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

2. The Guide of the Perplexed as a Work of Classical Political Philosophy

2 The Guide of the Perplexed as a Work of Classical Political Philosophy Leo Strauss republished “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed” in full in his 1968 collection of essays, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (LAM).1 This chapter treats “How To Begin To Study” in the context of LAM, and it is divided into three parts. The first part analyzes the structure of LAM. The second part follows Strauss’s use of “progress” and “conservative ” as leading terms, both in “How To Begin To Study” and in LAM as a whole. By following Strauss’s use of these terms, one is able to understand why Strauss calls the Guide both a Jewish book and a work of classical political philosophy. The third part investigates why Strauss uses “progress” as a leading term in a section that treats the vulgar notion of providence. This investigation enables us to see that in LAM Strauss speaks not only as a student of classical political philosophy, but also, in part, as a Jewish political thinker. The Structure of Liberalism Ancient and Modern LAM consists of a Preface and ten chapters. The ten chapters can be divided into three sections. In the first section, chapters 1–3, Strauss presents liberal education as an antidote for the more vulgar aspects of popular culture.2 For instance, Strauss concludes chapter 1, “What Is Liberal Education?” as follows: “Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for ‘vulgarity’; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful.”3 Chapter 2, “Liberal Education and Responsibility”—which Strauss prepared for The Fund for Adult Education—ends by urging the reader 131 132 Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics to turn away from “loud-speakers,” which might mean either popular culture or crassly partisan politics, or both: “Liberal education consists in learning to listen to still and small voices and therefore in becoming deaf to loud-speakers. Liberal education seeks light and therefore shuns limelight.”4 And in chapter 3, “The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy,” Strauss critiques Eric Havelock’s The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics, a book in which Havelock reads the modern notion of “progress” back into ancient Greece.5 Strauss calls Havelock’s book “unusually poor” and justifies his long analysis of it as follows: “Books like Havelock’s are becoming ever more typical. Scholarship, which is meant to be a bulwark of civilization against barbarism, is ever more frequently turned into an instrument of rebarbarization.”6 Strauss likewise concludes chapter 3 by calling for a return to the classically liberal value of human excellence: “True liberals today have no more pressing duty than to counteract the perverted liberalism which contends ‘that just to live, securely and happily, and protected but otherwise unregulated, is man’s simple but supreme goal,’ and which forgets quality, excellence, or virtue.”7 The second section of LAM, chapters 4–7, ascends from the present -day threats to liberal virtue to illustrations of classical political philosophy . “How To Begin To Study” is chapter 6. In his Preface, Strauss explains that these essays, like much of his previous work, are intended, “to lay bare the fundamental difference between classical and modern political philosophy .”8 He thus classifies the Guide as a work of classical political philosophy. In chapters 4–7 the difference between classical and modern political philosophy is shown by illustrating the art of writing of four classical thinkers : Plato, Lucretius, Maimonides, and Marsilius of Padua. These thinkers sought to enlighten their readers, but they were not enlighteners in the modern sense. They did not attack their readers’ prejudices, but instead appealed to those prejudices, playing one prejudice off another as the reader ascended to a more comprehensive view. For instance, in chapter 4, “On the Minos,” Strauss treats how Plato’s Socrates appealed to the pro-Athenian prejudice of his companion. In chapter 5, “Notes on Lucretius,” Strauss addresses the way Lucretius appealed to Memnius’s pro-Roman prejudice. In chapter 6, “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” Strauss discusses how Maimonides appealed to Joseph’s pro-Jewish prejudice, and in chapter 7 Strauss treats how Marsilius appealed to the New Testament in his battle against the doctrine of Papal plenitude. All of these writers adapted their views to the prejudices of their contemporaries, and their 133 The Guide...