western civilization, are in the midst of a moral, religious, and political crisis engendered by their waning faith in an eternal truth. Since "the authoritative layer of the Jewish heritage presents i t s e l f . . . as a divine gift, as divine revelation," the eternal truth it teaches is rooted in "the irrefutable premise" of belief in "the omnipotent God whose will is unfathomable" and who reveals Himself as He wills. 26 While modern rationalism is precisely constituted by the rebellion—be it speculative or scientific—against this "irrefutable premise," Strauss incisively characterizes the rebellion as nothing but a "moral antagonism," which he admits was previously defined just as exactingly by the Jewish tradition as "Epicurean" unbelief. 27 Inasmuch as modem reason or philosophy dogmatically denies the very possibility of divine revelation (though often camouflaging its radicalism for political purposes), it is a denial it cannot demonstrate, and thus the very basis for modem rationalism is not "evident and necessary knowledge" but rather "an unevident decision." Hence, following Strauss's logic, philosophy paradoxically puts itself in the category of a faith. Yet modern reason, despite its faulty basis, is permitted by ostensibly "enlightened" theology to pass decisive rational judgments about divinely revealed religion, especially in its criticism of traditional texts and beliefs.

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Modern reason also asserts an unconditional victory against classical reason, which, however, it also can merely assert and not demonstrate, its persuasiveness deriving perhaps from the successes of modern science in mastering nature. Yet as Strauss succinctly indicates, in the very "progress" of modern reason and civilization, its faith in itself as a force of good for man gradually fails and eventually collapses because of both irrationalist philosophical developments and the events of history revealing the dubious benevolcnce in human self-assertion against nature. 28 (Strauss speaks of "the self-destruction of rational philosophy" in our day.) Modern rationalism, as Jews adapted the Jewish tradition to it, not only leaves Judaism more exposed to attack by its hostile opponents for its suprarational claims, but also leaves it appearing less inspired than medieval or premodern philosophy ever did in its happy adaptation to them. However, even in modern rationalism's collapse through "the victory of orthodoxy" or irrationalist philosophy, its virtual antipode, 29 Judaism is not actually helped, as Rosenzweig especially would have us believe. In stark contrast to him, Strauss expounds Judaism undoubtedly in the spirit of both Maimonides and Hermann Cohen, viewing it as a faith that claims only to possess "suprarational," and not "irrational," truths. Hence, the truths Judaism teaches, according to Strauss's thought, do not contradict reason but only pass beyond what unaided reason can apprehend by its own efforts and abilities alone. He uses as his prooftcxt a favorite Torah verse, which he often cites in order to emphasize the rational character of the Jewish tradition, according to the best formulation of its fundamental principles (Maimonides) and in its most classical statements as a cultural source (Cohen): "Jewish orthodoxy based its claim to superiority to other religions from the beginning on its superior rationality (Deut. 4:6)." 30 Thus, Strauss began to radically doubt modern rationalism once he started asking whether the modern form of rationalism may only be "the source of the present" predominantly in a debilitating sense, while simultaneously pondering whether in fact the medievals may exemplify in their rationalism a higher and more enduring standard for measuring the present. 31 Strauss regarded himself as faced with a choice, a choice that indeed all modem men face if they reflect upon their spiritual situation and are not fully satisfied by any modern, post-Enlightenment alternative: We may either put our faith in "what cannot be known from the start—that only new, unheard of, ultramodern thoughts can clear away our dilemma" 32 or, if this seems an unreasonable hope, we may with Strauss consider whether "the critique of modern rationalism as the critique of modem sophistry, 33 is the necessary starting point, the constant concomitant, and the unerring hallmark of the search for truth possible in our age," 34 that is, we must "approach the medieval enlightenment, the enlightenment of Maimonides, for help." 3 5 Animated by both theological and political concerns that beset him as a modem Jew philosophically preoccupied with accounting for and justifying

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his unyielding but problematic commitment to Judaism as a revealed truth, Strauss turned to Maimonides for this help—and never retreated from him, for Strauss's Jewish thought was transformed by the "aid" he received. In fact, I would suggest that the testing of this "tentative" solution emerged as his life's work. 3 6 In Maimonides Strauss genuinely believed he had discovered "the truly natural model, the standard" of rationalism in Judaism, and perhaps even in all philosophy, which his subsequent discoveries only confirmed and deepened. Already in Philosophic und Gesetz he declares unambiguously against the modems that "the purpose of the present writing is to awaken a prejudice in favor of this conception of Maimonides, or rather, to arouse a suspicion against the powerful contrary prejudice" 37 —a prejudice against Maimonides' premodern wisdom first created and enunciated by the supposedly "free" and "unprejudiced" modernist Spinoza, and repeated ever since by his manifold followers. 38 But what does Strauss ultimately mean to say, in a philosophical sense, by characterizing the premodern as "the truly natural" form of reason or, as I put it, as the purer and deeper form? 39 What I called the fundamental lack of purity attributed to modern rationalism may help us comprehend Strauss's notion of it: It consists in the willfulness, in the prior "unevident decision" about the nature of things, and in the determination to "construct" the world as it wants the world to be 40 rather than accepting the limiting inferences possible from experience by first grounding itself well in the evident nature of things. 41 To Strauss, if philosophy is the search for truly "evident and necessary knowledge," then the search for knowledge properly commences in the visible world of human experience there for us first, to be seen plainly with our own eyes. However, the visible world in the beginning can only be intelligibly articulated and authoritatively explained to us through received or authoritative opinion as one's own city and law establishes it. Man only moves or rises gradually, through the intellect's probing of opinion in doubting the "necessity" of one's own city's opinions, perhaps by comparison with other cities' opinions. One is able to dimly divine the truth, which, acting in the capacity of a final cause, draws one from "the given" to an awareness of the whole, especially as it may be reflected in the few generic and permanent features of the one human soul that manifests itself as such across the many opinions. 42 In other words, Strauss discerned that in the contrary starting points of philosophy, classical versus modem, the contrary conclusions are already contained, if by these conclusions one limits oneself, as he did originally, to characterizing this fundamental difference by the absolute distinction between nature and history. As a result, what is "first for us" 4 3 is either what Plato termed "opinion," which, like "the given" or the empirical per se, helps us to transcend itself by first forming our view of the visible world and only subsequently leading us to ask about "the condition of its possibility"; or it is what the Enlightenment termed "prejudice," which is merely received or forced upon us against our true nature and which as such

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hinders and deceives us entirely, so that we can only commence true knowing by utterly substituting for this merely given thing some absolute certainty. 44 But "prejudice," as Strauss further discerned, is itself a derivative notion; in fact, as the fundamental polemical notion of the Enlightenment in its fight against orthodox revealed religion, Strauss perceived that "prejudice" is chiefly "an historical category" and not, as it claims, a purely natural one. 4 5 It is for this reason that Strauss originally wanted both the justification, and the dubiousness, of "'prejudice' as a category" to be elucidated in view of the Enlightenment's fight with revealed religion 46 rather than devoting himself to its argument with classical philosophy. Indeed, only for the Enlightenment is it "the prejudice pure and simple" to maintain that divine revelation is possible or that this possibility has been actualized in the Bible. 47 In fact, the Enlightenment waged its war against "prejudice" primarily and ultimately "with a view to the radical meaning of revealed religion"—"the radical meaning" it dogmatically rejects residing in orthodoxy's maintaining man's need for divine illumination and hence his lack of self-sufficiency in attaining the truth. In Strauss's interpretation, revealed religion fundamentally rejects this world, the world of ordinary human experience and reasoning, as the final moral standard, or even as a possible source for such a standard, since "how man is" is essentially sinful. Instead, it projects that which is known by divine revelation, by a transcendent source beyond man and the world, as the only true basis for a genuine morality, since only "how man should be," that is, in the image of God, is the valid standard. 48 In other words, it is, like classical philosophy, morally "Utopian," although modern philosophy castigates such moral "idealism" as purely imaginative and wishful and offers its own "realism" as the first truly rational and efficacious teaching. Hence, Strauss's first substantial theological work in 1928 already reached the conclusion that modem philosophy is moved not so much either by scientific discoveries or by "secularization" of religious meanings and values, as it is by a moral passion, inasmuch as this passion is directed against all claims to transcendent sources of truth, made accessible in our world through G o d ' s action: "The opposition to Utopia is thus nothing other than the opposition to religion." 49 Indeed, modern philosophy, as Strauss consistently maintained, was perhaps directly "caused," and certainly decisively "facilitated," by the passion he calls "antitheological i r e . " 5 0 However, as Strauss subsequently recognized—and this represents a shift in his view—what modem philosophy teaches in opposition to "theology" seemingly applies to both the biblical and the classical philosophic traditions, which are equally "Utopian" in the "strict demands" of their moralities and "theological" in the exclusive God (or god) whose truth transcends and fulfills their moralities. 5 1 Classical philosophy shares with the biblical tradition not only a certain attitude toward morality but also "the natural world view" that is in a sense presupposed by their common moral attitude. 52 If we put this "natural world

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view" common to both traditions in the simplest possible language of philosophy, we might articulate Strauss's silent premise by saying that final and formal causes are still valid and are determinative in defining what the nature of a being is, and that, as such, all beings have a natural end or perfection peculiar to them. Morally, man is to be viewed in the light of the high or superhuman rather than the low or subhuman, which means he is by nature a noble being, created in the image of God. Hence, this "wisdom" about man is a necessary element in the complete and final perfection of human life. These principles, with their moral and natural ramifications, are repudiated by modern philosophy and science as "prejudices" we must escape, and also by modern historicism as positions we have progressed beyond. However, Strauss incisively cuts through these diverse modern positions and exposes their common core in this one presupposition they all share: the belief that we cannot "return" to the "natural world view" because it has been demonstrably refuted. Yet this presupposition may in fact be itself a "prejudice" consciously created by modern rationalist philosophy, supposedly on the strength of modem science, in order to further its cause. Ironically taken for granted by modem historicism, this "prejudice" gave it the ammunition to mount the attack against its own precursor, modem rationalism, as a "refuted" position that can and must be simply gotten beyond, and to which we can never "return." As Strauss puts it, "this belief is a dogmatic assumption whose hidden basis is the belief in progress or in the rationality of the historical process." 53 Moreover, this modern "belief in progress," even in its original rationalist form, contains in itself a plain denial of "the theological tradition" rather than its so-called secularization, that is, the selective translation of the theological whole into parts usable by the secular world. The theological tradition had "recognized the mysterious character of Providence," whereas modem philosophy "culminates in the view that the ways of God are scrutable to sufficiently enlightened men." 5 4 Accordingly, Strauss reveals the fundamental weakness of the modem rationalist position, and hence of modem philosophy per se, by uncovering the irrationality of its basic premise—namely, that it can penetrate and move beyond the realm of God through rationality alone, or, as this same dogmatic presupposition might be put purely philosophically, that it can achieve the conquest of chance in mastering nature as this is made possible by modem science. 55 Although Strauss reached some of these primary conclusions in his first historical and theological studies, he was also previously influenced by the works of the Jewish thinker Franz Rosenzweig, with whom he was acquainted and whom he "greatly admired." 56 That Strauss dedicated Die Religionskritik Spinozas "to the memory of Franz Rosenzweig" expresses the "stage" of spiritual growth in which Strauss developed the book's main thrust—the move from purely political Zionism to a decidedly theological orientation. Thus, the chief thesis of Die Religionskritik Spinozas is, like

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Rosenzweig's thought, rooted in the philosophic vindication of theology or divine revelation. Rosenzweig taught Strauss, among other things, that "the natural, original, pristine is fidelity"51—a notion that, we would suggest, also serves as the human basis for "opinion" rather than "prejudice." Likewise, Rosenzweig represented, by the heroic Odyssey of his return to the Jewish tradition and his rediscovery of its deep spiritual sources for sustaining man in life and in death, the genuine possibility of "return" to an ancient truth even in our modem circumstances. Strauss was familiar with Rosenzweig's "New thinking," especially in its critique of Hegel, which postulated the victory of orthodox revealed religion against Enlightenment reason in the Hegelian system's "final collapse." But taking this Rosenzweigian insight one step further, Strauss recognized that the Hegelian system's "final collapse" equally rehabilitates the Enlightenment, since it was also supposed to have been "sublated," or given its best and highest exemplification, in the historical synthesis of Hegelian dialectical reason. 58 In the light of the Hegelian synthesis' collapse, Strauss next began to wonder whether the Enlightenment, or modern rationalism, could in principle achieve its goal of the completed philosophic system 59 —a goal shared by positive science but which it tried to achieve by a different method—since it began its efforts from such a shaky point of departure: It could not refute its chief opponents, biblical orthodoxy and classical philosophy, so it simply set about "constructing" the world and hoped to eclipse them by its successes, which did seemingly work for several centuries. (Strauss calls it a "truly Napoleonic strategy." 60 ) However, its eventual failure and what Strauss termed our present theological-political crisis, should cause us, according to Strauss's logic, to reacquaint ourselves with the Enlightenment's basic premises and arguments and to ask whether they hold as much certainty as was originally claimed for them. The Enlightenment, and its assumptions, which conquered the nonorthodox Jewish world, is the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century movement inspired by Descartes' Meditations and Hobbes' Leviathan61—but which Strauss would subsequently trace to Machiavelli's evil genius 62 —aiming to make man "the master and owner of nature" in his conquering it through science. 63 As Strauss discovered, however, the Enlightenment originated not in a genuine scientific refutation of either biblical orthodoxy or classical philosophy (that is, of "the natural world view" shared by both the Bible and by Aristotle), 64 but in an act of will or belief, in a moral choice, even though "the new natural science appears to be the true entitlement [Rechtsgrund] of the Enlightenment." 6 5 Only while "the old notion of truth still ruled the minds [Gemüter] of men," 6 6 that is, "the idea of an eternal nature [and] an eternal truth," was a continued belief in the promise of modern science made possible. 67 Once the Enlightenment and modem science were "sublated" by modem idealism, which "consummates itself in the discovery of the 'aesthetic' as the truest [gediegensten] insight into human creativity" and "in

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the discovery of the radical 'historicity' of man and his world as the final overcoming of even the idea of an eternal nature, an eternal truth," then modern natural science, which was the glory of the Enlightenment in its fight against orthodoxy, is exposed as merely "one historically conditioned form of 'interpretation of the world' among others." 68 In other words, it "could not long maintain its claim to have brought to light the truth about the world as it is 'in itself.'" 6 9 As Strauss reads it, "the 'idealistic' construction of itself was already built into [steckte . . . in] its basic approach." This rather cryptic statement can perhaps be better comprehended if we examine a similar statement he made in his "Preface" to Spinoza's Critique of Religion about how Spinoza's philosophic system "prepares German idealism": Not God or Nature as It is in Itself is the most perfect being to Spinoza, but God or Nature as It is in the process of becoming is most perfect; indeed, the movement from the One to the many represents an ascent, not a descent. "Spinoza thus appears to originate the kind of philosophic system which views the fundamental processus as a progress: God in Himself is not the ens perfectissimum. In this most important respect he prepares German idealism." 70 Furthermore, it was through this idealistic breakthrough that the Enlightenment's "victory" against orthodoxy was actually denied its force and persuasiveness, and in fact "its original, decisive justification: the demonstration of the unknowability of miracles as such becomes invalid [kraftlos]. For only on the premise of modern natural science is miracle as such unknowable." 7 1 Hence, idealism explodes the very truth claim of modern natural science, with the sole exception of its own scientifically demoralizing comprehension as a substitute—demoralizing because science can no longer aspire to truly know nature but can only know either its current state as a configuration in our knowledge or the permanent tools by which the human mind constructs how such things may be. Finally, Strauss observes that even such a critical view of knowledge that idealism postulates and clings to as the only truth that remains for us about things is refuted by existentialism, its own "stepchild," as yet another form of "essentialism," that is, the false belief in "an eternal nature, an eternal truth," although of the human mind. Thus, Strauss diagnosed existentialism (in the form of radical historicism) to be the very last consistently modem movement, whose pride and supreme claim as a more or less philosophical movement is its purer or self-conscious willing to construct the world and even man. Simply put, modern reason in the process of freeing itself from theology and the divine will has destroyed itself as reason by eventually reducing itself to human will; it is revealed by Strauss to be motivated not by pure love of wisdom, which would be compelled to encounter theology as a serious and worthy opponent, perhaps possessing some wisdom to teach philosophy, but to be motivated by "atheism" or by "antitheological ire" or—in terms of its ancient predecessor, despite its modem revisions—by Epicureanism. 72

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It seems plainly evident from Strauss's incisive diagnosis of the crisis in modem rationalism in Philosophic und Gesetz (a diagnosis he never repudiated although he may have subsequently radicalized) that his original interest in the attempted refutation of orthodoxy by Spinoza and the Enlightenment was by no means determined by a passion for orthodoxy pure and simple, even though he deeply respected it and often appears in the guise of its noble protector. Rather, it was an expression of a dccided preference for an eminently reasonable theology, in one for whom "the desideratum of an enlightened Judaism is not to be denied [unabweislich]." 7 3 As stated previously, although he "greatly admired" Rosenzweig, Strauss was not satisfied by his approach even if Strauss did acknowledge that "Jewish theology was resurrected from a deep slumber" by Rosenzweig. 74 Seeking an "enlightened Judaism," Strauss was "obliged to ascertain whether enlightenment is necessarily modem enlightenment." Hence he pursued a different path in search of this goal, ultimately finding this goal only attainable by striving to reappropriate a premodem "Platonic" criterion for measuring "enlightenment." 75 *

*

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In his search for modem alternatives that might still be embraced, Strauss is sharply critical of what he calls the "moderate Enlightenment," which attempted numerous "harmonizations" (Vereinbarungen) between the "radical Enlightenment" and orthodoxy. He does not believe it signified a cogent "third way" in preserving and unifying the best of both modem reason and traditional revelation, for he rejects the very notion of "mediation" contained in its premise. Strauss concurs with the Romantics and the idealists, as well as with "the most equitable historical judgement," that this mediating effort amounts to an "untenable . . . compromise." 76 The moderate Enlightenment is first represented by Moses Mendelssohn and his followers in the emergence of modem Judaism. But for Strauss, "modem Judaism is a synthesis between rabbinical Judaism and Spinoza," thus representing a synthesis of two mutually contradictory doctrines. Hence, Mendelssohnian "religious liberalism" can only elaborate and maintain its position either by ignoring the contradictions entirely or by smoothing them over in such a way as to inhibit any exact understanding of their pointedness. 7 7 In Strauss's estimation, all such harmonizing or synthesizing attempts by the moderate Enlightenment are futile, for it sustains no model or standard beyond the modem (radical) Enlightenment by which it could measure or criticize its own attempts at synthesis, and hence recognize and reconcile its own contradictions. 7 8 In fact, Strauss discerned that this movement ultimately failed in its own efforts at "moderation" and actually served as the unwitting advance guard in the Enlightenment's attack against orthodoxy: "In the end, these harmonizations always work as vehicles of the Enlightenment, and not

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as dams against it: for the radical Enlightenment, the moderate Enlightenment is the best first fruit." 79 The moderates further the success of the radicals by accommodating their opponents to a palatable and even harmless version of the modern Enlightenment, which, once the infiltration is complete and resistance is defused, eventually expedites a complete victory. These same strictures Strauss applies to the pre-idealistic moderate Enlightenment concerning its subservience to the radical Enlightenment he also applies, with some modifications, to the subsequent philosophic and theological developments, that is, Hegelianism and the anti-Hegelians. In Strauss's view, the "'higher' plane of the post-Enlightenment synthesis," with its "interiorizations" of the orthodox tradition's basic and primary assertions, "robs these assertions of their entire sense" 80 (as claims about the "exterior" world). Taking the most fundamental case, Strauss maintains that if these "post-Enlightenment synthesizers" believe God did not "actually create" the world, and if they do not accept as a given this scriptural belief in the divine creation of nature as an entirety, "as simply true, as the fact of creation," then there is in the Hegelian and anti-Hegelian schools a spiritualizing tendency more or less continuous with their moderate Enlightenment predecessors. This spiritualizing tendency, however, has moved even farther away from any genuine scriptural belief, for it claims to have ascended to a higher synthesis that surpasses in the decisive respect the claims of both its constituent theses—their claims to be the truth. But to Strauss, the spiritualizing tendency of this synthesis represents an equivocation, even a vacillation, of a still greater radicalness, which undoubtedly expresses the overwhelming fact that for the "'higher' plane of synthesis," "the relation of God to nature could no longer be understood, and hence is no longer even of interest" 81 because it has followed modern natural science in wholly surrendering the belief that it is necessary to infer metaphysical principles in order to adequately explain the physical universe. Not only does the moderate Enlightenment thus transformed by the Hegelian synthesis still serve the radical Enlightenment in general purpose, but also the two procedures by which it validates its specific claims of harmony or synthesis are for Strauss completely "unscrupulous" as well as "erroneous" in principle. 82 First, it designates the "external" or literal sense of Scripture as a mere relic of "an immature level of formulation of the faith," 83 even in regard to such seemingly crucial doctrines as creation out of nothing, verbal inspiration, and individual immortality. 84 Second, it "invokes against orthodoxy extreme utterances ventured in the Jewish tradition" as if they were normative, and hence turns them upside down as if the base were "the tip of the pyramid." 8 5 In his judgment about the moderate Enlightenment's reading of the Bible and tradition as a mere search for prooftexts in order to justify its own preconceived opinions, Strauss undoubtedly counts among the figures who employ such a faulty method not only its spiritual patriarch, Mendelssohn, but also and especially the two

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greatest post-Hegelian Jewish thinkers, namely, Cohen (with his "idealizing" interpretations) and even Rosenzweig (with his "new thinking"), who both readily admit the Enlightenment origin of their "reservations" [Vorbehalte] toward t r a d i t i o n . 8 6 All " i n t e r i o r i z a t i o n s " or " s p i r i t u a l i z a t i o n s " [Verinnerlichungen] of the tradition's basic and primary assertions are to Strauss, in his radical critique, "in truth denials" of the tradition, which for him "is a fact obvious to the unbiased view." 87 That is because in the very act of "internalizing" or "spiritualizing" their meaning, the traditional assertions are stripped of their claims to be truths about the world in its "external," factual sense. 88 This is obscured from view only because we, "so long as we do not make a point of fighting against our prejudices through historical recollection [Besinnung], are completely under the spell of the mode of thinking produced by the Enlightenment, and consolidated by its proponents and opponents." 8 9 Thus, in the very act of reconsidering the Enlightenment's encounter with orthodoxy, Strauss seems to have liberated himself from the Enlightenment-created "prejudice," endorsing its own rational necessity, and he emerged in favor of premodem reason, achieving this liberation decisively aided by theology. 90 However, in the course of his embattled and passionate reconsideration, the theology whose cause he embraced was driven back to its premodern, sounder fortifications; indeed, he discovered that its opponents had never actually destroyed those fortifications but had merely caused them to be abandoned through a clever diversionary tactic. Yet how was Strauss enabled to cross the great divide and to recognize the enduring validity of the premodern theological approach? *

*

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It seems that the key to this great step beyond the dualism established by modern philosophy as the final choice between Spinoza vs. the Jewish tradition, Enlightenment vs. orthodoxy, even philosophy vs. the Bible, is to be located in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Lessing was not bound by the dualism because he had, as Strauss might have put it, recovered the "natural horizon of human thought." 91 This means to say that Lessing was able to think beyond the modem dualism because he looked back to the ancients who, in the words of Lessing quoted by Strauss, saw with "better" and "sharper eyes" than the moderns, who can only claim to "see more." 9 2 To Lessing, the ancients already penetrated as deeply as possible to all the fundamental principles of philosophy, while the moderns only apply the same to a wider field and elaborate them in a higher number of examples. 93 In other words, Lessing was not captivated by history, for "having had the experience of what philosophy is" in its true, that is, classical, sense, 94 he used history precisely with the proper philosophic intention of recovering "the natural horizon" as reflecting "the eternal truth" beyond either orthodoxy or Enlightenment, the genuine nature of whose conflict had been obscured in

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his day by polemics and apologetics. In his mature historical studies of the Enlightenment and orthodoxy, Lessing partially vindicated and partially criticized them both, which to Strauss indicates the ironical distance at which Lessing held these two rival parties. According to Strauss's conception, Lessing's firsthand knowledge of classical philosophy enabled him to dialectically transcend these false modern alternatives, which he rightly recognized as determined mainly by a mere historical accident (the conflict in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, primarily caused by the modem Enlightenment's peculiarly bellicose character), and thus not by the suprahistorical or necessary truth. 95 Likewise, Strauss justified his own original research concerning Spinoza, the leading figure in the Enlightenment's critique of religion, by the need to "re-enact" or "repeat" [wiederholen]96 "the classic quarrel between the Enlightenment and orthodoxy" as a fight for "the one, eternal truth," because in "the classic quarrel" "the natural desire for truth had not yet been deadened by the modern dogma that 'religion' and 'science' each has in view its own 'truth' co-ordinated to it." 97 Strauss's notion that the search for the single truth may reside in reviving and "re-enacting" supposedly obsolete quarrels is suggestively reminiscent of the remark made by Lessing about his need for retrieving those truths he might have lost in discarding certain prejudices. 98 Indeed, the proof for the basic failure of the Enlightenment, especially in its attempt to refute orthodoxy, was apparently furnished in substance for Strauss by three points Lessing taught him. First, the radical Enlightenment's need to resort to laughter and mockery in order '"to laugh' orthodoxy 'out' of its position from which it could not be dislodged by any proofs supplied by Scripture or by reason" 99 demonstrates like no other historical fact that orthodoxy's "ultimate premise" is "irrefutable," for this resort to base techniques such as mockery must be considered a desperate measure for rational men. As Strauss remarks trenchantly, "mockery does not succeed the refutation of the orthodox tenets but is itself the refutation." 100 Second, according to "Lessing's Law" [Regel], as Strauss calls it, 101 the Enlightenment's worldly successes (e.g., modem science and modem politics), inasmuch as they are victories against orthodoxy, do not by any means prove the truth of its assertions, for "victories are 'very ambiguous demonstrations of the lightness of a cause, or rather . . . none at all' and thus 'he who is held to be right and he who should be held to be right is seldom one and the same person.'" It is for this reason, among others, that Strauss regarded it as necessary to abandon one's prejudices and to re-enact the classic quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment in order to reach an honest judgment about the truth, by considering "uncorrupted by prejudice" each party's "hidden premises." Hence "one must pay attention to the arguments of both parties" equally and fairly. 102 Third, the critique of the moderate Enlightenment's theological "interiorizations" or "spiritualizations" of traditional orthodox assertions—a critique carried through with full force by

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nineteenth-century anti-Hegelianism, and as such laying the basis for the twentieth-century "movement of return"—was, as Strauss discovered, decisively begun by Lessing. 103 In fact, Lessing engaged in such theological critiques, so Strauss contends, actually as "a rehabilitation of the [radical] Enlightenment" in order to isolate the real disputants in the conflict. 1 0 4 Following Lessing's lead in remaining free of attachment to either one party or the other, even while "rehabilitating" their most radical arguments, Strauss indeed judges both sides justly. In speaking respectfully of orthodoxy (i.e., not only because it seems to stand for the noblest moral ideals), Strauss praises it for having withstood its attackers' numerous "ruthless" 105 offensives by adhering mightily to "the irrefutable premise" in which it is firmly g r o u n d e d . 1 0 6 Similarly, in addressing himself unpolemically to the Enlightenment (i.e., not as if it were a spent force, despite what its postKantian and Romantic critics maintain against its "dogmatic" rationalism), Strauss vigorously defends it for neither arguing "the great issues" with "trivial premises" nor for deserving to be treated as "a contemptible adversary," 107 despite what he admits is its "atheistic" modem Epicureanism. However, the dialectical approach Strauss employs for "re-enacting" the quarrel may itself have been borrowed from Lessing as well, who was also able to sharply criticize those parties he considered either guilty of a faulty compromise (e.g., Mendelssohn) or immersed in a pious self-deception (e.g., Jacobi). And learning form Lessing this agile and independent style of thinking, Strauss was able to reach strikingly judicious and unprejudiced conclusions about the Mendelssohn-Jacobi "Pantheismusstreit." Thus, Strauss came to understand what Lessing himself was trying to get at in his use of a dialectical style that seemed to go out of its way to be paradoxical: He was striving to provoke his friends in both camps to a less dogmatic, more probing form of thinking that escapes modem prejudices and ripens into a deeper, classical freedom of thought, i.e., one that allows itself a full radicalism of theory while moderating itself by prudence in practice. 108 Hence, on the one hand, Lessing clearly may have wanted to shock his friends in the moderate Enlightenment of Berlin by viewing orthodoxy so appreciatively (following his acrimonious controversies with the orthodox Paster J. M. Goeze) by "vindicating" Leibniz's strange assertion of pure orthodox beliefs in his fight against a contemporary heterodox theologian. But Strauss helps us to perceive beyond this apparent "vindication" [Rettung] that Lessing may have wanted to prove, among other points, that either an honest avowal of faith in the strict orthodox tradition or an unambiguous Spinozan philosophic "atheism" is preferable to acquiescing in anything like Mendelssohn's pantheistic "purified" Spinozism, which Strauss aptly calls "semi-theism." 109 On the other hand, in Lessing's seemingly simple, though not entirely unironic, identification of philosophy with Spinoza, he may have aimed to shock men like Jacobi away from what he discerned in them as an embryonic or even a fully budding romanticism, with its appeal to

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nostalgia for "the lost belief ' while keeping it safely "at arm's length," with its "equivocal reverence" for the orthodox tradition. According to Strauss's reading, which forces us beyond this by no means obvious exposition to an even deeper insight, Lessing was apparently hinting that they plainly err if they consider this to be either genuine religiosity or genuine speculation, since the belief they thus try to recover has been infected with atheism through its very exposure to and immersion in modern rationalistic philosophy. Like its moderate Enlightenment opponent, this erstwhile romanticism, too, is a compromise or a synthesis with Spinoza and the radical Enlightenment—and, as it seemed to Strauss, Lessing intended to express that a pure atheism is preferable in its honesty to a halfhearted faith that consists mainly of nostalgic longing. 110 However honest or sincere this atheism may seem, "conscientious" atheism is scarcely Strauss's own last word. Indeed, Strauss was induced to wonder about the theological and political adequacy of modem rationalism precisely once its fundamental atheism was exposed, 1 1 1 an atheism that seemed to Strauss somehow connected with its issuing in a decided irrationalism. 112 As Strauss declares, atheism is "admittedly undemonstrable"; hence, atheism could not be "made a positive, dogmatic premise." This logic remained binding only so long as the "old love of truth" ruled philosophy. But it is not necessarily so with the new "intellectual probity," which, godlike, claims that it can search and know its own heart with purity. 113 Strauss contends that such a "terrible thing as atheism" 114 is only possibly a tolerably valid term if it hesitatingly articulates the experience represented by negative, skeptical probing, by free inquiry, and if it is meant primarily as a tentative method of standing in doubt of "authority" ("authority" being the source of every orthodox opinion or prejudice). 1 1 5 As such, even the Enlightenment, having established itself as an "authority," must be doubted by the authentic "atheist" (which may be done in the manner of Lessing, who recognized that the best way to contend against this new authority is through its old chief adversary, orthodoxy). This doubting, not bound by any dogma, even a dogmatic atheism, is distinguished by genuine open-mindedness, or by true "free thinking," because it is free with respect to the opinions commanded by authority. Consequently, it is pursued not in order to attain immediately one absolutely certain thing by doubting everything possible, as did Descartes in his grounding of modem philosophy, 116 but in order to acquire the truly philosophic "attitude," 117 as Strauss conceived it, which by its nature especially requires one to "dialectically" transcend false alternatives in their claims to be the complete and final wisdom. Thus do we arrive at the Socratic "dialectical attitude," which in Strauss's scheme is the peculiar characteristic of the true philosopher. In fact, according to Strauss, this "dialectic" was, in the very beginnings of philosophy, applied to the conflict of opinions about the good and about the whole in the diverse divine codes, philosophy being a search for what is good

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"by nature" rather than by ancestral tradition, as well as a search for an adequate, evident, and necessary "articulation of the whole" rather than for its mythic presentation. 118 Therefore, Strauss (following Lessing) proceeds differently from the Enlightenment in method, and likewise moves away from it in goal, because he keeps in view the possibility of a truth that transcends all "authoritative" opinions or prejudices but is fleetingly reflected in them and to which only they first point us. Hence, we must ascend "dialectically" through them, be it only for the sake of their directing us to "a fundamental awareness of the whole," philosophically known as the eternal truth, or nature, or even God. "In other words, the opinions prove to be solicited by the self-subsistent truth, and the ascent to the truth proves to be guided by the self-subsistent truth which all men always divine." 119 In light of these considerations and the further statement Strauss proffers concerning what he sees as the one universal thing that "all understanding presupposes"—"prior to any perception of particular things, the human soul must have had a vision of the ideas, a vision of the articulated whole" 120 —it is, I believe, entirely accurate to designate Strauss as a "cognitive theist." 121 *

*

*

Strauss thus seems to have achieved a standpoint from which he could view the antagonists, Enlightenment and orthodoxy, free of partisan passion and yet could still remain vitally interested in the examination of their "classic quarrel" and its "great issues." 122 Indeed, this is the standpoint that Strauss identified with Maimonides. To be sure, Strauss will attain his first striking comprehension of the Maimonidean standpoint by analyzing, in comparative terms, the philosophic flaws and the natural limits in Spinoza's critique of orthodox revealed religion with its Maimonidean supports, for Strauss always regarded Spinoza's powerful criticism as a great help in sharply formulating the decisive points of conflict. 123 Nonetheless, I believe it may still safely be said that Strauss's comprehension of the Maimonidean perspective was certainly deepened but never surpassed in his subsequent development, however one judges its direction. 124 In using this fundamental standpoint, which somehow harmoniously embraces both natural reason and divine revelation, Strauss clearly recognized and distinctly maintained its basic connection with Plato. But this does not mean Strauss saw it as purely and simply Platonic: It seems that for Strauss Maimonides probed the meaning of the "Platonic" standpoint deeper and carried its ramifications further than any predecessor or successor who was faced with what Strauss viewed as the two ultimate antagonists, the Bible and philosophy. 1 2 5 I must equally emphasize that, appearances to the contrary in my presentation hitherto notwithstanding, Strauss definitely identified this "Platonically" dialectical standpoint with Maimonides rather than with Lessing, although Lessing taught him a good deal that helped him penetrate the hidden reaches of

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Maimonides' thought in its religious and philosophic aspects. Both in terms of what Strauss regarded as sound "Platonic" natural right as well as natural theology, it would seem Maimonides especially provided the map by which Strauss discovered in the history of philosophy "a safe middle road between [the two] formidable opponents, Averroes and Thomas." Indeed, for Strauss, it was Maimonides beyond all others who in The Guide of the Perplexed struggled nobly and mightily with the great conflict between reason and revelation, and w h o as such "is probably the greatest analyst" of the "fundamental difference" between the two claims to the comprehensive truth. 126

NOTES Key to

Abbreviations

"AE" (PP) "BGW" "CA" "CCM" "CCWM" CM "CPP" DLT "ET' "PP" "GA" "HBSC/>" "HBSMP" (RCPR) HPP "IERR" JA "LCGP" (PAW) "UUC' (PAW) "MCL" "MITP" MM J A, vol. 3, pt. 2

NRH "OCPH" "OF" (WIPP?)

"An Epilogue," as reprinted in PP (1975) "Biblische Geschichte and Wissenschaft" (1925) "Cohens Analyse der Bibel-Wissenschaft Spinozas" (1924) "Correspondence Concerning Modernity" (with Karl Löwith) (1983) "Correspondence Concerning Wahrheit und Methode" (with Hans-Georg Gadamer) (1978) The City and Man (1964) "The Crisis of Political Philosophy" (1964) De la Tyrannie (1954) "Exoteric Teaching" (1986) "Farabi's Plato" (1945) "A Giving of Accounts" (with Jacob Klein) (1970) "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed' (1963) "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy," as reprinted in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (1989) The History of Political Philosophy (1972) "Introductory Essay" to Hermann Cohen's Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (1972) Jerusalem and Athens (1967) "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed," as reprinted in PAW (1952) "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari " as reprinted in PAW (1952) "Machiavelli and Classical Literature" (1970) "The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy" (1979) Moses Mendelssohn Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, volume 3, part 2: "Einleitungen" to Morgenstunden, An die Freunde Lessings, and Sache Gottes oder die gerettete Vorsehung (1974) Natural Right and History (1953) "On Collingwood's Philosophy of History" (1952) "On a Forgotten Kind of Writing," as reprinted in WIPP? (1959)

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"OIG" "ONI" or PAW "PET'

"On the Interpretation of Genesis" (1981) "On a New Interpretation of Plato's Political Philosophy" (1946) On Tyranny (1963) Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952) "Preface to the English Translation" of Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1965) PG Philosophie und Gesetz (1935) "PHPW" "Preface to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft" (1979-1980) "PIHPE" "Preface to Isaac Husik's Philosophical Essays: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern" (1952) PL Philosophy and Law (1987) "POR?" "Progress or Return?" (1981) PP Political Philosophy (Six Essays by Leo Strauss) (1975) PPH The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (1952) RKS Die Religionskritik Spinozas (1930) SCR Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1965) SPPP Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (1983) TOM Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958) "TS" "Das Testament Spinozas" (1932) "UP" "An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's College" (In Honor of Jacob Klein, 1899-1978) (1978) WIPP? What Is Political Philosophy? (1959) "WWRJ" "Why We Remain Jews (Can Jewish Faith and History Still Speak to Us?)" (an unpublished Hillel Lecture, February 4, 1962) XSD Xenophon's Socratic Discourse (1970) The letters of Leo Strauss, cited in the notes, are as yet unpublished. They are accessible in the Leo Strauss Archive of the University of Chicago Library. 1. For Strauss and what he calls the theological-political crisis as it affects Jews and Judaism, cf. "CA," especially pp. 312-314; "BGW"; "TS"; "Einleitung" to PG; "POR?" pp. 17-33, 44^15; "MITP," pp. I l l , 117-118; "PET"; "WWRJ"; JA, pp. 3-7, 22-23. 2. In unraveling the mysteries of Leo Strauss, we may perhaps be quite well advised to proceed first through the obvious perplexities, especially since we may detect a clue to his employing such a method himself in the Greek epigraph to "LCGP" (whose author only—Aristotle—and not the source—Metaphysics Bl. 995a27-30—is mentioned in the text): "Now those who wish to succeed in arriving at answers will find it profitable to go over the difficulties well; for answers successfully arrived at are solutions to difficulties previously discussed, and one cannot untie a knot if he is ignorant of it." (I quote the translation by Hippocrates G. Apostle, Aristotle's Metaphysics [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966].) As Strauss teaches us in his catalog of what we might call the "additional devices" employed by Maimonides, he mentions "mottoes prefixed to the whole work or to individual parts" as a significant clue extended by the author (cf. PAW, p. 75; cf. also p. 66: "indeed all quotations in the Guide, belong to the same class of hints"). Thus, we may suggest that the significance of this Aristotelian epigraph, which Strauss chose to head this essay with, is that it points toward the contradictions as the "knot," or as the true "difficulties," in the Guide, which we must be made aware of if we are even to begin to comprehend Maimonides' true meaning—and perhaps also Strauss's. 3. The revolutionary change in the study of Maimonides brought about by Strauss's works is discussed by Marvin Fox, "Prolegomenon," in The Teachings

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of Maimonides, by Abraham Cohen (New York: KTAV, 1968), pp. xvi-xviii, xxiii, xxvi-xxviii; Arthur Hyman, "Interpreting Maimonides," Gesher 5(1976): 4 6 - 5 9 , especially pp. 5 3 - 5 6 ; Warren Zev Harvey, " T h e Return of Maimonideanism," Jewish Social Studies 4 (1980): pp. 249-268, especially pp. 253-255, 265. Also now refer passim to Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Consider especially pp. 4 - 5 , 1516, 35, 54-62, 76-78, 85, 335. 4. "PET," p. 1. The theme of the three stages in the development of Strauss's views on Maimonides, mentioned here in passing, is treated fully in my study of Strauss as a Jewish thinker, and his relation to Maimonides: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss, publication forthcoming by SUNY Press. 5. Cf. Allan Bloom, "Leo Strauss," Political Theory 2 (1974): pp. 3 7 3 392, specifically p. 383. 6. We must add that Strauss was, by his own admission, "greatly assisted" in these matters by his reading of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The issue of the debt Strauss owed to Lessing is a complex one and deserves a fuller, separate treatment. In " G A " (p. 3), he mentions Lessing already in connection with RKS: "Lessing was always at my elbow. This meant that I learned more from him than I knew at that time. As I came to see later Lessing had said everything I had found out about the distinction between exoteric and esoteric speech and its grounds." Strauss's probing examination of Lessing was decisively aided by his researches from 1932 to 1937 for the three Moses Mendelssohn Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe volumes that he edited during this period (volumes 2; 3, part 1; and 3, part 2). Cf. Strauss's letter of May 28, 1971, to Alexander Altmann (published by Altmann in his "Vorbemerkung" to MM JA, vol. 3, pt. 2; Strauss had already completed work for this volume in 1937, but it only appeared in print in 1974, following his death). In the letter to Altmann, Strauss said that since 1937 he had wanted to write an essay about Lessing in order to present the "Zentrum" of Lessing's teaching "de Deo et mundo." (I have recently discovered something like this planned essay, written 1939, in the Leo Strauss Archive of the University of Chicago Library; it has been published in Interpretation 14, 1 [1986]: pp. 51-59, as Leo Strauss, "Exoteric Teaching." It may in fact be that this specific essay represents the first fruit, in literary terms, of Strauss's great rediscovery of esotericism.) Scattered throughout Strauss's works are occasional references to Lessing, often of crucial significance for the argument: cf., e.g., PG, pp. 17-19, 51-52, with echoes of the same points in "PET," pp. 28-29, in the SCR text itself, pp. 143-146, and in WIPP? p. 61; PAW, pp. 28 (note 7), 33 (note 13), and 182; " F f , " p. 357 (epigraph), 391 (note 97); NRH, p. 22; OT, p. 112 (note 17); "CCM," pp. 106, 107, 114-115; and of course the "Einleitungen" to Morgenstunden and An die Freunde Lessings in MMJA, vol. 3, pt. 2, which deal more or less directly with Lessing through the Mendelssohn-Jacobi dispute about his "legacy." As for whether Lessing's own esotericism is controversial, one does well to recall S0ren Kierkegaard's remark: "no one, no one could carry himself more circumspectly than Lessing, while achieving the still more difficult task of keeping silent through speaking" (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968], p. 61). 7. Our explication, which locates the decisive move in Strauss's turn to Maimonides, is confirmed by the main text of his own "self-interpretation." Writing in 1962 his spiritual autobiography until 1928 (the research for the original German edition of RKS was completed in 1928, but it only appeared in print in 1930; cf. "PET," p. 1), Strauss designates as the culminating result of his

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research in RKS his recognition of the need to recover the lost wisdom of "especially Jewish-medieval rationalism," i.e., Maimonides (as well as its classical basis, i.e., Plato and Aristotle). Through this "change of orientation," in which he had first to overcome a "powerful prejudice" (cf. also his review of Julius Ebbinghaus, Über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik, in Deutsche Literaturzeitung, no. 52 [December 27, 1931]:col. 2451-2453, and PG, p. 9), he "became ever more attentive to the manner in which heterodox thinkers of earlier ages wrote their books" ("PET," p. 31). One may justifiably doubt whether the "Preface" is a complete and adequate account of Strauss's spiritual autobiography, as did Gershom Scholem (in his letter of November 28, 1962, to Strauss): "Das einzige, was ich daran auszusetzen habe, ist, dass Sie einige Stadien Ihrer Autobiographie darin zu überspringen scheinen" ("The only thing I would criticize in it is that you seem to leap over several stages in your autobiography"). Responding to Scholem (in his letter of December 6, 1962), Strauss admitted this about the "Preface," that in it he had "omitted in a way everything which comes after 1928." However, in my judgment, the "in a way" may reflect a substantial reservation about his admission, namely, that the "Preface" does contain everything that followed, if this be limited to the most essential elements. If one does not want to accept this as the final word, one may turn for a further confirmatory statement to "GA" (pp. 3-4), in which he makes it considerably clearer: It was through his formative preoccupation with Maimonides, and especially his prophetology, that he laid the basis for the crucial conclusions he ultimately reached about esotericism, philosophy, morality, politics, and religion. Maimonides was, to begin with, wholly unintelligible to me. I got the first glimmer of light when I concentrated on his prophetology and, therefore, the prophetology of the Islamic philosophers who preceded him. One day when reading in a Latin translation Avicenna's treatise, On the Division of the Sciences, I came across this sentence (I quote from memory): the standard work on prophecy and revelation is Plato's Laws. Then I began to begin to understand Maimonides' prophetology and eventually, as I believe, the whole Guide of the Perplexed.

It is made quite transparent in what follows, according to this "account" rendered in 1970, that he was led by Maimonides directly to the fundamental notions that characterize his subsequent work; thus, he also, in some measure yet to be determined, may be said to have derived these fundamental notions from Maimonides. In this light, one must be prepared to consider the possibility that Strauss's life's work may represent a "Maimonideanization" of the history of philosophy. Cf. also his letter of November 30, 1933, to Cyrus Adler; PG, pp. 9, 28-29, 118-122; PAW, passim; "OF" {WIPP?), p. 230. 8. PG, p. 9. To be precise, Strauss is citing the judgment of Hermann Cohen on Maimonides, which he is, of course, both in rough accord with and in sharp divergence from. 9. This is not to suggest that no significant changes occurred in the views of Strauss from PG to "PET"—but the fundamental "orientation" remained constant. 10. Strauss was already drawing a clear line of demarcation between modems and premoderns in SCR, but with a different notion of the basis for the distinction and with a different aim in view, i.e., with a greater theological emphasis. Cf., e.g., SCR, p. 181. 11. PG, p. 23. 12. Ibid., pp. 18, 21, 87-122; "PET," pp. 28-31. 13. PG, p. 9.

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14.RKS, pp. 129-181; SCR, pp. 145-192. 15. It should, however, be noted that Strauss has apparently restructured the section and chapter or subsection numbers for the English translation perhaps in order to make plainer in this version what he considers the central section to be (in accordance with the statement in "PET," pp. 28-31). Thus, if we count the "Preface to the English Translation," then there are eleven sections, the central one of which is Section V, "The Critique of Orthodoxy." Accordingly, the vindication of especially Jewish orthodoxy was his main conclusion (cf. SCR, pp. 207-209; although cf. also SCR, p. 192, and "PET," p. 30), for Strauss carefully demonstrates in this section that divine revelation, biblical orthodoxy's fundamental principle, was never actually "refuted" by Spinoza's philosophy; and inasmuch as Spinoza's "system," however flawed it may be, represents the true ambition of philosophy in its purest and simplest form, philosophy cannot ever "refute" divine revelation. Cf. also PC, pp. 18-24; PAW, p. 182; "MITP," p. 117; and "PET," pp. 28-29. 16. The notion that a critique of modern philosophy can only be carried through in comparison with medieval philosophy, and especially with Maimonides, might seem to be contradicted by statements Strauss subsequently made about the need for a comparison between modern and classical principals as the only adequate method for escaping modern "prejudices." (Cf., e.g., "ONI," pp. 327-328, with "CCM," pp. 107-108 and PG, pp. 9-10.) However, not only do this essay, and others like it, have to be considered in the context of the man whom it is directed against—John Wild—and the audience it is destined for— "students" and the general American philosophical reader—but one must also connect this statement with the relevant connecting allusions, i.e., the medieval philosophy that "would not suffice" for Strauss here means Christian medieval philosophy. (Cf. "ONI," pp. 338, 344-345, 362-364.) Indeed, we now possess Strauss's own evaluation of this essay, and it is definitely clear that he does mean Christian medieval philosophy. (Cf. "CCM," pp. 106, 108.) In general, Strauss's firmest statements voicing a preference for comparing modern philosophy with classical philosophy alone appear in works whose audience is primarily a Western, i.e., "Christian," one, since (as shall be brought to light) he considered the link between Jewish and Islamic medieval philosophy and classical political philosophy to be of greater directness and profundity. (Cf. the introductions to NRH and CM. For Strauss's prefaces and introductions as the best key to his own "exoteric teaching," cf. Victor Gourevitch, "Philosophy and Politics," in Review of Metaphysics 22 (1968): pp. 58-84, 281-328, and especially p. 61. Cf. also PAW, p. 21. For the Jewish (and Islamic) medieval philosophy as superior to its modem Jewish (and Christian) counterpart, cf. PG, pp. 33-35, 40-44, 60-62. We may now add, to corroborate our thesis here, Strauss's own words directing us along these lines: cf. "HBSMP" (RCPR), pp. 207-226.) 17. SCR, pp. 178-182; "PET," p. 31. 18. "PET," pp. 1-7, 15-17. 19. PG, p. 10. 20. Perhaps the first thing we should notice about Strauss's approach is the way in which he links the crisis of modern Western civilization with the crisis in which the Jews and Judaism are immersed, and hence how he uses the difficulties of the one as a dialectical means for revealing the difficulties in the other's situation. On the one hand, the crisis of liberalism, and the democratic regimes that operate in its spirit, are reflected by its limited ability to facilitate complete Jewish "assimilation": "the liberal state cannot provide a solution to the Jewish problem, for such a solution would require a legal prohibition against every kind of 'discrimination,' i.e., the abolition of the private sphere, the denial of the

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difference between state and society, the destruction of the liberal state" ("PET," pp. 6 - 7 , 2 0 - 2 1 ) . On the other hand, the Jewish crisis has a great deal to do with the liberal promise, articulated by Spinoza, that it had the solution to Jewish suffering, if this be considered "as a merely human problem," but the Jews have put their hope in a promise, however "sympathetic," which liberalism has never been able to fulfill: "Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create a society which is free of contradictions. From every point of view it looks as if the Jewish people were the chosen people in the sense, at least, that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of the human problem as a social or political p r o b l e m " ( P G , pp. 9 - 1 0 , 27-28; "PET," pp. 4, 6 - 7 , 20-21). 21. PG, p. 10. For some remarks concerning belief vs. knowledge, or true belief vs. spurious belief, cf. PAW, pp. 120-121 (with note 175), and p. 104 (note 25); " E T , " pp. 5 3 - 5 4 (with note 15). He also refers us to M a i m o n i d e s ' Guide, I, 50. 22. PG, p. 28. 23. " P E T , " pp. 4 - 7 . 24. The most significant respect in which "the movement of return" (by which Strauss primarily means to say Franz Rosenzweig, "who is thought to be the greatest Jewish thinker" produced by German Jewry) changed the previous direction of modern Jewish theology is in its p o w e r f u l argument for divine revelation as not just a received opinion and hence as something that must be "merely believed," but precisely as a present possibility and thus as something that can be "genuinely k n o w n " ("PET," pp. 8 - 9 ) . The other significant respects in which the "new thinking" of Rosenzweig transformed modem Jewish theology Strauss seems to treat m o r e or less critically, especially as compared with Maimonides, namely: its supposedly "empirical," but actually dogmatic, point of departure in "Israel" rather than in "Torah"—yet for Strauss and the "old thinking" what is actually "primary or authoritative" for Jewish experience is "Torah," while " I s r a e l " is merely " t h e primary condition of [its] possibility"; its revitalized m e t h o d of biblical interpretation, which, however, he regards as enmeshed in historicism; its accepting the need for a "principal of selection" in regard to "the traditional beliefs and rules," which refers itself to "a force" possessed by each Jewish person, and hence which is only possible in "the conditions of m o d e m 'individualism'"; its determined stance against "orthodox austerity or sternness" concerning the law, which in Strauss's view m a y be shallower than the orthodox view as regards "the power of evil in man"; its often doubting attitude toward miracles, which perhaps does not sufficiently reckon with G o d ' s omnipotence ("PET," pp. 13-15). Cf. also Michael L. Morgan, "The Curse of Historicity: T h e Role of History in Leo Strauss's Jewish Thought," Journal of Religion 61(1981): pp. 345-363. 25. Cf. PG, pp. 1 0 - 1 2 , 15-17, 2 6 - 2 8 ; " P E T , " pp. 7 - 1 5 , 18-28; " I E f l f l , " pp. x x x i i i - x x x v . Strauss's first statement along these lines is also still worth considering, although written in the cause of a romantic Jewish "folk-spirit": " C A , " especially pp. 3 1 2 - 3 1 4 . 26. " P E T , " pp. 6, 28. 27. Ibid., p p . 2 8 - 3 0 . 28. PG, pp. 2 1 - 2 2 ; " P E T , " pp. 30-31. 2 9 . PG, p. 9 (note 1): " ' I r r a t i o n a l i s m ' is but a variety [Spielart] of modern rationalism, which is itself already 'irrational' enough." For Strauss's c o m m e n t s a b o u t M e n d e l s s o h n ' s Jewish "rationalist" theology in relation to the history of m o d e m philosophy, cf. MM J A, vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. L X - L X X , X C V I CX.

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30. Cf. "PET," p. 30, along with SCR, pp. 170-171, 179; PG, pp. 54-55; " H B S G P , " p. xxii; JA, p. 5; cf. also Guide, II, 11, and III, 31. 31. P G , pp. 9-10, 28-29; "PET," pp. 13, 31. 32. PG, p. 28. 33. As for Strauss's equating "modern rationalism" per se with "modern sophistry" (PG, pp. 9-10), here he seems to make an error of simplification in unconditionally identifying the two, an error that he "corrects," as it were, in his critique of John Wild. (Cf. "ONI," pp. 335-345: "The temptation to identify modern philosophy with sophistry is considerable, and Wild is not the first to succumb to it.") He subsequently identifies "modern sophistry" with, if anything, "historicism" and relativistic social science. (Cf. NRH, pp. 9 - 1 3 , 115-119.) Even in Strauss's mature and comprehensive view of the history of modern philosophy, however, it seems that also this peculiarly modem guise in which the natural possibility of "sophistry" appears has its deeper roots in, and was decisively prepared by, modern rationalism—in which case this small error Strauss made in his youth would not be as significant as the larger truth it possessed in substance. Cf., e.g., "PET," pp. 15-17. But cf. also SPPP, p. 228: "Machiavelli and Socrates make a common front against the Sophists" regarding "the ingredient of politics which transcends speech." For a clear rejection of Machiavelli's thought as supposedly originating in "sophism," cf. "MCL," p. 13. As for "the ingredient of politics which transcends speech," Strauss seems to refer to the body: "The soul can rule the body only despotically, not by persuasion." Still, if Machiavelli does not consider thought politically relevant, certainly speech (and action) receive a higher estimation in Machiavelli than they do in the Socratic tradition of philosophy, which regards the naturalness of thought in man as the basis for all natural right. Human nature is not in general determined by beautiful speech or by persuasion: Only some men can be persuaded in determining their actions by considerations of honor, and only a very rare and specific kind of man is solely determined in his actions by reason. Hence, philosophers must adjust their speech to this reality about human nature. But that rare and specific man, the Socratic ideal, is of no concern to Machiavelli in determining how political life, and hence political speech, are to be guided. Thus, compare SCR, pp. 226-229, and PAW, pp. 154-158, 181-184, 191-193, 198, and 201 for Spinoza's merely tactical silences combined with bold assertions, with TOM, pp. 232, 294-299, concerning modern philosophy's "considered boldness" as reflecting "a wholly new estimate of man," with its basis in a new view of nature and philosophy. In the new view of nature, man (forgetting his higher self) recognizes himself as "threatened by a stingy, hostile nature" that he can save himself from only by mastering and owning it, and that is beneficent only through free human constructive action. (Cf. PG, pp. 20-22, 25-26; "PET," pp. 29-30.) Hence, this changes even nature as the standard reflecting "the good" or "being"; as historically comprehended by modern man, now even nature does not mean "to be always" or that this eternal being is good (NRH, pp. 30-31). Philosophy itself eventually leaves nature for history: Man must retrace his own path "ontogenctically" as his main "philosophic" task in order to know how "being" has been constructed by man in the form of human civilizations and their supporting "philosophies," and not concern himself with what is by nature. It is, then, denied that true natural knowledge is possible, thus leaving man merely to write the history of opinions as poetic horizons in which he has created his worlds. In Spinoza's Critique of Religion Strauss already discerned the root of modern rationalism's primary error in the basic Enlightenment notion "prejudice," which "is a historical category" rather than a purely natural one; or if it reflects something natural, it is secondary rather than primary. Indeed, its

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historically derivative character "precisely constitutes the difference between the struggle of the Enlightenment against prejudices and the struggle against appearance and opinion with which philosophy began its secular journey" (SCR, p. 181 and generally pp. 178-182, 134-135, 252-254, and PG, pp. 45^46. Cf. also PPH, pp. 152-154, 158-165, for opinion and "dialectic"). 34. PG, pp. 9 - 1 0 . 35. Ibid., p. 28. 36. Cf., e.g., CM, p. 11. 37. PG, p. 9. 38. SCR, pp. 178-182, 191-192. 39. Cf. the chapter text near superscript 9. 40. Thus, consider these statements about modern natural science: "the new science . . . proved itself in the struggle against orthodoxy, if indeed it did not have its very raison d'être in [such a struggle]" (PG, p. 20); "only on the premises of modem natural science are miracles as such unknowable" (PG, p. 23); "in the end, is not the purpose of radically securing itself against miracles the motive [Grund] of the very notion [Begriffes] of science which guides modern natural science?" (PG, p. 23). Cf. also SCR, pp. 60, 212-214; PG, pp. 21-24; PPH, pp. 166-170; NRH, pp. 169-177; WIPP? p. 47; "PET," pp. 28-29. For "essential differences," or formal and final causes, as still valid or as scientifically unrefuted, cf., "CPP," pp. 9 2 - 9 3 . Consider also: "The rejection of final causes (and therewith also of the concept of chance) destroyed the theoretical basis of classical political philosophy." Cf. "The Three Waves of Modernity," in PP, p. 87, and also pp. 82-89 generally. 41. SCR, pp. 150-151, 158, 160-161, 164, 174-175, 182. 42. OT, pp. 214-216. 43. TOM, p. 134; CM, pp. 239-241. 44. SCR, pp. 130-131, 178-182, 215 , 226, 245-247, 262; TOM, pp. 1 1 12, 51, 175-208, 294-298; " P E T , " p. 13. Cf. also DLT, p. 343, for the necessarily radical distinction between "conditions" and "sources" of knowledge in classical philosophy. 45. Cf. Gerhard Kriiger's review of RKS in Deutsche Literaturzeitung 51(1931): pp. 2407-2412, and especially p. 2410. Strauss thus seems to have been attempting to "recover" classical "nature" as the true standard for reason through "historical studies," a possibility first exemplified for him by "Lessing's ' d i a l e c t i c ' " ( " C C M , " p. 107). But modern historical studies, a postEnlightenment creation, seemingly repeat or presuppose the Enlightenment's belief in a decisive progress of man beyond both classical philosophy and biblical orthodoxy. (Cf. WIPP? pp. 66-68, 71, 76-77.) He was, as a result, constrained to speak, in an inspired image, of "ascending" from "the second 'unnatural' cave," created by modern rationalism, to the "first 'natural' cave, depicted by Plato's parable." Thus, the return to classical philosophy, to Plato and Aristotle, meditated by Lessing, meant as much as anything for Strauss primarily to learn from the ancients what their obscured or forgotten idea of "nature" signifies in and for our world. The paradoxical need for history in order to recover nature, and hence for the man who would be a philosopher to appear in the guise of a historian, is one of the first and most enduring principles reached by Strauss in his search for truth beyond modem categories. The difficulty in our comprehending what is conveyed, and what is presupposed, by this notion is not diminished by a recognition that he seems to attribute his discovering the necessity for such a "recovery" to the crucial awareness of philosophy's radical roots, which he discerned in Heidegger's antiphilosophical speculation. The discovery at issue for Strauss would seem to have been made by Heidegger, whose

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radical historicism "made nature disappear completely, which however has the merit of consistency and compels one to reflect" ("CCM," p. 107). Or as he also puts this same point otherwise: "Certain it is that no one has questioned the premise of philosophy as radically as Heidegger" ("UP," p. 2). In other words, in attempting to complete the overcoming of nature, nature being for Strauss simply "the premise of philosophy" ( N R H , p. 9), one discerns that philosophy must have already undergone a gradual historicization, this having commenced for Strauss with modern rationalism. (Cf„ e.g., SCR, p. 181; WIPP? pp. 58-60; "POR?" pp. 38-42.) Thus, one rightly wonders first whether one has correctly comprehended what one is trying to surpass historically; and subsequently one wonders whether a return to a previous teaching is perhaps possible once historicism itself is rendered problematic, for this possibility of return or "restoration" (e.g., of nature) is only excluded by historicism itself, which assumes "that every intended restoration necessarily leads to an essential modification of the restored teaching" (WIPP? p. 60). Strauss credits his friend Jacob Klein with having first recognized, or first taught him, both Heidegger's greatness and his questionableness: "by uprooting and not simply rejecting the tradition of philosophy, he made it possible for the first time after many centuries—one hesitates to say how many—to see the roots of the tradition as they are and thus perhaps to know, what so many merely believe, that those roots are the only natural and healthy roots." Strauss also credits Klein with the following discovery: "Klein was the first who understood the possibility which Heidegger had opened without intending it: the possibility of a genuine return to classical philosophy, to the philosophy of Aristotle and of Plato, a return with open eyes and in full clarity about the infinite difficulties which it entails" ("UP," p. 2). Cf. also WIPP? pp. 26-27, 56-77; SPPP, pp. 29-30. (Consider also the following: "a return to an earlier position is believed to be impossible. But one must realize that this belief is a dogmatic assumption whose hidden basis is the belief in progress or in the rationality of the historical process" [CM, pp. 1011]). Cf. also: Strauss's review of Julius Ebbinghaus, p. 2453 (fully cited in note 7, above); PG, pp. 13 (note 1), 53 (note 3), 116; "FP," pp. 375-377, 393; "ONI," pp. 329-332; "OCPH," pp. 575-576, 578-579, 582-586; NRH, pp. 7, 61-62, 79-82; PAW, pp. 14-17, 155-156; WIPP? pp. 73-77; OT, p. 27; CM, pp. 1012; "CCM," pp. 107, 109-110, 114; "GA," pp. 2-3; "UP," pp. 1-3. It was in this "archeological" act of recovering the "first 'natural' cave" that Strauss was also fundamentally aided by the reenactment or the remembering of "the polemic against the tradition" (i.e., the modern tradition that created the "second 'unnatural' cave"), which Strauss considered a prerequisite for the philosophic ascent. This was "the polemic against the tradition" that Lessing started in his turning the Enlightenment critique of orthodoxy against itself, a polemic Nietzsche later "radicalized" in his critique of tradition per se, as to its very idea or possibility, once he comprehended modern philosophy's full ramifications. (For Nietzsche, cf. PG, pp. 13 [note 1], 23-24, with p. 24 [note 1], It is worth noting further that in Nietzsche's Ecce Homo account of Beyond Good and Evil, he calls it primarily "a critique of modernity." Strauss considered this same book Nietzsche's "most beautiful" book, the one in which he especially "'platonizes' as regards the 'form'" [SPPP, pp. 174-175], and he quotes from this account in Ecce Homo to support his argument for Beyond Good and Evil's "beauty," but he curiously does not refer to that key sentence, which might seem to have enhanced his preference.) Lessing, directing himself against the moderate Enlightenment in both of its guises, i.e., rationalistic and romantic, disclosed it as a substitute but mediocre tradition that adapted the radical Enlightenment to society by a frail but

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unsuitable "synthesis." He even exposed it as such a compromise in his rehabilitating the deeper philosophic and political purposes of men like Spinoza, who in their radically antitraditional and antitheological polemic, aimed to eradicate all earlier Western philosophy and religion as misguided. (It is noteworthy that in Strauss's consideration of Lessing's "polemic against the tradition," Strauss seems to be concerned only with Lessing's critique of the moderate Enlightenment and does not mention Lessing's equally sharp, if not sharper, attack against strict orthodoxy (i.e., in his sixteen "anti-Goeze" pieces). In Strauss's own reflections, perhaps the latter did not help him quite as much as did the former, because in his study of Spinoza he had already discerned the natural limits set for any critique of orthodoxy in its being necessarily unphilosophic as polemic (although Lessing himself had probably recognized the same thing; cf. the letter to his brother Karl, cited in note 73, below), but he also accepted their main substantive thrust, i.e., the right to and need for "biblical criticism" as a modern historical and theological discipline once it has been established. (Thus, cf. " B G W " as a whole.) However, undoubtedly aided by Rosenzweig, Strauss passed beyond even Lessing in his transcendence of "biblical criticism's" antiorthodoxy. (Cf. JA, pp. 6 - 7 ; " O I G , " pp. 6 - 9 , 14-15, 18-20.) Thus, it was probably in this spirit that Strauss entitled the Judaism he envisioned for the future as "post-critical" Judaism. (Cf. "WWRJ," Question and Answer Section, p. 11; " P O R ? " pp. 23-24, 27-29, 33, 44^15.) It is this very substitute tradition (i.e., in its critique of the true Western tradition, which for Strauss means classical philosophy and biblical orthodoxy) that has obscured and even managed to "bury" what we might call "the natural perspective" pure and simple, whose true basis the radical Enlightenment originally intended to restore, or such was its claim. "The intention of the Enlightenment was the rehabilitation of the natural through the denial (or restriction) of the supernatural; however, its achievement was the discovery of a new 'natural' foundation that, far from being natural, is rather as it were the residuum of the 'supernatural'" ( P G , p. 13 [note 1]). The problem seems to arise from the question about whether the "typical" or the "extreme" is the best key to the natural. Cf. PG, pp. 13 (note 1), 21-22, 26-27, 36-43, 61-62; SCR, pp. 335-339; "ET," pp. 57-59; "CCM," pp. 11-114; NRH, pp. 161-163, 171-177, 202; TOM, pp. 221-223, 246-255, 279-280, 297, 299; WIPP? p. 47; " P E T , " pp. 13, 15-16. This notion docs not change fundamentally for Strauss even with his discovery that Machiavelli, and not Hobbes, laid the basis for modern philosophy, since with all his radicalism Machiavelli still wanted to actualize what the classics merely envisaged, i.e., he still moved in the sphere of human nature as delineated by the classics, even if he reached different conclusions about what to do with it. Cf., e.g., SPPP, p. 228. 46. SCR, p. 179. 47. Ibid., p. 181. Cf. also NRH, pp. 173-176. 48. Cf. PG, pp. 2 3 - 2 4 for the significance of modern science's "Is" and "Ought," or "fact" and "value," distinction in subverting nature as a standard. 49. SCR, p. 226. 50. For modern philosophy's "antiutopianism," cf., e.g., NRH, pp. 178— 179, 200-201. For "antitheological ire," cf. SCR, pp. 178-182, 226-229; PG, pp. 31, 25-27, with p. 26 (note 1); NRH, pp. 184, 198; TOM, pp. 11-13, 198199; WIPP? p. 44; HPP, p. 269; and cf. chapter text near superscript 50, and chapter text near superscript 72. 51. OT, p. 205. 52. PG, pp. 20, 22, 23, 3 3 ^ 5 ; NRH, pp. 81-95. Cf. also "The Three Waves of Modernity," in PP, pp. 8 2 - 8 3 for why modernity does not represent a

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"secularization" process; and pp. 84-89 for the basic accord between the Bible and classical philosophy, and why "Machiavelli rejects the whole philosophic and theological tradition." 53. CM, pp. 10-11. 54. NRH, pp. 316-317. 55. Ibid., pp. 174-176, 199-202; WIPP? p. 55. 56. "GA," p. 2; "PHPW" p. 1. 57. SCR, p. 180; "PET," p. 24. 58. PG, pp. 16-17; "PET," p. 9. 59. PG, p. 21; "PET," p. 29. 60. PG, p. 21. 61. Ibid., p. 10. 62. Cf., however, already SCR, pp. 226-229 and PPH, p. 88 (note 5). 63. PG, pp. 20-22, 25-26; "PET," pp. 15, 29-30. 64. PG, pp. 22-23. 65. Ibid., p. 22. Baumann translates (PL, p. 14): "The actual grounds for the Enlightenment's right thus seems to be the new natural science." 66. Ibid., p. 23. 67. Ibid., p. 23 and also pp. 13-14 (note 1). 68. Ibid., pp. 2 2 - 2 3 . 69. Ibid., p. 22. 70. "PET," pp. 15-16. 71. PG, p. 23. 72. Ibid., pp. 20, 23-28; NRH, pp. 167-170, 178 (note 11), 188-189; "PET," pp. 29-31. 73. PG, p. 28. Cf. also Lessing's famous letter of February 2, 1774, to his brother Karl. Lessing defends orthodoxy against the "new theologians" for the sake of philosophy, because in the old arrangement with orthodoxy, "things were fairly well settled. A curtain had been drawn between it and philosophy." Each one allowed the other freedom of action in its own domain. The "new theologians" want to remove the curtain and make believers rational; however, in the process of their reforms, "they are making us very irrational philosophers." Likewise, he defends orthodoxy against their Enlightenment-prompted attacks: W e are agreed that the old religious system is false, but I cannot share your conviction that it is a p a t c h w o r k of bunglers and half philosophers. I know of nothing in the world in which human sagacity has been better displayed and cultivated. T h e real patchwork of bunglers and half philosophers is the religious system which they now want to set in p l a c e of the old, and with far m o r e influence on reason and philosophy than the old ever presumed.

The translation follows Henry E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966). On what "half philosophers" are, cf. "ONI," p. 342 (note 15). Cf. also the similar statement of Lessing's in "Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts" (1780), para. 65. Cf. also Ernest L. Fortin, "Rational Theologians and Irrational Philosophers: A Straussian Perspective," Interpretation 12 (1984): pp. 349-356. 74. "GA," p. 2. 75. Cf. PG, pp. 28, 46, 53 (note 3), 62-67, and 113-122 for Strauss's first definite statements about how he discovered that "Platonic political philosophy" is the key to this premodern criterion as it emerged in his study of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors Farabi and Avicenna. Their prophetology was especially pertinent, inasmuch as through it they do not separate the search for "enlightenment" from "philosophic politics," but subordinate its requirements to the unavoidable human difference between the philosophic few and the

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nonphilosophic many: Never will all men be prophets, for they will not want, or be able, to endure the arduous training and way of life it requires. 76. PG, pp. 11-12. 77. "PET," pp. 27, 13, 4 - 8 ; cf. also especially MM]A, vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. LXXVIII, LXII for Mendelssohn's apparent obliviousness to the irreconcilable contradiction between Epicurean and Jewish moralities. 78. PG, pp. 12-15. 79. Ibid., pp. 22; "PET," pp. 7 - 8 . 80. PG, p. 11. 81. Ibid., pp. 11-12. 82. Ibid., pp. 12-13; cf. also "PET," pp. 16, 18-21: Spinoza, who might be said to have originated the liberal tradition, both political and religious, already "plays a most dangerous game: his procedure is as much beyond good and evil as his God." 83. PG, p. 12. 84. Cf. also "BGW"; "CA," pp. 312-313; SCR, pp. 252-256; "PET," p. 27. 85. SCR, pp. 200-204; "PET," pp. 23-24; " I E R R " pp. xxvi-xxviii. 86. PG, pp. 11, 16; "PET," pp. 14-15, 25, 27. 87. PG, p. 12. 88. Ibid., pp. 11, 14, 22. 89. Ibid., p. 12. 90. Strauss acknowledged the debt he owed to the "resurrection" of theology in the 1920s by Barth and Rosenzweig, in both " P H P W , " p. 1, and in "GA," p. 2. He does not, however, detail the contents of what they taught him, other than mentioning Barth's liberating biblical hermeneulic as he enunciated it in the preface of his commentary to Paul's Letter to the Romans: Barth emphasizes that the truth expounded by Scripture can only be of interest to us if it is just as vital and relevant for us here and now as it was then and there. In other words, this amounts to a declaration of independence from the historical approach to Scripture, which can only be exculpated from the charge of participating in historicist triumphalism and reductionism by duly subordinating itself to the eternal truth taught by Scripture. 91. "OCPH," p. 586. 92. Strauss also quotes Lessing's conclusion with seeming approval: "I fear that the entire comparison of the ancients and moderns may boil down to this," i.e., the difference between "better" and "sharper eyes" vs. "seeing more," suggesting the contrast between M a i m o n i d e s ' " d e p t h " and S p i n o z a ' s "originality," which he speaks of in a subsequent work. Cf. "OF" ( W I P P ? ) , p. 230, with "ET," p. 59 (note 37). 93. As Strauss seems to suggest, Lessing is further intimating by this and by other similar remarks against the moderns that he did not share the belief in there being a greater ultimate or suprarational truth of divine revelation that can be known through natural reason. This is because "unaided" reason cannot pronounce true in terms of itself that which transcends it, although it can recognize such "aided" truths as necessary or wise or blessed inasmuch as they apply to other realms, e.g., morality, religion, or politics. It may have been this belief in a suprarational truth of Scripture that also, as a philosophic possibility, laid the basis for the modern, post-Enlightenment belief in "history" as manifesting a decisive "progress" of truth and even of being, a "progress" that in Strauss's view Lessing would seem to tacitly reject in advance by attempting to recover the lost, or obscured, "natural horizon," known best through the ancients. According to Strauss, "the greatest exponents of the ancients' side in the 'querelle [des anciens et des modernes'], that is, Swift and Lessing, knew that the real

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iheme of ihe quarrel is antiquity and Christianity." In other words, the conflict between ancient and modem ideals conceals this crucial fact: "The modems" were powerfully influenced by the Bible and by the Christian theological tradition, and do indeed believe that they vindicate its cause, even if Strauss denies that they do vindicate it by their methods. Strauss carries this interpretation through with an exacting consistency, in that he relegates Lessing's "Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts" to the "completely exoteric," even though it has often been considered a prophetic anticipation of Romantic historicism in its several guises. Cf. Lessing's "Die Erziehung," pars. 4, 65, 77; "CCM," p. 106; "ET," pp. 51-59; PAW, pp. 12-13, 18; Karl Lowith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 1 - 6 , 17-19, 182-207; Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment, pp. 147-161, and especially p. 147 for the "Erziehung" as "an 'esoteric,' speculative treatment of the history of religion." Cf. also Henry Chadwick's comments on the esotericism of Lessing in his introduction to Lessing's Theological Writings (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957), pp. 4 3 - 4 4 . 94. Strauss often seems to draw a sharp line in dividing the realms of human knowledge between things or beings that dwell solely in the sphere of the accidental, i.e. history, and those that can attain, or are identified with, what is essential, as "the truth about the highest things," i.e., philosophy. Cf. "OCPH," pp. 584-585; "F/>," pp. 389-393, 374-377; "ET," pp. 56-59. It is perhaps this radical division between the two realms that causes Strauss to speak Platonically in terms of the need for "conversion" to philosophy, being a complete transformation in the soul of the man who genuinely philosophizes, by turning himself entirely, in soul and body, to the love of wisdom. Cf. "ET," pp. 56-57; PAW, pp. 108-110; NRH, pp. 11-12; CM, pp. 112-118, 124-128; OT, pp. 211-216. By way of contrast, consider "OCPH," pp. 582-586, and "ONI," pp. 326-332 and 333-334, for a defense of history and historical research, i.e., philosophic preoccupation with what is seemingly rooted in the accidental realm: "insistence on the fundamental difference between philosophy and history—a difference by which philosophy stands or falls—may very well, in the present situation, be misleading, not to say dangerous to philosophy itself' ("ONI," p. 332). Cf. also PAW, pp. 12-14. 95. "ET," pp. 58, 59 (notes 33 and 35); DLT, pp. 342-344. 96. For Strauss's fullest elaboration of his notion of "re-enactment," cf. "OCPH," pp. 575, 582. 97. PG, p. 15. 98. "ET," p. 58 and p. 57 (note 28). 99. PG, pp. 18-19, with the identical words in "PET," pp. 28-29. Cf. also SCR, pp. 145-146, and " B G W " (1925) for the first mention of this principle, which he learned from Lessing: "We suppose that the Enlightenment has laughed this Orthodoxy to death, and if we today good-naturedly laugh at these Enlighteners, then we forget that there is also still today an Orthodoxy." He quotes Lessing by name to prove a similar point: "Not therefore Orthodoxy but a certain squinting, limping Orthodoxy which is unequal to itself is so loathsome." T h e quotation is from Lessing's "Counter-Propositions" to Reimarus. Cf. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Werke, vol. 7, edited by Herbert G. Gopfert et al. (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1971), pp. 457-491, and especially p. 472. 100. "PET," p. 29; PG, p. 19. 101. PG, p. 18. 102. Ibid., pp. 17-18. 103. Ibid., pp. 17, 51. 104. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

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105. Cf., e.g., PAW, p. 109 for a medieval parallel to the philosophers' "ruthless attack" and its potentially disastrous consequences, as reflected in the complete absence of a direct encounter between the philosopher and the Jewish scholar from Halevi's Kuzari. Indeed, it is this literary theme and what it represents philosophically that, I believe, animates Strauss's entire monograph "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari." 106. PG, p. 18; "PET," p. 28. Cf. also chapter text near superscript 21, and between superscripts 26 and 32. 107. PG, p. 10. 108. Cf. now the recently published "ET" as a whole. One might be partly justified here in applying to Strauss his own criticism of Nietzsche for having "understood Spinoza in his own image" ("PET," pp. 25-26). As one critic might put it, Lessing may not have been so entirely swayed by Platonic dialectics as he was by Spinozan metaphysics presented with Leibnizian philosophic diplomacy and his own native literary genius. Cf., e.g., Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment, pp. 124-135. 109. PG, p. 26 (note 1); MM JA, vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. XXXIV, LXX. 110. PG, pp. 26 (note 1), 28; "PET," p. 30; TOM, p. 51. For both Mendelssohn's and Jacobi's "theistic" misreading of atheism as necessarily "antitheism" in Lessing's "Spinozism is philosophy" remark, cf. MMJA, vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. XXXIV, LXX, as well as XXXI, LXXV-LXXVII, LXXX-LXXXII, X C XCI, and "PET," pp. 16-17. In his critique of Collingwood, Strauss isolates the element of modernity in Romanticism: "The romantic soul, we prefer to say, is characterized by longing, by 'futile' longing, by a longing which is felt to be superior to any fulfillment that is possible 'now' i.e., in post-revolutionary Europe. . . . True Romanticism regards the highest possibility of the nineteenth or twentieth century, 'futile' longing, as the highest possibility of man, in so far as it assumes that the noble fulfillments of the past were based on delusions which are now irrevocably dispelled. . . . It believes therefore that the present is superior to the past in regard to knowledge of the decisive truth, i.e. in the decisive respect. . . . Hence Romanticism perpetuates the belief in the superiority of modem thought to earlier thought" ("OCPH," pp. 576-577). Cf. also TOM, pp. 198, 219-221; PAW, pp. 157-158. 111. PG, p. 28. 112. Ibid., p. 9 (note 1); cf. also OT, pp. 198, 219-221. 113. PG, pp. 22-23, 26 (note 1); "POR?" p. 37; NRH, p. 169; TOM, pp. 11-13, 208-223; "PET," pp. 12-13; "CCM," p. 112; SPPP, pp. 179-181. In "An Epilogue," pp. 122-123, Strauss directs criticism against the "dogmatic atheism" of modern relativistic social science, which avows its own unbelief as "intellectual honesty," but as he rejoins, this "intellectual honesty is not enough. Intellectual honesty is not love of truth." In other words, it is not compelled by any rational demonstration of the necessary falseness of every possible divine revelation but simply proceeds in atheistic faith as if there were such a refutation. If "a frank atheist is a better man than an alleged theist who conceives of God as a symbol," then "unreasoned unbelief, probably accompanied by a vague confidence that the issue of unbelief versus belief has long since been settled once and for all" is the worst sort of dogmatism, for this "unreasoned u n b e l i e f ' is grounded in the deaf and blind refusal even to consider "the possibility that religion rests ultimately on God's revealing Himself to man." Similarly, in his dispute with Kojfeve, Strauss suggests that this concern with "probity," which criticizes philosophers for their motives in desiring to attain certain cognitive pleasures, rather should recognize that this whole matter of pleasures is subordinate to the activities philosophers desire to engage in: "the rank of the

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various kinds of pleasure ultimately depends upon the rank of the various activities to which the pleasures are related. Neither the quantity nor the purity of the pleasures determines in the last resort the rank of human activities." Strauss suggests that this exclusive concern with "intellectual probity" seems to "gratuitously assume . . . an omniscient God who demands from men a pure heart," while what for the Socratic philosopher is "akin to 'the good conscience'" is something quite different. Cf. OT, pp. 211, 218-219. 114. OT, p. 198. 115. NRH, pp. 82-90, 123-124; "POR?" pp. 41-43; "MITP," pp. 111112. But cf. Gourevitch, "Philosophy and Politics," pp. 294-299. 116. SCR, pp. 181-182, 183-186. 117. PAW, p. 105 note 29. 118. NRH, pp. 90-93, 124; "MITP," pp. 113-114; TOM, pp. 11-12. 119. NRH, p. 124; CM, pp. 119-121; OT, pp. 214-216. 120. Strauss is, in my judgment, also speaking for himself; however, to be clear about what he is ostensibly doing in the quoted passage, he is merely proceeding to expound the spirit of Socrates' teaching as interpreted by Plato. Cf. NRH, pp. 125-126. 121. The term is borrowed from E. D. Hirsch, Jr., who applied it, in reverse, to Heidegger whom he calls a "cognitive atheist." Cf. The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 12-13. This designation remains valid, however one may put the emphasis in Strauss's final understanding of "the ideas," those "self-subsistent," transcendent entities that must first be apprehended in "a vision." Thus, Thomas L. Pangle rather overstates the case for Strauss's ultimate skepticism in regard to "the ideas" and the Socratic "teleotheology" concerning the whole. Cf. Pangle's introduction to SPPP, pp. 2 5; and Strauss, PG, pp. 20, 23; NRH, pp. 7 - 8 , 89 (note 9), 94-95, 109-113, 124-126, 155, 171, 176-177; TOM, pp. 78, 298; W1PP? pp. 38, 47, 286; " A E " ( P P ) , pp. 102-106, 126-127; CM, pp. 19-21, 118-121, 138; XSD, p. 160. Strauss's concern with "the whole" is itself already an expression of his "cognitive theism," since the philosophic intuition represented by "a vision of the articulated whole," whether "adequate" or not, is not the only or the necessary way in which the human or natural basis of philosophy has been postulated. Consider also that while "the ideas" may be a transitional pedagogical teaching to true and pure philosophizing, colored by the theological teaching they are meant to supersede, and hence this teaching is not meant to be taken literally, nevertheless it is meant very seriously. For Strauss, as we also know, only the theological teachings give us our first access to "the articulated [or intelligible] whole" that philosophy is a striving to know. Inasmuch as we do not achieve that complete knowledge of "the whole," we are stranded in the transitional realm, which augments its value to us as the only unchanging reminder we possess of what we are striving for. Thus, the question may legitimately be asked: What remains of "theism" in Strauss's notion? Is there any element of divine will or of personality possible in "the ideas" that we cognize? How then is God ("theism") present? The soundest answer we are bound to reach, if our original suggestion is correct, is: God is "the whole" or "nature"—which we cannot fully comprehend— hence His Being is beyond our comprehension, although this is not necessarily willed; He is the merely intuited unity of "the whole" (whose "character" is "elusive" or "mysterious"), which is expressed imaginatively but truly by "theistic" religion, and especially by "monotheism." For a similar notion about Strauss, cf. Kojéve's remarks about the "theistic conception of Truth (and of Being)," OT, pp. 160-162, a notion Strauss does not directly address or refute but that is more or less adequately covered by OT, pp. 209-210 and DLT, pp. 342-

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344. For Kojève's critique of the "theistic" element in the Platonic tradition, cf. further Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 100-130. 122. PG, p. 10. 123. Cf., e.g., "MITP," pp. 114-117. 124. The Platonic derivation of the leading idea in Maimonides was rightly established for Strauss by Hermann Cohen—but for the wrong reasons. The clue Cohen gave him did not take clear shape immediately. The correct connection was finally clarified for Strauss in a remark of Avicenna's, which he apparently discovered quite by accident. Strauss's emphasis on the fortuitous, and even serendipitous, element in his discovery of the key to Maimonides' work may be helpful for comprehending his curious comment on "the irretrievably 'occasional' character of every worthwhile interpretation," and perhaps should also be related to his unconditional rejection of the "'hermeneutic experience'." Cf. "CCWM," pp. 5 - 6 . For Cohen, Plato, and Maimonides, cf. PG, pp. 9, 35-37, 67, 119-122; " P I H P E , " pp. xxvi, xxx-xxxii; "PET," pp. 15-28; JA, pp. 22-24; "GA," pp. 2 3; "JERR," pp. xxxv-xxxvi; and above, note 7, for Avicenna's remark. 125. " P O R ? " pp. 38-39. Strauss himself approached the two antagonists and their claims through two questions that his work was an attempt to answer. He was "compelled to wonder whether not present-day social science but classical political philosophy is the true science of political things" (CM, p. 10). He was also led to ask himself "if it is true, as I believe it is, that the Bible sets forth the demands of morality and religion in their purest and most intransigent form" (TOM, p. 133). 126. NRH, p. 159; "POR?" pp. 38-39; JA\ PAW, pp. 7 - 2 1 ; "MITP"; CM, p. 1.

3 Leo Strauss on Maimonides ALFRED L IYRY

i Leo Strauss's first article on Maimonides' thought appeared in 1934, some thirteen years after he received his doctorate. The intervening years may be seen as a period of incubation and preparation for his Maimonidean studies, years in which he worked back from contemporary issues of concern to Zionism and the Wissenschaft des Judentums, through the Aufklärung of Mendelssohn and the pioneering modernity of Spinoza, to arrive at Maimonides and the Middle Ages.1 Strauss's intellectual quest was to take him back further, back to classical antiquity and to the fountainhead of political philosophy, Plato. Strauss was eventually to reflect upon many periods of Western civilization, to analyze Xenophon, Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Yet if Strauss's mind was peripatetic, his soul was Platonic, and in Maimonides it would appear he found a soul mate. The care and attention he lavished upon every word of "the Master" (ha-Rav, as Maimonides was traditionally known in Hebrew) bespeaks an admiration bordering upon love. Strauss was attached to Maimonides in a way second to none, and through him Strauss expressed his attachment to Judaism and the Jewish people. That attachment was dearly won, in a "Wars of the Lord" of his own, which Strauss waged with his contemporaries and with his immediate predecessors: with Julius Guttmann, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Hermann Cohen on the one flank, and with Heidegger, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Spinoza on the other. Strauss's quarrel with his fellow German Jews was over the way they appropriated the Jewish tradition and refashioned it, each in his own way but all, for Strauss, reflecting modern sensibilities alien to it; while his dispute with the major figures of German philosophy, and ultimately with Spinoza, challenged the ethical foundations of their thought. However successful the moderns were in critiquing the philosophies and theologies of the ancients and in presenting a more realistic and scientific world view, they, too, for Strauss, functioned in the moral

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sphere with rationally indefensible principles, principles that they accepted ultimately on faith. These principles and values were rooted in the Bible, Strauss believed, revelation being the best, if not the only, plausible reason for accepting them, once examined. Modern man was saved from nihilism by faith, Strauss thought, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. It is this realization that saved Strauss himself as a young man and that apparently gave him the strength to persevere in a world that seemed, already in the twenties and thirties of this century, determined to destroy itself, and its Jews, morally if not physically. Strauss's "Wars" are partially recounted in his book Philosophic und Gesetz, first published in 1935 and just now republished, in translation; 2 and more fully told in the preface he wrote in 1962 for the English translation of his 1930 Spinoza study. 3 The preface dramatically portrays the dilemma, if not the anguish, that Strauss, as a young German Jewish intellectual, faced in the 1920s: Uncomfortable intellectually with the traditional and modern forms of Jewish religiosity, and even more removed in principle from both secular and religious Zionism, Strauss's entire Jewish identity was threatened by the supposed triumph of modern rationalism and secularism. Secularism had arrived in the wake of post-Enlightenment democracy and political liberalism, movements that could be traced to Spinoza, one of the fathers of modern rationalism as well. Strauss believed that an analysis of Spinoza's critique of religion could help him resolve "the theologico-political predicament" in the "grip" of which he found himself. 4 This predicament is many-faceted, as its hyphenated name implies, but at the root for Strauss it is the dilemma of choosing between the modern state and its secular ideologies, and the premodern society, which was founded on religious belief. Strauss was too much the modern intellectual, too much the rationalist, to revert to a simplistic fundamentalism. Moreover, he was convinced that the medievals themselves considered philosophizing to be a command of revelation. Yet in his critique of Spinoza's critique of religion, he detected an Achilles' heel of faith in Spinoza's Ethics that rendered it as subjective and irrational as the tradition Spinoza attacked. 5 The Judaism that remained intellectually valid and inviolable for Strauss after the formidable and nearly overwhelming critique of Spinoza and his successors was that of a community that affirmed the facticity of the miraculous, however incomprehensible, a people who simply believed in revelation, in God and his Torah. The distinctive quality of that Torah, to Strauss, is the corpus of Sinaitic laws that formed the Jews into a distinct political and historical community. The Jewish faith that Strauss believes withstands the criticism of the moderns is thus relatively simple, its political component a direct consequence of the form its revelation took. None of the particular philosophies of Judaism that try to interpret it in more elaborate terms is

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attractive to Strauss, none appears to him able to withstand the withering critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Strauss's disenchantment with metaphysics in general is apparent. It is the ethical and related political dimension of philosophy that attracts him; it is that which he feels has not been demolished by modern science and philosophy. It is religion in these dimensions that remains viable for him, and it is Judaism's claims in these areas that render it meaningful to him. However, he is not exactly sanguine over the claims of religion either; he is aware of the difficulty in arguing from faith, of presenting ethical and political theory on dogmatic grounds. Plato did not do that, Strauss knows, but neither did he base his ethical and metaphysical beliefs ultimately on rational demonstration. Beginning with Socrates, Strauss sees an honorable tradition of earnest agnosticism in philosophy: recognition of the inability to know ultimate truths and principles, on the one hand, and recognition notwithstanding this of the necessity to posit such, on the other. 6 Strauss is also very taken with Plato's concern for the ideal state, a concern with practical as well as theoretical considerations and with great appreciation for the fact that the successful lawgiver/leader of the state cannot disregard popular opinions and customs but must accommodate his teachings to them. This political philosophy in the Platonic mode appealed to Strauss and weathered, for him, the buffetings of modem philosophy. It is in Maimonides' writings that Strauss found the convergence of all that has escaped the ravages of modem society and philosophy: a political and ethical philosophy founded upon faith, conscious of what it knows and what it does not know, and conscious, too, of what it should convey to the masses, for their own good. Maimonides thus represents for Strauss a "response" to Spinoza and the modems, and an affirmation of the best in Plato and the ancients. He also served Strauss as a personal model with whom he could identify, as a Jew and as an intellectual. This identification is obvious on stylistic grounds alone. As is well known, Strauss highlighted and adopted Maimonides' esotericism; indeed, he reveled in it, and rivaled his model in developing a literary style of great complexity, full of allusions and references that hint at meanings other than the plain meaning of the text, and often in opposition to it. A study of Strauss on Maimonides such as this should, therefore, look at Strauss's writings on both planes, the exoteric and esoteric, both containing teachings he believed important to communicate. First, however, it would be well to review the record of his encounters with Maimonides. II

Strauss's 1934 article, his first on Maimonides, is called "Maimunis Lehre von der Prophetie und ihre Quellen," and it was reprinted the following year

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in his book Philosophie und Gesetz, subtitled as Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer. These titles alone indicate those features of Maimonides' thought that first attracted Strauss and were to remain dominant in his subsequent articles on Maimonides. Strauss is drawn to Maimonides as a political thinker, a thinker for whom prophecy is significant politically more than metaphysically. 7 Maimonides' metaphysical concerns are barely touched upon in this work, since it is the image of the prophet as lawgiver rather than as theologian that Strauss discerns as dominant in Maimonides' treatment of the subject. Maimonides, together with all other medieval philosophers, is seen as believing that revealed law commands understanding and hence philosophical inquiry, i.e., the pursuit of political philosophy. 8 Strauss knows that this philosophy examines the purpose as well as practice of the law, its relation to human happiness and fulfillment. These topics should lead to questions about the nature of the divine source and goal of the law, yet Strauss stops short of this final step, in this and subsequent studies. Maimonides is presented as one who accepts the existence of God and the validity of the Torah on faith, without examining the nature of either particularly. Revelation is seen as the presupposition of his philosophizing, as it is of all other medieval philosophers, and in this work, as subsequently, Strauss merely adumbrates the extrapolitical dimensions of revelation. The various roles of the prophet are those Islamic philosophy had identified and examined earlier, and Strauss therefore correctly situates Maimonides' views within the context of the teachings of Farabi and Avicenna. 9 Through Farabi he makes the connection to Plato; Farabi's emphasis upon the political dimension of Plato's thought establishes for Strauss the dominant perspective of Maimonides' own approach. These, then, are the main predecessors for Maimonides' teachings in what can be called political philosophy, and they are the main sources to which Strauss refers in his various writings on Maimonides. These writings include an early study of Maimonides' perspective on divine providence, 10 as well as early and midcareer studies of Maimonides' view of political science as such. 11 Beginning in 1939, however, with a review of M. Hyamson's edition of Book One of the Mishneh Torah,12 the close reading of his sources, which was characteristic of Strauss's methodology, becomes even more pronounced. Strauss's Maimonidean scholarship comes to focus less on broad themes and more on individual Maimonidean works, particularly on the Mishneh Torah's Book of Knowledge, and on The Guide of the Perplexed. Strauss's references now tend to be intratextual, or intertextual as between Maimonides' own writings. The Master's Vorläufer have apparently receded in significance in Strauss's mind, and he appears completely taken with the profundity and subtlety of Maimonides' genius. Maimonides' work emerges as the epitome

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of a distinctive Jewish literature no more philosophical than it is Islamic or Greek. The articles Strauss writes in this vein are among the most challenging, puzzling, and problematic of all his works. In his "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge" and his various and complementary studies of the Guide, Strauss the expositor becomes an exegete, the social scientist turns into a literary critic. 13 The Maimonidean text moves in his hands from peshat to derash, from the literal to the imaginative, or in more familiar terms, from exoteric to esoteric levels of literature. This move toward esotericism was mandated, in Strauss's opinion, by Maimonides, who openly admits in his introduction to the Guide that it contains contradictions and inconsistencies of various sorts, statements that cannot be taken at face value but must be interpreted for their hidden meaning. 14 Maimonides adopts this strategy, his introduction makes clear, to ward off the uninitiated and keep the unsophisticated at bay. These are the traditional Jews against whom Maimonides is constructing fences, not only the unlettered masses but also learned rabbis; all, however, equally ignorant of philosophy. 1 5 These people are not prepared for Maimonides' nonliteral treatment of biblical terms or for his allegorical explanations of biblical stories. They would not appreciate, Maimonides knows, his attempt at explaining the secrets of the Torah. Moreover, Maimonides is by his own admission constrained by tradition against disclosing these secrets fully, and in particular in writing. 16 Tradition dictates, therefore, that he speak in hints and riddles, offering mere "chapter headings," suggesting his views in brief and nonsystematic utterances. That he discusses these "secrets" at all is due, he claims, to the crisis of his age, in which the tnie teachings of the Torah are viewed as being in danger, misunderstood both by the ignorant masses and by those who have been exposed to philosophy. It is particularly for the latter that the Guide is written, in the hope that the few who have been initiated in philosophy and are thus of superior intellect to begin with will be able to pierce through its defenses. The appropriate reader of the Guide will then be brought to a true understanding of the teachings of the Torah, an understanding that will include an appreciation for maintaining the secrecy of these teachings. These Maimonidean teachings of the Torah are often assumed to be congruent with the teachings of philosophy, and Maimonides' attempt to maintain secrecy is commonly interpreted as his unwillingness to challenge his community with untraditional, if not heretical, beliefs. In Strauss's apparent, i.e., exoteric, exposition of Maimonides, however, this is not the case. He would have us believe that the Guide is written esoterically because it contains unpopular but not untraditional or heretical views. It breaks new ground and develops new ideas but not, essentially, at the expense of the old ones. On the contrary, for Strauss the Guide, as all of Maimonides' work,

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would seem to represent a stirring assertion of the traditional tenets of Judaism and a defense of its beliefs in the face of the challenge of philosophy. That Maimonides is a Jewish thinker and not a philosopher, that his compositions are Jewish and—with the exception of his early Treatise on Logic—not philosophical, is a message Strauss frequently reiterates. 17 Strauss's support for this assertion is found in the Maimonidean texts themselves, of course, but it is undoubtedly abetted by Strauss's general understanding of the nature of Judaism and its essentially antithetical attitude toward philosophy. The expression of this antithesis is perhaps best given in Strauss's essay "Jerusalem and Athens," 18 and in the fundamental distinction Strauss drew there between revelation as the foundation of the Jewish way to virtue and truth, and reason as the foundation of the Greek way. For Strauss, Maimonides is the medieval example par excellence of this traditional Jewish approach, grounding his beliefs in faith and not philosophy. But as Maimonides is a medieval intellectual, which is to say a member of a society in which philosophy and science have made considerable inroads, his faith is structured along lines that take cognizance of the teachings of philosophy and are influenced by them, even while opposing them. Yet, however involved Maimonides is with philosophical arguments, for Strauss it is a fundamental error to view him as a philosopher. For Strauss, it is not the substance of the argument that determines its philosophical character so much as it is the actual position held. Thus, he can say that Maimonides' Mishneh Tor ah is more philosophical than the Guide, insofar as it assumes, in passing, the eternity of the universe without insisting on the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo}9 The concept of creation from nothing is for Strauss the linchpin of Maimonides' faith, the doctrine on which his belief in the Jewish God is founded. 2 0 This is the God who is capable of performing miracles, most notable creation itself, but also and importantly the miracle of revealing Himself, to the patriarchs and prophets, and preeminently to Moses at Sinai. Proper understanding of these two miracles, that of creation and revelation, called in Hebrew ma'aseh bereshith and ma'aseh merkavah, are traditionally considered to be the most secret teachings of Judaism, and it is therefore no wonder, to Strauss, that Maimonides, following the prophets, cloaks his unavoidable discussion of these topics in esoteric language. 21 The God who reveals Himself through creation and revelation is, for Maimonides as Strauss reads him, a God who acts of His own free will, a God who is concerned for all His creation and knows it intimately. Personal providence is thus another feature of the Jewish God, a deity in whom a beneficent will is the dominant attribute. 22 This image of God is traditional, and there would be little reason for Maimonides to hide these teachings from his fellow Jews were they the only teachings of the Guide. There are, however, other messages of Judaism Maimonides feels obliged to convey, and these were less palatable to many of

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his contemporaries, or so he presumably thought. Perhaps the least objectionable to us, but still controversial in Maimonides' day, was the teaching of the incorporeality of God. This tenet seems contradicted by the many biblical expressions that depict God in corporeal terms, expressions we dismiss as anthropomorphisms. Maimonides did so as well, but he knew that many of his fellow Jews continued to believe in the literal word of Scripture. He thus set out to disabuse them of their notion of God's corporeality, a notion tied to that of idolatry on the one hand and to divine unity on the other. The teaching of God's existence, unity and incorporeality, entailing the denial of idolatry, forms the core theological view of God in Judaism, Maimonides is convinced. 23 Accordingly, in chapter after chapter of the first part of the Guide, Maimonides explicitly interprets all coiporeal expressions pertaining to God in noncorporeal terms. 24 He goes further than that and attacks the very notion of divine attributes, ruthlessly stripping God of any composition and hence of meaningful predication. 2 5 It is not just that God does not sit or stand; neither does He act in any physical way whatsoever, not having any identifiable part or corporeal aspect with which to accomplish such action. This means, among other things, that God does not speak, having no voice, a view that has immense implications for the notion of the Torah as the literal word of God, as Strauss comments. 26 Yet Strauss is nothing if not literal himself in approaching Maimonides' texts. His point of departure is the sacredness of Maimonides' word. He thereby adopts toward the Guide the same attitude Maimonides and all Jews had traditionally adopted toward Scripture itself: that there is no adding to or subtracting from it; i.e., not a word is superfluous or unnecessary in it; it is the very paradigm of literary and conceptual perfection. This attitude determines Strauss's treatment of the Guide and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the Mishneh Torah. Strauss (as many others) believes Maimonides' claim that he constructed the Guide in such a way that each word is significant, that each key term resonates with others, the whole being most carefully contrived. Strauss sets out to validate this claim, common to Maimonidean scholarship, constructing elaborate philological and structural designs to relate diverse parts of the Guide to each other, and even on occasion to relate the Guide to the Mishneh Torah. He uses modern as well as medieval techniques in this approach, relating words according to their grammatical form as well as numerical equivalents. The "chapter headings" Maimonides refers to help Strauss establish subsections for each part of the book, abetting his argument for a stylistically balanced and thematically coherent structure. The external, formal appearance of each word is the key to its understanding, however far from its literal meaning that understanding may go. As much as he can, however, Strauss respects Maimonides' word and accepts his assertions at face value whenever contradictions do not ensue.

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Thus, he accepts Joseph (ibn Sham'un), the addressee of the Guide, as the individual for whom the book is really, or at least originally, written, and he sees Joseph's weakness in physics as determining, in large part, Maimonides' nonstringent discussion of natural science. This ties in nicely with Maimonides' supposedly nonphilosophical orientation in general, but offers Strauss the sort of specific situation in which he prefers to ground his theories. Then, too, it is Joseph's limited knowledge of philosophy that supposedly worries Maimonides and causes him to insist rather dogmatically on the noncorporeal nature of God. Here, though, Strauss apparently feels Maimonides is looking beyond Joseph, looking apprehensively toward the mass of believers for whom the literal acceptance of the Bible is its true understanding. To Maimonides, fundamentalists of this sort unwittingly invite idolatry and polytheism back into Judaism. The threat of Sabianism, as Maimonides calls paganism, is the real impetus that propels him to take the elaborate precautions he does against admitting composition and corporeality into the concept of the deity, as Strauss sees it. Strauss thus presents Maimonides as he presents himself in the Guide, as a traditional Jew who believes in a strict form of monotheism, i.e., a single, nonphysical deity who is yet responsible for the physical world, its absolute creator and solicitous, knowledgeable governor. Strauss goes even further, and sees Maimonides as endorsing all of the thirteen principles of including the faith, which he enunciates in his Mishnah Commentary, doctrine of resurrection. 27 Though even some of Maimonides' contemporaries doubted his sincerity in this and other matters, for Strauss Maimonides' attitude on these tenets of Judaism is apparently clear—at least as a first reading of Strauss indicates. Faced with this position on Maimonides, we must inquire again into the reason for the exceptional measures of concealment Strauss sees Maimonides undertaking in the Guide, measures Strauss attempts to identify in his preface to that work. Has Strauss's elaborate methodology done more than uncover the peshat (literal level) of the Guide? Or is there more to Strauss's teaching than meets the eye initially? Before answering this question, it is well to remember that the very peshat of the Guide, as of the Mishneh Torah's Book of Knowledge, is one that in large measure Strauss's analysis has disclosed. Maimonides' teachings stand out boldly, for many of us, because of the elucidation they have received in Strauss's painstaking investigations. Thus, anyone who wishes to get a comprehensive orientation to the structure of the Guide would do well to begin with the chart of its contents Strauss provides in his introduction to the Pines translation of that work. 2 8 As well, Strauss's lexicographical studies are helpful when they highlight the anomolous and hence significant teachings Maimonides affords such key terms as living and Shekhinah.29 In these cases, however, Strauss is no longer dealing with the peshat of the text, and the element of conjecture increases. This element is well-nigh

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inescapable in some of Strauss's more fully developed and intricate schemes. 30 Indeed, upon close examination it would appear that his elaborate attempts to discern the hidden structures of Maimonides' work are not particularly successful. 31 More to the point, it would seem his analyses of Maimonides' true teachings are often adventitiously connected to his lexicographical efforts. Try as he may in his later works to avoid substantive discussion of Maimonides' positions, Strauss's own interpretations seem ultimately to be confirmed or disproved on other than stylistic grounds. Differences over the utility of Strauss's methodology aside, we may yet concur with him that Maimonides' teachings on certain key issues are less conclusive than he proffers, and that, as Strauss believes, Maimonides may even have deliberately attempted to obscure the inconsistencies and contradictions contained within his teachings, for reasons beyond those already mentioned. Accordingly, Strauss's view of these ulterior motives must next be examined. Ill It appears to me that there are two ways in which the esoteric interpretation of Strauss's writings on Maimonides may be construed, the one more radical than the other. In the less radical interpretation, Maimonides may be seen as believing in all the tenets of the faith that I have asserted in Part II above, while knowing that his beliefs are founded on mere opinion and not on demonstrative reason and that they are therefore not at all necessarily true. In the more radical interpretation, Maimonides may be understood as not believing, at least not literally, in what he has ostensibly affirmed. The less radical interpretation of Strauss's presentation of Maimonides' esoteric teaching may be gleaned from Strauss's essay on "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed'; the more radical interpretation from his introduction to the Pines translation of the Guide. Looking at the former and earlier study first, we find Strauss describing the Guide as a work devoted to "the true science of the law," that "which is concerned with what we out to think and to believe." This stands in contrast to the science of the law as usually understood, a legalistic study concerned with what we ought to do. The Guide, then, is seen as the theoretical aspect of the science of the law, the Mishneh Torah as its practical part. 32 One would think that the theoretical dimension of the science of the law, as Strauss has defined it, would lead beyond ethical to metaphysical questions, fundamental issues of belief examined as to their truth or falsity. Thus, it is somewhat surprising to find Strauss immediately draw a different sort of parallel, one couched in traditional Jewish terms, between the study of the halakhah (rabbinic law) and aggadah (folklore). Strauss, however, does not spell out the sense in which he is using aggadah in general, nor does he identify which "part of the aggadic literature" is characteristic of the Guide's

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"most important feature." Instead, he refers to some passages in the Guide in which Maimonides adduces Midrashic support for four of his arguments, those concerning creation, textual contradictions, God's incoiporeality, and the need for secrecy in discussing the mysteries of the Torah. 33 These passages are relatively effective prooftexts for Maimonides' contentions concerning the themes in question, and thus legitimate, in traditional terms, Maimonides' preoccupation with them. Whether each passage is characteristic of rabbinic thought is another question, however. For the aggadah is notoriously fragmentary in style and often ambiguous in intention, beyond the most general affirmations of God's existence and His relation to the people of Israel. Aggadic literature has no uniform final view on specific subjects; it deliberately suspends judgment and tolerates a plethora of opinions on practically every subject recorded. Aggadic literature is the outlet for rabbinic conjectures and fantasies, hopes and aspirations. Where not beguilingly simple, its theology is episodic and ambiguously articulated, deliberately so. The image of the aggadah that Strauss evokes, therefore, as the specific aggadic references he gives, creates the suspicion that he believes the Guide is a work that relies heavily on imaginative conjecture, that the "true science of the law" is far from dealing with demonstrable truth, truth of a decisive and definitive sort. The Guide, as the aggadah, is seen as approaching its subject obliquely, without any certainty in its claims. This message is not one Strauss does more than hint at in his opening pages, moving on rapidly as he does. He prefers to discuss the Guide in its relation to the science of the law as understood in the Islamic world. Here the pattern of his early writing on Maimonides, in which he located the Guide in relation to its Islamic milieu, is evident. This avenue of thought leads Strauss to juxtapose Maimonides' efforts with those of the mutakallimun, the theologians of Islam, who considered the "roots of religion (u$ul al-din) rather than the law, or fiqh, itself. For Strauss, the Guide is essentially a work of kalam in spirit and purpose, defending the law against the opinions of the philosophers. This, despite the fact that Strauss knows that Maimonides differs with the (supposedly) classical kalam view of the role to accord the imagination, as opposed to the intellect, in determining reality. Maimonides argues for a more controlling role for the intellect, implicitly accepting the evidence of our senses regarding the nature of things. For Strauss, this means only that Maimonides* work is a more "intelligent or enlightened kalam," 3 4 using adjectives that are not, in this context, either equal or equally justified (at least not obviously so). Strauss here again interrupts his discussion and makes a "fresh start" in attempting "to arrive at a more definitive description of the subject matter of [the Guide]."35 He now identifies this "more definitive" subject matter as the revelation of the secrets of the Bible, particularly those of the Torah, and this will be the main theme of the rest of his article. Before we follow him into

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this subject, however, we should note that Strauss does not deny that the Guide is essentially a kalamic work, as such apologetic in regard to the law, particularly in its defense of a principal root of the law, its belief in creation, against the philosophers' view of the world as eternal. This identification with kalam literature does not detract from the value of the Guide, though it does raise questions about the uniquely Jewish nature of the book, a point Strauss often makes, as has been mentioned. Strauss's kalam identification of the Guide is also significant for its omission of one of the distinguishing marics of kalam reasoning, that of dialectical rather than demonstrative argument. Maimonides had already drawn that distinction in his youthful Treatise on Logic, and it was a standard mark whereby the philosophers distinguished themselves from the theologians. 36 The facticity and reliability of the natural world, and of our senses, play an important role in guaranteeing the truth of our scientific premises and reasoning, so that the Occasionalist challenge of kalam to a natural scientific world view determines the logical modalities it was able to utilize. Were Maimonides truly an "enlightened" mutakallim, even a Jewish one, he would have no confidence, a priori, in the certainty of his arguments; he would know that they were no more than probably true, at best, though also, therefore, possibly false. 37 Strauss's identification of the Guide with both aggadic and kalamic literature thus makes the same point, tacitly: that Maimonides knew his work was not only not philosophical but that it was not conclusive, knew that he had not proved his theses in more than probabilistic fashion. This point is irrelevant to the remainder of the article, which is its main part and which is concerned to identify the precise (nonphilosophic) nature of the book and to explain and justify Maimonides' divulgence of the allegedly secret teachings of the tradition. Strauss views Maimonides' behavior as necessitated by the crisis of his age, and he ingeniously interprets his style in the Guide so as to conform, as much as possible, to the dictates of the tradition concerning secrecy. For Strauss, the Guide is an "esoteric explanation of an esoteric doctrine." 38 He takes this position on moral grounds, though other equally moral considerations lead him to divulge to the reader those literary techniques that will allow him to penetrate the secrets and contradictions of the book. The discussion of the literary character of the Guide is the main concern of the article, and what emerges is a rather unique form of literary criticism. Strauss settles on Maimonides' use of conscious and intentional contradictions as the form of the esoteric teaching of the Guide39 and declares it to be the duty of the interpreter "not to explain the contradictions, but to find out in each case which of the two statements was considered by Maimonides to be true and which he merely used as a means of hiding the truth." 4 0 Of two contradictory statements, for Strauss the true statement is that which is most secret, its secrecy being attested by the rarity of its

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appearance. 41 Not only is infrequency of expression deemed an important indication of Maimonides' belief, but so are the outright omissions of expression, ambiguous terms, and the like. Strauss comes perilously close to advancing an argument ex silentio as the key to determining Maimonides' true positions; though those positions, once detected, would not necessarily be better understood, nor would Strauss expect Maimonides to explain them. "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed' thus does not enlighten us as to Maimonides' true teachings but supposedly points us in the direction that will allow us to discern them. The certainty with which Maimonides holds whatever beliefs he does hold is not addressed explicitly, and only our analysis of the opening pages of the article permits us to believe Strauss believed Maimonides believed in the fallibility of his beliefs. This could well qualify as Strauss's esoteric interpretation of "an esoteric interpretation of an esoteric teaching," and as such describes a moderately radical interpretation of Maimonides' teachings. IV

A more radical esoteric interpretation may be discerned in Strauss's introduction to the Pines translation of the Guide. Here Strauss is under pressure to write something that would appear in a book sure to attract a large and lay readership, one well beyond the professional circles for which he normally wrote. By his own sense of fidelity to Maimonides and respect for him and for Jewish tradition, Strauss would have been very careful not to attribute to Maimonides anything that would upset his image in the community. Of necessity, Strauss found himself writing the kind of introduction that mirrors the Guide itself in its circumspection. Yet it is in this introduction that Strauss offered a more radical view of Maimonides' position than before, however disguised in the conservative views previously outlined. Much of this introduction, titled "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed," is exegetical, following Maimonides' own exegesis of the biblical text, structuring it and rendering it logical and systematic. Strauss finds reasons, mostly based on a literal acceptance of Maimonides' account of the nature of the addressee of the Guide, to justify the book's peculiar mix of speculation and exegesis, its assumption of a certain degree of scientific and philosophical knowledge in the reader that allows the author to refer to philosophical doctrine rather than argue it, for the most part. Strauss follows suit, referring to Maimonides' positions in general rather than analyzing them in detail. He is interested in the dynamics of the Guide, the circuitous flow of the argument, more than in the argument itself. He wants us to understand what Maimonides' position really was rather than analyze the position itself. That work has presumably been done by others, and Strauss

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does not believe Maimonides himself, for the most part indulged in such philosophical analysis. Strauss's investigation of Maimonides' attitude to Moses and subsequent prophets, particularly Isaiah, is a case in point. While Moses is said in Exodus 33:23 not to have had a direct view of God, we read in Isaiah 6 that the prophet had such an experience. Strauss comments that "we are thus induced to believe that Isaiah reached a higher stage in the knowledge of God than Moses or that Isaiah's vision marks a progress beyond Moses'." 4 2 Strauss knows this view sounds "preposterous," given Maimonides' emphasis upon the supremacy of Moses' prophecy and the law that derives from it. 4 3 Yet Strauss, despite his penchant for taking Maimonides' statements at face value whenever a critical issue is at stake, feels that the Master could well have believed in a "certain superiority of Isaiah's specchcs to those of Moses." Strauss supports his argument for Isaiah's superior view of God with parallels drawn from the Guide's discussion of the experiences of the biblical Daniel and Job. For Strauss, Maimonides considered them as having had a more advanced idea of resurrection and providence, respectively, than did Moses, or at least as having articulated it better. Such examples are part of Strauss's contention that Maimonides believed in the progressive, postMosaic refinement of the idea of God in Judaism, extending beyond the biblical to Talmudic times. Two further examples drawn from this later period are the substitution of prayer for sacrifice and the growing realization among the rabbis of the incorporeality of God, a concept that supposedly helped monotheism historically to prevail over idolatry. 44 The point of the Isaianic vision (as of that of Daniel and Job) is not, however, immediately given, its meaning not gone into in any detail. We are apparently to understand it as a topos, a kind of revelation to which Strauss indirectly refers later when discussing Mosaic prophecy in general, as a topos of another kind. 4 5 It is thus that Strauss acknowledges that which he intimated before, that "undoubtedly Maimonides contradicts himself regarding Moses' prophecy," in that he speaks of it after having said he would not. 46 Moreover, the further contradiction (which Strauss calls merely a "great difficulty") ensues from Maimonides' claim that Moses' prophecy was purely intellectual and independent of the imagination, though the language of the prophecy abounds in similes and metaphors, imaginative language if ever there was such. Strauss shows there is no getting away from this fact, confirmed finally by Maimonides' claim that God does not use speech in any sense, so that the language of Scripture has to be that produced by Moses' imaginative faculty. Strauss does not make this latter point explicitly, but no doubt he is alluding to this in saying that "infinite consequences" are entailed by God's not speaking. 47 This is very extreme language for Strauss to use and casts serious doubt upon the veracity of the scriptural text in toto. Strauss, however,

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seems to ignore this and attempts at first to salvage the text (however mediated by the imagination) by appealing to its suprarational level, i.e., the nonliteral understanding of its language that is yet controlled by the prophet's exceptional understanding. He is forced to admit, however, that on certain crucial questions, those concerning creation and providence, Maimonides believes the critical faculty involved is the imagination rather than the intellect. Assuming as he always does that Maimonides believes in God's "free creation of the world out of nothing," Strauss concludes that the account of the beginning, ma'aseh bere'shith, as related in the Torah, is on a different level from the account of the chariot, ma'aseh merkavah, as found in the Books of Ezekial and Isaiah. 48 The former is based upon the religious imagination, the latter supposedly on the intellect. The account of the chariot is the divine science, the apprehension of God and His general governance of the world, and it is for this reason given to the intellect to understand; whereas the questions of the creation of the world, as the workings of divine providence, are beyond human comprehension and are couched in rationally ambiguous language. It is of course the belief in creation, and in subsequent miracles, as well as the belief in a providential God, that establishes the personal connection Judaism has to its God, and Maimonides' inability to demonstrate the truth of that belief is a major realization for him of his limits as a philosopher, in Strauss's view. Strauss accepts this situation with equanimity, however, and attempts at first to play up the achievements of post-Mosaic prophecy and understanding, that dealing with metaphysics in general and with political philosophy, "the governance of the world." Toward the end of the essay, however, Strauss acknowledges that the "Isaianic" understanding of the divine is also flawed, that its controlling faculty, the intellect, can do little more than utter tautologies concerning God when dealing with divine attributes, or accept a notion of divine perfection that is an "unfathomable abyss." 49 Strauss believes that Maimonides sincerely recognized that both Platonic and Aristotelian arguments cannot prove demonstrably that the world is eternal, and that their proofs do not establish God as the only divine, i.e., eternal, being. Though revealed, miraculously ordained law is not as threatened by Platonic doctrine as it is by Aristotelian, both systems are rejected by Maimonides on philosophical grounds, Strauss believes. In addition, the challenge to Aristotelian doctrine posed in Maimonides' time by the astronomers put the entire Aristotelian-based cosmology under a cloud, as it were. The intellect, then, fares no better for Maimonides in leading man out of his perplexities than does the imagination, and Strauss concludes for him that "the only genuine science of beings is natural science or a part of it." 5 0 Though he qualifies this statement somewhat, Strauss's conclusion has the effect of limiting the utility of the Isaianic, intellectual approach to truth. Maimonides is seen as reaching an impasse in his attempt to understand God

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and the heavens rationally, and to be left with imperfect imaginative as well as intellectual constructs. Strauss's esoteric teaching of the Guide thus presents Maimonides as proclaiming in a number of ways the status of his beliefs. Strauss holds that, while not philosophizing, by and large, Maimonides has recourse to philosophical ideas, both utilizing them and discarding them. His philosophical sophistication is evident in his familiarity with the various philosophical systems and in his appreciation of their achievements—and limitations. This appreciation of the limits of his knowledge, and of the limitation of human knowledge in general, (implicitly) places Maimonides, for Strauss, in the august company of Socrates, Plato, and all true philosophers. In not critiquing Maimonides' view of the ethical and political dimension of divine attributes and divine governance, and in not quarreling with his presentation of the law in itself, Strauss indicates that for him Maimonides' strength lay in political philosophy rather than in metaphysics; it is this that makes him a Jew. If so, though, we might need to welcome Plato, Farabi, and others into the covenant, since law, practical law, is law. The law, then, remains intact for Strauss, though its ultimate rationale—the "true science of the law," the metaphysical secrets of revelation—is shown to be incoherent and incomprehensible. Reason enough for Strauss to be esoteric in his interpretation of Maimonides. NOTES 1 . C f . the bibliography of Strauss's writings found in his Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago and London, 1983), pp. 249ff. (henceforth Studies). 2. Cf. now Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, translated by F. Baumann (Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 3-58; in the original German edition (Berlin, 1935), pp. 9 - 6 7 . 3. Originally published as Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischen Traktat (Berlin, 1930), the translation, by E. M. Sinclair, is called simply Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York, 1965). Cf. the preface to the English translation there, pp. 1 - 3 4 . My references to Strauss's theological as well as existential "Wars" allude to the study of Gersonides' famous book by that name in which Strauss was engaged when he was drawn to the greater challenge Spinoza represented to him. Strauss's insights into Gersonides found expression later in Philosophie und Gesetz; cf. the English translation, pp. 7 1 - 7 8 in particular. 4. Preface to Spinoza's Critique, p. 1. 5. Ibid., pp. 28, 29. 6. Cf. Thomas Pangle's introduction to Strauss's Studies, pp. 19-23. 7. Cf. Philosophy and Law, pp. 50, 98ff. 8. Ibid., pp. 39ff. 9. Ibid., pp. 92ff. This context perhaps justifies Strauss's omission of significant themes—creation and the nature of God, for example—in which Farabi and Avicenna do not foreshadow Maimonides' alleged teachings, though the

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differences expressed have considerable implications for Strauss's view of medieval philosophy. 10. Cf. "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis," Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 (1937), pp. 9 3 105. 11. Cf. "Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maimonide et de Farabi," Revue des Etudes Juives 100 (1936), pp. 1-37; "Maimonides' Statement on Political Science," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 22 (1953), pp. 115-130; reprinted in What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoc, 111., 1959), pp. 155-169. 12. Cf. Review of Religion 3:4 (May 1939), pp. 4 4 8 ^ 5 6 . 13. Cf. "The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed," first published in Essays on Maimonides, ed. S. Baron (New York, 1941), pp. 37-91, and reprinted in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111., 1952), pp. 3 8 94 (future references to "Literary Character" are taken from this later publication); "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed," in S. Pines's translation of the work (Chicago, 1963), xi-lvi (henceforth "How to"); "On the Plan of The Guide of the Perplexed," Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 775-791. The "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge" was published originally in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 269-283, reprinted in Studies, pp. 192-204 (from which it will henceforth be referred to as "Knowledge"). 14. Cf. the Pines translation of the Guide, p. 17; 10a in the Münk edition of the Arabic text (Jerusalem, 1929), references to which are found at the top of the page in the translation. Future Guide page references are lo the Pines translation. 15. Cf. Guide, p. 5. 16. Ibid., p. 6f. 17. Cf., e.g., "Knowledge," pp. 192ff.; "Note on Maimonides' Treatise on the Art of Logic," Studies, p. 208; "Literary Character," p. 42; "How to," pp. xiv, xvi. 18. First published in 1967 in the City College Papers, no. 6; reprinted in Studies, pp. 147-173. 19. Cf. "Knowledge," p. 192. 20. Ibid., and see, too, Strauss's "Note on Maimonides' Letter on Astrology," Studies, p. 206; "How to," p. liv. 21. Cf. "How to," p. xiv; "Literary Character," pp. 41, 46ff. 22. Cf., e.g., Astrology, p. 206; "Knowledge," p. 202. 23. Cf. Guide 1:71-11:31, and see the Mishneh Torah, Book of Knowledge, 1:1.

24. Guide 1:1-49. 25. Ibid., 1:50-70. 26. "How to," p. xxxix. 27. Cf. the Mishnah Commentary to Helek: Sanhedrin, ch. 10; see, too, Strauss's "Knowledge," p. 202; "How to," p. xxxiii. 28. Cf. "How to," pp. xi-xiii. 29. Ibid., pp. xxxif., xlvii. 30. Ibid., pp. xxv-xxxii; "Literary Character," pp. 65ff. 31. Cf., in this regard, the detailed critique of Strauss's introductory essay ("How to"), in M. Fox's review of the Pines translation, Journal of the History of Philosophy 3:2 (October 1965), 269-273. A more recent and ambitious attempt to fathom Strauss's understanding of Maimonides may be found in R. Brague, "Leo Strauss et Maimonide," Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, 1986), pp. 246-268.

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32. Cf. "Literary Character," p. 39. 33. Ibid., n. 5. 34. Ibid., p. 41, and cf. the Tenth Premise in the Guide 1:73, p. 206f. 35. Cf. "Literary Character," p. 39. 36. Cf. I. Efros's edition and translation of Maimonides' Treatise on Logic (New York, 1938), ch. 8. See, too, the Arabic editions of Farabi's Introduction to Logic, ed. M. Turker, Revue de la faculté de langue, d'histoire et de géographie de l'Université d'Ankara 16 (1958), 188f., and his Book of Letters, ed. M. Mahdi (Beirut, 1970), p. 151. 37. Cf. the discussion of this and related issues in M a m o n i d e s ' confrontation with kalam thought in my article, "Maimonides on Possibility," in Mystics, Philosophers and Politicians, ed. J. Reinharz et al. (Durham, N.C., 1982), pp. 76ff. 38. "Literary Character," p. 56. 39. Ibid., p. 68. 40. Ibid., p. 69f. 41. Ibid., p. 73. 42. "How to," p. xxxiii. 43. Ibid., and cf. Guide, 1:39, p. 379. See, too, the Mishnah Commentary to Helek: Sanhédrin, ch. 10, Seventh Principle. 44. "How to," p. xxxivf. 45. Ibid., p. xxxix. 46. Ibid., p. xxxvif. 47. Ibid., p. xxxix, and see Guide 1:23 and 1:65. 48. "How to," p. xxxix, and cf. Guide 111:6, p. 427. 49. "How to," p. xlix. 50. Ibid., p. lv.

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Leo Strauss and Maimonides RÉMI BRAGUE

The work of Leo Strauss is usually received—at least in France—as it presents itself, which is to say as a noble defense of the natural right of the ancients against modernity, whose successive and increasingly pernicious waves it analyzes. Occasionally Strauss's work is even dealt with without any mention of the works he consecrated to medieval thinkers, and in particular to Maimonides. 1 In fact, as we will attempt to show, the relation to Maimonides is central, permanent, and decisive in Strauss's work. Maimonides is the permanent object of his scholarly research; he is the source for what Strauss estimated to be his great discovery; he is the inspiration for Strauss's personal philosophic method (which, in his case, is more a style than a method). It therefore seems necessary to give a critical account of this subject. 2 Maimonides is present at all stages, chronologically speaking, of Strauss's career. He is the author with whom Strauss was most constantly concerned, from his first book on Spinoza 3 to a text published six years before his death—besides two short, posthumous notes, which probably date from the very last period of Strauss's life. The result of this chronological continuity is that Maimonides is one of the few authors, if not the only author, on whom Strauss wrote in all the philosophical styles he used. It has been suggested that Strauss's writings should be divided into three periods. 4 The first, which goes until about 1938—a date that also marks his departure for the United States—is that of the works on Spinoza (1930) and Hobbes (1936), and the first, and only, book on Maimonides (1935). The second period extends from 1938 to about 1954. It is that of the first books on the Greeks (for example, the one on tyranny), and of his most famous book on natural right (1953). The third period lasts from 1954 until the end. The Strauss of the first period still writes according to the conventions of university scholarship: He researches sources, discusses other interpretations, and makes multiple footnotes. During the second, the style remains fairly close to received conventions, but attention to detail and wording, the effort to take account of everything, is distinctly above normal. Finally, the third

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period consists of the texts that, at first sight, are nothing more than paraphrases of classical authors, while the style is characterized by an extreme reticence. None of the other authors to whom Strauss attached himself was treated successively in these three styles: The ancients are absent from the first period, Hobbes and Spinoza are absent from the third 5 —none, except for Maimonides himself, and, to a lesser degree, Farabi. The first period and the first style are illustrated by Philosophic und Gesetz (1935), the "Remarks" of 1936, the article on providence of 1937, to cite only the texts bearing exclusively on Maimonides. The second period comprises, aside from the review of the Hyamson edition of the Book of Knowledge (1939), the texts on the literary character of the Guide (1941) and on Maimonides' political science (1953). The preface to the English translation of the Guide (1963), the notes on the Book of Knowledge (1967), and the two short posthumous notes already mentioned, which relate to the Letter on Astrology and to The Treatise on Logic, belong to the third period. The constant presence of Maimonides in the oeuvre of Strauss does not mean that the latter did not modify or deepen his point of view. A shift has been noted after Philosophic und Gesetz: While this first book still refused to see in Maimonides the free thinker that he was often considered to be before the nineteenth century, the later texts rejoined this traditional conception. 6 Strauss himself attracted attention to such a shift—even if he says nothing of its content—when he affirms, in a text published in 1963, that his discovery of the plan of the Guide rests on research he had been pursuing for about twenty-five years. 7 This places us at about 1939, at the discovery recorded in the text of 1941, which was on the literary character of the Guide, and generalized in the book on persecution—which implies a discreet exclusion of the first works. We must, nonetheless, focus on the whole of Strauss's itinerary. We can pass rapidly over what precedes Philosophic und Gesetz; for the image of Maimonides that emerges from the first texts hardly departs from the then current opinion. This holds for the first allusion I could detect, which considers the doctrine of the attributes as the central point. 8 One can say the same for the introductions to the editions of Mendelssohn: For this edition, Strauss had to translate excerpts from the German philosopher's commentary to the Logic, excerpts that contain neither chapter 10, nor chapter 14.9 It holds again for the part of the book on Spinoza that deals with the critique the latter gave of Maimonides. 10 The medieval thinker appears here again as having attempted to reconcile revelation and Aristotelian philosophy by correcting the latter. It is, however, the study of Spinoza's sources that puts Strauss on track in the end, a forked track of which one branch leads to Hobbes, and the other to medieval theories of prophecy. After the completion in 1927 of his book on Spinoza, Strauss had been given the task by Guttmann, acting as chairman of the Academy for the Science of Judaism, of

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analyzing the Wars of the Lord. And it is the study of the sources of the prophetology of Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon) that led him from Maimonides to the Muslims. 11 The discovery through which Strauss emerges from the beaten paths dates from the summer of 1931—Strauss takes care to mark this date with a cornerstone—the date on which he writes what will become the last text of Philosophic und Gesetz, the only one that is entirely devoted to Maimonides. 12 Four texts of 1936 and 1937 enlarge the breach by applying the proposed key. The clearest outline of the position attained at the end of this first period having been furnished at the beginning of the text on Abravanel, 13 this is the one that we can use as a base for the most essential points. Indeed, it constitutes a very clear resume of the way in which Strauss conceives the Jewish and Muslim philosophy of the Middle Ages, a resume he presents in order to demonstrate Abravanel's position, in contrast. Strauss's interpretation is political: It is a question of disengaging the ultimate presuppositions of Jewish and Muslim Aristotelianism, which are neither Aristotelian nor Jewish nor Muslim, but borrowed from Plato's political philosophy. It is the Republic and the Laws that play the role of final authority for Jewish and Muslim Aristotelianism in matters of politics, a role played in Christianity by the Politics of Aristotle. 14 The latter was not translated into Arabic, and Strauss makes it clear that it was not entirely by accident but by deliberate choice. 1 5 This is so because the Muslim philosophers did not "believe" in the revelation, properly speaking. They had to understand it in rational terms. The task had been facilitated for them by the fact that revelation presented itself to them not as a "religion" but as a law. They interpreted it as the ideal law, as the ideal political organization. And ideal in the sense that it contrives a place central to what makes them live, that it enjoins them to philosophize and helps those who are capable of philosophizing to do so. The legislating prophets were, in their eyes, philosopher-kings—the central theme of Platonic political philosophy. The law that they preach is therefore founded on certain fundamental and purely philosophical opinions. But it contains also other beliefs that are not, properly speaking, true but are images of truth and, on those grounds, are necessary in the interest of the city [cite] J6 If philosophers adhere to true beliefs, they also have the duty to defend necessary beliefs by means of arguments that are no longer demonstrative but persuasive or rhetorical. This duality of styles is found in the Guide. There Maimonides wants to show on the one hand that the fundamental dogmas of Judaism are the same as those of philosophy, and on the other that the nonphilosophical beliefs that the Mosaic law contains are necessary to the regulation of the city. This supposes that the law has two different meanings: an exterior meaning, which addresses itself to the commonalty, and an interior meaning, destined only for the philosophers. It is not possible for the philosopher explicitly to discriminate between true and necessary beliefs without endangering the

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authority of the law in the eyes of the commonalty. Maimonides will therefore not be able to evoke the fundamental distinction except by allusion, by the plan of his work, and especially by the rhetorical character of his defense of the necessary beliefs. The Guide, therefore, like the law that it interprets, has to have two meanings, the one addressed to the reader who is not really a philosopher, the other to the authentic philosopher. It is therefore written in order to be able to receive two interpretations, the one "radical" and the other more "moderate."' 7 This, then, is the position attained at the end of the first period. But this conclusion has a point of departure, which is the study of the Maimonidean doctrine of prophecy. The enigma to be resolved is that of the role played by the imagination. Why does Maimonides, who considers the imagination to be the obstacle par excellence to the exercise of reason, accord to the prophets not only the perfection of the intellect but also that of the imagination? 1 8 The answer is that the prophet is different from the philosopher—the man whose intellect is discursive—in that the former grasps the superior realities in unmediated fashion, or rather he is grasped by them, in the entirety of his faculties, including imagination. Imagination is not therefore an instrument of understanding for him; it is that which permits him not to know but to expose the truth. How can this capacity and that of knowing the future, which seems not to have anything in common with it, together characterize the prophet? The point they have in common is the practical end of these faculties. Prophecy is thus the reunion of theoretical and practical perfections. The prophet is the one who both teaches and directs. He is superior to the philosopher in that he is capable of legislating. The prophet is the founder of the ideal state as Plato desired it. Such a conception of prophecy is the work of Farabi, 19 who obviously is inspired by the evidence of the Platonic idea of the city: The prophet is none other than the founder of the Platonic city. 20 The second period—a period whose beginning we placed at about 1938— and with it Strauss's second style as annotator of Maimonides marks, as we have noted, a rupture. It means first a solution of continuity with respect to the natural development of the investigation of Maimonides, a necessary result, once it was established that the key of the doctrine was political. After having used this key to suggest a solution to the problem posed by the doctrine of providence, or rather in order to pose it correctly, by putting it in its proper place, 21 it seemed natural to attack the fundamental problems of the Guide, i.e., the doctrine of God and of creation. This is the very thing announced by Strauss, whose goal is to study "the relationship between the theology of the Moreh and the Platonic doctrine of the One, and the relationship between the cosmology of the Moreh (that is, the discussion of the creation of the world) and the doctrine of the Timaeus."22 Now, these efforts, a complete program of generalization of the Platonic perspective, were not executed or not published or at any rate remained buried between the lines of what was published. In their place Strauss produced texts on the way

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to read Maimonides: First, the review of Hyamson's edition of the first book of the Mishneh Torah, a brief and often unacknowledged text, but important in that it presents Strauss's method for the first time; 23 second, the celebrated essay on the literary character of the Guide. From the reading of Maimonides emerged a renewed understanding of the manner in which the philosophers before the Enlightenment wrote and the implications of this art of writing. It assumes a reversal in the meaning of the adjective "political," as it qualifies philosophy. For the Strauss of the first period, "political" designates a certain domain of philosophy, very important indeed, but which remains one among many others, though it commands the understanding of all. In the second period, on the contrary, "political" designates a fundamental aspect of all philosophy. Every philosopher as such, even when he is not concerned with what we call "political questions," expresses himself in such a way that he safeguards the city in which he lives from the danger it incurs through the very philosophy he adheres to: Philosophy as such undermines opinion, which is the nourishing milieu of the city, and must therefore be kept under wraps. 2 4 This, according to Strauss, was what Maimonides, among many others, had understood. Strauss brought to light rather early the esoteric nature of the Guide, even if it is only later that the distinction of the esoteric and the exoteric becomes a determining principle of interpretation. 25 But what is remarkable is that Strauss listened so well to Maimonides' lesson that he fell himself obliged to use the same mode of expression, and to practice the same reticence as he saw, or believed to sec, at work in the writings of his predecessors. 2 6 That is why there is no question that he should take the position, in the face of the moral dilemma that he was presented with, that Freud had taken shortly before when faced with an analogous problem in Moses and Monotheism: To yield to a plebeian cult of the truth at all costs in order to take away from the Jewish people the second Moses, as Freud had attempted to do for the first, would no doubt have appeared to him to be not only an abominable crime but, worse yet, a sign of the utmost rudeness. Strauss therefore did not take a position on the deep thought of Maimonides, except when he hid his interpretation behind more or less opaque veils. From then on he never elaborated on, for example, Maimonides' manner of answering the questions that people battled over in his name: the eternity of the world, divine knowledge and individual providence, the immortality of the soul, etc. The reader is given the task of finding his own answer, using the method that Strauss proposes and that, it seems, will not change. This method is characterized, as we know, by a scrupulous, almost pathological, attention to detail—down to the most (apparently) insignificant elements. Maimonides is incomprehensible unless one pays attention to every word, especially when the words are ambiguous. 27 All the words will have to be taken into account, even the smallest, even the articles. 28 We will

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have to ask ourselves whether they are set off, for example in the case of a verb, by the addition of an unnecessary pronoun, 29 or by their particularly sensitive placing in the beginning, 3 0 or, on the other hand, particularly unnoticeable placing, if they are at the center. 31 We must even consider, if they are absent, that they have been deliberately omitted, and ask ourselves w h y . 3 2 Silence is, in effect, for an intelligent reader at least as full of meaning as discourse. 33 The omission will be all the more significant the more significant the place of that which is omitted. 34 The same principles will have to be applied to the numbers and in particular to certain key numbers. 35 We will have to take into account the rank of the precepts in their enumeration by Maimonides. At the level of the sentences we will have to consider their length as well as their circumlocutions and pay even more attention when these sentences are quotations or epigraphs. 36 When two sentences resemble one another, to the point of appearing almost identical, the minimal addition that one of them contains will have to be analyzed. 37 As for the content of the sentences, we will have to ask ourselves what sophistical or ironic elements they hold. 3 8 We will have to locate the contradictions 39 and choose, as expressive of Maimonides' thought, which of two contradictory statements is more hidden, that is, less frequent. 40 Finally, as to the whole of the work to be interpreted, to understand will be to understand the plan. 41 In a general way, one can say of all these procedures that they investigate the hints, which are more important than the most solemn declarations, 42 and that to understand a work will be to understand the hints it conceals. 43 One would have no difficulty in showing that these hermeneutic rules can be found in the rest of Strauss's works, applied to authors who bear only a distant relation to Maimonides. 44 Rather than providing too many examples, we will simply note that Strauss makes a point of recognizing that the new interpretive approach that he applies to writers before or after Maimonides was discovered while he was reading the medieval thinkers. 45 It is they, and more than any other (even Farabi) it is Maimonides, 4 6 who possess the value of a privileged object for Strauss's hermeneutics. If it is not easy to separate a third and final period from the second one we have just characterized, it is because Maimonides is for Strauss more than an object of scholarship, to the point where it becomes difficult, not to say impossible, to distinguish both between method and results, and between Maimonides' thought and that of Strauss himself. The principal text of the second period ("Literary Character of the Guide") presents itself as purely methodological and only attacks the essential problems in a roundabout way. On the other hand the most important of the texts of the third style, in volume as well as in content ("How to Begin to Study"), though it attempts a reading of certain passages of the Guide, bears a title that presents it as relating to the method and to it alone. In regard to Strauss's interpretation of Maimonides, we are reduced to conjecture. Everything would lead us to think,

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certainly, that Strauss was partisan to a very radical interpretation of the deep thought of Maimonides on traditionally controversial issues—as regards, for example, personal immortality. 47 But we are left wanting on the central question of the eternity or of the adventicity of the world, as well as on the related question of the nature of God. For even though Strauss's remarks suggest a great deal, we would not be able to arrive at anything really devoid of ambiguity. On the central problem, to take an example that is more than an example, one finds allusions to something rather close to the secret doctrine that Averroes attributed to Avicenna, and according to which God would be no different from the celestial bodies—something, then, like an enlightened Sabianism. 48 It is difficult here to do more than ask questions: In what sense is God the "life of the world," in other words of the totality situated beyond good and evil? 49 Is suppressing idolatry equivalent to making the way clear for the cult of the real God, or is it an end in itself? 50 Besides the risk present in yielding to simple suggestions, nothing proves that the questions that were particularly burning for the commentators on Maimonides—starting with that of God—are those that Strauss considered to be fundamental. This is why one ought to make of the second difficulty (how to distinguish the thinking of Maimonides, as Strauss interprets it, from the personal thought of Strauss) the principle of a solution: The source from which we should be able to derive Strauss's interpretation of Maimonides is none other than the books in which, even when they seem not to bear any relation to Maimonides, Strauss exposes his own thought. But does he expose it? Strauss identified with his model to the point of having borrowed from him not only his ideas but even his style. If this last loan is obvious, one should also note several reminiscences that invite one to modify the impression according to which Strauss, as political thinker, is not specifically Maimonidean. 51 For even if Maimonides is mentioned no more than once in the book on natural law, the main text on the idea of nature in a sense only develops a line of the Book of Knowledge.52 In order to get to the bottom of the problem, one ought to engage in the study of Strauss's thought for itself, which would represent a departure from the framework of this essay—a fact that permits me, not without some relief, to escape from a redoubtable task. If we turn now toward the question of the reception of Strauss's interpretation of Maimonides, we find that Strauss's method, if it has been challenged for certain details and also for certain of its apparent results, is often taken up by numerous scholars (sometimes without mention of his name). The situation does not present itself in the same way for Maimonides as for the other authors whom Strauss was led to deal with, and whose concern for esoteric writing is less evident. It is one of the reasons I cannot speak here of the reactions to Strauss's hermeneutic in general.53 Strauss does not apply this hermeneutic everywhere, since, as he notes apropos of

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Hermann Cohen, not all authors write like Maimonides. 5 4 But did Maimonides himself write like Strauss, or the way Strauss thought that Maimonides wrote? It has been noted that the extreme care of the wording that Strauss attributes to Maimonides should have rendered the Guide untranslatable. Yet its author, if he did not authorize it, at least permitted its translation by Samuel ibn Tibbon. 5 5 And, on one particular point, the rediscovery of the original Arab version of the Logic undermined the interpretation that Strauss gives of chapter 14. 56 The importance of arithmology was accepted in principle, 57 but no one makes such great use of it as Strauss. The importance of the deliberately ambiguous words is also admitted, and the weight of their absence avowed. 58 The heuristic value of the research of repetitions and additions, founded on the Maimonidean reading of Job, does not appear to have been contested. 59 The same is true for the idea according to which the true teaching of Maimonides was presented in dispersed form and could not become comprehensible unless by the putting together of these disjecta membra.60 On the other hand the use of the method of contradictions rather quickly came up against the accusation of arbitrariness. 61 Recourse to the famous "seventh cause" of contradiction may be an easy way out. It is sometimes invoked by Strauss's immediate predecessors. 62 But it cannot be taken into account legitimately until one has distinguished the desired contradictions from those that result simply from our misunderstanding of Maimonides. 6 3 The criterion permitting the identification of that which is intentional cannot be provided except, on the one hand, by a precise study of the ambiguous words that help to dissimulate the contradiction 64 and, on the other, by an even clearer determination of the literary genre of which the Guide is the unique representative 6 5 —two approaches that are themselves, as a matter of fact, eminently proper to Strauss. One should, whatever the case might be, give Strauss credit for the fact that, interpreting as he does, whatever the legitimacy of the results or of certain among them is not a method applied from the outside to an indifferent object but rather the very manner in which Maimonides wished to be read. Of all the authors that Strauss studied, he is in fact one of the rare ones, if not the only one, who admitted that he deliberately contradicted himself and that, with him, apparent doctrine and real doctrine were separate. 66 Doubtless one can contest the legitimacy of Strauss's method when it is applied, for example, to Aristophanes. For Maimonides one will have to recognize that it conforms to the indications that the latter gives very specifically in the introduction to his principal work. These indications have long been neglected. We owe it to Strauss that we have begun to take seriously what Maimonides himself says of his writing method. 67 These declarations oblige us to enter the hermeneutic circle of the results and the method that reciprocally confirm or invalidate one another. Only the hyper-Maimonidean style Strauss uses constrains one to take the somewhat inelegant attitude,

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unavoidable in his case, which consists of accepting the method while drawing back from the excessive subtleties that it entails. 68 There is nonetheless a point with regard to which the circle can be run without excessively long detours: the very presupposition of esotericism, according to which the Guide and the Code would have to be decidedly separated and that determines what the method will have to discover in or behind the Guide, as though it opposes the popular doctrine exposed in the Code. This presupposition has been criticized from several sides, especially by authors who emphasize the continuity over the rupture between the two aspects of Maimonides, particularly in stressing the implicit philosophical wealth of the Mishneh Torah.69 Here we will have to be content to make two remarks, neither of which can plumb the depths of the problem, which we are unable to solve: On the one hand Strauss is more nuanced in this domain than he seems to be at first sight. For him the difference between esoteric and exoteric works is, in a general way, more one of degree than one of nature. 70 And as far as Maimonides is concerned, Strauss recognizes that there is philosophical material in his legal works, 71 that there might even be more of it there than in the Guide,12 up to the paradox according to which the Mishneh Torah is more esoteric than the Guide 73 On the other hand, there is no point in stressing the fact that Judaism, far from opposing practice to study, gives study the role of choice, whereas one has to wonder whether, for Maimonides, "salvation" doesn't depend on the study of the "Greek" rather than of the Jewish texts. 74 The relation between the Guide and the Code brings into play both the method and one of its results. As concerns the other results of Strauss's method, they are more or less difficult to critique according to the style in which they have been formulated, which, as we have seen, has evolved. Among the results of the first period, the importance of the influence of Farabi has been confirmed from various sides, not without occasional important qualifications. 75 The principal result, however, was the central character of the political perspective. Julius Guttmann, who had been the victim of the founding patricide, responded post mortem by trying to demonstrate that this political view, however important it might be, was not decisive, since the final goal was not, for Maimonides, society's perfection but that of the individual. 76 But that is a remark that Strauss approved of without reserve, according to his conception of the politics of philosophers as aiming to assure the conditions of the contemplative life. What seems acquired in this domain is in any case the subordination of morality—whether in relation to the political form of the active life or in relation to the contemplative life. No one would dare write any more, it seems, that the contemplation of God is, for Maimonides, the knowledge of his actions, that is, of the model of morality. 77 On the contrary, the theme of the imitatio Dei as imitation of the divine government by means of the foundation of a city as perfect as is nature—a theme touched on by Strauss—was largely orchestrated

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by what followed. 7 8 The question even arises of knowing whether the importance of politics is not such that it prevails over the contemplative life or, in any case, whether human knowledge might not be so strictly limited to the sublunary that the contemplation of God must boil down to the knowledge of nature as the model for political activity, which would then be the highest perfection accessible to man. 79 The realms to which the Strauss of the first period had applied the political criterion, that is, prophecy and providence, have since been examined more deeply, and if the results do not always coincide with those of Strauss, their general tendency is in the direction of the naturalism that seems to form the basis of his thinking. Prophecy, such as Maimonides conceives it, was according to Strauss a natural phenomenon. 80 There are many scholars who grant this point. 81 The law that this prophecy communicates receives its qualities, including its "divinity," not from its origin but from its end. 82 The Maimonidean doctrine of providence appears more and more as though distanced from the traditional concept that ties it to the accomplishment of the Commandments: 8 3 General providence is the divine government by means of nature; the people of Israel is the object of God's special providence in the sense that its history is not supernatural but more natural than that of any other people; 84 individual providence is tied to intellectual excellence and not to moral virtue. In the same class of ideas, the question of the eternity of the world seems less and less capable of being settled by referral to the solution that Maimonides pretends to provide in the second part of the Guide.*5 As concerns the other points, which Strauss did not touch on until after he had imposed on himself the duty of reticence, it is nearly impossible to criticize them because it is difficult to grasp them—just as difficult as it is, according to Strauss, to grasp the true thinking of Maimonides. To critique Strauss is to risk blaming an isolated formula, ignoring the fact that it is nuanced, even contradicted, in other passages. 86 How can one reproach Strauss for mistakes that one can always say are intended? This was noted by reviewers of the introduction to the English translation of the Guide, who pick up on certain oddities. 87 Some of them are evidently of the type that Strauss thought must be obvious to any intelligent schoolchild—by which he shows perhaps excessive esteem for secondary education. But how to demonstrate that there are others just as obvious? And what to do with certain enigmas? 88 What was established, in any case, is that reading Maimonides is hardly an easy task. Strauss destroyed—and, it would seem, definitively—the naivetes of the nineteenth century 8 9 in order to enable a Maimonides to appear who is "more disturbing than Guttmann believed." 90 In doing this he renews a tie with a way of interpreting the philosophers that, according to him, was interrupted only recently, with historicism. 91 It is especially true where Maimonides is concerned, for Strauss's ideas on Maimonides are not

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unrelated to those of both his adversaries and those who, following the enlightened thinkers, attempted to enroll him in the ranks of their alleged forerunners. 92 Strauss himself acknowledges certain predecessors in the course of the Jewish tradition. Though he occasionally quotes some lines from Salomon Maim on, 93 it is primarily the medieval thinkers who detain him. He quotes Falqera, 94 Narboni, 95 Efodi, 96 Shem Tob, 97 and even Abravanel, whose tendency overall is, however, diametrically opposed to his own. 9 8 Nonetheless, it is another commentator, one of Abravanel's bêtes noires, Joseph Ibn Caspi, whom Strauss seems to have chosen, at one point at least, as the model for an interpretation of an esoteric text that itself remains esoteric, and this even if he never quotes a precise passage of Caspi's annotations to the Guide." It is not impossible that Strauss might have too easily recognized his own image in that of the medieval Averroist, 100 whose annotations, as a matter of fact, are much less hermetic than his own. 101 In a more general way, too, it is not impossible that the influence of the medieval thinkers, all of them out and out Averroists, might have led him to lend more elitism than necessary to Maimonides. 102 However that may be, even when Strauss does not note it, he is sometimes put on track by a peculiarity ascertained by a medieval thinker. For example, and to cite only one author whose name Strauss does not even mention, the strange mention of Ahijah the Shilonite in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah is none other than the object of the very first critique of the Rabad. 103 And it is in part by following his traces that certain contemporary commentators have drawn the medieval thinkers from the ill repute from which they have suffered, to lean on the often precious indications that they furnish. 104 Thus, in a certain way, Strauss reestablishes the continuity of an interrupted tradition—if only because he has contributed to reopening the polemic surrounding Maimonides, although of course on another level. But he distinguishes himself from the partisans as well as from the adversaries of Maimonides by virtue of the fact that neither he nor, in his opinion, Maimonides is either orthodox or a man of the Enlightenment—in any case not in the sense that would require the destruction of religion. Far from undermining religion by pretending to defend it, as Maimonides has been reproached for doing, Strauss's Maimonides wanted to maintain religion's political role, to favor in religion that which aims more or less toward philosophy, and to neutralize what could harm the civil or religious community whose health is the first condition of the philosopher's life and of the philosophical life. It is a question of making a fiction of religion, in the juridical sense of the term: to change the subjacent principle while dissimulating this change by conserving the formula whose original sense is henceforth out-of-date. 105 Now this operation is not peculiar to Maimonides, nor even to Judaism, since Maimonides was himself the successor of Farabi, who had practiced it on Islam. 106 It can be applied to other, more or less religious traditions—for example the American civic religion. Thus

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Maimonides serves not only as an object of scholarly study but also as a paradigm for a perfectly current process. Now one may ask whether the relation between the original and the copy would not function here in both directions, whether Strauss's reading of Maimonides might not be directed by a project peculiar to Strauss. It is possible that Strauss's enterprise might be a repetition of the one whose presence he discovered in Maimonides; but it is, on the other hand, not impossible that the Straussian Maimonides might be, at least in part, a construction and the projection into the past of a personal project. We could therefore not hope to understand Strauss's interpretation of Maimonides (and thereby escape the suspicion just expressed) unless we were able to take Strauss's personal position into consideration. Let us say right away that the task is infinite, and the danger of tilting at windmills omnipresent. There is no question of even beginning to take it on here. I would simply like to close by noting one aspect: If, in reading Maimonides, Strauss is led to defend the ancients against the moderns, his reading of Maimonides is itself marked by, if not derived from, more modern, indeed— to take a fully demonetized term seriously—ultramodern thought. Rather than of Heidegger, 107 we should think of Nietzsche. One may ask oneself whether Strauss is not basically Nietzschean, even if Strauss's constant (exoteric?) doctrine sees in Nietzsche, of whom he speaks hardly at all, the latest wave of modernity. 108 One can make this assumption more plausible by noting that Nietzsche is quoted from the very beginning in Strauss's writings. In one of the first texts, which moreover contains an allusion to the "doctrine of the attributes of the Spanish era," he mentions as example of what the German spirit can bring to Judaism "the critique of culture by Nietzsche, who attempted to descend toward the pre-'Christian' depths of the Jewish spirit as well as of the Greco-European spirit." 109 In the following year he quotes the German thinker twice, 110 and both times they are texts that refer to problems that will continue to keep Strauss going: the confrontation of Athens and Jerusalem, or the theological-political problem. These quotes would nonetheless not suffice to postulate a determining influence on an author who writes at a period during which Nietzsche's work was undergoing a veritable craze in Germany, if it were not for the fact that Strauss himself makes an avowal of a totum me tenuit. We possess, in effect, a letter to Karl Lowith, written to thank Lowith for sending his book on the eternal recurrence of the same, and in which, without pretending to be a specialist on Nietzsche, Strauss writes: "I can only say that Nietzsche so dominated and bewitched me between my twenty-second and thirtieth years, that I literally believed everything . . . that I understood of him." 111 Certainly, Strauss speaks at this time of the "old Nietzschean that he was," i.e., in the past tense. Nonetheless it seems that the period he speaks of, that of the twenties, and during which he was himself in his twenties—the age of coming into one's own intellectually—left lasting traces. Amaldo Momigliano gives proof here, as

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elsewhere, of great perspicacity when he notes that Nietzsche is "everpresent in Strauss's thinking." 1 1 2 We can corroborate this sentiment with more tangible proofs: If Nietzsche is quoted only once in Strauss's first work— written, nonetheless, in the period during which he was an avowed Nietzschean—it is in a context that contains the germ of the ideas that turn out to be decisive as early as the second work: Nietzsche's atheism is such that Nietzsche knew the "death of God" meant the setting of a sun. 113 The most revealing text on the attitude toward Nietzsche and, at the same time, toward Strauss's project, is probably (and this is not by accident) the book on Maimonides. Nietzsche is quoted explicitly several times there. 114 The most important passage, however, is, in my opinion, the one where Strauss invokes the virtue of intellectual probity (Redlichkeit) as the supreme virtue that compels one to atheism, and in which he notes that this virtue is of biblical origin. 115 The extreme importance of this passage is shown in that its substance is taken up again, sometimes literally, in English and without indication of source, after more than thirty years—which seems to indicate the permanence of a fundamental idea behind the change of style that was noted. 1 1 6 In this text, Strauss indicates explicitly the Nietzschean origin of his idea of atheism as coming from biblical morality. 117 In a text that Strauss does not quote, Nietzsche remarks that the result of absolute probity would be disgust and suicide, if we didn't have art as an antidote (The Gay Science II, 107). Could the "art of writing" have the same function as art in general? Though there is no question of recklessly reconciling Nietzsche and Maimonides, 1 1 8 one should note that Strauss's reading of Maimonides attempts very explicitly to go beyond the aporias of the modern Enlightenment by restoring the medieval enlightened thinkers. 119 The object of the return to Maimonides is to bring us out of an aspect of the "dialectic of Enlightenment"—the very aspect that Nietzsche brought to light, according to which the critique of ideals in the name of the search for truth at any price becomes the critique of the very ideal of truth. 120 Strauss himself seems to determine the situation of his enterprise inside the history of metaphysics when he notes that Nietzsche, in order to avoid the danger that life incurs as a result of the absolute relativism that historicism necessarily foments, had the choice between two solutions: either to refuse the possibility of the contemplative grasp of the eternal and to enslave thought to destiny, or to insist on the strictly esoteric character of an analysis of life and thus to return to the Platonic notion of the noble lie. 1 2 1 If the first solution was, at least in Strauss's eyes, that of Heidegger, one might ask whether the second was not his own. If this is the case, Leo Strauss's reading of Maimonides, to the extent that it sheds a new light on the medieval thinker, will have to be left to the judgment of competent historians. But it also interests the philosopher as such, in that it has paradigmatic value for the understanding of Strauss's

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hermeneutic method and, what is more, for the understanding of his paradoxical relation to modernity. NOTES Originally published in French as "Leo Strauss et Maimonide," in S. Pines and Y. Yovel (eds.), Maimonides and Philosophy (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), pp. 246-268; translated by C. Joanna Sheldon. 1. This is the case in the article by Michel-Pierre Edmond and Miguel Abensour, "Leo Strauss," Universalia 1983, Encyclopaedia Universalis, pp. 443445. As exceptions, let us note Edmond's essay "La 'Lettre sur l'astrologie— 1194' de Moise Maimonide," Les Temps Modernes 34, 390 (January 1979): pp. 1053-1074, which is provocative in spite of several errors (p. 1068 reads "Mishneh Torah," not "commentary on the Torah"; p. 1069, n. 2, reads "City of God," not "Confessions") See also Pierre Rusch, review of Strauss, Philosophic und Gesetz, Café 4 (1984): pp. 30-32. 2. I know of only one study bearing on Strauss's interpretation of Maimonides: Mordechai Ben-Asher, "Religion and Reason in Maimonides. Contribution to an Explanation of the Views of Julius Guttmann and of Leo Strauss" (Hebrew), Bash-Sha'ar, 4 (1961): pp. 78-87. It seems to give the subject short shrift, in that it considers only Strauss's Philosophic und Gesetz (Berlin, 1935); "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching," in J. B. Trend and H. Loewe (eds.), Isaac Abravanel (Cambridge, 1937), pp. 95-129; and "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed" (1941), in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111., 1952); and especially because, by limiting itself—in order to facilitate the comparison with Guttmann—to the problematic of the identity (or nonidentity) reason/revelation (here called "rationalism"), the author is led to attribute to Strauss positions that are not at all his (pp. 83-87), for example, the notion according to which philosophy would be inferior to revelation for Maimonides (p. 87). The article by Joseph Buijs, "The Philosophical Character of Maimonides' Guide—A Critique of Strauss' Interpretation," Judaism 108, vol. 27/4 (1978): pp. 4 4 8 ^ 5 7 , is also too cursory. Lawrence Berman, "Maimonides, the Disciple of Alfarabi," Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): pp. 154-178, announces a study on Strauss's contribution to the studies on Maimonides (p. 169, n. 52). My own essay is, I hope, only a provisional substitute for that promise. 3. Here I am leaving out a few scattered allusions in the works of his youth—for example, "Das Heilige," Der Jude 7/4: pp. 240-242, p. 241. 4. Cf. Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarves. Essays 1960-1990 (New York, 1990), pp. 243-245. This division merely seems convenient to me, and it is in this capacity that I apply it here. 5. Here I omit the text prefacing the 1962 English translation ( S p i n o z a ' s Critique of Religion) to the 1930 book on Spinoza (Die Religionskritik Spinozas, Berlin). 6. Pp. 2, 8 of Julius Guttmann, "Philosophie der Religion oder Philosophic des Gesetzes?" Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 5, 6 (1975): pp. 146-173. 7. "How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago, 1963), p. xi. 8. "Das Heilige," p. 241b.

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9. Introductions to various works by Mendelssohn in Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Jubiläumsausgabe, Schriften zur Philosophie und Aesthetik 2 [1931] and 3 [1932]). 10. Die Religionskritik Spinozas, pp. 129-181. 11. Letter of November 30, 1933, to Cyrus Adler—cited according to the biographical note on the correspondence of Strauss in the library of the University of Chicago. I owe a copy of this note to the kindness of Professor J. Cropsey. 12. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 87, n. 1. The third text seems to have been written rather quickly, as a counterpart to the last one, on Maimonides. The second answers the book by Julius Guttmann, Die Philosophie des Judentums (Munich, 1933). 13. "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency," pp. 95-100. 14. Strauss insists on the need to get out of the tempting parallelism between Christian scholasticism and Judeo-Muslim Aristotelianism. Cf. "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency," p. 96; p. xxvii of the introduction, with M. C. Nahm, to I. Husik, Philosophical Essays: Ancient, Medieval and Modern (Oxford, 1952), pp. vii-xli. 15. "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency," p. 97. The affirmation that the Politics of Aristotle was not translated in Arabic, which Strauss seems to have taken from Steinschneider without critique (Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 113, n. 5; "Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maimonide et de Farabi," Revue des Etudes Juives 100 [1936]: 1-37, p. 3, n. 32), was qualified by Shlomo Pines, "Aristotle's Politics in Arabic Philosophy," Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): pp. 150-160. See, however, my "Note sur la traduction arabe de la Politique d'Aristote. Derechef, qu'elle n'existe pas," in P. Aubenque (ed.), Etudes sur la Politique d'Aristote (forthcoming). The idea of a deliberate refusai to translate is found in Shlomo Pines, "La loi naturelle et la société: la doctrine politicoHierosolymitana théologique d'Ibn Zur'a, philosophe chrétien de Bagdad," Scripta 9 (1961): p. 188, n. 82; "The Philosophie Sources of the Guide of the Perplexed," in Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago and London, 1963), p. lxxxvii; and Georges Vajda, "La pensée religieuse de Maimonide: Unité ou dualité?" Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 9(1966): 29-49, p. 40. 16. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 107; "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency," p. 99; "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis," Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 (1937): pp. 9 3 105. On this theme, cf. Charles Touati, "Croyances vraies et croyances nécessaires," in G. Nahon and C. Touati (eds.), Hommage à Georges Vajda (Louvain, 1980), pp. 169-182. 17. "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency," p. 100. Unless I am mistaken these adjectives appear here for the last time in Strauss's work, whereas they were almost incantatory in his youthful writings (cf. "Biblische Geschichte und Wissenschaft," Jüdische Rundschau 30 (1925): pp. 744-745: "in so far as we are Jews, we are radical" [p. 745a]). 18. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 92f. Strauss does not seem to take very seriously the exception constituted by the prophecy of Moses. Cf. Pines "Philosophic Sources," p. xci; against which cf. p. 331 of Alvin J. Reines, "Mamonides' Concept of Mosaic Prophecy," Hebrew Union College Annual 4 0 41 (1969-1970): pp. 325-361. 19. The reinterpretation of Maimonides is accompanied by a rediscovery of Farabi's thinking and of his determining influence on his Jewish disciple, a more important influence than that of Avicenna ("Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 16; "Eine Vermisste Schrift Farabis," 80 [1936]: pp. 96-106, p. 105f.). Strauss

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at first examines only the writings on the ideal city (Philosophie und Gesetz, pp. 99-103, 107f., 114-116); then, thanks to some recent editions, his interest concentrates on the Catalogue of Sciences and the Philosophy of Plato. 20. Philosophie und Gesetz, pp. 9 6 f „ 113f„ 117; cf. Sholomo Pines, Studies in Abu'I Barakat al-Baghdadi—Physics and Metaphysics, vol. 1 of The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1979), p. 261. 21. "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre." The object of this article is to show that the doctrine of providence does not belong to metaphysics or theology, but to practical philosophy. 22. "Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 35. 23. This text is missing from p. xcix of Johann Maier's otherwise excellent "Zu Person und Werk des Mose ben Maimon," in Moses ben Maimon, Führer der Unschlüssigen, vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1972), pp. xi-civ. (This bibliography, however, attributes to Leo Strauss an article on Saladin and the Jews, which was written by Eliyahu Ashtor-Strauss.) It is also absent from the bibliography by Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven, 1980). 24. Persecution, p. 18. 25. "Quelques remarques sur la science," pp. 14, 30f.; "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre," pp. 98, 101. 26. "Literary Character of the Guide," par. 4. 27. Ibid., pp. 47, 71-73; review of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, bk. 1, ed. M. Hyamson, Review of Religion 4 (1939): pp. 448-456 (p. 454; regarding de'a, pp. 452, 455; on which Twersky, Introduction, p. 417, n. 148). 28. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 78. Examples on p. xxv of "How to Begin to Study"; and on p. 269f. of "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," in Studies in Mysticism and Religion, presented to G. Scholem (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 269-281. And cf. Twersky, Introduction, p. 303, n. 158. 29. "Farabi's Plato," in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York, 1945), p. 382, n. 62; "Maimonides' Statement on Political Science," in What is Political Philosophy? (New York, 1953), p. 158, n. 6. 30. "Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 25; "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 77. 31. Persecution, p. 13; "Maimonides' Statement," p. 167; "How to Begin to Study," p. xliii; "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," pp. 272, 274, 277, 278. 32. Review of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, p. 450; "How to Begin to Study," pp. xxiv, xxxf., xlviii; "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge" pp. 272, 275. 33. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 75; "How to Begin to Study," p. xlvii. 34. "Maimonides' Statement," p. 163. 35. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 87, n. 143; "How to Begin to Study," p. xxx. The key numbers are 7 in "Maimonides' Statement," pp. 165f., 168, and n. 23; in "How to Begin to Study," p. xiii; and in "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge" p. 274; 14 in "How to Begin to Study," p. xxx; 17 in "How to Begin to Study," p. xix; 26 (the value of the tetragrammaton in geomatria) in "How to Begin to Study," pp. xv, xviii; and 169 (13 squared) in "How to Begin to Study," p. xlviii. 36. "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 66, 75, 78, and cf. the application to Strauss himself on p. 61 of Milton Himmelfarb, "On Leo Strauss," Commentary 58, 2 (1974): pp. 60-66. 37. For the principle, cf. "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 63, 70.

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Applications as early as "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre," p. 100 (with regard to Maimonides' reading of the book of Job), then in "How to Begin to Study," pp. xxxii, xxxvi, xl; "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 275. 38. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 74. 39. The principle in review of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, p. 454; "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 68-71; "Farabi's Plato," p. 369. The applications in "How to Begin to Study," pp. xxiv, xxxiii, xxxvi; "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 277. 40. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 73; "Farabi's Plato," p. 376. 41. "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 277; cf. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 77; "How to Begin to Study," passim. 42. "Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 14. 43. "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 47, 79f.; "Farabi's Plato," p. 375. 44. The clearest text is no doubt Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle and London, 1958), ch. 1. But according to Strauss, Machiavelli himself was to be placed among the falasifa (cf. p. 175). 45. Persecution, p. 8. 46. "Farabi's Plato," pp. 369, 382. 47. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 76. 48. "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari," in Persecution, p. 126; "Farabi's Plato," p. 390f.; Emil L. Fackenheim, "The Possibility of the Universe in AlFarabi, Ibn Sina and Maimonides," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 16 (1946-1947): pp. 39-70, p. 48. Note the implicit paralles between the Sabaean Isaac and Maimonides in "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 81. Cf. also "Maimonides' Statement," p. 169; p. 208f. of "Note on Maimonides' Treatise on the Art of Logic," in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago, 1983), pp. 208-209. Cf. also Pines, "Philosophic Sources," p. cxiv, n. 94. Note also the insistence on the stars as saintly bodies in "How to Begin to Study," pp. xx, xxiii. 49. "How to Begin to Study," p. xxxiv. 50. "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 272, and cf. p. 128 of Arthur Hyman, "Maimonides' 'Thirteen Principles,'" in A. Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 119-144. 51. See p. 253 of Warren Zev Harvey, "The Return of Maimonideanism," Jewish Social Studies 42 (1980): pp. 249-268. 52. Pp. 81-83 of "The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right," in Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), pp. 81-119; and Mishneh Torah, Yesode Ha-Torah, IV, 2, beginning (cf. review of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, p. 453). The implicit citation is identified in "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 273 and n. 9. The rest of what Harvey says on Strauss (pp. 253-255) is very accurate. Cf. also p. 265, n. 36: Pines's very illuminating remark. 53. As far as I know there is no general study of this hermeneutic. For my purposes I made use of an unpublished lecture by Stanley Rosen. See his Hermeneutics as Politics (Oxford, 1987), pp. 107-138. I deal with some aspects of Strauss's hermeneutics in my "Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: On Leo Strauss' 'Muslim' Reading of the Classics," in Alan Udoff (ed.), The Playground of Textuality (forthcoming), French translation in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1989): pp. 363-390. 54. P. xxx of "Introductory Essay," in H. Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (New York, 1972), pp. xxiii-xxxviii. 55. Maier, "Zu Person und Werk," p. xxvi. 56. Lawrence Berman, "A Reexamination of Maimonides' 'Statement on

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Political Science,'" Journal of the American Oriental Society 89 (1969): pp. 106111. 57. P. 6, no. 14, of Shlomo Pines, "Quelques réflexions sur Maimonide en guise de préface," in Moise Maimonide, Le Livre de la connaissance, trans, from Hebrew and annotated by V. Nikiprowetzky and A. Zaoui (Paris, 1961), pp. 1-19; p. 212 of Georges Vajda, review of Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Revue des Etudes Juives 123 (1964): 209-216; Hyman, "Maimonides' 'Thirteen Principles,'" p. 131, n. 75. 58. P. 269, n. 35, of Warren Zev Harvey, "A Third Approach to Maimonides' Cosmogony-Prophetology Puzzle," Harvard Theological Review 74, 3 (1981): pp. 287-301. 59. Leonard S. Kravitz, "Maimonides and Job: An Inquiry as to the Method of the Moreh," Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): pp. 149-158, developing "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 62-64. 60. P. 170, n. 5, of Alvin J. Reines, "Maimonides' Concepts of Providence and Theodicy," Hebrew Union College Annual 43 (1972): pp. 169-206; p. 257 of Reiries, "Maimonides' Concept of Miracles," Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974): pp. 243-285. 61. Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 8 of Philosophy and Science (New York, 1958), p. 314, n. 28. 62. P. 177 of John Glücker, "Modality in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed" (in Hebrew), Iyyun 10 (1959): pp. 177-191; p. 278 of Jonah BenSasson, "A Study of the Doctrine of 'Ta'ame ha-mizvot' in Maimonides' Guide," Tarbiz 29, 3 (1960): pp. 268-281; Reines, "Maimonides' Concept of Miracles," pp. 267, 271. 63. Pp. 3 7 2 - 3 7 5 of Abraham Nuriel, "The Question of a Created or Primordial World in the Philosophy of Maimonides" (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 33, 4 (1964): pp. 372-387. 64. Ibid., pp. 3 7 5 - 3 7 7 ; p. 346 of Aryeh Nuriel, "Providence and Governance in Moreh Nevukhim" (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 49, 3 - 4 (1980): pp. 346355; and before that p. 86ab of Jacob Levinger, "Sodo shel |iiddush maksim," Behinoth 11 (1956-1957): pp. 80-86. 65. P. 102 of Shlomo Pines, "Notes on Averroes' Political Philosophy," in Pines, Studies in the History of Jewish Philosophy (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 84-102; Pines, "Philosophic Sources," p. lxxix. 66. "Persecution," p. 32; "certain cases." 67. P. 269 of Marvin Fox, review of The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines, Journal of the History of Philosophy 3, 2 (1965): pp. 265-274; p. 456 of Shlomo Pines, "Leo Strauss" (in Hebrew), Molad 37-38 (1976): pp. 455^457; p. 336 of Charles Touati, "Les deux théories de Maimonide sur la providence," in S. Stein and R. Loewe (eds.), Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History (London, 1979), pp. 331-342. 68. Pp. 126, n. 2, 146 (1972), and p. 200 (1974) of Georges Vajda, "Les études de philosophie juive du Moyen-Age depuis la synthèse de Julius Guttmann," Hebrew Union College Annual 43 (1972): pp. 125-147 and 45 (1974): pp. 205-242. 69. P. 84 of S i m o n - R a y m o n d Schwarzfuchs, "Les lois royales de Maimonide," Revue des Etudes Juives 111 (1951-1952): pp. 63-86; Hyman, "Maimonides' 'Thirteen Principles,'" p. 141f.; p. 97 of Isadore Twersky, "Some Non-Halakic Aspects of the Mishneh Torah," in A. Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 95-118; David Hartman, Maimonides, Torah, and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 20-27; Twersky, Introduction, ch. 6, passim, and esp. pp. 274, 448, 507.

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70. "Law of Reason in the Kuzari," p. I l l , n. 45; p. 187 of "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," in Persecution, pp. 142-201. 71. "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre," p. 103; "How to Begin to Study," p. xlii. 72. "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 269. 73. Review of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, p. 454f. 74. Kravitz, "Maimonides and Job," p. 158, n. 30. 75. Cf. Schwarzfuchs, "Les lois," p. 65; Pines, "Philosophie Sources," pp. lxxviii-xcii; Georges Vajda, "A propos d'une citation non-identifiée d'al-Farabi dans le 'Guide des égarés,'" Journal Asiatique 253 (1965): pp. 43-50, with regard to the allusion made in Guide II, 15, to a commentary at the Topics, since rediscovered (cf. Pines, "Philosophic Sources," p. lxxxvf.—unchanged in Pines, Studies in the History, p. 129). Herbert Davidson, "Maimonides' Shemonah Peraqim and Alfarabi's Fusul al-Madani," Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 31 (1963): pp. 33-50, has studied in depth the parallelism between the Eight Chapters and Farabi's Aphorisms of the Statesman—taking account of the remarks on pp. 4 I f . and 48 (Maimonides separates himself from Farabi in the matter of theology). Cf. Berman's synthesis, "Maimonides." Conversely, Berman, "A Reexamination," p. 107a, and Alexander Altmann, "Maimonides' 'Four Perfections,'" Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972): pp. 15-24, restore to Ibn Bajja what had been attributed to Farabi. 76. Guttmann, "Philosophie der Religion?" p. 164. 77. Guttmann, Philosophie des Judentums, p. 200. 78. "Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 32; "How to Begin to Study," p. xxxiv; Lawrence Berman, "The Political Interpretation of the Maxim: 'The Purpose of Philosophy Is the Imitation of God,'" Studia Islamica 15 (1961): pp. 53-61; Pines, "Quelques réflexions sur Maimonide," p. 5f.; p. 27f. of Shlomo Pines, "Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides and Kant," Scripta Hierosolymitana 20 (1968): pp. 3 - 5 4 ; p. 222 of Pines, "Les limites de la métaphysique selon al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja et Maimonide," Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13, 1 (1981): pp. 2 1 1 - 2 2 5 ; Reines, " M a i m o n i d e s ' Concept of Mosaic Prophecy," p. 355 and n. 113; Altmann, "Maimonides' 'Four Perfections,'" p. 24; Twersky, Introduction, p. 457; and Nuriel, "Providence and Governance," p. 349f. 79. Pines, "Les limites"; counterargument on p. 21 If. of Warren Zev Harvey, "Political Philosophy and Halakha in Maimonides" (in Hebrew), lyyun 29 (1980): pp. 198-212. 80. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 90; "Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 18.

81. V a j d a , " L a Pensée religieuse de M a i m o n i d e , " p. 45; Reines, "Maimonides' Concept of Mosaic Prophecy," p. 334f.; p. 244 of Lawrence Kaplan, "Maimonides on the Miraculous Element in Prophecy," Harvard Theological Review 70 (1977): pp. 233-256; p. 206 of Miriam Galston, "Philosopher-King v. Prophet," Israel Oriental Studies 8 (1978): pp. 204-218. 82. "Rational" end: p. 249 of "Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion," in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York and London, 1968), pp. 224-259; "natural" end: p. 48 of José Faur, "The Basis for the Authority of the Divine Commandments According to Maimonides," Tarbiz 38, 1 (1968): pp. 43-53. Faur's conclusions on Judaism in general are out of my province, but they seem to cut down Maimonides on the kalam (cf. p. 265ff. of Faur, "La doctrina de la ley natural en el pensamiento judio del medioevo," Sefarad 27 (1967): pp. 239-268; Faur, "Basis for the Authority," p. 52f. On "divine" end, p. 31 of Miriam Galston, "The Purpose of the Law According to Maimonides," Jewish Quarterly Review 69, 1 (1978): pp. 27-51; Harvey, "Political Philosophy and Halakha" p. 200.

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83. Kravitz, "Maimonides and Job"; Reines, "Maimonides' Concepts of Providence and Theodicy"; Touati, "Les deux théories"; Nuriel, "Providence and Governance." 84. Pp. 2 9 0 - 2 9 4 of Shlomo Pines, "Ibn Kaspi and Spinoza on the Probability of a Restoration of the Jewish State," in Pines, Studies in the History of Jewish Philosophy (in Hebrew), (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 277-305. Cf. Pines, "Philosophic Sources," pp. lxxii-lxxiv; Pines, "Ibn Khaldun and Maimonides: A Comparison Between Two Texts," Studia Islamica 32 (1970): pp. 265-274. 85. Fackenheim, who follows Strauss ("The Possibility of the Universe," p. 49, n. 30a), suggests that the defense of creation is merely rhetorical, in the style of the kalam (pp. 58-70). Glucker ("Modality," pp. 188-191) shows it more clearly starting from a study of the criterion of possibility (cf. Fackenheim, "The Possibility of the Universe," p. 60f., n. 61). Nuriel ("The Question," p. 386f.) starts from a linguistic criterion: The word "creator" is employed only in the contexts that exclude creation; the former is omitted where the latter is affirmed. Cf. the critique of Israel Ravitzsky ("The Question of a Created or Primordial World in the Philosophy of Maimonides" [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 35, 4 [1966]: pp. 333-348). Ravitzsky was in turn critiqued by Vajda, "Les études" (1974), p. 217, and cf. Vajda, "La pensée religieuse de Maimonide," p. 44. Opposite to this, Alexander Altmann ("Essence and Existence in Maimonides," in Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism [London, 1969], pp. 108-127) shows that the idea of creation corresponds well to Maimonides' Avicennian ontology. For Harvey ("A Third Approach," p. 294), Maimonides leaned toward eternity, which he did not consider to be demonstrated but in conformity with experience. We can draw an analogous position from Pines ("Les limites"). Earlier texts by Pines incline more toward eternity—for example, "Philosophic Sources." 86. It seems to me that Hartman ( M a i m o n i d e s , p. 223, n. 71) and Buijs ("Philosophical Character") do not always avoid this trap. 87. Vajda, review of The Guide, pp. 213, 214, n. 1, and especially Fox, review of The Guide, pp. 269-273. Other singularities are notable: "How to Begin to Study," p. xiv, "tree of life," when referring to the tree of knowledge (Genesis 3:6, quoted in the Guide, I, 2); "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," p. 271, "Pillar of the Law" (Yesode Ha-Torah, VII, beginning) translates 'amude hadat. 88. For example, "How to Begin to Study," p. xxx, on Albo. 89. Pines, "Spinoza's Tractatus," p. 4; Pines, "Leo Strauss," p. 456b; cf. Strauss, "Maimonides' Statement," p. 168. 90. Charles Touati, La pensée philosophique et religieuse de Gersonide (Paris, 1973), p. 558. 91. Examples in Persecution, pp. 27-29. 92. On S. D. Luzzatto and Ahad Ha'am, cf. Aryeh Leo Motzkin, "On the Interpretation of Maimonides," Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 3 9 46. 93. "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre," p. 104. The passage is located in the Autobiography. Strauss never refers to Giv'at ha-Moreh. 94. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 54. We note only the references to the Moreh ha-Moreh, leaving aside the works in which Falqera does not write as commentator, in spite of what they might be able to tell us about the reception of the Guide. Cf. Pines, "Philosophic Sources," p. cxvi, and Studies in the History, 176, n. 12. 95. Philosophie und Gesetz, pp. 54, and 95, n. 1. 96. Ibid., p. 105; "On AbravanePs Philosophical Tendency," p. 110;

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"Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 47, n. 38, and 81; "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," p. 198, n. 115. 97. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 54; "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 49, n. 42; 57, n. 65; and 93. 98. Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 54; "Literary Character of the Guide," pp. 47, n. 38, and 81; "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," p. 198, n. 115. On the personal perspective of Abravanel, cf. "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency." I omit here the Jewish philosophers who, even if they mentioned Maimonides, did not write annotations to the Guide—like Albo, whom Strauss mentions often (for example, "How to Begin to Study," p. xxx). 99. "Literary Character of the Guide," p. 56. On p. 70, n. 99, Strauss refers very probably to Mishne Kesef, ed. I. Last (Krakow, bk. 2), p. 284, and to Adne Kesef, ed. I. Last (London, 1913, bk. 1), p. 15—the second text being much clearer than the first with regard to the allusion that Strauss sees there. Even clearer is the passage from the first work, bk. 2, p. 229 (on Leviticus 1:1), noted on p. 127 of W. Bacher, "Joseph Ibn Caspi als Bibelerklärer," Judaica (Festschrift for H. Cohen's Seventieth Birthday) (Berlin, 1912): pp. 119-133. 100. P. 203, n. 18, of Isadore Twersky, "Joseph Ibn Kaspi: Portrait d'un intellectuel juif médiéval," in Juifs et judaïsme de Languedoc (Cahiers de Fanjeaux 12) (Toulouse, 1977), pp. 185-204. 101. Pines, "Ibn Kaspi and Spinoza," p. 277f. 102. Pines, "Philosophie Sources," p. cxviiif., and, in general, Pines, "Les limites," p. 221. 103. " T h e Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy," in The Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1979): 115. Strauss makes use of the classical commentaries in his review of Hyamson's edition of The Mishneh Torah, passim. 104. Cf., for example, Nuriel, "The Question"; Kaplan, "Maimonides on the Miraculous." 105. Cf. p. 190 and n. 104 of Robert S. Kirschner, "Maimonides' Fiction of Resurrection," Hebrew Union College Annual 52 (1981): pp. 163-193. 106. P. 127 of "Restatement of Xenophon's Hiero," in What Is Political Philosophy? pp. 95-133. 107. Heidegger is probably the one Guttmann is alluding to ("Philosophie der Religion?" pp. 6, 21, 27), basing himself on Strauss (Philosophie und Gesetz, p. 67), who speaks of the "comprehension of the authentic [eigentlich], that is, human meaning" of problems. But the usage of the "Jargon der Eigentlichkeit" is not proper to Heidegger. 108. We possess only one text by Strauss on Nietzsche: "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil," Interpretation 3, 2 (1973): pp. 97-113, now in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago, 1983), pp. 174-191. 109. "Das Heilige," p. 241; cf. "Quelques remarques sur la science," p. 2. 110. P. 12 of "Paul de Lagarde," Der Jude 8, 1 (1924): pp. 8-15; p. 192 of "Soziologische Geschichtsschreibung," Der Jude 8, 3 (1924): pp. 190-192. 111. Letter to Karl Löwith of June 23, 1935. I owe this text to the kindness of Marc B. de Launay. See now Independent Journal of Philosophy 5, 6 (1988): p. 183. 112. P. 122 of Arnaldo Momigliano, "Ermeneutica e Pensiero Politico Classico in Leo Strauss," Quarto Contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (1969): pp. 117-128. 113. Die Religionskritik Spinozas, p. 200, n. 276. The allusion is no doubt to The Gay Science V, p. 342. It is, moreover, rather revealing that the Spinoza that Strauss presents is characterized by a formula that does not belong to Spinoza

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but in fact to Nietzsche, that of amor fati. Strauss puts it in Spinoza's mouth Religionskritik without—and with reason—indicating the reference (Die Spinozas, pp. 203, 222, and cf. 192), whereas amor fati is for Nietzschc that Wagner, which characterizes his own "intimate nature" (Nietzsche Contra Epilogue, section 1; Ecce Homo, The Case of Wagner, section 4). This attitude was formulated in 1882 (The Gay Science IV, section 276; letter to Overbeck of June 1882, in Sämtliche Briefe, Kritische Studienausgabe (Munich, 1986), vol. 6, p. 199f.), that is, after the discovery of Spinoza, told in a letter to Overbeck of July 30, 1881 (ibid., p. I l l ) — a letter that does not mention among the points of contact the amor intellectualis Dei. Nietzsche criticizes it in The Gay Science V, section 372 and in Twilight of the Idols, "Streifzüge," section 23. 114. Philosophie und Gesetz, pp. 14; 24, n. 1; 62, n. 1. 115. Ibid., pp. 26-28. We can imagine the welcome this passage received in the letter of March 29, 1935, from G. Scholem to W. Benjamin. Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, Briefwechsel 1933-1940 (Frankfurt, 1980), p. 192. 116. "Preface to Spinoza's Critique," p. 255f. 117. Ibid., p. 236f., and n. 24-28, p. 258, for the references to texts of Nietzsche. 118. The comparison is made by Pines, "ibn Kaspi and Spinoza," p. 29If. Nietzsche himself spoke of the "Jewish free-thinkers of the Middle Ages" {Human, All-Too-Human I, chapter 8, section 475). He even wrote a baffling anticipation of the whole approach to the falasifa, which the young Strauss advocated half a century later: Muhammed, according to Nietzsche, made Plato's dream of an ideal state come true {Dawn, V, section 496). But what did Nietzsche know of Maimonides? 119. Philosophie und Gesetz, pp. 9, 88f. 120. Ibid., p. 14. 121. "Natural Right," p. 26.

5

Juxtapositions: Aristotle, Aquinas, Strauss THOMAS PRÜFER

PREFACE Leo Strauss is justly famous for the range of texts he interpreted and for the care given to the detail of those texts in interpreting them. This range and this care led to stressing the importance of the difference between "the exoteric and the esoteric" meaning of many of the interpreted texts; he has become notorious for stressing this difference. The difference between "exoteric and esoteric" depends on two senses of "political philosophy"; the phrase "political philosophy" can mean both philosophizing about the political and the "politic" self-presentation of philosophy to and in the nonphilosophical realm of the political. (In Plato's Defense of Socrates, Socrates defends himself before the Athenian jury against charges of impiety and subversion by presenting his way of life as god-given and law-abiding.) Each of the two senses of "political philosophy" depends on the difference between philosophy and the political. This difference in turn depends on the difference between the highest or the most fundamental things and human affairs; and this difference depends on the difference between necessity and self-sufficiency, on the one hand, and chance-and-choice (contingency) and being-with-others (community), on the other hand, and on the superiority of the first, necessity and self-sufficiency, to the second, contingency and community. Together with "exoteric and esoteric" and "political philosophy," a third theme concerns Strauss, "ancients and moderns": the return from derivative ways of raising questions to the origin(s) of those derivative ways. This return finally leads back to Socrates. Socrates "never ceased asking the question ' W h a t is . . . ? ' about all the b e i n g s " and Socrates "brought philosophy down from heaven." The Socratic juncture of these two, the stance and the move, articulates the whole in a way that begins political philosophy. (Socrates, who wrote nothing, is accessible to us through interpretation of Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon.

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Strauss gave a great deal of care to interpreting the texts of these three authors.) Consider some passages from Strauss about Socrates, the articulation of the whole, the heterogeneity of kinds, the elusiveness of the whole, and political philosophy: The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (1989), pp. 101, 132, 142-143; Natural Right and History (1953), pp. 122-123. A fourth theme, the theme of this essay, concerns Strauss: the incompatibility between philosophy and taking creation to be true. For Strauss this incompatibility is based on a rejection of raising contingency and community, understood in a certain way, to a level higher than necessity and self-sufficiency, understood in a certain way (or ways). This essay is divided into two main parts; each of these parts consists of thirteen parts: the first main part consists of thirteen quotations, and the second main part consists of thirteen formulations of positions of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Strauss. PART ONE

1. "meleta to pan: Look to the whole." 2. " . . . they are lovers of the gods and look to the divine in a certain way, the gods and the divine in which they believe because good things happen to them through chance." 3. " . . . that the gods are an evil, if a necessary evil. This would reduce piety to 'bearing the divine things as a matter of necessity'; . . . " 4. "We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is entirely independent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing, fair or ugly. It leads us to realize that all evils are in a sense necessary if there is to be understanding. It enables us to accept all evils which befall us and which may well break our hearts in the spirit of good citizens of the city of God." 5. "The God Who created heaven and earth, Who is the only God, Whose only image is man, Who forbade man to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Who made a Covenant with mankind after the Flood and thereafter a Covenant with Abraham which became His Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—what kind of God is He? Or, to speak more reverently and more adequately, what is His name? This question was addressed to God Himself by Moses when he was sent by Him to the sons of Israel. God replied: 'Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.' This is mostly translated: 'I am That (Who) I am.' One has called that reply 'the metaphysics of Exodus' in order to indicate its fundamental character. It is indeed the fundamental

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biblical statement about the biblical God, but we hesitate to call it metaphysical, since the notion of physis is alien to the Bible. I believe that we ought to render this statement by 'I shall be What I shall be,' thus preserving the connection between God's name and the fact that He makes covenants with men, i.e., that He reveals himself to men above all by His commandments and by His promises and His fulfillment of the promises. 'I shall be What I shall be' is as it were explained in the verse (Exod. 33:19), 'I shall be gracious to whom I shall be gracious and I shall show mercy to whom I shall show mercy.' God's actions cannot be predicted, unless He Himself predicted them, i.e., promised them. But as is shown precisely by the account of Abraham's binding of Isaac, the way in which He fulfills His promises cannot be known in advance. The biblical God is a mysterious God: He comes in a thick cloud (Exod. 19:9); He cannot be seen; His presence can be sensed but not always and everywhere; what is known of Him is only what He chose to communicate by His word through His chosen servants." 6. "The Prince consists of 26 chapters. Twenty-six is the numerical value of the letters of the sacred name of God in Hebrew, of the Tetragrammaton. But did Machiavelli know of this? I do not know. Twentysix equals 2 times 13. Thirteen is now and for quite sometime has been considered an unlucky number, but in former times it was also and even primarily considered a lucky number. So 'twice 13' might mean both good luck and bad luck, and hence altogether: luck, fortuna. A case can be made for the view that Machiavelli's theology can be expressed by the formula Deus sive fortuna (as distinguished from Spinoza's Deus sive natura)—that is, that God is fortuna as supposed to be subject to human influence (imprecation)." 7. "Created good added to uncreated good does not result in something greater." 8. "The communication of goodness is not the last end, but the divine goodness itself, out of love of which God wills to communicate that goodness [to others by creating]; for God does not act for the sake of his goodness as desiring to gain what he does not have, but as willing to communicate what he has, because he acts not out of desire for the end [not possessed] but out of love of the end [enjoyed]." 9. "God wills the ordered whole of creatures for its own sake, although he also wills it to be for his own sake. These two are not inconsistent: for God wills that creatures be for the sake of his goodness, that they imitate and represent that goodness, each in its own way. This indeed they do insofar as they have [their] to be (esse) from that goodness and subsist in their own natures. Thus it is the same to say that God made [created] all things for the sake of himself and that he made [created] creatures for the sake of their to be (esse)." 10. "How uncultivated and upstart is Scotus's way of speaking when he

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calls the divine will 'the first contingent cause.' It is nefarious to speak, of contingency in the divine will." 11. "If we were to take it that God had not willed the to be (esse) of creatures, for this reason we would not hold that there would be any imperfection in God, any potentiality in his being, but we would say only that there is freedom in the divine will itself and the lack of a certain 'relation of reason' [a term of art contrasting with 'real relation']." 12. "The divine will, if it had not willed to create the world, would not be otherwise in itself than it is, having willed to create. But with the world itself it is otherwise: it makes a difference for the world when it actually receives to be (esse) from God and in its being is related to him." 13. " . . . the glory which comes to God from a more perfect or from a less perfect creature, granted that between the creatures themselves there is a great difference and that one is much better than another, nevertheless in comparison with God, to whom is infinite glory of himself, this difference in extrinsic glory given (or not given) by a more perfect creature adds nothing of moment. The whole of creatures all together, in comparison with God, is to be taken as empty, a nothing, as it were, a drop of dew before sunrise." PART TWO

1. For Aquinas although God knows and wills many and other beings and in that sense is not solitary, nevertheless it is meaningful although not true that God be the only sense of "being" and that "being" mean not God and many others as well but God alone. 2. For Aristotle separate being in its self-sufficiency does not contemplate and does not choose lesser beings, but separate being could not be the only sense of "being." It is necessary that "being" mean being in common to many and being in common with others. 3. For Aquinas God can annihilate ex simplici voluntate creatures that are necessary insofar as they are beings of a nature in which there is no principle of the possibility of ceasing to be, and God knows the actuality of the contingent future in its presentness: prout est in esse suo determinato. 4. For Aristotle necessary natures are eternally actual, and the contingent future is able not to be going to be. 5. Aquinas crisscrosses the Aristotelian positions, holding the annihilability (possibilitas ad non esse) by God of necessary natures and the actuality (esse determinatum) for God of the contingent future. 6. This crisscrossing is a miscegenation between necessity and contingency, the parts into which the whole is articulated—if the last transcendence is the transcendence of the whole to its parts, and if the last immanence is the immanence of the whole to its parts. But if there are three transcendences? The transcendence of the better part of the whole to the less good or lesser or lower part of the whole; the transcendence of the whole to

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its parts; and the third and last transcendence, which transcends the whole and is immanent to it without being together with it another and better and last whole. 7

•

God Necessity j and self-sufficiency j

freedom of indifference to create or not to create

necessity 2 and self-sufficiency 2 contingency and community

the created whole 8. For Aquinas God and creatures together are not the last whole. As part o f a whole, one part is complemented by another part, no matter how much more excellent the one is than the other. God is not complemented or completed by any other. This is the meaning of the freedom of indifference to create or not to create. God as necessity! and self-sufficiency] transcends or exceeds the whole whose parts are necessity 2 and self-sufficiency 2 and contingency and community. God is as immanent or intimate to the lower part o f the whole (contingency and community) as to the higher part of the whole (necessity 2 and self-sufficiency2). Necessity], not part of the whole, is freedom of indifference to necessity 2 , the higher part o f the whole, and necessity] establishes contingency, the lower part of the whole, in its very contingency. 9. For Strauss the best is the whole within which necessity 2 and selfsufficiency 2 are the better part and contingency and community the less good or lesser or lower part. Thus for Strauss necessity] is assimilated to necessity 2 , the better part of the whole, and freedom of indifference to create or not to create is assimilated to contingency, the less good or lesser or lower part o f the whole. 10. For Aquinas God Himself as necessity] and self-sufficiency] is freedom of indifference to whether or not (this looks like contingency as indeterminacy) there be many others (this looks like community as complement), to whether or not there be the created whole, whose parts are n e c e s s i t y 2 and self-sufficiency 2 and contingency and community. G o d ' s freedom to create or not to create is not indeterminacy or arbitrariness in

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Himself, but the necessity and self-sufficiency of His goodness, which cannot be complemented or completed by any other and which cannot be assimilated to either part of the created whole. 11. For Strauss so-called divine chance-and-choice and so-called divine being-with-others are assimilated to contingency and community, the less good or lesser or lower part of the whole, the part which, although inferior, is, as a part of the good whole, as a part of the whole as good, nevertheless indispensable to the goodness of the whole. Contingency and community and necessity 2 and self-sufficiency 2 are the two parts of the whole. The whole is better than the better part, necessity 2 and self-sufficiency 2 . Contingency and community, the less good part of the whole, make the whole better than it would be without that lesser or lower part. In that sense, contingency and community are "divine." They contribute to the goodness of the whole, which would be less good without them. The higher is better than the lower, but the best is the whole, both the higher and the lower together. The whole is divine in the proper sense. Contingency and community are called "divine" only because they contribute to the divine in the proper sense, the whole, the good whole, the whole as good, the goodness of the whole. 12. For Aquinas the superabundant and therefore necessary and selfsufficient goodness of God is His freedom, freedom without indeterminacy or arbitrariness, freedom that is free-of-and-for whether or not there be many others, freedom that is free to be generous because, being self-sufficient, it need not be generous. 13. For Strauss the covenant and the law and the prophets are assimilated to chance-and-choice and being-with-others, which are the less good or lesser or lower part of the whole. Chance-and-choice and being-withothers are an indispensable and in that sense necessary part of the last and in that sense self-sufficient whole. NOTES Part One 1. Periander of Corinth, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Diels-Kranz, 6. Aufl., 1951, vol. 1, p. 65. 2. Aristotle, Rhetoric I 17, 6, 1391b2ff. Cf. Leo Strauss, "On the Euthyphron," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, 1989, pp. 202-203. 3. Leo Strauss, "The Birds," Aristophanes, 1966, p. 192. Cf. Leo Strauss, "The Problem of Socrates," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, pp. 132-133, 142-143; "Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History," ibid., p. 101; Natural Right and History, 1953, pp. 122-125. 4. Leo Strauss, "What Is Liberal Education?" in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 1968, p. 8. 5. Leo Strauss, "Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections," in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, 1983, p. 162.

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Political 6. Leo Strauss, "Niccolo Machiavelli," in Studies in Platonic Philosophy, pp. 223-224. (In the original "sometime" is one word and the last "fortuna" is not italicized.) 7. Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de malo V 4, ad 1. 8. Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de potentia Dei III 15, ad 14. 9. Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de potentia Dei V 4. (The manuscripts confirm the reading fecerit.) 10. Cajetan, Commentary on Question XIX of the First Part of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, Leonine edition, vol. 4 (1888), p. 236; cf. Scotus, Vatican edition, vol. 6 (1963), pp. 26*-30*. 11. Sylvester of Ferrara, Commentary on Book One, chapter LXXX, of Aquinas's Summa contra Gentiles, Leonine edition, vol. 13 (1918), p. 224. 12. Banez, Commentary on Question XIX of the First Part of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, Madrid-Valencia, 1934, p. 442. 13. John of St. Thomas, Commentary on Question XIX of the First Part of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, Cursus theologicus, Solesmes edition, vol. 3 (1937), p. 133a; see also pp. 76b, 92b. Part

Two

3. See Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de potentia Dei V 3 and Scripta super libros Sententiarum I 38, 1, 5. 8. See Aquinas, In libros Peri hermeneias expositio I 14, 22. 10. Miracle is less proximately but more precisely (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 982a25-28) characterized as motivating the move from nature 2 to n a t u r e ; than as motivating the move from naturej to choice, the choice that chooses the way creatures are, the choice whose principle is nature]. 13. "This, then, will be a key permitting one to enter places the gates to which were locked. When those gates are opened and those places entered, the souls will find rest therein, the bodies will be eased of their toil, and the eyes will be delighted." Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, "Introduction," in fine. SCHOLIUM Taking creation to be true is for philosophy not a repudiation of the primacy o f nature o v e r convention; much less is it a fall back from the difference b e t w e e n nature and convention into "the w a y s " prior to the differentiation of nature and convention. Philosophy, as eros for nature and for the whole, is not less itself (a) for m o v i n g from a l e s s primary sense of nature, nature 2 , to the m o s t primary sense of nature, nature], most primary because o f its eternity and necessity, self-sufficiency and intelligibility, and (b) for m o v i n g from the whole to the principle of the whole, the principle that is not itself a part of the whole.

6

Laying Down the Law: The Theological-Political Matrix of Spinoza's Physics DAVID R. LACHTERMAN

i One might have thought that Strauss's 1930 volume on Spinoza's critique of religion had put beyond both exegetical and substantive doubt the unbridgeable chasm separating the teachings of Maimonides in the Moreh from the arguments of Spinoza in the Ethics and, especially, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, at least as far as the issues of the revelation, prophecy, and miracles are concerned. With respect to exegesis, one would be compelled by Strauss's interpretation to read Spinoza's Tractatus as a palimpsest or, in the literary historian's sense, a "travesty" of the Moreh. Substantively, the force animating, or, better, motivating Spinoza's theological-political project would come through clearly as the desire to abolish the traditional Jewish distinction between the "God of the philosophers" and the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," abolishing it so as to leave only the first God intact and impregnable, rhetorically and dialectically, if not apodictically in the strict sense. Strauss's evidence notwithstanding, many contemporary interpreters of Spinoza might be best described as "ecumenical revelers," reeling from the heady brew first concocted by the German early Romantics for whom Spinoza was, in Novalis' famous sobriquet, a "god-intoxicated man." This intoxication has led either to the equation of Spinozistic divinity with exotic imports such as Zen Buddhism or, more importantly, to unqualified statements such as this: "The God of Spinoza was the God of his fathers. Any charge that he made was in himself." As though Spinoza's announced promise to write a book Contra Judaeos need not be taken seriously onto account!1 In a much more sober and therefore more challenging way, a small number of Strauss's most able readers, particularly Shlomo Pines and Warren Zev Harvey, have called into question the substantive distinction between Maimonides and Spinoza, while paying due heed to the elusive divarications of both. In Harvey's words, Spinoza "was, if you will, a descendent

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Maimonidean . . . but he was nonetheless a Maimonidean." 2 The implications of the resulting partial identity extend beyond what might initially strike one as narrowly scriptural matters (e.g., revelation, prophecy, and miracles) to the heart of metaphysics (e.g., creation vs. eternity), as well as to the center of politics and ethics (e.g., the status of the Commandments). So, on the view alluded to by Pines and argued with great skill by Harvey, the scandalous novelty of Spinoza's formula Deus sive natura is mitigated by the recognition that the Rambam hinted at the very same synonymy when he introduced Chapter 32 of Book III of the Moreh with the phrase "Divine actions, I mean, natural actions. . . . " So, too, the "dictum of the philosophers" so often cited by Maimonides in the Moreh and in the Sefer ha-Madda, namely, that God is at once 'aql, 'aq'ul, and ma'qui (intellect, the intellecting subject, and the intellected object) entails, as Pines put it, that "if [God] does cognize the system of forms (and we may add, using a later term, of natural laws), subsisting in the universe, He must be held . . . to be identical with these forms and laws, i.e., with the scientific system of the universe." 3 This would make him out to be something coming perilously close to Spinoza's attribute of thought (or to his "intellect of God"). So, finally, Harvey argues, Maimonides, if he were to have argued consistently with his own philosophical premises, would have acknowledged that God must also be identical with the attribute of extension as well. "Spinoza thus seems to have seen himself as pushing Maimonides' metaphysical monotheism to its logical conclusion." 4 In sum, for Pines, Harvey, and like-minded exegetes (in contradistinction to Quellenkritische-iovtmxmtrs such as Joel and Wolfson), Maimonides' derash is, at bottom, Spinoza's peshat.5 Before confronting from a rather different angle of vision the interpretive issues raised by this apparent discrepancy between Strauss's view and the views of Pines and Harvey, let me stand back for a moment to contemplate what makes this something more than a simple hermeneutical debate. Without wishing to exaggerate to vain effect, I am nonetheless tempted to say that the question of the relation between Maimonides and Spinoza is the decisive question we need to raise in coming to terms with "the humanistic legacy" of Strauss. As far as I have been able to tell, Strauss, in his published writings, held little brief for "humanism" as usually understood, that is, either in the sense of the Roman rhetorical ideal of humanitas or in the sense of so-called Renaissance humanism. To the contrary he seems to have held throughout his writings that for any thoughtful person the most momentous contest is that between humane letters and divine or sacred letters, or, in the terms he takes from Tertullian, between Athens and Jerusalem. This contest has been a feature, perhaps the outstanding feature, of Jewish thoughtfulness since the Hellenistic era, when one disgruntled observer of contemporary devotees of the ways of the

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conquerors could write: "Cursed be the man who raises pigs or teaches his son Greek wisdom." 6 One might say that the hallmark of premodern Jewish thoughtfulness, if not also of Christian and Islamic thoughtfulness, is the unremittingly lived awareness of the power of the disparate claims advanced by the leading citizens of the two cities, Athens and Jerusalem. In contrast, Spinoza sets his unfading seal on the character of modern thoughtfulness when he so dissociates the two cities that the force of their rivalry is diminished, sometimes to a null-point. Perhaps it is not outlandish to say that he prophesizes this diminution in his notorious remark, "The Jews despise philosophy." 7 If, however, the conflict between Maimonides and Spinoza turns out to have been, at its deepest root, not a battle royal between the exemplar of premodern Jewish thinking and the exemplar of self-willed modernity, but a "shadow fight" between two thinkers in radical harmony with one another, then these consequences apparently follow without further ado: 1. The distinction between premodernity, at least in its medieval expression, and modernity is all along superficial; at most the distinction survives as the difference in degree of technical resourcefulness at the disposal of the two ages. 2. Maimonides' articulations of the struggle between Athens and Jerusalem must be reinterpreted as fundamentally rhetorical or homiletical, inasmuch as the palm has from the first been awarded to Athens. The discrepancy between Maimonides' fierce loyalty to Judaism and Spinoza's proud disloyalty should accordingly be construed as a difference in style. The Maimonides of the Mishneh Torah would be at one with the Maimonides of The Treatise on Poisons, i.e., in both cases dispensing medical remedies to the congenitally incapable or impaired, perhaps as a show of that love for o n e ' s own that stands somewhere between amour-propre and "hum anitarianism." Let me advance one last formulation of what is implied by the conversion of Spinoza into a "renegade Maimonidean" or, conversely, of Maimonides into a Spinozist avant la lettre: Tractate Megillah of the Talmud speaks, with reference to the Septuagint, of the desirability of bringing "the beauty of Japhet [that is, of the Greeks] into the tents of Shem." 8 The equation of Maimonideanism with Spinozism would lead us to interpret this as we would the nocturnal missions of Odysseus into the tents of the Trojans. II

What is most strikingly absent from the case Pines and Harvey make for some such equation, however delicately qualified, is the role played by early

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modern physics in Spinoza's thinking. In this, it must be said, they are in tacit agreement not only with Strauss himself, but with the "orthodox" reception of Spinoza inaugurated by Lessing and Mendelssohn. 9 The reasons behind the near-total neglect of Spinoza's place in the history of modem science are complex and need not be canvassed here in any detail. Certainly, Spinoza left nothing to posterity in any way resembling the systematic and technical achievements of Descartes, Leibniz, Huyghens, and Newton, but this by itself does not sufficiently warrant the inference that Spinoza's interest in modern physics was sporadic or secondary to other preoccupations. In his own self-understanding Spinoza was through and through what his friend Christian Huyghens called a "cosmotheoros," a spectator of the worldwhole. Indeed, in place of any systematic treatise on particular or comprehensive physical questions, Spinoza's central legacy to modern science is his sustained reflection on the most general conditions that must be satisfied if the new mathematical physics is to be both true of the world in its totality and adequately intelligible to human minds. Spinoza aims at furnishing the "transcendental" theory of cosmotheoria itself. The relevance of the foregoing to the Maimonides-Spinoza issue should be straightforwardly evident: To evaluate the relationship between Maimonides' phrase "the divine things, I mean, the natural things" (Moreh Nebuchim III, 32) and Deus sive natura, we must first have established what each understands by "nature" and hence by a science of nature. Having established this, we would have to go on to assess the variety of consonant or dissonant ways in which the two thinkers believe we can interpret apparently distinctive human matters exclusively or, for the most part, in the light of "the natural things," as each understands these. In other words, the interplay of physics and political anthropology manifest in both thinkers must be thought through in each case with an eye to ruptures as well as to continuities. On the present occasion I can only begin to communicate some suggestions of the manner in which that program might be fulfilled. My principal aim in making these suggestions will be to indicate how intimately reciprocal the relationship between commitment to the explanatory intentions of modem physics and the dismantling of scriptural theology turns out to be. Ill Spinoza's physics, his cosmotheoria, is both the locus and the result of a battle fought simultaneously on two fronts—one intramural, in which certain salient features of Cartesian science are challenged, the other extramural, in which the enemy is the rival format of "explanation" offered by premodem philosophical interpretations of the Bible. This means that Spinoza's Ethics and his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus work in tandem to establish the adequate groundwork for Spinoza's version of the new science of nature and to demolish the specious edifice of prescientific superstition. As we shall see,

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the notion that holds these two texts and projects in tandem is law, lex, understood for the first time in its unyielding univocity. The Intramural Battle Since I have dealt with Spinoza's critique of Cartesian physics elsewhere in some detail, let me offer on this occasion a brief summary of his major strategy and its principal consequences. 10 Spinoza's dominant strategic aim is to replace the heterogeneities and thus inconcinnities of Descartes' physics with homogeneities and thus strict congruities between the terms of physical explanation and the explananda themselves. He locates the source of these heterogeneities in the division and tension between Cartesian kinematics or phoronomy, on the one hand, and Cartesian dynamics, on the other. It is also a major consequence of this tension that the Cartesian physicist has no adequate and uniform account of corporeal individuation. Accordingly Spinoza's "project," seen most comprehensively, will be to reunite kinematics and dynamics in such a way as to yield an apt, structurally homogeneous theory of material individuals and their combinations. The key notion put to work, expressly or implicitly, in this reunification is conatus and with it Spinoza's understanding of motion and rest as equally self-expressive endeavors on the part of each finite mode to preserve its own, individual nature against the continuous intrusions of circumambient entities. Let me try to give these claims at least some substance before proceeding further. In Descartes' kinematics or science of local motion without regard to causes or forces, movement is defined as "the transport of one part of matter, or of a body, from the neighborhood of those which immediately touch it and which we consider as at rest in the neighborhood of some others." 11 This "relativistic" local motion—in which kinesis is reduced to the linear or annular locus marking the distance between starting point and end point—is exactly the notion that fits and satisfies Descartes' model of the spatial plenum, or, in other words, the identification of matter with geometrical extension. It is to be noted that "actual" movements in this plenum are always circular or annular, the results of the pressures exerted by surrounding or neighboring "parts" of one and the same res extensa. In Descartes' dynamics or science of the causes of motion, motion arises from the exertion of some force external or extrinsic to the mobile and is always both inertial and rectilinear. It is only under the latter two conditions that Descartes' controversial seven laws of impact can be fulfilled. However, the dynamical model in which "bodies" travel in straight lines is patently at odds with the kinematic model in which portions of matter are transported in curvilinear fashion. Furthermore, the bodies satisfying the dynamical model must be perfectly inelastic or solid, while Descartes is required to introduce three distinct varieties of matter, differing in elasticity, when he fleshes out

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his initial kinematic model into an explanation of the universe. Finally, it is this same duality separating kinematics from dynamics that lies at the root of the bedeviling issue of individuation in Descartes. Perhaps as a token of his own acknowledgment of the perplexities brought about by that duality, Descartes speaks of a body's "tendency or conatus to move in a straight line" (under the impulsion of extrinsic forces). However, Cartesian conatus is itself derived from the "abstract" or unrealizable principle of inertia and so cannot serve to single out "real" individuals in the domain of extended substance. On the other side, since the kinematic definition is relativistic (a body or part of matter is transported relatively to a neighboring ensemble considered as at rest), it, too, fails to furnish an independent or context-free specification of what it is to be this one body, with appropriate marks of continuity, reidentifiability, and the like. The perplexities thereby brought to the fore within Descartes' technical elaboration of a new physics meant to be "nothing other than geometry" gain special poignancy when what is in question is that seemingly special or even self-evident case of my one body.12 Spinoza may be said to "solve" or "dissolve" these difficulties with a single stroke by virtue of his generalized theory of conatus, inasmuch as this can be understood as that intrinsic source or cause of all motion and rest that was signally lacking in Descartes. (In letters written toward the end of his life, Spinoza is at pains to make plain his radical dissent from Cartesian physics; so, for instance, writing to Tschirnhaus in May 1676 he says: "From extension as Descartes conceives it, namely, a quiescent mass, it is not only difficult, as you say, but absolutely impossible to prove the existence of [particular] bodies. . . . For this reason I have not hesitated on a former occasion to affirm that the Cartesian principles of natural things are useless, not to say absurd.") 13 To see this at work in its simplest terms we need only observe how Spinoza defines a body as a "certain ratio of motion and rest" and, in turn, how he understands the endeavor to conserve exactly that ratio (and no other) as the constitutive essence of that body (and of no other). To cite the exceedingly concise formulation we find in the so-called Short Treatise, "Every particular corporeal thing is nothing other than a certain ratio [zeekere proportie] of motion and rest." 14 The rewards derived from making the conatus to preserve a determinate ratio of motion and rest into the very essence of each singular body are considerable. First, inertia now becomes an abstraction from conatus rather than vice versa; that is to say, the former belongs only to what Spinoza names the corpora simplicissima and is never confused with individuals or singular bodies. In this case rectilinear motion comes about solely in virtue of the repulsion of neighboring bodies and is always ambiguous in respect to both velocity and vectorial direction. "Genuine" motion, if that epithet may be used, is the motion of a composite, however temporary, of corpora

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simplicissima and takes place in the infinite plenum occupied to the full by other compounds on the move or resisting the intrusions of others. Since, however, it is the conserved ratio of motion and rest that defines the essence of any "one body," the particular identity or fate of the compounded corpora simplicissima is less salient than their joint satisfaction of that ratio (and there are, of course, infinitely many "numbers" satisfying any given ratio m:n). To put this in less strict terms, any "one body" is a temporary or lasting alliance of simples yoked together in pursuit of a single aim, selfconservation via maximal activity or what might be called incessant selfexhibition. (Spinoza on one occasion refers to this as the actus extendendi, the act of self-extension via motion and rest.) 15 Furthermore, by making conatus and the ratio of motion and rest corresponding to it in each case the conditions both of actual motion (or rest) and of corporeal individuation Spinoza can replace the ad hoc heterogeneity of elastic and inelastic bodies and the three varieties of Cartesian matter by a homogeneous scheme in which two features are most prominent: First, hardness and softness become differences of degree, not of kind, a function of the area of contact between the surfaces of the component parts of a body; hence, as he argues in his remarks on Boyle's Historia fluiditatis etfirmitatis (see Ep. XI), the distinction between hard and fluid as ordinarily understood or experienced vanishes when the motions of component parts relative to one another's bulk or mass (moles) display the same ratio. Second, the relation between singular bodies and the whole of geometrical extension can now be clarified: There is a continuous progression from the most simple to the most complex and in this progression the composition of ratios of motion and rest demarcates the successive stages. Thus, we pass from the lowest stage (that of the corpora simplicissima) through what is presumably an infinite sequence of more complicated stages (including that of some one human body and of those associations of human bodies known as commonwealths or societies) until we reach the final stage, where we encounter, as it were, the integral of all the different constitutive ratios of bodies on all the lower stages. Spinoza gives this integral the name fades totius univeri, the "face of the entire universe," and treats it as the infinite mediate mode of the attribute Extension. One last "reward" issuing from Spinoza's transformation of Cartesian physics: In the latter the distinction between rest and motion remains fundamentally ambiguous, especially when motion is itself understood as a "state" that, like "rest" itself, can be transferred from one "body" to another. Spinoza is both insistent and consistent in pairing motion with rest in his formulations of basic physical principles; his motive seems to be to accentuate the equally intrinsic character of both and, that means, their equipollent roles in a body's efforts at self-conservation and self-exhibition. "Rest" expresses a body's active extension toward holding the continual pressures and intrusions of neighboring bodies "at bay"; motion is the

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similarly active prolongation of that body's career vis-à-vis other proximately or remotely influential bodies. Rest and motion, then, are two sides of a single coin stamped with the seal of conatus. I have deliberately omitted from this compendious summary several of the most vexed questions raised by Spinoza's elaboration of a science of bodies. For instance, does he have any particular physical model in mind when he refers to the corpora simplicissima? How influential was Huyghens's theory of isochronous pendula, where it is proved that the periods of pendula are independent of the amplitude of "swing" as well as of the weight and mass of the suspended bobs? 16 (We might note, very much in passing, how the temporality of pendular motion answers more nearly to Spinoza's inherent duratio than to the derivative notion of tempus.) Moreover, I have left untouched the curious status of mathematics in Spinoza's elaboration: On one side, he asserts that mathematical notions such as measure and numbers are only auxilia imaginationis—aids to the imagination—and thus lack ontological standing in their own right; on the other side, the "determinate ratio of motion and rest" is, as I have argued, the very essence of any body and thus precisely what is known when we have adequate intuitive knowledge of some such singular. Since ratio is an unmistakably mathematical notion for Spinoza, how can it be both imaginative and the content of scientia intuitiva? Perhaps his use of the derivation of the fourth proportional in Eudoxean theory as the model for the third kind of knowledge can be made to point the way toward further illumination of this paradox. 17 Finally, my brief account of Spinoza's physics contained nothing about the endlessly problematic relations between bodies and minds. In my opinion, which I cannot defend at any length here, there is a deliberate asymmetry lodged in the so-called psychophysical parallelism Spinoza is believed to have advocated. By this I mean that Spinoza's conception of mind is shaped to accord with his theory of body, so much so that there are no intelligibles—noeta—for the mind to grasp apart from the doings and passions of "its" body. This asymmetry is especially pressing when Spinoza comes, in Book V of the Ethics, to talk of the eternality of minds; according to Proposition 29, "Whatsoever the mind understands [intelligit] under the look of eternity, it does not understand by virtue of conceiving the present actual existence of this body, but by conceiving the essence of the body [that is, its ratio of motion and rest], under the look of eternity," while according to Proposition 39, "He who has a body apt for doing the greatest number of things is one who has a mind of which the greatest part is eternal." Spinoza captures the force of this asymmetry most boldly in the earlier Short Treatise: "For as the body is, so the soul, idea, knowledge, etc." 18 To bring this part of my discussion to a close, let me reemphasize the governing strategy Spinoza deploys in his transformative critique of Cartesian natural science: Difference is to give way to (partial) identities, heterogeneity to homogeneity. This rule holds sway in regard both to

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principles of explanation and to the items thereby rendered explicable. Indeed, in the light of Spinoza's own procedures we can begin to see how the ordo cognoscendi dominates the ordo essendi: Formal or structural principles constraining the formation of explanatory theories (principles such as those of homogeneity, univocity, continuity, simplicity, cognitive transparency, or adequacy) dictate the nature of the entities, patterns, and sequences required for their own satisfaction or referential saturation. Or, in other words, Spinoza's ontology is a semantic model in which the syntactic desideratum of physical theorizing itself holds true. It remains for us to see if (and how) Spinoza can guarantee that this model is also unique. This brings me to the grand theme of law. I want to argue three interconnected points with respect to this theme: First, it is the notion of law or, so to speak, of the law of laws, that generates and continues to govern Spinoza's articulation of science in general, that is, without restriction to either bodies or minds. Second, in forging his conception of law as inviolably binding or necessitating, Spinoza rejects two contemporary attempts to link together the new physics with the idea of legislation— explicitly, he rejects the Cartesian theory of the creation of external truths while, implicitly, he forswears the Leibnizian doctrine of selection among possible worlds. Third, throughout this process Spinoza's preoccupations are simultaneously with the foundations of physical theory and with theological politics; put more strongly, he endeavors to usurp the idea of law from its theological-political setting by undermining that setting itself as it was construed pre-Spinozistically. And it is this aspect of his endeavor that brings him into most pointed conflict with Maimonidcs and his supple equivocations in regard to divine law, nature, and the Jewish community. These three arguments could be brought into closer unity if we were to say the lex is the Spinozistic arche, the genetic definition of which yields the construction of the unique and comprehensive domain held under its power, in much the way the genetic definition of a circle in principle yields the comprehensive set of all truths necessarily holding good for all circles. Lex appears with surprising infrequency in the Ethics, while it is clearly one of the dominant themes and most frequently occurring terms in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. This lexical observation is, I think, already suggestive and needs to be thought through in company with the fact that Spinoza nowhere in the Ethics defines what law is, even though it figures crucially in his explanation of the all-important Proposition 15 of Book I: "Whatever is, is in God and nothing can be or be conceived without God," as well as in the logically dependent Proposition 17: "God acts solely by the laws of his own nature and docs not act under constraint by anyone." A preliminary hypothesis explaining these data could take its start from his remark in the Tractatus, Chapter IV, that the term lex seems to be used of "natural things" only per translationem, by which phrase we should understand something stronger than metaphorical transposition—perhaps

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something akin to the Aristotelian metabasis eis alio genos, although here this would name not a fault, but a fate, of reasoning. In less sybilline terms, we can adumbrate the initial phenomenon as follows: Law seems (and the videtur is, I think, important here) to refer to human mandates or commandments that human beings can either carry through (perficere) or neglect. When this commonsense or historical or prescientific notion is translated ad res naturales, what drops away is, first of all, any suggestion of optionality, of what can be obeyed or, as it may be, disobeyed. In the next place, however, and even more crucially, the translated (and thereby rectified) concept of law must be shorn of all apparent reference to a legislator at liberty to institute such-and-such laws or to substitute others for them. Thus, Spinoza emphasizes that talk of God as a "lawgiver or prince" is merely talk ex captu vulgi, accommodating itself to the "deficiency of cognition" characteristic of the multitude in all ages. Consequently, optionality disappears from both sides of the "legislative" relation, from the authors as well as from the recipients of law; this disappearance leaves behind as the core of the law "taken absolutely" the intertwined notions of necessity, comprehensiveness, and precision or adequacy. His first example brings home with considerable clarity how these three are interwoven: "For instance, that all bodies, whenever they impinge on smaller bodies, lose just as much of their motion as they communicate to the other bodies, [this] is a universal law of all bodies, a law which follows from the necessity of nature." All bodies without exception come under this law and no sense can be given to the thought that some might evade or fail to observe it. Furthermore, when the law has been comprehended in a clearly determined way, nothing remains in need of explanation in any physical episode in which impact is involved; to understand the law of the reciprocal loss and communication of quantity of motion just is to comprehend fully what transpires in impact under this aspect. 19 Three observations seem in order before we return directly to the circumstances of the genesis of Spinozistic law: First, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in its entirety might be understood as the dual movement of translation and retranslation of the concept of lex. That is, having secured the purified concept of law as necessity, comprehensiveness, and adequate intelligibility by translating it from the realm of human commandments, Spinoza can in what follows undertake to retranslate this same concept back into that domain. This will bring to light certain revolutionary consequences, revolutionary, that is, from the standpoint of the multitude as well as from that of the neophyte philosopher hitherto accustomed to the multitude's habits of thought. What will emerge most decisively is the law (or small set of laws) from which the prescientific understanding of law, legislation, legislators, obedience, and disobedience can all be intelligibly derived. Spinoza will thus, by his own lights, succeed in providing a scientific account, anchored to the purified

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concept of law as it operates within human nature and human history, of how human beings have come to misconstrue both so badly and so efficaciously the meaning of law. In particular, the purified concept of law will fully illuminate the unavoidably impure law of Moses. 20 Second, as others have already noted, Spinoza's preferred formula for the purified conception has two elements, namely, laws and rules (leges et regulae), as in the pivotal summary found in Chapter VI of the Tractatus: "Whatever happens, happens in accordance with laws and rules which involve [i.e., contain in their innermost "folds"] eternal necessity and truth; therefore nature always observes laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and truth, even though not all of these are known to us, just as it observes a fixed and immutable order." The most plausibly helpful explanation of this dual wording would trace the use of regulae back to Bacon, who in the third aphorism of the New Organon asserts that "what in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule." Spinoza appears to follow the Baconian analogy, quite possibly as it reappears in Descartes' Regulae and Principles, the analogy thanks to which the gap between theory and productive practice is straightaway spanned, not to say eliminated. 21 The law, in the purified conception, is not merely a theoretical statement of "regularities" in the course of nature, it is also, perhaps primarily, the rule by which configurations and sequences in nature are eternally brought about and so can be brought about anew, in the same or in transfigured fashion, by those who comprehend the relevant leges et regulae. The other face of this unification of theory with productive practice will also emerge in the course of Spinoza's critical retranslation back into the impure conception, for in the latter we shall discover commandments to actions only, issue and obeyed without adequate theoretical insight into the necessities from which such actions have arisen. A third and final observation concerns the phrasing we encountered toward the start of Chapter IV of the Tractatus: ex necessitate naturae. There, and throughout his writings, Spinoza slides without apparent effort between a restricted and an unrestricted "reading" of this and cognate expressions. In the former, what is in question is the nature of some class of particular things, while in the latter, what is in view is nature in its totality. The point is not a minor one, since what it is for some class of particulars to operate in necessary accordance with the laws of their nature is for them to express in a determinate manner the unrestricted or infinite nature of nature in its totality. 2 2 Or, in other terms, the "active essence" of God is always on exhibit in a particular manner throughout the "law-abiding" career of each class and this is, at bottom, the only essence (or infinite power) so exhibited. Deus sive natura can consequently and consistently be taken to denote the inexorable lawfulness of all the laws and rules. This last observation brings us back to the double matrix that gives birth to Spinoza's purified conception: his opposition to contemporary

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theories of the origins of laws of nature, on the one hand, and his subversion of the Maimonidean understanding of these matters, on the other. Of these contemporary theories, one was well known to Spinoza from Descartes' correspondence with Mersenne, especially the letter of April 15, 1630, in which Descartes speaks memorably and mystifyingly of a dependence of eternal truths on God as complete as that of all the rest of the creatures. "Do not fear, I beg you, to give assurance and to publicize everywhere that it is God who has established these laws in nature, just as a King establishes laws in his kingdom." This and allied pasages have attracted considerable commentary in recent years, most notably in Jean-Luc Marion's Sur la théologie blanche de DescartesP In the present context I want to bring to the fore two and only two aspects of what is arguably involved in Descartes' position. First, the absolute dependence of nonetheless eternal truths on God, who institutes them the way a king institutes laws, means that there is no analytical relationship tying these truths to the definition of divine substance (where "substance" in any case is predicated equivocally of God and finite substances). Instead, their status in the order of knowing is similar to that of synthetic a priori truths in Kant, at least in this key respect: Discovering such truths via the method of the new science counts as genuine discovery; it yields ampliative knowledge in Kant's sense. It is as though the createdness and hence radical contingency of eternal truths pose a continual challenge to the Cartesian ego cogitans. This is, I think, in harmony with the second aspect. Not only does Descartes commit himself to a rather special version of voluntarism with regard to necessary, eternal truths, i.e., the laws of nature, a version at least echoed later by Newton in the Optics when he stresses that God could "vary the laws of nature and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the Universe"; in addition, this divine voluntarism is, so to speak, the reflection or projection of the primacy of human will even, or especially, in matters of knowing. Despite the equivocity of "substance," Descartes is prepared to claim that the divine and the human are alike in sharing an infinity of will. Consequently, the will that goes into the creation of eternal truths is matched, in point of intensity, if not strictly in extension, by the human will that goes into the uncovering or reproduction of those same truths. With this the roots of Descartes' doctrine in theology and anthropology begin to expose themselves. 24 Spinoza, who reproduces a version of Descartes' original teaching in his early Cogitata Metaphysica II, paragraph 9), repudiates it decisively in the Ethics, as, for example, in the demonstration of Proposition 33 in Book I: "If things . . . could have been of a different nature, or be determined to act in a different manner, so that the order of nature would have been different, then the nature of God would also have been able to be different from what it is now, and thus this other nature would have had to exist (by Prop. 11) and consequently it would have been possible for two or more Gods to exist. This is absurd."

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Spinoza, we should note, does not only repudiate Cartesian voluntarism on the grounds that it leads to the manifest absurdity that more than one God is capable of existing at the same time; he is also concerned to undermine the similarity between God and the king in his kingdom, as we already know from the Tractatus Theologicn-Politicus. It belongs to the inmost character of law in the purified conception that it could not have been otherwise and that it is inviolably operative. Unless these characteristics of law are strictly maintained, there is still room left for the incompatible, vulgar understanding such as we meet within the traditional interpretation of Mosaic legislation and the accompanying notions of reward and punishment. At all events, Spinoza places alongside the doctrine of extreme voluntarism a second theory that he says is even further from the truth. According to the second theory, God acts not by his indifferent will but sub ratione boni, by reason of some good. Spinoza straightaway construes this ratio boni as an exemplar that must be independent of God. But to say this, he adds in accents echoing Descartes' letter of 1630, is "to subjugate God to fate." The movement of thought from action sub ratione boni, through the positing of an independent exemplar, to the thinly veiled accusation of paganism needs more careful inspection than I can give it here. It would be more valuable, I think, to consider the extreme form of the second theory as it appears in Leibniz's notion of divine selection among an infinity of possible worlds, the essences of which, or the essences of whose "members," all strive equally for existence. The criteria of divine, world-actualizing selection, are far from being univocally clear in Leibniz's labyrinthine writings; it is nonetheless fair to say that under one primary conception it is the inner structure of the possible worlds themselves that determines or codetermines divine choice. "Inner structure" is used here to include not only the compossibility of essences or individual substances but also the degree of perfection manifest in them sub ratione possibilitatis. Divine purpose is only actualized to the maximum when the possible world whose exigence of existence is in fact satisfied is that world which possesses the maximum of internal perfection and can be realized most economically. 25 For my purposes what is most pertinent in this truncated version of Leibniz's theory is the sense in which the degree of perfection or, as he says, of "quantity of essence," is itself independent of divine will and so can constrain the latter from below, as it were. Essences, or eternal truths about essences, act in the manner of the exemplar that, Spinoza claims, leads to our "subjugating God to fate." For Spinoza, to the contrary, to speak of the essence of any particular or class is finally to speak of an expression of the unique and uniquely necessary essence of God or nature. Furthermore, the very language of "possible worlds" would itself be alien to Spinoza's ears since possibility is replaced without remainder by potency or power in his thinking, and of this power he is ready to demonstrate that all of its effects must necessarily exist (Ethics, Book I, Proposition 34). Not to have given

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existence to a "possible world" would therefore testify, per absurdum, to some deficiency in God's power, that is, in his infinitely self-expressive essence. It must suffice to note here, in the briefest possible way, that Leibniz's theory, as much as Descartes', is moored to something other than an innocent logic of pure modalities. God, he argues near the end of the Monadology, is both the architect of the natural world and the legislator of "the moral world within the natural world." The allegedly perfect correspondence between divine architecture and divine legislation is what guarantees the ultimate identity of nature and grace, that is, of efficient and final causes. 26 From Spinozistic optic, these claims would inevitably appear to be a retrogression to the impure and vulgar imagination that continually threatens to block the achievement of authentic science. To summarize this rapid survey of Spinoza's critique of two rival contemporary theories: For him the actually operative laws of nature are neither radically contingent, i.e., dependent on "God's decree alone" nor are they the outcome of partially constrained divine selection among competing possibilities, each with its intrinsic, underived, and underivable degree of perfection or quantity of essence. Since the laws in their totality and integrity are nothing other than the actual essence of God, the latter is neither free, nor constrained ab alio in regard to these laws. To express this in the Christian scholastic language current since the condemnation of 1277, for Spinoza God's potentia absoluta is, perforce, identical with his potentia ordinata, and nothing can prise the two apart. Spinoza's God, i.e., nature understood as the realm of "laws and rules" is self-necessitated necessity. 27 If Spinoza's polemical tasks vis-à-vis his contemporaries were arduous, they were, I suggest, just as pressing and even more intricate when his target was his most important Jewish ancestor, Maimonides. Reflections such as the following may show us why this is so. 28 The Extramural Battle If, as Strauss argued, philosophy can never disprove the possibility of revelation, it can, in its modem form, try to persuade its potential adherents that the new sciences provide an understanding of the world that is at once superior in theoretical certainty or completeness to the understanding adduced from the Torah and more useful to human beings than the understanding of human matters supported by that same source. Appeals to certainty and assurances of utility work hand in hand in this persuasive endeavor, as they must when the weightiest premise and/or conclusion of the new science of nature is that the human realm cannot be regarded as "a kingdom within a kingdom," somehow exempted from the laws and rules of nature in its totality. A fortiori, the "commonwealth of the Hebrews" could never have been, nor could it ever be, a kingdom within a kingdom within a kingdom in the sense of special exemption or in the sense of special providence. If

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Spinoza ultimately points to the superior utility of the lessons learned from the Hebrew commonwealth in comparison to the lessons culled from Christian commonwealths, this is because, according to him, the former, unlike the latter, was based on laws commanding actions alone and never on laws dictating opinions or beliefs. Accordingly, the former, but not the latter, provides an historical precedent for libertas philosophandi, even though its "laws" as such are rooted in ignorance of the true order of the world. 29 Questions of forbidding intricacy loom at the center of my inquiry as a result of the preceding reflections, foremost among them this: Are Maimonides' deepest suggestions concerning both nature and the roots of the Commandments compatible with Spinoza's teachings? Because the lines of demarcation between Maimonides' esoteric and his exoteric teachings are so elusive, to say the least, confidence about these issues is inevitably chimerical. Moreover, limitations of space and expertise prohibit me from doing anything more than offering some tangential remarks and tracing some possible paths from them toward the center of the question. Whatever the ultimate origin of Mosaic legislation in Maimonides' eyes, that is, whether the mitzvot are miraculously revealed from Sinai or stem from a marvelously prophetic act of imaginative, human construction, the telos of that legislation bears witness to its divinity just to the extent that the commandments can be understood as promoting the fourfold perfection of human nature as set out in Book III, Chapter 54. 30 Because these four species of perfection are, or so it seems, derived exclusively from human affairs and desires as they are humanly experienced and understood, and hence not from a more comprehensive and putatively more certain science of nature in toto, the legislation promoting them remains open to judicious accommodations, if not to patent amendments. (See, for example, the discussion of wine drinking from the perspective of medicine and the law, respectively, at the end of Maimonides' "Discourse on the Explanation of Fits.") 31 Spinoza and Maimonides thus appear to disagree not only on the telos of Mosaic legislation (which is, for Spinoza, purely and simply selfpreservation within the Hebrew theocracy), but also on the relative importance of origin and telos to the determination of the "divinity" of that legislation. Since, for Spinoza, the laws of the Hebrew state could not have originally been derived from an adequate grasp of divine law in the purified meaning of that phrase, that is, as identical in reference and in sense to law of nature, it makes no sense to view those civil laws as ex post facto identical or consonant with divine law. Nor, for that matter, could Mosaic legislation be meaningfully revived in light of the purified conception of laws and rules of nature because its telos, as interpreted by Maimonides, is not consistent with the view of human perfection entailed in that conception. Spinoza replaces Maimonides' fourfold perfection in which theoretical virtues are at the apex with an amalgam forged of restively utilitarian self-preservation and calmly hedonic self-satisfaction or self-absorption, namely, acquiescientia in

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se ipso, said to be "in reality the highest thing for which we can hope" {Ethics, Book IV, Proposition 52, Scholium). The discussion of "intellectual love of God" in Book V of the Ethics serves to strengthen, not to undo, this amalgam. 32 These apparent disagreements would, however, lose most of their initial force if it could be shown that on Maimonides' genuine view nature, including human nature, is rigidly determined by laws in something approximating the purified Spinozistic conception. For, if this were the case, then the Mosaic Commandments would continue to be reasonable, for Maimonides himself, only if they could be shown to confomi to the putative "laws of nature." Any failure of conformity would consign the particular laws affected to the status of mere leges humanae arising from failures of understanding, i.e., from the multitude's twin dependence on imagination and fear. Does, then, Maimonides hold that nature itself is the realm of inexorable, unbreakable laws? Certainly the safest response to this question, implicating as it does such issues as creation vs. eternity and the status of miracles, is to say that darkness abounds. Some light might be thrown by the following mainly linguistic observations and hypotheses. I. Despite the impression conveyed by some modem translations, Maimonides, as far as I have been able to determine, never conjoins the term for revealed law (shari'a; torah) with the term for nature (tabi'a) to yield any expression equivalent in force to Spinoza's conjunction of divine law with law of nature. Moreover, the Arabic caique namus denotes "convention" or humanly instituted usage and is not used, again as far as I can tell, of nature in toto. 33 II. Rather, when Maimonides is discussing the regularity of nature, for instance, of biological patterns, he often cites as his prooftext the talmudic dictum olam ke-minhago noheg (the world follows its normal, customary path). Since the Hebrew minhag ordinarily denotes "custom," "habit," or "behavior" rather than law interpreted as exceptionless necessity, it is most probably misleading to render that dictum with the phrase "laws of nature" as though in anticipation of seventeenth-century scientific and metaphysical usage. (That the Maimonidean contexts in question are quite often eschatological or messianic is itself suggestive of one intended nuance he gives the talmudic dictum, namely, that the "habits" acquired by the Jews in pre-messianic times be preserved in the messianic period when the subjection to foreign peoples has come to an end.) 34 III. This does not, of course, mean that Maimonides has no use for any notion of divine governance or regulation of nature. On the contrary, in the Moreh the Arabic tadbir appears frequently and is usually rendered by Samuel Ibn Tibbon by the Hebrew term hanhagah, from the same root as minhag in the previously cited talmudic saying. While tadbir does indeed mean

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governance and even law, it is an equivocal term, as Maimonides would have known in the first instance from the beginning of Ibn Bajja's Governance of the Solitary, where it is said to be applied with different meanings, or amphibolously, to God, the celestial spheres, nature as a whole, and even the realm of human civic affairs. It is exceedingly difficult to know whether this equivocity is, for Maimonides, by chance or grounded in some commonality of meaning (in the manner of Aristotle's pros-hen equivocals). If the latter is the case, then we might be led to suggest that at least in his official teaching Maimonides views God as habituating the world to its normal course (whether eternally a parte ante or a parte post) in something like the way a human ruler accustoms his subjects to politically requisite actions, passions, and opinions. In this view explicit legislation plays the role of an instrument well suited to the execution of that governing purpose. Or, in other terms, in this interpretation of tadbir the laws are subordinate to the habits and dispositions they promote. It is within this setting that Maimonides' references to the "wily graciousness" or "gracious ruse" of the deity display one more facet of their meaning, to wit, the reciprocal accommodation of acquired or instituted habits and inherent natures. IV. These hypotheses seem to be in agreement with two crucial passages in the Moreh, the first in Book II, Chapter 40, the second in Book III, Chapter 43. In the first passage, where he is expounding the Aristotelian claim that man is by nature a political animal, he says that "the revealed law, although it is not natural, enters into what is natural" (laha madkhal fi). In context this would appear to mean that the revealed law, like a wise legislator, disguises the natural diversity, even opposition, within the human species by establishing "multiple points of conventional accord" and thereby securing the well-ordered community. In the second passage Maimonides is discussing the reason the feast of Pesach lasts for seven days. "You know already that this period plays a great role in natural matters. It does so likewise in matters pertaining to the revealed law: for the law always tends to assimilate itself to Nature, perfecting the natural matters in a certain respect." Here he seems to be alluding to Aristotle's statement in the Physics: "In general, then, art either imitates the beings that are by nature or completes [epitelei] that which nature is unable to bring to completion" (199a 15 f.). The second passage, when read in light of this allusion to Aristotle, suggests that the relation of revealed law to nature is technical, rather than constitutive or derivative. Whatever its origin, the wisdom of the Mosaic law would thus be exhibited in its artful ability to supply, on the basis of nature, what nature itself either lacks or is unable to perfect. V. One last "semantic" observation. In a note in his 1937 article on "The Place of the Doctrine of Providence According to Maimonides," Strauss mentions that in what he regarded as the first main section of the Guide, the preferred term for providence is tadbir, while in the second, concluding

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section the preferred term is inaya, corresponding to the theoretical character of the first section and the practical character of the second. 35 More recently, Aryeh Nuriel has returned to the same lexical distinction. 3 6 Nuriel identifies tadbir with the "governance of God" identified with "the natural order of the universe," while he undertakes to show that 'inaya indicates "special divine providence" and is "exercised over human beings only, in accordance with each individual's intellect." To assess the full weight of these findings would require a detailed examination of the comparative standing of the theoretical and the practical lives according to Maimonides. 37 In the absence of such an examination I can only suggest that these findings tend to confirm that for Maimonides the only reasonable and responsible way in which to grasp the human things in their human dimensions is to maintain the presence of that "kingdom within a kingdom" eschewed by Spinoza in virtue of the homogeneous format of principles required by the new science. VI. These linguistic questions to one side, it still remains for us to inspect the key difference between the Maimonidean understanding of natural form or essence and the modem surrogate for form, Platonic or Aristotelian, namely, law. Even if Maimonides believed in uncreated natural essences it would remain the case that such essences bear chief responsibility for an entity's being timelessly what it is (in the sense of the Aristotelian ti en einai), and only thus for its specific performances in time. A Spinozistic essence, in contrast, is identical with a certain ratio of motion and rest in virtue of which an individual may succeed in conserving its existence (its being this one individual) over longer or shorter durations. Accordingly, the philosophers' dictum so often cited by Maimonides (and made pivotal by Pines), that God is simultaneously the intellect, the intellecting subject, and the intellected object, has to be understood in keeping with the Aristotelian doctrine of intelligible essences, not with the Spinozistic doctrine of lawabiding individuals. The considerations I have sketched are intended to have only tentative, heuristic value. They nevertheless seem to me to point toward one central conclusion: that the Spinozistic leges et regulae naturae are not at home in Maimonides' thought. Perhaps, though, it would be more prudent to say that in this matter, as in most others, we confront the disparity between Spinoza's unyielding demand for rigid univocities and Maimonides' supple or wily equivocations. Spinoza's assault on Maimonides under the banner of the new science of nature can also be taken as his attempt to replace that suppleness with certainty, at any cost. Does Spinoza succeed in "laying down the law" with impunity? The successful course of modern physical science, at least until recent decades, might make that very question seem impudent. Nevertheless, two issues calling for further reflection present themselves in lieu of a finale.

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If lex, in Spinoza, n a m e s the maximum of both demonstrative penetration and causal power, then we might do well to reconsider Hegel's demontage of the legal edifice of modern science in Kraft und Verstand, where we are put in the position of experiencing the self-evacuating, nugatory, character of the concept of physical law on its own. At the heart of the putative law of nature stands "consciousness . . . in unmediated conversation with itself." Scientific nomos is inevitably a matter of self-satisfying human thesis}* What, then, of the distinction between divine commandment and "mere" human law, the distinction collapsed into unity in Spinoza's enterprise? Would any attempt to restore that distinction lead, sooner or later, pleasurably or distressingly, to much the same end to which Hegel's disarticulation of "true" or substantial physical law led? Put most sharply, would the pre-Spinozistic, or, perhaps, the Maimonidean, understanding of the mitzvot as divinely instituted give way to yet another version of the "unmediated conversation" human consciousness conducts with itself? And if it is yet another version, is its vocal outcome worth a hearing, or does it amount to endless babble indistinguishable from thoughtless silence? In his early essay, "Der Geist des Christenthums," Hegel retells the story (recently retold by Jacques Derrida in his commentary on Franz K a f k a ' s parable "Vor dem Gesetz,") of Pompey the Great: Having entered the tabernacle in the hope of "finding in one central point the life-giving soul of this remarkable people, to gaze on a being as an object for his devotion [Pompey] might well have been astonished on entering the arcanum to find himself deceived so far as some of his expectations were concerned, and, for the rest, to find himself in an empty room." 3 9 I, for one, regret that Leo Strauss is not here to illumine these questions with the elegance of his ellipses. NOTES 1. Cited from Paul Wienpahl, The Radical Spinoza (New York, 1979), p. 57. On Spinoza's intention to write a work "against the Jews," see F. Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (New York, 1899), p. 19, n. 1. For the origin of the attempts to assimilate Spinoza to non-Western traditions see Yuen-Ting Lai, "The Linking of Spinoza to Chinese Thought by Boyle and Malebranche," Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985), pp. 151-178. 2. Warren Zev Harvey, "A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean," Journal of the History of Philosophy 20 (1981), pp. 151-172, at p. 172. For Pines, see "Quelques réflexions sur Maimonide en guise de préface," in Moise Maimonide, Le Livre de la connaissance, trans. V. Nikiprowetzky and A. Zadui (Paris, 1961), pp. 1 - 1 9 ; "Translator's Introduction," in Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago, 1963), pp. l v i i - c x x x i v ; and "Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Polilicus, Maimonides and Kant," Scripta Hierosolymitana 20 (1968), pp. 3-54. (On significant changes in Pines's views see note 37 below.)

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3. Pines, "Translator's Introduction," p. xcviii. 4. Harvey, "Portrait of Spinoza," p. 166. 5. See Karl Joel, Spinozas Theologisch-Politischer Traktat auf seine Quellen geprüft (Breslau, 1870), and H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA, 1934). 6. Cited in Menachem Marc Kellner, "Rabbi Isaac Bar Sheshet's Responsum Concerning the Study of Greek Philosophy," Tradition 15 (1975), pp. 110-118, at p. 112. See also bT, Menahoth, 99b, and Saul Lieberman, "The Alleged Ban on Greek Wisdom," in his Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1962), pp. 100-114. For the (putative) influences of the Greek schools, see Henry A. Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy: A Study of Epicurea and Rhetorica in Early Midrashic Writings, Studia Post-Biblica 21 (Leiden, 1973). See also Ernest Wiesenberg, "Related Prohibitions: Swine Breeding and the Study of Greek," HUCA 27 (1956), pp. 213-233. 7. The context of Spinoza's remark is set out with great care by I. S. Revah, "Aux origines de la rapture spinozienne," Revue des études juifs 123 (1964), pp. 359—431, and Henri Mechoulan, "Spinoza à la charnière de deux mondes: orthodoxie et hétérodoxie," Revue de synthèses 99 (1978), pp. 129140. 8. See bT, Megillah, 9b. 9. For the "Spinoza-Renaissance" see Herman Thim, Gott und die Freiheit. der Goethezeit, vol. 1 (Frankfurt, 1974), Studien zur Religionsphilosophie together with Sylvain Z a c ' s review "La Renaissance de Spinoza dans la philosophie religieuse en Allemagne à l'époque de Goethe," Cahiers Spinoza 3 (1970-1980), pp. 239-270. Also of interest are Zac, "Le spinozisme épure de Lessing vu par Moses Mendelssohn," Revue de métaphysique et de morale 87 (1982), pp. 4 5 0 - 4 7 7 , and " L ' A u f k l ä r u n g . Spinoza et le problème de foi," Archives de philosophie 46 (1983), pp. 568-582, as well as David Bell, Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe (London, 1984). The all-important exchange between Lessing and Jacobi is now available in English: The Spinoza Conversations Between Lessing and Jacobi, Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing Controversy. . . . translated by Gerard Vallé et al., (Lanham, MD, 1988). From these sources the displacement or replacement of the new physics by an "enlightened" natural theology becomes visible. 10. See D. R. Lachterman, "The Physics of Spinoza's Ethics," in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. J. Biro and R. Shahan (Norman, OK, 1980), pp. 71-112 (originally published 1977). Among the handful of studies devoted to this topic after the original publication of that essay, the following deserve special mention: A. Lecrivain, "Spinoza et la physique cartesienne," Cahiers Spinoza 1 (1977), pp. 273-291; D. Parrochia, "Optique, mécanique et calcul des chances chez Huygens et Spinoza," Dialectica 38 (1984), pp. 319-345; and Y. Toros, "Spinoza, précurseur de l'idée moderne d'espace," Recherches sur le XVII siècle 7 (1984), pp. 151-158. For a more expansive view, see James Collins, Spinoza on Nature (Carbondale, IL, 1984). 11. R. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, A.-T., VIII-1, pp. 53-54. 12. See the classic work of G. Rodis-Lewis, L'Individualité selon Descartes (Paris, 1950). 13. Benedicti de Spinoza, Opera quotquot reperta sunt, ed. J. Von Vloten and J. P. N. Land (The Hague, 1914), Tomus III, p. 241. 14. Ibid., IV, p. 93. 15. See the references to an actus extendendi (ibid., IV, p. 143) and to the Kragt van uytwerkinge (Force of Effectuation; ibid., IV, p. 72). On the topic as a

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whole, see M. Messeri, "Il corpo singolo nella teoría fisica délia materia di Spinoza ed in quella di Descartes," Annali délia Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Lettere e filosofía (Serie III), 14 (1984), pp. 771-795. 16. Compare Parrochia, "Optique," pp. 332-340. 17. See A. Matheron, "Spinoza and Euclidean Arithmetic: The Example of the Fourth Proportional," trans. D. R. Lachterman, in Spinoza and the Sciences, ed. M. Grene and D. Nails, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 91 (Dordrecht and Boston, 1986), pp. 125-150. 18. Spinoza, ed. Van Vloten and Land, IV, p. 37. 19. See S. Zac, "L'Idée du loi," in his Philosophie, Théologie, Politique dans l'oeuvre de Spinoza (Paris, 1979), pp. 191-201. 20. For a brilliant study of the interplay of inherited and enlightened parsings of the concept of law, see A. Tosel, Spinoza, ou le crépuscule de la servitude (Paris, 1984), pp. 163-206. Lothar Kreimendahl, Freiheitsgesetz und höchstes Gut in Spinozas Theologisch-Politischem Traktat (Hildesheim, 1983), throws much light on the logical structure of TTP, Ch. 4. 21. See G. Nador, "Leges et regulae. Bemerkungen zu Spinozas Gesetzesbegriff," Studium Generale 19 (1966), pp. 696-698. One should also take into account the reference to "laws . . . inscribed as it were in the true codices [of things]" in Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (ed. Van Vloten and Land, I, p. 31). This, and allied Baconian texts, have been most recently studied by Antonio Pérez-Ramos, Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition (Oxford, 1988). However, one should also consult the critical review by Richard Kennington in the Review of Metaphysics 43 (1989), pp. 414-417. 22. On the key motif of "expression," see G. Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de Texpression (Paris, 1968). On the relation between divine causation and individuals, see Richard V. Mason, "Spinoza on the Causality of Individuals," Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986), pp. 197-210. 23. Paris, 1981; see, too, his more recent essay "De la création des vérités éternelles au principe de raison. Remarques sur l'anti-Cartesianisme de Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz," XXVIII Siècle (1985), pp. 143-164. Other important recent studies of this beguiling doctrine include the colloquium published in Studia Cartesiana 2 (1981), pp. 85-135 (papers by J. M. Beyssade, G. RodisLewis, and G. Simon); J. Bouveresse, "La théorie du possible chez Descartes," Revue Internationale de philosophie 37 (1983), pp. 293-310, with reply by H. Ishiguro, ibid., pp. 311-318; E. M. Curley, "Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truths," Philosophical Review 93 (1984), pp. 569-597; A. Funkenstein, "Descartes, Eternal Truths, and the Divine Omnipotence," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 6 (1975), pp. 185-198; and R. LaCroix, "Descartes on God's Ability to Do the Logically Impossible," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1984), pp. 455-476. 24. See Margaret J. Osier, "Eternal Truths and the Laws of Nature: The Theological Foundations of Descartes' Philosophy of Nature," Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985), pp. 349-362; and Daniel Garber, "Mind, Body, and the Laws of Nature in Descartes and Leibniz," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1983), pp. 105-134, esp. pp. 116-126. 25. On "possibility" in Leibniz see, above all, Ingetrud Pape, Tradition und Transformation der Modalität, vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1966), pp. 109-173; and Pape, "Von den 'möglichen Welten' zur 'Welt des Möglichen'. Leibniz im modernen Verständnis," Studia Leibnitiana, Supplementa, Vol. 1, (Wiesbaden, 1968), pp. 266-287. Also of importance are David Blumenfeld, "Leibniz's Theory of the Striving Possibles," and John Hostler, "Some Remarks on 'omne possible exigit

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e x i s t e r e , ' " Studia Leibnitiana 5 (1973), pp. 163-177 and pp. 281-285, respectively. 26. Monadologie, Pars. 86-90. 27. Cf. Schelling's remark in his "Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie" (Stuttgart, n.d.), p. 34: "[Spinoza's being] is without potency and in this sense the powerless being, that it does not have at all the power {Macht) of another being in itself." 28. It was the special merit of M. B. Foster to bring to light the Christian theological underpinnings of the modern scientific conception of law; see his "Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Science," Mind 43 (1934), pp. 446-468; 45 (1936), pp. 1-27. Cf. the complementary studies of Francis Oakley, "Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise of the Concept of the Laws of Nature," Church History 30 (1961); "Nebuchadnezzar's Fiery Furnace," in Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant and Order (Ithaca, 1984), pp. 6 7 - 9 2 . My argument is that Spinoza, in subverting the Maimonidean conception, is set on "outdoing" his Christian contemporaries in this matter. 29. On the relations between Moses the legislator and the apolitical Christ in TTP, see J. Schwartz, "Liberalism and the Jewish Connection: A Study of Spinoza and the Young Marx," Political Theory 13 (1985), pp. 58-84. For a very different exposition, see P. Slyomovics, "Spinoza: Liberal Democratic Religion," Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985), pp. 499513. 30. See A. Altmann, "Maimonides' 'Four Perfections,'" in Altmann, Essays in Jewish Intellectual History (Hanover, NH, 1981), pp. 65-76. On the character and intention of Mosaic legislation, see K. Bland, "Moses and the Law According to Maimonides," in Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of Alexander Altmann, ed. J. Reinharz and D. Swetschinski, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (Durham, NC, 1982), pp. 49-66; and M. Galston, "The Purpose of the Law According to Maimonides," Jewish Quarterly Review 64 (1978), pp. 27-51. 31. Cf. "Moses Maimonides' Two Treatises on the Regimen of Health. . . ," trans. A. Bar-Sela, Hebbel E. Hoff, and E. Faris, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 54, Pt. 4 (1964), p. 40. 32. See Lachterman, " T h e Physics," and Lachterman, "Spinoza on 'Acquiescence' and the Intellectual Love of God," AJS Review, forthcoming. 33. See Raymond L. Weiss, "Some Notes on Twersky's Introduction to the Code of Maimonides," Jewish Quarterly Review 74 (1983), pp. 61-79, at pp. 7 3 74 for some other instances of the intrusion of "laws of nature" into the interpretation of Maimonides. It is also very much worth noting that a Jewish contemporary of Newton, R. David Nieto, expressly opposes the corruption or degeneration of "God" into "Nature" [Teba'Y, cf. José Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition (Bloomington, IN, 1986), pp. 19-22. For an ampler, and more polemical view, see S. Schwarzschild, "The Unnatural Jew," Environmental Ethics 6 (1984), pp. 347-362. 34. For the dialectical, or at least expository, transition from "way," through "custom," to "nature" (in Maimonides' Yesode Ha-Torah IV, 2, ed. Moses Hyamson [New York, 1937], p. 38a), see Leo Strauss, "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom Scholem, ed. E. E. Urbach et al. (Jerusalem, 1967), p. 273. On the uses of the prooftext Olam ke-minhago noheg, see David Hartman, Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 290-292, to which Guide II, 29 (Pines translation, p. 345) should be added. On the contours of Maimonides' treatment of messianic expectations, see A. Funkenstein, "Maimonides: Political

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Theory and Realistic Messianism," Miscellanea Mediaevalia 11 (1977), pp. 8 1 103. 35. Cf. "Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Absicht Maimunis," Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 (1937), p. 95, n. 9. 36. A. Nuriel, "Providence and Governance in More Ha-Nevukhim," Tarbiz 49 (1980), pp. 3 4 6 - 3 5 5 (in Hebrew with an English summary, p. viii). 37. Some of S. Pines's recent studies, based on the references to Farabi's (lost) Commentary on the Ethics contained in a manuscript by ibn Bajja, raise anew the question of the relative standing of the theoretical and practical lives. See "The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja, and Maimonides," in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 82-109, esp. pp. 9 9 - 1 0 0 . 38. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister, (Hamburg, 1952), p. 127. 39. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegels Theologische Jugendschriften, ed. H. Nohl (Tübingen, 1907), pp. 2 5 0 - 2 5 1 . Cf. J. Derrida, "Préjuges," in Spiegel und Gleichnis. Festschrift für Jacob Taubes (Würzburg, 1983), pp. 3 4 3 - 3 6 6 , at p. 358.

POSTSCRIPT,

1988

Some references and observations amplifying or rectifying my original argument: I. In addition to tabi'a Maimonides also uses the Arabic term fitra, which Munk (I, 449, n. 6) renders disposition naturelle. On the meanings of fitra and on the diverse attempts to translate it into Hebrew, see Henry Malter, "Medieval Hebrew Terms for Nature," in Judaica. Festschrift zu Hermann Cohens siebzigstem Geburtstage (Berlin, 1912), pp. 253-256. On the Hebrew term ma[bea (a loan-word from the Arabic and cognate with teba') in earlier rabbinic literature, see José Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), pp. 139-142. Faur points out that the principal meaning of matbea is signet or seal, with which a coin is given currency. An unminted coin is, in Hebrew, asimon, "a loan-word from the Greek asemeion 'without a sign'" (p. 140). We should also recall that the Greek word for coinage is nomisma. II. Strauss's own observation concerning Maimonides' vocabulary in the Book of Knowledge (IV, 2) should also be cited: "When discussing the characteristics of the four elements, Maimonides speaks first of the 'way' [derekh] of each element, then of its 'custom' [minhag], and only after this preparation, of its 'nature' [teba']. He thus lets us see that 'nature'—a notion pointing back to the Sages of Greece—cannot be used in the context without some preparation' ("Notes on Maimonides Book of Knowledge," in Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy [Chicago, 1983], p. 195). It is not clear, from this passage alone, whether Strauss would have us understand Maimonidean "nature" as the precursor of Spinozan "nature." III. On minhag used in the Talmud (e.g., bT, Pesahim, 3a) to mean

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"local usage or custom," see A. Perls, "Der Minhag im Talmud," Festschrift Israel Levy (1911), as cited in E. E. Urbach, The Sages (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), p. 974, n. 52, with additional rabbinical references. Not included in Urbach's note, and equally important to the interpretation of this theme, is Alexander Guttmann, "Der Minhag der Bibel im Spiegelbild des Talmuds: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der miindlichen Lehre," Festschrift fur Leo Baeck (Berlin, 1938), pp. 55-65. IV. One last addendum to my comments in the body of the text on the absence in Maimonides of any expressions joining together "law" with "nature." Someone might point to his citation of Jeremiah 33:25, tyuqqot shamayim va-eretz (the statutes of heaven and earth) in the Moreh 11:28 (p. 335 of Pines), and again in 111:13 (p. 451 of Pines, with his note there). (Cf. Jer. 31:34-35; "the statutes of the moon and the stars.") Two considerations stand in the way of construing these prooftexts as Maimonides' version of leges naturae in the Spinozistic sense. First, the initial citation of Jeremiah 33:35 occurs as part of Maimonides' arguments for the world's eternity a parte post. The "statutes" [fyuqqim] governing celestial and terrestrial motions are, once created or commanded, unchangeable; in this respect they are analogous to the unique and inalterable "Law of Moses our Master" (cf. 11:39 [p. 379 of Pines] et alibi). These statutes cannot be identified, then, with Spinoza's laws, which are, of necessity, eternal both a parte ante and a parte post. Second, perhaps even more tellingly, Maimonides chooses verses in which the word /¡uqqoth (or ¡¡uqqim) stands by itself not joined with mishpatim (ordinances). The former are ordinarily classified as laws for which no rational explanation is available. Maimonides, in his extended discussion of the (utilitarian) rationale behind the fyuqqim (especially those concerning sacrifices, 111:31-32) introduces the notion of accommodation to historical circumstances or, put differently, the notion of God's wily ruses. The "statutes of heave and earth" may thus appear to be equally the consequence of divine accommodation or ruse; at all events, "natures" are instituted, not self-subsistent. (Compare, too, the derivation of fyoq from the root Ij-q-q (to carve, to engrave) with the etymology of ma0ea discussed above.) Wiliness does not fall within the repertory of Spinoza's nonpurposive Deus. On the theme of the tyuqqim see the excellent study by Josef Stem, "The Idea of a Ijoq in Maimonides' Explanations of the Law," in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht, 1986), pp. 92-130. On Maimonides' doubts concerning the absoluteness of Ptolemaic mathematical astronomy, see M. Nutkiewicz, "Maimonides on the Ptolemaic System: The Limits of Our Knowledge," Comitatus 9 (1978), pp. 63-72. V. Leon Roth, in the first volume of the Chronicon Spinozanum (1921), translated R. Zevi Ashkenazi's responsum to a question put concerning the heterodoxy of David Nieto (1654-1728), leader of the Sephardic community of London. Roth's title "David Nieto and the Orthodoxy of Spinozism" gives, I think, a misleading impression of Nieto's

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position and of the grounds of its acceptability. While Nieto had claimed in his controversial sermon of November 20, 1703, that "God and Nature and Nature and God are one and the same" (ibid., p. 278), he also makes it clear that this reciprocal identity is not to be per Spinoza. Nieto's use of "Nature" in the above equation is a concession to the modems. As he writes in De la Divina Providencia (London, 1716), Everything, both mediate and immediate acts, was attributed to God [namely, in the days of the sages of the Talmud], In the centuries closer to our own, what the Ancients designated as God, has more recently been designated as Hashgafp (= Providence). Later, it further continued to degenerate until it became [totally] corrupted and changed into Teba' (= Nature). With the passing of time this name gained daily recognition, forming in the mind of the people an image or idol, which seriously affected their mind and soul, (cited in Faur, Golden Doves, pp. 21-22)

Accordingly, there is no "Universal Nature" (teba' kolel—which Roth renders as "natura naturans"!) intermediate between God and the world; hence, all worldly actions spring from God alone. But this is the providential God of the Torah, not the necessitarian God of the Ethics. So, R. Zevi Ashkenazi can conclude his responsum by saying, in favor of Nieto, "The word 'nature' as applied to God is not the particular natural thing which acts by necessity, but the will and puipose of the Holy King" (Roth, "David Nieto," p. 282). On the dispute and on Nieto's views generally, see Faur, Golden Doves, pp. 19-22. VI. At the same time as my original talk, a significant article was published by Jane E. Ruby, "The Origins of Scientific 'Law "'Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986), pp. 341-360. Ruby puts beyond doubt that the locutions lex or leges naturae occur prior to the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Following the lead of A. C. Crombie ("The Significance of Medieval Discussions of Scientific Method for the Scientific Revolution," in Critical Problems in the History of Science, ed. A. C. Crombie [Madison, Wis., 1959], p. 89), Ruby shows that Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century, frequently employs these and cognate expressions in his optics (cf. p. 343, no. 10). She also argues that Regiomontanus (1436-1476) was in mathematics "the first ever to use the term [namely, lex in the modern, scientific sense], in astronomy, the first, with one exception, since the twelfth century" (p. 352). Crucial to Ruby's analysis of her ample historical evidence are the claims that (1) in Bacon mathematical explanations replace or exclude "physical and metaphysical explanations," (2) that Bacon understood lex/leges as central to the attempt to mathematicize physics, and (3) that the idea of divine legislation, or, more particularly, divine legislative absolutism, is missing in the cases of Roger Bacon and of sixteenth-century writers such as Regiomontanus and Copernicus.

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Let me comment very briefly on these three pivotal claims. To (1): Exaggeration seems to go hand in hand with the quest for remote precursors. Roger Bacon is lavish with encomia of the necessity of mathematical explanation in the sciences of nature; so, for instance, "the cause of natural things cannot be given except by means of geometry" (Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. Brewer [London, 1859], Vol. 1, p. 111). However, David Lindberg, in his acute study of Bacon's rhetoric and practice of mathematics in his explorations of the natural domain, decides: "Despite appearances, one should not conclude . . . that Bacon really believed that physics is reducible to mathematics. Mathematics, as Bacon himself notes [in Opus Maius, ed. Bridges (Oxford, 1897), Vol. 1, p. 97] is but one of four sciences having special prerogatives and importance . . . and although mathematics is often given priority over the others, it does not eliminate the need for them or (in general) subordinate them to itself." Cf. D. Lindberg, "On the Applicability of Mathematics to Nature: Roger Bacon and His Predecessors," British Journal for the History of Science 15 (1982), pp. 3 25, at p. 17; on Bacon's actual practice see, too, N. W. Fisher and S. Unguru, "Experimental Science and Mathematics in Roger Bacon's Thought," Traditio 27 (1971), pp. 353-378. Ruby (p. 344) cites one passage from the Opus Maius (Pars. 4, Dist. 4, Cap. 8) in which Bacon speaks of "omitting" physical and metaphysical explanations and "proceeding by means of geometric lines alone." Ruby's reading seems to me to miss the strategic or tactical emphasis Bacon employs in the key passage she cites (Vol. 1, 145 of the Bridges edition [Oxford, 1897], not "I, 143"): "Quod volo ad prasens ostendere solum per rationes geometricas ut promisi, quamquam rationes naturales et metaphysicae sunt copiosae et efficaces, de quibus alias grandis sermo potest fieri. Et necesse est propter sensum vulgi, qui violentus est ubique." (Note that the last sentence is ambivalent. Is it geometrical reasoning that is necessitated by the "understanding of the many, who are everywhere boisterous?" or, rather, physical and metaphysical reasoning?) At all events, Bacon's actual mathematical arguments here serve to illustrate, not to demonstrate, the metaphysical thesis that matter cannot be one in number, since this would entail that it is one in an infinite number of things and thus would possess infinite potency. Hence "it follows necessarily [i.e., from the thesis under attack] that matter is God and the Creator" (ibid., pp. 144—145). Moreover, like his predecessor Robert Grosseteste, who is likewise made a precursor of seventeenth-century mathematical physics, Bacon strives both to respect the Aristotelian taboo against Metabasis eis alio genos in "scientific" reasonings and to maintain the distinction between propter quid {dia ti) and quia (hoti) explanations. (See Lindberg, "On the Applicability," pp. 12-14, and, for the role of the qualitative in Grosseteste's account of the "law" of refraction, see Bruce S. Eastwood, "Grosseteste's 'Quantitative' Law of Refraction: A Chapter in the History of Non-experimental Science,"

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Journal of the History of Ideas 28 [1967], pp. 4 0 3 ^ 1 4 . Neither Lindberg nor Eastwood is cited in Ruby's study.) To (2): A similar criticism may be made of Ruby's second major claim. "Law," in a sense approximating a modem mathematical formula, is not the cardinal notion in Bacon's optics. Rather, again inspired, in the first instance, by Grosseteste, Bacon mobilizes the concept of species to designate the causal effect of physical action via hierarchical emanation (effects that include optical refraction, etc.). "Species is meant to designate the first effect of any naturally acting thing," as Lindberg renders Bacon's definition in his critical edition and translation of Bacon's De multiplicatione specierum (Roger Bacon's Philosophy of Nature [Oxford, 1983], p. 2 [Par. 1, Cap. 1, 28-29]; for a full discussion of the transition from species as "aspect" to species as "the force or power by which any object acts on its surroundings," see ibid., pp. liv-lxiii). Species, but not lex, is linked closely to Aristotelian dynamis and thus to "lawless" physis (cf. ibid., pp. 2-5). To (3): Two considerations are salient here. First, both Grosseteste and Bacon do employ the notion of law as divine ordination or decree when setting out their physics. Grosseteste: "Cum dicat Ambrosius [Hexameron 5.10; p. 1. 14, 217], cum sermo Dei ortus naturae sit, iure usurpat legem dare nature, qui originem dedit" (cited in James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste [Oxford, 1982], p. 192, n. 113). Bacon, contrasting the "law of particular nature," thanks to which spiritual and celestial substances, together with their matter, have a certain aptitude to produce complete effects (i.e., an effect in the recipient similar in names and definition to the agent, or, in other words, a univocal replica), writes "by divine ordination and a universal law of nature [ex ordinatione divina et ex lege nature universalis] .. . power is withheld and the actuality is excluded" (De multiplicatione specierum, ed. Lindberg, pp. 84, 119-121). So, divine intervention blocks what would otherwise be the free activity of particular natural aptitudes. This lexical correction apart, it is still important to note that for both Grosseteste and Bacon, the mathematics of light is ultimately derived from a luciferous cosmogony, itself stemming from the conception of God as lux prima et inaccessiblis (cf. McEvoy, Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, p. 211). God, for Grosseteste, is the primus numerator, the mensurator primus et certissimus, and this is certainly reminiscent of, say, Kepler. However, Grosseteste (unlike Bacon, who keeps silent on this matter), asserts that God chooses the unit measure "from which the cosmogonic process began" (ibid., p. 177) and there is an insuperable gap between divine measurement and human measurement, a gap corresponding to the difference between the infinite and the finite mind. Adequate (mathematical) knowledge of the essence of God is therefore impossible; contrast Spinoza's assertion in Ethics, Book II, Proposition 47. (On the whole of Grosseteste's cosmogony and theory of light, see McEvoy, Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, pp. 149-205.)

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The issue, therefore, is not one of theological voluntarism or absolutism narrowly considered. As I have argued in the body of my text, Spinoza's understanding of "law of nature" is wedded to a strict necessitarianism. What requires elucidation is the origin of the lasting modern symbiosis between theology (either in general or specifically Christian) and a mathematicized physics to which human minds have full access. (For some speculations on the wide topic, see A. Kojève, "The Christian Origins of Modern Science," trans. D. R. Lachterman, St. John's Review 35, 1 [1984], pp. 22-26.) Why, furthermore, was it this symbiosis or collusion that undermined the "orthodox" (Christian) position that lex is used of inanimate things or events only metaphorically (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, S. T. I-IIae, q. 91, art, 2 at 3, and F. Suârez, Tractatus de legibus ac Deo legislatore 1.1.2 [Madrid, 1971], Vol. 1, p. 12)? What role, finally, was played by the dissociation of lex naturalis and ius naturale in domesticating the "new" sense of lex in the realm of physics? (On the overlapping, if not always synonymous, use of these two expressions by the theologians and the glossators in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see the fundamental study of Odo Lottin, "La loi naturelle depuis le début du XII siècle jusqu'à Saint Thomas d'Aquin," in his Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, T. II, Partie I (Louvain and Gembloux, 1948), pp. 71-100.) VII. Similar lines of questioning into the ties between medieval theology and the concept of scientific law are pursued in the learned study by Rainer Specht, "Naturgesetz und Bindung Gottes," in Philosophie im Mittelalter. Entwicklungslinie und Paradigmen, ed. J. P. Beckmann et al. (Hamburg, 1987), pp. 409-423. Since a précis of his evidence will not do full justice to his discussion, let me simply point to three important themes relevant to my own investigations above. First, what, if any, are the missing links between the medieval tradition embodied in Grosseteste and Bacon and the modem notion of "law of nature"? Specht quotes extensively from Suârez, whose texts were familiar to Descartes, regarding the relationship between God's trustworthiness and his voluntary or providential concurrence with the "secondary causes" responsible for the ordinary course of nature. So, for example, "Postquam decrevit [namely, Deus] causas secundas efficere et conservare, infallibili lege cum eis concurrit ad earum operationem" (Disputationes Metaphysicae 22.4.3, in Opera Omnia, T.25, 829b). This and related texts brought forward by Specht raise delicate issues concerning the agreement between the concept of necessary divine concurrence in physical nature via "infallible law" and the more restrictive account in De legibus, that divine law "merely imposes an obligation which is of a moral nature and cannot thus be physically brought about" (Oxford, 1949, I, v); on the larger quandary here see, by way of background, P. F. Moreau "Loi naturelle et ordre des choses chez Suârez," Archives de philosophie 42 (1979), pp. 229-234.

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Second, the universality and necessity characteristic of the pattern of events in the physical and the moral order (ordo naturalis) is due to the rightful claim of creatures to the efficient cooperation of God or to his concurrence with secondary causes: "Sooft die natürliche Ordnung für ein Geschöpf eine Wirkung vorsieht, zu der es allein nicht in der Lage ist, bekommt es einen gesetzlichen Anspruch auf die Hilfe dessen, der für die natürlichen Ordnung verantwortlich ist, und kann sie mit Gewissheit des Erfolges auslösen—eine physikalische Variante der Korrelation von Gehorsam und Schutz" (Specht, "Naturgesetz," p. 416). Finally, a crucial inference from Specht's evidence is that the early modern concept of scientific law stems, at least in part, from the transposition of what allegedly holds good in the realm of praxis to the domain of (mathematical) theoria. Spinoza cancels the role of "secondary causes" (still retained by Descartes in the French version of Principes, Book II, Par. 37,) as well as the notion of divine providence, only to make Deus sive natura absolutely obliged to bring about what occurs in the course of nature. VIII. On the more limited topic of voluntarism and the scientific revolution, see Edmund B. Davis, Jr., "Creation, Contingency and Early Modern Science: The Impact of Voluntaristic Theology of Seventeenth Century Natural Philosophy" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1984). And, for the sake of completeness, mention should be made of the article by John R. Milton, "The Origin and Development of the Concept of the 'Laws of Nature,'" Archives Européennes de sociologie 22 (1981), pp. 173-195, an attack on Zilsel's well-known sociopolitical thesis regarding the genesis of the notion of physical law (in Philosophical Review, 51 [1942], pp. 245279). Unfortunately, Milton substitutes for Zilsel's conjectures a "pragmatic" explanation at the heart of which is his claim that "the theoretical acceptance of the notion of a law of nature [namely, in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries] resulted from its practical employment. On this view scientists began to think in terms of laws of nature because they had discovered explanatory principles which could most appropriately be interpreted as laws." (Milton, "Origin and Development," p. 180; the circularity here is both vicious and vacuous.) IX. A very instructive path through the labyrinthine subtleties of Leibniz's position (see pp. XXXX) is traced by Kathleen Okruhlik, "The Status of Scientific Laws in the Leibnizian System," in The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz, ed. K. Okruhlik and J. R. Brown (Dordrccht and Boston, 1985), pp. 183-206. See especially her thesis that "Leibniz maintains that laws of nature are absolutely contingent, hypothetically necessary and (in some cases at least) a priori deducible" (p. 183). See also Robert McRae, "Miracles and Laws," ibid., pp. 171-181, and, of great importance for Leibniz's relations with his contemporaries and nearcontemporaries over the question of nature and law of nature, Catharine

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Wilson, "De ipsa natura: Sources of Leibniz's Doctrines of Forces, Activity and Natural Law," Studia Leibnitiana 19 (1987), pp. 148-172. X. Interesting light on the context of Spinoza's early attempts to upend the thesis of creatio ex nihilo (the obverse, as it were, of the identification of God with Nature) is thrown by a recent study by G. Saccaro Battisti, "Abraham Cohen Hervera et le jeune Spinoza entre Kabbale et scolastique: à propos de la création ex nihilo," Archives de philosophie 51 (1988), pp. 5 5 73. For two recent, extremely provocative views of Maimonides' possible position on the same matter, see S. Klein-Braslavy, "The Creation of the World and Maimonides' Interpretation of Genesis I-V," in Pines and Yovel, Maimonides and Philosophy, pp. 65-78, and A. Ivry, "Maimonides and Creation," in Creation and the End of Days: Judaism and Scientific Cosmology, eds. David Novak and Norbert Samuelson (Lanham, Md., 1986), pp. 185-213. In Ivry's essay one should take note of his suggested precise rendition of the crucial clause allahu awjadaha ba'da I- 'adama l-mahda l-mutlaq (Moreh 11:13; p. 281 of Pines) as "God caused (it) to exist after pure and absolute privation." (My emphasis; Pines translates the final four words "after having been purely and absolutely nonexistent.") XI. The following conjecture seems worthy of further discussion. By claiming that numbers (as well as time and measure) are merely entia imaginationis or auxilia imaginationis, Spinoza would seem to have eschewed a large part of the contemporary program for a mathematicized physics See the famous letter XII to L. Meyer on the infinite and M. Gueroult's commentary, Appendix ix. However, if discrete numbers (integers and rational fractions) are replaced by (proto-) infinitesimals, then Spinoza's treatment of the essences of bodies as ratios of motion and rest (of the form dy/dx) keeps its modern mathematical meaning. For the broader issues of Spinozan physics and modern physics, compare Joe D. van Zandt, "Res Extensa and the Space-Time Continuum," in Spinoza and Sciences, eds. M. Grene and D. Nails (Dordrecht and Boston, 1986), pp. 249-266, where my suggestions in regard to the physics of conatus are quite generously endorsed (p. 255). To be sure, Spinoza nowhere gives evidence of having grasped or divined the nascent technical theory of differentials and integrals, although, as André Lecrivain has suggested in his study of the Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae, "la lecture Spinoziste de Descartes semble appeler, en quelque sorte, par avance, la mise en oeuvre du calcul infinitésimal, en designer, pour ainsi dire potentiellement, l'exigence et le lieu de production, la place vide, si l'on préfère" ("Spinoza et la physique Cartesienne," Cahiers Spinoza 2 [1978], p. 153). On the profound reasons behind Spinoza's resistance to the reification of integral numbers, in his effort to free mathematical physics from the Cartesian "epistemological obstacles," see Part I of Lecrivain's study (ibid., 1 [1977], pp. 248-265). Compare, too, M. Wartofsky, "Nature, Number and

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Individuals: Motive and Method in Spinoza's Philosophy," Inquiry 20 (1977), pp. 457-479, especially pp. 472-^75. In any case, it should not need stressing that Spinoza saw himself as a participant in the program of mathematicizing physics, whatever the limits of his technical facility. The title of his treatise on the rainbow makes this plain. "Algebraic [Stelkonstige] Reckoning of the Rainbow Serving the Connection of Physics [Naturkunde] with Mathematics." XII. A concluding note: Whatever his views of Renaissance "humanism," Strauss seized the occasion to make clear his position vis-à-vis modern "humanism." I quote from his essay "Social Science and Humanism" (reprinted in St. John's Review 36, 2 (1985), p. 27): "I do not have to go into another implication of the term 'humanism'—viz., the contradistinction of human studies to divinity, since our program [namely, in 1955] is silent about divinity. I may limit myself to the remarie that humanism may be said to imply that the moral principles are more knowable to man, or less controversial among earnest men, than theological principles."

7

Leo Strauss and the Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns STANLEY ROSEN

The topic assigned to me is very broad, and in a real sense, it is coextensive with the work of Leo Strauss as a thinker and teacher. In a single essay, I can only deal with what I take to be the crucial phases of this work. In addition, it will be necessary to strike a balance between documenting what I take to be Strauss's attitude toward the quarrel between ancients and moderns, and attempting to assess its merits. It is often said that Strauss concealed his own views behind his persona as commentator on the great thinkers of the past. To the extent that this is true, one is not merely permitted, but required, to do more than summarize passages from Strauss's writings. However, as we shall see, it is not entirely true; on the decisive points, Strauss spoke in his own voice, or sufficiently so for us to be able to discern the fundamental presuppositions of his philosophical stance. I begin with some remarks about the quarrel itself. It is often said that the quarrel between the ancients and moderns was in principle a dispute in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France concerning the relative merits of classical and contemporary poetry. I shall suggest that this manner of viewing the quarrel is obviously unsatisfactory. On the other hand, a sound understanding of the quarrel shows that poetry, or poiesis, was indeed at the heart of the matter. Let us first recall Francis Bacon's famous assertion in The Advancement of Learning: "These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrograde>, by a computation backward from ourselves." 1 Bacon means, of course, that it is we moderns who are ancient because of our collective experience and accumulated knowledge of nature. It is true that, in order to understand nature, we must restrain her "in the trials and vexations of art." 2 But no one would imagine that, by "art," Bacon is referring to what we now call the fine arts. He is referring to techne and experiment, not to epic or tragedy. The function assigned by Bacon to poetry in the usual sense is well brought out in the following observation. Poetry "was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind, whereas reason does buckle and

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bow the mind unto the nature of things." 3 Poetry corresponds to the imagination, which thus governs desire. 4 One should compare these texts with Spinoza's discussion of imagination in the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus. There is, however, an important difference between Bacon and Spinoza. Bacon does not provide a "metaphysical" foundation to science, but one that leads directly to the philosophy of history, not quite to the doctrine of continuous and unrestricted progress, but because of the ties to scientific and technological progress, to something very close to continuous progress. To put this in another way, whereas Spinoza looks backward to the ancients, and in particular to the Stoics, in what is despite his acceptance of modern science a decisive respect, Bacon does not. It is true that Bacon retains something of the classical doctrine of prudence. But on the decisive point, method, he sees himself as breaking cleanly with, and going beyond, the ancients. 5 On this point Bacon is closer to poetry than he perhaps realizes. In this connection, two additional remarks are helpful. The first is that Bacon's new method or "logic" has as its end to command and constrain natural work ad meritum et usus vitae;6 in so doing, the intellect mixes up its own nature with the natures of things. 7 The sense of knowing as making is already visible here. Second, it is Descartes who decisively transforms the Baconian revolution against the ancients into a mathematical and scientific form. In so doing, Descartes subordinates the analysis of geometrical structure to the intention of the methodologist. The Cartesian method, as described in the Regulae, entails the imposition of humanly constructed rules onto diverse subjecta (i.e., objects of investigation: hypokeimena, or what lies under the gaze of the lumen naturale), thereby forcing them to submit to the unity, but also to the will, of the investigator's intellect. The "natural" diversity of forms is then irrelevant to the modern revolution. "Human knowledge receives no more diversity from them than does the light of the sun from the various things it illuminates." 8 The intellect "neutralizes" the diversity of natural forms by coordinating them to ratios of lines and symbols. Natural things are replaced by theoretical constructions, hence, in the broad sense of the term, by "poems," which are logically equivalent to the relations of natural things, and which we may manipulate in accord with the problems we wish to solve. Form is replaced by, or "transformed into," relations. The content of the relations, in the last analysis, is supplied by human passions, by desire and will. This must suffice as an indication of the sense in which the quarrel between the ancients and moderns is indeed about the status of poetry, or about what Socrates called the long-standing quarrel between philosophy and poetry. I want to underline the fact that the explicit version of the quarrel is not about poetry but about science. To this end, I cite a relevant text, Fontenelle's Digression sur les anciens et les modernes (1688). Poetry, says Fontenelle, may be perfected relatively quickly, after a small amount of experience—as was true of the ancients.

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But physics, medicine, mathematics, are composed from an infinite number of views, and depend upon the accuracy of the reasoning, which perfects itself with extreme slowness, and perfects itself continuously; it is often the case that the aforementioned sciences are assisted by experiences which chance alone engenders, and that they do not culminate at a determinate point. It is evident that all this has no end, and that the latest physicists or mathematicians will naturally be the most able. 9

Philosophy, Fontenelle continues, has thanks to Descartes been perfected in this century. But Descartes' major contribution is his method, not the doctrines of his teaching, "of which a good part show themselves to be false, or very uncertain, according to the very rules which he has given us." Thanks, then, to the application of the Cartesian method, our posterity will surpass us, and we shall become "the ancients." 10 On the crucial point, then, Fontenelle is a Baconian, not a Cartesian. He does not praise the present so much as the future. As one could almost put it, modern scientific method is intrinsically a doctrine of historicity, according to which human beings produce their lives and destiny. 11 As Jonathan Swift points out in the Battle of the Books, apropos the quarrel between the ancients and modems, the aggressor in a war is moved by poverty and pride. 1 2 In view of Leo Strauss's connection between the position of the ancients and what he calls an "economics of scarcity," this remark by Swift is especially pertinent for us. We should also remember the traditional association between pride and courage. The moderns are poor because (as they believe) they have been deprived of their heritage by the timidity, even the cowardice, of the ancients. In his debate with Alexandre Kojève concerning his interpretation of Xenophon's On Tyranny, Strauss points out that Xenophon does not mention courage among Socrates' virtues. 13 In this connection, one should also consider Strauss's assertion that the superiority of spiritedness to desire, maintained in Plato's Republic, is questionable. 1 4 In his unpublished lectures on the Nicomachean Ethics, Strauss emphasizes that for Aristotle, courage is the lowest of the virtues; the same point is made concerning Socrates in Strauss's (also unpublished) interpretation of the Symposium. This should be bome in mind when we consider that Bacon, in the Novum Organum, emphasizes that human beings underrate their strength. 15 It is also pertinent to the fact that Descartes defines "générosité," or the highest legitimate self-estimation, as the "free disposition of our volitions," that is, the determination never to lack the will to carry out all those things one judges to be the best. 16 Needless to say, preeminent among these is the desire to be master and possessor of nature. One may suggest that "générosité" is the Cartesian revision of Machiavelli's love of glory, with which Machiavelli associates the love of money. 17 If it is true, as Strauss also argued, that Machiavelli is the father of modernity, we may see in the passage just cited from The Prince the

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paradigmatic association of poverty and pride in the modern quarrel with the ancients. Poverty, when linked to moderation or temperance, may lead to Socratic, but certainly not to Baconian or Cartesian wisdom. 18 Differently stated, Leo Strauss attributes to Plato the view that whereas thought is both mad and fearless, speech must be moderate. 19 This is the same as to say that action must be moderate: To give the decisive example, there can be no question of the conquest of nature. The reason for this, according to Strauss, is not the inconceivability to the ancients of the infinite perfection of technology (cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia I, 1. xv), but what one may call a political decision or assessment of human nature. In a discussion of Rousseau published in What Is Political Philosophy? Strauss says: "On the whole the view has prevailed that democracy must become rule by the educated, and this goal will be achieved by universal education. But universal education presupposes that the economy of scarcity has given way to an economy of plenty. And the economy of plenty presupposes the emancipation of technology from moral and political control." 20 Although I cannot develop the point here, this strand of Strauss's critique of modernity should be compared with the strictures against reification and regimentation leveled against the Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno. The post-modernist attack against the Enlightenment has its representatives on the Right and the Left, since it stems in large part from Nietzsche and Marx. When Strauss refers negatively to the emancipation of technology from moral and political control, he is of course not taking a stand within the post-modernist camp but defending the priority of virtue to freedom; and by virtue he means the rule of the gentleman, the kalos kagathos aner. The penultimate sentence of Natural Right and History tells us that "the quarrel between the ancients and the modems concerns eventually, and perhaps even from the beginning, the status of 'individuality'." 21 One should compare with this statement Strauss's discussion in his Hobbes book of the seventeenthcentury replacement of prudence by history and political philosophy by technology, or of both by method. 22 The immediate reference of the sentence in Natural Right and History is to the aesthetics of Edmund Burke. The ultimate sentence reads as follows: "Burke himself was still too deeply imbued with the spirit of 'sound antiquity' to allow the concern with individuality to overpower the concern with virtue." I cannot resist mentioning, as an aside, that the tension in Burke between an aesthetics of individuality and classical virtue is paradigmatic for an understanding of twentieth-century "conservatism," with which Strauss and many of his students are associated. As one could also say, the modern taste for individuality has everything to do with the triumph of poetry over philosophy. Unfortunately for contemporary conservatives, this raises an insuperable difficulty for classical virtue. Strauss never develops the aesthetic or poetic dimension of the quarrel

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between the ancients and the modems. I mean by this that he never develops the metaphysical or ontological dimension of that quarrel. I do not believe that it suffices, in order to explain this omission, to say that his primary interest was political, or to note his view that the political is the gateway or antechamber leading into the theoretical. At this point, we require some illumination of Strauss's understanding of theory. To this end, I put to one side for the time being his preference for the virtue of the classical gentleman, and will quote a passage from Natural Right and History : If we take a bird's-eye view of the secular struggle between philosophy and theology, we can hardly avoid the impression that neither of the two antagonists has ever succeeded in really refuting the other. All arguments in favor of revelation seem to be valid only if belief in revelation is presupposed; and all arguments against revelation seem to be valid only if unbelief is presupposed. . . . Now it is this state of things that seems to decide irrevocably against philosophy and in favor of revelation. Philosophy has to grant that revelation is possible. But to grant that revelation is possible means to grant that philosophy is perhaps not the one thing needful, that philosophy is perhaps something infinitely unimportant. To grant that revelation is possible means to grant that the philosophic life is not necessarily, not evidently, the right life. Philosophy, the life devoted to the quest for evident knowledge available to man as man, would itself rest on an unevident, arbitrary, or blind decision. This would merely confirm the thesis of faith, that there is no possibility of consistency, of a consistent and thoroughly sincere life, without belief in revelation. The mere fact that philosophy and revelation cannot refute each other would constitute the refutation of philosophy by revelation. 2 3

This passage is taken from within the context of a discussion of Max Weber. Despite that, and despite the regular use of "would," it is perfectly apparent that Strauss intends to state a genuine dilemma. The quarrel between the ancients and moderns has to be reassessed in the light of philosophy's apparent failure to refute revelation, and hence, to validate itself. It would seem that philosophy altogether is predicated upon an act of the will. But if this is so, does not the philosopher produce his own world, or, like the poet, create a world in the image of his desires, as these are mediated by the imagination? We may reinforce the authority of the previously cited text as an expression of Strauss's own view by citing a parallel passage from the intellectual autobiography appended to the 1962 edition of his early study, Spinoza's Critique of Religion: The orthodox premise cannot be refuted by experience or by recourse to the principle of contradiction. An indirect proof of this is the fact that Spinoza and his like owed such success as they had in their fight against orthodoxy to laughter and mockery. By means of mockery they attempted to laugh orthodoxy out of its position from which it could not

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be dislodged by any proofs supplied by Scripture or by reason. . . . The genuine refutation of orthodoxy would require the proof that the world and human life are perfectly intelligible without the assumption of a mysterious God; it would require at least the success of the philosophic system: man has to show himself theoretically and practically as the master of the world and the master of his life; the merely given world must be replaced by the world created by man theoretically and practically. Spinoza's Ethics attempts to be the system but it does not succeed; the clear and distinct account of everything that it presents remains fundamentally hypothetical. As a consequence, its cognitive status is not different from that of the orthodox account. . . . philosophy, the quest for evident and necessary knowledge, rests itself on an unevident decision, on an act of will, just as faith does. Hence the antagonism between Spinoza and Judaism, between unbelief and belief, is ultimately not theoretical but moral. 2 4

Is this conclusion valid for Strauss only relative to Spinoza, as the previous conclusion may be thought to be valid relative to Max Weber? I cannot believe that a thoughtful reading of these passages supports such a conclusion. Fortunately, we can clinch the point by citing from Strauss's debate with Kojdve, in which he speaks in his own voice without qualification. We need three passages from this text. First: Philosophy as such is nothing other than the real consciousness of the problems, that is to say, of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. It is impossible to think about these problems without being attracted toward a solution, toward one or the other of certain rare typical solutions. However, as long as there is no wisdom, but only the search for wisdom, the evidence of all these solutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. As a result, the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher from the moment that his "subjective certitude" of the truth of a solution becomes stronger than the consciousness that he may have of the problematical character of this solution. At this moment, the sectarian is b o m . 2 5

Second: The classics identified satisfaction with happiness. The difference between the philosopher and the political man will therefore be a difference concerning the subject of happiness. The dominant passion of philosophy is the desire for the truth, that is to say, for the knowledge of the eternal order or of the eternal cause or causes of the whole. 2

Third: Philosophy in the strict and classical sense is the search for the eternal order or for the eternal cause or causes of all things. I suppose therefore that there is an eternal and unchangeable order within which history takes place, and which is in no manner affected by history. 2 7

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In the remainder of this passage, Strauss goes on to speak of other "presuppositions" of the philosopher in the strict sense. This page should be carefully compared with Natural Right and History, pp. 30-31, where Strauss describes the presuppositions attributed to philosophy by those who attempt "to establish the dogmatic and hence arbitrary or historically relative character of philosophy proper." 28 We can now safely conclude that for Strauss, philosophy is a passion or desire, i.e., an eros, but hence, too, an act of the will by which we presuppose what we need in order to gratify that eros. One could perhaps doubt from this set of passages whether the act of will is motivated by a moral decision or by the desire for pleasure. In my view, the latter is the case, and the moral decision is part, if not the basis, of Strauss's exoteric teaching. This teaching, or political philosophy, as Strauss says in the debate with Kojfcve, has as its function "to persuade the city that philosophers are not atheists, that they do not profane all that the city holds sacred, that they respect that which the city respects, that they are not subversives, finally, that they are not irresponsible adventurers but good citizens and even the best among the citizens." 29 That this is Strauss's exoteric teaching is altogether clear from a remark on an earlier page in the same text: "In raising his gaze to investigate the eternal order, all human things and all that which pertains to humanity reveal themselves to him very clearly as paltry and ephemeral, and no one can find a solid happiness in that which is paltry and ephemeral." 30 These passages should be compared with Nietzsche's very frank discussion of the distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric in Beyond Good and Evil.31 But they should also be compared with one of the most important, and most neglected, passages in Plato, Philebus 28C, in which Socrates says: "All the wise agree, thereby exalting themselves, that intellect is king for us of heaven and of earth. And perhaps they speak well." Let me repeat my conclusion. The quarrel between reason and revelation is settled for Strauss, i.e., for himself, not solely or primarily by an act of the will, but by eros. The act of the will is subsequent to this desire; as a consequence, the Republic must be rewritten in such a way as to make desire higher than spiritedness, with a consequent demotion of courage. Courage is replaced by prudence. More immediately important for us, philosophy cannot validate itself rationally. I believe that this is connected for Strauss with his understanding of the so-called Platonic Ideas. According to Strauss, the usual version of this doctrine as stated by Socrates in the Republic, "is very hard to understand; to begin with it is utterly incredible, not to say that it appears to be fantastic." 32 In an unpublished graduate course on Plato's Statesman given at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s, Strauss expands briefly upon the Ideas as the articulation of noetic heterogeneity. In his published writings, no such expansion occurs. Instead, in What Is Political Philosophy? Strauss speaks of "the unchangeable ideas, i.e. of the fundamental and permanent problems." 3 3 I can confirm from private

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conversations that this was Strauss's view of the matter. The Ideas are the "fundamental and comprehensive problems" to which philosophy in the genuine or classical sense is dedicated. 34 The philosopher can know these problems, as well as the rare typical solutions to them, but he cannot know which solution is in fact correct for each problem. Unfortunately, Strauss leaves it entirely mysterious how we can know that certain problems or solutions are fundamental and comprehensive, if we cannot know the foundations or the whole. If the Platonic Ideas in the traditional or Platonic sense are replaced by problems, then the foundations are removed as well. The term "fundamental" becomes an honorific term for human or perhaps for epochal perspectives. We are dangerously close to Nietzsche. I want to offer a speculation on this rejection of the Ideas, or on their replacement by problems. I suspect that Strauss did not take seriously the doctrine of the noetic perception of pure form. It is my impression—and I emphasize that it is no more than an impression—that for Strauss, philosophy is discourse. Or in slightly different terms, I suggest that Strauss regarded philosophy as finally impossible because of the impossibility of furnishing the discursive validation of the foundations. For this reason, the foundations became problematic and, finally, problems. Perhaps Strauss was struck by the paradoxical discontinuity between eros and the Ideas toward which it is ostensibly directed. But whatever the merits of my conjecture, the following result is plain. The Straussian philosopher is condemned to infinite conversation, or what his friend Kojéve more ruthlessly called infinite chatter. This is because there is no theoretical foundation or superstructure to Strauss's conception of philosophy. And therefore he is forced to direct his "zetetic skepticism" or investigative looking toward practice. Strauss is forced to defend philosophy, which is for him discursively indefensible in its own terms, by turning to the prephilosophical situation. Since nature is, as it were, theoretically invisible, Strauss attempts to find it in practice. On this point, his esoteric and his exoteric doctrines converge. We are now almost ready to return to Strauss's noted preference for the virtue of the gentleman. I want to make one preliminary and general remark. The turn to the prephilosophical situation merely carries with it one's philosophical perceptions, or lack of perceptions. The prephilosophical situation is not a magical revelation of the origins of philosophy. This is because the prephilosophical situation contains everything; it therefore contains the unphilosophical or sophistical as well as the philosophical. The distinctions do not identify themselves to the neutral observer. To suggest that they do is to accept the myth of positivism. This same myth underlies Strauss's thesis that the task of the scholar is to understand a philosophical text exactly as it was intended, to the extent that this thesis is buttressed by a hermeneutical method and the tacit assumption of the neutral reader who is passively open to the thoughts of the author. On the other hand, the turn to the prephilosophical has utility for the philosophical construction of an

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exoteric political philosophy. And this is precisely the use to which Strauss, in my opinion, puts such a turn. I would call Strauss's preference for the gentleman "exoteric," not because it had no correspondence to his own political tastes, but because these tastes, on his own testimony, are philosophically irrelevant. If this statement seems shocking, one has only to recall the passages I have already quoted about the paltriness of human things. Political philosophy is for Strauss "the political, or popular treatment of philosophy." 35 It has two main functions. The first, as we have already noticed, is to protect the philosopher from the city. The second is to lead the best citizens to philosophy. I mention immediately that, if Strauss believed that the best way to lead the best citizens to philosophy was by advocating a regime of rural aristocrats, then I am in sharp disagreement with him. This to one side, on Strauss's view, a concern for the virtue of the nonphilosophical citizens, while genuine enough, is clearly subordinate to the primarily philosophical, i.e., defensive, intentions of political philosophy. These intentions emerge from and are defined by the natural distinction between the few and the many, and the resultant inexpungable conflict between the eros of the philosophers and the opinions or desires of the nonphilosophers. Philosophy seeks to replace opinions by knowledge, whereas the citizen seeks to preserve the opinions of the city. The philosopher is motivated by a desire for truth; the citizen is motivated, in the highest instance, by the love of honor. Perhaps the most comprehensive formulation of the conflict between the philosopher and the nonphilosopher may be expressed as follows. The citizen's love of honor is mitigated by his fear of the gods. The philosopher's love of honor is transformed into, or eclipsed by, his love of the Ideas. However, the Ideas are accessible to the philosopher only as problems. Philosophy therefore represents a double danger to the city. First, it transforms the traditional gods into Platonic Ideas. Second, it transforms Platonic Ideas into unresolvable problems. Philosophy thus takes away the foundations of the city but cannot replace them with a theoretical foundation. As a consequence, philosophy must invent a rhetorical foundation for the city that mediates between love of the best and love of one's own. Whereas philosophy begins in the study of nature, 36 and so in the study of the particular natures in their totality, or the whole, 37 political philosophy begins when philosophy is brought down from heaven into the cities of men. In order to understand the political in its proper or natural terms, one must go back to its origins in classical antiquity. Strauss distinguishes between classical and modern political philosophy in two not altogether compatible ways. First, classical political philosophy differs from its modern counterpart because its highest theme is the life of the wise. 38 Incidentally, if this is true, it has to be added that classical political philosophy casts no direct light on the life of the wise, or presents it in exoteric terms. Second, classical political philosophy takes its bearings by "moral distinctions as they are

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made in everyday life." As a consequence, it "limited itself to addressing those who . . . took these distinctions for granted." 39 Classical political philosophy sees things with unequaled freshness 40 because it starts from the "natural" or "prephilosophical," 41 i.e., from the exact distinctions of political life itself, 42 prior to their transformation and concealment by theories in the constructive sense of the term. As our passages suggest, Strauss holds that moral distinctions are not only natural but that they are directly accessible in a way that theoretical distinctions are not. Or perhaps the theoretical distinctions may be visible, but without revealing their intrinsic natures. A perception of the Idea of justice does not tell us what is just in the given case. On the other hand, at least according to Strauss, we have, or may obtain, perceptions of what is just in the given case by considering that case. Assuming for the moment that this is so, what bearing does it have upon the thesis that classical political philosophy has as its highest theme the life of the wise man? We already know from Strauss that this life entirely transcends the city and, indeed, all human things. It must therefore transcend natural, political, or prephilosophical moral distinctions. But even further, the philosopher as philosopher cannot in any way be interested in moral distinctions. If classical political philosophy is the popular presentation of philosophy, then it cannot take its bearings by prephilosophical moral distinctions. It must rather take its bearings by the transpolitical or purely theoretical objects of philosophical eros. But on Strauss's account, there are no such objects. To be sure, Strauss claims that prudence and the "lower world" of political action cannot be seen properly "without some knowledge of 'the higher world'—without genuine theoria."43 If, however, the Ideas are problems, then the "lower world" must itself appear problematical. Furthermore, as Strauss points out, "Aristotle's cosmology, as distinguished from Plato's, is unqualifiedly separable from the quest for the best political order. Aristotelian philosophizing has no longer to the same degree and in the same way as Socratic philosophizing the character of ascent." 44 Strauss is of course referring here to the sharp distinction in Aristotle between theoretical and practical reason. But therefore, when Strauss attributes to Aristotle a belief in "a natural harmony between the whole and the human mind" and adds that "man would not be capable of happiness if the whole of which he is a part were not friendly to him," 4 5 it in no way follows that the prephilosophical situation is the gateway to philosophy. Contrary to Strauss's assertion, Aristotle's preference for the gentleman and gentlemanly virtue casts no light upon the wise man or the theoretical life. The following typical statement by Strauss is either in contradiction with his own understanding of Aristotle's philosophy, or it is a part of his exoteric teaching: "The life of the perfect gentleman points toward the philosophic way of life. . . . The gentleman is by nature able to be affected by

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philosophy; Aristotle's political science is an attempt to actualize this possibility." 46 In general, the same must be said about Strauss's extension of this thesis to Plato, and to "the classics" generally. This extension is made, for example, in Natural Right and History: The administration of the law must be intrusted to a type of man who is most likely to administer it equitably, i.e. in the spirit of the wise legislator. . . . The classics held that this type of man is the gentleman. The gentleman is not identical with the wise man. He is the political reflection, or imitation, of the wise man. Gentlemen have this in common with the wise man, that they 'look down' on many things which are highly esteemed by the vulgar or that they are experienced in things noble and beautiful. They differ from the wise because they have a noble contempt for precision, because they refuse to take cognizance of certain aspects of life, and because, in order to live as gentlemen, they must be well off. 4 7

Whatever we may think of these assertions as expressions of sound political thinking, the fact is that they are unsupported by Strauss's broad view of the nature of philosophy in the genuine, i.e., classical, sense. And so far as I know, they are unsupported by a single passage from Plato and Aristotle themselves. Yet these views summarize the political formulation of Strauss's critique of modernity and attempted rehabilitation of classical political philosophy. My own view is quite different. I believe that the advocacy of the rule of gentlemen expresses the Platonic-Aristotelian conviction that there is no direct connection between philosophy or the life of theory, and politics or the life of practice. To the contrary, as Strauss regularly asserted, the unresolvable antagonism between philosophy and politics is one of the main causes of philosophical esotericism. One must infer from Strauss's own principles that no political book is genuinely philosophical unless it is exoteric. In the strict sense of the terms, political philosophy is not philosophy at all but rhetoric, or a noble lie. Thucydides' silence about philosophy, also noted by Strauss, is in my opinion the correct political inference to be drawn from Plato and Aristotle. And this is entirely compatible with the telling of elaborate noble lies in the attempt to preserve philosophy from the merited hatred of the nonphilosophers. If we put to one side contingent questions of taste, what is the theoretical justification for classical political virtue and the claim that the regime of rural aristocrats possesses some kind of paradigmatic status for human beings at all times, with necessary consideration for the local conditions? It is begging the question to identify the aristocratic code with the natural perception of nobility. This conception of nobility rests upon the assumption that the crucial distinction between the few and the many is unchangeable, or changeable only through the sacrifice of nobility itself.

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However, this is precisely what defenders of modernity deny. Strauss tries to mitigate, even to conceal this fact by his regular assertion that the founders of modernity lower their standards, or look to efficacity, utility, pleasure, comfort, and so on, whereas the ancients looked to nobility and the life of the wise. He never gives an adequate hearing to the defense of modernity, according to which what the classics call nobility is at bottom baseness. By this same defense, classical political philosophy is base in its practical consequences because it is the result of cowardice, or the denial that courage is a philosophical virtue, for all the talk about philosophical madness. And let me repeat that, if courage is not a philosophical virtue, this is because, contrary to Strauss's exoteric teaching, there is no connection between philosophy and politics. One could also say that courage becomes a philosophical virtue thanks to the rise of modern science, which expands man's power indefinitely. Strauss's critique of modernity depends upon his drawing entirely, or largely, negative conclusions from the application of modern science. I would never deny that there is considerable historical evidence at his disposal. Nevertheless, I deny that the inference is sound, either philosophically or politically. But this is not the occasion to develop a defense of modernity. We are primarily concerned with the teaching of Leo Strauss. We therefore note that, according to Strauss, modem thought in all its forms is determined by the idea of progress, 48 that it is of British origin (Hobbes and Bacon: the will to power and technology), 49 and hence is rooted from the outset in Enlightenment. 5 0 Strauss's critique of modernity is thus a critique of the Enlightenment, similar to that of Nietzsche, but also entirely typical of what has frequently been called "post-modernism." Strauss also shares the characteristically Nietzschean ambiguity of fluctuating between a view of philosophy as pure theoretical contemplation, as unsatisfiable eros, and as a radically nonrational commitment of the will. The fundamental difference between Strauss and Nietzsche is in my opinion this: Nietzsche rejects theoretical truth in favor of art. Strauss rejects theoretical truth in favor of prudence. Nietzsche, like Strauss, defends the classical perception of nobility. But whereas Strauss associates this perception with an unstable blend of theory and practice, Nietzsche associates it with production. Strauss's relatively low estimate of poetry, together with his practice of esotericism, is thus quite reminiscent of the founders of modernity, and in particular, of Bacon. 51 As a post-modem or successor to Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss is in a position to understand that modern science is at bottom neither theory nor practice, but praxis, and hence, poetry. His exoteric rehabilitation of classical political philosophy may therefore best be understood as the attempt to distinguish philosophy from poetry. Unfortunately, it is seriously weakened because of the absence of a coherent and convincing view of philosophy. Finally, one must also raise the question as to the appropriateness of Strauss's rhetoric in a post-modem age. This was

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a question Strauss himself took seriously, as I know from personal correspondence with him. Unfortunately, he is no longer here to continue the conversation. NOTES 1. The Works of Francis Bacon, 14 vols., eds. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, Günther Holzboog, 1962), p. 130 [1605AD], Hereafter, SEH. 2. Ibid., p. 188. 3. Ibid., p. 203. 4. Ibid., p. 182. 5. E.g., Novum Organum, SEH 1, pp. 234-236. 6. Ibid., pp. 209f„ 214, 234. 7. Ibid., p. 219. 8. René Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii: Texte critique établi par Giovanni Crapulli avec la version hollandaise du XVIlème siècle (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 2. 9. Bernard Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes: Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes, ed. R. Shackelton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 166. 10. Ibid., p. 167. 11. Ibid., p. 175. 12. Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920), pp. 218-219. 13. "Tyrannie et Sagesse," in De la Tyrannie (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1954), p. 305. Hereafter, TS. Cf. Leo Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 31. Hereafter, XS. 14. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 110-111. Hereafter, CM. 15. Novum Organum, SEH 1, p. 199. 16. Passions III, article 153. 17. Niccolo Machiavelli, II Principe, eds. S. Bertelli and F. Gaeta (Feltrinelli: 1960-1964), ch. 25, pp. 99-100. 18. Cf. XS, p. 78; Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 36-37. Hereafter, WPPH. 19. WPPH, p. 32. Cf. CM, p. 229, where the same distinction is attributed to Thucydides. 20. WPPH, p. 37. 21. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 323. Hereafter, NRH. 22. Leo Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. E. M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 86-87, 152. 23. NRH, p. 75. 24. Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), pp. 28-29. 25. TS, pp. 316-317. 26. Ibid., p. 319. 27. Ibid., p. 343.

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28. Cf. NRH, p. 125. 29. TS, pp. 332-333. 30. TS, p. 319. 31. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits Gute und Böse, in Werke in drei Bänden, ed. K. Schlechta (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954-1956). 32. History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1963), p. 27. 33. WPPH, p. 39. 34. TS, pp. 316-317; NRH, p. 32. 35. WPPH, pp. 93-94. 36. NRH, p. 82. 37. WPPH, p. 11. 38. Ibid., p. 91. 39. Ibid., p. 89. 40. Ibid., p. 27. 41. Ibid., p. 75. 42. Ibid., p. 79. 43. NRH, p. 321. 44. CM, p. 21. 45. Ibid., p. 41. 46. Ibid., p. 28. 47. NRH, pp. 141-143. 48. WPPH, p. 76. 49. Ibid., p. 172. 50. NRH, p. 198. 51. Consider Advancement, SEH 6, p. 290, where Bacon criticizes the modern use of esotericism, together with New Atlantis, SEH 5, p. 411, where the practice of esotericism in Bacon's Utopia is made plain.

8

The Prescientific World and Historicism: Some Reflections on Strauss, Heidegger, and Husserl LAURENCE BERNS

This paper is concerned with some fundamental differences between the thought of Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger. We conclude with some observations on Strauss's critique of what can be regarded as Husserl's approach to political philosophy. Strauss's explicit criticisms of historicism can be found, among other places, in his chapter "Natural Right and the Historical Approach" in Natural Right and History.1 I am more interested here in the principles bearing on that criticism that are implicit in his thought as a whole. I We begin with some elementary agreements and disagreements. Husserl, Heidegger, and Strauss all agree that the understanding of man that is based on methodical or systematic rejection of what is primordially or naturally given to human experience, that is, modern science's understanding of man, is inadequate. They agree with Plato and Aristotle that science and philosophy must begin from prescientific, prephilosophic experience, the world of ordinary experience, in Husserl's language, the "life-world." An accurate description, or articulation, of that world is then one of the first tasks of philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, Husserl, and Strauss are open to the possibility that science can uncover the true, or intelligible, world underlying the world of ordinary experience. For Husserl, following Kant, transcendental subjectivity underlies and constitutes both the world of natural experience and the world of "objective" science. Objectivity, from this point of view, is understood as universal subjectivity, or undeniable intersubjective agreement. If the constituting subjectivity is conceived of as decisively determined by the uniqueness of its historical situation, this position becomes historicist. Some characterize the thought of the early Heidegger and the late Husserl in this way. If science is simply part of a world view that is valid only for some limited period of time, the question rises as to what objectivity could mean. 169

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For Heidegger, one might say, the ancients and Husserl are correct in trying to begin from the natural, the given world, the life-world; but in their descriptions they all fail to reach the primordially given, the pragmata, the fundamental objects of human concern. This failure, to put it in nonHeideggerian terms, is the failure to articulate the fundamental attitude of religiosity permeating the perspective of the life-world. A Christianized anthropology is used by Heidegger to articulate the structures of human existence: The foundations of morality are discussed in terms of conscience, guilt, and fallenness; history, Geschichte, is connected to Geschick, what has been sent; objects of thought "at the end of philosophy" are to give themselves or to be given to thinking that opens itself in grateful acceptance. 2 "But what lies obscurely at the basis of everything Heidegger ever said, and induces many to become attentive and listen is something unsaid: The religious motive, which has surely separated itself from Christian belief, but just in its dogmatically uncommitted indeterminateness appeals the more to those who are no longer believing Christians, but still would like to be religious." 3 Religious sentiments are presented in more or less respectable academic garb ("existential analytic"), without the academically less respectable theological presuppositions that might ground those sentiments. That classical philosophy grounded itself in natural prescientific cognition was often emphasized by Strauss. Yet in a sense, he implicitly acknowledged, Heidegger was correct. Classical philosophy in its accounts of prephilosophic experience does not present the concern with the divine as that concern exists normally within the prephilosophic perspective, "because for it [classical philosophy] the concern with the divine has become identical with philosophy." Yet, Philosophy is the ascent from what is first for us to what is first by nature. This ascent requires that what is first for us be understood as adequately as possible in the manner in which it comes to sight prior to the ascent. . . . the city as it primarily understood itself [is] distinguished from the manner in which it was exhibited by classical political philosophy: the holy city in contradistinction to the natural city. . . . what is 'first for us' is not the philosophic understanding of the city but that understanding which is inherent in the city as such, in the prephilosophic city, according to which the city sees itself as subject and subservient to the divine in the ordinary understanding of the divine or looks up to it. 4

II

Strauss often noted the absence of any thematic treatment of piety in the Nicomachean Ethics, and that the most prominent mention of piety in that book occurs just before Aristotle launches into a critique of the Platonic idea

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of the good. The passage is instructive. The introducers of the ideas are referred to by a verb that reminds one of the original charge accusing Socrates of introducing new divinities. To criticize these men is difficult, he says, because they are our friends, because they are dear to us. But while both the truth and our friends are dear to us, since we are philosophers, it is more pious for us to honor the truth before our friends. Piety comes into view with the conflict between the love of one's own and the love of truth. Classical philosophy was never permitted to ignore piety: The danger of being charged with bringing in new deities was never altogether absent. From the point of view of classical philosophy, one might say, there is little danger of the religious perspective ever being neglected, for philosophy itself will always necessarily coexist with one kind of public religion or another. If the religious impulse is rooted in human nature itself, it is not accidental that the tendency of modern philosophy to incorporate religious notions into itself began with, or shortly after, the philosophic project to dispense with revealed religion through "enlightenment." However this may be, for Strauss and classical philosophy the natural perspective is constituted essentially by a tension between the demands of piety and the demands of what leads to objective science and philosophy. This is exhibited in a classic manner by Strauss's account of the discovery of nature out of theology in Natural Right and History.5 Just before that account, Strauss writes: "To grasp the natural world as a world that is radically prescientific or prephilosophic, one has to go back behind the first emergence of science or philosophy. . . . The information that classical philosophy supplies about its origins suffices, especially if that information is supplemented by consideration of the elementary premises of the Bible."6 What causes great difficulty for conventional scholarship, with its more or less legalistic canons of evidence, is that from the classical point of view these matters cannot be properly discussed, at least in writing, with full explicitness. I refer to Strauss's rediscovery of exotericism. 7 Human beings, the classics argued, are radically individual and radically social at the same time. 8 Society, in order to reconcile this tension in human nature, is always political society. For society to exist decently with at least a modicum of freedom, the sanctification of norms is required. This sanctification is necessary to provide individuals with sufficient strength to make the sacrifices required for overcoming radical selfishness as well as external enemies. The sanctifications that back up the personal commitments required to keep society decently free have the cognitive status of opinions. Philosophy as the ascent from opinion to knowledge calls into question all opinions, regards all, even the best, opinions as insufficient knowledge. The canons of philosophic and scientific evidence, therefore, tend to dissolve such commitments by calling the cognitive status of their supports into question. In that public speech, then, which is his writing, the philosopher mutes whatever might tend to weaken the sources of human decency and freedom, not only because the im-

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provement of society is good in itself, but also because, generally speaking, no society without a m o d i c u m of f r e e d o m and decency is likely to tolerate or h a r b o r philosophy within itself. 9 T h e serious student, then, seeking the unmuted m e a n i n g of his philosophic teachers, especially in what concerns the " f u n d a m e n t a l structures of h u m a n existence," must have recourse to the implications of their philosophic rhetoric. Heidegger approaches these themes of political philosophy in Sections 2 7 and 35 of Sein und Zeit,10 but does not seem to have thought through h o w this might have affected and modified the presentation of all p r e m o d e m philosophy. Ill Classical political philosophy, then, in S t r a u s s ' s v i e w consisting of ethics and politics, is that branch of philosophy that is devoted to the articulation and understanding of the prephilosophic and prescientific perspective and the negotiations of the tensions constituting it. Does Heidegger by his rejection of, p e r h a p s e v e n c o n t e m p t for, ethics miss the f u n d a m e n t a l sense of the initial pragmatal Can o n e articulate the f u n d a m e n t a l c o n c e r n s of h u m a n existence without e v e r raising the question of justice, not to speak of the questions w h o , or what kind of m e n should rule, which way of life is best, what is h u m a n excellence, its varieties, their order of rank? Is it accidental that in trying to understand the political implications of H e i d e g g e r ' s thought one must have recourse to his embarrassing public statements of the thirties? Despite m a n y disagreements, Strauss took Heidegger's rejections of ethics as a sign of his greatness: Heidegger, he said, faced the p r o b l e m of ethics. Heidegger, H a n s - G e o r g G a d a m e r writes, provided us with the philosophic means for uncovering the illusion that science—in whatever style—could ever be responsible for the decisions of a "universal praxis". . . . we owe to his critique then this, that the way of knowing implied in the Aristotelian critique of Plato's knowledge of the Good, which as philosophia practica dominated the tradition till well into the 18th century, before it lost its 11 legitimacy, could now be grounded anew. H e i d e g g e r supplies that " g r o u n d i n g " in his sections on c o n s c i e n c e in Sein und Zeit (p. 286), w h e r e the foundations f o r "morality in g e n e r a l " are laid d o w n . T h e distinction b e t w e e n a virtuous act and a v i r t u o u s m a n (Nicomachean Ethics, II.4, 1105a 17ff.) or, more generally, b e t w e e n a certain kind of act and being a certain kind of m a n is developed into the distinction between vulgar conscience and existential, or authentic, conscience: a concern with r e c k o n i n g u p o n e ' s g o o d and bad d e e d s in contrast with a serious concern with what one is, with w h e t h e r one measures u p to what o n e could be.

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The threefold scheme of "fundamental existeniialia," 12 (1) Disposition, 13 (2) Understanding, and (3) Discourse, is used to disclose the resoluteness of the man who "wants to have a conscience," the man of authentic conscience. This resoluteness is constituted by (1) anxiety; (2) understanding how one is not what one might be, i.e., guilt; and (3) the silent discourse, or call, that calls one back from the never totally escapable idle talk of the public, that calls one back to oneself and to one's unfulfilled present and "factical" possibilities. To be resolute is "to be already taking action," and Heidegger anticipates, indeed quite rightly, that resoluteness might be, as he claims, misunderstood as "a special way of behavior of the practical faculty in contrast with one that is theoretical." Resoluteness, he argues, is the authenticity of care, and care is said to be so primordial as to precede any distinction between theory and practice. The concern with what kind of man one is to be precedes the choice of one kind of life rather than another. The emphasis here seems to be on the efficient causes, the emotional dispositions impelling that concern, rather than the rational consideration of final causes that might shape and guide it toward some state of felicity. If the choice is to be reasonable, or "ontologically adequate," it should be based on a more or less accurate estimate of one's own natural capacities. Fortunately, or providentially, nature usually helps in these matters by making what one is better suited for more pleasant. A fuller discussion of pleasure, love, and desire might be even more instructive than a discussion of radical anxiety. In this context Heidegger speaks continually of one's "ownmost potentiality-for-being" (Seinkdnnen). He wants to avoid the concession to the theoretical perspective that reference to nature would entail. Can a potentiality be made intelligible without reference to its term or end? One is reminded of the complaint frequently leveled at Kant: Heidegger's account is too formal; the account of the virtues and ways of life that would fill out the discussion of "potentiality-for-being" is missing. Nature, for classical philosophy, provides the potentialities, but any adequate account of potentialities must include a discussion of the ends, the virtues, for which they are potentialities. "By reason of the law of development embodied in every nature, 'natural' can be predicated of either of these opposites: the initial, the incipient, the primitive, the native, the rudimentary, and the terminal, the final, the accomplished, the perfect." 14 The crucial Aristotelian text, literally translated, is one to be found in Nicomachean Ethics, II. 1, 1103a 24-26: "Therefore, neither by nature, nor against nature are the virtues engendered in us, but by our being natured to receive them and by our being completed (or perfected) by habit." Nature provides both the capacities to receive the moral virtues and the ends implicit in them: Men by their habits and laws fulfill or pervert those capacities. There is, in fact, an ethical stance implicit in Heidegger's substitute for virtue, "authenticity," 15 his "resoluteness," 16 and, above all, his descriptions of "falling," of the shallowness and emptiness of das Man and his idle talk.

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In doctrine, however, "we must avoid giving [falling] any ontically negative 'evaluation'." Heidegger's Eigentlichkeit is the offspring of the modern notion of freedom as self-legislation, that ethical criterion that was conceived so as to be compatible with a nonteleological science of nature. IV

The rank order of the virtues and the different ways of life for classical philosophy are connected to a rank order of powers of the soul. For Heidegger, the bounds and framework of the potentiality-for-being referred to are determined by one's historical situation but cannot be set by nature or any scheme of "reification" or "objectification." Despite the doctrinal barriers he has placed in its way, it may nevertheless be useful to interpret Heidegger's account of human existence from the point of view of classical psychology, especially the psychology of Aristotle. In addition to Aristotle's distinction between a virtuous act and a virtuous man, so, too, as Gadamer has mentioned, was his doctrine of phronesis important for Heidegger's account of conscience. The former distinguishes the mere performance of virtuous actions from the being of the kind of man who acts virtuously (1) knowingly, (2) from deliberate choice, and (3) from a fixed and unchanging disposition so to act. 17 The latter, the doctrine of phronesis (a word that in Aristotle has a range of meanings from elementary prudence to practical wisdom) distinguishes "mere" objective, detached knowing from a form of knowing that depends on being a certain kind of man, a knowing, in Gadamer's words "within the concrete situation of existence." The same facts were looked at by Strauss in another way: He was fond of quoting Thomas Aquinas's observation that the intellectual virtues with the exception of phronesis do not presuppose moral virtue. Phronesis, the intellectual virtue by which one chooses the means conducive to virtue, presupposes a man who is disposed and habituated to want virtuous ends. The different powers of the soul, since in each case they are the powers of a single person, form some kind of unity. Philosophic psychologists distinguish those "parts" or powers, deal with the relations between the powers, and try to determine which one of the parts should be dominant in determining the unity and the character of the whole. That unity, one may say, is a unity of interpenetrating powers in tension. When Aristotle says in the beginning of the Metaphysics that all men by nature desire to know, he knows that most men, while they do desire to know, desire other things more. Most men, he reports at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, live by passion. Men are distinguished, as Plato's Republic most dramatically shows, by the powers that dominate their souls. The best men for Plato and Aristotle are those in whom intellect, or understanding, dominates. The moving power in practical action, linked with reason, is appetite, which is further subdivided into three "parts" in an ascending order of closeness to

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reason: desire (epithumia), which seeks pleasure; spiritedness (thymos), which is the source of those feelings primarily directed to the care for one's own, especially fear, hope, anger, and love; and wish, or wanting (boulesis), which aims at the apparent good. Many factors conspire to indicate that spiritedness is the dominant power for Heidegger. There is the emphasis on "mineness," "ownness," and anxiety, a radicalized fear. If resoluteness approaches any Aristotelian virtue, it would seem to be courage, the virtue that refines spiritedness. Furthermore, "the Being of Dasein itself is to be made visible as care" (Sein undZeit, p. 57). 18 As Heidegger has anticipated, from an Aristotelian perspective this discussion and his doctrine of Zuhandenheit (readiness-to-hand) as a whole lead us to conclude that for Heidegger human existence is primarily practical existence. 19 The problem of spiritedness has been stated classically by the Athenian Stranger of Plato's Laws (731e-732a): "In truth the cause of every sin comes to each person each time through excessive love of oneself. For the one who loves is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges the just and the good and the noble things badly, believing that he is bound always to honor what is his own before the truth." This consequence of our particularity, our Dasein, the tendency to sacrifice truth to the love of one's own, points to moderation as an indispensable virtue of practical life, especially of political life. Heidegger, as we have indicated, particularly appreciated the psychological distinctions of the Nicomachean Ethics. But, as his immoderate exaltation of spiritedness indicates, he may not have equally appreciated the substantial treatment of the virtues, for example, the beautiful way Aristotle describes the defects small-souledness, the dispirited state of those whose lack of selfesteem keeps them from enjoying the virtuous deeds they could enjoy, and especially inirascibility (aorgesia), which he deals with in the context of a discussion of gentleness, good temper, or patience.

v Strauss and classical philosophy, we have argued, understood the natural or prescientific, prephilosophic perspective to be constituted at its core by a tension between the demands of piety and the divination of an impersonal nature that leads to philosophy and science. 20 Political philosophy, as he understood it, articulates that fundamental tension, not only by its study of the straightforward questions of ethics and politics but also by the study of the origins of philosophy, the quarrel between the poets and the philosophers, the question of the possibility of philosophy as a way of life, the principles of revealed religion. In Strauss's view, then, this tension is natural in both senses of the word (p. 173), which includes the sense, "healthy." From this we can begin to understand Strauss's remark that the mutual irrefutability of biblical revelation and science and philosophy may be the secret of the vitality of Western civilization. 21 The negative and critical

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side of Strauss's argument is his sweeping and meticulous demonstration, especially in Natural Right and History, that historicism is rooted not in an open-minded analysis of human existence but in a mode of interpreting human existence ultimately derived from the questionable principles and crises of modem political philosophy. 22 One important common ground for the paths blazed by Heidegger, on the one hand, and Klein and Strauss, on the other, was the conviction that the attempt to understand human existence on the basis of modern science and its "conquest of nature" was a failure. But they account for the failure differently. For all his profound understanding of the differences, Heidegger stresses the continuity between modem science and classical philosophy. Put roughly, classical philosophy is held responsible for what modern science has wrought. Strauss and Klein emphasize the differences. The failure is traced to modem philosophy's break with classical philosophy. 23 Both Strauss and Heidegger faced the problem of the difficulty of finding one's way to the "natural cave," the world of prescientific experience, in a technological society where the ordinary workaday world and its discourse are permeated by science. Heidegger's way is the "deconstruction" of the tradition that led to the difficulty, and the alleged uncovering of the primordial ontological or existential ground that underlies all traditions, i.e., existential analytic. For Strauss, the way out of our air-conditioned pit (modern thought's alleged progress beyond all earlier thought) beneath the cave requires primarily a recovery of the classical philosophy that the great moderns oppose and reject, and thereby presuppose they understand. 24 VI

The fundamental tension we have referred to has been discussed in different ways. The most prominent way in the writings of classical philosophy takes the form of the distinction between theory and practice. Strauss approved of Jacob Klein's way of putting it: In Greek episteme the life of "cognition" and "knowledge" was recognized for the first time as an ultimate human possibility, one which enables men to disregard all the ends they might otherwise pursue, to devote themselves to contemplation in complete freedom and leisure, and to find their happiness in this very activity. This possibility is contrasted with the bondage imposed by the affairs of the day. Here science stands in original and immediate opposition to a nonscientific attitude which yet is its soil and in which it recognizes its own roots. In attempting to raise itself above this nonscientific attitude, science preserves intact these given foundations. It is therefore both possible and necessary to learn to see Greek science from the point of view of this, its "natural" basis. In its sum total Greek science represents the whole complex of those "natural" cognitions which are implied in a prescientific activity moving within

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the realm of opinion and supported by a preconceptual understanding of the world. 25

The whole of human cognition, however, embraces both theory and practice. If it is a hierarchic whole, as each of the powers contends, then which of the major parts should be authoritative for determining its character? This ranking, it would seem, should be a reflection of the rank order of the parts that constitute the whole of the objects of cognition. What then is the character of the principle that governs the whole of things? This, I believe, is behind the marvelous way Strauss ends The City and Man, with "the allimportant question which is coeval with philosophy although the philosophers do not frequently pronounce it—the question quid sit deus." What is God? Is it the loving, caring God of justice, for whom righteous action is the one thing needful, or impersonal intelligence, self-sufficient in its intellection, the model and ground of the human capacity to understand things as they are? VII

On one level, the lowest level, the political drift of Heidegger's position did not seem, to Strauss, difficult to discern. Resoluteness is exalted without clarification of the ends of resoluteness. All transcendent, i.e., transhistorical, ethical, and political principles that could support or induce moderation and a critical stand toward the given goals of one's own historical situation are disparaged. It was a spiritual resonance with the National Socialist Revolution that prevented Heidegger, albeit only temporarily, from seeing Hitler's ruthlessness for the degradation and the perversion of heroism it was. The practical bent of Heidegger's thought, however, enters the political plane on another level, the highest possible level. Appalled by the prospect of an approaching spiritual unity of the planet on the lowest level of humanly empty, calculating, technical thought, wrought by the victory of Western technology, Heidegger tried to prepare the ground, a possible common but deeper ground for the meeting of East and West in dialogue. The ground Heidegger tried to prepare was to make it possible for each side to preserve something of its own noble depths while joining with the other to forge the unified humanity imposed upon us by . . . history? Destiny? The gods? This seems to be Heidegger's way of responding to Nietzsche's call to his philosopher-poets of the future to prepare themselves for planetary rule. The fundamental tension we have referred to seems, in Heidegger's thought, to have been resolved. Theory has culminated in the worldwide victory of technology and the end of philosophy. Theory does not seem to be an alternative coeval with human existence. The task of thinking at the end of philosophy is to develop the depths in our Western thought ultimately

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derivative from the Bible, the East in us, but freed from those dogmatic underpinnings that might prevent them from becoming planetary. 26 Strauss's criticism of Husserl's approach to political philosophy brings us back more directly to our main theme, the rootedness of science in an opposed "nonscientific attitude which yet is its soil and in which it recognizes its own roots." Husserl's Philosophy as Rigorous Science,21 published in 1911, begins with the sentence: "From its first beginnings philosophy has raised the claim to be the science that would satisfy the highest theoretical needs and in regard to ethics and religion render possible a life regulated by pure rational norms."2* Heidegger seems to dissolve one element of the fundamental tension, Husserl the other. In 1911, Strauss suggests, Husserl failed to think through what the effects of a successful single-minded pursuit of philosophy might be. What is likely to happen if the spirit of science were increasingly to dominate practical life, religion, and politics? Husserl did not consider the possible adverse effects the success of scientism would have on the doctrines most men live by, and then what the effects these reactions would have on philosophy as rigorous science itself. A variety of opposing doctrines and fighting faiths could be called into being. For example, if philosophy as rigorous science appears to have a monopoly on reason and yet is thought (by calling tradition into question) to be harmful to life, a world view might be called into being that would be antirational. It would take the form of illiberal antirationalism, i.e., fascism. Or, perhaps, when scientism has sufficiently weakened the tradition, a revolution even in the name of a kind of reason will impose a single world view on all members of society and will no longer tolerate the open-minded inquiries of philosophy as rigorous science, except, of course, in strictly technical fields. Its political form might be called pseudorationalism, i.e., communism. 29 Husserl, who so profoundly understood that the scientific understanding is dependent upon the natural understanding, apparently overlooked some essential characteristics of that understanding. By 1935, Strauss suggests, events moved Husserl to extend these reflections. In his Vienna Lecture he said: Those who are conservatively contented with the [religious] tradition and the circle of philosophic human beings will fight one another, and surely the fight will take place in the sphere of political power. Already in the beginning of philosophy persecution sets in. The men who live toward those ideas [of philosophy] are outlawed. And yet: ideas are stronger than all empirical powers.

Strauss comments: "in order to see the relation between philosophy as rigorous science and the alternative to it clearly, one must look at the political conflict between the two antagonists, i.e., at the essential character

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of that conflict." 3 0 By referring to this conflict as a fundamental tension we indicate our belief that relatively peaceful coexistence on a practical plane is both possible and desirable, especially when the raison d'être of both antagonists is under attack from powerful opponents w h o deny the very possibility of transhistorical goals. It is, then, neither safe nor theoretically rigorous for philosophy and science to become oblivious to the religious and traditional soil in which they find their roots. The most congenial political home for philosophy and science, which w e might call rational liberalism, would seem to need to learn to be respectful and even conservative of that soil.

NOTES 1.For good recent discussions of those explicit arguments, see Hilail Gilden, "Introduction," in An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), pp. vii-xxiv; Eugene F. Miller, "Leo Strauss: The Recovery of Political Philosophy," in Contemporary Political Philosophers, eds. Anthony de Crespigny and Kenneth Minogue (New York: Dodd Mead, 1975); Paul Norton, "Leo Strauss: His Critique of Historicism," Modern Age, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 1981), pp. 143-154; Richard Kennington, "Strauss's Natural Right and History," The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. xxxv, No. 1, (September 1981), pp. 5 7 - 8 6 ; Victor Gourevitch, "The Problems of Natural Right and the Fundamental Alternatives in Natural Right and History," in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy : A Straussian Perspective, eds. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Soffer (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), corrected edition, pp. 30-33. 2. See Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1957), secs. 54-60, and especially n. 1, p. 199; and Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1969), p. 80. 3. Karl Löwith, Heidegger: Denker in dürftiger Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960), p. 111. Emphasis in original. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Die religiöse Dimension," in Heidegger's Wege (Tübingen: Mohr, 1983), pp. 140-151. 4. The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), pp. 240-241. Aristotle's treatment of piety and religion, in addition to scattered remarks in the Politics, Ethics, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics, is to be found, I have argued, implicit in his discussion of tragic pity and fear: Cf. "Aristotle's Poetics," in Ancients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. Joseph Cropsey (New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp. 76-78 and 81. The first seven books of Plato's Laws, it might be argued, should be exempted from this criticism. 5. Chapter 3. 6. Emphasis added. This last point and its significance seems to be overlooked by Hwa Yol Jung in his discussion of these passages, Review of Politics, Vol. 29, No. 4 (October 1967), p. 506. 7. Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, "A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss," The College (St. John's of Annapolis) (April 1970), pp. 1-5. 8. Cf. Aristotle, History of Animals, 1.1, 487b 3 3 ^ 8 8 a 13; and Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), II, chap. 40.

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9. This last remark requires qualification, cf. my "Transcendence and Equivocation: Some Political, Theological, and Philosophic Themes in Shakespeare," in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. John Alvis and Thomas G. West (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), pp. 48-49. 10. Especially pp. 129 and 169. See p. 130, sec. 27, next to last paragraph, for what in Heidegger corresponds to an account of man's being "by nature a political animal." 11. Kleine Schriften III, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972), p. 200; cf. also vol. I (1967), pp. 84-85; and Wahrheit und Methode, Part Two, II.2.b). Emphasis supplied. A less literal translation can be found in Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 196; cf. also pp. 201-202. 12. Sein und Zeit, Part I, V. A; sees. 29-34. 13. Befindlichkeit, the "state in which one may be found," should not be translated "state-of-mind" (as Macquarrie and Robinson do). The emphasis is on mood rather than mind. 14. Yves Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher's Reßections, ed. Vukan Kuic (New York: Fordham University Press, 1967), pp. 51-54. Simon, of course, implies that it can also be predicated of the whole development embracing both opposites. 15. The sense of the word Eigentlichkeit might be conveyed in English more clearly by an Anglo-Saxon cognate with the German, i.e., "ownliness." English-to-German dictionaries render the Greek-rooted "authenticity" by Echtheit, "genuineness," not Eigentlichkeit. Authentic, in the sense of genuine, slightly raises the moral tone of eigentlich, "truly, or really, one's own." 16. Cf. my "Spiritedness in Ethics and Politics: A Study in Aristotelian Psychology," Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy (May and September, 1984), pp. 3 3 5 - 3 4 8 . Chaninah Maschler has observed that Heidegger's resolute man seems to approach Aristotle's spoudaios, the serious, earnest, or seriously good man. 17. This threefold distinction, with order reversed, may be the original source for Heidegger's scheme of fundamental existentialia. See text at n. 12, above. 18. It is important for the study of the essentially human, Aristotle suggests, to determine what natural powers belong exclusively to human beings in comparison with the other animals. Many of the other animals have spiritedness in abundance, none of them has intellectual intuition, nous. The possession of this power is said to be the ground of the possibility of genuine theory, the ground of the most important human peculiarity, the peculiar possibility of being open to the being of things as they are—if this is a possibility. Is the rejection of the possibility of nous, especially by Kant, and its modern replacements (e.g., transcendental subjectivity) any less problematic? Is the way human beings think, even in philosophy and science, essentially different from the cognition of other animals? If so, what is the best way to account for it? Cf. my "Spiritedness in Ethics and Politics," cited in n. 16, above, p. 339, esp. n. 15. 19. This is not to deny that spiritedness and its care are operative in theory. Philosophia means love and care for the unchanging truth. Knowledge is not knowledge until it becomes one's own. The question is, however, which power of the soul dominates the soul? Aristotle's remarks about philosophic piety indicate that intellect so dominates for the philosopher as to enable him to sacrifice the more commonly "primordial" objects of care to his care for the discovery of truth.

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Spiritedness in the proper sense of the word, for Aristotle, is aroused by objects of our own that are in some way endangered, that might in some way be protected by ourselves. This would apply only to particular objects, especially objects of practice. The ultimate objects of theory, for Aristotle, cannot be endangered. The objects of spiritedness in practice are usually in some way exclusive. One loses no part of the troth by sharing it with others. The "care" of theory, then, is not care in the ordinary sense of the word. The endangered object here is the carer's own soul, or being, his or her concern for the possible loss of the greatest of all goods, understanding. Care here revolves around the relation of mortal beings to immortal truths. There is some important common ground in the Aristotelian account of philosophic wisdom and H e i d e g g e r ' s account of authentic conscience. The account needs to be supplemented by an account of pleasures, especially "pure," or philosophic pleasure, the kind of account that Aristotle, but not Heidegger, supplies. Cf. Gadamer, "Religiöse Dimension," n. 3, p. 144. 20. Cf. my "Rational Animal-Political Animal: Nature and Convention in Human Speech and Politics," in Essays in Honor of Jacob Klein (Annapolis: St. John's College Press, 1976), pp. 31-32. "Prephilosophic," of course, does not mean devoid of what could lead to philosophy. Cf., e.g., Deuteronomy 4:19-20; and Genesis 18:11-15. 21. Cf. "The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy," The Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1979), pp. 111-118. 22. The demonstration includes discoveries about Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau that prove to be more interesting and important than historicism itself. 23. Cf. Heidegger, Die Frage nach dem Ding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1962), B.I.5., especially e); "Das Wesen des mathematischen Entwurfs . . . ," "The Essence of the Mathematical Project . . . "; and Jacob Klein, "On the Difference Between Ancient and Modern Conceptualization," in Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), p. 117ff. (It may be advisable to read pp. 3 - 9 first, and if possible, chapters 6-8). Cf. also Leo Strauss, "Political Philosophy and History," in What Is Political Philosophy (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1959), pp. 74-77. 24. See especially pp. 154-158 of Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952). 25. Klein, "On the Difference," pp. 118-119. Cf. Judah Halevi, Kitab Al Khazari, 1.63 with Genesis 9:27. 26. Despite his insistence that what he is doing should not be called philosophy, Heidegger's intrepid questioning, his revivification of the problem of being, etc., make it difficult not to see him as being in and of the tradition of (Western) philosophy. 27. Translated by Quentin Lauer, with "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man," the Vienna Lecture, in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). 28. Strauss's translation in "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy," Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy (Summer 1971), pp. 1 - 9 , emphasis added. 29. Cf. my "Speculations on Liberal and Illiberal Politics," The Review of Politics (April 1978), p. 231ff., especially n. 13. For the preparatory development in Russia, consider, in this order, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and Virgin Soil (frustrated populism turns to terrorism), Dostoyevsky's The Possessed, and Alexander Herzen's Memoirs, especially his account of his time at the university. 30. Strauss, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science," n. 28, p. 9.

9

Leo Strauss's Philosophie und Gesetz EVE ADLER

The occasion of this essay is the recent publication of an English translation of Leo Strauss's Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und Seiner Vorläufer (Schocken Verlag, Berlin, 1935). This is an important and beautiful book. It contains a groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors, and it offers an argument on behalf of that philosophy which is also a profound critique of modem philosophy. Philosophie und Gesetz deserves to be widely recognized as fundamental to the study of Jewish thought, but it has long been out of print in German and had never been translated into English. 1 It was therefore cause for rejoicing that the Jewish Publication Society recently brought out an English translation (Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, translated by Fred Baumann, 1987), which will now introduce Strauss's work to a wider audience and stimulate interest in its subject matter. The rejoicing cannot be unqualified, however, for the translation is so extensively flawed by material errors that it is an inadequate and even a misleading guide to the argument of the book. That argument is challenging in every sense of the word; but it is not baffling, as unwary readers of the translation might be led to suppose. My purpose in this essay is to encourage the study of Strauss's book while taking account of the obstacles presented by the translation. Accordingly, the essay has two parts. First, in a discussion of the argument of Philosophie und Gesetz, I hope to give a glimpse of the treasures that make this book worth studying; then, in a discussion of the translation, I hope to prepare its prospective readers for some of the difficulties they will face. Finally, I have appended a list of such corrections to the translation as may help readers to solve some of those difficulties.

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Strauss's professed aim in Philosophic und Gesetz is to "awaken a prejudice" in favor of the view that Maimonides' medieval rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism and, even more, to arouse a suspicion against the powerful opposing prejudice ( P & G , p. 9). The powerful opposing prejudice, as it turns out, is not so much that modern rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism as that there is no true natural prototype of rationalism. Strauss will take issue with the view that nature has been proved by modern thought to have been a delusion. His twofold aim is, then, in the first place to arouse a suspicion against the view that it is irrational to inquire after the true natural prototype of a thing, and only in the second place to awaken a prejudice to the effect that as for rationalism, not modern rationalism but Maimonides' rationalism is its true natural prototype. Strauss begins from the present situation of Judaism. This situation, like all phenomena peculiar to the present, has been determined by the Enlightenment (p. 10). The Enlightenment has undermined the foundations of the Jewish tradition by appearing to have defeated orthodoxy once and for all (p. 11). Strauss however, comparing the "so-called victory" of the Enlightenment over orthodoxy to a prematurely conceded battle (p. 21), and remarking that victories are in any case very dubious evidences of the just cause (p. 17), proceeds to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment, with a view to reaching a well-founded judgment (p. 18). Thus the core of the introduction (pp. 17-28) has the dramatic character of a trial. The rehearing of this old case is motivated by the urgent suspicion that the untenable situation of Judaism may have resulted from an error in the original disposition of the case. Certainly there was an error in the original jurisdiction: world history, indeed just the history of the last two or three hundred years, was mistaken for a competent court (p. 17). For what, after all, is the Enlightenment's case against orthodoxy? As a party whose interest lies both in solving the Jewish problem and in getting to the bottom of things, Strauss considers the arguments on both sides. It goes without saying that the Enlightenment did not directly refute the irrefutable premise of orthodoxy that God is omnipotent and His will unfathomable, or any of the claims of orthodoxy—the creation, miracles, the revelation—that depend on that premise (p. 19). Nor does the Enlightenment have a case in its supposed indirect refutation of orthodoxy, its elaboration of a philosophic system to prove that the world and life are perfectly intelligible without the assumption of a mysterious God; for its attempt to show that man is theoretically and practically the master of the world and of life has run into obstacles (pp. 20-21). Nor can the new natural science legitimate the Enlightenment, since its always had

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latent in it the modern "idealism" that finally understands modern natural science as one historically conditioned form of world construction among others, and by which therefore the natural world view of the Bible is certified as equally eligible (pp. 22-23). Nor can the Enlightenment rest its case on the modern ideal of freedom as the autonomy of man and his culture. This ideal only temporarily seemed viable at a moment when, "after the decisive entry into the state of civilization, one had forgotten the state of nature." But the state of nature was not to be disposed of merely by being forgotten.The ideal of freedom as the autonomy of man and his culture was only an unstable, absent-minded derivative of the original, the primary ideal of civilization as the self-assertion of man against overpowering nature (pp. 2 4 25). Here, then, is the true basis of the Enlightenment's case against orthodoxy: the ideal of civilization as the self-assertion of man against overpowering nature. Strauss characterizes this ideal as a species of Epicureanism, though to be sure profoundly transformed: the original Epicurean animus against the terror in the delusion of religion has become the Enlightenment animus against the delusion in the comfort of religion (p. 25). Epicureanism so transformed, Enlightenment Epicureanism, is marked by a new virtue, intellectual probity, borrowed though from the morality of the biblical tradition against which it was asserting itself: "This atheism with a good conscience, or even with a bad conscience, differs from the conscienceless atheism at which the past shuddered precisely by its conscientiousness, by its morality." The new Epicurean, instead of being willing to "live in hiding" safely, "learned to fight and die for honor and truth," and finally to reject the belief in God "for reasons of conscience." The true meaning of the Enlightenment's primary ideal, its "last word and ultimate justification," is this atheism of intellectual probity (P- 28). Having discovered in this atheism the fundamental premise of the Enlightenment, we see that for the same reason for which it is "admittedly not demonstrable" (p. 26, n. 1 in fine), it is as irrefutable as the premise of orthodoxy. Because, then, there is in the modem world only the alternative "orthodoxy or atheism," and because unconditionally political Zionism is the only "solution of the Jewish problem" possible on the basis of atheism, the present situation is untenable for the Jew who can be neither orthodox nor an unconditionally political Zionist. We are therefore compelled to ask whether enlightenment must be modem enlightenment, i.e., whether enlightenment must be atheism (p. 28). And thus we are induced to apply for aid to the medieval enlightenment, that of Maimonides, where Strauss undertakes to recover the leading idea whose loss accounts for "many modem convictions and doubts": the idea of law (p. 29). That "the idea of law" was the crucial piece of missing evidence in the original misjudgment of Enlightenment v. Orthodoxy appears to come as a

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surprise in the last sentence of the introduction, but it has not been wholly without preparation. If the opening movement of Philosophic und Gesetz is suggestive of a case at law, its deepest theme is nature, its ruling image is the cave, and its method is history of philosophy. In two extremely condensed essays that appear as footnotes to the introduction (pp. 1 3 - 1 4 , 2 6 27), Strauss announces the theme, introduces the image, and justifies the method. He expressly informs us, first of all, that the "assertion made in the text" about the Enlightenment's attack on the biblical tradition "extends also to the philosophic tradition," i.e., that the case of Enlightenment v. Orthodoxy is equally the case of Enlightenment v. Philosophy. The Enlightenment's intention in attacking the biblical (or the philosophic) tradition was to rehabilitate the natural through the denial of the supernatural; but, against its own intention, it only succeeded in overthrowing (or forgetting) the natural foundation it had sought to secure. The leading idea of the medieval enlightenment, the idea of law, was lost together with the idea of philosophy and for the same reason. Since both took their bearings by nature—philosophy as quest for knowledge of nature and law as necessitated by human nature—both disappeared with the oblivion of nature. In order to rediscover the idea of law, therefore, it will be necessary to rediscover nature first; and along this path, law must lead also to philosophy. The primary rediscovery of nature can be achieved only through "a radical critique of the principles of the tradition," Greek and biblical, which in turn can take place only through history of philosophy. Strauss expresses this in a remarkable image: "To that end and only to that end is the 'historicizing' of philosophy justified and necessary: only the history of philosophy makes possible the ascent from the second, 'unnatural' cave, into which we have fallen less because of the tradition itself than because of the tradition of polemics against the tradition, into that first, 'natural' cave which Plato's image depicts, to emerge from which into the light is the original meaning of philosophizing" (p. 14). In order to serve this end, though, the history of philosophy would have to be guided by a mindful distinction between the old love of truth and the new probity: "for if one makes atheism, which is admittedly not demonstrable, into a positive, dogmatic premise, then the probity that is expressed by it is certainly somewhat different from love of truth" (p. 27). With this we are in a position to understand that the title of Philosophic und Gesetz is as much as to say that philosophy and law are in the same boat, the apparently capsized boat of nature. In this light we begin to appreciate the primary aim of Philosophic und Gesetz, the awakening of a suspicion against the powerful prejudice that there is no true natural prototype of rationalism. Strauss's project in Philosophic und Gesetz is to excavate a tunnel from the impermeably sealed second cave back to that first cave where the faint penetration of the light of nature could still motivate the beginning of philosophizing.

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Chapter 1: The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the Philosophy of Judaism: Notes on Julius Guttmann, The Philosophy of Judaism If the drama of the introduction lies in its representation of a trial, that of Chapter 1 lies in the spectacle of Strauss playing at cat-and-mouse with Julius Guttmann, the learned author of a history of Jewish philosophy. With many expressions of respectful bewilderment and many patient unravelings of the bewildering assertions, Strauss demonstrates from Guttmann's book the untenable position of the modern Jew. In exploding Guttmann's thesis he uncovers the conclusion that enlightenment need not be modern enlightenment, that the alternative "orthodoxy vs. enlightenment" need not collapse into the alternative "orthodoxy vs. atheism." The heart of Guttmann's thesis, as Strauss shows, is that modern Jewish philosophy is superior to medieval Jewish philosophy in this point: whereas medieval Jewish philosophy was able to retain the belief in the revealed form of the Bible, as being in harmony with medieval (teleological) metaphysics, only modem Jewish philosophy is able to retain the content of Judaism, the "personalistic piety of the Bible," as being in harmony with modern (mechanistic) metaphysics (p. 33). Guttmann, then, holds that modern Jewish philosophy is superior to medieval as content is superior to form. But Strauss's analysis of Guttmann's thesis eventually discloses that revelation, so far from being only the form of the religious ideas of the Bible, is itself one of the religious ideas of the Bible; indeed it is "the central religious idea of the Bible and the condition of the possibility of all the others" (p. 41). Hence Strauss is willing to entertain Guttmann's claim that the original achievement of medieval philosophy was "philosophy of religion," in the sense that philosophy was driven to justify its recognition of the revelation as a presupposition of philosophizing, and thus "to make religion a problem for philosophy" (p. 43). But Strauss is brought up short by a "shockingly unintelligible thing" (p. 52) in Guttmann's account of medieval "philosophy of religion." According to Guttmann, what makes the medieval philosophers who believe in the revelation "rationalists" is that they hold that reason is capable, of itself, of knowing the whole of revelation. So for them the purpose of the revelation is purely "pedagogical": it presents to the multitude the same truths that the philosophers ascertain for themselves through reason (p. 50). The philosophers therefore are not dependent on the revelation for any theoretical or practical truth; and since even the multitude's dependence on the revelation is in fact supplied only by the philosophers' interpretation of the revelation, no one, ultimately, is dependent on the revelation (p. 51). Strauss explains his shock: "whoever 'believes' in the revelation in this manner actually keeps, as Lessing puts it, only the names, and repudiates the things" (p. 52). "Keeping the things" here would require that philosophy need the revelation and have therefore a passionate interest in the revelation. How

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could philosophy of religion be the original achievement of medieval philosophy if what it shows is that the revelation, however "real," is altogether superfluous (p. 52)? Strauss is reluctantly compelled by the shocking unintelligibility of Guttmann's argument to venture two suggestions. First, the claim that the medieval rationalists believe reason is capable of knowing the whole of revelation is "not in accord with the facts" (p. 56): at least the exemplary medieval rationalist Maimonides holds that the revelation contains more than reason of itself can know. In particular, reason cannot answer the crucial theoretical question whether the world is eternal or created; for this the philosopher is wholly dependent on the revelation (pp. 52-53). And second, in considering the problem presented to philosophy by the revelation, Guttmann was guided by the modern division of philosophy, where this problem falls under philosophy of religion, rather than by the ancient division, where it falls under politics (pp. 58-60). Thus he missed the leading idea of medieval philosophy, the idea of law (p. 61). For Guttmann did not notice that the ancient and modern divisions of philosophy are not mere formalities but are marked by distinctive contents. The content of philosophy of religion is that the moral ordinances are grounded in the subjective moral consciousness, while the actual particulars that make law, law are groundless (p. 61). But the content of politics is that man is by nature a political animal who therefore (cf. p. 109) needs a law, and therefore a lawgiver (p. 59). And when the problem of the revelation is considered under the heading of politics, it emerges that the philosopher is dependent on the revelation not only for the crucial theoretical question but also and especially for the crucial practical question. For according to the claim of politics, the philosopher as a human being needs to live under a law that makes the existence of a human community possible. Even more, as a philosopher he is concerned with living under a rational law, one that aims at the specific perfection of the human soul. But neither as human being nor as philosopher is he qualified to give this law as law, i.e., with all the concrete particulars that make it law. Therefore the philosopher, like the multitude but even more so, is dependent on the revelation (pp. 59-60). Strauss is thus compelled to concede to Guttmann that the medievals are indeed "more primitive" than the modems: they are guided "not by the derived idea of natural right, but by the primary, the ancient, idea of law: they are pupils of Plato, not of Christians" (p. 62). With this, Strauss has intimated the thesis to which Chapters 2 and 3 will be devoted: that the medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers are Platonists. For against Guttmann's claim that "philosophy of religion" is the original achievement of medieval philosophy, we are now in a position to see that the doctrine of medieval "philosophy of religion," or better to say medieval politics, is derived from Plato: the revelation is that law by which the prophet becomes "the founder of the Platonic state" (p. 62). Indeed the only—but decisive—innovation of

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the medievals is to replace the possibility of a future philosopher-king with the actuality of a past prophet (p. 63). Thus even their innovation detracts from their originality; for since in their view the perfect law is already given, they lack the urgency in seeking it that characterizes Plato's political philosophy: "their philosophy of law does not have the sharpness, originality, depth, and—ambiguity of Platonic politics" (p. 64). In order to consider the meaning of medieval Platonism, Strauss begins by identifying the "highest point of view shared by Plato and the medievals" as the idea of a divine law. In this light, medieval Platonism must be understood as beginning not from the Republic but from the Laws. For it is in the Laws that Plato, "in accordance with a kind of interpretation which anticipates the philosophic interpretation of the revealed law among the medieval thinkers, transforms the 'divine laws' of Greek antiquity into truly divine laws." For the medieval thinkers, Plato's project could be the starting point of a philosophic understanding of the revelation only if Platonic philosophy had suffered from an aporia in principle, through which Plato had been able to point to, but only to point to, the revelation as its remedy (pp. 64-65). Thus Strauss concludes Chapter 1 by being thrust "as if by chance" on "the necessary connection between politics and theology (metaphysics)" (p. 66). For Plato, the need for a law to provide for human beings stems from the absence of divine provision, and accordingly the realization of the ideal state depends on chance. Maimonides' successor Gersonides maintains against Plato that the world ruled by divine providence is already the ideal state; as a consequence of his "radicalizing" of the idea of divine providence, human provision for the stability of the human associations becomes entirely dispensable. Gersonides thereby approaches "that modem kind of politics which believes, on the basis of a belief in providence that ignores the power of evil, that it can confine the operation of the state within the narrowest bounds" (p. 66). The Platonic politics of Maimonides stands between the extremes marked out by Plato and Gersonides: against Plato, Maimonides holds that there is divine providence; but in such a way that, against Gersonides, the human need for law is necessarily fulfilled by a human prophet. The study of the medievals that begins, like Guttmann's, from medieval metaphysics misses the political problem, in which is concealed nothing less than the leading idea of medieval philosophy, the philosophic explanation of the law as the presupposition of philosophizing. But the study of the medievals that begins from Platonic politics "brings to light also the metaphysical problems, and that in such a way as to offer the only guarantee of understanding their proper, that is their human, meaning" (p. 67). Chapter 2: The Legal Foundation of Philosophy: The Commandment to Philosophize and the Freedom of Philosophizing Since the actuality of the revelation is the controlling prephilosophic assumption of the medieval rationalists, it requires them to ask at the outset

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whether philosophy is forbidden, permitted, or commanded by the law. Only after the finding that it is permitted or commanded, in any case authorized, does the question arise whether philosophy is free without limit, or whether on the contrary the law imposes a limit on the freedom of philosophizing. Strauss considers the treatment of this question in Averroes, Maimonides, and Gersonides. He formulates the view of Averroes and Maimonides explicitly (pp. 75, 79), and implicitly that of Gersonides as well (p. 86), in the saying, "the freedom of philosophy depends upon its bondage." With this saying Strauss raises the question: how does philosophy's bondage to the truth proclaimed by the law differ from "the bondage which is given with the very intention of philosophy itself, the bondage to known truth" (p. 74)? Averroes presents a thematic treatment of the freedom of philosophy in the Decisive Treatise, where he argues that philosophy, defined as the consideration of the existing things in relation to their Maker, is expressly enjoined by the law upon those suited for it. Philosophy and the law cannot be in conflict since both are truth. Therefore if philosophy leads to any apparent difference from the law, the philosophers are enjoined by the law to interpret the law. The freedom of philosophizing, then, amounts to the freedom of interpreting the law. Strauss proceeds to Averroes' discussion of five alleged limits on interpretation, showing how each turns out on examination not to limit the freedom of philosophizing (pp. 72-73). To this point, philosophy is free. But its freedom is thrown into doubt by Averroes' distinction between two kinds of error in regard to the law. There is a kind of error that is excusable in those qualified to philosophize; but there is a second kind, "disavowal" of the principles of the law or "innovation" in the derived teachings, that is inexcusable simply (p. 74). Strauss here calls attention to the distinction between philosophy's own characterization of deviation from the "principles of the law" that are accessible to reason as "error," and the law's characterization of such deviation as "disavowal (unbelief)-" The latter means that the acknowledgment or denial of rational truths has the "character and consequences" of the acknowledgment or denial of dogma, and thus that the freedom of philosophy is limited by an extraphilosophic, prephilosophic authority (p. 74). This is the closest Strauss comes in Philosophie und Gesetz to a thematic discussion of the law as penal law. For the law there are truths the "consequence" of whose disavowal is punishment, and preeminently, as indicated already in Averroes' definition of philosophy, the truth of God's existence, by which the law stands or falls. "Philosophy is not sovereign. . . . the law has the first place." Strauss leaves it open in what sense the first place is first, but makes a suggestion. "It is not that one occupies from the outset a standpoint outside the law, from which one proceeds on the path of rational reflection to submission to the law"; rather, one occupies from the outset a standpoint within the cave: "the law has the first place" (p. 75). Indeed, one occupies even at the end a standpoint depending on the cave. For

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as the philosophers are human beings who are by nature in need of living under a law, the condition of the possibility of philosophy is the existence of the political community, which in turn is made possible by the law: "philosophy is not sovereign." The human prophet's provision for the human need of (punitive) law amounts to a defense of humanity against the (punitive) law of nature. When the law punishes disavowal of the truths by which the law stands or falls, it anticipates, i.e., prevents, nature's punishment of such disavowal. By singling out the disavower for exemplary punishment, the law deters the career of such erring opinions as, if widely held, would undo the authority of the law itself, and with it the necessary conditions of human life and therefore of thought. Thus "the freedom of philosophy depends upon its bondage" (p. 75). But what are the truths by which the law stands or falls? According to Maimonides, philosophy as authorized by the law is free "in its sphere," which is nature, but bound by the law in the supernatural sphere, which human intellect is insufficient to know (p. 78). In particular, while Averroes had held that the law's teaching on creation is open to interpretation, Maimonides holds that philosophy is bound by this teaching. "For Maimonides it is known that Scripture teaches the creation of the world and—what is even more important for him—that Judaism forfeits its foundations if the assertion of creation is abandoned" (pp. 78-79). The preservation of the foundations of Judaism is more important for Maimonides than the fact that Scripture teaches the creation; it is in fact "the most important reason which causes Maimonides to assert the insufficiency of the human intellect and its dependence on revelation" (p. 79). Averroes' teaching that human intellect is sufficient to master the question of creation depends on his teaching that the question of creation is irrelevant to dogma, i.e., that it is not a principle on which the law stands or falls (p. 79). Thus, Maimonides' disagreement with Averroes on the question of the sufficiency of the human intellect is secondary to his full agreement with Averroes on the primacy of the law. By denying the sufficiency of the human intellect to answer the question of creation on which the law stands or falls, Maimonides reaches the same conclusion Averroes had reached by denying that the law stands or falls on this question. "The freedom of philosophy depends upon its bondage" (p. 79). For Gersonides, as one might have inferred from his "radicalized" idea of divine providence (p. 66), no need of human provision for the preservation of the community could limit the freedom of philosophy. Strauss presents Gersonides' position as harmonizing the teachings of Maimonides and Averroes on the question of the sufficiency of human intellect (p. 79). Gersonides holds that while human intellect is sufficient in principle to the mastery of any particular knowledge, including creation, its finitude makes it insufficient in practice to the mastery of all knowledge. Thus even he accepts a limitation on the freedom of philosophy that is actually "much more

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radical" than those accepted by Averroes and Maimonides. He holds that the law, "like the world, is a work of infinite wisdom and grace and thus is knowable to the finite intellect only to a small extent; the Torah itself is a world, in which man lives." The law—"like the world, as a 'world'"—is prior to philosophy: the law has the first place for Gersonides just as for Maimonides and Averroes (p. 86). "The freedom of philosophy depends upon its bondage." Chapter 3: The Philosophic Foundation of the Law: Maimonides' Doctrine of Prophecy and Its Sources Strauss seeks first to elucidate Maimonides' prophetology by showing that the position in aid of which the Guide was written is possible only if there is prophecy in a certain sense. Then he applies Maimonides' prophetology to the development of a deeper understanding of Maimonides' position. That position is the "religious enlightenment of the Middle Ages" to which he has directed our interest as an alternative to modern enlightenment. Medieval and modern enlightenment share their concern with the freedom of human thought, the "freedom of philosophizing," but differ conspicuously in that medieval enlightenment is esoteric whereas modern enlightenment is exoteric (pp. 88- 89). The difference derives from the fact that medieval enlightenment asserts the primacy of the theoretical life, while modern enlightenment asserts the primacy of practical reason (p. 89). Maimonides' position, "medieval enlightenment," is constituted by the Greek ideal of the life of theory on the one hand and the binding character of the revealed law on the other. The link between the two elements is that the highest object of the revealed law is to summon man to the theoretical life. Under commandment of the revealed law, philosophy takes for its subject matter all of being, including revelation as the law given by God through a prophet. Since the sphere of philosophy is nature (p. 78), prophecy is intelligible to philosophy insofar as it is natural. Therefore prophetology, the philosophic foundation of the law, is the explanation of prophecy from the nature of man (pp. 89-90). In the light of this preliminary account of Maimonides' position, Strauss proceeds to interpret Maimonides' prophetology, relying both on the Guide itself and on its sources in Farabi and Avicenna. His interpretation has the form of an inquiry into the inner coherence of the six apparently unconnected faculties that Maimonides enumerates as requisite to prophecy: perfect intellect, perfect imagination, perfect morals, courage, divination, and leadership. The inquiry leads through an instructive study of the falasifa's psychology, and particularly the status of the imaginative faculty, to the conclusion that prophecy is both a combination of theoretical and practical perfection and an enhancement of each of these perfections over the standard attainable by nonprophets. The prophet is both philosopher and statesman, "teacher and leader in one" (p. 108), but in such a way that both his

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philosophizing and his statesmanship are superior to those of men who are only philosophers or only statesmen. Having laid a groundwork in the elements of Maimonides' prophetology, Strauss proceeds to its entire system with the question, "What is the final end of prophecy?" (pp. 108-109). The end of prophecy is the end of Platonic politics: the prophet is the founder of a community that is directed to the proper perfection of man; he is "the founder of the Platonic state" (p. 113; cf. p. 109). The prophet, however, rather than ruling as king, is the proclaimer of a divine law. Since Maimonides presents his prophetology as the fulfillment of Platonic politics, our understanding of it depends on the relationship between the prophet and the philosopher-king (p. 117). According to Maimonides, law has two kinds: human, which is directed only to the preservation of the bodies, and divine, which is directed also and especially to the specific perfection and thus the happiness of man (p. 109). According to Avicenna, politics has two divisions, kingship and prophecy, of which kingship is the subject of Plato's and Aristotle's books "on the state," and prophecy the subject of their books "on the laws" (p. 111). Strauss shows that Avicenna's distinction between kingship and prophecy corresponds precisely to Maimonides' distinction between human law and divine law (pp. 112-113). He thereby suggests that according to the falasifa the relationship between the philosopher-king of Plato and the prophet of the falasifa is already intimated by Plato himself in the relationship between the Republic and the Laws. But in this view the politics of the Laws is not a descent from but the consummation or perfection of the politics of the Republic. Maimonides and the falasifa follow Plato not only in their understanding of politics but also in their understanding of philosophizing (pp. 115-116), which they express by appropriating Plato's simile of the cave. Yet in appropriating Plato's cave simile they also express a criticism of Plato's philosopher-king: according to them, Plato is mistaken in holding that the philosopher is the highest human type. It is the prophets, not the philosophers, who "see as it were the light i t s e l f ' (p. 116). The philosophers' knowledge is necessarily indirect and incomplete; they are thereby dependent upon the prophets, for whom the night in which the human race is stumbling about is illuminated by lightning flashes from on high, by direct knowledge of the upper world. Maimonides and the falasifa derive Platonic politics from the un-Platonic premise of the revelation (p. 117), according to which divine providence makes wisdom directly accessible to human beings through prophecy. Strauss concludes the chapter and the book with the suggestion that this un-Platonic premise is, after all, not so un-Platonic (p. 119): precisely in this premise of the revelation, Maimonides and the falasifa still remain Platonists. He unfolds his suggestion from Hermann Cohen's "paradoxical"

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claim that "Maimonides was in deeper harmony with Plato than with Aristotle" (p. 119). If the opposition between Plato and Aristotle amounted to that between the primacy of quest for the right life, for the good, and the primacy of pure theory, then Maimonides, with his "enthusiasm for pure theory, for scientific knowledge for its own sake," would have to be classed "unconditionally" as an Aristotelian (p. 120). But, for the reason indicated by Cohen's own saying, "All honor to the God of Aristotle, but he is not the God of Israel," a Jew as Jew cannot be an Aristotelian in the sense at issue. He must, if he asserts the primacy of theory, limit this primacy in some way and thus call it into question. For Maimonides, who does assert the primacy of theory, the necessary limitation lies in the inferiority of the philosopher to the prophet: the philosopher needs the prophet both for his direct theoretical knowledge and for his proclamation of the law. In this reservation against the primacy of theory, which appears in his prophetology, Maimonides is then a Platonist. But what of the rest of his philosophy, where he appears to follow Aristotle rather than Plato? Plato teaches no less decisively than Aristotle that man's specific perfection lies in pure contemplation. The distinction between Plato and Aristotle lies in the stand they take toward theory as man's highest perfection: while Aristotle "leaves it in natural freedom," Plato "does not permit the philosophers 'what is now permitted them'"; he '"'compels' them to care for the others" (p. 121). The distinctiveness of Plato lies in his calling for, inquiring into, a law, the "divine law," under which philosophy could stand as authorized and set free by law. Plato's aporetic quest for the divine law that could authorize philosophy's freedom gives his political philosophy its "sharpness, originality, depth, and—ambiguity" (p. 64). The political philosophy of Maimonides and the falasifa loses Plato's sharpness, originality, and depth by resolving its ambiguity. Because the divinely revealed law that Plato could only desire is actual for them, they are therefore, as authorized by that law, "free to aristotelize." "Since, for Maimonides and the falasifa, the law is given, it is not the leading and first theme of their philosophizing. Hence the metaphysical themes occupy so much more space in their writings than the moral-political. But indeed they had to attempt, as philosophers, to understand the given law; this understanding was made possible for them by Plato, and only by Plato" (p. 122).

Strauss's professed aim in Philosophie und Gesetz, we recall, was to awaken a prejudice in favor of the view that Maimonides' rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism, and, even more, to arouse a suspicion against the powerful opposing prejudice (p. 9). Along the path of arousing this suspicion Strauss has brought forward for scrutiny the "paradoxical incongruity between life and thought" implied by Guttmann's argument for the superiority of modern over medieval philosophy (p. 35). That a paradoxical view may be true can be inferred from the conclusion of

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Philosophie und Gesetz, where Strauss defends Cohen's "paradoxical" claim about Maimonides' Platonism (p. 119). That a paradoxical incongruity between life and thought is not an insight of modem as opposed to medieval rationalism emerges directly from Strauss's presentation of Maimonides' rationalism. For according to Maimonides, the revelation presents rational and suprarational teachings that, while not strictly true, are necessary for life, while philosophy presents rational teachings that, while true, are not strictly necessary for life (pp. 55-56 with p. 55 n. 2). Strauss's criticism of modern rationalism is not that it asserts such an incongruity between life and thought as would be shown by medieval rationalism to be illusory, but that it cannot account for this incongruity so adequately, so naturally, as medieval rationalism does. This is because the leading idea of medieval rationalism, the idea of law, entails the idea of nature. Only by recovering a standpoint within "that first, natural cave which Plato's image depicts" could we hope to emerge into the light, in accordance with "the original meaning of philosophizing." THE TRANSLATION

The task presented to a translator by Strauss's powerful, complex writing is formidable indeed. A sentence like the following, where he describes the character of modern as opposed to ancient atheism, demands some thought: Dieser Atheismus, der Erbe und Richter des Offenbarungsglaubens, des jahrhunderte-, ja jahrtausendealten Streites zwischen Glauben und Unglauben, der kurzlebigen endlich aber darum nicht auch zugleich folgenarmen romantischen Sehnsucht nach dem verlorengegangenen Glauben, der Orthodoxie in vielfältiger Verschlagenheit, gebildet aus Dankbarkeit, Auflehnung, Sehnsucht und Gleichgültigkeit, und in einfältiger Redlichkeit gegenüberstehend, ist seinem Anspruch nach zu einem ursprünglichen Verständnis der menschlichen Wurzeln des Gottesglaubens befähigt wie keine frühere, keine weniger vielfältigeinfältige Philosophie, (p. 28)

Nor is it just because of one's rusty German that the sentence demands thought; even in English it is difficult: This atheism, the heir and the judge of the belief in revelation, of the secular struggle between belief and unbelief, and finally of the shortlived but by no means therefore inconsequential romantic longing for the lost belief, confronting orthodoxy in complex sophistication formed out of gratitude, rebellion, longing, and indifference, and in simple probity, is according to its claim as capable of an original understanding of the human roots of the belief in God as no earlier, no less complex-simple philosophy ever was.

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This English version is Strauss's own, readily accessible in his preface to the English translation of Spinoza's Critique of Religion.2 Baumann offers, in place of Strauss's version, the following: This atheism is the inheritor and judge of the belief in revelation, of the centuries-old, even millennial, conflict between belief and unbelief, of the ultimately short-lived but not therefore inconsequential romantic longing for lost belief, of Orthodoxy in its complex cunning. Fashioned out of gratitude, rebellion, longing, and indifference, it stands in simple probity. It claims to be capable of an original understanding of the human roots of the belief in God like no earlier philosophy, no philosophy at once less complex and less simple, (p.

19)

Like Strauss's version, Baumann's is difficult; but there the likeness ends. No matter how carefully the reader attempts to parse the translation, it will not yield Strauss's meaning. The more deeply one reflects on what might be meant by "Orthodoxy in its complex cunning," the further one will drift from Strauss's argument; for Strauss says that this complex cunning, or rather complex sophistication, belongs to modern atheism as it confronts orthodoxy, not to orthodoxy as modern atheism inherits it. The reader of the translation will puzzle to no purpose over the paradoxical assertion that modern atheism is a compound of four interested motives that "stands in simple probity," for there is no such paradox in Strauss's sentence. The complex thing that is "fashioned out of gratitude, rebellion, longing, and indifference" is not modern atheism but the complex sophistication of modern atheism; modem atheism confronts orthodoxy both "in complex sophistication" and "in simple probity"—an inner contradiction ("complex/ simple") that may raise some question about its claim to have access to the true understanding of the human roots of the belief in God. Through a series of plain syntactical and lexical errors—mistaking the construction of "der Orthodoxie" and the referent of "gebildet," misreading "gegenüberstehend" as "stehend"—the translation constructs a chimerical contrast between the "simple probity" of atheism and the "complex cunning" of orthodoxy, thus making nonsense of Strauss's actual argument. The importance that Strauss himself attached to certain key passages of Philosophie und Gesetz is indicated by his having republished them in his own English thirty years later, in the 1965 preface to the English translation of Spinoza's Critique of Religion. It is thus especially unfortunate that Baumann's translation, both here and in other such passages, 3 has replaced Strauss's own lucid English version with a version that both misrepresents the original and is unintelligible in itself. In passages of Philosophie und Gesetz of which there are no published English versions by Strauss himself, the mistranslations, though no less regrettable, are perhaps more understandable. It is, after all, a difficult book.

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Still, where there is a presumption that an author has written sense, a fair rule for his translator would be: where the translation doesn't make sense, there is a presumption of error in the translation. This simple rule would have led Baumann to reconsider scores of passages in the translation. For example, in a passage where Strauss is discussing Guttmann's account of the relative merits of medieval and modem philosophy from the point of view of Judaism, Strauss mentions Guttmann's reference to the "break with revealed religion" brought about by the "mechanistic transformation" of metaphysics in modernity. In Baumann's version he goes on to say: But this loss is offset precisely because out of the Bible's spirit of "personalistic piety," the "inclination to a mechanistic concept of nature" and the revulsion against the assumption of purposeful forces, can, and in modernity actually does, come out as a "kind of polytheism." (P- 25)

Since the sentence is a little complicated, one cannot know whether it makes sense until one has made a complete attempt to understand it. It says that something "comes out as" a kind of polytheism. The something is a compound something, "the 'inclination to a mechanistic concept of nature' and the revulsion against the assumption of purposeful forces"; let's call it for short "pro-mechanism and anti-teleology." (We leave to one side for the moment our natural question as to why these two are joined by an "and.") "Pro-mechanism and anti-teleology," then, can come out as a kind of polytheism and in modernity actually does so. Doubtless one is to think of the improvident atoms, of careless gravity and electromagnetism, as a modem kind of gods. So, pro-mechanism and anti-teleology comes out in modernity as a kind of polytheism; and it does this "out of the Bible's spirit of 'personalistic piety.'" Now this is harder. Perhaps this means it is from the point of view of, or in reaction against, the Bible's spirit that mechanistic metaphysics comes out as polytheism. Take either as a working hypothesis. Now we have only to figure out how this fact—the fact that from the biblical point of view, or in reaction against the biblical point of view, m o d e m mechanistic metaphysics comes out as a kind of polytheism—can be said to offset a certain loss, namely, the break with revealed religion caused by m o d e m mechanistic metaphysics. If at this point we cannot help noticing that we ourselves are lost, it is not Strauss who got us into this fix. His sentence reads: . . . aber dieser Verlust wird dadurch aufgewogen, dass gerade aus dem Geist der "personalistischen Frömmigkeit" der Bibel die "Neigung zu mechanistischer Auffassung der Natur," die Perhorreszierung der Annahme nach Zwecken handelnder Kräfte als "einer Art von Polytheismus" hervorgehen kann und in der Neuzeit tatsächlich hervorgegangen ist. (p. 33)

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It means: Bui his loss is offset by the fact that it is precisely from the spirit of the "personalistic piety" of the Bible that the "tendency to a mechanistic conception of nature," the horrified rejection, as of "a kind of polytheism," of the supposition of forces acting teleologically, can arise and, in modern times, has in fact arisen. This rather changes things. In Strauss's version the ancient, not the m o d e m , conception of nature is " a kind of p o l y t h e i s m " — t h e " g o d s " in question are the "purposeful forces" of teleological philosophy, not the purposeless forces of mechanistic philosophy; pro-mechanism, i.e. (not "and"!), anti-teleology, d o e s not " c o m e out as p o l y t h e i s m " but " c o m e s out o f , arises f r o m , the B i b l e ' s spirit of personalistic piety." This anti-teleology c o m e s out of the B i b l e ' s spirit of personalistic piety because in that spirit the purposeful forces of teleological philosophy appear as rivals or alternatives to the will of the o n e God; and this fact—the fact that it is precisely f r o m the spirit of the personalistic piety of the Bible that m o d e m mechanistic philosophy can arise and in fact has a r i s e n — o f f s e t s the "loss," the break with revealed religion b r o u g h t a b o u t by t h e m e c h a n i s t i c t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of m e t a p h y s i c s in modernity, by s h o w i n g that this mechanistic transformation is so far from incompatible with the B i b l e ' s spirit of personalistic piety that it can arise f r o m and actually has arisen from that very spirit. Here again, the u n w a r y reader of the translation has been led d o w n a path of errors that will never converge with Strauss's argument. Strauss himself is justly f a m o u s for the exacting standards of accuracy that he observed in translation. In Philosophie und Gesetz he translated as follows A v i c e n n a ' s definition, in his treatise " O n the Parts of the Scienccs," of the subject matter of politics: This part of practical philosophy (viz. politics) has as its subject matter [a] the existence of prophecy and [b] the dependence of the human race on the religious law for its existence, its stability, and its propagation.4 (The last three "its" refer to "the human race.") According to B a u m a n n ' s translation, Strauss says that Avicenna says: This part of practical philosophy (namely, politics) has as its subject [a] the presence of prophecy and [b] man's dependency with respect to this presence, its duration and its propagation in the religious law. (p. 101) Since " w i t h respect to this presence, its duration and its p r o p a g a t i o n in the religious l a w " neither c o r r e s p o n d s to S t r a u s s ' s text n o r m a k e s any sense o n its o w n account, one will never learn from the English translation that a c c o r d i n g to A v i c e n n a " t h e d e p e n d e n c e of the h u m a n race o n the

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religious law" is a subject matter of politics. And without this key definition of the subject matter of politics, it is no wonder if Strauss's larger argument in this important passage on Maimonides' teaching about prophecy seems obscure. In a passage where Strauss argues that a decisive defect of modern "philosophy of religion" is that, because it proceeds from "consciousness" rather than from "nature," it is unable to conceive of God as "the creator of the world," Baumann makes Strauss remark that "it cannot 'discover' God as the Creator from the cosmos, but rather only from consciousness" (p. 29). The reader will wonder what Strauss is getting at in this blithe selfcontradiction; for if he is admitting that modern philosophy of religion can discover God as the Creator (albeit from consciousness rather than from the cosmos), why is be objecting to it on the grounds that it can't? But again, it is not Strauss's argument that is baffling or confused. What he actually says is that modern philosophy of religion "cannot 'discover' God from the cosmos, [and thus] as the Creator, but only from consciousness" 5 —and thus in quite another character than that of "the Creator"! Strauss speaks of a certain moment in history when the old concept of truth—of the one eternal truth—still determined the conception one had of modern natural science, even though modern natural science itself had imperceptibly undermined that very conception of the one eternal truth. According to the translation, Strauss says: Only because of this was the attempt to ground the modem ideal, the ideal of civilization by means of modern natural science, temporarily possible. It was believed that the new concept of nature was the adequate foundation of the old ideal. But this was a delusion, (p. 15)

But his unintelligible assertion cannot be traced to Philosophie where Strauss makes a perfectly lucid statement that means:

und Gesetz,

The only reason why the attempt to ground the modern ideal, the ideal of civilization, by means of natural science was temporarily possible was that one believed that the new concept of nature was the adequate foundation for the new ideal just because the old concept of nature had been the adequate foundation of the old ideal. But one was deluding oneself. 6

Baumann's translation will perplex readers by calling the Jewish tradition an "instance" (p. 33), historical research an "example" (p. 35), and reason an "instance" (p. 46), where Strauss in each case is speaking of a tribunal or court or arbiter or judicial authority: the Jewish tradition is a premodem tribunal, 7 historical research is a modem tribunal, 8 and reason is the tribunal that (self-evidently, for a rationalist) must settle the conflict between reason and revelation. 9 It is easy enough to surmise that the origin

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of the mistake here 10 was the superficial similarity between the German word Instanz and the English word "instance." But even if one didn't know at the outset what Instanz actually means, our rule of translation would lead one to find it out. For "reason is the instance that must settle the conflict between reason and revelation" (p. 46) is a proposition that makes no sense; but Strauss is presumed to have written sense; therefore, there is a presumption of error in the translation. In a discussion of Gersonides' views on whether human intellect is sufficient to know everything that man has a natural desire to know, Baumann's translation presents Strauss's argument as follows. Since the question "created world or eternal world?" is the decisive one, and since Gersonides' reason for holding that human intellect suffices to answer this question establishes the sufficiency of human intellect to answer all questions for whose answer man has a natural desire, "consequently, Maimonides asserts the insufficiency of human intellect just as generally" (p. 73). But this astonishing "consequence" is, of course, not drawn by Strauss, who believed neither that Gersonides (1288-1344) lived before Maimonides (1135-1204) nor that Maimonides' reasonings were the consequence of the future reasonings of this yet-unborn successor. What Strauss says is that since the question "created or eternal world?" is central, and since Gersonides' reason for holding that human intellect suffices to answer this question establishes in principle the sufficiency of human intellect to answer all questions for whose answer man has a natural desire, "and since Maimonides on the contrary asserts the insufficiency of the human intellect [not only for this question but] in general as well—consequently it must be said that Gersonides is opposing his assertion of sufficiency against Maimonides' assertion of insufficiency." 11 Baumann's Strauss says that the acknowledgment of the authority of the revelation "is not posited as a basis for human thought but is imposed on human thought in advance" (p. 30); but his self-contradictory remark does not occur in Strauss, who says that the acknowledgment of the authority of the revelation is "not posited by human thought but imposed on human thought." 1 2 Baumann speaks contradictorily of theoretical insights that the prophet gains "indirectly, without premises and conclusions" (p. 127), where Strauss speaks of theoretical insights that the prophet gains "directly, without premises and conclusions." 1 3 Baumann attributes to Strauss the statement that for Guttmann "the problem of religious truth, like the problem of the relationship of the theoretical to the religious consciousness of truth, becomes . . . the central problem of the 'philosophy of religion'" (pp. 51-52); but Strauss does not say that one thing, "like" another thing, is the central thing; he says rather that "the problem of religious truth, [understood] as the problem of the relationship between theoretical and religious truth-consciousness, becomes for him the central problem of 'philosophy of religion.'" 14

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201

These examples of unintelligible propositions in Philosophy and Law are, regrettably, only a small sampling of the difficulties in store for its reader. But what has been shown about them is true of all the others as well: each arises from a plain error in translation; none correctly represents Strauss's own words. The reader can therefore take it as a rule that every time an unintelligible proposition occurs in the translation, he will find the solution in the original. This rule is easy enough to apply because unintelligible propositions are self-identifying. Unfortunately, the translation is also marred by errors that will be harder for the non-Germanspeaking reader to identify because, while incorrect, they are not manifestly absurd. For example, Baumann makes Strauss say that the "'philosophy of religion' of the medieval Jewish rationalists . . . deserves Guttmann's depiction of it as rationalistic" (p. 42). Although this sentence violates no canon of reason, it is quite incorrect. Strauss, so far from expressing his own judgment on the medieval Jewish rationalists' philosophy of religion, states that according to Guttmann's account it deserves to be characterized as rationalist 15 —and this is the very account of Guttmann's that Strauss, so far from agreeing with, goes on to describe as "shockingly unintelligible" (see the third paragraph in the section above). In a similar vein, Baumann speaks of Guttmann as "he who, appropriately, recognizes the Jewish tradition as the judge over modern thought" (p. 51). But Strauss, far from commending Guttmann's recognition as "appropriate," accuses Guttmann of an inconsistency between what he purports to recognize and what he in fact recognizes: he refers to Guttmann as he "who in fact recognizes the Jewish tradition as the judge over modern thought." 1 6 Where Strauss quotes Guttmann as saying that according to Saadia there can be no contradiction between reason and revelation, 17 Baumann (perhaps thinking this too strong a claim?) reduces it to the statement that according to Saadia "there is no contradiction" (p. 42). 18 Such reversals of what Strauss unambiguously says "is in fact" the case with what he says "follows" logically or "is possible" all too frequently misrepresent the sense of Strauss's argument. Errors of this plausible sort are likely to mislead the unwary again and again. To take some examples, Baumann speaks of "a predetermined Aristotelian, or rather Platonic, way of thinking" (p. 35) where Strauss speaks of "the predetermining Aristotelian, or rather «eo-Platonic, way of thinking." 19 Strauss says that according to Farabi God grants 20 revelations to the man who fulfills the conditions for receiving them; Baumann says that God "guarantees" revelations to such a man (p. 94). 21 Where Strauss speaks of antiquity, 22 Baumann speaks of "the prehistoric past" (p. 107). Where Strauss speaks of natural right,23 Baumann speaks of natural law (p. 12). Baumann says that Maimonides and the falasifa "assert a preference for prophecy over philosophy" (p. 109) where Strauss says that Maimonides and the falasifa assert the precedence, the superiority, of prophecy over

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philosophy. 2 4 Where Strauss says that something is a subject matter of politics, 25 Baumann says it is the object of politics (p. 50). Where Strauss speaks of what is required in order for a man to be "a perfect man," 2 6 Baumann speaks of what is required in order "for man to be a perfect being" (p. 83). Where Strauss speaks of a law that is simply binding, 27 Baumann speaks of a binding law that is simple (p. 106). Baumann speaks of "the transcendant [sic] truth of philosophy" (p. 46) where Strauss speaks of "the truth that transcends philosophy." 2 8 Baumann speaks of "supernatural powers" (p. 16) where Strauss speaks of "superhuman powers." 29 Where Strauss speaks of the Enlightenment's "construction of its world," 3 0 Baumann speaks of the Enlightenment's "reconstruction of the world" (p. 12). Where Strauss attributes to Avicenna the statement that "the Lawgiver must summon to and awaken the desire for marriage, since through it the species endure," 3 1 Baumann corrects Strauss's Avicenna in the light of Darwin: "since through it arise the kinds" (p. 133, n. 71). There is no foolproof way for the reader to recognize the scores of such misleading errors that will confront him in these pages. If his familiarity with the subject matter makes him sensitive to the implausibility of such passages, he may be luckily prompted to look them up in the original. Besides mistranslations that are unintelligible on their face and others that are more specious though no less wrong, Philosophy and Law has the misfortune of being marred by blemishes of English usage that, while not always misleading as to the argument, strangely misrepresent the elegance and force of Strauss's writing. In standard English one does not say "a principled misunderstanding" (p. 9) for "a misunderstanding in principle"; "research of something" (p. 23) for "research on something"; "the understanding preservation" of a thing (p. 32) for "the intellectual preservation" of a thing; "it characteristically distinguished itself' (p. 40) for "its specific difference is"; "the opinion of Revelation" (p. 40) for "the meaning of Revelation"; "even in the case that he can know" (p. 51) for "even in case [=if] he can know"; "the enlightenment of the presupposition" (p. 58) for "the explanation of the presupposition"; "the mediation of their knowledge" (p. 88) for "the indirectness of their knowledge"; a "theorist" (p. 98) for a "theoretical man"; "partial in transcendent ideals" (p. 113) for "partial to transcendent ideals"; "a gradual distinction" (p. 119) for "a difference in degree." Many of these are errors that the reader on a moment's reflection may silently correct for himself; most will not materially mislead. It is unfortunate, though, that they give such a dismal impression of Strauss's manner of writing. The reader who turns to the German original of this book, or to any of Strauss's English books, will discover there an author whose masterful rhetorical art is one of the lavish encouragements with which he refreshes us in the study of his challenging works.

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CORRIGENDA TO PHILOSOPHY AND LAW Translation Page 3 3.5: the touchstone that puts modern rationalism to shame 3.13: the highest stage of selfconsciousness Page 4 4.6:

the peculiar appearances of the present 4.11: point back to the movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries introduced by Descartes' Meditations and Hobbes' Leviathan, that is, back as though to their source, to the Enlightenment. 4.20: its justified requests have become 'trivial' and seem

Page 6 6.3: if Creation thus cannot be maintained even in its theoretical content 6.10: cannot even be of interest 6.13: the pristine open-minded view 6.20: There seems to be 6.34: it is hard to cast doubt on them Page 7 7.11: well witnessed and repeated 7.27: It must necessarily remain the case that the "internalization" of the fundamental assertions of the tradition robs them of their meaning, and that not just every compromise but also every synthesis between

Revised

Translation

the stumbling block on which modern rationalism falls down the highest stage so far of his selfconsciousness the phenomena peculiar to the present refer back to the Enlightenment, that is, to the movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries initiated by Descartes' Meditations and Hobbes' Leviathan, as their source.

its legitimate concerns, which have now become 'trivial,' seem if the creation cannot be maintained with theoretical meaning as well is not of interest the unbiased view There is one can hardly [i.e., not] doubt them

well witnessed and often repeated If therefore [i.e., as a consequence of the foregoing argument] it must be insisted that the "internalization" of the fundamental assertions of the tradition robs them of their meaning; if therefore not only every compromise between orthodoxy and Enlightenment but also every synthesis of these opposed

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the opposed positions of Orthodoxy and Enlightenment proves to be untenable. Then it follows that the alternative of either Orthodoxy or Enlightenment can today no longer (or rather, not even yet) be avoided. If this is so, then one must at first and at least once descend to the level of the classical quarrel . . . Page 8 8.10: 8.32, 35:

positions ultimately proves to be untenable; if therefore the alternative "orthodoxy or Enlightenment" may today no longer, or rather, may today not yet be evaded—then one must first of all, and at the very least, descend to the level of the classical quarrel . . .

long and still developing

already long-standing and still evercontinuing

revision

review, rehearing

Page 9 9.5:

the allegedly characteristic concept of the Law held by German Orthodoxy 9.13: that these reservations received a justification (which would consequently be a partial justification of the Enlightenment) that would satisfy reasonable claims 9.24: precisely what led accordingly to a rehabilitation 9.32: a principled misunderstanding of the tradition

Page 10 10.5:

PROBLEM

it wholly and especially depends on repeating or reunderstanding 10.18: If it depends on distinguishing 10.21: if it depends on exercising the critique

the concept of the law allegedly peculiar to contemporary German orthodoxy that these reservations received such a justification—[which would] in fact [be] also a partial justification of the Enlightenment—in such a way as to satisfy the demands of reason

precisely what led in fact to a rehabilitation a misunderstanding of the tradition in principle

the important thing, indeed the principal thing, is to resume or reunderstand If it is a question of distinguishing if it is a question of carrying out a critique

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10.28: 10.38:

Page 11 11.6:

11.9:

11.14:

11.21:

11.26:

11.32: Page 12 12.4: 12.21: 12.23: 12.31: 12.37:

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205

unprejudiced miracles and revelation are possible as such, especially the miracles and revelation of the Bible.

uncorruptea by prejudices miracles and revelations in general, and in particular the miracles and revelations of the Bible, are possible.

the impossibility of miracles is simply established, or rather, is demonstrable. experienced the fact that as a consequence of the irrefutability of the ultimate presupposition of Orthodoxy, all the individual assertions that rest on that presupposition are indestructible. If they did not recognize it clearly, in any case they felt it vividly.

the impossibility of miracles and revelation is simply established or is demonstrable.

the weapon that did them such excellent service that it might even be said that it alone decided the victory is thus not just the consequence of a previous refutation At least, even if consequent, mockery is the decisive legitimation attacks and retreats.

the aggressive critique natural law the peculiar mark of this formation If it were to remain true to itself in its reconstruction of the world

learned, if not as something clearly known, then at least as something vividly felt, that as a consequence of the irrefutability of the ultimate premise of orthodoxy, all individual assertions resting on this premise are unshakeable.

the weapon that they employed by preference, and that they handled so adeptly, so masterfully, that it—one might say, it alone—decided the victory is not the successor of a previous refutation (Cf. "Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion" [hereafter PSCR], p. 254 near the bottom) At least, mockery is the admittedly subsequent but still decisive legitimation (cf. PSCR, p. 254) [Footnote missing—cf. on p. 113 below.] the offensive critique natural right the specific sign of this development If it remained true to itself in the construction of its world

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12.39:

THE

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compelled to reconstruct

compelled to construct

this world

the world

no other way remained but

no other way therefore remained but to

Page 13 13.9: 13.12:

to attempt a complete

13.36:

attempt to prove that the world and

understanding of the world

life are completely intelligible [and

and life

cf. PSCR, p. 254 at the bottom]

"prescribe her laws"

"prescribe his laws to her" [and cf. generally PSCR, p. 256 at the top]

Page 14 14.20:

the best first harvest of the radical Enlightenment

14.26:

its "idealistic" explication already informs its

the best preparation of the soil for the radical Enlightenment the "idealistic" interpretation of it was already latent in its beginning

beginnings

Page 15 15.8: 15.12:

modern science

modern natural science

thought through so that

devised precisely in order that

miracles would be

miracles would be unknowable

unknowable 15.17:

which the Enlightenment had already destroyed

15.20:

Only because of this was

science] had already shaken The attempt to ground the modern

the attempt to ground the

ideal, the ideal of civilization, by

modern ideal, the ideal of

means of modem natural science,

civilization by means of

was temporarily possible only

modern natural science,

because it was believed that, since

temporarily possible. It

the old concept of nature had been

was believed that the new

the adequate foundation of the old

concept of nature was the

ideal, the new concept of nature was

adequate foundation of the

the adequate foundation of the new

old ideal. 15.33:

which it itself [modem natural

correspondingly

ideal, on the other hand

Page 16 16.15 :

the eventual justification

the final justification

16.18 :

correspondingly

on the other side

16.28 :

of the man against an over-

16.39:

supernatural powers

powerful nature

of man against over-powering nature superhuman powers

Page 17 17.13:

this happy repose fundamentally

17.22:

about the real goods and past the enjoyment

this happy repose, this peace, fundamentally about the real goods, about the enjoyment

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17.23:

they divert them away from the real "this-worldliness" to an imaginary "otherworldliness"

Page 18 18.10: it forbids every flight 18.27: Just because of its conscientiousness and morality, this atheism with a good, or even bad, conscience must be distinguished Page 19 19.6: This atheism is the inheritor and judge of the belief in revelation, of the centuries-old, even millennial, conflict between belief and unbelief, of the ultimately short-lived but not therefore inconsequential romantic longing for lost belief, of Orthodoxy in its complex cunning. Fashioned out of gratitude, rebellion, longing, and indifference, it stands in simple probity. It claims to be capable of an original understanding of the human roots of the belief in God like no earlier philosophy, no philosophy at once less complex and less simple. 19.24: unconditional political 19.31: 19.32:

Zionism there are only and if, correspondingly, the desirability

Page 23 23.6: previous research of them

207

they divert them from the real "here" to an imaginary "yonder" [And see generally, for this entire passage, PSCR, p. 255] it forbids itself every flight This atheism with a good, or even bad, conscience is distinguished . . . precisely by its conscientiousness, its morality

This atheism, the heir and the judge of the belief in revelation, of the secular struggle between belief and unbelief, and finally of the shortlived but by no means therefore inconsequential romantic longing for the lost belief, confronting orthodoxy in complex sophistication formed out of gratitude, rebellion, longing, and indifference, and in simple probity, is according to its claim as capable of an original understanding of the human roots of the belief in God as no earlier, no less complex-simple philosophy ever was. [This is Strauss's own English version, PSCR, p. 256.]

unconditionally political Zionism there are in the modern world only and if, on the other hand, the desirability

previous research on them

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23.8: et passim Philosophies of Judaism 23.8, 13: the understanding reader 23.11:

Page 24 24.35:

this handbook, which in the past was always dispensed with and is now indispensable guarantee for an appropriately scientific understanding

Page 25 25.20: 25.22:

religiosity of the Bible of biblical and talmudic Judaism 25.33: in Spinoza, led to a necessary break with revealed religion 25.34: But this loss is offset precisely because out of the Bible's spirit of "personalistic piety," the "inclination to a mechanistic concept of nature" and the revulsion against the assumption of purposeful forces, can, and in modernity actually does, come out as "a kind of polytheism."

Page 26 26.11:

26.28: 26.35: 26.36: Page 27 27.15:

PROBLEM

The Philosophy of Judaism

the reasonable reader, the thoughtful reader this long-lacking and now indispensable handbook

guarantee of an adequate scientific understanding

religion of the Bible of the content of biblical and talmudic religion "in Spinoza, led to a necessary break with revealed religion" But his loss is offset by the fact that it is precisely from the Bible's spirit of "personalistic piety" that the "tendency to a mechanistic conception of nature," the horrified rejection, as of "a kind of polytheism," of the supposition of forces acting teleologically, can arise and, in modern times, has in fact arisen.

Thus for him who especially allows no superrational truths of faith, must have sacrificed the belief an appropriately scientific understanding fascination of Guttmann's reasoning

Thus for him, especially since he allows the validity of no superrational truths of faith,

His opinion is

His meaning is

had to sacrifice the belief an adequate scientific understanding attractiveness of Guttmann's argument

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27.22:

the victory of reflection over the original

27.23: 27.28:

a fictitious retreat can thus also be interpreted in a wholly opposite way

Page 28 28.5:

Page 29 29.4:

29.8: 29.9:

29.10:

30.25: 30.27: 30.28:

the victory of the reflective over the primary, of reflectiveness over primariness a necessarily fictitious retreat can thus be interpreted in completely opposite ways

to preserve the content of its tradition, while understanding it

to preserve intellectually the content of its tradition

modern philosophy no longer (indeed, less than e v e r ) understands man as a member of the cosmos consciousness as that which constitutes nature it cannot "discover" God as the Creator from the cosmos, but rather only from consciousness Under the sway of the

modern philosophy no longer, or less and less, understands man as a member of the cosmos

cosmological orientation . . . the "Reality," the "absolute actuality" of God, was self-evident; hence just this reality becomes fundamentally incomprehensible . . . Page 30 30.9: 30.12: 30.15:

209

overfull of the gifts our Being-of-God that we men are respectively from each other, what we are and who we are all creatures are included he just as studiously passes over " . . . there, where the law is fulfilled in its full sense, Creation too (becomes) plain, revealed. It is

consciousness as that which constitutes man it cannot "discover" God from the cosmos, as its fthe cosmos'] Creator, but rather only from consciousness Whereas under the sway of the cosmological orientation . . . the "reality," the "absolute actuality" of God, independent of consciousness, was self-evident, this very actuality becomes fundamentally incomprehensible . . .

overflowing with the gifts our Being-from-God that it is from each other that we men are what we are and who we are

the matter under discussion is all creatures he omits studiously, as it were ". . . wherever the law is fulfilled in its full sense, there the creation too becomes plain again, revealed again. Therein it is revealed how God created man ..."

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revealed in how God created man ..." Page 31 31.32:

If, then, Cohen's idealistic philosophy at least shows itself superior to the philosophy of existence in this decisive point, no one correspondingly will dispute . . .

[Even] if, then, idealistic philosophy, at least that of Cohen, shows itself superior to existential philosophy in the decisive point, nevertheless no one will dispute . . .

faith in the existence of God as the Creator, and also and especially of nature 32.16: the understanding preservation of the "existential" sense of the Bible 32.25: more capable than medieval to preserve understanding^ the "inner world" of faith

belief in the existence of God as the Creator also and especially of nature

Page 32 32.12:

Page 33 33.16: an unmodem, premodern instance 33.33: be it "before God?" Page 34 34.34: the possibility of an understanding preservation Page 35 35.4: religion, even 35.7, 11: process 35.23: only within the framework of a predetermined Aristotelian, or rather Platonic, way of thinking 35.30: the moderns are unambiguously instructed

the intellectual [as opposed to the "lived"] preservation of the "existential" sense of the Bible more capable than medieval of preserving intellectually [i.e., as an object of knowledge] the "inner world" of belief an unmodern, premodern tribunal albeit "before God"? the possibility of the intellectual preservation

religion," even [close quotes after "religion"] procedure only within the framework of a predetermining Aristotelian or neoPlatonic way of thinking the modems are unambiguously instructed about the danger of this

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by a modern example, namely,

211

very betrayal by a modern tribunal, namely,

Page 36 36.17: 36.18:

36.21: 36.37:

is the achievement of medieval philosophy Admittedly, the assertion itself seems less vulnerable to us than the presuppositions on whose basis it achieves its characteristic evidence. Guttmann only assumes a certain superiority more appropriate

is the original achievement of medieval philosophy Indeed, even more debatable than the assertion itself, it seems to us, are the premises from which it derives such evidence as it has.

Guttmann admits only a certain superiority more obvious

Page 37 37.33: 37.34:

Rather, he is of the opinion that which is just thereby characteristically distinguished

Rather, he means that

recognizes in Revelation "a wonderful guidance for rational research" what was understood "by itself' It is not posited as a basis for human thought

recognizes in revelation a "miraculous guidance" for rational inquiry

it corresponds to the opinion o f Revelation Medieval . . . philosophy characteristically distinguished itself

it is in accord with the meaning of the revelation

the former is a part of the structure of philosophical teachings itself We content ourselves with the repeated conclusion

the former is itself a part of the philosophic system

it deserves Guttmann's

it deserves, according to Guttmann's

which has therein its specific difference

Page 39 39.1:

39.23: 39.33:

what was evident "of itself' It is not posited as a basis by human thought

Page 40 40.18: 40.21:

Medieval . . . philosophy differs specifically

Page 41 41.10:

41.16:

We content ourselves with repeating the statement

Page 42 42.12:

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PROBLEM

depiction of it as rationalistic 42.23: there is no contradiction 42.26: the divine truth

account, to be characterized as rationalist there can be no contradiction the revealed truth

Page 43 43.12: "healthy common sense"

"healthy human understanding"

Page 44 44.26: Whoever thus "believes" in Revelation,

Whoever "believes" in the revelation in this manner

Page 45 45.20: our highest and actual calling 45.21: The highest knowledge for us consists of secrets Page 46 46.2: the authorities of Revelation 46.10: cases of truth 46.12: a principled arrangement 46.18: that that "principled arrangement," which is precisely what Guttmann finds missing, 46.21: We do not want to say thereby that his "accommodations" of Revelation and reason must be satisfying in every case and that one might not be allowed in particular, perhaps, to reflect on the interpretation of the Bible in the sense of Aristotelian cosmology 46.25: In any case, the arrangement suggested by Maimonides is principled insofar as through it the instance is determined that must settle the conflict between reason and Revelation. This

our highest and proper destiny The highest objects of knowledge arc secrets from us the authority of the revelation tribunals of truth an agreement in principle that precisely the "agreement in principle" that Guttmann finds missing By this we do not mean that his "accommodations" of revelation and reason were necessarily satisfactory in each individual case, that one could not raise doubts perhaps especially about the interpretation of the Bible in accordance with Aristotelian cosmology . . .

In any case the agreement suggested by Maimonides is an agreement in principle insofar as through it the tribunal is determined that must settle the conflict between reason and revelation. This tribunal (selfevident for a rationalist) is reason.

EVE

46.37: Page 47 47.4: Page 49 49.28:

49.33:

Page 50 50.9:

instance (self-evident for a rationalist) is reason, the transcendant [sic] truth of philosophy

213

the truth that transcends philosophy

of one particular revelation

of the one actual revelation

Since an essential modification of the state of historical fact is given just with the use of the concept of "religion" enlightenment about the meaning and purpose of Revelation

Since, then, an essential modification of the historical evidence results from the very use of the concept of "religion"

This characteristic problem of prophecy is the object

This specific problem of prophecy is a subject matter of politics.

of

50.37:

ADLER

the explanation of the meaning and purpose of the revelation

politics.

he may not only be a philosopher

Page 51 51.9: even in the case that he can know 51.18: the principles of law as such and especially the principles of rational law 51.34: Thus it happens that he who, appropriately, recognizes the Jewish tradition as the judge over modern thought has no misgiving about entrusting the understanding preservation of this tradition to the "philosophy of religion" 51.39: the problem of religious truth, like the problem of the relationship of the theoretical to the religious consciousness of truth, becomes for him the central problem

he must not be only a philosopher

even in case [="iF] he can know the principles of law in general and of the rational law in particular Thus it comes about that he, who in fact recognizes the Jewish tradition as the judge over modem thought, does not hesitate to entrust the intellectual preservation of this tradition to "philosophy of religion"

the problem of religious truth, [understood] as the problem of the relationship between theoretical and religious truth-consciousness, becomes for him the central problem

214

Page 53 53.1: 53.34:

THE THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL

later Jewish thinkers which, taking into account the completed fulfillment of actual Revelation, yields the concept

Page 54 54.9: Platonic (respectively Aristotelian) metaphysics 54.32: because they are led by Plato in the foundation of philosophizing itself, because they answer a Platonic question Page 55 55.4:

55.12: Page 56 56.4:

56.26: Page 57 57.31: 57.35: 57.38:

PROBLEM

later Jewish philosophers of religion whose completion in the light of the actual revelation yields the concept

Platonic (or Aristotelian) metaphysics because they are led by Plato, in the foundation of philosophizing itself, to answer a Platonic question

the philosophical grounding of the Law, which, it follows, is the philosophical discussion the preceding disciplines

the philosophical grounding of the Law, which is in fact the philosophical discussion

truly divine law; that is, he recognizes them again as truly divine laws the political adjustment

truly divine laws; that is, he recognizes them as truly divine laws

Mendelssohn's teaching of Revelation Platonic-medieval thoughts of law by chance

Page 58 58.6: its characteristic, i.e., its human meaning 58.11: the philosophical enlightenment of the presupposition of philosophizing Page 61 61.11: Though once they have assured themselves of the permission or the

the disciplines that precede it

the political orientation, the political dimension Mendelssohn's teaching on revelation Platonic-medieval ideas on law as if by chance their proper, that is, their human, meaning the philosophic explanation of the presupposition of philosophizing

Even if, once they have assured themselves of the permittedness or commandedness of philosophizing

EVE

61.20: 61.22: 61.24:

commandment to philosophize as such, they may clarify philosophically the possibility of Revelation and may even finally look upon reason as the only judge of the truth or falsity of Revelation. Thus the fact of revelation is secured. . . . the superhuman descent of the source of Revelation all specific philosophical deliberation they accordingly precede

Page 63 63.7: as tools to labor 63.10: "for, as long as the instrument that serves for slaughter contains in itself the conditions of validity, in terms of the validity of the completed slaughter, one does not pay attention to whether it belongs to one of our coreligionists or to one who is not a coreligionist"

63.19: 63.22:

Aristotle's physics it is not even commanded as one among many human activities; rather its characteristic purpose is identical

ADLER

215

as such, they are able to explain philosophically the possibility of the revelation, and even ultimately to regard reason as sole judge of the truth or falsity of the revelation— still, the fact of the revelation stands firm. . . .

the superhuman origin of the document of revelation all specifically philosophic deliberation they in fact precede as the instruments to the work "for in the case of the instrument that serves for sacrifice, one considers what has to do with the success of the sacrifice made with it, and not whether it belongs to one of our coreligionists or one who is not our coreligionist; for the instrument itself contains in itself the conditions of that success." [Hourani has, in the place cited by Baumann: "For when a valid sacrifice is performed with a certain instrument, no account is taken, in judging the validity of the sacrifice, of whether the instrument belongs to one who shares our religion or to one who does not, so long as it fulfils the conditions for validity." George F. Hourani, Averroes: On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (London: Luzac, 1961), p. 47.] Aristotelian physics it is not only commanded as one among many human activities, but rather its proper end is identical

216

Page 64 64.2:

64.37: Page 68 68.5:

Page 70 70.38:

THE

THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL

of the commandment.

the unchosen

Page 73 73.31:

or the commandment; in either case, philosophizing is commanded by the Law. the unqualified

it would be worthwhile to point them out emphatically as long as it were still important to make clear that Averroes was not, say, the Voltaire of the twelfth century. But even for this proof, these utterances would not be indispensable . . .

It was in any case creditable to point them out emphatically so long as it was a matter of making it clear that Averroes was not, say, the Voltaire of the twelfth century. But even for demonstrating this, those remarks were not really indispensable . . .

therefore disappears. We thus assume that Averroes

therefore disappears for him. We therefore conclude that Averroes

Page 72 72.23, 29, 30, 39: concealed to predecessors 72.28: Levi counts on this obvious 72.33:

PROBLEM

objection He who deviated . . . did . . . made

But since this question is a central one, and furthermore the reason Levi gives for the fundamental possibility of answering it correctly establishes beyond doubt the fundamental possibility of answering all questions for whose answer man has a natural desire, consequently, Maimonides asserts the insufficiency of human intellect just as generally. Thus, it must be said that

concealed from their predecessors Levi takes this obvious objection into account he who deviates . . . does . . . makes

But since this question is central, and since, furthermore, the reason Levi gives for the fundamental possibility of answering it actually puts beyond doubt the fundamental possibility of answering all questions for whose answer man has a natural desire, and since on the other hand Maimonides asserts the insufficiency of human intellect [not only for this question but] in general as well—therefore it must be said that Levi opposes his assertion of sufficiency to Maimonides' assertion of insufficiency.

EVE ADLER

217

Levi sets up the assertion of sufficiency against Maimonides' assertion of insufficiency. Page 75 75.13: wondrous 75.20: the teaching of miracles

miraculous the teaching on miracles

Page 77 77.27: The limitation . . . that Levi also acknowledges

the limitation . . . that Levi himself acknowledges

Page 78 78.7: The Torah is—like the world as "world"—before philosophy.

The Torah—like the world, as a "world"—is before philosophy.

Page 79 Maimonides' Teaching of Prophecy Page 82 82.12: the medieval philosophers were, in the original understanding, precisely not Enlighteners 82.17: the unchosen 82.19: the actual, i.e., modern, Enlightenment Page 83 83.8: for man to be a perfect being Page 84 84.2, 3, 4, 11, 14: correspondingly talented man, corresponding training, [etc.] 84.6: as He deems 84.18: how prophecy is constituted in such a way that . . . it is possible for the life of theory to be the proper perfection of man

Maimonides' Teaching on Prophecy

these medieval philosophers were precisely not Enlighteners in the original sense [i.e., in the proper sense of the word] the unqualified the Enlightenment proper, i.e., the modern Enlightenment for man to be a perfect man

suitably talented man, suitable training, [etc.] as He deems fit, at His discretion how prophecy must be constituted so t h a t . . . the theoretical life as the proper perfection of man is possible

THE

Page 85 85.5:

Page 87 87.34: Page 88 88.21:

Page 90 90.13:

THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL

PROBLEM

which there is the nethermost of the incorporeal intelligences

which is the lowest of the separate intelligences

our proper and highest determination

our proper and highest destiny

By the mediation of their knowledge of the upper world, the philosophers distinguish themselves from the prophets,

Thus it is by the indirectness of their knowledge of the upper world that the philosophers differ from the prophets

if he is correspondingly talented

if he is suitably talented

Page 91 [In this entire section read "intellect" for "understanding," "intelligibles" for "things of the intellect," "particulars" for "partial things," "sensibles" for "sensory things," and "veridical dreams" for "truthful dreams."] 91.10:

91.27:

there still exists another— at least one other— independent activity of that power, whose dependence on the activity of the intellect is not evident from the beginning, philosophy becomes real

Page 92 92.1:

there is also an independent activity of its own—at least, an activity whose dependence on the activity of the intellect is not apparent from the outset.

philosophy becomes actual, is actualized

to answer this question, taking into consideration Maimonides' sources 92.8, 9: came, did

comes, does

Page 93 93.3: Then it reproduces what the senses have perceived. Occasionally it digests, in a corresponding manner, what the intellect brings

Sometimes it reproduces what the senses have perceived; sometimes it elaborates in its own peculiar manner what the intellect presents to it—in its own manner, viz., since it

to answer this question by considering Maimonides' sources

EVE

to it—in a corresponding manner, since, because it is not capable of receiving the things of the intellect as such, it imitates them by making them sensory. 93.11:

93.19:

93.37:

Page 94 94.2: 94.24: Page 96 96.9: Page 97 97.35:

Page 98 98.12: 98.24:

98.30:

ADLER

219

is not capable of receiving the intelligibles as such, it imitates them by representing them sensibly.

it digests in a corresponding manner what is offered by the other powers If the Active Intellect works on the power of the imagination, then it thus receives either things of the intellect or partial, and especially future, things. imagination. 3 2

it elaborates in its proper manner what is presented to it by the other powers

God guarantees revelations coincide in the prophecy

God grants revelations coincide in true prophecy, in prophecy as such

confirmation of the prophecy

confirmation of the prophet

the imaginative "outer meaning" transmits the teachings of these speeches that are useful

that imaginative "outer meaning" of these speeches transmits teachings that are useful

a theorist If it is necessary for prophecy to ensure that intellect and the power of imagination are jointly influenced by the Active Intellect seer-miracle-worker

a theoretical man If it is necessary, in order for prophecy to come about, that the intellect and the imaginative faculty be jointly influenced by the Active Intellect

If the Active Intellect works on the power of the imagination, then the latter receives either intelligibles or particulars, especially future ones.

imagination. The condition of this (the first) kind of prophecy is then the highest perfection of the imaginative faculty. 32 [superscript misplaced]

seer-(miracle-worker)

220

THE THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL

Page 100 100.27: apparently is held to be the closest source Page 101 101.7: This part of practical philosophy (namely, politics) has as its subject the presence of prophecy and man's dependency with respect to this presence, its duration and its propagation in the religious law. 101.11: the individual religious laws, according to people and era and peculiar characters 101.27: is fundamentally indicated just as much by Avicenna as by Maimonides Page 103 103.9: Plato's works of state 103.20: divine the state Page 104 104.7: must be a prophetphilosopher and seer in one. 104.30: Only the direct knowledge of the upper world, so it seems, qualifies the prophet for leading men, which is proper to him, uniting in itself politics and science. Page 105 105.1: Shemtob Falaquera points to a related passage in the same work Page 106 106.11: a simple binding Law . . . a Law with the power of r i g h t . . . is real

PROBLEM

clearly must be considered the closcst source

This part of practical philosophy (namely, politics) has as its subject [1] the existence of prophecy and [2] the dependence of the human race, with regard to its existence, its stability, and its propagation, on the religious law.

the peculiar characters of the individual religious laws according to people and era is presented in fundamentally the same way by Avicenna as by Maimonides

Plato's works on the state divide the state must be a prophet—[i.e.,] simultaneously a philosopher and a seer. Only direct knowledge of the upper world, it seems, qualifies the prophet for the leadership of men that is proper to him, [namely,] politics and science united.

Shemtob Falqera refers to his explanation of a related passage of the same work a simply binding Law . . . a Law with the force of law . . . is actual

EVE

106.12, 14, 19, 21: real Page 107 107.2: factual 107.11: in the prehistoric past 107.37: against it. Likewise, insofar as something speaks for it at first, it takes away all precision and significance from just what speaks for it. Page 108 108.11: he came to an assertion that has content solely on the basis of this presupposition; however, in view of Maimonides' apparent Aristotelianism, this assertion, on the basis of this presupposition, was paradoxical: "Maimonides 108.23: as Aristotelians without reservations 108.27: as the last absolute purpose Page 109 109.8: philosophy 109.12: The preference for the prophet over the philosopher is, to be sure, also based on 109.19: assert a preference for prophecy over philosophy 109.28: The Platonic question about the true state requires a detour Page 110 110.3: philosophizing or lingering in the contemplation of truth

ADLER

221

actual actual in ancient times against it; or, insofar as something does speak for it at first, even what does speak for it takes from it all certainty and all significance.

he came to the view, meaningful only on this premise, though admittedly, in view of Maimonides' manifest Aristotelianism, paradoxical on this premise, that "Maimonides . . .

unconditionally as Aristotelians as the final, absolute purpose the philosopher The precedence of the prophet over the philosopher is, to be sure, partly based on assert the precedence of prophecy over philosophy The Platonic question about the true state, about the Good, requires a detour philosophizing as an abiding in the contemplation of the truth

222

THE

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PROBLEM

Page 113 [between n. 9 and n. 10]

113. nl2, 115, 6: pristine open-mindedness 113. nl3, 17: partial in transcendent ideals 113. nl3, 116: especially rejection, with all its implications, such as the belief in progress, of that half-theism Page 115 115. nl2, 16: which, moreover, "adheres to the essential content of traditional Jewish religious ideas" Page 119 119. n71, 14: a gradual distinction 119. n71, 117, 13 an essential distinction, the essential distinction 119. n71, 121: Guide, III Page 123 123. n36, 111 : Hourani . . except God.'"]

[Footnote omitted:] That one must make a distinction in principle between orthodoxy as such on the one hand, and the statements of many of its apologists and all of its "systematic philosophers" on the other hand, needs no further demonstration.

impartiality

partial to transcendent ideals

especially the rejection of that halftheism, with all its implications, such as the belief in progress

which "adheres throughout to the essential content of the Jewish premises of belief'

a difference in degree

a difference in kind, the difference in kind

Guide, in, 51

[Hourani's translation cited here by Baumann should not be mistaken for

223

EVE ADLER

a correction of Miiller's and Strauss's; it represents the competing interpretation of the verse. Everything hinges on whether the 'ahl-ul-burhart are taken as part of the subject of this clause or as the subject of the next clause.]

Page 124 124. n38:

[Add translation]: And I say that human knowledge has a limit, and so long as the soul is in the body it is not able to know what is above nature . . . but it is able to know and to contemplate everything that is in nature.

Page 126: 126. nl6:

[The reference is only to the

Theological-Political 126. n22:

Treatise]

"the proof and, in general, speculation."

"demonstration and, in general, speculation."

gains theoretical insights indirectly, without premises and conclusions

gains theoretical insights directly, without premises and conclusions

The preference for knowledge while awake

the superiority of waking knowledge

receive theoretical insights

receive theoretical insights in dream

Maimonides excludes Moses' prophecy from his prophetology.

Maimonides excludes Moses' prophecy from his prophetology on principle.

Page 127 111. n26, 15:

127. n32:

Page 128 128. n37, 127:

Page 130 130. n47, 129:

224

THE

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PROBLEM

Page 132 132. n61, 11: 1298 132. n61, 12: To produce this text

In establishing the text

Page 133 133. n71, 17: marriage, since through it arise the kinds

marriage, since through it the species endure

Page 134 n86: p. 70, and p. 108.

pp. 70, 72, and 108.

1928

NOTES Parts I and II of this essay originally appeared in AJS Review 14, 2 (1990); reprinted with minor revisions for this volume with the permission of AJS Review. 1. Strauss's English publications on Maimonides include: "The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed," in Essays on Maimonides, ed. S. W. Baron (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), pp. 37-91, reprinted in Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952), pp. 22-37; "Maimonides' Statement on Political Science," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 22 (1953), pp. 115-130, reprinted in Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1959), pp. 155-169; "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed," in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. xi-lvi, reprinted in Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 140-184; three chapters on Maimonides in Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), which also contains a full bibliography of Strauss's works. 2. Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), pp. 1-31; reprinted as "Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion" in Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, pp. 224-259. This essay will be cited as PSCR according to its pagination in the latter edition, where the sentence here quoted is on p. 256. 3. E.g., Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, translated by Fred Baumann (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), pp. 10-11 and 13 vs. PSCR, pp. 254 and 256; Baumann, pp. 17-18 vs. PSCR, pp. 255-256. 4. "Dieser Teil der praktischen Philosophie (nämlich die Politik) hat zum Gegenstand das Vorhandensein der Prophetie und die Angewiesenheit des Menschengeschlechts hinsichtlich seines Vorhandenseins, seines Bestands und seiner Fortpflanzung auf das religiöse Gesetz" (Philosophie und Gesetz, hereafter P&G, p. 111).

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225

5. ". . . kann sie Gott nicht vom Kosmos her, als den Schöpfer, sondern nur vom Bewusstsein her 'entdecken'" (P&G, p. 36). 6. "Nur darum auch war der Versuch zeitweilig möglich, das moderne Ideal, das Ideal der Zivilisation, mittels der modernen Naturwissenschaft zu begründen: man glaubte, der neue Naturbegriff sei das zulängliche Fundament für das neue Ideal, da ja der alte Naturbegriff das zulängliche Fundament des alten Ideals gewesen war. Aber man täuschte sich . . ." {P&G, p. 23). 7. ". . . erkennt [Guttmann] die jüdische Tradition, und also eine unmoderne, vormoderne Instanz, als Richterin über das moderne Denken an . . ." (P&G, p. 41). 8. ". . . die Modemen durch eine moderne Instanz, nämlich durch ihre eigene historische Forschung, über die Gefahr eben dieses Verrats unzweideutig belehrt sind . . ." P&G, p. 43. Baumann omits the phrase "über die Gefahr eben dieses Verrats" from his version, which thus comes out: "the moderns are unambiguously instructed by a modern example, namely, their own historical research," instead of "the moderns arc unambiguously instructed by a modern tribunal, namely, their own historical research, about the danger of this very betrayal" (p. 35). 9. ". . . durch ihn die Instanz bestimmt wird, die den Konflikt zwischen Vernunft und Offenbarung zu schlichten hat. Diese Instanz ist—für einen Rationalisten selbstverständlich—die Vernunft" (P&G, pp. 54-55). Baumann: "through it the instance is determined that must settle the conflict between reason and Revelation. This instance (self-evident for a rationalist) is reason" (p. 46). 10. Cf. also p. 46, "cases of truth" for "Wahrheitsinstanzen" ( P & G , p. 54): "courts of truth, arbiters of truth." 11. "Da diese Frage aber zentral ist, und da ausserdem der von Lewi angegebene Grund für die grundsätzliche Möglichkeit ihrer Beantwortung der Sache nach die grundsätzlich Möglichkeit, alle Fragen zu beantworten, nach deren Beantwortung der Mensch ein natürliches Verlangen hat, ausser Zweifel setzt, da andererseits Maimuni die Unzulänglichkeit des menschlichen Verstandes ebenfalls allgemein behauptet, so muss gesagt werden: Lewi stellt der Insuffizienzbehauptung Maimunis die Suffizienzbehauptung entgegen" (P&G, p. 82). 12. ". . . sie wird nicht vom menschlichen Denken zugrunde gelegt, sondern sie ist zuvor dem menschlichen Denken auferlegt" (P&G, p. 47). 13. ". . . der Prophet ohne Prämissen und Konklusion, unmittelbar, theoretische Einsichten gewinnt" (P&G, p. 98, n. 2). 14. ". . . wird ihm das Problem der religiösen Wahrheit als das Problem des Verhältnisses von theoretischem und religiösem Wahrheitsbewusstsein zum zentralen Problem der 'Religionsphilosophie'" (P&G, p. 60). 15. ". . . verdient sie Guttmanns Darstellung zufolge die Kennzeichnung als rationalistisch" (P&G, p. 50). 16. ". . . er, der der Sache nach die jüdische Tradition als Richterin über das moderne Denken anerkennt" (P&G, p. 60). 17.". . . es zwischen beiden keinen Widerspruch geben kann" (P&G, p. 50). 18. Baumann here as elsewhere in cautiously relies on David Silverman's translation (Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, trans. David W. Silverman [New York: Schocken, 1973]) for passages from Guttmann's Die Philosophie des Judentums quoted by Strauss in Philosophie und Gesetz. For instance, in the face of S t r a u s s ' s emphatic warning that "an essential modification of the historical evidence results from the very use of the concept of

226

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PROBLEM

'religion"' ("eine wesentliche Modifikation des geschichtlichen Tatbestandes allein mit der Verwendung des 'Religions'-Begriffs . . . gegeben ist" [P&G, p. 58]), Baumann reproduces Silverman's transformation of Guttmann's "Jewish premises of belief' ("der jüdischen Glaubensvorstellungen" [P&G, p. 32, n. 1]) into "Jewish religious ideas" (Baumann, p. 115, n. 12). 19. ". . . der vorentscheidenden aristotelischen bzw. neuplatonischen Denkweise" (P&G, p. 43). 20. "gewährt" (P&G, p. 101). 21. Especially misleading since the passage occurs in the midst of an account of the controversy between Maimonides and the falasifa as to whether prophecy does or does not occur necessarily under given conditions, i.e., whether or not it is "guaranteed." 22. "die Vorzeit" (P&G, p. 118). 23. "Naturrecht" (P&G, p. 20). 24. " M a i m u n i und die Falasifa den Vorrang der Prophetie vor der Philosophie behaupten" (P&G, p. 120). 25. "Dieses eigentliche Problem der Prophetie ist Gegenstand der Politik" (P&G, p. 58). 26. "um vollkommen Mensch zu sein" (P&G, p. 89). 27. "ein schlechthin verbindliches Gesetz" (P&G, p. 117). Similarly, Baumann makes "unconditionally political Zionism" ("den vorbehaltlos politischen Zionismus" [P&G, p. 28]) into "unconditional political Zionism" (p. 19; tacitly corrected in Ralph Lerner's preface, p. xii); and "independent of all specifically philosophical deliberation" ("unabhängig von aller spezifisch philosophischen Überlegung" [P&G, p. 68]) into "independent of all specific philosophical deliberation" (p. 61). 28. "der Philosophie transzendente Wahrheit" (P&G, p. 55). 29. "übermenschlichen Mächten" (P&G, p. 25). 30. "im Aufbau ihrer Welt" (P&G, p. 20). 31. "denn durch sie bestehen die Arten" (P&G, p. 114, n. 2).

10 Strauss's

Natural Right and History RICHARD H. KENNINGTON

At the time Strauss published Natural Right and History (1953) the state of the question of natural right was a mixture of oblivion and fitful restoration. Natural right had disappeared from the center of discussion in political philosophy for well over a century. No philosopher of the first rank had written a treatise on, or advocated the necessity of, natural right since the time of German idealism or perhaps since Rousseau. Kant more than any other had emptied "natural right" of meaning—by asserting that the moral law must be a law of reason and not a law of nature. Naturrecht in the subtitle of Hegel's great treatise on right did not mean right derived from human nature or from nature as a norm or standard: Right was to be sought in the conjunction of the rational and the historical. By the middle of the last century there arose a virtually unanimous agreement between the conservative Right and the radical Left: The question of right had to be decided or the plane of "history" and not by reference to "nature." The attack on natural right in its explicit form had begun with the critique of modem natural right by the great conservatives of "the historical school." It was completed by Nietzsche and Heidegger, who traced the "nihilism" of the age to the continuing power of the belief in transhistorical or "eternal" truths, e.g., to the belief in natural right. Certainly in this period there were distinguished conservatives who pointed to the necessity of a "higher law" as distinct from the positive law, or who sought to restore the claims of natural law. But the reassertion or restoration of "the tradition of natural law," as distinct from a specific version of natural law, demands an exact historical understanding of that tradition. The histories of that tradition assumed a unity and continuity that was borrowed from or at least in harmony with the assumptions of Hegel's history of human thought. Just as Naturrecht could be translated, and was translated by able scholars, as referring to either natural law or natural right, so both the partisans and opponents of natural law tended to blur the distinction between "natural right" and "natural law." And the natural law tradition was often regarded as a single, continuous tradition stretching from

227

228

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the Stoics through the natural law theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. At the same time it was acknowledged that Stoic and medieval natural law had a considerable dependence on the teachings of Plato and Aristotle—in which the presence of the term, or the concept, of natural law is at best problematic. Against this background, the protagonists of Thomistic natural law possessed the greatest clarity. Their grasp of the opposition between premodern and modern natural law reflected the awareness of that distinction in the modem teachers of natural law. The exposition of natural law within the architectonic of Thomas's thought was and remains their greatest strength. It proves also a ground for reservation of assent. It leads one to wonder whether the ultimate grounds of the doctrine were accessible to human reason. It forces one to ask whether the "nature" of the Thomistic doctrine, clearly of mainly Aristotelian origin, could withstand the claims of the "nature" presumably established for all to see by the victory of modern natural science. On the other hand, modern "nature" has implied or required diametrically opposed answers to the question of natural right. Our contemporaries, in the name of rigor, or at least of methodology, assure us that the "facts" of nature supply us with no knowledge whatever of the "values" of right and justice. But the founders of the modem natural right doctrines thought that natural right was consistent with, and even in part dependent on, even the most extreme "mechanistic" versions of modem nature. Accordingly for the author of Natural Right and History, "the problem of natural right is today a matter of recollection rather than of actual knowledge" (Introduction, p. 7). The first thing needful is "historical studies." "I had to write a précis raisonnée of the history of natural right."1 This is a first reason for the tentative character, often overlooked, of a book that scarcely ever claims to demonstrate, or to refute, a single doctrine in a final manner. Strauss is unique in contending that "historicism" raises the utmost jeopardy for natural right. But he grants that "in the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to say at what point in the modem development the decisive break occurred with the 'unhistorical' approach that prevailed in all earlier philosophy" (p. 13). In his earlier Hobbes book (1936) he had explored the turning to history by Hobbes and others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He does not even allude to this earlier turn in Natural Right and History, nor did he ever publish his related studies of Montesquieu and others: "The discovery of history" remained for Strauss an uncompleted inquiry. Similarly, as regards the first origins of natural right, "the full understanding of the classic natural right doctrine would require a full understanding of the change in thought that was effected by Socrates. Such an understanding is not at our disposal" (p. 120). We cannot say with confidence that Strauss himself believed this gap was eliminated by his subsequent books on Socrates. Natural Right and History consists in great part of reasonings for the necessity of

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investigations rarely if ever undertaken by others yet left incomplete by Strauss. What was never actual knowledge can never become "a matter of recollection." It is difficult to fit together the "historical" dimension of Strauss's book with his obvious intent to establish the philosophical grounds for a decision as regards natural right. This difficulty begins with the title. Despite the title it has been understood as, and described as, "[Strauss's] study of natural law." 2 The difficulty of grasping his sense of "natural right" and "natural law" is owing ultimately to his peculiar mode of exposition. Strauss nowhere gives a "systematic" or even thematic discussion of the relation of these terms. The question arises whether his "essentially historical" treatment of these notions is meant to elicit their abiding and univocal meaning, or to show that the "concreteness" of their instantiation defeats such univocity. Certainly some of Strauss's most iconoclastic historical judgments seem to presuppose an abiding meaning of "natural law." Thus it is essential to his understanding of all three major protagonists of m o d e m natural law— Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau—that their teachings do not have the genuine character of natural law (pp. 181, 228, 276). It does not follow, however, that the character of natural law that is absent there is present throughout premodem natural law. Strauss's historical judgments are even more innovative about classic natural right than about modem. The original form of classic natural right—the Socratic-Platonic—divides into a natural right teaching and a natural law teaching. It must be distinguished from two other forms of classic natural right, Aristotelian natural right and Thomistic natural law. The two forms of classic natural law that thereby emerge are far from homogeneous. It might be tempting to resolve this "terminological" discussion by saying: "Natural right is the genus and natural law is a species characterized by certain differences, obligatoriness, universal promulgation, etc." Strauss's judgments about the heterogeneity within classic natural law did not permit this resolution. The heterogeneity within natural law, between classic and m o d e m natural right, and possibly between "natural law" and "natural right," make impossible the abiding and univocal meanings of a "history of natural right." At the same time it does not follow that the particularity of these views is enmeshed in "historical concreteness." Natural Right and History is a disclosure of fundamental alternatives. The difficulty just discussed proved to be connected with what is surely the fundamental obstacle to the interpretation of Strauss's book. The introduction begins with the invocation of the modem natural rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence. M o d e m natural right proves to be invulnerable to the modem critiques made by the proponents of historicism, or of the distinction of facts and values, because of their questionable premises. But m o d e m natural right from the outset sanctioned an "individualism" that has proved more powerful than the restraints on

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individuality supplied by the modern doctrines. "When liberals . . . had to make a choice between natural right and the uninhibited cultivation of individuality," they chose the latter (p. 5). The modern doctrine of individuality, developed in several chapters, is the hitherto most powerful solvent of natural right. Its inherent difficulties force us to think of the return to classic natural right. In the final paragraph of Natural Right and History we read: "The quarrel between the ancients and modems concerns eventually, and perhaps even from the beginning, the status of 'individuality'." But classic natural right is "connected with a teleological view of the universe," which "would seem to have been destroyed by modern natural science" (pp. 7-8). "The fundamental dilemma, in whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modem natural science" (p. 8). Accordingly, Strauss limits the scope of the inquiry of Natural Right and History "to that aspect of the problem of natural right which can be clarified within the confines of the social sciences" (p. 8). The argument with the social sciences, which occupies only chapters 1 and 2, and concerns "History" and the distinction between "Facts and Values," leaves the teleological issues untouched. The remarkable result is this: The single most overwhelming problem confronting the recovery of classic natural right appears to go undiscussed by Strauss. Is, then, Natural Right and History a merely historical work that never grapples with the question of nature, which it has itself identified as the decisive issue? I Strauss's treatment of teleology in Natural Right and History must therefore be clarified at the outset of our discussion. An initial familiarity with the book soon reveals that the teleological issue is at the heart of its argument. All classic natural right presupposes teleology, and all modem natural right presupposes its denial. The denial of teleology is a necessary part of the beginning of modernity, as would of course be generally granted. But the peculiarly Hobbesian form of the denial of teleology is decisive in this context. The founder of modem natural right theory makes the goal of philosophy the mastery of nature and maintains that humans know only what they make; he thereby begins the development that leads to the discovery of history and the emergence of historicism. "'History' limits our vision in exactly the same way in which the conscious constructs limited the vision of Hobbes: 'History,' too, fulfils the function of enhancing the status of man and of his 'world' by making him oblivious of the whole or of eternity (p. 176)." Strauss observes that the rejection of teleology in modem begins not in natural science, e.g., mathematical physics, but in the thought of Machiavelli. His demand that we study "what men do what they ought to do," implies the rejection of the highest human

thought political and not end, the

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summum bonum, as the guide for the right life of man (pp. 178-179). Similarly, the denial of the summum bonum, explicit in Hobbes and Locke, follows not at all from the nonteleological character of the new physics, but from Machiavelli's and similar considerations, underived from scientific sources. Thus the "modem" chapters (5 and 6) beginning with Hobbes are meant to be the explanation of the origin of historicism in the "contemporary" chapters (1 and 2). More fully and precisely, the quarrel between the ancient view (chapters 3 and 4) and that of the moderns (chapters 5 and 6), which turns decisively on the teleological issue, is ultimately identical with the quarrel between the ancients and Nietzsche and Heidegger (in the contemporary chapters, but especially the first). We return now to consider Strauss's introduction of the teleological issue in the Introduction (pp. 7-8). Strauss could resolve the teleological problem he raises in two ways. First, he could deny that modern natural science supplies a sufficient basis for rejecting a teleological account of the heavens. Second, he could defend the classic teleology to the extent that it is a necessary part of classic natural right. Strauss does both. He shows the essential incoherence of the natural philosophy of Hobbes and maintains that its "metaphysical neutrality" is paradigmatic: Hobbes' natural philosophy is "'scientific' in the present-day sense of the term" (pp. 174, 266). And he defends teleology as necessary to classical natural right, but he does not even mention the most prominent version of classical teleology, Aristotle's teleological metaphysics of the heavens. The "Socratic" sense of philosophy that Strauss proposes to defend is knowledge that one does not know; that is to say, it is knowledge of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamental problems or alternatives (p. 32). This choice of the Socratic sense of philosophy, as distinct from the Aristotelian, Stoic, or any other classic sense of philosophy, governs the structure of chapter 4. That chapter distinguishes between a part concerned with the nature of the whole, and a part devoted to the character of natural right, in analogy to the structure of chapter 3. Chapter 4 gives us an account of the classic teaching on natural right that combines Socratic-Platonic doctrines with Aristotelian teachings. But in regard to the teaching on the nature of the whole, chapter 4 presents only the Socratic-Platonic "science of the whole," completely omitting the Aristotelian account of the whole. Accordingly, it is then only philosophy in the Socratic sense that exhibits the end or excellence of man, and hence the teleological basis for natural right. As will become more clear later, "if striving for knowledge of the eternal truth is the ultimate end of man, justice and moral virtue in general can be fully legitimated only by the fact that they are required for the sake of that ultimate end" (p. 151). Indeed, "Plato eventually defines natural right with direct reference to the fact that the only life which is simply just is the life of the philosopher" (p. 156).

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II

The first two chapters of Natural Right and History treat what Strauss regards as the two greatest powers of contemporary life, "History" and "Science." Each is a source of the denial of natural right. The book as a whole is divided into such pairs. Just as chapters 1 and 2 are "contemporary," so chapters 3 and 4 are "ancient" and 5 and 6 are "modern." Given the length of the two parts of 5 and of 6, Strauss could easily have given us four "modern" chapters: He preferred a pair structure in the surface organization. All roads lead to or from, all doctrines prepare or depart from, "classic natural right" in chapter 4. It is "central" in its weight, but also central literally, if we count the introduction and the subdivisions of 5 and 6 as parts. The final chapter turns back upon—forms a pair with—the first: Chapter 5 on the turning to history prepares the first chapter on historicism. Thus in 6 "Burke paves the way for 'the historical school'"; in 1 we begin the account of historicism with "the historical school" without a mention of Burke (pp. 316, 13). The book becomes something like a whole through the activity of the reader who joins its end to its beginning; it ceases to be a linear "history" of natural right. The pairs that articulate this whole are sometimes easily combinable, the one being the root of which the other is the florescence, sometimes heterogeneous and difficult to think together. Likewise, chapter 1 is a succession of pairs. We first learn that historicism must be distinguished from conventionalism because one rejects and the other accepts "the idea of philosophy." Historicism has two forms, naive or "garden variety" historical relativism, and "radical ('existentialist') historicism." Historical relativism is self-contradictory; radical historicism avoids self-contradiction by jettisoning the claim to theoretical truth. Underlying both is "the experience of history," which has two premises, one temporal and one atemporal. The atemporal premise proves to be decisive. Radical historicism is opposed to philosophy: One denies the intelligibility of the whole, the other allegedly assumes it dogmatically. The concept of philosophy in turn divides into "the idea of philosophy" and "the Socratic notion of philosophy." Only the latter supplies the decisive basis for a response to radical historicism—to Heidegger. Strauss begins chapter 1 with the contrast between historicism and conventionalism in order to establish the primacy of "the idea of philosophy" for the question of natural right. "The fundamental premise of conventionalism is . . . nothing other than the idea of philosophy as the attempt to grasp the eternal" (p. 12). Historicism is the view that "all philosophizing essentially belongs to a 'historical world', a 'culture' etc.—to what Plato had called the cave" (p. 12). The possibility of philosophy is the necessary though not the sufficient condition of natural right (p. 35). If philosophy is impossible, the case for natural right is hopeless; if possible, the question of natural right remains open. Strauss's book

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moves back and forth, in different chapters and within a single chapter, between two planes, the possibility of philosophy, and the still further question of natural right and its "sufficient condition." Chapter 1, on the first plane, shows that historicism, by making philosophy impossible, makes natural right impossible. Hence in chapter 1 Strauss restricts his use of "idea" to two things, "the idea of philosophy" and "the idea of natural right." But his distinction of planes does not always prove disjunctive. For it was the critique of a specific form of natural right— modem natural right—that initially led to the historicist critique of "the idea of philosophy." Historicism, by denying philosophy, and conventionalism, by only denying natural right, exist on different planes. They appear to employ the same argument. From the variety and perishability of opinions about right and justice they conclude to the denial of unchangeable right and justice. In each case this proves to be only a first appearance. Each requires special premises about the unchangeable. Conventionalism, as we leam from the thematic exposition in chapter 3, must ultimately assume, e.g., that each man by nature seeks his own good, or that the good is the pleasant. Conventionalism, at least in its outstanding exponents, was aware of its premises. Strauss's task in explaining historicism is of considerable difficulty. He must show what the nonhistorical premises of historicism were, and that it was unaware of them. The question arises whether this ignorance of their premises is a consequence of the abandonment of "the idea of philosophy." Strauss contends that historicism is a single phenomenon that divides into naive (theoretical) historicism and radical ("existentialist") historicism (pp. 25, 31), which are both continuous and discontinuous. Naive historicism originates in the reaction of the eminent conservatives of "the historical school" to the natural right doctrines of the revolutionaries of 1789. It culminates in "the experience of history" (pp. 20-22). The experience of history points backwards: Its premises are either identical with, or rooted in, the same natural right doctrine that was opposed by "the historical school." It also points forward: The experience of history was accepted by radical historicism, but without critical reflection on the premises of that experience. The "experience of history" is thus the essence of the middle term of a three-term historical sequence: modem natural right, naive historicism, radical historicism. The experience of history only appears to be based on empirical evidence—of the variety, incompleteness, inconsistency, and perishability of all past human thought. Its strength in fact rests on two underlying beliefs or premises, stated in paragraph 17, which are the core of chapter 1. Each premise, however, is given a double formulation, one version corresponding to modem natural right, the second to the historical school and naive historicism. The identity within each double formulation is the bond between modem natural right and naive historicism.

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It seems to us that what is called the "experience of history" is a bird'seye view of the history of thought, as that history came to be seen under the combined influence of the belief in necessary progress (or in the impossibility of returning to the thought of the past) and of the belief in the supreme value of diversity or uniqueness (or of the equal right of all epochs or civilizations), (p. 22)

In the first or "temporal" premise the underlying identity of the two versions is "progress"—implied in the second version, and dropping the "necessity" of the first. "Progress" is preserved in radical historicism in the assertion that the historicity of human thought, while a fateful and arbitrary disclosure and in no wise intelligible and necessary, is an advance over all prior, "prehistoricist" human thought (p. 25). In the second or "atemporal" premise, the identity is "individuality" or the belief that the real is the individual. Strauss reduces the two premises to one in the discussion of radical historicism: Nietzsche's preference for "the tragic life" (p. 26, footnote) shows that he accepted individuality, "the fundamental premise of the historical school." But the view of the natural right revolutionaries of 1789 is that "the natural is always individual" (p. 14). Individuality bonds together the three phases of Strauss's history of historicism. If "individuality" is the fundamental premise, the temporal premise, i.e., the temporality of all human thought, must be independent or derivative from it. The grand, overarching thesis of Natural Right and History, developed through chapters 5 and 6 but culminating in 1, is that the individuality thesis precedes and prepares, chronologically and logically, the temporality of thought in the dimension of history. Only this relationship makes possible a "history of historicism" as an account of a phenomenon that appeared for the first time in the course of modem thought. The "individual" in Hobbes, the founder of modem natural right, is an individual precisely because his selfhood is not constituted by any relationship to other men, or to anything that is always, or eternal, neither to God, nor to the ultimate atomic individuals, as in ancient materialism. From the Hobbesian individual Strauss traces a course in chapters 5 and 6 to "history"; but this "humanistic" or political course of development will require a "cosmological" complement in chapters 5 and 6 to justify the thesis that "the real is the individual" simply. The solitude of the Hobbesian individual in the state of nature was bad but only because he was insecure. Moreover, as Rousseau observed, he was not genuinely natural because he was equipped with reason, pride, and other passions that presupposed civil society. Rousseau's correction of Hobbes's individual presupposed his distinction between the state of nature and civil society. Hobbes's denial of man's natural sociality is the most visible starting point for any account of the "discovery of history." Rousseau more than any other established that individuality is good. Because his goodness presupposed his independence of freedom, the natural man had to be stripped of reason and those passions

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inseparable from society and therefore dependence. In the first stage of his thought Rousseau had made the discovery that to be an individual in the modern sense is to be inhuman or subhuman. Man's humanity (e.g., his reason and speech) is acquired, but his natural freedom is lost, in the course of history, a mysterious process whose causality is a mixture of necessity and accident. Rousseau sought to reestablish the goodness of individuality or freedom on the basis of man's historically acquired nature, but the fundamental dependence on the mysterious process of history remained. The elaboration of the good man and the good citizen could be no more than an account of man as he happens to have become up to now. Man's nature is historically determined, but man's knowledge is not: A tension existed between the historical character of existence to which the individuality premise had led, and the possibility of transhistorical knowledge. A resolution seemed to be available in the notion of an "absolute moment," discovered by Rousseau and Hegel (pp. 273, 315, 29). In the absolute moment the historical character of individuality is disclosed as knowledge of final validity. Yet it proved impossible to establish the absoluteness of the moment without nonhistorical or "theoretical" reasoning that belied the novel insight of "the discovery of history." It was only radical historicism that reconciled historical individuality and temporality, or "being and time," by abandoning the plane of theoretical understanding. The immediate reason for the emergence of radical historicism was the perception of the self-contradiction within naive historicism. The latter had said all human thought is historical but had inconsistently exempted itself from its own verdict (p. 25). At this juncture it would have been reasonable to examine the credentials of "the discovery of history" that had created the difficulty. Instead, Nietzsche and his successors said we must make a "turn" to being or reality. The difficulty exists only if we assume that reality is intelligible. But the realization that human thought is embedded in historicity is a disclosure of blind fate, not in principle intelligible to man as man, and made to certain men at certain times and perhaps only once. Is this not once again the notion of an "absolute moment"? On the one hand, the radical historicist denied that the end of history had been reached; on the other, he said or implied that the disclosure of historicity was an absolute advance over all previous, "prehistoricist" thinking. He could not "prove" this superiority by historical evidence of an "empirical" variety without relapsing into theoretical, nonhistorical reasoning. The mysterious ground of the disclosure of history is hidden, but it can be wrested from its hiddenness by the creative actions of poets, thinkers, and statesmen as distinct from philosophers. 3 It does not exist apart from the individual creative human actions, the truly historical events; it is dependent on human doings. "The highest principle, which as such, has no relation to any possible cause or causes of the whole, is the mysterious ground of 'history' and [is] wedded to man and man alone" (p. 176). The difficulty that results is stated by Strauss in terminology that is

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probably meant to refer to Heidegger. "[I]f and when there are no human beings, there may be entia, but there cannot be esse, that is . . . there can be entia while there is no esse" (p. 32). 4 The other side of the radical historicist argument is its critique of the possibility of philosophy, especially in its ancient or classical form. This critique must be met by Strauss, most obviously in the "ancient" chapters 3 and 4, if natural right is to be possible. Philosophy makes the dogmatic assumption that the whole is knowable, that is, intelligible (p. 30). "The whole as it is in itself is identified with the whole in so far as it is intelligible." Strauss could have observed that this is the textbook objection to modern, especially Cartesian, rationalism: What is "clear and distinct" to the human mind is arbitrarily identified with the substance of things. While classical philosophy is the ultimate source of this modern error, it is apparent that the objection turns on its modern consequences. The identification mentioned makes it possible to regard the whole as an "object" to be mastered by a "subject"—in the terms of Descartes. The classical assumption supplied the remote but necessary basis of the technological goal of the founders of modem philosophy—"mastery of nature" in Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes. The "quarrel of the ancients and modems" is thereby abolished. The opposition between an ancient philosophy whose intention is primarily theoretical or contemplative, and a modem philosophy whose intention is to make the human race "lord of the universe," is replaced by a single metaphysical tradition, whose beginning is in antiquity, and whose fruit is modern technological mass society. If the whole is intelligible (or "lawful" in terms of modem physics), it is predictable and controllable. The root of the guiding assumption now reveals itself to be the dogmatic identification of "to be" in the highest sense with "to be always." It is clear already in chapter 1 that Strauss means to respond to radical historicism not with "the idea of philosophy" but with a precise version thereof, "the Socratic sense of philosophy" (pp. 23, 32, 35). "Philosophy is knowledge that one does not know, that is, it is knowledge of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamental problems and, therewith, of the fundamental alternatives regarding their solutions that are coeval with human thought" (p. 32). The possibility of philosophy does not require that there be "ideas" that are "the only things which are beyond all change" and "separated" from the things (cf. City and Man, pp. 119-120). It requires no more than that "the fundamental problems always be the same" (p. 35). In accordance with this understanding of Socratism, the usage of "idea" through Strauss's book departs markedly from that usually found in the mouth of Socrates in the Platonic writings. An "idea" is a fundamental problem. From this perspective we understand how chapter 4 can be entitled "The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right": Ideas can come to be. In Natural Right and History "idea" is used with economy and precision. Each chapter is concerned with one or two but not more then five items that

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are designated as "ideas." Chapter 1 speaks of "the idea of philosophy" and "the idea of natural right" but no others; chapter 2 of "the idea of science" and "the idea of natural right" but no others. "The idea of science" occurs in no other chapter, and "the idea of philosophy" in no other chapter, except in connection with Rousseau's rejection of "the classical idea of philosophy" (pp. 261-262). The term "idea" is normally used not in the chapter where it receives its primary exposition, but in the chapter where it becomes problematic. Thus, "the idea of philosophy" as the attempt to grasp the eternal is spelled out at length in chapter 3, where the phrase is absent. And "the idea of science," which is expounded at length in connection with Hobbes in chapter 5, where it is absent, occurs only in the chapter devoted to Max Weber. Ill The only chapter in Natural Right and History that examines a twenticthcentury thinker at length is also the only chapter in which Strauss permits irony to pass over into jest and ridicule. The chapter on Max Weber is also the only chapter in which is discussed a matter of some gravity, "the sccular struggle between philosophy and theology" (p. 75). The theme of chapter 2 is the rejection of "the idea of natural right" made on the basis of "the idea of science" in its contemporary, or at least Weberian, version. Weber understood scientific method to be autonomous, or devoid of need for philosophic justification in terms of the nature of reality. His method was "metaphysically neutral" or "'scientific' in the present-day sense of the term" (chapter 6, p. 266). Hence chapter 2 seems to exist on a different plane from chapter 1: It concerns not the possibility of philosophy, but the question of a determinate answer to the question of the right life, or of the possibility of natural right. It could appear that method determines ethics, insofar as method dictates the necessity of the distinction between "facts" and "values," and declares that only the former are capable of rational adjudication. Weber, as distinct from many he influenced, did not draw this conclusion. To establish that values are a different sort of thing from facts, it was necessary to show that there are a variety of insoluble conflicts between values, or between "unchangeable principles of right and goodness." Ethics determines method. More precisely, the discussion of ethics that shows its impossibility at the same time establishes the necessary condition of method, the distinctness of the domain of "fact" from that of "value." But the reasonableness of the life devoted to factual inquiry obviously depends on a value, the value of science. The same argument that established the rationality of the factual domain of science establishes the irrationality of the science that studies that domain. It might seem that this result shows the folly of "the idea of science" when divorced from "the idea of philosophy." But Strauss appears to accept

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Weber's view that they stand or fall together. The ultimate conflict for Weber between "unchangeable principles of right or goodness" is the conflict between "religious faith" and "the idea of science." Strauss tried "to state in more precise terms what Weber had in mind when he said that science seemed to be unable to give a clear or certain account of itself' (p. 74). The "more precise" account proved to be in terms of "the secular struggle between philosophy and theology." "The fundamental question is whether men can acquire that knowledge without which men cannot guide their lives individually or collectively by the unaided efforts of their natural powers, or whether they are dependent for that knowledge on Divine Revelation" (p. 74). Philosophy and revelation each regards itself as "the one thing needful"; no harmony or synthesis is possible. The question of what each can say on its own behalf appears to involve what each can say to exclude the other. But revelation is unable but also not obligated to refute the possibility of philosophy, whereas philosophy, to show its own reasonableness, is obligated but unable to refute the possibility of revelation. The choice of philosophy cannot satisfy its own requirement that the choice be reasonable choice. Weber was wrong: The conflict is not insoluble but decides in favor of revelation. But the final blow to the rationality of Weberian science appears to be a Pyrrhic victory for Strauss. If philosophy is impossible as a rational alternative, the case of natural right is hopeless. Natural Right and History stands at the crossroads. Yet such is the unconcern of Strauss that he lets stand without objection the argument of chapter 2 in which philosophy is vanquished by revelation, and leaves the scene of battle with a jest, "hastening back from these awful depths" (pp. 75-76). This is the most curious moment in Natural Right and History. We start with the observation that Strauss went out of his way to sharpen in his own terms what was only latent in Weber. The "more precise" version is also what he calls a "bird's-eye view" of the struggle between philosophy and theology. This reminds us of the "bird's-eye view" quoted above underlying the "experience of history," a fallacious view in Strauss's judgment. (The phrase occurs only twice.) The "bird's-eye view" of Natural Right and History proves to be identical with Strauss's view in his early book of 1930 on Spinoza and biblical religion. In both the premise that philosophy cannot refute the possibility of revelation is fatal to the rationality of the choice of philosophy. In the 1930 book Strauss concluded that orthodoxy is superior to the modem rationalism of Spinoza; the relation to premodern philosophy, which was not a live option, did not have to be considered. In the 1962 preface to the English translation of the Spinoza book, Strauss criticized his earlier views in two respects. "The victory of orthodoxy through the self-destruction of rational philosophy was not an unmitigated blessing, for it was a victory not of Jewish orthodoxy, but of any orthodoxy." 5 Meanwhile, he had come to believe that a return to premodern philosophy is possible. "Other observations and experiences

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confirmed the suspicion that it would be unwise to say farewell to reason" (in the phrase of Spinoza). 6 This self-criticism of 1962 can already be found in Natural Right and History, provided we follow the theme of religion and philosophy into the "ancient" chapters. In place of a confrontation with the one "Revelation" as in chapter 2, philosophy confronted the "many orthodoxies" or the many "divine codes" at its inception, according to chapter 3. It was the "contradiction" among the many divine codes (pp. 86-87) that was a necessary condition of the original emergence of philosophy. For the "preSocratics," the status of revelation or "superhuman information" (p. 87) was settled prior to the emergence of "the idea of philosophy." But Strauss's autocritique required a second phase. In the Socratic concept of philosophy in chapter 4, the "divine codes" are not dismissed but restored to a place among the fundamental alternatives (p. 125), without, however, losing their manyness or their mutual contradiction. IV

Philosophy first emerged with "the discovery of nature," which was "made by some Greek twenty-six hundred years ago or before" (p. 82). The first section of chapter 3 (paragraphs 1-17) is an archeology of this discovery. Why is the original discovery of "the idea of philosophy" by "the first philosophers" the genuine meaning of philosophy that is "transhistorical" and valid for all time? The answer that underlies the whole of Natural Right and History lies in the inseparable connection between "the idea of philosophy"—which we met in chapter 1—and "the idea of nature," a connection of final validity. Strauss tacitly grants that what the first philosophers discovered was not so much "nature"—only once does he deign to mention what they said nature is—but "the idea of nature." Only by recognizing the elements that belong to the problem of nature is philosophy possible. The first philosophers discovered nature in this sense, but they denied natural right: They were "conventionalists." Because they discovered nature as an authority or standard, and hence as a term to be distinguished from "convention," they were able to pose the problem of natural right. Accordingly, the first part of chapter 3 on "the idea of nature" is followed by its other part on "the idea of natural right." Only these two "ideas" occur in chapter 3. Strauss seeks to show why the specific answer of the first philosophers to the problem of nature led to the conventionalist answer to the problem of natural right. He designates the cause of their error in the central paragraph of the first section: "the perspective in which nature was discovered [was] determined by the original character of authority" (p. 86). Authority in prephilosophic life is "characterized by the primeval identification of the good with the ancestral" (p. 83). Strauss's general problem is to show that although philosophy and nature originally

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emerged in opposition to an "authority" of a specific type that distorted the original meaning of philosophy and nature, nonetheless the meaning of the "ideas" of philosophy and nature that emerged are of timeless validity. The "way" or "custom" of things is the prephilosophic antecedent of "nature" (p. 82). Prior to philosophy almost anybody knows a good deal about the ways peculiar to kinds of things, e.g., dogs, etc., but the paramount custom or way is the way of one's own society. It was not the "way" of a class or kind of thing that provoked the discovery of nature, but the way of one's own society, which tends to comprehend everything, the way of our tradition, the core of which is the belief that "the good is the ancestral" (pp. 82-83). Or rather it was the discovery that the ancestral good as expressed in the "divine code" written or unwritten of one's own society is in contradiction with the divine codes of other societies. The perception of the contradiction between the divine codes was the necessary condition for the discovery of nature. Those who were believed to have established the divine codes were thought to be gods, or son of gods, or "dwelling near the gods" (pp. 83-84). Just as these first beings were both "first" and "good," so when nature replaced the divine codes in the emergence of philosophy it was understood as both "the first things" and an authority or standard for all other things. As "determined by the original character of authority," the discovery of nature as "the first things" obscured the manifest articulation of things into classes or kinds. But "the two most important meanings of nature" are "the first things" and the essential character of a kind or class of things (p. 83, footnote 3). The understanding of nature tended therefore to have the character of a descent from the first or divine or imperishable things (cf. Sophist 242c8-243bl). Insofar as it ascended from "experience," it did not ascend from the kinds of things, and in its descent it did not link the first things with the kinds of things. Its perspective was therefore adverse to the discovery of the natural within the class of human things. This "divine" perspective is reflected in the text of Heraclitus, which is crucial for our grasp of conventionalism in the first philosophers. "In God's view, all things are fair [noble] and good and just, but men have made the supposition that some things are just and others are unjust" (p. 93). The judgment of the first philosophers that right and justice are "by convention" had only a loose connection with "nature." What could be traced to the divine codes could be safely relegated to convention. On the other hand, since the first things are the eternal or imperishable things (p. 89), it was apparent that the class of perishable things is too wide to be identified with convention, or traced to the divine codes. Neither the generation of animals, nor their characteristic behavior—the barking and wagging the tail of dogs, for instance—is amenable to the influence of divine codes. Nor was it possible to derive such features of things from specific versions of the "first things" such as the atoms and void of Democritus. It was necessary to embark on an inquiry into the human things to establish what could be at-

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tributed to the divine codes, i.e., to human decision and agreement, and what was independent thereof. To compress the results of Strauss's lengthy analysis, it was not the variety and changeableness of beliefs about right and justice that proved decisive, but the analysis of law and the city. "The nerve of the conventionalist a r g u m e n t . . . is this: right is conventional because right belongs essentially to the city and the city is conventional" (pp. 107-108). The right that belongs to the city is conventional, however, only because it is opposed to the thesis that by nature everyone's desire is directed toward one's own good. And this thesis in turn was traceable—so Plato at least thought—to the view that human nature discloses to us that "the good is identical with the pleasant." These special assumptions were not drawn from the inquiry into the variety and unchangeablcness of opinions. They were not evidently applicable to human phenomena alone, although what they were meant to explain was peculiarly human. There was perhaps a harmony between these assumptions and particular ("materialist") views of the first things. But there was no firm bond between the "nature" embodied in these assumptions about the human, and "nature" understood as "the first things." The conventionalism of the "pre-Socratic" conventionalists was arbitrary. Nevertheless, by the discovery of nature as "the first things" the first philosophers discovered "the idea of philosophy." This discovery keeps its finality even though it is susceptible to alternative interpretations. The whole of Natural Right and History is an experimental inquiry into its implications. "The fundamental premise" of the discovery of nature is "that no being emerges without a cause" (p. 89). The causality we acknowledge to account for the manifest changes of things familiar to us is incomplete, and dependent on further and unknown causes, and therefore not known as causality, unless there are first things that are as such unchangeable. If, on the other hand, causality becomes understood as a "construct" or "category" of the human mind, it loses the possibility of being understandable: It is nature, and not the human mind, that is the cause of the human mind. It is only the first things, and not some psychology or study of the human, that can account for the possibility of philosophy. The "idea of philosophy" demands therefore that one distinguish between that causality which is attributable, at least immediately, to human agency, and that which is not, precisely in order to understand itself as a human possibility. It requires the distinction between nature and art, on the one hand, and nature and convention on the other. Hobbes was the first modem to experiment with the abandonment of the ("metaphysical") quest for the first things. Accordingly, he had to abandon the double sense of "nature" in antiquity: as a term of distinction, and as a standard. He tried to abolish the distinction between nature and art; he was forced to understand philosophy as art or "construction" in contradistinction to nature. Philosophy, as distinct from other human activities, stands or falls by its relatedness to the first things. Its own quest for knowledge of ultimate things cannot possess its distinctive character—a good that is internal and

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unique to its own activity—unless the first things are of "higher dignity" (p. 89) because they constitute the order in which everything else is. This insight into "the idea of philosophy" is not denied but confirmed by those of our century who suggest that the highest human possibility is the attempt, through authentic despair or "creativity," to confront the groundlessness of all things in any "first things." Such attempts seek to return to the ancestral or "the gods" on the plane of human reflection without thinking about the nature of the ancestral. The possibility of philosophy is stamped with the duality of the first things that both mirrors and departs from the duality of the ancestral. V The treatment of "classic natural right," the subject of the central chapter, is divided according to a complex plan: 1. The Socratic or Socratic-Platonic "science of the whole" (pp. 120126) 2. The classic natural right teaching (pp. 126-146) 3. The Socratic-Platonic form of classic natural right, including Stoic natural law (pp. 146-156) 4. The Aristotelian form of classic natural right (pp. 156-163) 5. Classic natural right in the form of Thomistic natural law (pp. 163164) The Socratic-Platonic "science of the whole" in section 1 is the only "classic" account of the whole or nature, and hence the only "classic" version of "the idea of philosophy" found in chapter 4. Thus sections 1 and 3 must bear the whole weight of the question, what is the connection of classic natural right and teleology? Section 2 is the only "anonymous" section: It strives to remain neutral, especially to the differences between "Plato" and "Aristotle." At the end of section 2 we encounter the central difficulty of the chapter. It is only after spelling out the classic natural right doctrine, especially as regards "the best regime," that Strauss addresses the questions: from what can natural right be derived? "Can natural right be deduced from man's natural end? Can it be deduced from anything?" (p. 145). More precisely, can "the idea of justice" be derived from "the idea of man"?: (p. 145). "Justice" and "man" are the only items designated as "ideas" in chapter 4; they are not designated as such in any other chapter. The connection between these two ideas, especially but not only in their Socratic-Platonic context in section 3, is the core of chapter 4. This conclusion is confirmed by the absence of any derivation of natural right or natural law in the Aristotelian and Thomistic sections 4 and 5. Moreover, the clarification of the distinction between "natural right" and "natural law," insofar as it is

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supplied by Strauss, is found primarily in the Socratic-Platonic contexts. Only this clarification makes possible Strauss's novel assimilation of the Stoic natural law to the Socratic-Platonic form of classical natural right, on the one hand, and the distinction between Stoic and Thomistic natural law, on the other. Philosophy, according to Socrates, is "the science o f the w h o l e " (p. 122). This novel v i e w was prepared or necessitated by the effort "to call philosophy down from heaven" and force it to inquire into the human things. T o avoid the reduction o f human things to the divine or natural things (p. 122) required the acknowledgment of the essential heterogeneity of all the kinds or classes of things. "Nature" as "the first things" can be linked with "nature" as class or kind of things only in the light o f the whole that comprehends both the eternal and the perishable. Since the things that are " f i r s t " in the whole are not directly accessible to us, w e must begin with what is "first to us," the articulation of things into kinds, which is manifest. Socrates never ceased considering "what each o f the beings is" (p. 122). " T o b e " means " t o be something" or a particular being o f a certain kind. " T o b e " means therefore "to be a part," of the kind, and o f the whole. Since the " w h o l e " cannot " b e " in the same sense in which everything that is "something" is, the whole must be "beyond being." Philosophy, accordingly, is not "metaphysics" as knowledge o f "being as being." So far is it from making the arbitrary assumption that "to be is to be intelligible" that it is guided by the undeniable manifestness of the articulation o f things into groups or kinds. "This v i e w makes possible, and it favors in particular, the study of the human things as such" (p. 123). It remains unclear in section 1 what Strauss means by stipulating the task o f philosophy as "to understand the unity that is revealed in the manifest articulation o f the completed w h o l e " (p. 123). Whether there are "horizontal" principles that mingle with, or cut across, different classes, and whether such principles are ranged in some "vertical" hierarchy with an apex or apices is not touched upon. The immediate problem that links section 1 and the following section of chapter 4 is that o f knowing a class, e.g., the human nature of man. Of any class of animals it is to some extent true that what is common to a class is too impoverished to capture the superior activity o f the outstanding or "paradigmatic" examples of the class. It is a question whether the propensity to imitation

common

to humans illuminates the poetic

activity

of

Shakespeare as much as his activity illuminates this human propensity. T o join these considerations with ones before mentioned, if "to b e " means "to be a part," this means for human beings both a part of human kind or the social whole to which w e belong; it may also mean to be related as a part to the whole simply through the mediation of one's kind or as an individual. Thus w e find Strauss speaking o f "kind-relatedness," so to speak, as "man's natural conscience" (p. 130), which is an awareness that there are limits to his freedom in action related to his own kind. But in addition "man

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cannot live without having thoughts about the first things" (p. 91). This duality is reflected in the opinions men have about "those simple experiences regarding right and wrong which are at the bottom of the natural right doctrines" (p. 105). As an epigraph to Natural Right and History Strauss places two stories from the Bible, one of which illustrates the sense of natural injustice present when a rich man with abundant resources takes from a poor man. In the other a king offers to Naboth the Jesreelite fair exchange or fair compensation for a vineyard that is nonetheless an ancestral inheritance. Inquiry into the human things divides into study of men essentially related to their own kind, and study of paradigmatic human beings whose excellence is essentially related to, or even grounded in, "the first things." It is recognition of this duality that requires that the Socratic-Platonic fonm of classic natural right—as distinct from the Aristotelian or any other— be treated in two waves, in sections 2 and 3. In the "classical natural right," which we encounter in section 2, the distinctiveness of the Socratic-Platonic teaching is effaced in the common ground it shares with the Aristotelian teaching, neither being named. The common premise of both is the Socratic discovery of kinds, and the specific heterogeneity of the human kind. Thus there is a common answer of classic natural right to the conventionalist thesis that the good is identical with the pleasant. The pleasures prove to be derivative from the wants, and in the case of the human, from the natural order of the wants. "It is the hierarchic order of men's natural constitution which supplies the basis for natural right as the classics understood it" (p. 127). Nevertheless, neither in the immediate sequel nor in the whole of section 2 does Strauss supply the derivation of natural right, which is reserved for following sections, as we noted above. In section 2 we observe an oscillation between what is common and the perfection of man. As regards the common, "It is man's natural sociality that is the basis of natural right in the narrow or strict sense of right" (p. 129). But the basis of natural right in the wide sense—the hierarchic order of man's natural constitution—points in the direction of the natural inequality of men, of the unequal contributions of men to the common good, and toward "the fuller actualization of humanity in the statesman, the legislator, or the founder" (p. 133). Ultimately, "wisdom appeared to the classics as that title to rule which is highest according to nature" (p. 140). Nevertheless, in section 2 "the idea of justice" is not derived from "the idea of man." The emphatically political character of classic natural right required that the wisdom of the highest human type, for which the society has the greatest need, be harmonized with the inability of the nonwise to recognize that wisdom (p. 141). In effect, this means that the rule of law is to take the place of the rule of men, however wise, and that "the best regime" is a "mixed regime." Section 2 accordingly ends with a question, from what if anything can natural right be deduced (p. 145)? Section 3 (pp. 148-156) is prefaced by a premise on "opinion," and is composed of a double ascent to the nature of justice and right. Only the

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aspiration expressed in speech, as distinct from what is observable in the "facts," guides us to perfection. "Whatever may be the proper starting point for studying human nature, the proper starting point for studying the perfection of human nature, and hence, in particular, natural right, is what is said about these subjects or the opinions about them" (p. 146). Section 2 had begun with the refutation o f conventionalism by appeal to the "facts," as distinguished from the "speeches," and led to the "hierarchic order of man's natural constitution" (pp. 1 2 6 - 1 2 7 ) . Section 3 begins with the speeches: with "the conflict between the two most common opinions regarding justice" (p. 146), close to the beginning of Republic 1, and leads to the "hierarchy of merit" (p. 148). Sections 2 and 3 are related differently to the political: In the first the rule of the wise had to be qualified by the consent of the unwise; in the second, this qualification is dropped in the pursuit of perfection. But the perfection that transcends the political points in two directions. What we may call "the first ascent" of section 3 is guided by "the idea of justice." "In a just society the social hierarchy will correspond strictly to the hierarchy o f merit and merit alone" (p. 148). Perfect justice demands that this principle not be qualified by requirements however indispensable to the existence o f political or civil society. Civil society, as a rule, requires "indigenousness" as a condition of high office: To be eligible, a citizen must be born within its borders, and perhaps even a son of a citizen father and citizen mother. Civil society requires that one treat fellow citizens differently from " f o r e i g n e r s " or " a l i e n s , " regardless o f merit. Whereas the conventionalists had argued that it is against nature arbitrarily to "cut off one segment of the human race and set if off against the rest" (chapter 3, p. 104), the same conclusion is now drawn in the name of justice. Accordingly, the city can avoid contradicting justice only if it transforms itself into the "world-state" (p. 149). Since only God can rule the whole human race justly, the just society is "the cosmos ruled by God," which "is simply according to nature because it is simply just" (p. 150). The natural is derivative from the just. Only the wise are citizens of this cosmopolis, and the character of their obedience to its law, which is "the natural law" (p. 150)—is "prudence." Strauss has here sketched the reasoning, drawn from Platonic dialogues, which underlies the Stoic natural law doctrine found in Cicero's writings. More precisely, what has been sketched is the "original and unmitigated Stoic natural law teaching" (p. 155), as distinct from the more familiar mitigated or diluted version (pp. 1 5 4 - 1 5 5 ) . It is at least the unmitigated Stoic teaching that is "based on the doctrine o f divine providence and on an anthropocentric teleology" (p. 154). This first ascent, or this form of classic natural right, indeed substantiates the claim of the introduction that "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe" (P- 7). It is then the perfection of justice and not the perfection of man that

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leads to "the natural law." Since the natural law implies, or is derived from, a divine lawgiver, a harmonization is possible between natural law and "the divine codes" of pagan antiquity and of every time. Indeed Strauss seems to suggest that the reflection on perfect justice is at the root of some divine codes at least. But "the idea of justice" is problematic in a way different from "the idea of man" (p. 145). The natural law just sketched is problematic because it is transpolitical and therefore politically useless, at least in its undiluted form; and because its theological and teleological requirements are not easily satisfied by philosophy. Accordingly, the original Stoic natural law doctrine was diluted: "the exoteric version" (p. 155) was harmonized with the needs of civil society in general, and of Rome in particular. Its "theological-teleological doctrine" was subjected to "severe criticism" by Cicero (p. 154). In this respect, we must say that he conformed to the teaching, or the silence, of the Republic, and to the aporetic character of theology and teleology in the Timaeus and Laws. "On the basis of the biblical faith," the natural law ordained by God becomes independent of, and prior to, "the paramount social phenomenon"—the best regime, as understood by classic natural right (p. 144, cf. p. 137). The best regime is the City of God and therefore always actual, and not the "object of the wish or prayer of gentlemen as that object is interpreted by the philosopher" (p. 139). A certain depoliticization of the best regime results. "The cessation of evil, or Redemption, is brought about by God's supernatural action" (p. 144) and not by the human construction of the best regime. When Thomistic natural law harmonized natural right with the claims of civil society, in part by including the Second Table of the Decalogue in the moral law, a doubt remained whether it is natural law strictly speaking, i.e., a law knowable to the human mind, unassisted by divine revelation (p. 163).7 What we may call "the second ascent" to perfect justice is guided by "the idea of man." Whereas the first ascent moved from justice to nature, the second moves from nature to justice. The life that is "truly according to nature" is that which truly accords with the hierarchic order of man's nature— the "basis for natural right" (p. 127) in the general as distinct from the "narrow or strict sense" (p. 129). The excellent human life is "devoted to the pursuit of something which is absolutely higher in dignity than any human things—the unchangeable truth" (p. 151). Strauss does not so much offer the deduction of natural right as identify its principle. "Justice and moral virtue in general can be fully legitimated only by the fact that they are required for the sake of that ultimate end or that they are conditions of the philosophic life" (p. 151). "That good life simply . . . is the life of a man who is awake to the highest possible degree . . . the perfection of man's nature" (p. 127). "One may therefore call the rules circumscribing the general character of the good life 'the natural law'" (p. 127). To sum up, it is primarily this problem of combining the diverse requirements of the two ascents—a combination that is apparently insoluble "theoretically"—that is the "idea of justice."

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VI

In ancient thought, the emergence of philosophy precedes by perhaps two centuries the discovery of natural right and political philosophy. In modern thought, the emergence of a distinctively modern "realistic" political philosophy in Machiavelli precedes by about a century the founding of modern philosophy by Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes. In each case, the sequence proves illuminating. What was discovered by the first philosophers was "the idea of nature," or the essentially transpolitical character of philosophy, which retained its validity for Socrates and classic philosophy. What was discovered by Machiavelli was that sound political "modes and orders" must be understood without reference to "the ideal of human perfection" or that perfect human life which is directed to the transpolitical and transhuman. We may then speak of Machiavelli's politicization of political philosophy. The manner in which Machiavelli's principle was the principal factor in the abandonment of "the idea of philosophy" and the politicization of philosophy is the theme of Strauss's interpretation of Hobbes. The three paragraphs on Machiavelli (pp. 177-179) thus have a weight out of proportion to their magnitude. With the Hobbes discussion we enter on two chapters that prove to be concerned with modem thought in its entirety. The importance of Hobbes may be stated schematically: It was Hobbes, and only he, of the illustrious founders of modem thought, who first conjoined the two dominant strands of modem thought—the new "realistic" doctrines of human individuality, and the new mathematical principles of physical science. It was the Hobbesian foundation of modem natural right whose crisis produced the turning to history, in which the politicization of philosophy culminated. We shall then treat chapters 5 - 6 as a unit. The basic stratum of Hobbes's thought is a series of three fusions. He accepted the "public-spiritedness" of philosophy that follows from the premise that politics is the source of great human goods. But he joined it with the hedonism of the materialist tradition that denied public-spiritedness. Hedonism can become public-spirited if it has nothing to seek or to fear beyond the political, and if it can gain an indispensable benefit from the political. In the second fusion, the elimination of the transpolitical took place on the plane of natural philosophy. Hobbes joined together the Platonic notion that "mathematics is the mother of all natural science," with Epicurean materialism. His natural philosophy is "both mathematical and materialist-mechanistic" (p. 170). But this fusion is possible only if its components lose their original integrity and are treated as malleable. The principle of this joint transformation was "method" or methodology. We can know only if we have a procedure that links together, preferably by deduction, only that which is fully evident. Both the procedure and the evidence must therefore be made or constructed by ourselves. We can know what we make. The definitions and axioms of mathematics are then

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understood as our postulations; the principles of physics are not the "first things" or principles of the whole, e.g., atoms and the void, but human constructs. Hobbes's well-known materialism proves to be a "methodical" not a "metaphysical" materialism (p. 174). Because he had abandoned "the idea of nature," he was compelled to abandon "the idea of philosophy as the attempt to grasp the eternal" (p. 12). How, then, is the goal of philosophy to be understood? It cannot be essentially different from the goal of politics; it differs only as the teacher of the political from its practitioner; it becomes a higher form of politics. Philosophy, originally the humanizing quest for the eternal order, "has become a weapon, and hence an instrument" (p. 34). Hobbes took over, through Bacon, the politicization of philosophy by Machiavelli. In the third fusion, the end by which philosophy and politics are joined together, comes from politics. Men as men are and can be concerned only with "acquisition," or with the power to gain, and the power to keep, whatever they actually desire. Scientia propter potentiam. The connection of Hobbes and "History" is relatively easy to make in one sense—on the plane of political philosophy. We have only to locate the specific problems of modern natural right that compelled Rousseau and then Burke to turn for a remedy to the historical (or "the local and accidental"). To divest natural man of those social characters illicitly given him by Hobbes, Rousseau described a "history of man," showing how men only acquired their rationality and sociality as they moved away from the state of nature. To blunt the doctrinaire character of modern natural right, Burke appealed to the proved beneficence of actual regimes such as England in their historical circumstances. But however articulated is our political account of their turn to the historical, it proves in both cases to be grounded in premises about "metaphysics" and the intelligibility of individuals and wholes. Rousseau's history of man in the Second Discourse "is meant to be neutral with regard to the conflict between materialism and anti-materialism, or to be 'scientific' in the present-day sense of the term" (p. 266). Strauss's footnote refers us back to discussion of Hobbes and Locke for the meaning of and preparation for this remark. When a rational inquiry is "neutral" to first or ultimate principles, i.e., when the rationality of its inquiry is held to be independent of such principles, we may call it "metaphysically neutral." 8 On this basis Rousseau presented a "physical" history of man, employing scientific categories of necessity and accident, while excluding questions of the teleology of the historical process and of the whole. Similarly, the central notion of man as "perfectible" in the sense of "malleable," was chosen because it was not implicated in "metaphysical dispute," as was the quality of being a free agent. As regards Burke, he started with the problem of the relation of theory to practice, but his recovery of this premodern problem was clouded by an understanding of "theory" that was partially and perhaps ultimately "modem." "[Burke] parts company with the Aristotelian tradition by disparaging theory and especially metaphysics" (p. 311). His concept of

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metaphysics was influenced by Locke and Hume. We must now turn explicitly to this metaphysical theme to understand why historicism claimed that not merely the historical or human whole is unintelligible, but why the whole simply is so. The two key concepts of Strauss in understanding modern thought are "individuality" and "metaphysical neutrality." The first is pervasive in chapter 5-6; the second, less visible; and the linkage between them is dark. It is helpful to begin with their reflection in common judgment about modern thought. The scholarly judgment is that "the individual" is the dominant notion of modern political philosophy, and "epistemology" of modern philosophy. With "the individual" are connected unconditional rights, the "right of the particular to be satisfied," and freedom as the realization of selfhood. To "epistemology" belong the priority of method in science and philosophy, the demand for "foundations" of knowledge, the requirement that philosophy be Wissenschaft, the several "transcendental" logics or psychologies of knowledge, and Nietzsche's physiopsychology of knowledge. The dominance of each is somehow neutral to the vicissitudes of "metaphysics." In general, the connection of these two dominant modern concerns has never been established. The exactness demanded by epistemology has proved fatal to principles of right and justice; the grounding of human activity in the good has proved beyond the powers of the activity of epistemology. The irrationality of values undermines the scientific value of rationality; the impossibility of Weltanschauung that includes the human good rebounds upon the rationality of "philosophy as rigorous science." 9 Both have long since lost connection with intelligible principles of the whole. Even the supreme efforts to link together "individuality" and rationality in Hegel and Nietzsche prove only to be stages in the development of historicism. In Strauss's approach, the root concept is "individuality." We need "order" and "method" as mediating concepts before it is seen to entail "metaphysical neutrality." M o d e m individuality is the discovery of Machiavelli. If we examine "men as they are and not as they ought to be" we are led to the modem individual who does not belong by nature to any whole, neither to family nor society nor by inclination or knowledge to what is abiding and eternal. His nature is most clearly disclosed when he is most alone—in "the extreme situation." His individuality is properly understood, however, when correctly related to that order which is the indispensable condition of his being, the social order, especially to the well-constructed or sound social order. The sound social order does not seek to educate to virtue the strivings of individuals for their own good, but to use them. "The good order or the rational is the result of forces which do not themselves tend toward the good order or the rational" (p. 315). This Machiavellian principle is explicitly stated near the end of Natural Right and History in a context in which Strauss contends that it is the principle common to the concepts of the

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historical in Rousseau and Burke. It had previously been exemplified in Locke, who believed that the root of property or wealth is the labor or enterprise of the individual, and that the sound order of political economy would result from liberating the natural desire for acquisition (cf. Prince, chapter 3) from ethical or political restraints. The principle of order, which was a principle of conscious construction with Machiavelli and in Hobbes and Locke, became recognized as the intelligible element in the process of history by Rousseau and Burke, but after the fact and without human foresight. The Machiavellian principle brings the individual within an order, but one that is exclusively human. In its indifference to the transhuman, it prepares the concept of "metaphysical neutrality." A more direct link to "metaphysical neutrality" is made when Hobbes extends the Machiavellian intention to make the principles of politics actual or effective, to the actualization of wisdom. Stated differently, the intention of Machiavelli to master fortune or chance in human affairs was extended to "the mastery of nature" as the goal of philosophy by Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes. In all three the mediating concept was "method." It was by "the right method" that it was thought possible to resolve the unending dispute between "dogmatism"—the great doctrines—and "skepticism," in the history of thought. Only the exercise of extreme skepticism could lead to unshakeable "foundations" of knowledge, i.e., a new dogmatism. 10 The heir of this resolution of the quarrel of dogmatism and skepticism is ultimately historicism (chapter 1, p. 20). While the experiment with extreme skepticism is best known to us from the "universal doubt" of Descartes, the essential character of method was most clearly recognized by Hobbes. If we impose rules of method of human devising, we may expect that method will enable us to master or control nature, but not that it will disclose to us the articulation of nature, and still less its first principles. The possibility thus arises that it is of the essence of "epistemology" to be "metaphysically neutral." Since it is now method that guarantees the cognitive status of our principles, there is no longer a necessity to understand them by reference to still higher or "first" things or principles. Epistemologically speaking, what is "first to us" can be identified with what is "first in itself' if what is "first to us" is method, and not what "comes to sight" of itself, through sensation and opinion. The awareness of our ignorance of what is first simply, or eternal, which is the original sting that gives rise to philosophy, now became a matter of indifference. It remained for Kant to "demonstrate" the impossibility of metaphysics, and by means of the Critique of Pure Reason, to show that not only science but morality as well requires "metaphysical neutrality." The Hobbesian insight into the implications of method seems not to have been acknowledged by "the founder of modern rationalism." To his method Descartes supplied a further foundation in a theocentric metaphysics. It thus appears that Descartes preserved the concern of philosophy with the "first things" and the eternal.

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Nevertheless, all scholars agree that Descartes never even attempted to infer from the natures of things to the existence and nature of God; his argument from "the effects" is merely from "ideas." Nor did he even attempt to show that God could be understood as the cause of the particular natures of things that we experience, or even of the content of the laws of nature. Descartes' "nature" is "metaphysically neutral" to the existence and nature of God. The enormous responsibility imputed to God as guarantor of human knowledge tends to blind us to Descartes' great departure from the metaphysical tradition: his refusal to acknowledge that God could be known as the cause of the beings of this world. "The good order or the rational is the result of forces which do not themselves tend toward the good order or the rational" (p. 315). This principle is not restricted to the human, but applies to cosmology, as Strauss indicates by endorsing Hegel's application of it to "the planetary system," i.e., Newton. That Newton's system is "neutral" in the sense we have used is shown by the cognitive independence of his fundamental laws from the question of the nature of body. That body or matter must be understood in terms of atoms or "particles" remains hypothetical or "probable" (Optics, query 31). The principle as exemplified in cosmology was never integrated with its use in the understanding of human things. In Descartes' cosmogony (.Discourse 5), it is a principle of a temporal process: From an original chaos, bodies with inertial force, in accordance with "laws," little by little constitute the present order of the solar system and the visible heavens. The further evolution of the animal and human was beyond Descartes' powers of deduction. In the political constructions of Hobbes and Locke, it was not characteristic of a temporal process, but of a constructed and enduring human order. In Rousseau and Burke the principle was discovered in phenomena both temporal and human—the workings of history. When Hegel followed their precedent, he divorced the manifestations of the principle in history from the principles of nature (p. 320): The whole is beyond order. When the historical was said to embrace the natural and all else, the last vestige of an order that could embrace the modern individual was lost. The natural whole had become incomplete and therefore unintelligible in Descartes and Spinoza, because the future manifestations of the laws of nature were infinite in character, 11 unless the exhaustion of all possible manifestations compelled "the eternal return of the same," a possibility recognized by Leibniz. 12 The all-comprehensive historical whole became incomplete and therefore unintelligible when the possibility of "laws of history" was abandoned. NOTES This chapter is a revised version of "Strauss's Natural Right and History," Review of Metaphysics 35 (September 1981): pp. 57-86. Copyright © 1981 by the Review of Metaphysics.

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1. Private letter to Helmut Kuhn, undated. Published in Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): p. 23. 2. John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. vi. 3. Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Neomarius Metaphysics Verlag, 1953), pp. 47-48; English translation, An Introduction to (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 62-63. 4. Cf. Heidegger, p. 64: "Es gibt keine Zeit, da der Mensch nicht war, nicht weil der Mensch von Ewigkeit her und in alle Ewigkeit hin ist, sondern weil Zeit nicht Ewigkeit ist und Zeit sich nur je zu einer Zeit als menschlichgeschichtliches Dasein zeitigt." English translation, p. 84: "There is no time when man was not, not because man was from all eternity and will be for all eternity but because time is not eternity and time fashions itself into a time only as a human, historical being-there." 5. Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1965), preface, p. 30. 6. Ibid., p. 31. 7. For the diverse sources of the natural law tradition, see Ernest L. Fortin, "Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the Problem of Natural Law," Mediaevalia 4 (1978): pp. 179-208. 8. For "metaphysical neutrality" in Descartes and Locke, see my "'Teaching of Nature' in Descartes' Soul Doctrine," Review of Metaphysics 36 (September 1972): esp. pp. 109ff. 9. See Leo Strauss, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy," Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (Summer 1971): pp. 1 - 9 . 10. The origin of this "methodological" formula may be found in Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620), in which "foundations" are established by a method that rejects the "natural species" conveyed by the senses, thereby finding a middle route between the dogmatism of Aristotle and the "acatalepsia" of the academy. See especially Novum Organum 1, Aph. 67. 11. See Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, preface, p. 16: "The knowledge of God as presented in the First Part of the Ethics is only universal or abstract; only the knowledge of individual things or rather events qua caused by god is concrete. Spinoza thus appears to originate the kind of philosophic system which views the fundamental processus as a progress: God in Himself is not the ens perfectissimum. In this most important respect he prepares German idealism." 12. See my "Analytic and Synthetic Methods in Spinoza's Ethics," The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza: Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 7 (1980): pp. 316-318.

11

On a Forgotten Kind of Reading DISKIN CLAY

Leo Strauss came early to the reading of classical texts. And he came late to writing about them. Greek and Latin were a part of his early education in Germany, and even as he was presenting the thought of a Hobbes or a Machiavelli his citations of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero—and even Xenophon— call attention to the thought of the ancients. In the case of both his Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Oxford, 1936) and Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, Illinois, 1958) his footnotes to the texts of the classical political philosophers were the beacons of what was to become a sustained dialogue between the ancients and moderns in Strauss's writings. 1 Yet his direct encounter with the text of classical political philosophers and other classical authors who had seldom if ever been taken seriously as political philosophers—and I think of Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Lucretius—came in the middle of his own career as a political philosopher. I would put the date of his dramatic, but long-deliberated, shift from the study of Jewish and Arabic texts and the origins of modern European political philosophy to a concentration on the ancients to 1962, the year of his Page-Barbour lectures at the University of Virginia. 2 Mid-career for Leo Strauss did not coincide with mid-life. He was sixtythree when he gave the lectures published as The City and Man. I first witnessed Leo Strauss in action at about this critical period of his intellectual life. I was visiting Chicago and he was teaching Xenophon's Cyropaideia at the University of Chicago in late fall 1962, and I observed, with absolute astonishment, one of his classes. The class met in an elegant room, framed in old wood, and before Strauss there stood a lectern that seemed larger than he. He punctuated his comments on the passages he analyzed that day with a cigarette extended in its authority by a cigarette holder. He addressed an audience that might have numbered some fifty students. All were well dressed, attentive, male, and polite, and all held before them well-used copies of Marchant's Loeb text of the Cyropaideia. Strauss spoke from what seemed to be elaborate handwritten notes. He made jokes I cannot now recall, but the memory of fifty students laughing over the subtlety of some point in the text

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of Xcnophon remains vivid with me. Most impressive of all, he had a reader—a tall man, with a good pulpit voice, in a suit and a tie, who read from the good book to convey the evangel of Marchant's English translation with a Xenophontic and not a distracting, and profound, German authority. Let me list some of the classical texts Leo Strauss has inteipreted. Most of these he addressed in the last decade of his life; the last three titles on this list were published after his death in 1973: • • • • • • • • •

Xenophon's Hiero, or On Tyranny, 1948 3 A r i s t o t l e ' s Politics, Plato's Republic, and T h u c y d i d e s ' Peloponnesian War in The City and Man, 1964 Aristophanes in Socrates and Aristophanes, 1966 Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in a modestly entitled "A Note on Lucretius," 19674 Xenophon's Oeconomicus in Xenophon's Socratic Discourse, 1970 Xenophon's Memorabilia in Xenophon's Socrates, 1972 Plato's Laws in The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws, 1975 Xenophon's Anabasis in Interpretation 4:3,1975 5 Plato's Apology, Crito, and Euthydemus in the collection Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 19856

There are some features of this partial list of Strauss's writings on classical texts that invite comment. The first comment is a feature that leaps to the eye: This is the pride of place occupied by a figure very few classical scholars have taken seriously as a philosopher since the Renaissance, that retired general with historical, equestrian, canine, and political interests and a country seat far from his native city, Xenophon of Athens. 7 Xenophon appears to have been the object of Strauss's serious interest from the period that led to his study of the Hiero in 1948 to the lecture he was to have given on the Anabasis the day before his death. Then there is the selection of authors. Canonically, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero loom large in the history of political thought in antiquity. 8 In the canon of Strauss's writings, Plato remains central; but Aristotle's political philosophy is represented only by the essay on the Politics in The City and Man and the intimations of Strauss's footnotes to other authors, both ancient and modern. And in his room we find the unfamiliar features of Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Lucretius. The titles of Strauss's books on classical political thought deserve the attention he gave to the titles of the works of both Plato and Xenophon. 9 And two preliminary observations about the titles of Strauss's books on Xenophon seem appropriate. The Hiero has an alternative title in the manuscripts of Xenophon; this identifies the work as Hiero, or The Tyrant. Like some of the titles to the dialogues of Plato, the general theme that arises out of a particular individual is identified in the alternative title.

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Strauss, who studied Xenophon with a care and seriousness that have not been seen before and will not likely be seen again, took the title of the Hiero as meaningful for its interpretation. And he begins, as always, with the work as it first presents itself to the reader. But the second observation focuses on the title of Strauss's book, On Tyranny: An Interpretation of Xenophon's Hiero. Here the general introduces the particular. Strauss's title suggests a larger theme than that indicated by Xenophon's, which is the life (bios) of the tyrannical man (tyrannikos). But On Tyranny suggests precisely what Strauss makes explicit in his preface: that Xenophon's short dialogue presenting an exchange between the poet Simonides and the tyrant of Syracuse, Hiero, can contribute to our understanding of modern and then contemporary manifestations of the tyrannical life. 10 Still another title on our list of Strauss's writings on classical political philosophy conveys the same suggestion. For his fundamental The City and Man, Strauss could have chosen a title like Essays on Three Classical Political Philosophers. Instead, by his choice of The City and Man, Strauss declares that the study of Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, and Thucydides' Peloponnesian War engages the large issue of the relation between the city and man. And he suggests that a return to the three classical texts chosen for The City and Man is an avenue to opening the question of the relation not of the Greek polis and the individual polites, or the modern state and its citizens, but of the city and man. 11 The conjunction in this title disguised an antagonism. There are other titles that suggest in their understated fashion that they announce an issue that arises out of but transcends the interpretation of a classical text, but an issue that Strauss chose to deal with by writing what appears to be a commentary on that text. Socrates is involved in all of these tides, and in some way his name alone suggests the relation and the antagonism not between the individual citizen and his polis but between the philosopher and his society. These are Socrates and Aristophanes (1966), Xenophon's Socratic Discourse (1970), and Xenophon's Socrates (1972). Perhaps the last observation to offer at this time about my list of Strauss's writings on classical authors is to consider for a moment the case of Aristotle; and Aristotle strikes me as a very curious case. In his statement on Aristotle in The City and Man, Strauss claimed that a "coherent and comprehensive understanding of political things is available in Aristotle's Politics, precisely because the Politics contains the original form of political science." 12 His essay in The City and Man is Strauss's only direct treatment of Aristotle, but his Aristotle is curious and somewhat isolated in the company of his Plato and Thucydides, both of whom prompt revealing reflections on the indirection of two seemingly very different modes of writing—the Platonic dialogue and a prose history articulated into the narrative of actions and arguments about action. And, as is clear from the first page of his essay on Aristotle in The City and Man, the Politics itself is

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not the subject of Strauss's reflections, although many of these reflections on Aristotle's political thought are anchored to the text of the Politics. Outside of this essay, Aristotle figures only in the footnotes to Strauss's writings on political philosophy. One wonders why Strauss should address Aristotle's thought as if it were somehow independent of a particular work like the Politics and diffuse in both the Politics and Ethics; and why he should fail to address a mode of writing that is so distinctively and dogmatically Aristotelian, after having written his reflections on the dialogue form of Xenophon's Hiero some fifteen years before and after having finished the chapter on Plato and the Platonic dialogue that served for his treatment of Plato in the History of Political Philosophy he had edited with Joseph Cropsey. 13 1 have a shaip and uncomfortable awareness of how provisional and limited my understanding of Strauss's interpretation of Aristotle's Politics and Ethics is. I was never his student and have not read the transcripts of his seminars on Aristotle, but I would guess that Strauss was never certain that our texts of Aristotle's esoteric writings were an immediate expression of his thought. 14 And then there was his mode of writing itself. His direct, systematic, dogmatic, and expository mode of writing seems to belong to the origins of political science and not to political philosophy. At the very least, his esoteric writings possess none of the indirection and discretion of a philosopher like Plato or a commander like Thucydides or Xenophon, both of whom were intensely involved in the affairs of the polis of Athens. Aristotle's city was Stagira, not Athens, and his mode of writing was not that of the great Athenians, among whom Strauss would number Aristophanes, caught up in the political affairs of their native city. In the orderly and positive and personal presentation of his thought there is vast subtlety, but none of the irony of Socrates or the higher irony of Plato. Rather, he resembles Hippodamus of Miletos, the first political scientist. Thus, Strauss begins his essay on Plato's Republic with the reflection: "Generally speaking, we can know the thought of a man only through his speeches oral or written. We can know Aristotle's political thought through his Politics. Plato's Republic, on the other hand . . . ." I 5 Strauss was not sure that our texts of Aristotle's esoteric writings accurately represented the lines of his thought, or that his mode of presenting his political thought allowed for a reading between the lines. That is, he was not sure that his political thought posed a danger to the city in which he spent most of his adult life as a foreigner. It is tempting to present Strauss's readings of classical texts author by author and text by text, moving from his reading of Xenophon's Hiero (or beginning even earlier) 16 and ending with his book on the Laws of Plato or his posthumous essays. This was my original plan for this essay. But the result of this exercise would not be very edifying, especially for a classical scholar, since it would produce an undistinguished paraphrase of Strauss's

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strikingly distinct paraphrase of his texts, and it would repeat for each author and for each text some of the general considerations that guided Strauss as a reader. Some of these texts now exist in strict new English translations that respect and illustrate, in English that reads like Greek, the minute details that disclosed so much to Strauss as he pondered the meaning of his author. 17 I have thought rather of what a classical scholar might learn from reflection on Strauss's seeming talmudic manner of reading Greek texts and from his reading of Lucretius; or at least I have thought of how Strauss's method of reading might lead to the rediscovery of an art of writing that has now been lost from sight. At first sight, Strauss's initial sustained reading of a classical text seems outlandish. One could complain that this reading has not been appreciated by classicists, but one could complain, too, that Xenophon's Hiero has not been appreciated by classicists. Much of his commentary to the Hiero reads like a paraphrase and plot summary—a frequent complaint of reviewers of his writings on classical texts. And the kind of interrogation Strauss forces upon the innocent Hiero seems arbitrary and even tyrannical. For he seems to extort from this short and apparently undistinguished dialogue a meaning (he would say a teaching) it never possessed, or, given Xenophon's intelligence—which is to say our low estimate of it—never could possess. Consider a passage from Strauss's preliminary meditations on the setting of the dialogue. (Strauss's understanding of the "setting" of a Xenophontic or Platonic dialogue includes an attempt to characterize the dramatis personae of the dialogue.) It is a part of the character of Xenophon's "wise" Simonides that he should ask Hiero ironically and uncharacteristically how the lives of the tyrant and the ordinary citizen differ in their pleasures and pains (I 3). Strauss's comment on Simonides' opening question is this: By adopting the vulgar view [of the life of the tyrant], Simonides tacitly rejects the gentleman's view. Could he not be a gentleman? Could he lack the moderation, the self-restraint of a gentleman? Could he be dangerous? Whether this suspicion arises depends on what opinion is held by Hiero about the relation of "wise" and "gentleman." But if it arises, the theoretical and somewhat playful discussion will transform itself into a conflict. 18

This kind of discourse will strike the refined Hellenist as something barbarous. To begin with, classicists have not dealt seriously with the project of Xenophon's Hiero. Its manuscripts and text, its Greek, its adherence to that genre of writing known as the non-Socratic dialogue, these have been the concern of the very few classicists who have dealt with this dialogue. And Strauss notices their work only in passing and to pass beyond it. 19 As Strauss put these reflections on paper, those classical scholars who addressed Greek political thought were engaged in the historical and genetic presentations of their authors, and in the late 1940s Strauss's comments on

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the setting of the Hiero must have seemed like the ravings of Nebuchadnezzar, when he was driven from men and did eat grass among oxen. It would seem by the vantage of hindsight that the goal of Strauss's early reflections on that forgotten kind of writing (studied in the collection Persecution and the Art of Writing of 1952) would be the study of Plato. Strauss's reflections on the art of writing dangerous thoughts innocuously and his studies of the writings of Farabi, Maimonides, Machiavelli (especially the Machiavelli of the Discorsi),20 and Spinoza lead inevitably to that master of concealment, but they did not lead directly to Plato. They reached Plato through a preliminary and as it were propaedeutic study of Xenophon's Hiero, and when Strauss returned to Athens late in his career as a political philosopher he was as concerned with the Xenophontic as with the Platonic dialogue. Yet Strauss's understanding of the dialogue as the ancient manifestation of the forgotten art of writing he discovered in medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy and in Spinoza and Machiavelli is most clearly and powerfully articulated in his treatment of the Platonic dialogue. The twelve dense pages Strauss devoted to general reflections on the peculiar set of problems facing the reader of the Platonic dialogues in his City and Man21 are not as shocking to the decent opinions of the classical scholar as is his treatment of Xenophon's Hiero. Many of his reflections and, indeed, some of the language of his reflections on the art of reading a Platonic dialogue have their analogues in neo-Platonic attitudes toward the Platonic dialogues; and the first volume of Paul Friedlander's masteipiece, translated into English as Plato: An Introduction,22 reveals a fresh and equally challenging awareness of the difficulties of approaching the thought of an author who never—at least in his own dialogues—spoke in his own voice and whose dramatic and "iridescent" irony hovers over the irony of Socrates within the dialogue. And Strauss's reflections on the art of reading a Platonic dialogue were followed in the introduction Jacob Klein wrote to his commentary on the MenoP But if Strauss's awareness of the problems of reading Plato was shared by contemporaries of similar training and background, his solutions to these problems were very different. The reasoned conviction that informs Strauss's interpretation of Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and Lucretius (but not, it would seem, Aristotle) is articulated in its clearest form in the statement Strauss elaborated in response to two doubting reviews of his Persecution and the Art of Writing: "opinion is the element of society; philosophy or science is therefore the attempt to dissolve the element in which society breathes, and thus it endangers society." 24 For Strauss, the art of a forgotten kind of writing is the art of seeming to conform to or to reinforce the socially salutary opinions of the majority while revealing an author's socially dangerous thoughts to the few by indirection. Plato was the ancient master of this forgotten art. Except in his letters, Plato never speaks himself. A total anonymity pervades his dialogues, and

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the danger of interpreting the Platonic dialogues is that Plato can be taken at Socrates' word. Strauss's analysis of the difficulties of inteipreting a Platonic dialogue articulate the critical principles he brought to bear in reading a forgotten kind of writing. And he is guided by Socrates, who, in the Phaedrus and in Book III of the Republic, comes as close as Plato ever comes to describing the Platonic dialogue and indicating how it should be read. Strauss evokes Socrates' discussion of narrative style (lexis) in Book III of the Republic to call attention to the dramatic, and therefore indirect, character of the Platonic dialogue. Socrates' distinction here (392C-394C) was taken in antiquity as a criterion for dividing the Platonic dialogues into the "narrative" and the "dramatic" or "mimetic." 25 But Strauss was aware of another issue involved in Socrates' discussion of narrative style with an Adeimantus who does not easily grasp the meaning of the term lexis. That issue is that of Platonic anonymity, and it emerges from Socrates' description of the mimetic or dramatic style. Here Plato seems to offer a rare reflection on his own mode of writing. To make his meaning clear, Socrates gives Adeimantus an illustration from the opening of the Iliad of how in the narrative style the poet speaks himself, that is, he recites a narrative about the actions of others and in the third person. So, Homer speaks himself when he says of Chryses: "he entreated all of the Achaeans and most earnestly the two sons of Atreus, the marshals of the army" (III 392D). Socrates' comment is revealing: "The poet speaks himself and doesn't even attempt to divert our attention to make us imagine that someone else is speaking." This is narrative; it is not the style of the Platonic dialogue. The second style is mimesis, that is, impersonation. Socrates draws his example of this from this same episode in the Iliad. As Homer abandons his role of narrator, he takes on the role and intonation of the old priest, and in impersonating Chryses Homer conceals himself. "Now if the poet were to conceal himself nowhere, his entire composition would prove to be effected without impersonation (mimesis) and entirely narrative (diegesis)." What of the case of the style of Plato and the Platonic dialogue? His style is not the style of the poet speaking himself. Rather it is the style of the dramatist, the tragic or comic poet, who is entirely mimetic and conceals himself everywhere. Strauss did not emphasize Socrates' telling word "conceals." Nor did he evoke the fate of Socrates or Plato's statements about his career and his mode of writing in the second and seventh letters to explain by autobiography and history why Plato concealed himself as the poet of his dramatic dialogues. And, although he cites a passage from the dialogue that comes closest to being the Platonic dialogue on the Platonic dialogue, the Phaedrus, to recall Socrates' requirement of "logographic necessity" for any discourse committed to writing, 26 he does not overtly call his readers' attention to the passage where Socrates stresses, with Phaedrus' complete agreement, the dangers of committing one's thoughts to a fixed and public

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form of communication that could come into the hands of any and all. This passage is noted only in a footnote to Strauss's essay on the Republic, precisely where his argument would lead his reader to expect a reference to the interpretative principle of "logographic necessity" (the new coinage of Phaedrus 264B7). But for Strauss a wink is more expressive than a nod. The Platonic text that is crucial to one formulation of Strauss's argument as the master of a forgotten kind of writing is this: But once it is committed to writing, every word (or discourse) rolls all about and comes into the hands of the perceptive, just as it comes into the hands of those who have no business with it. And it does not understand to whom it should speak and to whom it should remain silent. And, once it has been badly treated and unjustly abused, it is in constant need of its father to come to its aid. For by itself it is capable of neither defending nor helping itself. 2 7

Strauss's case for Plato as an exponent and perhaps the greatest exponent of a forgotten kind of writing is stronger than he makes it in The City and Man. I am quite sure that he was well aware of how strong his case was. And I would guess that in making it elliptical in The City and Man he intended his own reader to experience the intellectual labor Plato himself requires. In all of his treatments of Plato, Strauss avoids justifying his understanding of Platonic writings in terms of an historical (or historicist) hypothesis of a climate of repression of free expression of thought in democratic Athens— precisely the kind of argument that Kurt von Fritz urged with such success for Tacitus' "tacitism." 28 Strauss's subtle reflections on Plato's self-concealment, "logographic necessity," Socratic irony, Platonic silences, and the titles and settings of the Platonic dialogues (which he counted as all the thirty-five of our manuscript tradition) cannot be rehearsed here and now. But his advice can be. Perhaps his most epigrammatic counsel to the reader perplexed by Platonic anonymity, the dramatic setting, details, and overall structure of the Platonic dialogues is this: "One cannot separate the understanding of Plato's teaching from the form in which it is presented. One must pay as much attention to the How as to the What." 2 9 And I would suggest that in order to gain an appreciation of what is distinctive and "Straussian" in Leo Strauss's reading of Plato, one only need pick up that ponderously inert presentation of Plato's dialogues with the strangest title ever invented for a book on Plato—Paul Shorey's What Plato Said. In a copy of The City and Man in the Vassar College Library there is a comment by a student pencilled on the first page: "Don't trust arguments." That is a reasonable reaction for the young reader who has made his first contact with the writings of Leo Strauss, and especially with the writings of the last two decades of his life when he turned at last to a sustained study of the ancients. But it is also a reasonable reaction for the reader who encounters

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a Platonic dialogue for the first time. I myself find Strauss's practice of a forgotten kind of reading persuasive for Plato, because I am convinced that Plato practiced this forgotten art of writing. His readings of Thucydides and Lucretius are also congenial to the subtlety and indirection of two masters of psychagogia, who worked in vastly dissimilar genres and whose arguments, except for Lucretius' description of the plague, seem worlds apart. I confess that I am puzzled by Strauss's Socrates and Aristophanes—the book that must have given him the greatest joy in the writing—and, although I do not believe that Aristophanes was an esoteric writer or that Socrates had a secret teaching for Strepsiades or Pheidippides, I have learned a great deal about Aristophanes as a dramatist from Strauss's attention to the structure of his comedies and the meaning of details within this structure. And I am reminded by this book that one of Strauss's acquaintances once told him that his writings resembled the then New Criticism. 30 His Xenophon has, I think, absorbed some of the subtlety and profundity of his commentator, but Strauss has forced classical scholars to take the philosophical and historical works of Xenophon seriously once again, if only to protest his interpretations. As I confront my own doubts about the Xenophon Strauss has read into Xenophon, or discovered in Xenophon, I keep in mind the salutory passage in the Anabasis where Xenophon describes the sacrifice he performed to the winds to bring about the abatement of a fierce storm that had paralyzed his army in the mountains of Armenia. His comment is not that then "the winds abated" but "that all agreed that the winds had abated" (a paraphrase of Anabasis IV 5.4). And I recall, too, that Strauss's Xenophon was the inventor of "Themistogenes of Syracuse," the author of the Anabasis of Xenophon of Athens. 31 To my mind, Strauss's Lucretius is one of his greatest discoveries. In "A Note on Lucretius" he laid bare the "logographic necessity" that connects the end of De Rerum Natura with its beginning. What Strauss seized on and revealed in this essay was the method of psychagogia by which Lucretius led his prephilosophic Roman reader from the dense atmosphere of opinion to the remote, grim, and clear world of Epicurean philosophy. But let me conclude this survey by recalling the power of Leo Strauss's own philosophical rhetoric, which is all the more remarkable for its being in English, a language he began to test only in his late thirties: Man has to choose between peace of mind deriving from a pleasing delusion and peace of mind deriving from the unpleasing truth. Philosophy which, anticipating the collapse of the walls of the world, breaks through the walls of the world, abandons the attachment to the world; this abandonment is most painful. Poetry on the other hand is, like religion, rooted in that attachment, but, unlike religion, it can be put to the service of detachment. Because poetry is rooted in the prephilosophical detachment, because it enhances and deepens that attachment, the philosophic poet is the perfect mediator between attachment to the world and attachment to detachment to the world. The

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joy or pleasure which Lucretius' poem arouses is therefore austere, reminding of the pleasure of the work of Thucydides. 32

I have attempted to offer some reflections on Leo Strauss as a reader of classical texts and the forgotten kind of reading he brought to a forgotten kind of writing. But at the end of these reflections I cannot conclude by pointing optimistically to the signs of Leo Strauss's influence on classical scholarship or the reading of classical texts by classicists. The abode of his influence is and will continue to be in departments of political science and philosophy, and it can fairly be said that Leo Strauss has returned the attention of political scientists to the origins of political philosophy in Greek thought, even if he has not persuaded the Library of Congress to alter the category under which translations of Plato's Republic and Laws are now subsumed: "Political science—Early works to 1700." It is, perhaps, too early for his influence to be felt on classical scholarship. There are signs that Strauss is impinging upon the consciousness and perhaps the conscience of some classicists. Strauss appears once and once only in W.K.C. Guthrie's six-volume History of Greek Philosophy, and here he is noticed only for his review of Eric Havelock's Liberal Temper of Greek Politics.33 Even so, Guthrie endorsed the conclusion of his review. Since then (1969) the reaction of the Hellenists working on ancient philosophy and on Plato in particular has not been so friendly. The conclusion of a review of a recent study of Lucretius and Epicurus is a signal of a growing awareness of the influence of Leo Strauss as a threat to classical studies: "I should note that the work is dedicated to Leo Strauss, and that those who find Strauss's influence on Classical studies salutory may find more of value here than I." 34 One can even begin to detect the emergence of a new English adjective for "perverse" in the term "Straussian." 35 And in Myles Burnyeat's long review of Strauss's final and enigmatic Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy the pathologist of philosophical taste can detect a severe allergic reaction that has produced a hive of rejoinders and retorts in the pages of The New York Review of Books and seems to have lost its power in Gregory Vlastos's April 24, 1986, letter to the editors. 36 With Burnyeat, I do not believe that Strauss's readings of classical texts will ever have a deep impact on classical studies. Vlastos can see no signs of his influence discernible in "our [American] mainstream scholarship"; nor can I, at least in classical studies. The barriers are too great. Classicists are and will remain philologoi when it comes to language but misologoi when it comes to an alien mode of thinking directed at their texts (cf. Phaedo 89D). And so long as they do not assess the full range of Strauss's thought on political philosophy, they will not appreciate what is at issue in his commentaries on classical texts. They will naturally mistake his writings, especially those on Xenophon and the shorter dialogues of Plato, as commentaries and will fail to register his own esoteric questioning in the

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guise of the commentator. And in not grasping his thinking on the conflict between society and philosophy, they will fail to grasp his argument for a forgotten art of writing as it was practiced by a Plato or a Thucydides or a Lucretius. "One writes as one reads." 37 Leo Strauss wrote as he read, and his writings, like the writings they address, are extremely difficult. It is, after all, unreasonable to expect, as did Strauss, that "the patience of the interpretor does not render superfluous the patience of the reader of the interpretation." 38 Clearly, many readers of his interpretations of classical texts are out of patience with him. Their loss is that they will read no m e s s a g e in his unfamiliar medium and therefore run the risk of closing themselves off from the meaning of the texts he professes to interpret. The danger for those who possess the patience his Hellenist readers lack, the "Straussians," is that they will make a message of Strauss's medium and search for his meaning in its elliptical and indirect expression rather than the meaning of the authors he has read with an unmatched sensitivity to their delicate, elliptical, and indirect expression.

NOTES This contribution to Leo Strauss's Thought remains essentially the address I gave at the colloquium on The Humanistic Legacy of Leo Strauss on April 7, 1986. In publishing it, I am well aware that I cannot pretend to the competence of a Seth Benardete (reviewing The City ana Man, cf. note 1 below) or a Thomas Pangle (in his introduction to Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy). Nor can I speak with the eloquence of Wemer Dannhauser of Leo Strauss as my teacher. I leave my reader to his "Leo Strauss: Becoming Naive Again," as it is reprinted from The American Scholar 44:4 (Autumn 1975) in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, edited by Joseph Epstein (New York, 1981), 252-265. If I have not supplied the account of Platonic hermeneutics Myles Burnyeat reasonably calls for in NYR for October 10, 1985, neither has Burnyeat himself; nor has Strauss. But I can refer my reader to a sympathetic, if independent and critical, assessment of Strauss as a reader and thinker by Hans-Georg Gadamer, in his Truth and Method (New York, 1975), 482^491 (a reference I owe to Professor Barry Goldfarb). This passage was added in the second edition of Gadamer's Wahrheit und Methode: Grundziige einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tubingen, 1965), 503-512, in response to the letter Strauss sent him on receiving a copy of the book in its first edition in February of 1961. Their correspondence is now published in Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): pp. 5-12. 1. Seth Benardete, in his review of Strauss's The City and Man, notes that Aristotle, Plato, and Thucydides are the names most frequently cited in the index to The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and rightly remarks of the ancients at this stage of Strauss's career as a political thinker: "They are no longer the beginning from which, they are now the beginning to which he goes," Political Science Reviewer 8 (1978): p. 1. 2. Published as The City and Man (Chicago, 1964; reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, 1977). Joseph Cropsey notes the shift from the moderns to the ancients in his "Leo Strauss: A Bibliography and Memorial,

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1899-1973," in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 5:2 (1975): p. 133: "Between 1930 (Die Religionskritik Spinozas) and 1958 (Thoughts on Machiavelli), most of his books were on the moderns; from 1964 to his death, his books were on the classic ancients." 3. There are two articles that prepare for Strauss's interpretation of Xenophon's Hiero. The first is ' T h e Spirit of Sparta and the Taste of Xenophon," Social Research 6:4 (1939): pp. 502-536; the second, "On Classical Political Philosophy," Social Research 12:1 (1945): pp. 98-117; reprinted in What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, 111., 1959). 4. In Natur und Geschichte: Karl Löwith zum 70. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 322-332; elaborated in "Notes on Lucretius" in the collection Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York, 1968), pp. 76-139. 5. Reprinted in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, with an introduction by Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago, 1983), pp. 105-136. 6. The remarkable thing about this collection of Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy is that only two of its fifteen essays are on Plato. His "On the Euthydemus" is reprinted from Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 1:1 (1970); his "On Plato's Apology of Socrates and Crito" from Essays in Honor of Jacob Klein (Annapolis, 1976). 7. Strauss is firm and eloquent in his attempt to rescue Xenophon from the prejudices of nineteenth-century Germany and England; cf. the appendix to his On Tyranny (reprint, 1963), pp. 24-27, and Xenophon's Socrates (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 179-180. I will not recall the recognition of Xenophon as a political thinker and in the Renaissance and in works like Castiglione's II cortegiano (I 43, referring to Scipio Africanus' admiration for the Cyropaideia\ cf. Cicero Tusculans II 26.), but I do recall vividly some comments Strauss made on Xenophon in August of 1964 (and that I noted): "But Xenophon, Xenophon is a pure joy to read." (Raising his eyes to heaven,) "It is not like reading authors like Thucydides and Plato. These are incomparably great and always formidable, but with Xenophon you are with an equal—a pure joy to read!" 8. The contrast between the philosophical bent of Strauss's writings and the historical analysis of his contemporaries or near contemporaries is remarkable, as a brief listing of standard works on ancient political thought makes plain. We have first and foremost Sir Ernest Barker's, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (London, 1906); Greek Political Theory : Plato and His Predecessors (London, 1918; 4th edition, 1951); The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1946); Kurt von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius' Political Ideas (New York, 1954); H. Ruffell, METABOLE POLITEION: Der Wandel der Staatsverfassungen (Bern, 1945); Viktor Pöschl, Römischer Staat und griechisches Staatsdenken bei Cicero: Untersuchungen zu Ciceros Schrift de re publica (Berlin, 1936); and the introduction of G. H. Sabine and S. B. Smith's translation of Cicero: On the Commonwealth (Columbus, Ohio, 1929). 9. On Tyranny (1963 reprint), pp. 30-34; The City and Man (1964), pp. 55-57; Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the Oeconomicus (1970), p. 87; Xenophon's Socrates (1972), p. 3. 10. On Tyranny (1963 reprint), pp. 21-27. Alexandre Kojeve in his essay, Tyrannie et sagesse (Paris, 1964, translated by Michael Gold for the 1963 reprint), p. 143, exhibits and was perhaps the first to exhibit the tendency to read Strauss's commentaries on classical political philosophers as a medium for his own thought: "In my opinion it is not only Xenophon who is of importance in this book that Strauss has devoted to him. Perhaps in spite of what its author thinks about it, this book of Strauss's is truly important not because it might

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reveal to us the authentic and uncomprehended thought of a contemporary and compatriot of Plato, but rather because of the problem it raises and discusses." 11. Cf. his opening remarks, pp. 1-12. 12."We contend that that coherent and comprehensive understanding of political things is available to us in Aristotle's Politics precisely because the Politics contains the original form of political science; that form in which political science is other than the fully conscious form of the common sense understanding of political things," p. 12. 13. History of Political Philosophy (Chicago, 1963), to which he also contributed the essay on Marsilius of Padua. 14. An observation I owe to Hilail Gildin, who attended his seminar on the Politics at the University of Chicago. 15. On Plato's Republic, p. 50. 16. With his essay on Xenophon's Constitution of the Lacedaemonians of 1939 (cf. note 3 above). 17. Foremost of these is Allan Bloom's The Republic of Plato (New York, 1968), whose goal in this translation is the accuracy of William of Moerbeke's Latin Aristotle. Strauss is also the inspiration for a series of scrupulously literal versions of the Platonic dialogues, which includes Thomas G. West, Plato's Apology of Socrates (Ithaca and London, 1979); David Bolotin, Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis (Ithaca and New York, 1979); Thomas L. Pangle, The Laws of Plato (New York, 1980); and Seth Benardete, The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman (Chicago and London, 1984). Also, a new translation of Xenophon's Hiero, by an anonymous hand, was commissioned for the "Agora" edition of On Tyranny (Glencoe, 111., and London, 1963); and Carnes Lord furnished the translation of Xenophon's Oeconomicus included in Xenophon's Socratic Discourse (Ithaca and London, 1970). More recently he has translated Aristotle's Politics (Chicago and London, 1984). 18. On Tyranny, p. 20. 19. The only classical scholar with whom he agrees is K. Linke, p. 122, n. 39. He refers to George Grote to correct him on p. 112, n. 21; Rudolf Hirzel's Der Dialog to go beyond him, p. 118, n. 16; and twice he notices Marchant's introduction to his Loeb text of the Hiero to show the inadequacies of his formulation of the character of the dialogue, p. 119, n. 18, and p. 121, n. 32. And, of course, there is the notorious estimate of Xenophon B. G. Niebuhr pronounced in his Uber Xenophons Hellenika (Kleine Schriften I [Berlin, 1828], 467), which Strauss took to be the expression of the modern prejudice against Xenophon as a thinker, but which questions only his patriotism, p. 139, n. 37 (cf. p. 102 and Xenophon's Socrates, p. 179). 20. For which we have his brilliant "Machiavelli and Classical Literature," Review of National Literatures 1:1 (1970): pp. 7-25. 21. On Plato's Republic, pp. 50-62. 22. Published in 1928 as Platon: Seinswahrheit und Lebenswirklichkeit and long available in the translation of Hans Meyerhoff as Plato: An Introduction (Princeton, 1958). Especially relevant are the chapters in the first volume of the English translation dealing with irony and the dialogue form (chapters 7 and 8).

23. A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill, 1965), pp. 3-31. 24. "A Forgotten Kind of Writing," The Chicago Review 8:1 (1954), p. 64, reprinted in What Is Political Philosophy? 25. The tradition is recorded in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers III 50. But in a sense all Platonic dialogues are dramatic. We are always in the

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presence either of the drama of conversation or a participant or an auditor reporting a conversation. 26. On Plato's Republic, p. 53, n. 4, referring to Phaedrus, 275D4-276A7 and 264B7-C5. 27. Phaedrus, 275D9-E5. 28. In "Tacitus, Agricola, Domitian, and the Problem of the Principate," Classical Philology 52 (1957): pp. 73-97. 29. On Plato's Republic, p. 52. 30. This was Lawrence Roger Thompson, the author of Melville's Quarrel with God (Princeton, 1952). The center of Strauss's interest in Socrates and Aristophanes is, of course, the Clouds and its articulation of the ancient feud between poetry and philosophy. 31. In Hellenica III 1; cf. "Xenophon's Anabasis," in Essays in Platonic Political Philosophy, p. 106. 32. From his first publication in 1921 (at the age of twenty-two) to his departure from Germany in 1933, the language in which he wrote was German. Two of his essays (of 1933 and 1936) were written in French. His Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis (1936) was translated by Elsa M. Sinclair. "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching" (1937) seems to have been his first essay in English (at the age of thirty-eight). (References are to works listed in Thomas L. Pangle's "Leo Strauss, 1899-1973: A Bibliography," in Essays on Platonic Political Philosophy.) His forceful, assertive, and, when it comes to his writings on the Greeks, seemingly Greek style is distinctive and easily recognized in the writings of his students and those influenced by him. The passage I quote here comes from Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 85. 33. Volume III: The Fifth Century Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1969), p. 10, n. 1. Characteristically, G u t h r i e ' s treatment of Xenophon is confined to Xenophon as a source for the "historical" Socrates, pp. 325-332. 34. Richard McKim, reviewing Lucretius and Epicurus (Ithaca and London, 1983), in ¡sis 76:1 (1985): p. 116. McKim cannot conceive that the dedication of this book to Leo Strauss can be anything other than a confession of the author's "Straussianism." 35. George Holland Sabine's review of Persecution and the Art of Writing in Ethics for 1953 seems to set the course for later reactions to Strauss's reading of texts when he asks whether Strauss's method of reading provides "a workable rule for historical interpretation or an invitation to perverse ingenuity" (emphases mine); cf. Strauss's reply to this reviewer in "On a Forgotten Kind of Writing" (in What Is Political Philosophy? p. 223). It is tempting to visit the sins of the sons, and in one case a daughter, on the head of the father, as is clear from Myles Burnyeat's review of Strauss's Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy in New York Review of Books (note 36 below) and Dorothea Frede's excellent review of Ronna Burger's The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Haven and London, 1984) in the American Journal of Philology 107:1 (1986): p. 121. Socrates suffered a similar fate. 36. Burnyeat's "Sphinx Without a Secret" appeared in New York Review of Books, May 30, 1985, pp. 30-36, and it generated the controversies that can be followed in "The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange," NYR, October 10, 1985, pp. 41ff. and come to their insipid end in Gregory Vlastos's contribution to "Further Lessons of Leo Strauss: An Exchange," NYR, April 24, 1986. I do not mean to contribute to the controversy by prolonging it here. 37. What Is Political Philosophy? p. 230. 38. On Tyranny, p. xx.

12

Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics PAUL A. CANTOR

Those oft are Strategems which Errors seem, Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream —Alexander Pope The disastrous changes in the modern world, often returning to earlier conditions, should at least have one good effect; historians may now understand better what happened under a Thought Police. —William Empson

I Leo Strauss is most famous for his claim to have discovered or rediscovered the phenomenon of esoteric writing, and thereby to have fundamentally reopened the question of how texts from the past are to be understood. By respecting the alien character of old texts—that is, by not trying to assimilate them to modern modes of writing and reading—Strauss worked to make the great thinkers of the past speak to us with a new power and freshness. His insistence on trying to understand authors from the past as they understood themselves stands in sharp contrast to the approach taken by most contemporary hermeneutic theorists. Indeed, his understanding of interpretation can serve as an effective counterweight to the dangerous tendency of contemporary hermeneutics to efface the distinction between reading and misreading. Though Strauss's work as an interpreter rested on the principle that a text does not always mean what it appears to mean, he did not free the interpreter from all constraints and argue that texts can be made to mean anything whatsoever. As we will see, what is distinctive about his understanding of interpretation is that he found a way to depart from the surface meaning of a text without abandoning the idea that an author's intentions should ultimately govern our reading of his work. The key to Strauss's achievement is that he showed that the phenomenon of authorial intention is far more complex than had been traditionally understood. Thus, when contemporary hermeneutic theorists dismiss the principle of authorial

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intention as a simplistic guide to interpretation, Strauss would say that they view it as simplistic only because they are operating with a simplistic notion of authorial intention. One would think, then, that Strauss's name would be featured, if not prominently, at least significantly, in contemporary debates on interpretation. In fact, he is generally ignored by Anglo-American literary critics. This is all the more surprising considering that a number of important Continental thinkers have been aware of the significance of his achievement as an interpreter: One may read with profit a book by Leo Strauss, of the land which traditionally offers asylum to those who chose freedom, in which the author gives his reflections on the art of writing and persecution. (Jacques Lacan)1 Strauss made a further important contribution to hermeneutic theory, by investigating a particular problem, namely the question of how far one has to take into account, when trying to understand texts, the conscious camouflaging of the true meaning because of the threat of persecution by the authorities or by the church. . . . I do not want to question the interpretations given by Strauss—I largely agree with them. (HansGeorg Gadamer)' In a book on the art of writing which has been justly noted because it is truly noteworthy, Leo Strauss has reminded us of what has tended to be too easily forgotten since the nineteenth century—that one ought not to take literally everything that the great authors of earlier times wrote, nor to believe that they made explicit in their writings all that they wanted to say in them. (Alexandre Kojeve) 3

One might wonder why a man well known to those at the center of European hermeneutic thinking should be ignored by literary theorists in the United States, where Strauss spent much of his life. One might point to the fact that for most of his career he taught in a political science department, and given the tendency of U.S. academic life to divide along rigid departmental lines, teachers of literature have little professional interest in anyone who seemed to be laboring outside the boundaries of the so-called humanities. Whatever the reasons for literary theorists' ignorance of Strauss, it is time to call their attention to one of the century's most important writers on the subject of interpretation. Though there is much in his thinking and manner of writing that is alien to literary critics, he has much to teach them about both the theory and practice of interpretation. In dealing with any text of interest to him, Strauss always began with literary questions, questions of how the text is to be read. Consider his introduction to his study of Plato's Republic: One cannot understand Plato's teaching as he meant it if one does not

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know what the Platonic dialogue is. One cannot separate the understanding of Plato's teaching from the understanding of the form in which it is presented. One must pay as much attention to the How as to the What. At any rate to begin with one must even pay greater attention to the "form" than to the "substance," since the meaning of the "substance" depends on the "form." One must postpone one's concern with the most serious questions (the philosophic questions) in order to become engrossed in the study of a merely literary question. 4

Far from seeming unliterary here, Strauss sounds like a New Critic, insisting upon the inseparability of form and content. But one should note that he speaks only of postponing one's concern with the most serious questions, not of avoiding them entirely as the New Critics tended to do. In fact, though Strauss always began with literary questions, he viewed them as merely preliminary, the starting point for a gradual ascent to more fundamental considerations: Still, there is a connection between the literary question and the philosophic question. The literary question, the question of presentation, is concerned with a kind of communication. Communication may be a means for living together; in its highest form, communication is living together. The study of the literary question is therefore an important part of the study of society. Furthermore, the quest for truth is necessarily, if not in every respect, a common quest, a quest taking place through communication. The study of the literary question is therefore an important part of the study of what philosophy is. The literary question properly understood is the question of the relation between society and philosophy. 5

I am going to argue that Strauss understood literary questions better than most literary critics in part because in the end he was not content to view them as merely literary. His interest in politics made him alert to the political dimension of writing and hence to subtleties in interpretation that have escaped most narrowly literary approaches to texts. As the emphasis on communication in this passage suggests, Strauss viewed literature on the model of rhetoric, not of art. 6 That is, he viewed a piece of writing not as a detached aesthetic object, to be contemplated and interpreted in isolation, but rather as a social act, an attempt by a writer to communicate with a specific audience and thus to be analyzed within a larger social and political context. Strauss's attention to writing as a mode of communication made him a brilliant reader of texts, but it prevented him from offering a general method of interpretation. Contrary to what many of his critics have assumed, he did not claim to have found or even to have sought a universal hermeneutic key to the reading of all texts. For Strauss, there are different kinds of authors, different kinds of texts, and different kinds of readers, and no single interpretive method is adequate to dealing with them all on the same basis. This is one of the issues on which he distinguished himself from Gadamer in their correspondence concerning Truth and Method:

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Yours is a "theory of hcrmeneutic experience" which as such is a universal theory. Not only is my own hermeneutic experience very limited—the experience which I possess makes me doubtful whether a universal hermeneutic theory which is more than "formal" or external is possible. I believe that the doubt arises from the feeling of the irretrievably "occasional" character of every worthwhile interpretation.7

Strauss makes it clear that the kind of interpretation in which he was interested involves analyzing unique acts of communication in their own terms and thus requires taking into account the highly specific contexts in which they occur. That is why for Strauss interpretation must always remain an art and cannot be turned into a science. Interpretation cannot hope to proceed according to universal and unequivocal rules, which will always yield unambiguous and unassailable results. Rather, interrelation must rely for its success on certain qualities in the interpreter, such as prudence, tact, and judgment, which unfortunately cannot be expected of all interpreters. For Strauss, one can offer principles of interpretation but not rules, unless one means rules in the sense of rules of thumb. Thus, from his point of view, much of contemporary hermeneutic theory leaps too quickly and too easily into generality and universality. In this essay, I want to outline Strauss's theory of interpretation, to offer some examples of how it can be applied as well as evidence for its validity, and to contrast his principles with those of important representatives of contemporary hermeneutic theory. II

Strauss's theory of interpretation resulted from a great leap of historical imagination. 8 He realized that the conditions—above all the political conditions—under which texts are written in the present age are radically different from those that prevailed in earlier ages. Hence, he concluded, we must read texts from earlier ages with greater care than we have become accustomed to exercising in interpretation. Our experience of writing is largely based on our own experience living in liberal democracies, which respect the principles of religious toleration, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Under such regimes, writers are on the whole free to speak their minds. Certainly, they can express any theoretical views without having to fear prior censorship, prosecution after-the-fact, or any form of legal persecution. Writers may be restrained by a fear of offending popular opinion, but they generally need not worry that their public statements will cost them their livelihood or even their lives. Under such conditions, we can legitimately expect that serious thinkers will express their ideas in an open and straightforward manner. By fostering a kind of ease of publication, modern liberal regimes foster a kind of ease of reading as well, which threatens to degenerate into a laziness of reading. But things were not always so easy. We have all heard of the trial of

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Socrates, the Spanish Inquisition, the Vatican Index, the imprisonment of Galileo, and the burning of Giordano Bruno, not to mention countless other instances of political and ecclesiastical censorship and persecution. But as Strauss suggests, we have not sufficiently reflected on the consequences for writing and reading of the prevalence of illiberal and intolerant regimes throughout history. In the vast majority of regimes we know of, a person could be punished, usually with imprisonment, exile, or even death, for publicly expressing ideas that contradicted the established and authoritative opinions of the community in which he lived. Under these conditions, we cannot expect authors in the past to have expressed themselves with the kind of freedom and openness we have become used to in contemporary writing. Strauss thus raised the possibility that in interpreting writers from the past we must distinguish between two fundamental classes. At any given moment in history, the majority of writers will be conventional in thought and hence content to respect the orthodoxies of their community or at least have no reason to contradict them. Their writings may on the whole be taken at face value. But a small minority of writers will be genuinely philosophic in nature and as a result seek to question the pieties and other authoritative opinions of their day. As Strauss summarized his view: Philosophy or science, the highest activity of man, is the attempt to replace opinion about "all things" by knowledge of "all things"; but opinion is the element of society; philosophy or science is therefore the attempt to dissolve the element in which society breathes, and thus it endangers society. Hence philosophy or science must remain the preserve of a small minority, and philosophers or scientists must respect the opinions on which society rests. T o respect opinions is something entirely different from accepting them as true. Philosophers or scientists who hold this view about the relation of philosophy or science and society are driven to employ a peculiar manner of writing which would enable them to reveal what they regard as the truth to the few, without endangering the unqualified commitment of the many to the opinions on which society rests.

These are the writers in whom Strauss was interested and on whom his theory of interpretation focuses. Even more crucial to Strauss's theory is the idea that there are correspondingly two classes of readers. The majority of readers, being themselves conventional in thought and used to reading conventional writers, will not be probing in their reading of texts but, rather, will be content to stay on the surface. Again, only a small minority will be prepared to pay careful attention to a text, willing and able to follow out the intricate turns of an elaborate argument. The fact that readers may be expected to exercise radically different levels of care in reading makes it possible for a writer to address two different audiences at once, creating an orthodox surface for the

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majority of his readers, while revealing an unorthodox meaning beneath the surface or between the lines to his careful readers. In a sense, then, Strauss might be categorized in the terms of contemporary critical debate as a reader-response theorist. Like critics such as Alpers, Fish, and Iser, he is interested in the phenomenology of reading, reading as a process unfolding over time. 10 Reader-response critics have charged that the traditional notion of reading is inadequate. Reading is not the passive process it is usually portrayed to be, in which the author does everything and the reader nothing. In the traditional view of reading, the author lays out his meaning explicitly in the text and the reader merely sits back and passively absorbs it. Reader-response critics have by contrast stressed the role of the reader in activating and actualizing the meaning of a text. Reading involves following the twistings and turnings of a text, working out clues, filling in gaps, making false assumptions, and learning to correct them. For reader-response criticism, at least in some of its forms, texts embody strategies for leading their readers through a kind of labyrinthine experience to insights that could not have been explicitly stated. Strauss's difference from reader-response criticism as it has generally developed is that he does not posit a single kind of reader. One of the charges against reader-response criticism is that in seeking to displace the traditional notion of reading, it has in some ways simply substituted one monolithic conception of the reader for another, and in the process demanded of that ideal reader a level of skill that cannot be expected of the majority of actual readers. Strauss avoids this extreme position by in effect offering a way of synthesizing the traditional view of reading with the new conception developed in reader-response theory. For Strauss, most readers do operate in accord with the traditional model of reading. Reading is a passive experience for them: They expect the important points to be made clearly and readily available and would gloss over any subtleties in the text. Only a handful of readers can be expected to read with the attention to detail and willingness to work out implications demanded by the reader-response model. As a phenomenologist of reading, Strauss seems truer than much of readerresponse theory to our empirical experience of readers. We have all experienced the phenomenon of good and bad readers, readers who read with care and readers who do not. On this empirical observation, rather than on an abstract and universal theory of reading, Strauss founded his view of interpretation. Given the two kinds of readers, authors wishing to escape persecution can give their works the appearance of orthodoxy (the exoteric meaning) to placate the conventional readers and above all the potential censors in their audience, while developing their heretical or unconventional ideas beneath the surface (the esoteric meaning). As difficult as this task may sound, the great factor working in favor of the would-be esoteric writer is the tendency of the conventional reader to assimilate whatever he reads to what he already

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believes. If he sees a familiar belief stated in a work, he will want to attribute that belief to the writer, especially if the belief is stated prominently and more than once. If, on the other hand, he encounters a passage that contradicts his familiar beliefs, he will tend not to notice it, or at least not make much of it, especially if the passage is not clearly expressed or does not feature prominently in the overall argument or appears only once (or any combination of these factors). The hasty and superficial reader will allow himself to be guided by the preponderance of the evidence and tend to dismiss a single heretical passage (if he notices it at all) as an aberration, especially if it is contradicted by several perfectly orthodox statements elsewhere in the work. The careful reader, aware of the possibility of esoteric writing, will by contrast be looking precisely for those moments when an author departs from conventional pieties. Understanding that in an environment of persecution an author has every reason to appear orthodox and no reason not to, the careful reader will let the evidence of a single unorthodox statement outweigh any number of orthodox statements in a work. Strauss's analysis of esoteric writing is thus a form of rhetorical analysis, but one that inverts the normal rules. All the rules of conventional rhetoric are based on the usually unexpressed premise that the speaker is trying to get his meaning across to his audience as clearly as possible. One such rule, proposed by Cicero, states that a speaker should always put his most important points and strongest arguments at the beginning and end of his speech. 1 1 The reason for this recommendation is that, given human frailty, one's listeners are most likely to pay attention right when one begins to speak and just when one ends, with their minds tending to wander anywhere in the middle. But suppose for a moment that one had dangerous ideas to state publicly and did not want to call the attention of the majority of one's listeners to them. The answer would be to do just the opposite of what conventional rhetoric dictates: to sound pious and conventional at the beginning and end of one's speech, when one's audience is listening most carefully, and place the dangerous ideas in the middle, when the audience is least likely to be alert to what one is saying. One of Strauss's rules of thumb for interpreting esoteric texts is in fact to pay close attention to what goes on at or near the middle of a work, and to discount what is said at the beginning or the end. We all know how we read a work when we are in a hurry to find out what it says: We take a quick look at the opening paragraph to see what the author's intentions are and his plan for proceeding, and then flip ahead to the final paragraph to see his summary of his argument and his conclusions. A censor faced with the task of overseeing a large body of writing would particularly be forced into such a procedure for checking works for heresies. The beginning and end are, in short, the most exposed points in any discourse. Strauss particularly cautions us against being taken in by what authors say in prefaces or dedicatory epistles. Since first impressions are what count most with hasty readers, an esoteric writer

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will want to sound as orthodox as possible in his initial pages. This does not mean that Strauss argues that nothing is to be learned from prefaces or dedicatory epistles. On the contrary, by indicating the typical addressees of his work, an author may suggest the specific kinds of prejudice he faces in his particular circumstances and thus provide an important clue to how to read his writing. Ill A good illustration of the esoteric order of presentation can be found in Rousseau's Second Discourse. He presents a view of man's origins completely at odds with that of the Bible, especially when he argues that man originally lacked speech and reason and was basically indistinguishable from the beasts. But at the beginning of the discourse, he takes great pains to give an impression of piety and to distinguish himself from prior philosophers by his unwillingness to contradict the sacred Scriptures: It did not even enter the minds of most of our philosophers to doubt that the state of nature had existed, even though it is evident from reading the Holy Scriptures that the first man, having received enlightenment and precepts directly from God, was not himself in that state; and that giving the writings of Moses the credence that any Christian philosopher owes them, it must be denied that even before the flood men were ever in the pure state of nature.12

Insisting that he accepts the authority of the Bible, Rousseau claims that his reasoning in the discourse will be purely "hypothetical and conditional" and he will be "setting all the facts aside" (103). All this is carefully calculated to assuage any doubts the conventional reader may have about his piety. When we get into the body of the discourse, however, Rousseau forgets about the Scriptures entirely and develops a daring antibiblical understanding of man. At roughly the center of the discourse, right at the end of the first part, he begins without fanfare to take back what he originally said about the conjectural character of his argument: I admit that as the events I have to describe could have happened in several ways, I can make a choice only by conjectures. But besides the fact that the conjectures become reasons when they are the most probable that one can draw from the nature of things, and the sole means that one can have to discover the truth, the conclusions I want to deduce from mine will not thereby be conjectural, since, on the principles I have established, one could not conceive of any other system that would not provide me with the same results, and from which I could not draw the same conclusions. (140-141)

If one follows out the implications of Rousseau's claim that his reasoning is

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the "sole means one can have to discover the truth," one can see that he is now in fact denying the authority of the Bible. Having originally claimed to have set aside the facts, he now repeatedly insists that he is dealing with facts; he says that he will not expand his reflections: concerning the impossibility, on the one hand, for one to destroy certain hypotheses, although on the other one cannot give them the degree of certainty of facts; concerning how, where two facts given as real are to be connected by a series of intermediate facts which are unknown or considered as such, it is up to history, when it exists, to present the facts that connect them; while it is up to philosophy, when history is lacking, to determine similar facts that might connect them. (141)

Here the state of nature has quietly become no longer a hypothesis but a fact. When Rousseau speaks of "two facts given as real," he means the state of nature and man's current state of civil society. The only thing that remains conjectural for Rousseau is the specific sequence of historical events that led from one factual state to the other. 13 The Second Discourse is thus a good case of a work with a pious exterior and an impious core. In the preface, Rousseau can sound like John Milton in Paradise Lost: By considering what we would have become abandoned to ourselves, we ought to learn to bless him whose beneficent hand, correcting our institutions and giving them an unshakeable base, has prevented the disorders which must otherwise have resulted from them, and has created our happiness from the means that seemed likely to heighten our misery. (97)

But as we get deeper and deeper into the work, we find one blasphemy after another, culminating in the proposal for experimental cross-breeding of humans and orangutans, a proposal made obliquely and quickly taken back, but deeply offensive to orthodox readers if they were to notice it (209, note j). The proposal occurs, however, in one of the least exposed points of the discourse, namely, in the notes, which the hasty reader is most likely to skip. Rousseau in fact instructs him to do so. His "Notice on the Notes" shows a writer explicitly discriminating between two kind of readers for his discourse: "These notes sometimes stray so far from the subject that they are not good to read with the text. . . . Those who have the courage to begin again will be able to amuse themselves the second time in beating the bushes, and try to go through the notes. There will be little harm if others do not read them at all" (98). Here Rousseau steers his careless, conventional readers away from his notes, which in fact contain some of the most unorthodox and dangerous material in the discourse. He recognizes that only some readers will be careful enough to read the discourse through a second

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time. Such daring readers are the only ones he is really interested in, and he invites them alone into the most secret regions of his discourse. As for other readers, "there will be little harm" ("il y aura peu de mal" 14 ) if they do not read the notes at all. Rousseau is deliberately ambiguous; one's first reaction is that he is talking about harm to the readers, but on reflection one sees that he may well be talking about harm to himself, which can be avoided if his orthodox readers fail to read the unorthodox passages in his notes. Rousseau's "Notice on the Notes" is the kind of clue Strauss looked for in trying to determine if a given author is writing esoterically. It all seems innocent enough at first: a simple set of instructions about how to read an unimportant portion of the book. But if one looks at the passage carefully, one sees that it actually contains two different sets of instructions, to two different kinds of readers and by that very fact gives an important hint as to how the whole of the book is to be read. As one reads further in Rousseau, evidence begins to accumulate to support the idea that he was an esoteric writer. For example, in one of the replies he wrote to critics of his First Discourse, he weaves a discussion of esoteric vs. exoteric writing into one of the footnotes: What are we to say about the distinction between these two doctrines so eagerly embraced by all Philosophers and in accordance with which they in secret professed sentiments that were the opposite of those which they professed in public? Pythagoras was the first to resort to the internal doctrine; he disclosed it to his disciples only after long trials and with the greatest mystery; he gave them secret lessons in Atheism while solemnly offering Sacrifices to Jupiter. . . . Cicero . . . in the company of his friend laughed at the immortal Gods to which he so emphatically appealed from the Rostrum. 15

In context, Rousseau appears to be attacking the philosophers for their impiety. But one of Strauss's rules of thumb is that once an author displays an awareness of the existence of esoteric writing, one cannot dismiss the possibility that he may be using it himself. In a later defense of the First Discourse, Rousseau is more explicit about his literary tactics and states openly that he was targeting a special class of readers: Here I had to take some precautions at first, and I did not want to say everything in order to make sure that everything got a hearing. I confided my ideas only successively and always to only a small number of Readers. . . . Often I went to great trouble to try and condense into a single sentence, a single line, a single word tossed off as if by chance, the result of a long chain of reflection. The majority of my Readers must often have found my discourses poorly structured and almost entirely disjointed for want of perceiving the trunk of which I only showed them the branches. But that was enough for those capable of understanding, and I never wanted to speak to the others.' 6

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The way Rousseau distinguishes between "a small number of Readers" and the "majority" of his "Readers" or contrasts the "trunk" of his discourse with the "branches" is powerful evidence for Strauss's way of reading him. 1 7 Strauss would not interpret an author as esoteric unless he could find some such indication in his works that he was aware of secret writing, though of course the evidence Strauss found was often itself esoteric in nature. His theory of interpretation by its very nature cannot provide hard-and-fast rules for determining without question whether a given text is esoterically written or not. After all, if the author's aim is to escape persecution, he cannot make the esoteric nature of his writing obvious or provable in court, as it were. A demonstrably esoteric text is a contradiction in terms. Strauss knew that he would always have to work from clues, sometimes from the barest of hints. Whatever proof he could offer of the esoteric character of a text depended on his skill as an interpreter, his ability to show that the hypothesis of secret writing could make the best sense out of the details of a particular work. The way Rousseau apparently contradicts himself on the issue of whether the state of nature is a fact or a fiction is a good example of what Strauss looked for in a text he had reason to believe is esoterically written: the obvious error—an elementary slip in logic, a significant omission, a misquotation, a quotation taken out of context, above all a self-contradiction. This is exactly the sort of detail that would allow an author to discriminate among his readers: The careless reader will simply miss it or at least not dwell upon it, whereas the careful reader will pause over it and take it as a sign that something is going on beneath the surface of a text. As Strauss wrote, "if a master of the art of writing commits such blunders as would shame an intelligent high school boy, it is reasonable to assume that they are intentional, especially if the author discusses, however incidentally, the possibility of intentional blunders in writing." 18 The issue of contradictions provides perhaps the best way of articulating the difference between Strauss and other interpreters. Some interpreters positively relish the chance to catch an author contradicting himself: It provides an opportunity to assert their superiority over some great writer of the past. They take delight in pointing out fallacies in the arguments in Plato's dialogues, for example, claiming that, however brilliant Plato may seem to be, he wrote at a primitive stage in the development of logic and thus can be expected to have made errors that a college freshman would not make today. Other interpreters explain the contradictions in a text by examining the history of its composition. For example, they argue that when the author began writing, he held one opinion, but by the time he was midway through, his mind had changed and he had come around to the opposite opinion on the subject, without bothering to change accordingly the earlier portions of the text in the final version. Still other interpreters explain contradictions by referring to the historical situation of the author. He was caught between two hostile world views; in one section of his work he was not able to free

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himself from the dominant thought-patterns of his age; in another, he fleetingly anticipated a coming intellectual revolution. What is common to these approaches is that they all assume that only the interpreter is aware of the contradiction in the text; the author was not; only time and scholarly scrutiny have brought the contradiction to light. Only the first of these approaches is openly patronizing to authors from the past, but they all have an air of condescension about them. All these approaches point away from the text to some external principle of explanation. They all say something not about the text itself but about the author and why he would have made such an error. They thus at least covertly assume that we can understand an author better than he understood himself. By virtue of our historical position later in time, the argument usually runs, we can notice aspects of the text to which the author himself was blind. These forms of interpretation thus threaten to turn the study of texts from the past into an essentially antiquarian enterprise. We study past writings not because they may contain permanent truths, not because the wisdom they embody may in fact be superior to our own, but because they show us the stages of development in intellectual history, revealing the crude beginnings of logical thought or the slow struggle by which our predecessors managed to break out of their quaint prejudices. In short, for most forms of interpretation the presence of contradictions in a text becomes an argument against it. One can explain the contradictions but only in a way that inevitably lowers the author in our esteem, either by calling into question the integrity of his work or ruling out the relevance of his thought in our own day. Strauss felt that he was being more humble when faced with what appeared to be errors in the work of the great thinkers of the past. If he could spot a contradiction in a work he had reason to take seriously, he assumed the author could just as well. He thus looked for a way in which he could explain the contradiction on the novel assumption that the author was aware of it himself. What Strauss began to notice is that the contradictions he observed formed a pattern: One opinion was orthodox and the contrary one was unorthodox. Thus the contradictions seemed to be part of the rhetorical strategy we have been discussing: The author contradicted himself because he wanted to give the appearance of orthodoxy at some points in his work and reveal his true ideas at others. Strauss's theory of interpretation clears the way for a serious reconsideration of the thought of the past by showing that what often appears to be dated in earlier writings is only a rhetorical concession to the prejudices of the time and not a confusion on the part of the author himself. In short, on the issue of the consistency or integrity of a work, Strauss was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt and put the burden of proof on those who would claim he was inconsistent. This does not, however, mean that, as some of his critics have charged, Strauss

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dogmatically asserted that all the texts he studied were perfectly consistent. It only means that he was very reluctant to charge genuine inconsistency to an author he respected and would do so only after long and careful study had failed to clear up the contradictions on the basis of rhetorical considerations. One of his essays on Rousseau concludes: "Only in a few cases is there any need for recourse to his private idiosyncrasies to clear up apparent or real contradictions in his teaching. In particular, I do not wish to deny that on a few occasions his irritable amour-propre may have blurred his amazingly lucid vision." 1 9 This is admittedly a rare moment in Strauss's writing, but it does show that he was not rigid in the application of his interpretive principles.

IV The issue of contradictions also provides an opportunity to contrast Strauss with one of the most influential movements in contemporary hermeneutics, deconstruction. Compared to traditional modes of interpretation, Strauss may appear to have made far too much of the issue of contradictions. But compared to deconstructive critics, Strauss seems positively sober and restrained in finding contradictions in texts. Strauss usually dwelled upon a few key contradictions in a given text; deconstructive critics find texts contradicting themselves on almost every page. Indeed, deconstruction thrives on the phenomenon o f contradictions. The aim of the movement is to deconstruct the binary oppositions that have formed the basis of Western thought by showing that what have been taken as absolute and polar opposites are really relative and presume each other's existence. Hence, for deconstruction, if authors contradict themselves, the reason is that our Western discourse is internally contradictory. Our language insists on positing differences as absolute when they are in fact merely relative, the product of a process of differentiation within language and not an aboriginal fact prior to and independent of all discourse. Thus, contradictions in texts provide the evidence on which many of the claims o f deconstruction rest. Deconstructive critics are concerned with showing not how texts hang together but how they fall apart. The ideal of the perfectly coherent text, in which each part has a role to play in the functioning of the whole, is the great hermeneutic illusion according to deconstruction. It is based on the deeper illusion that texts speak to us; that they can perfectly embody and communicate an author's meaning; that the intention of the author stands behind and shapes the text, thereby authorizing its meaning for us. Traditional interpretation is, in short, grounded in the myth of presence, the illusion that the author's meaning is present in the text. Deconstruction, by contrast, attempts to sever the text from the author's intentions and give it, as it were, a life of its own or, rather, to allow the language o f the text a kind of free play on its own. Deconstruction argues

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that even if the author has tried to give shape to a text, the language he must use is always recalcitrant to his purposes. However consistent the author may try to be, he inevitably runs up against the inconsistency of the conceptual oppositions embodied in our language. A deconstructive critic thus does not devote himself to tying up the loose threads in the weave of a text but to unraveling a few more of them, showing that the text always says more than the author wanted it to, showing that the text can be made to say the opposite of what the author wanted it to say. In opposition to traditional forms of interpretation, then, both Strauss's theory and that of deconstruction do not shy away from the phenomenon of contradictions in texts. Neither Strauss nor the deconstructive critic sees a contradiction as an objection to a text, something that needs to be explained away on the basis of some extra-textual consideration. The difference between Strauss and deconstruction is that he sought a way of seeing contradictions as in accord with the intentions of the author and in fact consciously set up in the text, whereas deconstruction sees contradictions precisely as evidence that the author's intentions can never be fully realized in a text. For traditional interpretation, contradictions are an aberration of discourse; for Strauss, they sometimes are a special form of discourse that points to a hidden meaning; for deconstruction, contradictions are the very fabric of discourse itself. Once again, Rousseau can help us to see what differentiates Strauss's position, since he has been a key figure for deconstruction as an hermeneutic enterprise. Much of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology is devoted to a discussion of Rousseau, specifically, of his Essay on the Origin of Languages. He is also the author discussed at greatest length in Paul de Man's Allegories of Reading. Rousseau is important to deconstruction as an author who does not fit neatly into the normal categories of critical discourse. He writes both philosophic and literary texts; more to the point, his philosophic texts are unusually literary in character and his literary texts are unusually philosophic. He thus facilitates a typical deconstructive move, namely, erasing the conventional distinction between philosophic texts and literary texts, that is, between texts that deal in truth and texts that deal in fiction. De Man is particularly concerned in his discussion of Rousseau with deconstructing the conventional opposition between the literal and the figurative. Literal/figurative is one of those fundamental binary oppositions deconstruction calls into question. According to conventional thinking, literal meaning is primary and original while figurative meaning is always secondary and derivative. Deconstruction sets out to overturn this hierarchy by showing that there is no original literal meaning to words from which figurative meanings are derived. Rather, language is always already figurative, and literal meaning is derived by a process of precipitation, in which words lose their original metaphoric force and harden into fixed meanings. 20 One can see, then, why de Man is attracted to the Second Discourse and Rousseau's presentation of the state of nature. Though de Man does not

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discuss the specific contradiction to which Strauss pointed, he does notice that Rousseau appears to waver between treating the state of nature as hypothetical and treating it as historical fact, that is, between treating the state of nature as a metaphor and treating it as literally true: "Rousseau seems to want to have it both ways, giving himself the freedom of the fabulator but, at the same time, the authority of the responsible historian." 21 De Man comes very close to Strauss's interpretation here, if only he were not the captive of a static model of reading. A temporal model of reading would reveal that the literal and figurative treatments of the state of nature in the Second Discourse do not occur at the same time. But de Man is taken in by Rousseau's philosophic rhetoric, indeed falling into the category of those we saw him call "the majority of my Readers," who "have found my discourses poorly structured and almost entirely disjointed for want of perceiving the trunk of which I only showed them the branches." De Man is blind to the deeper plan of the Second Discourse, the fact that Rousseau is willing to say initially that the state of nature is conjectural precisely in order to achieve "the freedom of the fabulator" from ecclesiastical censors, but that later he claims "the authority of the responsible historian" with the careful readers he is genuinely addressing and trying to instruct. But de Man is too concerned with deconstructing the text to give Rousseau credit for this kind of subtlety. He wants to use Rousseau to make a point about all discourse, that all writing hovers uncertainly between the literal and the figurative. Hence he does not see anything special about the form of Rousseau's discourse and makes no effort to resolve the contradictions he observes in it; indeed, he needs them "intact" to support his own view of language. In discussing Emile, de Man is once again aware that something odd is going on in the text. In the "profession of faith" section, Rousseau appears to be staking out a theistic position, but he also seems to undermine the epistemological basis of that position. De Man comes very close to Strauss's view of Rousseau here as well: It is obvious, for example, that none of the passages so frequently quoted from the Profession as evidence for Rousseau's theistic convictions are spoken by Rousseau himself, but by a fictional character, whose "voice" does not necessarily coincide with the author's. . . . In the case of a so-called work of fiction, the observation is almost too self-evident to be necessary; no one will, without further question, simply equate Proust with Marcel or Flaubert with Emma Bovary. But in a discursive text like the Profession de foi, the use of a fictional spokesman, if it is noticed at all, is explained empirically as an alibi to shelter the writer from reprisals for his subversive opinions, a real enough problem in the case of Emile. (226)

It is unfortunate that de Man did not work out the full implications of his insight here, because it would have given him a basis on which to see how the seemingly inconsistent statements in Rousseau actually fit together.

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But de Man is substituting his own agenda for Rousseau's, and de Man wants to make a point about language. Hence in his reading of the Social Contract, he claims once again that the consistency of Rousseau's argument ultimately is shipwrecked on the rock of language: W e are not merely pointing out an inconsistency, a weakness in the text of the Social Contract that could have been avoided by simply omitting sentimental or demagogical passages. The point is not that the Social Contract relapses into textual activism because it does so explicitly, in sections and passages that can be isolated and quoted by themselves. Even without these passages, the Social Contract would still promise by inference, perhaps more effectively than if Rousseau had not had the naïveté or the good faith, to promise openly. The redoubtable efficacy of the text is due to the rhetorical model of which it is a version. This model is a fact of language over which Rousseau himself has no control. Just as any other reader, he is bound to misread his text as a promise of political change. The error is not within the reader; language itself dissociates the cognition from the act. Die sprache verspricht (sich); to the extent that is necessarily misleading, language just as necessarily conveys the promise of its own truth. (277)

De Man's Rousseau is very different from Strauss's (and a far less interesting figure). De Man's Rousseau is naive; he speaks in good faith; for all the subtlety of many of de Man's observations, in some ways we seem to be back to the most straightforward of readings in which we take an author's statements at face value. Above all, de Man asserts that Rousseau has no control over his text: The language he uses has a logic of its own—or, rather, an illogic of its own. De Man is unwilling to grant Rousseau any special status as an author: "Just as any other reader, he is bound to misread his text." Again, for all the seeming sophistication of a deconstructive analysis, we are back to a monolithic conception of authors and readers. All readers are the same; all authors are the same; they are all entangled in the web of language. This explains why deconstruction as a method of interpretation so quickly becomes tedious and repetitive. It makes the same claims about every text; after a while, the deconstructive moves become so predictable that one could perform them in one's hermeneutic sleep. Deconstruction does not even offer convincing reasons for why one should bother dealing with one text rather than another. Why continue to interpret what have been regarded as the great works of the past (except out of habit) if a writer such as Rousseau is in the situation of "any other reader"? One might make the argument that the great texts are those which most fully reflect the contradictions inherent in language. But if Rousseau is just like "any other reader," it is not clear why any work riddled with contradictions will not serve just as well for the text of a deconstructive analysis. There is, in short, something fundamentally undiscriminating about the deconstructive approach to texts. 22 Moreover, it is

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parasitic: The movement inherits from the herrneneutic tradition a sense of what the important texts to interpret are, and, more generally, a sense of the importance of the activity of interpretation as such, but deconstruction could never on its own explain the basis of that importance. Deconstruction as a herrneneutic enterprise helps to highlight Strauss's virtues as an interpreter, above all, his sobriety, moderation, and restraint. Throughout his career, he was charged by various representatives of traditional modes of interpretation with doing violence to texts, with coming up with overelaborate and overingenious readings, with forcing meanings upon texts. But compared to what is going on in contemporary hermeneutics, Strauss appears in his true colors, as a genuinely conservative reader of texts. Now that misreading has become the watchword of interpretation, Strauss's technique of close reading seems almost old-fashioned and innocuous by comparison. Theories of interpretation today grant the reader great power over the text, often to do with what he will, on the assumption that the author's intentions are largely if not entirely irrelevant to its meaning. At least Strauss recognized that a text exerts constraints upon a reader, and his interpretations have a genuine focus, namely, to reveal the meaning and intention of the author. This would seem to leave Strauss open to the countercharge from contemporary hermeneutics that, far from being overingenious as an interpreter, he was unsophisticated. But before condemning him for his reliance on the principle of authorial intention, one must remember that he showed that meaning and intention can be far more complex than traditional interpreters ever imagined. Strauss's interpretive enterprise is discriminating in the deepest sense. By not trying to treat all authors or readers the same way, he showed that some authors are subtler than they have been given credit for, and thus, unlike deconstructive critics, he could justify why he studied certain works and not others. He suggested ways in which we can distinguish between texts that are riddled with contradictions simply because their authors were too stupid to be aware of them and texts in which the contradictions are part of a conscious rhetorical strategy worked up by an intelligent author. Strauss's sophistication resulted from the fact that he never offered a universal theory of reading and thus could restrict his interpretive activity to the most sophisticated authors: The meaning of "an author" is so vague. Things which are true of the highest intellects are wholly inapplicable to others. The case of authors who explicitly say that they intentionally contradict themselves in order to indicate a secret teaching to an elite among their readers, is entirely different from that of authors who neither say nor indicate anything of the kind. 23

In light of this analysis, it is deconstruction that appears to be unsophisticated in its approach. Deconstructive critics have allowed

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themselves to b e taken in by the rhetorical strategies of esoteric writing. 2 4 T h e y h a v e m i s t a k e n artfully p r o d u c e d contradictions for e v i d e n c e of the contradictory nature of all discourse. T h e m o v e m e n t has elevated misreading of an elementary kind into a philosophic principle. T h u s the deconstructive inteipreter is characteristically not interested in learning f r o m the text under consideration but merely wants to use it to m a k e his o w n point. O n e c o m e s a w a y f r o m a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i m p r e s s e d w i t h the brilliance not of the author interpreted, but of the interpreter himself. As w e have seen, in Allegories of Reading o n e gets the impression of a naive Jean-Jacques R o u s s e a u and a sophisticated Paul de M a n , w h o d e m o n s t r a t e s his s o p h i s t i c a t i o n p r e c i s e l y b y u n c o v e r i n g R o u s s e a u ' s naivet6 f o r us. H e lived b e f o r e d e c o n s t r u c t i o n d e m y s t i f i e d discourse; at m o s t he w a s groping in his blindness toward the insight of Derrida. D e c o n s t r u c t i o n is thus another form of hermeneutic thinking that posits a privileged position f o r the interpreter. W e look d o w n u p o n the writings of the past f r o m the height of our understanding of the definitive truth about language. This truth was not available to authors in the past and hence they necessarily misunderstood their o w n activity of writing. Thus, for all the d i f f e r e n c e s b e t w e e n d e c o n s t r u c t i o n and the traditional f o r m s of interpretation Strauss c o m b a t t e d within his lifetime, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n still a s s u m e s that w e can u n d e r s t a n d w r i t e r s f r o m the past b e t t e r t h a n they understood themselves. Rejecting this kind of condescension, Strauss showed that if w e can get o v e r our naive prejudice that the great writers of the past naively expressed their ideas, w e will discover that they are m o r e interesting as authors than w e believed. It is remarkable h o w often deconstructive critics have stumbled upon the p h e n o m e n o n of e s o t e r i c w r i t i n g , t h o u g h of c o u r s e t h e y c o n t i n u a l l y misinterpret it w h e n they c o m e across it. Consider this c o m m e n t o n George Eliot by J. Hillis Miller: This attempt makes Adam Bede throughout a deliberately ambiguous text. It is intended to be taken in one way by the credulous and in another way by those who know that God, as Feuerbach defines him, ". . . is nothing other than. . . an epitome of the generic human qualities distributed among men". . . . It accomplishes nothing, however, to affirm one's mastery over words in this way, Humpty-Dumpty-like, and so to say that the word "God" really means "man." The theological words . . . form a system which is stronger than the intention of any writer. The result is that certain key passages in Adam Bede vibrate before the reader's eyes like one of those Gestaltist diagrams which may be seen as duck or rabbit, or as inside out or outside in. The entire system of Christian metaphysics insinuates itself willy-nilly into George Eliot's expression of the Feuerbachian version of the counterculture. It forces her to say both what she means to say and its tranquilly orthodox opposite. 25

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Miller is his own best critic in this passage. Though I have not studied George Eliot carefully enough to determine whether or not she wrote esoterically, I suspect that Miller has the right answer at the beginning of this paragraph: The ambiguity of Adam Bede is the result of Eliot's attempting to speak to two different audiences at once, one orthodox and the other unorthodox. But Miller quickly loses sight of his own realization, and soon we are hearing the familiar deconstructive claim that the ambiguity in Adam Bede is the result of forces beyond the author's control. Miller's own prose is riddled with contradictions: At one point he calls the ambiguity the product of "a system which is stronger than the intention of any writer," while at another he describes it precisely as the result of authorial intention: The text "is intended to be taken in one way" by one part of Eliot's audience and "in another way" by another part. Miller writes that it "accomplishes nothing" to speak of God when one really means man, but, as we have seen, this kind of camouflaging can in fact accomplish a great deal, allowing authors to discriminate between different kinds of readers. In one paragraph, Miller moves from Strauss's understanding of contradictions to Derrida's: He begins with the idea that the ambiguity in Adam Bede is the product of a conscious rhetorical strategy, but by the end Eliot is the victim of a system of words, compelled to be both orthodox and unorthodox at once. Miller's essay illustrates the great intellectual danger of deconstruction. He sets out to blur the outlines of the positions that have traditionally been found in Victorian debates on religious faith. The way Miller assimilates Carlyle, George Eliot, Swinburne, and Hopkins to each other is a perfect example of the homogenizing tendency of deconstruction. By the time Miller is finished, we no longer have orthodox thinkers lined up against unorthodox, but all thinkers are somehow both orthodox and unorthodox. The result of deconstruction is thus to deny the possibility of philosophy, of any genuine and radical questioning of the authoritative opinions of a community or a tradition. Miller writes: "The counter-culture has no instruments with which to attack the official culture but those drawn from the twenty-five-hundredyear-old official culture. For this reason, the counter-culture turns out regularly and inevitably, in spite of itself, to be another version of what it attempts to destroy" (206). Here deconstruction is revealed to be another form of historicism, and a particularly insidious one. An author's thought is necessarily the product of his age or his "official culture"; even if he appears to struggle against the ideas that dominate his age or his culture, he can be shown to reflect them at the same time. But, as we have seen, this is to mistake what is merely a rhetorical concession to the dominant ideas of one's age for some kind of inner conviction. We see here what is ultimately at stake in the confrontation between Strauss and other forms of hermeneutics, namely, the question of whether some human beings are free to think independently of their age or culture.

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Of course, deconstructive critics would reply that inner conviction is not what is at issue, since the term points to authorial intention and they have left that naive interpretive principle behind. The question is not what George Eliot says but what Adam Bede says. But this move only underlines why one cannot abandon the principle of authorial intention. If we look at a text in isolation, severed from all context, it can appear to say both one thing and its opposite. But if we cease to regard the text as merely a text, and view it as an act of communication, we can see how the author can intend it to say one thing to one part of his audience and another to another part. The relation of the orthodox and unorthodox meanings of a text is to be explained only and precisely in terms of the author's intentions. In its view of meaning, deconstruction rests on one of those simplistic binary oppositions it is always condemning in others. Deconstruction is based on the unspoken premise that meaning has to be either simply determinate or simply indeterminate. That is, a text either means one thing to all readers or its meaning cannot be pinned down at all, and it can in fact mean both A and not-A. Strauss has shown what a naive view of textual meaning this is. If we look at how texts actually function as acts of communication, we can see that we are not faced with a choice between a single meaning and an infinity of meanings; a text can have a double meaning, as an author addresses two audiences with a single text. In other words, Strauss showed that a text can have a determinate meaning without necessarily having a univocal meaning. This is the important contribution his theory of esoteric writing can make to the contemporary debate on the nature of meaning. To be sure, Strauss never claimed that all texts are esoterically written and hence he was not offering a universal theory of meaning. The answer to the notion that all texts have either a single meaning or an infinity of meanings is thus not that they all have precisely two meanings. Nevertheless, the fact that some texts can be shown to have an exoteric and an esoteric meaning does have important implications for hermeneutics and must be taken into account in any larger theory of meaning. The phenomenon of esotericism can help refocus attention on texts as acts of communication and reopen the question of authorial intention as the guiding principle of interpretation. Above all, Strauss shows what is wrong with the false universalism of most hermeneutic theories, which insist that for a text to have a determinate meaning, it must have the same meaning for all readers.26 V Once one is alerted by Strauss to the possibility of esotericism, one can find evidence for it throughout history. Strictly speaking, one cannot prove his theory, but by offering some convincing evidence for it I hope to direct readers to his writings, in which they can see the power of his interpretive

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hypothesis worked out in detail. I will begin with Maimonides, the author who featured prominently in Strauss's discovery of secret writing. 27 As he found during a lifetime of studying The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides is one of the subtlest of esoteric writers, and offers some of the most revealing comments on the nature of secret writing. Throughout his introduction, he discusses the problem of communication and specifically the issue of how to discriminate between parts of his audience. He is explicitly concerned with the problem of writing as such, aware that putting one's thought in a book for all to see is a potentially dangerous enterprise: "God, may He be exalted, knows that I have never ceased to be exceedingly apprehensive about setting down those things that I wish to set down in this Treatise. For they are concealed things." 28 Hence Maimonides takes pains to point out that his book is not meant for every reader: "it is not the purpose of this Treatise to make its totality understandable to the vulgar or to beginners in speculation" (5). Hinting at the problem he is grappling with, Maimonides calls our attention to the difference between written and oral communication: A sensible man thus should not demand of me or hope that when we engage in the explanation of the meaning of one of the parables, we shall set forth exhaustively all that is expressed in that parable. An intelligent man would be unable to do so even by speaking directly to an interlocutor. How then could he put it down in writing without becoming a butt for every ignoramus who, thinking that he has the necessary knowledge, would let fly at him the shafts of his ignorance?(6)

Like Plato's Phaedrus, The Guide of the Perplexed is a piece of writing grounded in an awareness of the defects of writing as a mode of communication. Maimonides' ideal is oral instruction, in which a teacher can speak directly to his pupil and adapt his teaching to the specific needs and abilities of that pupil. But a book must be open to everyone and must appear to say the same thing to all readers. The defects of writing as a mode of communication explain why Maimonides is forced to resort to a strategy of revelation and concealment: "my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again concealed" (6-7). His aim is to discriminate between two parts of his audience: "That which is said about all this is in equivocal terms so that the multitude might comprehend them in accord with the capacity of their understanding and the weakness of their representation, whereas the perfect man, who is already informed, will comprehend them otherwise" (9). Maimonides indicates the kind of true reader he desires by explicitly addressing his treatise to his favorite pupil, Joseph ben Judah. 29 Indeed, Maimonides is quite clear about how narrowly targeted his book is: To sum up: I am the man who when the concern pressed him and his way

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was straitened and he could find no other device by which to teach a demonstrated truth other than by giving satisfaction to a single virtuous man while displeasing ten thousand ignoramuses—I am he who prefers to address that single man by himself, and I do not heed the blame of those many creatures. (16) T o explain how he can select out his true readers, Maimonides presents a theory of reader response, distinguishing between readers who will gloss over difficulties in a text and readers who will look for a deeper meaning behind them: We also saw that if an ignoramus among the multitude of Rabbanites should engage in speculation on these Midrashim, he would find nothing difficult in them, insomuch as a rash fool, devoid of any knowledge of the nature of being, does not find impossibilities hard to accept. If, however, a perfect man of virtue should engage in speculation on them, he cannot escape one of two courses: either he can take the speeches in question in their external sense and, in so doing, think ill of their author and regard him as an ignoramus—in this there is nothing that would upset the foundations of belief; or he can attribute to them an inner meaning, thereby extricating himself from his predicament and being able to think well of the author whether or not the inner meaning of the saying is clear to him. (10) This is exactly the principle of reading w e saw Strauss invoking: With an esoterically written text, one must assume the author is either a fool or cleverly hiding something. Maimonides proceeds to develop a striking metaphor for the relation of exoteric and esoteric meanings: The Sage accordingly said that a saying uttered with a view to two meanings is like an apple of gold overlaid with silver filigree-work having very small holes. . . . For he says that in a saying that has two meanings—he means an external and an internal one—the external meaning ought to be as beautiful as silver, while its internal meaning ought to be more beautiful than the external one. . . . Its external meaning also ought to contain in it something that indicates to someone considering it what is to be found in its internal meaning. . . . When looked at from a distance or with imperfect attention, it is deemed to be an apple of silver; but when a keen-sighted observer looks at it with full attention, its interior becomes clear to him and he knows that it is of gold. (12) A s quaint as this passage may sound, Maimonides is offering what w e would call a p h e n o m e n o l o g y o f reading, contrasting what happens w h e n one reads with "imperfect attention" with what happens when one reads with "full attention." It is particularly interesting that M a i m o n i d e s c h o o s e s to symbolize the exoteric meaning o f a work in the form of a precious metal such as silver, rather than a base metal. He thereby indicates an important

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aspect of the strategy of esoteric writing. The surface meaning of a work must not be so obviously defective that anyone can see through the deception. Rather, the surface meaning must be such that the average reader will be willing to rest content with it; if there are holes in the text—what Iser would call gaps—they should be small, and hence evident only to the careful reader. Though Maimonides does not make the connection clear, as an example of the sort of detail one might look for in an esoteric text, he ends his introduction with a discussion of how one is to "account for the contradictory or contrary statements to be found in any book or compilation" (17). 30 He begins with some of the obvious sources of contradictions, the kind of explanations we have seen given by conventional interpreters. For example: "The author of a particular book has adopted a certain opinion that he later rejects; both his original and later statements are retained in the book" (17). But Maimonides is not interested in this kind of contradiction, which is simply the result of incompetence: " I f , however, the two original propositions are evidently contradictory, but the author has simply forgotten the first when writing down the second in another part of his compilation, this is a very great weakness, and that man should not be reckoned among those whose speeches deserve consideration" (18). Maimonides is interested only in artful contradictions, which can be explained as part of a conscious itietorical strategy: In speaking about very obscure matters it is necessary to conccal some parts and to disclose others. Sometimes in the case of certain dicta this necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of a certain premise, whereas in another place necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one. In such cases the vulgar must in no way be aware of the contradiction; the author accordingly uses some device to conceal it by all means. (18)

Maimonides is deliberately vague about the necessity dictating this strategy, but a little reflection will show that it is the need to avoid persecution. The whole discussion of contradictions in the Guide—which is significantly more complicated than I have time to explain here—is basic to any full understanding of the nature of esoteric writing.

VI Francis Bacon provides perhaps the most complex discussion of esoteric writing, a discussion that is itself deeply esoteric in character. It occurs in The Advancement of Learning, his work devoted to promoting and cataloging the sciences. He had good reason to resort to secret writing: His program for the encouragement of the natural sciences and technology had no hopes of receiving the political support he sought if the full extent of its antireligious

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implications was publicly understood. Hence Bacon works to make The Advancement of Learning sound as traditional as possible, filling it with quotations from classical authors and the Holy Scriptures, whose authority he appears to accept. He assimilates his work to familiar treatises of Renaissance humanism and conceals the revolutionary character of his proposals. In particular, he buries his advice on reading and writing: He does not present it at the beginning of the work, where it would help someone on a first reading, but develops it obliquely toward the middle of the treatise, where it would help only a careful reader prepared to go through the work a second time. Bacon exploits the characteristics of the genre in which he chose to work. Discussing the division of the sciences seems to be a particularly innocuous activity. The Advancement of Learning has a kind of textbook or encyclopedic quality. During most of the work, Bacon does not appear to be advocating anything or breaking new ground but rather simply to be giving neutral definitions of the existing sciences, along the lines of "ichthyology is the science of fish." Such a procedure is unlikely to arouse the interest or scrutiny of censors. Moreover, the elaborate classification scheme of the division of the sciences allows Bacon to conceal or obscure anything he wants. He tends to bring up important subjects when discussing arcane branches of the sciences, that is, in places where nobody would expect to find the heart of his teaching or bother to go looking for it. For example, he takes up writing at the end of a long chain of divisions and subdivisions. We must go through Philosophy—Human Philosophy—Man Segregate—Knowledge of Mind—Inquiry into Faculties of the Soul—Those Involving Reason & Understanding-—Those Serving Functions of Memory before we finally get to Writing. Given the categories under which Bacon takes up writing, one would anticipate a rather narrow discussion of the subject, focusing on writing solely as a form of mnemonics. In fact, he avoids putting all his advice on how to write in one section and labeling it "Writing" for all to see. In itself, the section labeled "Writing" reveals very little. But clustered around it are other sections that contribute to Bacon's real teaching on how to write. He disperses or scatters his thought in The Advancement of Learning. Since the connections between sections are not evident on the surface, one has to think counter to the ostensible classification scheme to arrive at Bacon's teaching. The thematic discussion of writing in The Advancement of Learning appears to begin just before Bacon comes to the actual subject of writing. At the end of the section on "Judgment," when discussing sophisms, he writes: And lastly, let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us by words, which are framed and applied according to the conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort: and although we think we govern our

words, and prescribe it well, Loquendum ut vulgus, sentiendum ut sapientes,

[a man should speak like the vulgar and think like the wise;]

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yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar's bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment; so as it is almost necessary in all controversies and disputations to imitate the wisdom of the Mathematicians, in setting down in the very beginning the definitions of our words and terms, that others may know how we accept and understand them, and whether they concur with us or no. 31

Though the distinction between the vulgar and the wise in Bacon's Latin quotation suggests that he is an esoteric writer, he goes on, it seems, to advocate making one's ideas as explicit and as clear as possible to one's audience. But strangely, earlier in the work, Bacon appears to be ignoring his own advice on how to write: Natural Science or Theory is divided into Physic and Metaphysic: wherein I desire it may be conceived that I use the word Metaphysic in a differing sense from that that is received: and in like manner I doubt not but it will easily appear to men of judgment that in this and other particulars, wheresoever my conception and notion may differ from the ancient, yet I am studious to keep the ancient terms. For hoping well to deliver myself from mistaking by the order and perspicuous expressing of that I do propound, I am otherwise zealous and affectionate to recede as little from antiquity, either in terms or opinions, as may stand with truth and the proficience of knowledge. (215)

Here Bacon articulates his principle of assimilating his thought as far as possible to traditional forms. But this procedure is the opposite of what he says mathematicians do. Bacon quietly alters the meaning of traditional terms, playing down his differences from antiquity and thereby confusing his readers about his terminology. For example, what he means by metaphysics is actually what we would today call theoretical physics, but only a careful reading of The Advancement of Learning will make his radical departure from traditional philosophy on this important point clear. This is a good example of the kind of conspicuous error in which Strauss was interested. 32 Within the space of fewer than a hundred pages, Bacon has flatly contradicted himself. First he says that he deliberately expresses his new ideas in the old terms; the way Bacon goes on to contrast himself with Aristotle makes it clear that his goal is to avoid controversy. Later he says that we should always make the definitions of the terms we are using clear so that people will know whether they agree with us or not. We thus confront the sort of choice in interpretation Strauss constantly posed: We can either regard Bacon as uncommonly stupid in failing to see how inconsistent his statements are or view the contradiction as in fact evidence for his care in writing. Pursuing the second possibility, if we read the two passages over, we notice how carefully they are qualified. In the earlier passage, Bacon proclaims that he will keep to the traditional terminology only insofar as it "may stand with truth and the proficience of

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knowledge." Thus he acknowledges limits to concealing his differences from antiquity; he cannot let the strategy obscure the teaching of the new science completely. By the same token, in the later passage, he carefully writes, "it is almost necessary . . . to imitate the wisdom of the Mathematicians." The qualifying almost suggests that there are limits to making one's definitions clear as well. Since Bacon refers specifically to mathematicians in this passage, perhaps there is something peculiar to mathematics that allows investigators in that field to define their terms precisely. One must then jump ahead to Bacon's section on "Method," where in discussing how to present material, he develops a distinction between "Mathematics" and what he calls "Policy": "Another diversity of Methods is according to the subject or matter which is handled', for there is a great difference in delivery of the Mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and Policy, which is the most immersed" (292). This is a vague explanation of the distinction Bacon is drawing, and the rest of the paragraph only succeeds in muddling the subject further. But the next paragraph, in which he ostensibly changes the subject, actually goes on to explain the real distinction between "Mathematics" and "Policy": "Another diversity of judgment in the delivery and teaching of knowledge is according unto the light and presuppositions of that which is delivered', for that knowledge which is new and foreign from opinions received, is to be delivered in another form than that that is agreeable and familiar" (293). By drawing attention to the distinction between knowledge in accord with popular opinion and knowledge running counter to it, Bacon finally supplies the key to what he has been getting at in talking about whether to define one's terms clearly or not. Mathematics is a form of knowledge that need not run afoul of popular opinion, whereas "Policy," or political philosophy, is a form of knowledge that is always running afoul of it. Recall that Bacon cryptically referred to "Mathematics" as "the most abstracted of knowledges" and "Policy" as "the most immersed." "Mathematics" abstracts from daily life and all practical considerations; indeed it is so abstract as a science, so theoretical in its outlook, that mathematical principles cannot offend anybody, because they are irrelevant to how people act. By contrast, "Policy" is very much immersed in daily life and practical considerations and touches the concerns of common people very closely. Nobody is going to get upset over one's definition of a quadrilateral; hence in mathematics one can safely make it clear what one means by one's terms. By contrast, people do care passionately about definitions of terms like justice and sometimes are willing to fight to the death over them. Thus in political philosophy one might not be as ready to reveal the precise meaning of one's terms but might instead conceal how far they depart from the conventional and traditional understanding of things. 33 Trying to piece together Bacon's teaching on defining one's terms is a good example of how carefully one must read The Advancement of Learning.

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Putting together four separate passages, one finally sees that he is drawing a distinction between writing about politically harmless subjects and writing about politically dangerous subjects, and thus he points to the need for esoteric writing. Turning now to the section he actually devotes to "Writing," we find that it seems at first to be disappointing. Bacon says almost nothing about the subject, and what he says seems to be confined to a rather innocent discussion of commonplace books. But in the very next section, in which he takes up the subject of what he calls the organ of tradition, he immediately returns to "Writing," a good indication of how he is playing fast and loose with his own classification scheme. In this section he spends much of his time discussing hieroglyphics. To understand the significance of this fact, one must recall that Bacon had brought up the subject of hieroglyphics earlier in the book, when he was discussing the divisions of poetry and came to "Allusive or Parabolical" poetry. At that point, he made one of his most explicit statements that writing might be used not to reveal thought as is generally supposed but to conceal it: But there remaineth yet another use of Poesy Parabolical, opposite to that which we last mentioned: for that tendeth to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered, and this other to retire and obscure it: that is when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, or philosophy are involved in fables or parables. (204-205)

After a section on grammar, Bacon devotes a whole paragraph to the subject of ciphers. He seems to be discussing common methods of encryption, and one begins to wonder if there is any subject too trivial to be catalogued in The Advancement of Learning. In the paragraph immediately following, Bacon himself admits that he seems to be straying into some obscure subjects but cautions his careful readers against mistaking the obscure for the unimportant: In the enumeration of these private and retired arts, it may be thought I seek to make a great muster-roll of sciences; naming them for shew and ostentation, and to little other purpose. But let those which are skilful in them judge whether I bring them in only for appearance, or whether in that which I speak of them (though in few marks) there be not some seed of proficience. (287-288)

Encouraged by this hint, the careful reader will review the paragraph on ciphers and discover that where Bacon appears to be talking about the sort of secret codes spies employ, he is actually describing his own form of esoteric writing. The discussion of ciphers in The Advancement of Learning is itself a cipher: "For Ciphers, they are commonly in letters or alphabets, but may be in words. The kinds of Ciphers (besides the simple ciphers with changes and intermixtures of nulls and non-significants) are many, according to the nature

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or rule of the infolding; Wheel-ciphers, Key-ciphers, Doubles, etc." (287). Bacon begins by diverting attention from the common form of cryptograms, in which letters are systematically substituted for other letters, and brings up the possibility of creating ciphers out of whole words, that is to say, in recognizable sentences. He seems to dismiss a simple kind of cipher in the parenthesis, and yet this is the only cipher whose technique he describes in any detail. The technique he is referring to may be the kind of code in which one would, for example, take every third word in a designated passage to find a secret message. But this sort of "intermixture of nulls and non-significants" is precisely the technique of esoteric writing we have been mapping out in The Advancement of Learning. Bacon does not develop a continuous argument; he does not present his secret teaching on secret writing in a sequence of clearly marked logical steps. On the contrary, he alternates innocuous passages on commonplace books with revealing comments on hieroglyphics, tedious discussions of grammar with encoded paragraphs on codes. To get at Bacon's meaning, one must ignore a great deal of confusing and insignificant detail in The Advancement of Learning and learn to extract and concentrate on a few key passages. Thus, on reflection one realizes that Bacon's own writing best satisfies his criteria for successful ciphers: "But the virtues of them, whereby they are to be preferred, are three; that they be not laborious to write and read; that they be impossible to decipher; and, in some cases, that they be without suspicion" (287). Bacon appears to be asking too much from a cipher: that it be simultaneously easy to write and read and yet hard to decipher. But this seems to be impossible only as long as one assumes that the same skill and effort will go into deciphering the code as went into creating it. Bacon's third criterion points to a resolution of the difficulty. In fact, only if one satisfies the third of his criteria can one satisfy the first two as well. If a cipher does not come under suspicion, then it will never be subject to deciphering, no matter how obvious its meaning may be to those who are in on the secret. The best cipher then would be one that does not even have the appearance of being a cipher. Esoteric writing fulfills this all-important criterion because it gives the appearance of being conventional and even orthodox discourse on the surface. Bacon develops this point more fully in De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, the Latin translation and expansion of The Advancement of Learning, which he prepared toward the end of his life. The discussion of ciphers in De Augmentis is considerably expanded, including an explanation of Bacon's famous bilateral cipher. 34 In discussing a simpler form of code that will still allow a writer to escape suspicion, Bacon gives a coded description of esoteric writing: Let a man have two alphabets, one of true letters, the other of nonsignificants; and let him infold in them two letters at once; one carrying

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the secret, the other such a letter as the writer would have been likely to send, and yet without anything dangerous. Then if any one be strictly examined as to the cipher, let him offer the alphabet of non-significants for the true letters, and the alphabet of true letters for non-significants. Thus the examiner will fall upon the exterior letter, which finding probable, he will not suspect anything of another letter within. (IX, 116-117)

This passage does, in fact, describe an excellent method of encryption, but there is more to it than at first meets the eye. Bacon is fascinated by the prospect of a single passage that can be read in two ways, one of them innocent and the other dangerous. Notice that he relies for the success of the cipher on the laziness of the average reader. If the potential interceptor of the secret message can find a conventional meaning in it, he will not bother to probe beneath the surface. Bacon's distinction between the "exterior letter" and the "letter within" covertly points to the distinction between exoteric and esoteric meanings in philosophic prose. In the more compressed discussion of ciphers in The Advancement of Learning, Bacon emphasizes how the success of a cipher depends less on the skill of the cipherer than on the lack of skill of the potential decipherer: "in regard of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass, the greatest matters are many times carried in the weakest ciphers" (287). The "Cipher" section of The Advancement of Learning is a perfect illustration of the method it is describing. As long as the reader is not aware that anything peculiar is going on in the section, he passes over it quickly as a recondite discussion of a technical matter (encryption). Once a reader looks at the section in light of the surrounding context, he sees that Bacon is daringly frank in talking about his own principles of communication. His own cipher is an open book to those who recognize it as a cipher, but closed to all others. Bacon moves on to another subject, which he calls "Method," but once again what he says in a later section seems to reflect back upon what he just said in an earlier one: Another diversity of Method there is . . . used in some cases by the discretion of the ancients . . . and that is, Enigmatical and Disclosed. The pretence whereof is to remove the vulgar capacities from being admitted to the secrets of knowledges, and to reserve them to selected auditors, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil. (290-291)

The Latin version is once again fuller and more explicit on this subject. In De Augmentis Bacon distinguishes two methods of what he calls Delivery: "Both methods agree in aiming to separate the vulgar among the auditors from the select; but then they are opposed in this, that the former makes use of a way of delivery more open than the common, the latter . . . of one more secret. Let the one then be distinguished as the Exoteric method, the other as

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the Acroamatic" (IX, 124). Bacon continually appears to be discussing different subjects—"Allusive or Parabolical" poetry, hieroglyphics, ciphers, "Enigmatical and Disclosed" method, "Acroamatic" method—but they all turn out to be different names—code names—for esoteric writing. The next method Bacon discusses is "delivery of knowledge in Aphorisms" (291). He contrasts developing one's thoughts in aphorisms with developing them in a systematic treatise (which he calls "in Methods"). Bacon prefers the former approach, because the systematic treatise, though "more fit to win consent or belief," is "less fit to point to action" (290-291). He defends aphorisms on the grounds that "particulars, being dispersed, do best agree with dispersed directions" (292). It is by no means clear what he means by this cryptic comment, but "dispersed directions" may be another reference to speaking to different audiences at once. In any event, this passage helps to confirm the idea that Bacon has "dispersed" his thoughts in The. Advancement of Learning. In effect, the book is a set of aphorisms masquerading as a systematic treatise, or rather a set of aphorisms buried in a systematic treatise. We cannot get at the meaning of The Advancement of Learning by following its ostensible plan and organization; rather, we have to piece together its teaching out of its separate parts. The connections Bacon explicitly supplies between the parts of the book are often misleading, a kind of smoke screen. The real connections lie beneath the surface and have to be worked out by the careful reader. Finally, Bacon cites the pedagogical value of aphorisms: "And lastly, Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to enquire farther, whereas Methods conveying the shew of a total, do secure men, as if they were at furthest" (292). This is an important supplement to our understanding of any form of esoteric writing. Strauss did not claim that the only value of writing esoterically is to escape persecution. As we saw in Maimonides, a truly philosophic form of writing would have to recapture something of the character of oral instruction. By making the reader work to get at its meaning, esoteric writing achieves this instructional power, sharpening the reader's mind even as it fills it with new ideas. Esoteric writing thus not only confines an author's message to an elite among his audience but it also works to train and educate their mental powers. Bacon moves on to a discussion of rhetoric, which develops the point that a speaker should be able to discriminate among his listeners: "the proofs and persuasions of Rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors: Orpheus in sylvis, inter delphinas Arion: which application, in perfection of idea, ought to extend so far, that if a man should speak of the same thing to several persons, he should speak to them all respectively and several ways" (300). Bacon is not explicit about the possibility that really interests him, namely, speaking to them "all respectively and several ways" with the same words. The two examples he cites in his quotation from Virgil give a further indication of the importance of rhetoric.35 Oipheus and Arion had to call

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upon their powers of eloquence to try to save their own lives. Bacon thus discusses rhetoric in the context of the safety of the speaker from potentially hostile forces in his audience. Bacon concludes the long section in which he discusses writing by taking up a few examples of what he calls "Sophisms of Rhetoric" (301). These seemingly random examples should be scrutinized carefully: They provide important clues as to how Bacon himself should be read. It cannot be an accident that the examples of antitheta he gives are all concerned with the problem of interpretation. The final one tells us how Bacon himself must be interpreted: "Ex omnibus verbis est eliciendus sensus qui interpretatur singula" ("The sense according to which each word is to be interpreted must be collected from all the words together" [302]). In what Bacon calls a "Critical" appendix, he discusses what we would today call philological approaches to texts. Once again, the discussion seems at first sight innocuous; he is talking about ensuring that we have accurate texts: The first is concerning the true correction and edition of authors; wherein nevertheless rash diligence hath done great prejudice. For these critics have often presumed that that which they understood not is false set down: as the Priest that where he found it written of St. Paul, Demissus est per sportam, [he was let down in a basket,] mended his book, and made it Demissus est per portam, [he was let out by the gate;] because sporta was a hard word and out of his reading; and surely their errors, though they be not so palpable and ridiculous, are yet of the same kind. ( 3 0 3 - 3 0 4 )

On the surface, this is sound advice about editing, but it has a wider application. Bacon suggests that if one is puzzled by something in a work, the answer is not to amend the text so that the difficulty disappears, but to try to make sense of the text as written. If we look up the reference to St. Paul (Acts 9:25), we find that the context of the line Bacon quotes is the story of a man trying to escape religious persecution: the Jews have resolved to kill Saul for his preaching and he flees their plot. The whole of Bacon's teaching on writing should be viewed against this background. VII

I have dwelled upon The Advancement of Learning at such length because I wanted to give a detailed example of how Strauss would go about reading a text and because this particular text, with all its talk of hieroglyphics and ciphers, strikes me as exceptionally strong evidence for the existence of esoteric writing. But it still is not explicit evidence; if Strauss is correct about the prevalence of esoteric writing, one would expect that at some point in history, no matter how great the constraints against divulging the secret,

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someone somewhere would have blurted it out. That someone turned out to be an E n g l i s h m a n , John T o l a n d ( 1 6 7 0 - 1 7 2 2 ) , known to intellectual historians as a central figure in the development of Deism and most famous for his book Christianity not Mysterious (1696). Toland seems to have lacked discretion and had a tendency to make public what was meant to remain private. The article on him in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out: "For the earl of Shaftesbury he had written political tracts, but Toland lost his friendship by publishing one of the Earl's works, An Enquiry Concerning Virtue, without authorization." 3 6 In 1720 Toland published a book called Tetradymus, one of whose four parts is entitled Clidophorus (the bearer of the key), with the subtitle "of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy; that is, of the External and Internal Doctrine of the Ancients." 3 7 Since Tetradymus has to my knowledge never been reprinted and the original edition is not generally available, I want to quote extensively from Toland to show that Strauss is not the only one ever to have claimed that esoteric writing is a widespread phenomenon. Toland begins by discussing the power of priests in the ancient world and their policy of persecuting anyone who challenged their authority. He then develops what amounts to Strauss's basic notion of persecution and the art of writing: Hence no room was left for the propagating of TRUTH, except at the expense of a man's life, or at least of his honor and imployments, whereof numerous examples may be alledg'd. The Philosophers therefore, and other well-wishers to mankind in most nations, were constrain'd by this holy tyranny to make use of a two-fold doctrine; the one Popular, accommodated to the PREJUDICES of the vulgar, and to the r e c e i v ' d C U S T O M S or RELIGIONS: the other Philosophical, conformable to the nature of things, and consequently to TRUTH; which, with doors fast shut and under all precautions, they communicated onely to friends of known probity, prudence, and capacity. These they generally call'd the Exoteric and Esoteric, or the

External and Internal Doctrines. (65-66) Toland is mainly concerned with documenting esotericism in the ancient world, and he cites an impressive array of authors, including St. Augustine, who testify to the presence of esoteric doctrines in ancient writers. Toland goes through the various ancient philosophers and sects, suggesting the esoteric d i m e n s i o n to their work. F o r e x a m p l e , he writes of the Pythagoreans' treatment of their various auditors: "All things were declar'd to the Esoterical (but without witnesses) in a plain, perspicuous, and copious speech; while every thing, on the contrary, was deliver'd to the Exoterical, in a peiplext, obscure, and enigmatical manner; nor was any thing told clearly, except popular and vulgar matters" (72-73). Citing the authority of Timeus Locrus, Toland argues that the Pythagoreans hid an esoteric scientific teaching under the cover of an exoteric religious teaching:

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it is from thence most manifest, that neither PYTHAGORAS nor the Pythagoreans believ'd the Transanimation, or Transmigration of Souls, for holding of which they are so famous: but that by this word they did Esoterically understand the perpetual change of forms in matter, one never decaying or dying but to begin and take on another; while Exoterically they did, to the promiscuous croud affectedly preach the Egyptian Revolution of Souls, for the punishment or reward of what was transacted in the Body. (83-84)

Toland makes a similar argument about the Stoics' seeking to accommodate the expression of their thought to conventional religious beliefs: They were too sagacious to admit the truth of such things in the literal sense, and too prudent to reject them all as nonsense: which led them of course, by the principle of self-preservation, to impose upon them a tolerable sense of their own; that they might not be deem'd wholly to deny the Religion in vogue, but to differ onely from others about the design and interpretation of it. (91)

Toland may or may not be correct in his specific interpretations of ancient philosophers; for our purposes, what is important is that he shows that the principle of esoteric writing, exactly as Strauss formulated it, was clearly familiar to a writer at the turn of the eighteenth century. Consider these statements: "What Reason cannot support, Force must: and that shall not be permitted to be told, which shows the Multitude to be ridiculous, or their Guides impostors. This put the Philosophers every where on their guard" (88). And, "The Priests were every where the cause, why the Philosophers invented those occult ways of speaking and writing" (94). Showing at least some prudence, Toland does not explain the esoteric doctrines of any of his contemporaries, but he does insist that esotericism is still important in the modem world: I have more than once hinted, that the External and Internal Doctrine, are as much now in use as ever; tho the distinction is not so openly and professedly approv'd, as among the Antients. . . . And indeed, considering how dangerous it is made to tell the truth, tis difficult to know when any man declares his real sentiments of things. (94-95)

Like Strauss, Toland focuses on the situation in which an author appears to make two contradictory statements in a work, one orthodox and the other heretical. His rule of thumb for resolving such contradictions is identical to Strauss's: In this state of things, while liberty in its full extent is more to be wish'd than expected, and that thro human weakness people will preferr their repose, fame, or preferments, before speaking of Truth; there is

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nevertheless one observation left us, whereby to make a probable judgement of the sincerity of others in declaring their opinions. Tis this When a man maintains what's commonly believ'd, or professes what's publicly injoin'd, it is not always a sure rule that he speaks what he thinks: but when he seriously maintains the contrary of what's by law establish'd, and openly declares for what most others oppose, then there's a strong presumption that he utters his mind. (96)38 The fact that Toland's interpretive principles are the same as Strauss's is of course no proof that Strauss is right. It is, however, significant that, unlike Strauss, Toland did not feel constrained to present his ideas about esoteric writing as a discovery or even a rediscovery. Clidophorus has a kind of matter-of-fact air about it: Toland talks about esoteric writing as if it were c o m m o n k n o w l e d g e among philosophers. T h e real importance of Clidophorus, then, is that it suggests, as Strauss claimed, that before the nineteenth century esotericism was a living tradition, passed on from philosopher to philosopher, though rarely discussed in public with Toland's frankness. VIII

I could go on citing historical evidence for the existence of esoteric writing, even from writers as recent as Nietzsche. 39 But I want to offer another kind of evidence. If Strauss's theory of persecution and the art of writing is true, then it ought to have some predictive value. He argued that the tradition of esoteric writing began to weaken and eventually died out with the rise of liberal democracies, in which persecution ceased to be a genuine threat to authors. If this is so, then one would predict that even in the contemporary world, wherever liberal democracy has not prevailed, esoteric writing should still be necessary. That it is needed does not, of course, ensure that it in fact exists. Still, Strauss's theory strongly suggests that something like esoteric writing ought to be observable under the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, above all in the Soviet Union, where totalitarianism prevailed long enough for writers to be driven underground. This is a subject eminently worthy of investigation, but not knowing Russian, I am not capable of pursuing it in any depth. I can, however, offer one striking confirmation of Strauss's theory based on what I have read about the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin. 40 Barely known even within the Soviet Union during his lifetime, Bakhtin has gradually been discovered in the West and has emerged as one of the central figures in contemporary literary theory. Though he lived most of his life in relative obscurity, by now the details of his biography have become known, and they turn out to be relevant to interpreting his writings. Bakhtin did not merely have reason to fear persecution from Soviet authorities; he experienced it in some of its most virulent forms. At one point he was imprisoned, and for many years he had

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to l i v e in internal e x i l e in Kazakhstan. A f t e r publishing one b o o k on D o s t o e v s k y in 1929, he was forbidden by the authorities to publish again until 1963. These circumstances led to a situation that has created great confusion in the study o f Bakhtin. H e may have published a number o f books under the names o f friends, whose Marxist orthodoxy allowed them access to print. In their biography o f Bakhtin, Katerina Clark and M i c h a e l Holquist discuss what is problematic about one of these books: The authorship of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, published in 1929, is clearly Bakhtin's. Aside from the title, the passages reputedly expressing Marxism, as in the declaration that only a Marxist approach can provide a cogent account of the nature of language, and the use of Marxist terms, such as base and superstructure, occur primarily in the first twenty-five pages of the book or in the final summarizing paragraphs of subchapters—namely in the very places to which a censor or publishing house editor's attention would be most alerted. The farther one reads in the book, the more the Marxist terminology fades from view. 4 1 A s far as I k n o w , neither Clark nor Holquist has ever heard o f Strauss. Y e t here they have clearly stated his rule o f thumb about the esoteric order o f presentation, and, noting where a censor is likely to pay attention, they even g i v e the same explanation f o r why that order works to avoid persecution. If Clark and Holquist are right that Bakhtin wrote the book, they have shown how he was able to g i v e it the appearance of Marxist orthodoxy to placate the authorities, w h i l e still suggesting his differences from that orthodoxy to a careful reader. In arguing that Bakhtin was not an orthodox Marxist, Clark and Holquist cite the same kind o f evidence o f anomalies in the text f r o m which Strauss typically worked: Moreover, although Marxist terminology appears periodically in declarations about the methodological approach, the book is singularly lacking in the sort of economic or class analysis that such declarations would suggest. The author is careful to justify this absence by criticizing the "vulgar sociologism" that was conveniently under attack at the time and by proposing that "class does not coincide with sign community." In some places, however, Marxist terminology gets confused. In one case the "base" is equated with "actual existence," and in another place a "typology" of forms of verbal communication is called "the most urgent task of Marxism." Another incongruous identification is implied between "production relations and the sociopolitical order" and "the hierarchical factor in the process of verbal exchange." The book is thus a Marxist study of the science of ideology in only the most unconventional sense. (166) I f this analysis is correct, in reading Bakhtin w e are witnessing the rebirth or

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rediscovery of esoteric writing once the sort of conditions that originally produced it were recreated in the Soviet Union, namely, a regime singlemindedly devoted to rooting out any signs of independent thinking. Given Bakhtin's wide-ranging reading, it is possible that he himself was aware of the tradition of esoteric writing and was merely applying it under new circumstances. What I find more interesting is that Clark and Holquist, with no stake at all in any theory of persecution and the art of writing, have independently arrived at several of Strauss's principles for reading a text produced in an environment of persecution. The analysis Clark and Holquist give of Bakhtin's book on Rabelais (which was eventually published in 1965 under his name, though only after the Soviet authorities held it up for many years) is also reminiscent of the way Strauss approached texts. For example, in order to figure out how to read Bakhtin's book on Rabelais, Clark and Holquist looked for clues in the way Bakhtin himself read Gargantua and Pantagruel (much as Strauss approached reading Machiavelli by studying how Machiavelli read Livy): The book is not only about the openness of Rabelais' novel but is itself an example of that kind of text. . . . In describing Rabelais' strategy, he reveals his own. The relation of Rabelais to [his character] Villon mirrors the relationship of Bakhtin himself to Rabelais. Bakhtin has written a book about another book that constantly plays with the categories and transgresses the limits set by the forces of official ideology. . . . In treating the specific ways in which Rabelais sought to find gaps in the walls between what was punishable and what was unpunishable in the 1530s, Bakhtin is looking for similar loopholes at those borders in the 1930s. (297-298)

Thus Clark and Holquist read Rabelais and His World as developing a covert critique of Stalinist culture: Rabelais must be seen in the context of its times. In the original dissertation on which Rabelais is based Bakhtin, who peppered his earlier texts with references to Russian writers such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, makes little mention of Russia or Russian writers. But this near absence of Russia in the text makes it all the more present as a referent. Indeed, the most cryptic of Bakhtin's rare references to things Russian are Aesopean hints of the political dimension of the work. (305)

Here Clark and Holquist are operating with another one of Strauss's rules of thumb for interpretation: the principle of significant omission, or the idea that what an author mentions least often may in fact be what is most important for him. Clark and Holquist go on to give a careful reading of Bakhtin's Russian references in Rabelais, dwelling particularly upon a mention of the czars

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"slipped into the middle of the b o o k " (306). They then discuss the most important passage: Bakhtin's final reference to things Russian . . . draws attention to itself by the abrupt manner of its presentation. This reference includes a wellknown quotation from Pushkin's Boris Godunov, although neither the author nor the title is identified in the text. . . . The fact that the "pretender" is Boris Godunov becomes clear only indirectly, through the introduction of the quotation, from which Bakhtin also omits the crucial but equally well-known line, "The people fell silent.". . . The reference to a "pretender" may be a hint at Stalin's worthiness to lead Russia. (306)

Finally, Clark and Holquist attribute to Bakhtin a strategy very similar to the one we just observed in Bacon, of presenting his unconventional ideas in the conventional terms and expressions of his day: [Bakhtin] coopts the ideas and rhetoric of his age and uses them to his own ends. Moreover, he coopts only those elements that can in some way be made to approximate his own views. . . . Bakhtin, for instance, uses a striking number of catch phrases of Stalinism, such as "the people are immortal," "the progressive movement forward," and "the new and better future," which might seem a lapse on the part of someone who decried the standardization of language. But the contexts in which these catch phrases are used suggest meanings other than those they ordinarily represent. (313-314)

I have allowed Clark and Holquist to speak for themselves about Bakhtin, rather than presenting my own analysis of his work, in order to avoid the charge that only my familiarity with Strauss makes Bakhtin look like an esoteric writer. In fact, it seems that, however strange Strauss's methods of reading may appear to scholars used to dealing with Western texts, these methods c o m e naturally to those in Slavic studies, who have had to learn how to deal with writers facing brutal persecution. 4 2 Without attempting a comprehensive survey of Bakhtin's works, I do want to give a sketch of what appears to be the basic strategy behind his writings. Bakhtin's relationship to Marxism seems to resemble what Strauss presents as the relationship of a number of early m o d e m philosophers to Christianity. Philosophers such as Hobbes and L o c k e did not feel that their time was right for a direct assault on Christianity. Rather, they sought to c o m e up with a modified form of Christianity, one that would be more tolerant o f philosophers and might even help them to put their political principles into practice. In their quest to modify and moderate Christianity, these philosophers drew their strength from their ability to pit one set of Christian principles against the others. F o r example, L o c k e was able to appeal to the Christian principle of charity against the principle of religious intolerance, and hence to find a religious justification for tolerating even

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heretics and nonbelievers. 43 Bakhtin attempted something similar in his approach to Marxism, searching for footholds within Marxist orthodoxy in the Soviet Union that would allow him to moderate its tendency to eradicate all forms of opposition. For example, Bakhtin was able to play upon Marxist sympathies for the economically downtrodden in order to champion literary reflections of folk culture in earlier ages. But in the process of celebrating what he called camivalization, he established the general principle that any rebellion in the name of natural human impulses against a rigid, hierarchical, authoritarian regime is to be prized in literature. The principle of camivalization—which at first seems to deal only with remote matters from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—could in fact have a significant contemporary reference in a Soviet context. By such stratagems, Bakhtin tried to remake Marxism into genuine philosophy, that is, to transform it from a closed and final ideological system into an open-ended pursuit of truth. Whatever Bakhtin's disagreements with Marxist orthodoxy may have been, he did not attack Marxism directly but presented himself as the champion of authentic Marxism against its false and distorted versions. In his discussion of the relationship of Marxism and literary criticism, for example, Bakhtin does not reject Marxist readings of literature but tries instead to come up with a more acceptable form of Marxist criticism. He claims that hitherto Russian criticism has been simplistic in the way it interpreted texts: It finalized and dogmatized basic ideological points reflected by the artist in his work, thus turning active and generating problems into ready theses, statements, and philosophical, ethical, political, religious, etc. conclusions. It did not understand or consider the vital fact that the essential content of literature only reflects generating ideologies, only reflects the living process of the generation of the ideological horizon. 44

Bakhtin is using Marxist terminology to make a fundamentally un-Marxist point. He develops a view of both literature and literary criticism as undogmatic and untendentious: The artist has nothing to do with prepared or confirmed theses. . . . Almost all critics and historians of literature committed these same mistakes with varying degrees of crudeness. . . . And the ideological squeezings themselves were profoundly inadequate in terms of the real content of the works. What had been presented in the living generation and concrete unity of the ideological horizon was put in order, isolated, and developed into a finished and always disreputable dogmatic structure. (19)

Bakhtin tends to leave the target of his criticism vague, and when he does explicitly include Marxist critics, he makes sure that it sounds as if he is

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merely rejecting a warped form of Marxist criticism: "Only crude mechanistic vestiges can account for the truly clumsy, inert, motionless, and irreversible division between 'intrinsic and extrinsic factors' in the development of ideological phenomena which is rather often encountered in Marxist works on literature and other ideologies" (29). What Bakhtin struggles for, then, is a way of appropriating the name of genuine Marxist criticism for his own approach to literature: "The Marxist method has already been applied to literary history, but there has not yet appeared a Marxist sociological poetics. What is worse, there has not even been any thought of one" (31). By viewing the Marxist goal of a sociological poetics as something as yet unattained and hardly even imagined, Bakhtin was able, at least temporarily, to open up the possibilities for literary criticism within the Soviet Union. Throughout his career, his emphasis on the principle of dialogue in literary interpretation seems to have been a conscious effort to find a basis for countering the dogmatic tendencies of orthodox Marxism, which he continually condemned under the name of the monologic principle in literature. A full understanding of this point would require careful study of his discussions of Socrates and the Socratic dialogue, which appear at odd points in his writings and which in many ways resemble Strauss's analysis of Plato and Xenophon. 4 5 The very fact that Bakhtin insisted on viewing the Socratic dialogue as one of the sources of the novelistic tradition suggests that he was trying to find a foothold for introducing philosophic discussion into Marxist literary criticism and into Marxist thought in general. IX

I want to conclude by returning to Maimonides for a statement of the ideal of a text that guided Strauss in his work as an interpreter. In his instructions to his readers, Maimonides cautions them how carefully composed The Guide of the Perplexed is: If you wish to grasp the totality of what this Treatise contains, so that nothing of it will escape you, then you must connect its chapters one with another; and when reading a given chapter, your intention must be not only to understand the totality of the subject of that chapter, but also to grasp each word that occurs in it in the course of the speech, even if that word does not belong to the intention of that chapter. For the diction of this Treatise has not been chosen at haphazard, but with great exactness and precision. . . . And nothing has been mentioned out of its place, save with a view to explaining some matter in its proper place.

(15)

As Maimonides suggests, the esoterically written text must be viewed as a perfect whole. The aim of the interpreter is to figure out how the parts fit

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together to form that whole; often the most important clues to the esoteric meaning will be parts that at first sight do not appear to harmonize with the whole. Maimonides' insistence o n the care with which he composed his text is designed to warn his reader against prematurely attributing elementary errors or confusions to the author. He stresses that each word must be taken into account in any full interpretation of the Guide. Strauss, following Plato's Phaedrus, called this principle "logographic necessity." His discussion of the Phaedrus takes up the same problems that preoccupied Maimonides: We may assume that the Platonic dialogue is a kind of writing which is free from the essential defect of writing. Writings are essentially defective because they are equally accessible to all who can read or because they do not know to whom to talk and to whom to be silent or because they say the same things to everyone. We may consider that the Platonic dialogue says different things to different people—not accidentally, as every writing does, but that it is so contrived as to say different things to different people, or that it is radically ironical. The Platonic dialogue, if properly read, reveals itself to possess the flexibility or adaptability of oral communication. 4 6 In order to achieve this form of communication, the Platonic dialogue requires a special form of writing: What it means to read a good writing properly is intimated by Socrates in the Phaedrus when he describes the character of a good writing. A writing is good if it complies with "logographic necessity," with the necessity which ought to govern the writing of speeches: every part of the written speech must be necessary for the whole; the place where each part occurs is the place where it is necessary that it should occur; in a word, the good writing must resemble the healthy animal which can do its proper work well. 4 The idea of a text with which Strauss worked was thus derived from his reading of medieval esoteric writers and confirmed by his study of classical philosophers such as Plato and Xenophon. This idea is in a sense an ideal: Strauss always aimed at giving a complete and thorough account of all the details in a given text, but he did not assume he would always be able to do so. A s he wrote in his correspondence with Gadamer: At least in the most important cases, earlier or contemporary, I have always seen that there remained in the text something of the utmost importance which I did not understand, i. e. , that my understanding or my interpretation was very incomplete; I would hesitate to say however that no one can complete it or that the finiteness of man as man necessitates the impossibility of adequate or complete or "the true understanding." You deny this possibility. Your denial is not justified by the fact that there is a variety of hermeneutic situations: the

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difference of starting points and hence of the ascents does not lead to the consequence that the plateau which all interpreters as interpreters wish to reach is not one and the same. 48

Strauss did not intend this passage for publication, and yet in many ways it most perfectly captures what distinguished him as an interpreter. One can see in it his reverence for the great texts of the past and his humility when faced with the task of interpreting them. Above all, one sees his lack of dogmatism as an interpreter. He steered a middle course between absolute certainty as an interpreter and absolute skepticism. On the one hand, he refused to proclaim his interpretations as complete and final. On the other hand, just because he had been unable to understand a text fully, he did not feel entitled to proclaim that no one could understand it fully. In sum, Strauss viewed interpretation as a genuinely open-ended task, always guided by the elusive but theoretically attainable goal of complete understanding. This view of interpretation is grounded in his view of philosophy in general, which he derived from the ancients and especially from Socrates: Philosophy in the original meaning of the term is nothing but knowledge of one's ignorance. . . . But one cannot know that one does not know without knowing what one does not know. What Pascal said with antiphilosophic intent about the impotence of both dogmatism and skepticism, is the only possible justification of philosophy which as such is neither dogmatic nor skeptic . . . but zetetic (or skeptic in the original sense of the term). Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems, i.e. , of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. 4 9

As Strauss viewed it, in hermeneutics either dogmatism or skepticism prematurely cuts off the process of interpretation, the one because it assumes that we already have a complete understanding, the other because it assumes that we can never attain it. Strauss has much to teach literary theorists about the nature of interpretation, but no more important lesson than the weakness of any hermeneutic theory that gets in the way of the difficult task of actually interpreting texts. Today we are faced with the strange and depressing spectacle of many complex theories of interpretation, which when applied to texts yield sadly conventional readings, or, what is worse, the same reading every time, no matter how different the texts. Strauss's theory of interpretation is comparatively simple, but he showed that the concrete process of interpretation is more complex than most readers have imagined. In short, Strauss was interested in demonstrating not his own ingenuity, but that of the writers he studied. His career offers a refreshing contrast and a healthy antidote to the narcissistic self-absorption of contemporary inteipreters. If interpretation is fundamentally an optic on the past, then Leo Strauss can remind us of the difference between a lens that can clarify and

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magnify our vision and a mirror that can only reflect back our own distorted and diminished image. 5 0 NOTES The Pope epigraph that opens this chapter is taken from An Essay on Criticism, 11. 179-180; the Empson epigraph is taken from Faustus and the Censor (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 53. My work on "Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics" was facilitated by a grant from the Earhart Foundation. 1. "The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious," trans. Jan Miel, in Jacques Ehrmann, ed., Structuralism (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1970), p. 117. 2 Truth and Method, trans. Garrett Braden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury, 1976), p. 488. 3. "The Emperor Julian and His Art of Writing," trans. James Nichols, Jr., in Joseph Cropsey, ed., Ancients and Moderns (New York: Basic Books, 1964), p. 95. 4. The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), p. 52. 5. I b i d . 6. See, for example, On Tyranny (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), pp. 25-26. 7. Leo Strauss and Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Correspondence Concerning Wahrheit und Methode," Independent Journal of Philosophy, 2 (1978), pp. 5 6.

8. The two most important essays in which Strauss laid out his theory of interpretation in general terms are "Persecution and the Art of Writing," in the volume of the same name (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952), pp. 22-37, and "On a Forgotten Kind of Writing," in What Is Political Philosophy? (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 220-232. See also Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958), pp. 29-53, for a detailed account of Strauss's interpretive principles in terms of a single author. Finally, see also an essay Strauss wrote originally in 1939, which has only recently been published and which deals with Lessing and secret writing ("Exoteric Teaching," Interpretation, 14 [1986], pp. 51-59). This essay has been reprinted in Thomas Pangle, ed., The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), a collection of Strauss's essays that now provides perhaps the best introduction to his thought in general. 9. What Is Political Philosophy? pp. 221-222. 10. For a representative collection of essays from the reader-response school, see Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). For a theoretical statement of the principles behind reader-response criticism, see especially Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). Of the examples of readerresponse criticism I have read, the one that comes closest to Strauss in approach and conclusions is Stanley Fish's "Georgics of the Mind: The Experience of Bacon's Essays," in Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 78-155. 11. See Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 185, where Strauss cites Cicero, Orator 15. 50 and De oratore II 77. 313.

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12. The First and Second Discourses, trans. Roger D. and Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin's, 1964), pp. 102-103. 13. M y discussion of the Second Discourse is simply an elaboration of what Strauss wrote in Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 267, note 32. For a thorough discussion of the historical status of the state of nature in the Second Discourse, see Marc F. Plattner, Rousseau' s State of Nature (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1979), pp. 1730. 14. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1964), vol. 3, p. 128. 15. "Observations by Jean-Jacques Rousseau of Geneva on the Answer to His Discourse," in The First and Second Discourses and Essay on the Origin of Languages, trans. Victor Gourevitch (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), pp. 4 1 42. 16. "Preface of a Second Letter to Bordes," in Gourevitch, p. 115. 17. Strauss's reading seems even more plausible when one considers that persecution was not merely an abstract or hypothetical possibility facing Rousseau. Despite his caution in writing, his Emile was condemned by the Parliament of Paris in June 1762, and an order was issued for the arrest of Rousseau. He fled to Switzerland, where he was barred from the territory of Bern and had to settle in Môtiers. Eventually the pastor of Môtiers condemned Rousseau in a sermon and incited a mob to stone his home in September 1765. Emile was publicly bumed in Paris in 1762 and both Emile and the Social Contract were burned in Geneva the same year. These are only a few examples of the persecution Rousseau endured; for details on these and other incidents, see Charles E. Butterworth's preface and interpretative essay in Rousseau, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (New York: N e w York University Press, 1979), especially pp. x v i - x v i i , 146-147. 18. Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 30. 19. " O n the Intention of Rousseau," reprinted in Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters, eds., Hobbes and Rousseau (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1972), p. 290. 20. On this subject, see my essay "Friedrich Nietzsche: The Use and Abuse of Metaphor," in David S. Miall, ed., Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives (Sussex, England: Harvester, 1982), especially pp. 71-72. 21. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 137. 22. T o be fair to de Man, he did try to distinguish between authors who are blind to the fictionality of their texts and those who are aware of it. But he never suggested clear criteria for making this distinction, and he tended to blur the issue by speaking of the texts themselves being aware of their fictionality, rather than of their authors being so. This tendency is evident in an interview he gave in 1983, in which his criticism of Derrida sounds very similar to my criticism of de Man: I h a v e a tendency to put upon texts an inherent authority, w h i c h is stronger, I think, than Derrida is w i l l i n g to put on them. I assume as a w o r k i n g hypothesis (as a w o r k i n g hypothesis, because I k n o w better than that), that the text k n o w s in an absolute w a y

what i t ' s d o i n g . I k n o w this is not the case but it is a

necessary w o r k i n g hypothesis that Rousseau k n o w s at any time what he is d o i n g and as such there is no need to deconstruct Rousseau. In a c o m p l i c a t e d w a y , I would

hold

to

the

statement

that " t h e

text

deconstructs

itself,

is

self-

d e c o n s t r u c t i v e " rather than being deconstructed by a philosophical intervention from

the outside o f the text.

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See Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 118. In this passage, de Man appears to formulate what I have described as Strauss's working hypothesis in approaching texts, and to criticize Derrida for thinking that he understands Rousseau better than Rousseau understood himself. But notice that, unlike Strauss, de Man is certain that his working hypothesis is false, and thus he ultimately does not accept the idea that some authors are in full control of their writing. Notice also the way de Man moves back and forth between speaking of what Rousseau knows and what the text knows. This anthropomorphizing of texts—a strategy inherited from the New Criticism—is typical of the evasive rhetoric of deconstruction. It allows deconstructive critics to keep using the notion of intentionality in interpretation without having to be bound by the notion of authorial intention, thus ultimately maintaining the authority of the critic over the text. For further exploration of this complicated issue, see de Man's important essay, "The Rhetoric of Blindness: Jacques Derrida's Reading of Rousseau," in de Man's Blindness and Insight (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). For an incisive critique of de Man on this and related issues, see the chapter "Paul de Man: The Rhetoric of Authority," in Frank Lentricchia, After the New Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), especially pp. 302-304. 23. What Is Political Philosophy? p. 224. 24. Cf. Lentricchia's description of de Man's criticism of Derrida: "when misreading goes on in the work of a critic like Derrida, . . . it is most likely attributable not to the critic's professional limitations but to his having been deceived by a rhetorical feature of the text that is not recognized as such" (p. 307). 25. "Theology and Logology in Victorian Literature," in Victor A. Kramer, ed„ American Critics at Work (Troy, New York: Whitson, 1984), pp. 199-200. 26. This critique of deconstruction in general and de Man in particular was written along with the rest of this essay in 1986, before the controversy erupted concerning the discovery of de Man's early newspaper articles, which seem to express antisemitic and fascist sentiments. I have neither the inclination nor the expertise to comment on this controversy; I do, however, want to make it clear that my position on de Man was formulated long before I knew anything of this issue. I find it intriguing that those of de Man's friends who have come to his defense thus far (as of the summer of 1988) have relied on a kind of Straussian reading of these newspaper pieces. They have read very carefully between the lines to come up with an antifascist message beneath the apparently profascist meaning on the surface, and pointed to the climate created by the suppression of free expression in Nazi-occupied Belgium to account for de Man's literary strategy. Thus far the longest and undoubtedly the most important apology for de Man to be published is Derrida's "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War," trans. Peggy Kamuf, Critical Inquiry, 14 (1988), pp. 590-652. Setting aside the grounds of Derrida's defense of de Man, which I would charitably describe as extraordinary, I am interested in the way Derrida chooses to read de Man, a hermeneutically remarkable performance for the founder of deconstruction. Contrary to his declared principles of interpretation, Derrida constantly speculates about what was going on in de Man's mind when he wrote these newspaper articles. For those of us who have followed Derrida's career as an interpreter of texts, it is indeed most odd to hear him state the meaning of a passage flatly and then say unequivocally: "That is the primary, declared, and underscored intention" (p. 624). Having devoted his career to criticizing the

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"privileging" of specch over writing, Derrida falls back upon a phonocentric reading of de Man, analyzing two paragraphs in which, he says, "I hear some mockery" (p. 624; my italics). Indeed, to come up with the readings he needs to vindicate his friend, Derrida must keep his ear carefully tuned to the voice of de Man (for example, "this diagnosis seems rather cold and far removed from exhortation," p. 615). The result of Derrida's effort to take into account the political situation in which de Man was writing and to listen attentively for hints of subversive countermovements in his prose is essentially to produce a Straussian reading of the newspaper articles as having a double meaning: "On the one hand, the massive, immediate, and dominant effect of all these texts is that of a relatively coherent ideological ensemble which, most often and in a preponderant fashion, conforms to official rhetoric; that of the occupation forces. . . . But on the other hand and within this frame, de Man's discourse is constantly split, disjointed, engaged in incessant conflicts. Whether in a calculated or a forced fashion, and no doubt beyond this distinction between calculation and passivity, all the propositions carry within themselves a counterposition; sometimes virtual, sometimes very explicit, always readable, this counterposition signals what I will call, in a regular and contradictory manner, a double edge and a double bind" (p. 607; Derrida's italics). I could go on detailing Derrida's contributions to the study of persecution and the art of writing in wartime Belgium, but I will confine myself to one more example. His claim that in criticizing vulgar antisemitism, de Man was covertly criticizing all antisemitism as vulgar (p. 625) is similar to the argument we will see made (somewhat more convincingly) by Clark and Holquist that Mikhail Bakhtin presented his critique of Marxism under the guise of merely criticizing vulgar Marxism (see Section VIII below). 27. See Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 8, and "A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss," The College (St. John's of Annapolis), 22 (1970), pp. 3-4. 28. The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 16. This edition contains Strauss's essay "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed," pp. xi-lvi. 29. For Maimonides' attitude toward his reading public, see also his "Letter to Joseph," in Raymond L. Weiss and Charles Butterworth, eds., Ethical Writings of Maimonides (New York: New York University Press, 1975), especially p. 115. 30. On this section, see Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 68-74. 31. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Heath, eds., The Works of Francis Bacon (Boston: Taggard and Thompson, 1864), vol. 6, p. 279. Translations of Bacon's Latin quotations are by Spedding. 32. Though Strauss never wrote extensively on Bacon, one passage in an essay on Spinoza suggests that he was aware of the point I am discussing. See Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 183. See also Jerry Weinberger, Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 251-252. 33. In light of this analysis, one might wonder why Bacon would be cautious about his definition of metaphysics, which would seem to be more analogous to a definition in mathematics than to one in political philosophy. Once one realizes, however, that Bacon's real definition of metaphysics is part of his assault on the teleological understanding of nature and hence has important implications for his view of religion, one can see why he would not want to make his departure from the traditional definition in this area clear to all his readers. On the need to preserve the semblance of old forms, see Machiavelli, Discourses on

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Livy, book 1, chapter 25. For Descartes' effort to conceal new ideas in traditional forms, see Hiram Caton, "The Problem of Descartes' Sincerity," Philosophical Forum, 2 (1971), especially p. 363. Using Descartes as a case study, this essay contains some of the most convincing evidence I have seen for the existence of esoteric writing. 34. For a discussion of this secret code, see William F. and Elizabeth S. Friedman, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), pp. 27-33. In the example of a bilateral cipher Bacon gives, the exterior message and the secret message contradict each other ("Do not go till I come" and "Fly"). See Bacon, Works (1863), vol. 9, p. 119. I want to thank John C. Briggs for calling my attention to the additional material on ciphers in De Augmentis. For his view of codes in Bacon, see his Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), especially pp. 25-29. 35. See Eclogues, viii.56. 36. Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), vol. 8, p. 141. 37.1 quote from the first editon of Tetradymus, published in London by J. Brotherton and W. Meadows in 1720; I have retained the original spelling. For making a copy of Tetradymus available to me, I want to thank the staff of the Rare Book Department at the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, and especially Page Nelson-Saginor. My attention was called to Tetradymus by a letter from Frederick Vaughan that appeared in Political Theory, 4 (1976), pp. 371-372. 38. Cf. Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 177. 39. On the "difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to philosophers," see Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966), sect. 30, p. 42. 40.1 first learned of Bakhtin from Michael Valdez Moses, to whom I also am indebted for his suggesting, and working out in detail, the possibility that Bakhtin may be an esoteric writer. 41. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 166. It may be impossible ever to determine with certainty the authorship of the three books from the Bakhtin circle: The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, published under the name of Pavel Medvedev, and Freudianism: A Critical Sketch and Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, both published under the name of Valentin Volosinov. In chapter 6 of their biography (pp. 146-170), Clark and Holquist argue persuasively for Bakhtin's authorship of all three texts. For a contrary view, see the translator's preface by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik in their edition of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. viixii. 42. For further discussion of the connection between censorship and double meanings in the Russian literary tradition, see Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1846 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 220, and Gary Saul Morson, The Boundaries of Genre (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 99-104, especially p. 102, where, in discussing What Is to Be Done? Morson writes: "Using 'Aesopian language,' the Russian phrase for this kind of hidden political allegory, Chernyshevsky's text invites an esoteric, as well as an exoteric, reading." For more recent evidence of persecution and the art of writing during the era of Soviet tyranny in Eastern Europe, see the account in Andrei Codrescu, The Disappearance of the Outside (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990), pp. 38-39: "Against history, we developed community through the use of

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a subtle and ambiguous language that could be heard in one way by the oppressor, in another by your friends. Our weapons of sabotage were ambiguity, humor, paradox, mystery, poetry, song and magic." 43. See, for example, John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), p. 13. 44. P. M. Medvedev [M. M. Bakhtin], The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 19. 45. See, for example, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 106-112; The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981); "Epic and Novel," pp. 24-26, and Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 120-123. 46. The City and Man, pp. 52-53. 47. The City and Man, p. 53. Strauss cites Phaedrus 275d4-276a7 and 264b7-c5. 48. "Correspondence Concerning Wahrheit und Methode," p. 6. 49. On Tyranny, pp. 209-210. 50. Since first writing this essay, I have discovered that literary critics have been—or at least are becoming—more aware of Strauss than I had supposed. In an essay called "Dialogue and Dialogism," first published in Poetics Today in 1983, de Man refers to Strauss as "a major theoretician of the discourse of persecution," quotes him approvingly to make a point, and applies him to the case of Bakhtin. Here de Man in fact acknowledges in general terms the point I made in criticizing his attempt to deconstruct the distinction between fact and fiction in Rousseau: Speaking of a text written in a context of persecution, de Man claims, "since it does not mean to say what it actually says, it is a fiction, but a fiction that, in the hands of the right community of readers, will become fact." See The Resistance to Theory, pp. 107-108. For a work that draws substantially upon Strauss's analysis of comedy in his Socrates and Aristophanes, see John Vignaux Smyth, A Question of Eros: Irony in Sterne, Kierkegaard, and Barthes (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1986). This book includes a brief comparison of Strauss and de Man on p. 375. A passing reference to Strauss appears in Harold Bloom's Ruin the Sacred Truths (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). See p. 171. Tzvetan Todorov discusses Strauss briefly but insightfully in his Symbolism trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, and Interpretation, 1982), pp. 21-22. Todorov views Strauss as an example of "reception" theory (a European variant of American reader-response theory). In her Censorship and Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), Annabel Patterson attempts to deal briefly with Strauss but evidently has little knowledge of his writings, since she claims that "Strauss was not interested in the predicament of early modern writers, such as Hobbes" (p. 15), an odd statement to make about an author who for many years was best known for his book on Hobbes. There may well be other examples of conventional literary critics who have drawn upon or tried to come to terms with Strauss. The most interesting recent development appears in the Spring 1990 issue of the Modern Language Association Newsletter (vol. 22). Here Michael Holquist announces that an entire issue of the organization's journal, PMLA, will be devoted to the subject of literature and censorship. In outlining possible submissions to this issue, Holquist suggests: "The topic also includes instances of Aesopian literature and

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texts of the kind Leo Strauss in Persecution and the Art of Writing characterized as 'esoteric w r i t i n g s ' " (p. 25). The way Holquist here conjoins Aesopianism and Strauss casts doubt upon my claim in Section VIII that his work with Clark on Bakhtin o f f e r s independent confirmation of Strauss's principles of reading. Perhaps I have underestimated the influence of Strauss on literary critics because I have overestimated their willingness to acknowledge their indebtedness to him.

The Contributors ALAN UDOFF is Louis L. Kaplan Professor of Philosophy at Baltimore Hebrew University.

EVE ADLER is professor of classics at Middlebury College. LAURENCE BERNS is Richard Hammond Elliott Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. DAVID BIALE is associate professor of Jewish studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. RÉMI BRAGUE is professor of classical and medieval philosophy at l'Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1). PAUL A. CANTOR is professor of English at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. DISKIN CLAY is professor of classics at Duke University. KENNETH HART GREEN is assistant professor of religious studies at University College, University of Toronto. ALFRED L. IVRY is p r o f e s s o r of Near Eastern studies at New York University. RICHARD H. KENNINGTON is professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. DAVID R. LACHTERMAN is professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. THOMAS PRUFER is professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. STANLEY ROSEN is Evan Pugh Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

315

Index Abraham, 116, 117 Abravanel, Isaac, 95, 103 Absolutism, 149 Acquiescientia in se ipsox 137—138 Action: moderating, 158; thought and, 27n71 Actus extendendi, 129 Adam Bede (Eliot), ambiguity in, 284—286 Adeimantus, 259 Adomo, Theodor, 32, 158 Advancement of Learning, The (Bacon), 296-297; ciphers in, 2 9 3 - 2 9 5 ; esoteric writing in, 289-294; quote from, 155 Aggadah, 85; Strauss on, 84; study of, 83 Agnosticism, 77 Ahijah the Shilonite, 103 Akademie flir die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 13, 75 Alcibiades, 16 Allegories of Reading (de Man), 280, 284 Amour propre. See Love Ancients, 232; Heidegger and, 231; moderns and, 155, 157-159, 231, 236, 263-264n2; Nietzsche and, 231; Spinoza and, 156; Strauss and, 155, 260; Swift and, 157 Anonymity, Strauss on, 6 Anti-Hegelianism, 53, 56 Aphorisms, pedagogical value of, 296 Aquinas, Thomas, 116, 118, 119, 120, 174 Arendt, Hannah, 33; on Jewish experience, 34; Zionism and, 3 9 n l l Aristophanes, 100, 115, 253, 256; Strauss on, 254, 258, 261 Aristotle, 22, 50, 60n2, 6 6 - 6 7 n 4 5 , 95, 107nl5, 116, 118, 139, 157, 169, 170,

180nl6, 180nl8, 1 8 0 - 1 8 1 n l 9 , 228, 231, 242, 253, 255, 2 6 3 n l , 2 6 5 n l 2 , 291; cosmology of, 164; Judaism and, 194; Maimonides and, 194; psychology of, 174; Strauss on, 164-165, 254, 256 Aristotelian doctrine, 95, 140; Maimonides on, 88 Arnold, Matthew, 21 Ashkenazi, R. Zevi, 146, 147 Assimilation, 63n20; Bacon on, 291 Atheism, 51, 56, 185, 186, 195; cognitive, 7 3 n l 2 1 ; misreading of, 7 2 n l l 0 ; modern, 196; Nietzsche and, 105; orthodoxy and, 187; Strauss on, 57, 72nl13 Athens, 20, 104, 124-125 Authenticity, 180nl5; Heidegger on, 173174 Authority, 57; thinkers and, 25n38 Averroes, 59, 99, 103, 192; Maimonides and, 191; Strauss on, 190 Avicenna, 15, 62n7, 7 4 n l 2 4 , 78, 89n9, 99, 107nl9, 192, 193, 202; prophetology of, 69n75; quote of, 1 9 8 199 Bacon, Francis, 133, 157, 166, 236, 248, 250, 303, 31 ln33; esoteric writing of, 2 8 9 - 2 9 7 , 312n34; modern philosophy and, 247; quote of, 155 Bacon, Roger, 147-150 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 312n40, 313n50; Clark and Holquist on, 301-303; esoteric writing of, 3 0 0 - 3 0 5 Banquet (Plato), 16 Battle of the Books (Swift), 157 Baumann, Fred; translation by, 195-202

317

318

INDEX

Being: Aquinas on, 118; Aristotle on, 118; logos and, 16 Ben Gershon, Levi. See Gersonides Benjamin, Walter, 32, 38; hermeneutics of, 35 Ben Judah, Joseph, 287 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), 161 Bible, 50, 197, 198; influence of, 71n93; Maimonides on, 37, 82; philosophy and, 58; quote from, 20; Rousseau on, 274— 275; Spinoza on, 32; Strauss on, 53, 76, 84 Bloch, Ernst, 32, 35, 38 Bloom, Allan, 35 Book of Knowledge (Maimonides), 94, 99, 145 Bruno, Giordano, 271 Buber, Martin, 4, 37, 75; Zionism and, 33, 39nl 1 Burke, Edmund, 158, 232, 248, 250, 251 Burnyeat, Myles, 262 Carnivalization, principle of, 304 Cassirer, Ernst, 12, 13 Celebration, model of, 16 Censorship, 2 7 0 - 2 7 3 , 281; avoiding, 301, 312n42 Christianity not Mysterious (Toland), 298 Cicero, 25n37, 245, 253, 254, 273 Ciphers, 297; Bacon on, 293-296 City and Man, The (Strauss), 177, 253, 254, 255, 258, 260 City of God, 22, 116, 246; Strauss on, 18 City of man, 95; Strauss on, 18 Clark, Katerina, 301, 302, 303 Classicists, Strauss and, 262 ClidophorusL 300 Cogilata Metaphysica (Spinoza), 134 Cognition, 176-177, 1 8 0 n l 8 Cognitive theism, 58 Cohen, Hermann, 1, 13, 14, 2 3 n l 6 , 41, 44, 46, 62n8, 7 4 n l 2 4 , 75, 100, 193; Enlightenment and, 54; liberalism and, 19; quote of, 194; respect for, 2; role of, 21; spiritual power of, 4; Strauss on, 2 3, 19-21, 22-23n3, 23n9, 3 3 - 3 4 , 195 Common sense, 6, 10 Community, 119, 120 Conatus, 128-130, 152 Concurrence, divine, 150 Conservatism, 158; Strauss and, 41 Consistency, Strauss on, 2 7 8 - 2 7 9

Contextualizing, Strauss on, 32 Contingency, 119, 120; necessity and, 118 Contradiction: deconstruction and, 284; deliberate, 277-278, 284; Maimonides on, 289; phenomenon of, 279, 280; seventh cause, 100; Strauss on, 278, 280; Toland on, 2 9 9 - 3 0 0 Conventionalism, 233, 2 3 9 - 2 4 1 , 244; historicism and, 232; nature and, 121; refutation of, 245 Copernicus, Nicholas, 147 Corpora simplicissima, 128-129, 130 Cosmotheoria, theory of, 126 Courage, 25n38, 157, 161 Creatio ex nihilo, 99, 152 Creation, 89n9, 112n85, 184; Averroes on, 191; eternity and, 124, 138; miracle of, 80; philosophy and, 116, 121, 240, 247; Strauss on, 80 Cropsey, Joseph, 256 Culture, Strauss and, 3 Cyropaideia (Xenophon), 253 Dasein, 175 Deconstruction, 2 7 9 - 2 8 0 , 282-283, 310n26; contradictions and, 284; de Man on, 281; Derrida on, 284; historicism and, 285; Miller and, 285; Rousseau and, 280; Strauss on, 283, 284, 286 De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (Bacon), ciphers in, 2 9 4 - 2 9 5 Defense of Socrates (Plato), 115 Deism, 298 De la Divina Providencia (Nieto), quote from, 147 de Man, Paul, 16, 17, 280, 282, 284; criticism of, 309-310n22, 310-311n26; Derrida on, 310-311n26; Strauss on, 313n50 De Rerum Natura, 261 Derrida, Jacques, 280, 284, 285, 3 1 0 31 ln26; criticism of, 309-310n22, 310n24 Descartes, René, 126, 133, 151, 157, 236, 250, 251; modera philosophy and, 57, 247; Spinoza on, 127-128, 134 Desire, 173, 175 Deus sive fortuna, 117 Deus sive natura, 117, 124, 126, 133, 151 Dialectical attitude, Strauss on, 5 7 - 5 8 Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft (Strauss), 13, 14, 32, 41, 42, 44, 4 9 - 5 1 , 65-66n33;

INDEX

quote from, 159-160; translation of, 196 Divine codes, 246; contradiction in, 239, 240 Divine providence, radicalized, 189, 191 Divine selection, 136; Leibnitz on, 135 Doctrine of law-abiding individuals, 140 Dogmatism, 252nl0, 307; skepticism and, 250 Dynamics: Cartesian, 127-128; kinematics and, 128 Eckermann, Johann Peter, quote of, 1 Efodi, Profiat Duran, 103 Ek-legein, 6, 9 Eliot, George: esoteric writing of, 284— 285, 286; Miller on, 284-285 Empson, William: quote of, 267 Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The: To land in, 298 Enlightenment, 47, 50, 97, 202; Adorno on, 158; Cohen on, 54; dialectic of, 105; freedom and, 185; Horkheimer on, 158; Judaism and, 44, 45, 52, 184; Lessing on, 55-56; medieval, 186, 192; moderate, 52-53, 57, 66-68n45; modern, 53, 105, 192; orthodoxy and, 51, 52, 54, 67n45, 71n99, 184-187; philosophy and, 186; Platonic, 52; prejudice and, 48, 65~66n33; radical, 53, 55, 56, 68n45; reexamination of, 13; Rosenzweig on, 54; Strauss on, 52-53, 58, 166; victory of, 51, 184 Entia, 236 Epicureanism, 51, 56, 70n77, 261; Strauss on, 185 Epistemology, 249, 250 Eros, 5, 6, 9 Esotericism, 16, 37-38, 62n7, 83, 85, 86, 101, 115, 161, 312n39; Bacon on, 168n51; exotericism and, 162; hermeneutics of, 17; Maimonides and, 77; move toward, 79; phenomenon of, 286; philosophical, 165; reading for, 272-273; rediscovery of, 42, 61n6; Rousseau on, 277; Strauss on, 14, 28n79, 166, 286-287 Esoteric writing, 267, 273-279, 294-295; Bakhtin and, 300-305; Maimonides and, 305-306; modern, 300-301; nature of, 289; Nietzsche and, 300; pedagogical value of, 296; phenomenon of, 284285; strategy of, 284, 289; Strauss on,

319

297-300; Toland on, 298-300. See also Writing Essay on the Origin of Languages (Rousseau), 280 Esse, 117, 118, 236 Essences, 136; intelligible, 140 Essentialism, 51 Eternity, 112n85, 121, 130, 146; creation and, 124, 138 Ethics, 237; Heidegger on, 172 Ethics (Spinoza), 76, 123, 126, 130, 131, 134, 138, 149, 160 Euripides, 6, 7 Existentialism, 232; Strauss on, 51 Exotericism, 16, 77, 79, 104, 115, 163, 166, 288, 295, 312n39; esotericism and, 162; rediscovery of, 171 Fades totius univeri, 129 Faith, 76, 238; philosophy and, 3 Falasifa, 192; Maimonides and, 194, 201, 225n21 Falqera, Shem Tov ibn, 103, 112n93 Farabi, 34, 36, 38, 78, 89, 89n9, 94, 96, 98, 103, 107nl9, 145n37, 192, 201; prophetology of, 69n75; Strauss on, 258 Fidelity, 50 First Discourse (Rousseau), esoteric style of, 276 Freedom, 120, 174 ; Enlightenment and, 185; limits of, 243; positivity of, 10 Friedländer, Paul, 258 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 172, 174, 269, 306307; quote of, 268 Galileo, 271 Gentlemen, rule of, 164-165 Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon), 89n3, 189, 191, 192, 200; prophetology of, 95; Strauss on, 190 Gnosticism, Jonas on, 37 God: Aquinas on, 118, 119; covenants with, 117; Descartes on, 135, 136, 251; divinity of, 88; fear of, 20; governance of, 140; incorporeality of, 81, 82, 84, 87; Judaism and, 88; Maimonides on, 139; revelation and, 80; Spinoza on, 135, 136; Strauss on, 177; view of, 87, 89n9 Goeze, J. M., 56 Good, 170, 172; created, 117; seeking, 7; uncreated, 117 Governance of the Solitary (Ibn Bajja), 139

320

INDEX

Grosseteste, Roger, 148-150 Guide of the Perplexed, The (Maimonides), 37, 42, 59, 78-83, 94, 95, 101, 102, 139, 192, 305, 306; contradictions in, 289; esoteric nature of, 97, 287; ibn Caspi on, 103; meanings of, 96; peshat of, 82; Strauss on, 84-87, 89, 9 8 100 Guthrie, W.K.C., Guttmann, Jacob, Guttmann, Julius, 113nl07, 188, on, 187, 197

262 26-27n63 75, 94, 101, 102, 106n2, 194, 200, 201; Strauss

Halakhah, 37; study of, 83 Harvey, Warren Zev, 123, 124, 125-126 Havelock, Eric, 262 Hedonism, 247 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 3, 4, 75, 141, 227, 235, 249, 251 Hegelianism, 53 Heidegger, Martin, 13, 73nl21, 77, 104, 105, 113nl07, 166, 176, 181n26, 227; ancients and, 231; historicism and, 232; Nietzsche and, 177; respect for, 3—4, 11, 67n45; Strauss on/and, 8, 11, 75, 2 4 n l 7 , 26n54, 26-27n63, 67n45, 169, 170, 177, 2 3 5 - 2 3 6 Heraclitus, 5, 7, 240 Hermeneutics, 267, 269, 270, 279, 2 8 2 283; contemporary, 283; esoteric, 35; Strauss and, 285. See also Interpretation Hiero, 255 Hiero (Xenophon), Strauss on, 257-258 Hippodamus of Miletos, 256 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 36 Historia fluiditatis el firmitatis (Boyle), 129 Historicism, 15, 36, 51, 64n24, 65n33, 71n93, 102, 181n22, 2 2 8 - 2 3 0 , 249, 250; Christianity and, 32; conventionalism and, 232; criticism of, 32, 37-38, 169; deconstruction and, 285; disclosure of, 235; forms of, 232; Heidegger and, 232; history of, 27n45, 234; modern, 49; naive, 233, 235; Nietzsche and, 234; origins of, 231; philosophy and, 186, 233; radical, 67n45, 232-236; relativism of, 105; Strauss and, 14, 37-38, 176, 234 History: discovery of, 235; experience of, 233-234; Hobbes on, 248; law of, 251; Strauss on, 232

Hobbes, Thomas, 13, 68n45, 94, 158, 166, 181 n22, 228-231, 234, 236, 237, 241, 248, 250, 251, 303; philosophy and, 247; Strauss on, 75, 93, 253, 313n50 Holquist, Michael, 301, 302, 303 Homer, 259 Honor, love of, 163 Humanism, 124, 125, 290; Strauss on, 153 Huqqim, 146 Husserl, Edmund, 13, 169, 170; Strauss on, 178 Huyghens, Christiaan, 126, 130 Ibn Bajja, 139, 145n37 Ibn Caspi, Joseph: Strauss on, 103 Ibn Sham'un, Joseph, 82 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 100, 138 Idealism: German, 51, 227, 2 5 2 n l l ; modern, 50, 185; moral, 48 Ideas, 236-237, 251 Idolatry, 81, 82, 87, 99 Iliad (Homer), 259 Imagination, 138, 192; aid to, 130; Maimonides on, 88; reality and, 84; role of, 96; Spinoza on, 156 Imitatio Dei, 101-102 'I nay a, 140 Incorporeality, 81, 82, 84, 87 Individualism, 158, 234; cultivation of, 229-230; Machiavelli on, 249; modern, 64n24; natural right and, 230; Rousseau and, 235; Strauss on, 230 Inertia, 128 Integrity, Strauss on, 278-279 Intellect, 124, 140, 192; domination of, 174; Maimonides on, 88; reality and, 84 Interpretation, 263, 2 6 7 - 2 6 9 , 308n8; Clark and Holquist on, 302; forms of, 278, 282-283; limits on, 190; Socrates on, 307; Strauss on, 270, 271, 2 7 3 - 2 7 4 , 279, 280, 283, 305, 307-308, 310n22; theory of, 270, 277, 283. See also Hermeneutics Isaac, 116, 117 Ischomachus, 15 Iser, Wolfgang, 272, 289 Isochronous pendula, theory of, 130 Jerusalem, 15, 20, 104, 124-125 Jerusalem and Athens (Strauss), description of, 20 Jewish Publication Society, 183

INDEX

Job, 87; Maimonides on, 100 Jonas, Hans, 35, 37 Judaism: Aristotle and, 194; crisis of, 4 1 45, 50, 63-64n20, 76, 104; Enlightenment and, 44, 45, 52, 184; God and, 88; Guttmann on, 197; Maimonides on, 47, 80-81, 191; philosophy and, 18, 20, 31, 6 3 n l 6 , 125; rationalism and, 37, 43, 45, 47; return to, 36; Spinoza and, 160; Strauss on, 47, 63n20, 68n45, 80, 184; Zionism and, 44 Justice, 172, 242; idea of, 244, 246; nature of, 2 4 4 - 2 4 6 ; perfection of, 2 4 5 - 2 4 6 Kalam, l l l n 8 2 , 112n85; enlightened, 8 4 85 Kant, Immanuel, 134, 169, 173, 180nl8, 250 Kepler, Johannes, 149 Kind-relatedness, 2 4 3 - 2 4 4 Kinematics: Cartesian, 127; dynamics and, 128 Kingship, prophecy and, 193 Klein, Jacob, 67n45, 258; quote of, 176177 Knowledge, 176; ampliative, 134; Aristotle on, 180nl9: attainment of, 9; limitation of, 89; quest for, 186; sociology of, 31; Strauss on, 71n94 Kojeve, Alexandre, 157, 160-162; quote of, 268 Kraft und Verstand (Hegel), 141 Lacan, Jacques: quote of, 268 Law, 140, 251; concept of, 131-133, 135, 190; Descartes on, 134; divine, 15, 137, 150, 189, 193, 194; human, 138; idea of, 185-186, 188; infallible, 150; Maimonides on, 131, 138, 144n33, 146; philosophy and, 186, 189-191; physical, 141; primacy of, 191; scientific, 150-151; Spinoza on, 131134, 137, 141; Strauss on, 190. See also Natural law Laws (Plato), 95, 175, 189, 193, 246 Legein, 6, 10 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 56, 126, 135, 136, 151, 251 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 54, 66-68n45, 69n73, 71n99, 7 2 n l 0 8 , 126, 187, 308n8; Strauss on, 55-58, 61n6, 70n92, 70-7ln93 Letter on Astrology (Maimonides), 94

321

Leviathan (Hobbcs), 50 Liberalism, 21, 43, 179; Cohen and, 19; crisis of, 3 2 - 3 3 , 63-64n20; limitations of, 44; political, 76; religious, 45, 52; Spinoza and, 19 Libertas philosophandi, 137 Life-world, 169; religiosity of, 170 Literature, Strauss on, 269 Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, The (Diogenes Laertius), quote from, 5 Locke, John, 228, 229, 231, 248-251, 303; Strauss and, 75 Locrus, Timeus, 298 Logic, 100, 156 Logoi, 5, 6, 8 - 9 , 26n41 Logos, 7, 8, 9, 12, 16, 17, 26n41 Love, 163, 173; quest for, 9; self-, 125, 175 Lowith, Karl, 104 Lucretius, 253, 257, 262, 263; Strauss on, 254, 258, 261 Machiavelli, 2 3 n l 5 , 50, 65n33, 68n45, 69n52, 117, 181n22, 231, 2 4 7 - 2 5 0 , 302; political thought of, 230; Strauss on, 75, 109n44, 157, 253, 258 Maimon, Salomon, 22n3, 103 Maimonides, Moses, 2, 18, 26-27n63, 38, 60n2, 6 3 n l 6 , 64n24, 69n75, 70n92, 89 n9, 11 l n 8 2 , 1 1 4 n l l 8 , 136, 144n33, 200; Averroes and, 191; Cohen on, 62n8, 7 4 n l 2 4 ; detail by, 97-98; Enlightenment of, 46, 185; esoteric writing of, 77, 287-289, 305-306; falasifa and, 201, 225n21; interpretation of, 83, 107nl9; Judaism and, 47; misunderstanding of, 100; Mosaic prophecy and, 87; natural science and, 82; Nietzsche and, 105; Plato and, 58, 189; political philosophy of, 183, 189; rationalism and, 42-43, 184; reverence for, 41, 75; Spinoza and, 123-126, 137; Strauss on, 36-37, 41-44, 58, 59, 61n4, 61-62n7, 75, 7 7 - 8 3 , 85-89, 93-100, 102-106, 106n2, 139-140, 145, 190, 192, 199, 258, 287; writing of, 100 Mannheim, Karl, 31 Marcuse, Herbert, 32 Marion, Jean-Luc, 134 Marx, Karl, 158; Strauss on, 11, 26n54 Marxism, 32; Bakhtin and, 301, SOSSOS

322

INDEX

Materialism, 241; ancient, 234; Hobbes on, 248 Mathematics, 230; Bacon on, 148, 149, 292; Grosseteste on, 148, 149; Spinoza on, 153 Meditations (Descartes), 50 Memorabilia (Xenophon), 5, 8, 9 Mendelssohn, Moses, 13, 52, 53, 56, 70n77, 75, 94, 126; atheism and, 7 2 n l l 0 ; Jacobi and, 61n6 Metamorphosis, Strauss on, 10-11 Metaphysical neutrality, 231, 237, 248, 249, 251, 252n8; Hobbes on, 250 Metaphysics, 21, 117, 124, 187, 243, 248-249; Bacon on, 291, 311n33; Hume on, 249; Locke on, 249; medieval, 189; Strauss on, 77; teleological, 231; theocentric, 2 5 0 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 174 Miller, J. Hillis: quote of, 284-285 Mineness, 175 Miracles, 80, 121nl0, 123, 124, 138, 184 Mishnah Commentary (Maimonides), 82 Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 37, 78, 8 0 83, 97, 101, 103, 125 Mitzvot, 137, 141 Modernity, 11, 21, 125, 198; critique of, 158; Machiavelli on, 157; Strauss on, 166 Moderns, 232; ancients and, 155, 157-159, 231, 236, 263-264n2; Swift and, 157 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 104 Monadology (Leibnitz), 136 Monotheism, 82, 87 Morality, 48, 170; model of, 101 Moreh (Maimonides), 96, 123, 124, 138, 139 Moses, 80, 97, 107nl8, 116; law of, 133, 135, 137; prophecy of, 87; wisdom of, 139 Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 97 Mutakallimun, Maimonides and, 84, 85 Mysticism, Scholem, 35 Narboni, Moses, 103 Naturalism, 102; Hobbes and, 231 Natural law, 140, 146, 227; modern, 229; Stoic, 242, 243, 245, 246; Strauss on, 229; Thomistic, 228, 229, 242, 243, 246. See also Law Natural right, 227, 228, 232, 244-245; Aristotelian, 229; Burke on, 248; classic, 242; duality of, 244; emergence

of, 247; Hobbes on, 234; idea of, 233, 237, 239; individualism and, 230; Plato on, 231; Socratic-Platonic form of, 2 4 2 244; Strauss on, 244 Natural Right and History (Strauss), 116, 158, 161, 169, 176, 232, 234, 236, 238, 241, 244, 249; historical dimension of, 229; publication of, 227; quote from, 159, 165, 228, 230; s e l f criticism in, 239 Natural science: Cartesian, 130-131; Maimonides on, 82. See also Science Nature, 146; Bacon on, 148; causes of, 150; convention and, 121; discovery of, 186, 239-241; idea of, 239-240, 247, 248; justice and, 246; laws of, 134, 136-138, 144n33, 150, 151, 191. 251; Maimonides on, 138; mastery of, 236; Rousseau on, 277, 280-281; rules of, 136-137; Spinoza on, 138; study of, 163 Nature of Jewish History—Its Universal Significance, The (Talmon), 21 Necessity, 119, 120, 150, 234; contingency and, 118; logographic, 306 Neoconservatives, Strauss and, 3 8 - 3 9 New Criticism, 261, 269 New thinking, 4, 36, 50, 64n24 Newton, Isaac, 126, 134, 251 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 174, 175; Strauss on, 157, 170 Nieto, David, 146-147 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 12, 67n45, 77, 1 1 4 n l l 8 , 158, 161, 162, 166, 227, 234, 235, 249, 300; ancients and, 231; Heidegger and, 177; Maimonides and, 105; Strauss on, 11, 23nl2, 24n29, 26n54, 7 2 n l 0 8 , 75, 104-105, 1 1 3 n l 0 8 , 113—114nl 13 Nihilism, 76, 227 Nobility, 1 6 5 - 1 6 6 Noesis noeseos, 10-11, 22, 116 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), 123 Novum Organum (Bacon), 133, 157 Nuriel, Aryeh, 140 Objectivity, 1 6 9 - 1 7 0 Of Grammatology (Derrida), 280 On Tyranny: An Interpretation of Xenophon's Hiero (Strauss), 157, 255 Optics (Newton), 134 Ordo cognoscendi, 131

INDEX

Or do essendi, 131 Ordo naturalis, 150-151 Orthodoxy, 13, 38, 45, 57, 58, 66n40, 195, 196; affirmation of, 36; appearance of, 272-273, 278; atheism and, 187; Enlightenment and, 51, 52, 54, 6 7 68n45, 71n99, 184-187; Lessing on, 5 5 - 5 6 , 69n73; neo-, 36; philosophy and, 68n45, 69n73; rationalism and, 238; refutation of, 52, 160; Spinoza and, 126; Strauss and, 36; victory of, 46, 50, 55, 6 3 n l 5 , 238 Ownness, 175 Paganism, 82, 135 Passion, Aristotle on, 174 Perfection, 49, 135-137, 246-248; pursuit of, 245 Persecution, 268, 271-273, 277, 296, 3 0 9 n l 7 , 313n50; avoiding, 300-301; Bacon on, 297; Derrida on, 311n26; Strauss on, 38; textual model of, 16; writing and, 298 Persecution and the Art of Writing (Strauss), 34, 258; description of, 31; quote from,

16 Peshat, 82, 124 Phaedrus (Plato), 259; Strauss on, 306 Philebus (Plato), 161 Philosopher-king, 189; prophet and, 193 Philosophers; Maimonides on, 194; poets and, 175; revelation and, 188; Rousseau on, 276; Strauss on, 31, 160-162 Philosophic und Gesetz (Strauss), 13, 42, 43, 47, 52, 76, 78, 94, 95; argument of, 184-195; goal of, 194; mistranslation of, 195-202; translation of, 183 Philosophy, 12, 2 3 n l 3 , 38; abandonment of, 233; alternatives to, 15; Averroes on, 190, 192; Bible and, 58; Christian, 31, 32; classical, 160, 170, 171, 175-176, 247; creation and, 116, 121, 240, 247; deconstruction and, 285; divine and, 170; end of, 177; Enlightenment and, 186; epistemology, 249; Fontelle on, 157; freedom of, 190-192; Gersonides on, 192; Greek, 31; Guttmann on, 188; Heidegger on, 176, 181n26; historicism and, 186, 233; history of, 8, 186; idea of, 232, 233, 236-242, 247, 248; Islamic, 31; Judaism and, 18, 20, 31, 6 3 n l 6 , 125; Klein and, 176; law and, 186, 189-191; Maimonides on, 191,

323

192; mechanistic, 198; medieval, 6 3 n l 6 , 188; modern, 6 3 n l 6 , 65n33, 176, 183, 236, 247; moral, 21; piety and, 170-171; poetry and, 156, 266n30; possibility of, 232-233, 236, 237, 242; premodern, 172; prophecy and, 192; religion and, 3, 15, 238; revelation and, 6 3 n l 5 , 94, 136, 159, 188, 238; roots of, 179; Rousseau on, 237; science and, 176, 178-179, 213; society and, 269; sociology of, 31-32, 40n29; Socratic, 231, 243; Strauss on, 22, 28n79, 136, 160-162, 165, 175-176, 178-179, 190, 271, 307. See also Political philosophy Philosophy as Rigorous Science (Husserl), quote from, 178 Philosophy of religion, 199, 200, 201; Guttmann and, 188 Phoronomy, Cartesian, 127 Phronesis, doctrine of, 174 Physics, 150, 231; Bacon on, 148; Cartesian, 128; mathematization of, 153, 230; modern, 236; Spinoza on, 126, 129-131, 152; theoretical, 291; transformation of, 129-130 Physics (Aristotle), 139 Piety: personalistic, 198; philosophy and, 170-171; Strauss on, 171 Pines, Shlomo, 123, 124, 125-126, 140 Plato, 12, 15, 25n37, 37, 38, 47, 6 6 67n45, 77, 78, 89, 95, 96, 1 1 4 n l l 8 , 115, 157, 158, 161, 169, 172, 174, 186, 188, 193, 228, 231, 232, 242, 246, 253, 255, 256, 262, 263, 2 6 3 n l , 2 6 5 n l 0 , 305; contradictions by, 277; cosmology of, 164; Maimonides and, 58, 194; political philosophy of, 189; Strauss on, 75, 165, 254, 258, 260, 261, 306; writing of, 2 5 8 - 2 5 9 Plato (Farabi), Strauss on, 34 Platonic dialogue, 269, 306; contradiction in, 277; Maimonides on, 88; narrative style of, 259; Strauss on, 258-261 Platonic Ideas, 161-163 Platonism: Maimonides on, 194-195; medieval, 189 Poetry, 24n22, 261; Bacon on, 155-156, 296; Fontelle on, 156-157; perfection of, 156; philosophy and, 156, 266n30; Strauss on, 166 Poets, philosophers and, 175

324

INDEX

Political philosophy, 34, 97, 115, 175, 256, 311n33; classical, 163-166, 172; emergence of, 247; function of, 163; Heidegger on, 172; Husserl on, 169, 178; Maimonides and, 183; Plato on, 189; Strauss on, 162-164, 169, 172, 256. See also Philosophy Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Strauss), 13; publication of, 253 Politics, 17, 97; contemplative life and, 101-102; content of, 188; philosophy and, 34, 165, 166 Politics (Aristotle), 95, 107nl5 Polybius, 254 Polytheism, 197; Strauss on, 198 Pope, Alexander: quote of, 267 Positivism, 15, 162; Strauss and, 14 Poverty, pride and, 158 Power, 125, 166 Prejudice, 49, 50, 54, 5 6 - 5 8 , 184, 194; discarding, 55; Enlightenment and, 48, 66n33; Strauss on, 4 7 - 4 8 Premodernity, 125; Strauss and, 54 Prince, The (Machiavelli), 157-158 Principles of Philosophy (Descartes), 133 Probity, 196; intellectual, 2 4 n l 9 , 105, 185; Strauss on, 7 3 n l l 3 Prophecy, 123, 124, 201; doctrine of, 96; kingship and, 193; Maimonides on, 102, 192, 199, 225n21; philosophy and, 192; Strauss on, 102, 193 Prophet, 188-189; Maimonides on, 194; philosopher-king and, 193 Prophetology, 69n75, 95, 194; Maimonides on, 192, 193 Prudence, 161, 245 Pseudorationalism, 178 Psychagogia, 261 Psychology, classical, 174 Pythagoreans, Toland on, 2 9 8 - 2 9 9 Rabad, Abraham ibn Daud, 103 Rabelais and His World (Bakhtin), 302-303 Rationalism, 106n2, 186; Cartesian, 236; distinctiveness of, 43; Guttmann on, 188; Judaism and, 37, 43, 45, 47; Maimonides on, 4 2 - 4 3 , 184, 194, 195; medieval, 188, 195; modern, 37, 4 3 - 4 7 , 49, 50, 64n29, 65n33, 66-67n45, 76, 195, 238; orthodoxy and, 238; premodern, 43, 47; prototype of, 184, 194; self-destruction of, 37; Strauss on,

43, 46, 49, 52, 62n7, 65n33, 188, 195, 236; true, 43 Reader-response criticism, Strauss and, 272 Reading: Bacon on, 290; Maimonides on, 288; phenomenology of, 272-273, 288; vulgar, 16 Reason: anonymity of, 20; relation of, 118; revelation and, 59, 161, 188, 199, 201 Rationalism, Rebirth of Classical Political The (Strauss), 116 Recollection, 9, 26n41, 54 Regiomontanus, 147 Regulae (Descartes), 133, 156 Relativism, 105; historical, 36, 232 Religion: philosophy and, 3, 15, 238; resurrection of, 70n90; roots of, 84, 187 Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (Cohen), 1, 20, 21, 33, 41 Republic (Plato), 5, 6, 95, 157, 161, 174, 189, 193, 246; Strauss on, 260, 2 6 8 269 Resoluteness, 177; Heidegger on, 173 Return: movement of, 36, 14 45, 50, 56, 64n24; Strauss on, 49 Revelation, 9 - 1 0 , 15, 19, 78, 89, 95, 123, 124, 137, 184, 187-188, 193, 195, 196, 200, 239; actuality of, 189-190; dependence on, 191; divine, 45, 48, 50, 6 3 n l 5 , 64n24, 7 2 n l l 3 ; God and, 80; Maimonides on, 188; miracle of, 80; philosophy and, 6 3 n l 5 , 94, 136, 159, 188, 238; reason and, 59, 161, 188, 199, 201; Strauss on, 136; vindication of, 50 Rhetoric, 273, 283-284; Bacon on, 2 9 6 297; Maimonides on, 289; Rousseau on, 281; Strauss on, 269 Romanticism, 56, 57, 7 2 n l l 0 ; Spinoza and, 123 Rosenzweig, Franz, 3, 4, 33, 36-38, 44, 46, 52, 68n45, 70n90, 75; Enlightenment and, 54; Strauss on, 11, 13-14, 64n24; thought of, 4 9 - 5 0 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 181n22, 227, 228, 229, 234, 235, 237, 248, 250, 251, 313n50; de Man on, 280-282, 284, 310n22; Derrida on, 280; esoteric writing of, 274-279; reasoning of, 274; Strauss on, 158, 276, 281, 282, 310n22 Rules: natural, 140; Spinoza on, 133-134 Sabianism, 82, 99

INDEX

St. Augustine, esolericisrr. and, 298 Scarcity: economics of, 157, 158 Schmitt, Carl, 13 Schoeps, Hans Joachim, 3 2 - 3 3 , 35 Scholem, Gershom, 33, 37, 38, 62n7; quote of, 35 Science, 151; Bacon on, 156; Cartesian, 126; idea of, 237-238; philosophy and, 176, 178-179, 213; roots of, 179; Strauss on, 28n79, 232, 271; value of, 237. See also Natural science Science of the whole, 242, 243 Second Discourse (Rousseau), 248, 274, 275; de Man on, 280-281 Second Table of the Decalogue, 246 Secularism, 69n52, 76. See also Rationalism Sefer ha-Madda (Maimonides), 124 Seinkönnen, Heidegger on, 173 Sein und Zeit (Heidegger), 172 Self-sufficiency, 119, 120, 121 Semi-theism, 56 Shem Tob, 103 Shorey, Paul, 260 Short Treatise (Spinoza), quote from, 128, 130 Silence, meaning of, 98 Simonides, 255; Strauss on, 257 Skepticism, 307; dogmatism and, 250 Social Contract (Rousseau), de Man on, 282 Socrates, 4, 15, 16, 21, 26n41, 31, 38, 65n33, 7 3 n l 2 0 , 77, 89, 115, 157, 171, 228, 243, 247, 259, 271, 305, 307; interpretation of, 5; memorabilia of, 9; speech by, 5, 6, 161; Strauss on, 6 - 8 , 12, 25n37, 26n47, 116, 255 Socrates and Aristophanes (Strauss), 255, 261 Species, Bacon on, 149 Speech, thought and, 158 Spinoza, 2, 3, 4, 13, 33, 44, 47, 52, 54, 57, 6 3 n l 5 , 64n20, 68n45, 70n82, 70n92, 7 2 n l 0 8 , 75, 76, 94, 117, 129, 130, 134, 160, 238, 251; Cohen on, 18; critique by, 127-128; elevation of, 18, 19; historicism of, 36; liberalism and, 19; limits of, 58; Maimonides and, 123126, 137; Strauss on, 18-19, 32, 39n4, 51, 77, 89n3, 93, 1 1 3 n l l 3 , 123, 258 Spinoza's Critique of Religion. See Die Religionskritik Spinoiasals Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft Spirit, transformation of, 10-11

325

Spiritedness, 180r.l8; Aristotle on, 1 8 0 181nl9; Heidegger on, 175 Spiritual comfort, seeking, 19, 177 Statesman (Plato), Strauss on, 161 Stoics, 228, 231, 245; Spinoza and, 156; Toland and, 299 Strauss, Leo: Cohen and, 4—5, 22-23n3; criticism of, 17-18; education of, 1 2 13; iconoclasm of, 36; influence of, 262, 267; interpretation by, 12, 15 , 98-100, 254, 2 5 6 - 2 5 7 , 263, 267-268, 270, 308n8, 310n22; as mediator, 2; methodology of, 83, 9 3 - 9 4 , 115; mistranslation of, 195-202; reading by, 16-18, 2 0 9 n l 7 , 257, 262, 2 6 4 2 6 5 n l 0 , 266n35, 314n50; style of, 9 6 97, 100-101; work of, 6, 14-15, 17, 268; writing of, 13, 18, 20, 27n66, 38, 94, 2 5 3 - 2 5 6 , 260, 264n8, 266n32, 267-269 Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Strauss), 1, 20 Substance, 269; Descartes on, 134 Suffering, 34 Summum bonum, 231 Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Marion), 134 Swift, Jonathan, 71n93, 157 Symposium (Aristotle), Strauss on, 157 Tadbir, 138-140 Talmon, J. L., 21 Technology, 166; victory of, 158, 177 Teleology, 242, 245; classical, 231; Hobbes on, 230; Strauss on, 230-231 Tertullian, 124 Teshuva, 36, 44. See also Return Tetragrammaton, 117 Theioi nomoi, 9-10. See also Revelation Theological-Political Treatise. See Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Theology. See Religion Theoria, 11-12, 17 Thinking, 8, 9, 25n38; philosophical, 18, 25n37; Strauss on, 19 Thought: action and, 27n71; speech and, 158 Thoughtfulness, Jewish, 125 Thoughts on Machiavelli (Strauss), 253 Thucydides, 165, 255, 256, 262, 263, 2 6 3 n l ; Strauss on, 254, 258, 261 Timaeus (Plato), 96, 246 Toland, John: esoteric writing of, 2 9 8 - 3 0 0

326

INDEX

Torah, 64n24, 76, 78, 81, 84, 88, 136, 192; Maimonides on, 79; return to, 36; Strauss on, 8, 37 Tractate Megillah, 125 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Spinoza), 13, 123, 126, 131, 132, 133, 135, 156 Tradition, disavowal of, 10 Transcendence, 118-119 Transformation, Strauss on, 10-11 Treatise on Logic, The (Maimonides), 80, 85, 94 Treatise on Poisons, The (Maimonides), 125 Truth, 199; Descartes on, 134; exposing, 96; honoring, 171; ideal of, 105, 160; intellectual approach to, 88; love of, 7 2 n l l 3 , 171; Nietzsche, and, 166; possibility of, 58; search for, 105; Spinoza on, 135; Strauss and, 166; voluntarism of, 134 Truth and Method, Strauss on, 269 Understanding: understanding of, 10-11, 22, 116 Universal Nature, 147 Values, secularization of, 48 Vienna Lecture (Strauss), quote from, 178 Virtue, 157, 158, 165, 172, 175; Heidegger on, 173; intellectual, 174; moral, 21, 174 Vlastos, Gregory, 262 Voluntarism, 149, 151; Cartesian, 1 3 4 135; Spinoza on, 135

von Fritz, Kurt, 260 Wanting, 175 Warburg, Aby, 35 Wars of the Lord, Strauss on, 95 Weber, Max, 159, 160, 237-238 Weimar Jews: mentality of, 32-33; Strauss and, 3 8 - 3 9 What is Political Philosophy (Strauss), 158, 161-162 What Plato Said (Shorey), 260 Wisdom, 49, 57, 181nl9, 244, 250; beginning of, 7; love of, 20, 51, 71n94; Mosaic, 139; search for, 160 Writing: art of, 105, 257, 258, 298; Bacon on, 290, 293; exoteric, 276; persecution and, 298; restoration of, 17; Strauss on, 258, 263, 269, 273; studying, 278. See also Esoteric writing Xenophon, 6, 7, 8, 21, 25n37, 26n47, 115, 262, 305, 306; Strauss on, 75, 157, 2 5 3 - 2 5 8 , 261, 264n7, 2 6 4 n l 0 , 2 6 5 n l 9 Xenophon's Socrates (Strauss), 8, 255 Xenophon's Socratic Discourse (Strauss), 255 Zarathustra, 10 Zen Buddhism, 123 Zionism, 3, 3 9 n l l , 75; atheistic, 44; cultural, 44-45; failure of, 33-34; Judaism and, 44; political, 185; religious, 76; Strauss and, 12, 33, 36, 37 Zuhandenheit, doctrine of, 175

About the Book Leo Strauss sought to revive political philosophy as it was practiced by thinkers like Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Montesquieu. His penetrating studies of the masters of both classical political philosophy and modern political thought have suggested that philosophical and political issues long thought dead and buried may be not only alive, but at the root of contemporary uncertainties and perplexities. This work provides the most comprehensive picture available of Strauss's thought and intellectual impact. The dozen essays, arranged in contrasting pairs, analyze his early development; his lifelong work on Maimonides; his ideas on the issues of Athens vs. Jerusalem, the ancients vs. the moderns, and the discontinuity or linkage between politics and theology; and finally, his literary hermeneutics.

327