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

Introduction

Introduction This book is a study of Leo Strauss’s later writings on Maimonides. In light of the many works and articles that have been written on Strauss, the reader might wonder if another work is really necessary. But the remarkable fact is that while much has been written about Strauss, scholars—not to mention journalists and intellectuals—by and large ignore his later writings. What’s more, these writings include Strauss’s most mature statements on Maimonides and some of his most considered reflections on the relationship between the Bible and philosophy, or “Jerusalem and Athens.”1 They belong to a class of writings—his later works in general—that Strauss’s student Allan Bloom called “the great Strauss to which all the rest is only a prolegomena.”2 The aim of this book is to demonstrate to anyone interested in Jewish thought, classical political philosophy, the problem of “progress,” or the perennial tension between reason and revelation what makes Strauss’s later Maimonidean writings so fascinating and important. The book also offers an account of Maimonides's method of interpretation that should be of particular interest to Jews who uphold the integrity of the Jewish tradition but who also recognize the necessity of intellectual-spiritual innovation within the tradition. My method has been straightforward: I carefully studied and tried to elucidate some difficult texts. In so doing, I discovered that Strauss’s later Maimonidean writings constitute a new stage in his understanding of Maimonides, a stage that witnesses the development of Strauss’s old views together with the appearance of some genuinely new and quite surprising views. This book also delineates how Strauss progressed in his understanding of Maimonides. The book is divided into five parts: an introduction, three central chapters that treat Strauss’s mature, later statements on Maimonides—“How To Begin To Study The Guide for the Perplexed” and “Notes on Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge”—and the conclusion. 1 2 Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics The Introduction is divided into five sections. The first section traces Strauss’s impact on the world of Maimonidean scholarship; the second section delineates the philosophical context of Strauss’s Maimonidean writings; the third section evaluates the phases of Strauss’s development; the fourth section explores the contributions made by the handful of scholars who have enabled us to progress in our understanding of Strauss’s later Maimonidean writings; and the fifth section explains how Strauss’s later Maimonidean works can profitably be read as exercises in liberal education. Strauss’s Impact on Maimonidean Scholarship In order to appreciate Strauss’s immense impact on Maimonidean scholarship , we should begin with Strauss’s first major statement on Maimonides, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors (PAL; 1935).3 In PAL Strauss argues that to interpret medieval Jewish Philosophy properly, its Platonic, political orientation must first be considered. Strauss’s argument was made in response to Julius Guttmann’s Philosophy of Judaism, a book in which Guttmann placed the metaphysical questions front and center in his interpretation of medieval Jewish philosophy . According to Strauss’s understanding of Guttmann, “the communication of truths . . . is the primary end of . . . revelation. . . . The community-founding, state-founding meaning of the revelation becomes in Guttmann a secondary end.”4 In contrast to Guttmann, Strauss argues that the proclamation of the law, and not metaphysics, is the primary end of revelation.5 Strauss claims that beginning from a political perspective enables one to see the metaphysical questions in their proper perspective, whereas beginning from a metaphysical perspective blinds one to the political problem that is the key for understanding the foundations of philosophy: “The interpretation of medieval Jewish philosophy beginning from Platonic politics . . . does not have to lose sight of the metaphysical problems that stand in the foreground for the medieval philosophers themselves. . . . If, on the other hand, one begins from the metaphysical problems, one misses, as the history of the inquiry to date clearly shows, the political problem, in which is concealed nothing less than the foundation of philosophy, the philosophic elucidation of the presupposition of philosophizing.”6 PAL motivated Guttmann to refine his own religious philosophy, and it changed the trajectory of the academic study of medieval Jewish philosophy in the twentieth century: political questions became centrally 3 Introduction important.7 And by explicating how seemingly metaphysical themes such as prophecy are best understood within the context of political philosophy— “The...