(Clark A Merrill) Strauss' Indictment of Christian Philosophy

Leo Strauss's Indictment of Christain Philosophy
Author(s): Clark A. Merrill

Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 62, No. 1, Christianity and Politics: Millennial Issue II
(Winter, 2000), pp. 77-105
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Leo Strauss's
Indictment of Christain
Philosophy
Clark A. Merrill
Leo Strauss's
writings
reveal a subtle but consistent set of accusations
against
the influence of Christian thinkers on
political philosophy.
These accusations
may
be summarized in three
charges.
First,
the
attempt byAquinas
and other Christian
scholastics to
synthesize
faith and reason led later
philosophers
to eschew
prudence
in favor of a humane
project
to
employ
science to transform
political
life. The
result was the destruction of the modus
vivendi,
safeguarded by
classical
political
philosophy,
between
pious
citizens and diffident but
inwardly
free
philosophers.
Second,
the rationalization of
political
life
implies
that a universal
regime
is
possible.
But,
unless all men become
philosophers,
this universal
regime
can be
only
a
universal
tyranny,
ruled
by
means of
perverted
faith in the
guise
of a final
philosophy.
Third,
Christian thinkers must bear ultimate
responsibility
for
precipitating
the
early
modern
rejection
of classical
political philosophy.
Without
the Christian
appropriation
of
Aristotle,
there
might
never have been a Machiavelli
or a Hobbes.
In
1959,
Leo Strauss delivered a lecture at St.
John's
College
in honor of his old
friend, Jacob
Klein. In addition to the
lecture,
Strauss wrote a
prologue
which he did not deliver. It was
pub-
lished
only
in
1978,
five
years
after his death. To introduce the
subject
of Strauss's subtle indictment of Christian
philosophy,
I
would like to
quote
an extensive
passage
from this
prologue.1
A
Fellowship
from the Earhart Foundation
supported
work on the
original
version of this
essay.
The
manuscript
benefited from the careful
reading
of Charles
Butterworth and
Boynton
Merrill
1. There is a case to be made
that,
by setting
out
clearly
and
publicly
a criticism
that Strauss
intentionally
left
implicit,
I am
engaging
in a
morally suspect project.
It is
possible
I am
doing
a disservice both to
politically responsible
Jewish
and
Christian believers and to
political philosophers. George
Grant,
one of Strauss's
most
gifted
Christian
readers,
declined to write
publicly
about Strauss's criticisms
of Christian
philosophy.
See letter to Ed
Andrew,
27 December
1983,
in The
George
Grant
Reader,
ed. William Christian and Sheila Grant
(Toronto:
University
of Toronto
Press, 1998),
p.
267. I have been
encouraged
to
disregard
Grant's
judicious
caution
by
the
example
of
ThomasAquinas
who was not afraid to set out
objections
to his
own
positions
and even to orthodox
belief,
often
stating
those
arguments
with
greater clarity
and force than the
opponents
who
actually espoused
them. The
accusations set out below
may
be viewed as three extended
objections opening
an
article headed "Whether There Is a Christian
Philosophy?"
As
such,
they
invite an
answer and
replies
from the heirs of St. Thomas.
78 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
While
everyone
else in the
younger generation
who had ears to
hear was either
completely
overwhelmed
by Heidegger,
or
else,
having
been almost
completely
overwhelmed
by
him,
engaged
in
well-intentioned but ineffective
rearguard
actions
against
him,
Klein
alone saw
why Heidegger
is
truly important: 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.
Superficially
or
sociologically speaking,
Heidegger
was the first
great
German
philosopher
who was a
Catholic
by origin
and
by training;
he thus had from the outset a
premodern familiarity
with
Aristotle;
he thus was
protected against
the
danger
of
trying
to modernize Aristotle. But as a
philosopher
Heidegger
was not a Christian: he thus was not
tempted
to
understand Aristotle in the
light
of Thomas
Aquinas.
Above
all,
his
intention was to
uproot
Aristotle: he thus was
compelled
to disinter
the
roots,
to
bring
them to
light,
to look at them with wonder.2
Let us
probe
Strauss's discussion of roots and
uprooting,
and
his
coyness
about
declaring
how
long
these roots have been
hidden. It seems clear that the tradition whose roots became
obscured is the tradition of classical
political philosophy
or,
more
specifically,
the works of Plato and Aristotle. Klein's own
major
scholarly
work identified the fateful break with the classical
understanding
of the world and man's relation to the world as
having
occurred first and most
decisively
in the mathematical
thought
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If Strauss
agreed
that the roots of the classical tradition first became
obscured at the time of that
break,
why
would he have
employed
such
ostentatiously
obscure
language?
I
think, rather,
that the
key
to the
mystery
lies in Strauss's
reference to
Heidegger's early
Catholic
training.
It would seem
that this
training
was beneficial in that it
conveyed
a certain fa-
miliarity
with the classical
tradition;
Catholic
pedagogy
did not
2. Leo
Strauss,
"An
Unspoken Prologue," Jewish Philosophy
and the Crisis
of Modernity: Essays
and Lectures in Modern
Jewish
Thought,
ed. Kenneth Hart
Green
(Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press, 1997),
p.
450;
also
published
in
Interpretation
7,
no. 3
(1978):
1-3. Cf. Leo
Strauss,
The
City
and
Man
(Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1964), p.
9.
3.
Jacob Klein,
Greek Mathematical
Thought
and the
Origin of Algebra,
trans
Eva Brann
(Cambridge,
MA: The M.I.T.
Press, 1968),
pp.
78-79, 121-22,
123.
STRAUSS AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY
try
to make Aristotle into a modern
philosopher.
Yet
Heidegger
had to abandon his Catholic
training
before he could achieve an
untrammeled view of Aristotle.
Thus,
the roots would still remain
hidden as
long
as one was
"tempted
to understand Aristotle in
the
light
of Thomas
Aquinas."
Can we not
suppose,
then,
that
Heidegger
succeeded in
uncovering
the roots of the classical tra-
dition,
not for the first time in three centuries
(back,
say,
to
1659),
but for the first time in seven centuries
(back
to
1259,
two or three
years
before Thomas
Aquinas
wrote his Summa contra
Gentiles,
a
work
specifically
intended to refute the
opinions
of certain Mus-
lim
philosophers
"whose rationalism
may
furnish reasons to
oppose
revelation")?4
Here we have at least half of Strauss's
quar-
rel with Christian
philosophic thought
in
general
and with
Aquinas
in
particular. Aquinas
did not break with the Aristote-
lian
tradition;
he was not
"modern";
but
Aquinas
so deformed
that tradition
(and
his deformed version became so
authoritative,
even for those who
rejected
it)
as to make a clear
understanding
of its roots unavailable to later thinkers until our own
century.5
4. Etienne
Gilson,
The Christian
Philosophy of
St. Thomas
Aquinas (Notre Dame,
IN:
University
of Notre Dame
Press, 1956),
pp.
385-86.
5. One can find in numerous
places
in Strauss's
writings
a similar
complaint
against
those who misunderstand classical
philosophy
because
they
make the
mistake of
reading
it
through
the lens of Christian scholastic
concepts.
For one of
the most extensive
passages
on this
subject,
see Leo
Strauss,
Persecution and the
Art
of Writing (Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1988),
pp.
8-9. See also Leo
Strauss,
Philosophy
and
Law,
trans. Eve Adler
(Albany:
State
University
of New
York
Press, 1995),
p.
73;
and "How to
Begin
to
Study
Medieval
Philosophy,"
The
Rebirth
of
Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas L.
Pangle (Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1989),
p.
221;
and "On a New
Interpretation
of Plato's Political
philosophy,"
Social Research
13,
no. 3
(1946):328.
Finally,
there is a curious
passage
in a
very early
work where Strauss hails Nietzsche as the first modern thinker
who drew aside the curtain of Christian
thought
to reveal a
way
back,
not
only
to
a clear vision of medieval
Jewish
philosophy,
but also to a true
reading
of the
ancients.
Judaism,
according
to
Strauss,
can benefit from "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."
"Das
Heilige,"
in Der
Jude 7,
no 4
(1923): 241,
quoted
and translated
by
Remi
Brague,
"Leo Strauss and
Maimonides,"
in Leo Strauss's
Thought:
Toward a Critical
Engagement
(Boulder
and London:
Lynne
Riener, 1991),
104.
79
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
Thomas
Aquinas
and the Natural Law
There are four
paragraphs
in Persecution and the Art
of Writing
in which Strauss refers nine times to Islamic and
Jewish
philoso-
phy
and nine times to Christian scholasticism. Strauss did not use
words
casually. Clearly,
he did not consider the Christian
specu-
lative thinkers to have been
engaged
in
philosophy.
It is also
interesting
to note that Strauss refers to Maimonides as the
great-
est
Jewish thinker, while,
in the same
sentence,
he
says
that
Maimonides
regarded
Alfarabi as the
greatest
Islamic
philosopher.6
What, nevertheless,
decisively separates
both the
falasifa
and
Maimonides from
Aquinas
and the other Christian scholastics is
that the latter
accept
the
principle
of faith in their
speculative
in-
quiries.7 Aquinas
discusses what
man,
strictly by
the use of his
human or natural
reason,
can know about the law
(i.e.,
about how
he should
live);
but he embeds this discussion within a
larger
conceptual
framework that assumes the
validity
of truths known
only by
faith. More
precisely, Aquinas
teaches the existence of a
natural law: a code of rules that is
natural,
in the sense that it
may
be
apprehended by
unaided human
reason,
and also
law,
in the
sense that it
imposes
the moral
obligation
of a command.
How,
then,
does
Aquinas's approach
to law differ from one that makes
absolutely
no concession to faith?
The Muslim
philosophers
and
Jewish
thinkers reduced natu-
ral law to the minimal and flexible
(not
to
say, opportunistic)
code
of rules needed to
guide
the
practical,
social intercourse of one
whose life is directed toward
contemplation. By
contrast, the
Thomistic doctrine of natural law is characterized
by
"definite-
6. Laurence
Bers,
who
speaks
from
long personal acquaintance
as Strauss's
student and
colleague,
tells us that Strauss "insisted that
strictly speaking
there is
no such
thing
as
Jewish
philosophy."
Laurence
Bems,
"Leo Strauss
1899-1973,"
The
Independent
Journal
of Philosophy
2
(1978): 2,
first
appeared
in The
College, January
1974
(a
publication
of St.
John's
College, Annapolis,
MD).
Cf. Leo
Strauss,
"How
to
Begin
to
Study
The Guide
of
the
Perplexed,"
in Moses
Maimonides,
The Guide
of
the
Perplexed,
ed. Shlomo Pines
(Chicago
and London: The
University
of
Chicago
Press, 1963),
p.
xiv. Cf.
Strauss, Persecution,
pp.
19.
43,
104-105.
7.
Strauss,
Persecution and the Art
of Writing, pp.
8-9. In the title of this
essay,
it
seemed advisable to use the term Christian
philosophy
instead of Christian
scholasticism to alert readers to the broad
implications
of Strauss's
critique.
In the
text,
I have followed Strauss's
terminology.
80
ness and noble
simplicity."8 According
to
Aquinas,
the habit of
synderesis
enables the human intellect to
apprehend
the first
prin-
ciples
of
practical
reason;
it is from this universal and
incontrovertible foundation that all men are then able to deliber-
ate
concerning
the
application
of these
general principles
to
particular
circumstances.9
Furthermore,
the entire discussion of
morality
and law in
Aquinas' writings
occurs within a
larger
framework that
presumes
the creation of the universe
by
a
provi-
dential God.10
Therefore,
the entire universe embodies a willed
order,
which
Aquinas
calls the eternal
law;
and it is a small
part
of this order-the first
principles
of
practical
reason
apprehended
by
the human intellect
through synderesis, together
with the sec-
ondary
and
tertiary principles
derived from these-which
Aquinas
calls the natural law.11 For Aristotle nature
specifies only
an end for each kind of
thing;
the means to achieve that end
vary
with circumstance. For
Aquinas
all nature is a "normed creation."
Some actions are themselves
contrary
to nature and thus
always
wrong.
"The human
agent
orders himself
(or others)
to
justice by
virtue of
participating
in a received norm."12
Indeed,
the entire
First Part of the Summa
Theologiae
establishes a natural
theology
of God and
creation,
an account of the
originating
exitus or
going
out of all
things
from God as from a first
principle;
while the Sec-
ond Part treats the movement of the rational creature back to
God,
the
great
reditus or
returning
of creation to God as to an end. "The
doctrine of
synderesis
or of the conscience
explains why
the natu-
ral law can
always
be
duly promulgated
to all men and hence be
universally obligatory."13
It is not
surprising
that Strauss doubts
one could arrive at this doctrine without belief in biblical revela-
tion. To make the
grounds
of his doubt more
explicit,
he
presents
what
may,
in contrast to
Aquinas's,
be called the
philosopher's
understanding
of the natural law:
8. Leo
Strauss,
Natural
Right
and
History (Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press,
1953),
p.
163.
9. Thomas
Aquinas,
Summa
Theologiae
I, Q. 79,
a. 12.
10.
Ibid., I-II, Q. 90,
introduction.
11.
Ibid., I-II, Q. 91, a, 2; Q. 94,
a. 1.
12. Russell
Hittinger,
"Natural Law as 'Law': Reflections on the Occasion of
'Veritatis
Splendor,'"
The American
Journal of Jurisprudence
39
(1994):
14.
13.
Strauss,
Natural
Right
and
History, p.
163.
-
81
This doubt is
strengthened by
the
following
consideration: The natural
law which is knowable to the unassisted human mind and which
prescribes chiefly
actions in the strict sense is related
to,
or founded
upon,
the natural end of
man;
that end is twofold: moral
perfection
and intellectual
perfection;
intellectual
perfection
is
higher
in
dignity
than moral
perfection;
but intellectual
perfection
or
wisdom,
as
unassisted human reason knows
it,
does not
require
moral virtue.14
Except
in their exoteric
teaching,
their
prudent deployment
of the
kalam,
the
philosophers
of Islam do not
recognize
the existence of
any
universal and
morally obligatory
rational laws.15 In contrast
to this
understanding
of the natural
law,
which
may
be called
"the
philosophic
view,"
one is
compelled
to describe "Thomas'
interpretation
as the view of the kalam
or,
perhaps,
as the theo-
logical
view."16
The
philosopher's
awareness of his own
ignorance
concern-
ing
the most vital
questions
about how to live convinces him that
the
highest
and most
urgent
task for man is to seek
knowledge.
For a
believer, however,
the best life cannot consist in the
quest
for
knowledge,
a
quest
that assumes a lack of
wisdom; rather,
the
most
important things, including
the best
way
of
life,
must be
revealed;
they
cannot be known. Whatever
topic
the
religious
thinker
takes
up,
he ends
by referring
it to
God,
in whom all that is
origi-
nates and to whom all
things
return. Scholasticism subordinated
philosophy
to doctrines
accepted upon
faith.
14.
Ibid.,
163-64.
15. Kalam refers to a kind of
speculative
or theoretical
thought
that does not
take
theory
as its chief
goal
but rather aims at the defense of
religion.
The term
originally
described the
teachings
of Muslim dialectical
theologians
who
attempted
to construct a rational defense of
religion.
One of the chief
parts
of this Islamic
science or kaldm was a
teaching
known in the Christian tradition as natural law.
The
capacity
of human reason to
prescribe
rational laws for the attainment of human
happiness
is
incorporated,
as in Plato's
Laws,
into a
theology
of divine
providence,
which lends the rational laws a
weight
of moral
obligation
that
they
would not
otherwise
possess.
The
theologians'
science of kaldm elevates the rational laws to
the status of rational commandments. Islamic
philosophers,
such as
Alfarabi,
however,
adapted
this
theological apologetics
and made it continue to
perform
its
function of rational
persuasion,
but now in the service of
philosophy.
Thus,
we
must
distinguish
a
philosophic
kaliam from the
original theological
kalam. See
Strauss,
of Writing, pp.
10-13.
16.
Strauss,
of Writing, pp.
97-98. Cf. Leo
Strauss,
"Criticism: Sixteen
Appraisals,"
What Is Political
Philosophy? (Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1959),
p.
285.
I
82
Aquinas,
then,
is
simply
not a
philosopher
in the same sense
as
Plato, Aristotle,
or Alfarabi.
Yet,
he is also not a Christian
thinker in the same sense that Halevi and Maimonides are
Jew-
ish thinkers.
They
took
philosophy
on the terms established
by
the
philosophers,
not to embrace but to
oppose
it or at least to
buffer the
city
from
philosophy's
subversive effects.17
By
con-
trast,
Aquinas attempted
to establish a
synthesis
of
philosophy
and revelation.
According
to
Strauss,
the
attempt
to create such a
synthesis
threatens to
destroy
reason itself.18
Admittedly, Aquinas gave great
weight
to the role of custom in
political
life,
and he never
sup-
posed
that a
thoroughly
rationalized
political
order was
possible.19
But,
all too
soon,
the ambition to
unify
the life of
theory
and the
life of action led
other,
less subtle and
judicious
thinkers to
aspire
to a rational ethics that could
dispense
with the
prudent
reticence
of the classical
political philosophers.
Later
philosophers
would
subject
the
opinions
that form the foundation of civic
friendship
to
public scrutiny.
Thus,
we discover a line
connecting
Thomas's
synthesis
to the
philosophers
of the modern
enlightenment
whom
Lessing
would rebuke for
having
"evaded the contradiction be-
tween wisdom and
prudence by becoming
much too wise to
submit to the rule of
prudence
which had been observed
by
Leibniz and all the ancient
philosophers."20 Eventually,
the modus
vivendi between
pious
citizens and diffident but
inwardly
free
phi-
losophers
breaks
down,
to be
replaced
in our own time
by
bickering
intellectuals,
grim ideologues,
hot-headed
political
en-
17. See
Strauss,
"The Law of Reason in the
Kuzari,"
in Persecution and the Art
of Writing, pp.
13941.
18. Strauss's thesis
regarding
Christian scholasticism's
responsibility
for
modem
philosophy's
submission to
popular opinion
is summarized
by
Nasser
Behnegar,
"Leo Strauss's Confrontation with Max Weber: A Search for a Genuine
Social Science,"
Review
of
Politics
59,
no. 1
(1997):
118n56.
"Strauss, therefore,
suggests
that the Scholastic
synthesis
of
philosophy
and Christian revelation was
really
an
attempt
to resolve the conflict in favor of revelation. It was on account of
this
attempted
resolution that
philosophy
first lost its character as a
way
of life and
became an instrument or a
department,
a view which has survived scholasticism
and continues to obscure the conflict between
philosophy
and revelation."
Behnegar
also makes a useful distinction between a
that makes itself
useful to
politics
and a
that becomes confused with
politics.
19.
Aquinas,
Summa
Theologiae
I-II, Q. 97,
a.
2,
ad.
1;
and a.
3, c.,
ad. 2.
20.
Strauss,
"The Problem of
Socrates,"
Rebirth
of
Classial Political
Rationalism,
p.
70.
83
thusiasts,
and
religious
zealots,
all
claiming,
like Plato's
Euthyphron,
to
possess special insight
into the truth.21
Those who would resist Strauss's insistence on the
sharp
dis-
tinction between
knowledge
and
opinion,
nature and
convention,
are the same as those who
reject
the
implications
of Plato's
story
of the cave.
According
to
Plato,
the multitude can never leave the
cave;
they
can never see
things
in their
true,
natural
light.
It is
crucial that
anyone inquiring
into
politics
understand that the
city
is the
cave,
is
always
the
cave,
can never be other than the
cave.
Any philosopher
(or
theologian)
who would
attempt
to
open
the cave to the direct
light
of truth risks
catastrophe.
"For if even
the best
city
stands or falls
by
a fundamental
falsehood,
albeit a
noble
falsehood,
it can be
expected
that the
opinions
on which
the
imperfect
cities rest or in which
they
believe will not be
true,
to
say
the least."22 In
Judaism
and
Islam,
the divine law-Torah
and
Shari'a-enjoined upon
man is coterminous with the
par-
ticular,
earthly regime;
the divine law does not
point beyond
the
city
in a
way
that makes the law
ultimately incompatible
with a
closed
city.
The divine law is the law of the
city.
The New Testa-
ment,
on the other
hand,
provides
no
legal
code; instead,
it
recounts events and
presents propositions
or
dogmas
which the
faithful must believe. The Christian is called to embrace truths
that transcend the customs and stand in
judgment
above
every
particular legal
code. These truths known
by
faith
provide
the
stamp
of
certainty
to
philosophical speculation, pronounce judg-
ment where
philosophers
differ,
and illuminate answers where
the
philosophers
had known
only questions.
It was
possible
to
proclaim Christianity
as the true
philosophy,
in relation to which
all
preceding philosophies
were
imperfect precursors.
Strauss saw this assimilation of
philosophy
to faith as a fatal
temptation.
The
attempt
to
synthesize philosophy,
which takes
its
starting place
from the
quest
for
knowledge
of the
eternal,
uncreated natures of
things,
and biblical
faith,
which takes its start-
ing place
from the
mysterious
will of an
omnipotent
and
omniscient
Creator,
can
only
lead to the
fracturing
of reason itself
and a return
(discernible
in Max
Weber)
to
warring gods.
From
Strauss's
perspective,
the unredeemable error or indiscretion of
21. See
Strauss,
"On the
Euthyphron,"
in Rebirth
of
Classical Political Rationalism.
22.
Strauss,
The
City
and
Man,
p.
125.
84
Christian scholasticism was the
attempt
to
unify
faith and rea-
son,
the
attempt
to
underpin morality
with rational laws. Christian
thinkers from the time of the Greek fathers have held that men
may
attain
philosophic
truths
by nonphilosophic
means. If one
begins
from
faith,
one will
understandably suppose
that reason
needs
faith,
for without faith reason's road to truth will be
longer
and less
certain;
it will be liable to
wrong
turns
leading
to
wrong
conclusions; and,
above
all,
without
faith,
reason will leave man
short of his
highest
destination.23
Aquinas
transformed classical natural
right;
or it
might
be
more accurate to
say
that he
accepted
the exoteric
teaching
of
the classical
political philosophers
as the true natural
right
teach-
ing. Aquinas accepted
the
teaching
that man's rational
perfection
and man's moral or
political perfection
are
interdependent
and,
together,
constitute man's natural end. No
longer
is man's ulti-
mate,
transpolitical
end conceived to be the life of
philosophy;
rather,
man's ultimate end transcends nature itself: our end is
eternal beatitude.24
Also unlike the classical
philosophers,
who had never
sup-
posed
that more than a
minority
of human
beings
could ever
attain their final
end,
could become
philosophers, Aquinas,
true
to the
theological understanding
of
man,
asserted that
every
human
being
has the
potential
to attain beatitude.25 In
this,
we
see that scholasticism has discounted what for classical
philoso-
phy
had been seen as the most crucial and ineradicable source
of
inequality among
men-the natural
capacity
for
rational,
es-
pecially speculative, thinking.
Scholasticism broke with the
ancients
by teaching
that we are all
equal
with
respect
to the
suprarational
end of our
actions;
the moderns would transmute
this same
emphasis
on
equality by teaching
that we are all
equal
with
respect
to the
prerational
or subrational
passions
that mo-
tivate our action. In
this, too,
the moderns redirect a break with
the ancients that had
already
occurred.
23.
Aquinas,
Summa
Theologiae,
I, Q. 1, c.;
Summa Contra Gentiles
I,
4 For an
excellent overview of Christian
philosophy
and for an
elegant argument
in favor
of the
very possibility
of a Christian
philosophy,
see Etienne
Gilson,
The
Spirit of
Mediaeval
Philosophy
(Notre Dame, IN,
and London:
University
of Notre Dame
Press, 1991,
first
published 1936),
esp. chapter
two.
24.
Aquinas,
Summa Contra Gentiles
III, 37,48,63;
Summa
Theologiae I-II,
Q.
2-5.
25.
Aquinas,
Summa
Theologiae
I-II, Q.1,
a.
7; Q. 5,
a. 1.
85
Aquinas
reconciles man's natural and
supernatural
ends,
arguing
that the same moral virtues useful or
necessary
for
man's
political
end also serve as
means,
albeit insufficient
means,
to move man toward his ultimate end.
Nothing
is lost
or redundant or
contradictory
between the moral virtues and
the
supernatural
virtues. The
way
of life that leads to man's
ultimate end is not in conflict with the
political way
of
life;
the
straight
line of action that leads man to his ultimate
perfection
passes through
the
point representing
his
political perfection.26
But to insist
upon
the linear
correspondence
of these two ends
requires Aquinas
to
reinterpret
the
political
or moral virtues as
they
are
represented by
Aristotle.
Irregularities
and awkward
excrescences are
pruned. Synthesis
demands that the
apparent
political good
be
truly good only
when it does not conflict with
the
higher good.
In other
words,
Aquinas
had
already adopted
what we have shown was to become the
typically
modern
stance toward
pre-philosophical phenomena:
he takes a criti-
cal stance toward the
pre-theoretical opinions
about
political
life,
and such a critical stance is
possible only
if one has claimed
for oneself a
higher insight
into the nature of
things
than is
available to common
sense,
an
insight
which
gives
one a
privi-
leged vantage point,
a true
perspective,
from which to
judge
pre-theoretical opinions.
In this
way,
we see that the modern
perspective
is not a return to the classical view but a reverse
image
of the scholastic view.27 Christian scholasticism viewed
political
life from above the natural horizon of the
city;
mod-
ern
philosophy
views
political
life from below the natural
horizon of the
city. Only
Platonic
takes
po-
litical life
simply
as it is in its own
terms,
admitting
that its
opinions
cannot be
conclusively
denied
(and, hence,
admit-
ting
the
possibility
that the claims of
political
life,
and
especially
its claim to rest
upon
a
divinely
revealed
law,
may simply
be
true),
while,
at the same
time,
insisting
that the
philosophical
26. The
correspondence
between man's mundane
good,
which can be known
by
natural
reason,
and his
ultimate,
supernatural
end,
which
requires
the
supplement
of
revelation,
is inherent in the
relationship
that
Aquinas
asserts
between the natural law and the eternal law. See
Aquinas,
Summa
Theologiae
I-II,
Q. 91,
a. 1 and
2; Q. 93,
a. 3 and
6;
Summa Contra Gentiles I,
7.
27. Cf.
Strauss,
"Restatement on
Xenophon'sHiero,"
in On
Tyranny,
ed. Victor
Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth
(New
York: The Free
Press, 1991),
p.
184.
86
life
represents
a distinct alternative to the
political
life,
with no
possibility
of a
synthesis
of the two.28
We
may
admire the
beauty
of Thomas's vast intellectual cel-
ebration of the
marriage
of faith and
reason,
but how must these
nuptials appear
to a Platonic
philosopher?
From such a
perspec-
tive,
philosophy
will be seen to have suffered at the hands of the
Christian tradition a most insidious and
perhaps ultimately
mor-
tal
injury.
From the
perspective
of a Platonic
philosopher,
the
city
will be seen to have
captured philosophy;
the
opinions
of the mul-
titude will be seen to have
put
a harness on reason
and, then,
to
have
proceeded
to drive reason like a hack
up
and down the
by-
ways
of the
imagination,
wherever its new
driver,
the
opinions
of
the
multitude,
wants it to
go.
No
longer
is
theology
the
political
arm,
the ministerial
art,
serving
ends known to
philosophy;
the-
ology
has now become the master and
philosophy
the valued but
firmly
indentured servant. Contrast this with the
philosophical
view,
according
to which
philosophy
is seen "not as a set of
propo-
sitions,
a
teaching,
or even a
system,
but as a
way
of
life,
a life
animated
by
a
peculiar passion,
the
philosophic
desire,
or eros."29
In the Shadow of Final
Tyranny
Nor is Strauss's criticism of the scholastic misuse or misun-
derstanding
of the natural law doctrine the end of his
misgivings
about the influence of
Christianity
on
philosophy
and
political
philosophy.
The
synthesis
of
philosophy
and the revealed truth
results in
(if,
indeed,
it is not
actually
motivated
by)
the
assump-
tion that decisive
progress
is
possible
for mankind as a whole.
The
synthesis
of
philosophy
and the Bible
promises
that man-
kind or human nature is
capable
of
improvement, capable
of
being
28. One must be careful not to confuse the
judgment
of Platonic
political
philosophy
that
political
life and moral
opinions
constitute
perhaps
the most
fascinating
and
urgent objects
of
philosophical investigation
with
any
kind of
admission,
on the
part
of the
philosopher,
that his
study
of
political
life in
any way
implies
that
political
life can be made
philosophical
or can be somehow reconciled
or combined with
philosophy.
29.
Strauss,
"Progress
or
Return,"
in Rebirth
of
Classical Political
Rationalism,
259. Section III of
"Progress
and
Return,"
from which this
quote
is
taken,
appeared
originally
as "The Mutual Influence of
Theology
and
Philosophy,"
The
Independent
Journal of Philosophy
3
(1979):
111-18.
87
raised to a
higher
level.
Surely,
one must assume that human na-
ture is
capable
of
undergoing
such
change
for
humanity
to have
been
decisively
transformed
by
the
saving
action of
Jesus
Christ.
The scholastic
synthesis
of Plato and the
prophets,
of
philosophy
and the
Bible,
and the
potential
for
progress
which that
synthesis
presumes
would
ultimately
result in an outlook that Strauss calls
the
typically
modern view.
According
to this
view,
truth is still to
be
sought through
sober reason or
science,
but now science itself
is conceived to be not an end but an instrument
serving
a
larger,
higher good,
the
good
of
humanity.
Given the
malleability
of hu-
man nature and the
availability
of an instrumental social
science,
man himself becomes
capable
of
engineering
an
improved, per-
haps
even a
perfect, society.30
But how does this
characteristically
modem
understanding
of man derive from Christian scholasticism's
synthesis
of faith
and
philosophy?
To understand this
connection,
one needs to re-
call the classical
assumption
that even the best
possible city
would
be a closed
community revering
its own
particular
customs,
ob-
serving
its own
laws,
and
worshipping
its own
gods.
The
polis
is,
in the most
important respect,
an education in
particular
virtues.
In
contrast,
a universal
society
based
upon strictly
rational,
uni-
versal rules of social conduct could
embody only
the most
rudimentary
moral
education,
boasting
no
higher
virtue or
dig-
nity
than a
gang
of robbers.31 For
any society
to
enjoy
a
higher,
more noble
way
of
life,
it must embrace a law that
goes beyond
what reason alone can dictate. Such a law would be the
heritage
of one
people,
one
regime.
Others could
adopt
this law
only
if
they
somehow came to believe
(they
could not
possibly
know)
that
that
particular
law was the best law.
Civil
society,
or the
city
as the classics conceived of
it,
is a closed
society
and
is,
in
addition,
what
today
would be called a "small
society."
... [In contrast,]
an
open
or
all-comprehensive society
would consist of
many
societies which are on
vastly
different levels of
political maturity,
and the chances are
overwhelming
that the lower societies would
drag
30. Leo
Strauss, "Jerusalem andAthens,"
Studies in Platonic Political
Philosophy
of
Chicago
Press, 1983),
pp.
167-68. See also Leo
Strauss,
"Liberal Education and
Responsibility,"
in Liberalism Ancient and Modern
(Ithaca
and London: Comell
University
Press),
pp.
19-20.
31. See
Strauss,
"The Law of Reason in the Kuzari," in Persecution and the Art
of Writing, p.
127.
I
88
down the
higher
ones. An
open
or
all-comprehensive society
will exist
on a lower level of
humanity
than a closed
society,
which,
through
generations,
has made a
supreme
effort toward human
perfection.32
According
to the
philosophical
view, then,
natural
right
is
politi-
cal
right;
ethics cannot be
separated
from
politics; any
discussion
of the
happiness
of all men
(to
be
distinguished
from the
happi-
ness available
only
to
philosophers)
must
necessarily
be
political.33
Indeed,
we
may say
that the
capacity
of all men to know and
attain true human
happiness
is the
pivot
on which turns the deci-
sion for or
against
classical versus modern
philosophy.
Christianity,
however,
does not understand man to
be,
before
all
else,
a citizen.
Christianity's
view of human life does not take
as its
starting place
the
perspective
of the citizen. The Christian
natural law doctrine holds out the
possibility
that the best
regime
need not be a closed
regime.34
Christianity proclaims
a
suprapolitical
truth: the brotherhood
of all men.35 The
irony
is that this Christian
teaching actually
re-
produces
a conclusion to which our reason also leads but which
it must
prudently deny
in
practice.
In
fact,
the
"fraternity
of all
men" is the natural truth that Plato's noble lie
intentionally
ob-
scures. "The
particular
or closed
political society
conflicts with
the natural
fraternity
of all men. Political
society
in one
way
or
another draws an
arbitrary
line between man and man."36 Arbi-
trary
deliniations are
necessary
for
political
life because
speech
or rational
persuasion
is
severely
limited in its
capacity
to
govern
32.
Strauss,
Natural
Right
and
History, pp.
130-32. Cf. letter to Karl Lowith
(15
August
1946)
in
"Correspondence Concerning Modernity:
Karl L6with and Leo
Strauss,"
The
Independent Journal of Philosophy
4
(1983):
107.
33. See
Strauss,
"Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and
Farabi,"
trans. Robert
Bartlett,
Interpretation
18,
no 1
(Fall 1990):
9. Christian
scholasticism did not heed what both Plato's and
Xenophon's
Socrates learned
about the "limitation of reason and of
speech generally."
The scholastics did not
understand the
political necessity
for Socrates to become friends with
Thrasymachus.
See
Strauss,
"The Problem of
Socrates,"
inRebirth
of
Classical Political
Philosophy, p.
159. The Christian
understanding
of man tends to be
apolitical.
34.
Strauss,
Natural
Right
and
History, p.144.
35.
See,
for
example, Ephesians
2:11-16.
36.
Strauss,
"The Problem of
Socrates,"
in Rebirth
of
Classical Political
Rationalism,
pp.
158-59. Strauss
specifically
states that the deliberate cultivation of
patriotism
(love
of the
patria)
is
part
of the noble lie.
Strauss,
The
City
and
Man,
p.
102. Ronald Beiner
argues
that awareness of this
apparent
contradiction
present
in
I
89
men:
gentlemen may
be amenable to
speeches
that
appeal
to their
spiritedness;
the base must be made to fear
punishment,
eternal
as well as
temporal;
neither will be satisfied or converted
by
the
love of rational
inquiry.
The ancient
Jews
were a
nation,
the Chosen
People
of
God,
the twelve tribes of
Israel;
the later
prophets
referred to the
corpo-
rate existence of the
people by
the name of their
city-a
real,
earthly
city-Jerusalem. According
to the Old Testament
vision,
the
per-
fect realization of God's
plan
for His
people
would remain this
actual
city,
with walls of
stone,
with a law and a
king,
and with
smoke
rising
from
temple
sacrifices.
Christianity
removed the
hopes
of the
people
of God to a
heavenly
Jerusalem,
the Com-
munion of
Saints,
the
mystical body
of
Christ,
the Church. Politics
was
largely
extraneous to the achievement of this end.37
Consider what it means to
say
that man is a
political
animal.
(Not
a social animal! A social animal could be a creature driven
by
instinctual
necessities,
only
with
speech
and
calculating
rea-
son added to the
teeth, claws, fur,
and other attributes animals
may employ
to obtain the
objects
of their natural desires. For
Locke,
man
is,
to some
extent,
a social animal. But to
say
that man is a
political
animal is to
say
that man is neither a
god
who
perfectly
knows the
good
nor an animal whose
good
is the
object
of a natu-
ral or
necessary
desire.)
A
political
animal must achieve his natural
perfection through participation
in the
public
life of his
city,
a life
whose contours consist of
opinion
about the
good,
the
noble,
and
the beautiful.
Christianity placed
the
goal
of man's
life,
the
object
of his
hope, beyond politics.
"For here we have no
lasting city;
we
are
seeking
one which is to come."38
To
say
that a universal
society embracing
all men can become
an attainable ideal is to
say
that
every
human
being
is
capable
of
becoming
wise. "The most relevant difference
among
human be-
ings
must have
practically disappeared."39
It is not
entirely
misleading
to see a
Hegelian aspect
to
Christianity
(or,
more in
Christianity,
between a rational
(or,
at
least,
a
humane)
truth and bad
politics,
dominates book
four,
chapter
8,
of Rousseau's Social Contract.
"Machiavelli, Hobbes,
and Rousseau on Civil
Religion,"
Review
of
Politics
55,
no. 4
(1993):
637.
37. See Ernest
Fortin,
"Rational
Theologians
and Irrational
Philosophers,"
Interpretation
12,
no. 2-3
(1984):
351.
38. Hebrews 13: 14.
39. Leo
Strauss,
"Restatement on
Xenophon's
Hiero,"
in On
Tyranny, p.
210.
90
keeping
with
chronology,
to see a
strong
element of
Christianity
in
Hegel)
in that it
proposes
the
possibility,
even the historical
necessity,
of
transforming
the
philosophical quest
into the actual
possession
of
complete
wisdom. And as with
Hegel, Christianity's
claim of access to wisdom
presupposes
a
degree
of freedom from
both nature and law that neither Platonic
philosophy
nor
Jewish
law would ever have countenanced.
If, however,
"the most rel-
evant difference
among
human
beings"
cannot be
overcome,
if
only
a few can live
by
reason while most will
always cling
to
various
opinions,
then
only
a
very
few men could ever be
happy
in a universal
society. Only
those few devoted to the
quest
for
knowledge
could live
happily
in a
city
whose
legal
and moral
code was reduced to the minimal rules needed to
govern
the so-
cial intercourse of the
wise,
who would be
unlikely
to exhibit
any
greater patriotism
or
solidarity
than a
gang
of thieves or
any greater
passion
for beautiful and noble
things
than a
city
of
pigs.40
Of
course,
given
the
actual,
nonphilosophical
nature of the
vast
majority
of human
beings,
a universal
society
such as the
wise
might design
and inhabit could never exist. In
reality,
a uni-
versal
society,
like
any
other
society,
would be
peopled by
the
ignorant
and ruled
by
the unwise. How then could an
ignorant
humanity
be united into a universal
society? Only by
a
final,
ab-
solutely
enforced,
and
universally persuasive dogma,
a
teaching
that claimed to have
superseded every
other
teaching,
an authori-
tative
opinion
to which reason must forevermore bend the knee.
In other
words,
a universal
society
could,
in
reality,
be
nothing
but another iteration of the
age-old phenomenon
of
tyranny,
but
now become a
final,
perfected tyranny
in which the universal
aspirations
of Christendom will have been armed with the
appa-
ratus of scientific
technique
and made
infinitely
more
persuasive
by
the rhetoric of
progress, equality,
and self-interest.
To retain his
power,
[the
Final
Tyrant]
will be forced to
suppress every
activity
which
might
lead
people
into doubt of the essential soundness
of the universal and
homogeneous
state: he must
suppress philosophy
as an
attempt
to
corrupt
the
young.
In
particular,
he must in the interest
of the
homogeneity
of his universal state forbid
every teaching, every
40. See Glaucon's
objection
to Socrates'
description
of the
rudimentary city
according
to the natural or
necessary requirements
for human
beings
to
enjoy peace
and health.
Republic
372c-d.
I I
91
suggestion,
that there are
politically
relevant natural differences
among
men which cannot be abolished or neutralized
by progressing
scientific
technology.41
Law wishes to
rule,
and law wishes to be
intellect,
though
the
philosopher recognizes
that law is
very
far from
being
intellect
and
cannot,
of
itself,
justify
its own
right
to rule.
Intellect,
on the
other
hand,
wishes to know the
whole,
but it has no desire to
rule.
If, however,
one were to
synthesize
law and intellect
by
mak-
ing
intellect
directly responsible
for
law,
one would
thereby
set
up
a
dynamic
that would lead toward
cosmopolis,
the
final,
uni-
versal
tyranny42
The
passage just quoted
is
part
of Strauss's
argument against
the French
Hegelian,Alexandre Kojeve,
who
taught
that the move-
ment of
history
was,
even
now,
at the
point
of
being completed
by
the establishment of a
final,
universal
society.
The same
para-
graph
continues with a
passage
whose clear
implication
reveals
to us what is
perhaps
Strauss's most
uncompromising
and harsh
pronouncement
on the true nature of all revealed
religions,
at least
from the
perspective
of the
philosophers.
The "Final
Tyrant,"
as
we have
seen,
must rule
by manipulating
the
opinions
of the
multitude. In
this,
he is no different than
tyrants
of
past ages,
and
philosophers
too will defend themselves as before
by attempting
to influence the
tyrant
with their
speeches.
Everything
seems to be a re-enactment of the
age-old
drama. But this
time,
the cause of
philosophy
is lost from the start. For the Final
Tyrant
presents
himself as a
philosopher,
as the
highest philosophic authority,
as the
supreme exegete
of the
only
true
philosophy,
as the executor and
hangman
authorized
by
the
only
true
philosophy.
He claims therefore
that he
persecutes
not
philosophy
but false
philosophies.
The
experience
is not
altogether
new for
philosophers.
If
philosophers
were confronted
with claims of this kind in former
ages, philosophy
went
underground.
It accommodated itself in its
explicit
or exoteric
teaching
to the
unfounded commands of rulers who believed
they
knew
things
which
they
did not know. Yet its
very
exoteric
teaching
undermined the
41.
Strauss, "Restatement,"
in On
Tyranny, p.
211.
Harry
V.
Jaffa
testifies to
Strauss's
antipathy
toward
any promotion
of universal
opinions.
See "Political
Philosophy
and Honor: The Leo Strauss
DissertationAward,"
Modern
Age
21,
no. 4
(1997):
388.
42. See
Joshua Parens,
Metaphysics
as Rhetoric:
Alfarabi's Summary of
Plato's
Laws
(Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press, 1995),
p.
75.
92
STRAUSS AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 93
commands or
dogmas
of the rulers in such a
way
as to
guide
the
potential philosophers
toward the eternal and unsolved
problems.
And
since there was no universal state in
existence,
the
philosophers
could
escape
to other countries if life became unbearable in the
tyrant's
dominions.43
The
passage
ends with the
foreboding prediction
that,
unlike in
the
past, philosophy might prove
unable to survive or
escape
the
universal
tyrant
and that "the
coming
of the universal and homo-
geneous
state will be the end of
philosophy
on earth."
Yet,
for our
purposes,
I want to focus on the characterization of the ruler-
any
ruler-who claims to rule in the name of the one truth. What
Strauss
implies
is clear and
pointed: any prophet,
armed or other-
wise,
any caliph
or
imam,
any pope
or
patriarch, any Holy
Roman
Emperor, any king ruling
as defender of the faith must be
(cannot
be other
than)
a
tyrant:
one who has seized the
power
to rule over
men
(in
this
case,
over their minds and
thoughts
as well as their
actions)
who
might
otherwise be
capable
of
living
as free men. In
this
image
of the Final
Tyrant, conjured by
Alexandre
Kojeve's
announcement of the arrival of the
Hegelian
world-state,
Strauss
gives
us not the Antichrist but an
Antisocrates;
not the natural
rule of
prephilosophical
custom or
unphilosophical opinion,
but
the
usurpation
of an
antiphilosophy.
And which kind of revealed
religion
would one
expect
to make the more effective
antiphilosophy?
One that
primarily
took the form of a divine law
to be
followed,
or one that
primarily
took the form of a faith to be
believed?44
The
precarious
status of
philosophy
in
Judaism
as well as in Islam was
not in
every respect
a misfortune for
philosophy.
The official
recognition
of
philosophy
in the Christian world made
philosophy subject
to
43.
Strauss, "Restatement," in On
Tyranny, p.
211.
44. See PaulA.
Rahe,
Republics
Ancient and
Modem,
Volume I: The Ancien
Rigime
in Classical Greece
(Chapel
Hill and London:
University
of North Carolina
Press,
1994),
pp.
212-13. Dante Germino seems in no doubt that Strauss
truly
entertained
the indictment of
Christianity
here set forth: "For
Strauss,
the
attempted
Christian
abolition of esotericism meant the
attempted
abolition of
philosophy
itself. Medieval
Christianity's attempt
to subordinate
philosophy
to revelation was for Strauss but
another name for the
attempt
to
destroy philosophy--despite
the fact
thatAquinas
promulgated
the
principlegratia
non tollit naturam sed
perficit"
("Leo
Strauss Versus
Eric
Voegelin
on Faith and Political
Philosophy,"
The Political Science Reviewer 24
[1995]: 264).
94 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
ecclesiastical
supervision.
The
precarious position
of
philosophy
in the
Islamic-Jewish
world
guaranteed
its
private
character and therewith its
inner freedom from
supervision.
The status of
philosophy
in the Islamic-
Jewish
world resembled in this
respect
its status in classical Greece.45
Not that the
world-enthralling
rhetoric of a final
tyranny
would
be
anything recognizable
as the Christian
faith,
but the
implica-
tion is that
ideology
is the natural child of
Christianity,
not
Judaism
or Islam.
Only Christianity adopted
the mantle of a Platonism for
the
people.
The intimate embrace of faith and
philosophy
coun-
tenanced
by
Christian scholasticism
may,
in the
end,
prove
fatal
to both
partners.
The
Origin
of
Modernity
as
Antitheological
Polemic
The
generally accepted
view is that
Strauss,
while "not un-
equivocally sympathetic"
with
Aquinas,
was nonetheless
deeply
respectful
toward the
greatest
Christian
philosopher.46 Admittedly,
45.
Strauss,
of Writing, p.
21. Platonic
always
takes as its
primary
reference,
not the
city,
but the life of the
individual;
not
the life of moral and
political
action,
but the life of
contemplation.
Cf. Laurence
Lampert,
Leo Strauss and Nietzsche
of
Chicago
Press, 1996),
pp.
139-40.
46. For an
example
of the uncontroversial
reading
of Strauss
vis-a-visAquinas,
see
Douglas
Kries,
"On Leo Strauss's
Understanding
of the Natural Law
Theory
of
Thomas
Aquinas,"
The Thomist
57,
no. 2
(1993):
216. Laurence Berns also does not
see Strauss as
blaming Christianity
for the modem break with the classical tradition.
See "The Relation Between
Philosophy
and
Religion:
Reflections on Leo Strauss's
Suggestion Concerning
the Source and Sources of Modern
Philosophy,"
Interpretation
19,
no. 1
(1991):
52-53.
According
to
Bems,
Strauss believed that the
motive behind the moder rebellion
against
medieval
philosophy
arose from
impatience
with the "mutual
irrefutability
of
philosophy
and revelation" and the
moderns' "wish to
supersede
the tension
arising
from their mutual
irrefutability."
Only by making
the
knowledge
of the world that is available to
every
man "the
ultimate source of
meaning
for
humanity's understanding
of the world" can man
then avoid the tension between the
mutually
irrefutable claims of
philosophy
and
revelation.
According
to this
view,
medieval Christian
thought,
far from
being
imprudent, merely adapted
the wisdom of ancient
to the new
conditions of revealed
religion
and continued to maintain the classical tension
between the
legitimate
claims of the
city's
authoritative
opinions
and
philosophy's
call for a life of unrestricted
inquiry.
But,
if I am
right,
Strauss
goes
further than
this,
implying
that the modern rebellion was a moral reaction
triggered by
Christianity's prior attempt
to resolve the tension between
opinion
and
philosophy
by subordinating philosophy
to a
peculiarly unpolitical opinion.
Aquinas
introduced non-Aristotelian elements into the classical
natural
right teaching,
but the decisive break with the classical
tradition did not occur until Machiavelli. In
addition,
Strauss is
critical of neo-Thomists who
(often
carelessly
or
unknowingly)
introduce elements of modern
thought
into their work that are
antithetical to the
essentially
classical core of true Thomism.
I would
challenge
this
picture
of
respect qualified by
mild
disagreement. Anyone
who has read Strauss's
writings
knows that
he was at
pains
to make Western scholars aware that thinkers such
as Alfarabi and Maimonides were not
simply
Muslim and
Jewish
equivalents
to
Aquinas.
It has
perhaps
not been
sufficiently
no-
ticed that one
may
reverse Strauss's dictum: We should not read
Aquinas
as
though
he were the Christian
equivalent
of Alfarabi
or Maimonides. I believe that if one adds
together
his scattered
and subtle
remarks,
it
gradually
becomes
apparent
that Strauss
held Christian scholasticism
responsible
for
having precipitated
the
early
modern
rejection
of classical
philosophy
and the
prob-
lematic
(and
perhaps ultimately
calamitous)
turn toward
modernity.47 Indeed,
in one
place,
in a context well
protected
from
casual
readers,
Strauss
actually
writes: "And modern
philosophy
emerged by way
of transformation
of,
if in
opposition
to,
Latin or
Christian scholasticism."48 At the risk of
being
somewhat reck-
47. Strauss
argued
that "all modem
political philosophies belong together
because
they
have a fundamental
principle
in common. This
principle
can best be
stated
negatively: rejection
of the classical scheme as unrealistic." Strauss
goes
on
to elucidate
why
Machiavelli deemed the classical scheme unrealistic:
"[T]here
is
something fundamentally wrong
with an
approach
to
politics
which culminates in
a
utopia,
in the
description
of a best
regime
whose actualization is
highly
improbable"
Strauss,
"What Is Political
Philosophy?"
in What Is Political
Philosophy?,
pp.
40-41. Strauss
implies,
however,
that Machiavelli himself was
sympathetic
to
theAverroistic tradition of classical
which
justified
the
pursuit
of the
philosophic
life in terms of the natural needs of the
city.
Thus,
it
appears
likely
that it was its Christian
interpreters
who had made classical
philosophy
appear excessively
"unrealistic."
James
Schall touched on this
oblique charge
against Christianity:
"Strauss
implied
that the elevation of human
expectations
due to
charity
'caused,'
indirectly
at
least,
a sort of fanaticism in
modernity....In
this
analysis,
Strauss seemed to
imply
a remote
Christian,
not
ideologically
anti-
Christian,
origin
for
modernity
in the worst sense of that term as Strauss used it"
(Schall,
"A Latitude for
Statesmanship?
Strauss on St.
Thomas,"
Review
of
Politics
53,
no. 1
[1991]: 141).
48.
Strauss,
"Preface to Isaac
Husik,
Philosophical Essays,"
in
Jewish Philosophy
and the Crisis
of Modernity, p.
252.
I
95
less,
I will hazard to
say plainly
what I think Strauss
implied:
namely,
that without
Aquinas
(or,
at
least,
without the scholastic
fusion of faith and
philosophy)
there need never have been a
Machiavelli or a Hobbes.
It is
likely
that Machiavelli could have been a
goodAverroist.49
He
might
have reconciled himself to
expounding
a
loyal
exoteric
teaching
under a
regime
ruled
by
the law of Moses or Mohammad.
What he could not stomach was
Jesus.50
For the
Averroist,
the
city
is a wild animal: a reasonable man
may
influence
it,
moderate
it,
but never tame it, never make it safe. Reason cannot domesticate
the
city,
like a cow or
sheep,
and
by
means of overt
husbandry
or
science direct the
city
toward an end
superior
to its natural end.
According
to
Machiavelli, however,
Christianity attempted just
such a domestication or emasculation of
politics.
[Machiavelli]
goes
on to
explain why,
or
by
virtue of
what,
Christianity
has led the world into weakness.
By showing
the truth or the true
way,
Christianity
has lowered the esteem for 'the honor of the
world,'
whereas
the
pagans regarded
that honor as the
highest good
and were therefore
more ferocious or less weak in their actions."51
49. Leo
Strauss,
Thoughts
on Machiavelli
of
Chicago
Press,
1984),
pp.
175 and 202. Paul Rahe
disputes
this
interpretation
of
Machiavelli,
arguing
that "there is
ample
indication within his books that-at the
deepest
level-the
enemy
is not
Christianity
but the classical
philosophy
embedded within it"
(Republics
Ancient and
Modern,
Vol. 2: New Modes & Orders in
Early
Modem Political
Thought [Chapel
Hill and London:
University
of North Carolina
Press, 1994],
328n7
and
343n67).
Rahe does not
explain
whether it seems
likely
Machiavelli would
have launched his radical
critique
of the ancients had he not seen ancient
philosophy
as the intellectual core of an ecclesiastical and
theological
order
which,
for the
benefit of
humanity,
he felt
compelled
to overthrow and
replace
with a new order.
50. See
Strauss,
"Restatement of
Xenophon's
Hiero,"
in On
Tyranny, p.
183.
One of Strauss's
extremely
rare direct references to
Jesus
occurs in his
description
of Machiavelli's
design
to
destroy Christianity
not
by
armed
might,
the
way
of
Moses,
but
by propaganda,
the
way
of
Jesus
himself. See also
Strauss,
"What Is
Political
Philosophy?
in What Is Political
Philosophy?, p.
45. We should also make a
distinction between classical
philosophy's
use of rhetoric in its relation to the
city
and modem
philosophy's
use of
propaganda
in its relation to the
city. Propaganda,
as used
by
both the Christian church and the moder
philosophers,
is intended to
change
the
world,
to make a new and better world.
Rhetoric,
in the classical
sense,
aims no
higher
than a modicum of
justice, simply giving
each his due. The medieval
philosophical
tradition
(as
opposed
to the
theologizing
tradition)
maintained the
subtle art of rhetoric. See
Strauss,
On
Tyranny, pp.
26-27.
51.
Strauss,
Thoughts
on
Machiavelli,
p.
178,
and see 177-79.
96
Machiavelli did not
actually
believe that
Christianity
showed men
the
way
to truth
but, rather,
made reference to truth to call atten-
tion to the
transpolitical goal
of the Christian
teaching.
Machiavelli
goes
on to contrast this truth with what he calls "the most
perfect
truth,"
a truth that
"upholds
the demand for the
strength
of the
world." In this
light, worldly strength
becomes the
badge
of
truth,
weakness the
sign
of falsehood.52 Machiavelli and later thinkers
who followed his new
teaching
rejected
classical
philosophy
be-
cause it seemed to aim too
high, attempting
to make men
good
rather than
teaching
them how to be
strong.53
Machiavelli was driven to reinvent
political philosophy by
what Strauss
called,
in one
place,
an
"anti-theological
ire," and,
in
another,
"an
antitheological passion."54
When
antitheological passion
induced a thinker to take the extreme
step
of
questioning
the
supremacy
of
contemplation, political
philosophy
broke with the classical
tradition,
and
especially
with
52.
Ibid.,
p.
178.
53.
Regarding
the
charge
made
against
the classical
philosophers
for a lack of
sufficient
realism,
see Niccolo
Machiavelli,
The
Prince,
chapter
15;
Rene
Descartes,
Discourse on
Method,
Part
I;
Thomas
Hobbes,
De
Cive,
letter of
dedication;
Francis
Bacon,
The Great
Instauration, Preface,
and The Advancement
of Learning,
Book
2;
Benedict
Spinoza,
Political
Treatise,
chapter
1,
Introduction.
54.
Strauss,
"What Is Political
Philosophy?"
in What is Political
Philosophy?, p.
44;
and "Marsilius of
Padua,"
in Liberalism Ancient and
Modern,
p.
201. Cf. Michael
Platt,
"Leo Strauss: Three
Quarrels,
Three
Questions,
One
Life,"
in The Crisis
of
Liberal
Democracy:
A Straussian
Perspective,
ed. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Softer
(Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press, 1987),
p.
20. "Is not Machiavelli's
animus
against
ancient ideal
republics really
an animus
against
an excessive and
unpolitical understanding
of
virtue,
which flows from Christian
teaching?
Machiavelli allows
anger
at God to become
anger
at the
good.
In this want of
discrimination Strauss saw a failure of
philosophy
to be
philosophic."
Classical
virtue had remained moderate and
realistically political
in that it had never denied
the
necessity
to cultivate the virtues
required
for war. Even the
philosophers, despite
their
transpolitical aspirations, acknowledged
the
binding authority
of the
law,
whose end was the
unity
and
preservation
of the
particular, earthly city. Christianity
openly taught
a doctrine that diminished men's
respect
and awe of the
particular
law of their
earthly city;
it
exposed
to the multitude the
merely provisional
character
of human law and
thereby
sowed the seeds of
public contumacy.
Between the
religious
fear of those who believe
they
know the
ways
of God and the scientific
pride
of those who claim to know and control the
ways
of nature
(and who,
therefore,
claim to be able to make or re-make
nature,
including
human
nature),
lies the modest wonder of the Platonic
philosopher.
Aristotle,
and took on an
entirely
new character. The thinker in
question
was Machiavelli. 55
These are the
concluding
lines from an
essay
on the Christian
Averroist,
Marsilius of Padua. In
opposition
to
Aquinas,
Marsilius
employed
the
pagan political philosophy
of Aristotle
to condemn the
political pretensions
of the Church. But in at-
tacking
the
Church,
Marsilius's Averroism
ultimately
constituted an attack
against
the idea that law is rooted in rev-
elation,
an idea whichAverroes himself had been at
great pains
to accommodate. Later writers motivated
by
the same
antitheological passion
as Marsilius would conclude that the
orthodox scholastics had been too successful in their
attempt
to harmonize Aristotle with Christian
theology
and that a new
beginning
was
needed,
a
beginning
that would entail the re-
jection
of Aristotle and the entire classical tradition.56
Strauss
clearly
condemned the
reprehensible
character of
Machiavelli's
teaching
and was aware of its baneful influence
on the entire course of modern
philosophy;57
yet it seems
likely
that he
quietly agreed
with Machiavelli's criticism of Chris-
tian scholasticism for
having openly promulgated
a
teaching
that
denigrated
the
political
nature of man and that led men
to
aspire
to transcend their need for
law,
their need for closed
polities,
in the
expectation
of
attaining
for themselves a vision
of the
light beyond
the cave.
Christianity
seduced
many
of
those inclined toward
philosophical speculation
(as
well as
many
who were
capable only
of
inflammatory
rhetoric)
to for-
get
the moderation of Platonic
political philosophy,
a
moderation that can be summed
up
thus:
Philosophy
transcends the
city,
and the worth of the
city depends
ultimately
on its
openness,
or
deference,
to
philosophy.
Yet the
city
cannot fulfill its function if it is not closed to
philosophy
as well as
open
to
it;
the
city
is
necessarily
the cave.58
55.
Strauss,
"Marsilius of
Padua,"
Modern,
p.
201.
56. On the distinction between the LatinAverroist and Machiavellian
critiques
of
religion,
see Paul
Rahe,
Republics
Ancient and
Modern,
2:
7, 18,
and 334-35n58.
57. See
Strauss,
Thoughts
on
Machiavelli,
Introduction.
58.
Ibid.,
p.
296.
IIIII I I III~~
98
And what of Hobbes? If Machiavelli's motive was a kind of
antitheological anger,
Hobbes's motive was a kind of antitheo-
logical
fear. To understand the basis for this
fear,
it is useful to
recall Socrates' conversation with
Euthyphron. Euthyphron justi-
fied his own
rejection
of traditional
piety by claiming special,
personal insight
into the divine
things.
Socrates warned
that,
un-
less we seek a
higher,
rational
principle
available to man
simply
as
man,
the
appeal
from received tradition to divine
knowledge
can
only
lead to
confusion,
anarchy,
and
faction,
with each fac-
tion
following
its own
god.
In Hobbes's
view,
Christianity
(at
least
since the
Reformation),
by proclaiming
a
higher
standard of
jus-
tice than mere obedience to the
law,
gave unparalleled scope
to
latter-day Euthyphrons, making
them far more
dangerous
than
the harmless butt of Socratic
irony (though perhaps
even
Euthyphron
was not so harmless to his
father).59
The doctrines of
grace
and individual conscience
gave
an
unparalleled
license to
zealots,
ideologues,
and well-intentioned
priests,
to
conjure
men
out of their
customary allegiances
with visions of a
higher,
more
perfect, trans-political
life.60 For
Hobbes,
this
proclivity,
which he
saw as
being
inherent in
Christianity, finally
burst
apart
the bonds
of the natural
(i.e.,
the
conventional)
city during
the Reformation
and the
subsequent
wars of
religion.61
Like
Machiavelli,
Hobbes's
59. Thomas
Hobbes,
De
Cive, VI, 11,
note.
60. See
Strauss,
Natural
Right
and
History, p.
92.
61. Laurence
Lampert paints
a forceful
picture
of the
antitheological
motive
at work in Bacon's
rejection
of classical
philosophy.
"Bacon's characteristic
opposition
to Plato is
required by
the times: Plato most
effectively brought together
what Bacon was forced to
separate, philosophy
and
theology.
Bacon forbids natural
theology,
one of the
principle parts
of Platonism for the
people,
because it no
longer
serves
philosophy's purpose
to
allege
that it has access to the
gods,
that it can
serve the
city by restoring
the
power
of
gods gone
dead. Bacon's times are not
marked
by
a death of the
gods
but
by
a God
grown all-powerful, dominating
even
philosophy,
a God whose
religion
is now rent
by
discords that threaten
European
civilization"
(Laurence Lampert,
Nietzsche and Modern Times: A
Study of
Bacon,
Descartes,
and Nietzsche
[New
Haven and London: Yale
University
Press, 1993],
124).
We
may question,
in
passing,
whether Strauss
actually
reads the
history
of
philosophy
in
quite
the same
way
as
Lampert.
If he
did,
then we
might suppose
that Strauss chose to defend
religion
in the mid-twentieth
century,
albeit in his
typically paradoxical
manner,
because he saw that we are once more
confronted,
like
Socrates,
with the death of the
gods,
and because he lacked confidence in
Nietzsche's
joyous
science-the
embracing
of immanent and
eternally recurring
nature-as a
popular
alternative to
religion
as a foundation for
political
order. In
99
solution was to reassert the
prerogatives
of
politics against
a the-
ology-intoxicated
Christian
philosophy.
Hobbes and other
early
moderns,
such as
Spinoza,
therefore,
shared the same motive as the ancient
Epicureans:
fear of reli-
gion.
A
proper understanding
of this motive
places
the
Enlightenment
in an unfamiliar
light:
we see that the
Enlightenment's
attack on
religion
did not
initially
result from
these thinkers'
newly
found self-confidence in man's
capacity
to
plumb
the secrets of nature and institute an
earthly utopia.
Quite
the
opposite! Religion
came to be
perceived
as such a mortal threat
to individual
security
and civil
peace
that men who felt a com-
mitment to the welfare of
humanity
were moved to seek a
refuge
from the
battering
winds of confessional strife. These
early
moderns embraced the
Epicurean
"mechanical worldview" as a
"consoling
truth." Modern science turned to the
necessary,
con-
tinuous
processes
of natural
causality
in order to exclude and
replace
the view of the world that
begins
from the
unpredictable,
arbitrary,
and unfathomable divine will. It is in
light
of this mo-
tive that we can understand
why
the refutation of the
possibility
of miracles should have been one of the decisive aims of the
early
modern
philosophers.62
Strauss would
probably
have had no
quarrel
with Machiavelli
and Hobbes had
they
been
good
Averroists or
good Epicureans,
but
they
were not. Averroes
acknowledged
that
philosophy
must
recog-
nize the claims of the
city
and its
laws,
must bow to the natural
exigencies
of
politics; yet,
at the same
time,
he was
uncompromising
in
holding
that
philosophy
remain
inwardly
unconstrained
by
the
opinions
of the
city.
The ancient
Epicureans
dismissed all
opinions,
the
consoling
as well as the
frightful, preferring
to withdraw from the
natural concerns of
humanity
in favor of the
enjoyment
of an
imper-
this
sense,
Strauss's attitude would be that which Gibbon attributed to the
magistrates
of ancient Rome:
"[T]he
various modes of
worship,
which
prevailed
in the Roman
world,
were all considered
by
the
people,
as
equally
true;
by
the
philosophers,
as
equally
false;
and
by
the
magistrates,
as
equally
useful"
(Edward
Gibbon,
The Decline and Fall
of
the Roman
Empire, chapter
2).
For an
example
of
such a Roman
magistrate,
see the account of
Scipio
Africanus in
Polybius,
The
Histories,
Book
10,
2.
62. See Gerhard
Kriiger,
"Review of Leo Strauss' Die
Religionskritik Spinozas
als
Grundlage
Seiner
Bibelwissenschaft,"
The
Independent Journal of Philosophy
5/6
(1979):
174.
100
turbable calm
flowing
from the
acceptance
of what is.
Epicurean
cour-
age
in the face of the
implacable
processes
of an
unprovidential
nature
"is not in need of
support by
belief in social
progress
between now
and the death of the world or
by
other beliefs."63
Machiavelli and Hobbes and the modern
philosophers
who
came after them
rejected
the claims made
by
Christian faith
upon
reason. To that
extent,
they agreed
with
Averroes,
though they
abandoned his exoteric attitude of
loyal
submission to the divine
law in favor of a more
open
confrontation. The moderns broke
decisively
with the Averroist
tradition, however,
by replacing
philosophy's
attachment to the
religious opinions
of the
city,
not
by
a reaffirmation of
philosophy's
intrinsic
freedom,
but
by tying
philosophy
to the
opinions
of the
city
in a new
way.
Likewise,
the
early
moderns broke
decisively
with the
Epicurean
tradition,
ap-
pealing
to nature as an antidote to
unsettling opinions
about the
divine,
not in favor of a
disengaged equanimity,
but in order to
impose
man's own will on events
through
the
mastery
of nature.
From the
viewpoint
of the classical
philosopher,
the one
thing
philosophy
must avoid is to
accept
"the ends of the demos as be-
yond appeal."
Yet it was
precisely
such an inward submission
that
Christianity
demanded of those who would
engage
in
philo-
sophical speculation,
a submission Strauss notes
by consistently
calling
these faithful Christian thinkers scholastics rather than
philosophers.
The
early
modern
philosophers rejected orthodoxy
only
to attach their
philosophizing
to the ends of the demos in a
new
way;
rather than
teaching
men how to attain
heaven,
the
modern
philosophers
would teach men how to live on earth.64
Reacting against
a scholasticism that had directed man to-
ward an end above the
grasp
of human
reason,
philosophy
would
now take as its
guide
what is below reason. From
being
the
handmaiden of a faith that had
promised
to confirm and
aug-
ment reason's
grasp
of the eternal
truth,
philosophy
would now
become an
accessory
to the basest
passions
and
appetites
shared
by
all men.65 The moderns cut the cord that had tethered
philoso-
63.
Strauss,
"Notes on Lucretius,"
Modern,
p.
135.
64.
Strauss,
"Liberal Education and
Responsibility,"
Modern,
p.
19.
65. See
Strauss,
Thoughts
on
Machiavelli,
pp.
207 and 296.
Philosophy,
in the
Socratic sense of
quest
for
everlasting
truth,
tends to be thrown out
along
with
Biblical
religion.
phy
to the
city's theological opinions only
to tie it more
firmly
than ever to a host of new
opinions: political glory (Machiavelli),
the
pre-political
individual's fear of death
(Hobbes), acquisitive-
ness
(Locke), equality (Rousseau), until,
finally,
with
Heidegger,
we find
philosophy embracing indiscriminately
whatever
may
happen
to be the dominant
opinion among
the Volk.
Philosophy
has become
Weltanschauungsphilosophie.66
The crisis of modem natural
right
or modem
could
become a crisis of
philosophy
as such
only
because in the modem
centuries
philosophy
as such had become
thoroughly politicized.
Originally, philosophy
had been the
humanizing quest
for the eternal
order,
and hence it had been a
pure
source of humane
inspiration
and
aspiration.
Since the seventeenth
century, philosophy
has become a
weapon,
and hence an instrument.67
In this
way,
Strauss traces the crisis of modern rationalism to
early
modern
philosophy's
dedication to an
eminently practical
and
popular purpose:
the
improvement
of man's
earthly
estate.
The
stage
was set for the eventual reduction of reason to will. In
order to become the masters of nature
through
science,
the
early
modern
philosophers
laid a new foundation of mathematical
physics, pointedly rejecting
the earlier basis for
philosophical
in-
quiry,
the common sense
(or,
at
least,
pre-theoretical) opinions
based on the immediate
experience
of the world. If man
possesses
the rudiments of
knowledge
about the true nature of
things prior
to
theorizing, prior
to the
application
of scientific
method,
then
reason itself must
acknowledge
the existence of a natural
order,
knowledge
of which becomes
philosophy's
own raison d'etre. The
early
modern
philosophers rejected pre-theoretical opinion
as the
proper starting point
for scientific
investigations
because it
pro-
vided a
point
of
entry through
which
religion
and the entire
kingdom
of darkness and
ignorance
could continue to make moral
claims
upon society
and intellectual claims
upon
science. But the
rejection
of this natural horizon as the ultimate source of knowl-
edge
entails the
rejection
of
any
external source of order
upon
which man could feel an
obligation
to model himself. Virtue floats
66.
Strauss,
"Philosophy
as
Rigorous
Science and Political
Philosophy,"
in
Studies in Platonic Political
Philosophy, p.
36.
67.
Strauss,
Natural
Right
and
History,
p.
34.
102
free of
any mooring
in the natural order. Reason loses its ordina-
tion to rule the lower faculties of the human soul. Deliberation
ceases to be considered a function of the
practical
reason
by
which
one
weighs
various means for
achieving
an end which one's rea-
son
already apprehends
as
good;
instead,
deliberation is
considered
merely
"the whole sum of
desires, aversions,
hopes
and fears"
preceding
an act of
will,
which is itself
merely
"the last
appetite,
or aversion
immediately adhering
to the action."68 In the
absence of all
knowledge
of a natural order
by
which he
might
measure his
actions,
man is free to create himself.
Yet,
the reduc-
tion of
practical
reason to a mere instrument of the will
destroys
every
basis for moral or
political
order;
it
destroys
the
very
notion
of
progress
(what
would constitute
progress?);
and it
destroys
even
the basis for
preferring
the rational over the
irrational,
knowl-
edge
over
ignorance,
truth over illusion.
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
compel
it to encounter
theology
as
a serious and
worthy opponent
(if
not as a
teacher),
but to be motivated
by
"atheism,"
or
by "antitheological
ire,"
or-with certain modern
revisions-by Epicureanism.69
We now
begin
to
see, however,
that Strauss did not
simply
understand the
problematic
course of modern rationalism to have
begun
with a
fateful,
moral commitment
by
certain
early
moderns,
such as Machiavelli and Hobbes. The
early
modern dedication of
philosophy
to the
improvement
of the human condition was it-
self a reaction
against
a
prior entanglement
of
philosophy
and
opinion-the entanglement perpetrated by
Christian scholasti-
cism.
Philosophy
became a
weapon,
and
philosophers
became
polemicists; contemplation gave way
to
action,
approbation
of
leisure made
way
for encomiums to
industry,
and the
philoso-
68. Thomas
Hobbes, Leviathan,
ed. Michael Oakeshott
(New
York: Collier
Books, 1962), I, 6,
pp.
53-54.
69.
Green, Jew
and
Philosopher:
The Return to Maimonides in the
Jewish
Thought
of
Leo Strauss
(Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press, 1993),
p.
19. Green
refers to the
following passages
in works
by
Strauss:
Philosophy
and
Law,
p.
12,15-
19;
Natural
Right
and
History, p.
167-70,178nll, 188-89;
"Preface to
Spinoza's Critique
of Religion," p.
29-31.
phers'
own
conception
of the best life was transformed from the
disinterested
quest
for
knowledge
to the
discovery
of means
(techne)
for the
improvement
of the human estate.70
Thus,
for one who has become dissatisfied with the late-mod-
ern situation and whose
gaze
turns back to review the
long
course of rational
inquiry, seeking
an alternative
enlightenment
that
may
be
proof against
the same breakdown of
confidence,
the same crisis of
rationalism,
as the modern
enlightenment,
Strauss would
deny
that the
enlightenment
offered
by
the Chris-
tian scholastics could
possibly provide
a
satisfactory
destination.71
For there is a
profound agreement
between
Jewish
and Muslim
thought
on the one hand and ancient
thought
on the other: it is not the Bible and
the
Koran,
but
perhaps
the New
Testament,
and
certainly
the
Reformation and modern
philosophy,
which
brought
about the break
with ancient
thought.72
That is
why,
as a
possible
cure for our modern
perplexity,
Strauss directs us instead to the medieval Muslim and
Jewish
enlightenment
and,
perhaps
above
all,
to the
Jewish
thought
(or
political philosophy)
of Maimonides.73
Whether,
for
Strauss,
that
70. Strauss
goes
so far as to condemn the modem
political society brought
about
through technological mastery
of nature as
unnatural;
and its
very
success
has made the return to a more natural
political society
almost
impossible.
See
letter to Karl L6with
(15August
1946),
in
"Correspondence Concerning Modernity,"
Independent Journal of Philosophy,
107-108. "I know
very
well that
today
[the
small
city
state]
cannot be
restored;
but the famous atomic bombs-not to mention at all
cities with a million
inhabitants,
gadgets,
funeral
homes,
'ideologies'-show
that
the
contemporary
solution,
that
is,
the
completely
moder
solution,
is contra
naturam."
71. Strauss at least seems to have had considerable
respect
for the
philosophical
acuity
of
ThomasAquinas.
One thinks of Strauss's numerous citations
ofAquinas's
works in Natural
Right
and
History, especially
in
chapter
4. Strauss accuses
contemporary
writers who
attempt
to
interpret
and make use
ofAquinas's
doctrines
of
having
been misled
by
moder
assumptions.
See Leo
Strauss,
"On a New
Interpretation
of Plato's Political
Philosophy,"
in Social
Research,
347n24. And as
for neo-Thomism, Strauss's attitude is
clearly
dismissive. See
Strauss,
"An
Introduction to
Heideggerian
Existentialism,"
in The Rebirth
of
Classical Political
Rationalism,
pp.
29,
34.
72.
Strauss,
"Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and
Farabi,"
pp.
4-5.
73. See
Strauss,
"Preface to
Spinoza's Critique
of
Religion,"
inLiberalism Ancient
and
Modern,
pp.
257: "I
began
therefore to wonder whether the self-destruction of
-
104
medieval
enlightenment actually represents
the summit or
is,
in-
stead,
a
way
station on the
path
that
ultimately
leads back to
Socrates must remain a
question
for another
day.
reason was not the inevitable outcome of modem rationalism as
distinguished
from
premodern
rationalism,
especially
Jewish-medieval
rationalism and its
classical
(Aristotelian
and
Platonic)
foundation." Maimonides exercised immense
care in
veiling
the
inquiries
of
speculative
reason. He was aware
that,
in
providing
the
necessary setting
for the moral or
political
life,
religion
meets
philosophy
at
the level of divine law. But what will
happen
if
religion
itself becomes a source of
political instability?
In that
case,
religion
will no
longer
serve the best interests of
either the
political
or the
philosophical
life.
May
we not
suppose
that,
as with
Maimonides' Guide
of
the
Perplexed, potential philosophers
also constituted
Spinoza's primary
intended audience? But
Spinoza's
circumstances had
changed;
he could no
longer employ
a
respectful
rhetoric
concerning
the
ruling opinions
of
his
day.
Those
ruling opinions
had become a source of disorder rather than order.
Spinoza
did not so much declare a revolution as
decamp
from a
city already
in the
grip
of sectarian strife. Can we even
perhaps say
that
Spinoza attempted
to rescue
a rationalism that was one of the
highest
fruits of
Judaism
from the self-destruction
of the
city
of faith?
Surely, any speculation
on
Spinoza's
actual
judgment
of the
relative merit of the two testaments must take into account his condemnation of
the "dualism of
spiritual
and
temporal power,
and therewith for
perpetual
civil
discord"-a dualism that is far more
apparent
in the New Testament than in the
Old.
Strauss,
"How to
Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political
Treatise,"
in
Jewish
Philosophy
and the Crisis
of Modernity, p.
205.

(Clark A Merrill) Strauss' Indictment of Christian Philosophy

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