Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics: Leo Strauss's Later Writings on Maimonides

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Strauss always placed Jerusalem before Athens when referring to these two ideal cities. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that this order reflects Strauss’s order of preference, for as Strauss learned from Maimonides, while the good of the soul is nobler than the good of the body, the good of the body must, of necessity, precede the good of the soul in time. 2. Bloom, Giants and Dwarves (GAD), p. 249. 3. Henceforth referred to as PAL. Strauss’s first book, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (SCR), is a learned treatment of Spinoza, but it failed to impact the world of Jewish scholarship, and more importantly it presents an interpretation of Maimonides that Strauss later rejected. Strauss views Maimonides in SCR as a theologian, and there is no recognition of the themes that would subsequently feature in Strauss’s interpretations: the political character of the Guide, the role of esoteric writing, and the role of progress in Maimonides’s thought. 4. PAL, p. 72. 5. “Religion is conceived by . . . Jews primarily as a law. Accordingly, religion enters the horizon of the philosophers primarily as a political fact. Therefore, the philosophic discipline dealing with religion is . . . political philosophy or political science.” In Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss (RCPR), p. 223. 6. PAL, pp. 78–79. 7. For an account of the Guttman-Strauss debate, see Schweid, “Religion and Philosophy: The Scholarly-Theological Debate between Julius Guttman and Leo Strauss,” pp. 163–195. 8. PAL, p. 74. 9. Medieval Political Philosophy (MPP), p. 1. 10. Henceforth referred to as PAW. Strauss’s essay on the Guide from PAW, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” was first published in 1941, in Essays on Maimonides, pp. 37–91. Two years earlier in 1939 Strauss wrote a review of Moses Hyamson’s translation of the Mishneh Torah, “Review of Moses 199 200 Notes to Introduction Hyamson’s edition of Maimonides, The Mishneh Torah, Book 1.” In that review he pointed out some of the contradictions, ambiguous terms, and secrets included in the Book of Knowledge. The review, which had little impact on the scholarly community , is treated in chap. 3. 11. Cf. Pangle’s Introductory essay to RCPR, as well as Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography. 12. Cf. Book of Knowledge, p. 33–34. 13. Ibid, p. 17. 14. Henceforth referred to as LAM, p. 15. 15. PAW, p. 16. 16. Cf. PAW, p. 17. 17. Ibid, p. 18. 18. Ibid, p. 94. 19. Ibid, p. 73. 20. “How Leo Strauss Paralyzed Maimonides Studies in the Twentieth Century ” [in Hebrew], pp. 386–397. 21. “Maimonides—the Abrahamic Man” [in Hebrew], pp. 20–22; Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah); Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest. 22. Cf. Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest, p. 9. 23. MPP, p. 2. 24. Cf. Pangle’s Introduction to RCPR, p. xxxiii. 25. Strauss also published a brief article, “Maimonides’ Statement on Political Science,” in 1953, in the Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research. It was subsequently republished in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (WIPP?), pp. 155–169. 26. “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” pp. xi-lvi. 27. Ibid, xi. 28. Kochin, “Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing,” p. 264, n. 6. 29. “Notes on Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge.” In Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem, pp. 269–283. In Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (SIPPP), pp. 192–204. References to “Notes” in this work are to the version in SIPPP. 30. For instance, in Steven Smith’s perceptive article on Strauss in the Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, he doesn’t take into account either “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed” or “Notes,” and both articles do not appear in the article’s bibliography. This is also the case in his helpful introduction to the philosophical and Jewish dimensions of Strauss’s thought, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism. 31. Pines, “On Leo Strauss,” p. 170. 32. Ibid. 33. Benardette refers specifically to the change in Strauss’s interpretation of Plato’s Republic that appears in The City and Man. See Benardette, Encounters and 201 Notes to Introduction Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardette, p. 42; “Leo Strauss’s...