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121 6 Medieval Rationalism or Mystic Philosophy? THE STRAUSS-VOEGELIN DEBATE The fascinating correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin raises more questions than it answers, if merely taken by itself.1 There are, to be sure, a number of extremely valuable debates that arise between the two writers, especially in the letters of 1949 through 1951. Often, however, the exchange gives only straws in the wind and a sense of agreements and disagreements, but much that unites and much that separates them ultimately remains obscure. To account adequately for everything would require a review of the correspondence in the context of the entire corpus of the technical writing and teaching of both men. That large task cannot be undertaken on this occasion, although some tentative suggestions will be ventured by way of conclusion. Since this 1. For the letters see Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934–1964, trans. and ed. Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); rev. ed. omitting the interpretive essays (“Part Three: Commentaries”) published under the same title and editorship by University of Missouri Press, 2004. The present chapter was included in the original edition, pp. 297–320. As Ernest L. Fortin commented: “What do we learn from the correspondence that we did not already know or could not know from other sources about Strauss’s or Voegelin’s thought? Not much, I suspect . Both authors have written extensively elsewhere on the subjects with which they deal here. There is nevertheless in the letters a certain bluntness or candor that would have been out of place in a piece written for publication. . . . Not surprisingly, neither one appears to have learned much from the other or to have budged in any way from his position” (Fortin, “Men of Letters: The Little-Known Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin,” Crisis [March 1991]: 33–36, at 36). 122 REPUBLICANISM, RELIGION, AND THE SOUL OF AMERICA correspondence is an exchange between the two giants of political philosophy of our time, there should be no doubt of its importance and great intrinsic interest. The tone of the exchange, stretching over the three decades from 1934 to 1964, is respectful and even warm to the extent of polite friendliness . It is a bit stiff, formal and civil, thawing eventually to “Mr. Strauss” and “Mr. Voegelin,” never to Leo and Eric, but this does not inhibit a lively and frank discussion. Most of the efforts to define the intellectual relationship between the two men are made by Strauss, and these almost always point up differences. It is of some moment that only five of the fifty-one surviving letters published in the Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper edition were written after Voegelin published the first three volumes of Order and History (1956 and 1957), perhaps a significant fact. Moreover, Strauss makes little or no comment to Voegelin about what he has written on the basis of a profound study of the Bible—specifically of the Hebrew Old Testament—in Israel and Revelation,2 his meticulous interpretation of the pre-Socratics that displays a philological and theoretical mastery of the some fifty-five Greek authors considered in The World of the Polis, nor the close textual analysis and interpretation given of the principal political writings of Plato and Aristotle as powerfully presented in the third of these volumes . Of course, there are gaps from missing letters, but this is mainly a problem for the correspondence during the years down to 1953 or so; and it seems extremely unlikely that a discussion of Order and History has disappeared.3 There is the relocation (which could have played 2. There is mention by Voegelin in his letter of June 10, 1953, that he is “working on the Israelite chapter in [his] History” and “greatly regretted that we have no opportunity to speak occasionally.” Strauss in his letter of June 23, 1953, responds that “the problem of history in the Old Testament” is “one of the most complex problems in intellectual history. I think perhaps the utopian plan would be to devote about ten years to the solution of this problem.” He says not a word in subsequent correspondence about the long book on the subject published in 1956 as Israel and Revelation. Voegelin’s lamentation about his command of Hebrew in the June 10 letter seems to have been partly modesty, since W. F. Albright in reviewing Israel and Revelation makes a...

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