In this Book
- Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors
- Book
- 1995
- Published by: State University of New York Press
- Series: SUNY series in the Jewish Writings of Leo Strauss
summary
A groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors. Leo Strauss’s Philosophy and Law contains a groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors, and it offers an argument on behalf of that philosophy which is also a profound critique of modern philosophy. Here is an entirely new and complete English translation of Strauss’s work, which takes as its ideal the exacting standards of accuracy that Strauss himself emphasized in his own work. It includes a prefatory essay introducing the argument of each of the four sections of Philosophy and Law.
This is a fresh and challenging treatment of the perennial conflict between reason and revelation, or philosophy and religion. Strauss’s key contention in this book is that the most influential modern approaches to this conflict have run aground in ways that reflect their loss of key insights developed by the medieval philosophers of Islam and their Jewish pupils, especially Maimonides. Strauss challenges the modern view that scientific enlightenment must ultimately amount to atheism, and that therefore there can be no such thing as enlightened religion. Through a careful, original, and detailed treatment of central works of the medieval Islamic-Jewish tradition, especially Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, Strauss aims to recover their key insights into this question.
Table of Contents
Additional Information
ISBN
9781438421438
MARC Record
OCLC
42855563
Pages
157
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No