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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
by Allan Bloom
But I have spoken too academically, and Leo Strauss's thought was never academic. It had its source in the real problems of a serious life. His intellectual odyssey began with his Zionism. Assimilation and Zionism were the two solutions to what was called "the Jewish problem." Zionism understood assimilation to be both impossible and demeaning. The establishment of a Jewish state was the only worthy and proud alternative. This formulation of the choice was predicated on the assumption that Orthodox Judaism – the belief in the letter of Mosaic revelation and the acceptance of the fate of Jews in the Diaspora as part of Divine Providence to be changed only by the coming of the Messiah – is no longer tenable for thoughtful men. In fact, the situation of the Jews could only be looked on as a problem, requiring and susceptible of a solution, in the light of that assumption. "The Jewish Problem" was a child of the Enlightenment, with its contempt for revelation and its assurance that political problems, once posed as such, can be solved. Strauss, while accepting the Zionist view of assimilation, wondered whether a strictly political or secular response to the Jewish situation in
As it then appeared to Strauss,[i] Spinoza directed his criticism of the Jewish tradition against two kinds of men – the Orthodox who believe in the divinely revealed character of every word of the Torah and for whom there was no need for, and a positive hostility toward, philosophy; and the philosophers, Maimonides in particular, who tried to show that reason and revelation are compatible, that Aristotelian philosophy arrived at by unaided reason is in perfect harmony with and is perfected by the Mosaic revelation. Briefly, Strauss concluded that Spinoza's method of textual criticism was persuasive only insofar as one believed that the textual difficulties cannot be explained as miracles or as the result of supernatural and suprarational causes and that Spinoza gave no adequate proof of that belief. Hence, he found, in agreement with Pascal, that the strictest orthodoxy which refused any concession to philosophy could still be maintained. And he also concluded that he must study Maimonides, for he had to see whether it was a failure of reason that made this philosopher remain loyal to the Jewish people and its sacred book. For, unlike Pascal, he was not prepared to reject philosophy.
So Strauss turned to Maimonides. His first impression was bewilderment. It was not only that he could make no sense of it; he felt utterly alien to the manner of thought and speech. But it was always his instinct to look for something important in that which seemed trivial or absurd at first impression, for it is precisely by such an impression that our limitations are protected from challenge. These writings were distant from what he understood philosophy to be, but he could not accept the ready explanations based on abstractions about the medieval mind. He kept returning to Maimonides and also to the Islamic-thinkers who preceded and inspired Maimonides. And gradually Strauss became aware that these medieval thinkers practiced an art of writing forgotten by us, an art of writing with which they hid their intentions from all but a select few. He had discovered esoteric writing. By the most careful readings, the texts become intelligible and coherent to rational men. This discovery, for which Strauss is famous and for which he is derided by those who established their reputations on conventional interpretations, may appear to be at best only an interesting historical fact, akin to learning how to read hieroglyphics. But it is fraught with philosophic significance, for the different mode of expression reflects a different understanding of reason and its relation to civil society. When one becomes aware of this, one is enabled to learn strange and wonderful things and to recognize the questionable character of our own view, to which we see no alternative. Out of this discovery emerged the great themes that dominated the rest of Strauss's life: Ancients and Modems, and
Strauss found that the harmony of reason and revelation was Maimonides' and Farabi's public teaching, while the private teaching was that there is a radical and irreducible tension between them; he found that the teachings of reason are wholly different from and incompatible with those of revelation and that neither side could completely refute the claims of the other but that a choice had to be made. This is, according to these teachers, the most important issue facing man. It turned out that the opposition between reason and revelation was no less extreme in Maimonides than in Spinoza and that Maimonides was no less rational than Spinoza. Strauss also later learned that Spinoza too recognized and used the classic art of writing. Wherein, then, did the difference lie? Put enigmatically, Spinoza no longer believed in the permanent necessity of that art of writing. His use of it was in the service of overcoming it. He thought it possible to rationalize religion and, along with it, civil society. Philosophy, instead of the secret preserve of a few who accept the impossibility of the many being philosophers, or truly tolerating it, could be the instrument of transforming society and bringing enlightenment. Maimonides' loyalty to the Jewish people may have been due less to his faith in the Bible than his doubt as to the possibility or desirability of depriving them of that faith. Spinoza, on the other hand, was a member of a conspiracy the project of which was the alteration of what were previously considered to be the necessary conditions of human life. This project required a totally different view of the nature of things, and it is the essence of modernity. It began in agreeing with the ancients that the primary issue is the religious question. With its success, its origins in this question disappeared from sight. Hence, to understand ourselves, we must return to this origin and confront it with the view of things it replaced. Nietzsche, Strauss found, was wrong in his belief that there is a single line of Western rationalism originating in the ancients and culminating in contemporary science.
There was a great break somewhere in the sixteenth century. Nietzsche's critique of rationalism might well hold good for modern rationalism, but the character of ancient rationalism is unknown to us. A choice had been made by modern man, but whether that choice had led to broader horizons seen from a higher plateau is not clear.
Moreover, in his study of Maimonides and the Islamic thinkers, Strauss found that they understood themselves not as innovators, as did the moderns, but as conveyors of a tradition that went back to Plato and that they had only adapted the Platonic teaching to the Judaic and Islamic revelations. Plato, he heard, was the teacher of prophecy. What in the world that meant he could not divine. So he turned to Plato, and it was by this route that he came to the ancients. His access to their thought was by way of medieval philosophy. He had, of course, had the classical education common in
Strauss discovered that Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Thucydides, as well as many others, wrote like the medieval thinkers who had pointed in this direction. The execution of Socrates for impiety is the threshold to the Platonic-world, and the investigation of philosophy's stance toward the g6ds is the beginning and end of those dialogues which are the supreme achievement of the ancient art of writing. Strauss found here the beginning point from which we would "be open to the full impact of the all important question which is coeval with philosophy although the philosophers do not frequently pronounce it — the question quid sit deus."[ii] The profound opposition between
