Politics and Apocalypse

The Straussian Moment

184 John Ranieri has as its goal the establishment of a Jewish state is viewed by Cohen as a satanic notion. Strauss then goes on to add: “he [Cohen] certainly would not have considered it satanic but divine if someone said that the sole end of the religion of Judaism is the establishment and preservation of the socialist state” (Leo Strauss: The Early Writings, 144). 71. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 88. The footnote accompanying this statement holds the “most accepted view,” in Strauss’s opinion, to be that of Maimonides. Whether Maimonides’ is in fact the most accepted view on this question or whether Strauss’s is the most accepted view of Maimonides is beyond the scope of this article. 72. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 88. 73. See Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985). The following description by Walzer of the influence of the Exodus identifies the very things that Strauss associates with modern notions of progress: “Exodus is a model for messianic and millenarian thought, and it is also a standing alternative to it—a secular and historical account of ‘redemption,’ an account that does not require the miraculous transformation of the material world but sets God’s people marching through the world toward a better place within it” (17). 74. See Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth, rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Free Press, 1991), 177–78; Karl Lowith and Leo Strauss, “Correspondence Concerning Modernity,” Independent Journal of Philosophy 4 (1983): 111. 75. Leo Strauss: The Early Writings, 32–33. 76. Strauss, “Biblical History and Science,” 135. 77. Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 1–26. 78. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 167–73. 79. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 176. For a detailed discussion of Strauss’s essay, see Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 80. Hermann Cohen, who, for Strauss, is an example (perhaps the example) of Jewish thought’s capitulation to modern ideology, does not fare well in Studies. As noted, Strauss criticizes him first in “Jerusalem and Athens” and then devotes the entire last chapter of the book to further, more pointed criticism. One could argue that the chapters that follow the Nietzsche essay (chapters 9–15) have, from the perspective of Straussian political philosophy, the character of a descent. We move from the estimable medieval Jewish rationalism of Maimonides through Machiavelli and other moderns, and end with Cohen, who embodies the confusion of modern thought with Jewish tradition. 81. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 180. 82. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 181. 83. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 181. 84. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 188–90. 85. Lowith and Strauss, “Correspondence,” 184, 189. 86. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 190. 87. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 328. Modernity and the Jewish Question 185 88. Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,” 179. 89. Strauss, “Freud on Moses and Monotheism,” 286. 90. Giles Fraser, Redeeming Nietzsche (London: Routledge, 2002), 110, 115–16. 91. Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed. Gourevitch and Ross, 209. 92. Lowith and Strauss, “Correspondence,” 183. 93. Leo Strauss, “Perspectives on the Good Society,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity , 440. 94. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 328. 95. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 117. 96. See Victor Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics II,” Review of Metaphysics 22, no. 2, (1968): 292–99, 325. 97. Leo Strauss, “Notes on Lucretius,” in Liberalism, Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 76–135. Here too Nietzsche’s influence weighs heavily, as Strauss ponders the Lucretian notion that “nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal” and that “the eternal is not lovable” (preface to Liberalism: Ancient and Modern, x). For Strauss’s treatment of Thucydides, see Leo Strauss, “Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss, selected and introduced by Thomas Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Leo Strauss, “Preliminary Observations on the Gods in Thucydides’ Work,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 89–104; Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago...