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Leo Strauss's Indictment of Christain Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Clark A. Merrill
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Extract

Leo Strauss's writings reveal a subtle but consistent set of accusations against the influence of Christian thinkers on political philosophy. These accusations may be summarized in three charges. First, the attempt by Aquinas and other Christian scholastics to synthesize faith and reason led later philosophers to eschew prudence in favor of a humane project to employ science to transform political life. The result was the destruction of the modus vivendi, safeguarded by classical political philosophy, between pious citizens and diffident but inwardly free philosophers. Second, the rationalization of political life implies that a universal regime is possible. But, unless all men become philosophers, this universal regime can be only a universal tyranny, ruled by means of perverted faith in the guise of a final philosophy. Third, Christian thinkers must bear ultimate responsibility for precipitating the early modern rejection of classical political philosophy. Without the Christian appropriation of Aristotle, there might never have been a Machiavelli or a Hobbes.

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Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , Winter 2000 , pp. 77 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2000

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References

1 There is a case to be made that, by setting out clearly and publicly a criticism that Strauss intentionally left implicit, I am engaging in a morally suspect project. It is possible I am doing a disservice both to politically responsible Jewish and Christian believers and to political philosophers. George Grant, one of Strauss's most gifted Christian readers, declined to write publicly about Strauss's criticisms of Christian philosophy. See letter to Ed Andrew, 27 December 1983, inThe George Grant Reader, ed. Christian, William and Grant, Sheila (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 267Google Scholar. I have been encouraged to disregard Grant's judicious caution by the example of Thomas Aquinas who was not afraid to set out objections to his own positions and even to orthodox belief, often stating those arguments with greater clarity and force than the opponents who actually espoused them. The accusations set out below may be viewed as three extended objections opening an article headed “Whether There Is a Christian Philosophy?” As such, they invite an answer and replies from the heirs of St. Thomas.

2 Strauss, Leo, “An Unspoken Prologue,” Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Green, Kenneth Hart (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 450Google Scholar; also published in Interpretation 7, no. 3 (1978): 1–3Google Scholar. Cf. Strauss, Leo, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 9.Google Scholar

3 Klein, Jacob, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, trans Brann, Eva (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press,1968), pp. 78–79, 121–22, 123.Google Scholar

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5 One can find in numerous places in Strauss's writings a similar complaint against those who misunderstand classical philosophy because they make the mistake of reading it through the lens of Christian scholastic concepts. For one of the most extensive passages on this subject, see Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 8–9Google Scholar. See alsoStrauss, Leo, Philosophy and Law, trans. Adler, Eve (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 73Google Scholar; and “How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy,” The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Pangle, Thomas L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 221Google Scholar; and “On a New Interpretation of Plato's Political philosophy,” Social Research 13, no. 3 (1946):328Google Scholar. Finally, there is a curious passage in a very early work where Strauss hails Nietzsche as the first modern thinker who drew aside the curtain of Christian thought to reveal a way back, not only to a clear vision of medieval Jewish philosophy, but also to a true reading of the ancients. Judaism, according to Strauss, can benefit from “the critique of culture by Nietzsche, who attempted to descend toward the pre-‘Christian’ depths of the Jewish spirit as well as of the Greco-European spirit.” “Das Heilige,” in Der Jude 7, no 4 (1923): 241Google Scholar, quoted and translated by Brague, Rémi, “Leo Strauss and Maimonides,” in Leo Strauss's Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement (Boulder and London: Lynne Riener, 1991), 104.Google Scholar

6 Laurence Berns, who speaks from long personal acquaintance as Strauss's student and colleague, tells us that Strauss “insisted that strictly speaking there is no such thing as Jewish philosophy.” Berns, Laurence, Leo Strauss 1899–1973,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 2Google Scholar, first appeared in The College, January 1974 (a publication of St. John's College, Annapolis, MD). Cf.Leo Strauss, “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed” in Maimonides, Moses, The Guide of te Perplexed, ed. Pines, Shlomo (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. xivGoogle Scholar. Cf. Strauss, , Persecution, pp. 19. 43, 104–105.Google Scholar

7 Strauss, , Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 8–9Google Scholar. In the title of this essay, it seemed advisable to use the term Christian philosophy instead of Christian scholasticism to alert readers to the broad implications of Strauss's critique. In the text, I have followed Strauss's terminology.

8 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), P. 163.Google Scholar

9 Aquinas, Thomas, summa Theologiae I, Q. 79, a. 12.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., I–II, Q. 90, introduction

11 Ibid., I–Ii, Q. 91, a, 2; Q. 94, a. 1.

12 Hittinger, Russell “Natural Law as ‘Law’:Reflections on the Occasion of ‘Veritatis Splendor’,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence 39 (1994): 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, P. 163.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 163–64.

15 Kalâm refers to a kind of speculative or theoretical thought that does not take theory as its chief goal but rather aims at the defense of religion. The term originally described the teachings of Muslim dialectical theologians who attempted to construct a rational defense of religion. One of the chief parts of this Islamic science or kalâm was a teaching known in the Christian tradition as natural law. The capacity of human reason to prescribe rational laws for the attainment of human happiness is incorporated, as in Plato's Laws, into a theology of divine providence, which lends the rational laws a weight of moral obligation that they would not otherwise possess. The theologians' science of kalâm elevates the rational laws to the status of rational commandments. Islamic philosophers, such as Alfarabi, however, adapted this theological apologetics and made it continue to perform its function of rational persuasion, but now in the service of philosophy. Thus, we must distinguish a philosophic kalâm from the original theological kalâm. See Strauss, , Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 10–13.Google Scholar

16 Strauss, , Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 97–98Google Scholar. Cf. Strauss, Leo, “Criticism: Sixteen Appraisals,” What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 285.Google Scholar

17 See Strauss, , “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 139–41.Google Scholar

18 Strauss's thesis regarding Christian scholasticism's responsibility for modern philosophy's submission to popular opinion is summarized by Behnegar, Nasser, “Leo Strauss's Confrontation with Max Weber: A Search for a Genuine Social Science,” Review of Politics 59, no. 1 (1997): 118n56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “Strauss, therefore, suggests that the Scholastic synthesis of philosophy and Christian revelation was really an attempt to resolve the conflict in favor of revelation. It was on account of this attempted resolution that philosophy first lost its character as a way of life and became an instrument or a department, a view which has survived scholasticism and continues to obscure the conflict between philosophy and revelation.” Behnegar also makes a useful distinction between a political philosophy that makes itself useful to politics and a political philosophy that becomes confused with politics.

19 Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae I–II.Google Scholar Q. 97, a. 2, ad. 1; and a. 3, c., ad. 2.

20 Strauss, , “The Problem of Socrates,” Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, p. 70.Google Scholar

21 See Strauss, , “On the Euthyphron,” in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism.Google Scholar

22 Strauss, , The City and Man, p. 125.Google Scholar

23 Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae, I, Q. 1, c.Google Scholar; Summa Contra Gentiles I, 4Google Scholar For an excellent overview of Christian philosophy and for an elegant argument in favor of the very possibility of a Christian philosophy, see Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (Notre Dame, IN, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, first published 1936), esp. chapter two.Google Scholar

24 Aquinas, , Summa Contra Gentiles III, 37, 48, 63Google Scholar; Summa Theologiae I–II, Q. 2–5.Google Scholar

25 Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae I–II, Q.I, a. 7; Q.5, a. 1.Google Scholar

26 The correspondence between man's mundane good, which can be known by natural reason, and his ultimate, supernatural end, which requires the supplement of revelation, is inherent in the relationship that Aquinas asserts between the natural law and the eternal law. See Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae I–II, Q. 91, a. 1 and 2Google Scholar; Q. 93, a. 3 and 6; Summa Contra Gentiles I, 7.

27 Cf. Strauss, , “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero,” in On Tyranny, ed. Gourevitch, Victor and Roth, Michael S. (New York: The Free Press, 1991), p. 184.Google Scholar

28 One must be careful not to confuse the judgment of Platonic political philosophy that political life and moral opinions constitute perhaps the most fascinating and urgent objects of philosophical investigation with any kind of admission, on the part of the philosopher, that his study of political life in any way implies that political life can be made philosophical or can be somehow reconciled or combined with philosophy.

29 Strauss, , “Progress or Return,” in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 259Google Scholar. Section III of “Progress and Return,” from which this quote is taken, appeared originally as “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1979): 111–18.Google Scholar

30 Strauss, Leo, “Jerusalem and Athens,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 167–68Google Scholar. See also Strauss, Leo, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

31 SeeStrauss, , “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 127.Google Scholar

32 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, pp. 130–32Google Scholar. Cf. letter to Karl Löwith(15 August 1946) in “Correspondence Concerning Modernity: Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy 4 (1983): 107.Google Scholar

33 See Strauss, , “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” trans. Bartlett, Robert, Interpretation 18, no 1 (Fall 1990): 9Google Scholar. Christian scholasticism did not heed what both Plato's and Xenophon's Socrates learned about the “limitation of reason and of speech generally.” The scholastics did not understand the political necessity for Socrates to become friends with Thrasymachus. See Strauss, , “The Problem of Socrates,” in Rebirth of Classical Political Philosophy, p. 159Google Scholar. The Christian understanding of man tends to be apolitical.

34 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p.144.Google Scholar

35 See, for example, Ephesians 2:11–16.

36 Strauss, , “The Problem of Socrates,” in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, pp. 158–59Google Scholar. Strauss specifically states that the deliberate cultivation of patriotism (love of the patria) is part of the noble lie. Strauss, , The City and Man, p. 102Google Scholar. Ronald Beiner argues that awareness of this apparent contradiction present in Christianity, between a rational (or, at least, a humane) truth and bad politics, dominates book four, chapter 8, of Rousseau's Social Contract. “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau on Civil Religion,” Review of Politics 55, no. 4 (1993): 637.Google Scholar

37 See Fortin, Ernest, “Rational Theologians and Irrational Philosophers,” Interpretation 12, no. 2–3 (1984): 351.Google Scholar

38 Hebrews 13:14.

39 Leo Strauss, , “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero,” in On Tyranny, p. 210.Google Scholar

40 See Glaucon's objection to Socrates' description of the rudimentary city according to the natural or necessary requirements for human beings to enjoy peace and health. Republic 372c–d.

41 Strauss, , “Restatement,” in On Tyranny, p. 211Google Scholar. Harry V. Jaffa testifies to Strauss's antipathy toward any promotion of universal opinions. See “Political Philosophy and Honor: The Leo Strauss Dissertation Award,” Modern Age 21, no. 4 (1997): 388.Google Scholar

42 See Parens, Joshua, Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi's Summary of Plato's Laws (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 75.Google Scholar

43 Strauss, , “Restatement,” in On Tyranny, p. 211.Google Scholar

44 See Rahe, Paul A., Republics Ancient and Modem, Volume I: The Ancien Règime in Classical Greece (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 212–13Google Scholar. Dante Germino seems in no doubt that Strauss truly entertained the indictment of Christianity here set forth: “For Strauss, the attempted Christian abolition of esotericism meant the attempted abolition of philosophy itself. Medieval Christianity's attempt to subordinate philosophy to revelation was for Strauss but another name for the attempt to destroy philosophy—despite the fact that Aquinas promulgated the principle gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit” (“Leo Strauss Versus Eric Voegelin on Faith and Political Philosophy,” The Political Science Reviewer 24 [1995]: 264).Google Scholar

45 Strauss, , Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 21Google Scholar. Platonic political philosophy always takes as its primary reference, not the city, but the life of the individual; not the life of moral and political action, but the life of contemplation. Cf. Lampert, Laurence, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

46 For an example of the uncontroversial reading of Strauss vis-à-vis Aquinas, see Kries, Douglas, “On Leo Strauss's Understanding of the Natural Law Theory of Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 57, no. 2 (1993): 216CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Laurence Berns also does not see Strauss as blaming Christianity for the modern break with the classical tradition. See “The Relation Between Philosophy and Religion: Reflections on Leo Strauss's Suggestion Concerning the Source and Sources of Modern Philosophy,” Interpretation 19, no. 1 (1991): 52–53Google Scholar. According to Berns, Strauss believed that the motive behind the modern rebellion against medieval philosophy arose from impatience with the “mutual irrefutability of philosophy and revelation” and the moderns' “wish to supersede the tension arising from their mutual irrefutability.” Only by making the knowledge of the world that is available to every man “the ultimate source of meaning for humanity's understanding of the world” can man then avoid the tension between the mutually irrefutable claims of philosophy and revelation. According to this view, medieval Christian thought, far from being imprudent, merely adapted the wisdom of ancient political philosophy to the new conditions of revealed religion and continued to maintain the classical tension between the legitimate claims of the city's authoritative opinions and philosophy's call for a life of unrestricted inquiry. But, if I am right, Strauss goes further than this, implying that the modern rebellion was a moral reaction triggered by Christianity's prior attempt to resolve the tension between opinion and philosophy by subordinating philosophy to a peculiarly unpolitical opinion.

47 Strauss argued that “all modern political philosophies belong together because they have a fundamental principle in common. This principle can best bestated negatively: rejection of the classical scheme as unrealistic.” Strauss goes on to elucidate why Machiavelli deemed the classical scheme unrealistic: “[T]here is something fundamentally wrong with an approach to politics which culminates in a utopia, in the description of a best regime whose actualization is highly improbable” Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” in What Is Political Philosophy?, pp. 40–41. Strauss implies, however, that Machiavelli himself was sympathetic to the Averroistic tradition of classical political philosophy which justified the pursuit of the philosophic life in terms of the natural needs of the city. Thus, it appears likely that it was its Christian interpreters who had made classical philosophy appear excessively “unrealistic.” James Schall touched on this oblique charge against Christianity: “Strauss implied that the elevation of human expectations due to charity ‘caused’, indirectly at least, a sort of fanaticism in modernity….In this analysis, Strauss seemed to imply a remote Christian, not ideologically anti- Christian, origin for modernity in the worst sense of that term as Strauss used it” (Schall, , “A Latitude for Statesmanship? Strauss on St. Thomas,” Review of Politics 53, no. 1 [1991]: 141).Google Scholar

48 Strauss, , “Preface to Isaac Husik, Philosophical Essays,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, p. 252.Google Scholar

49 Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 175 and 202Google Scholar. Paul Rahe disputes this interpretation of Machiavelli, arguing that “there is ample indication within his books that—at the deepest level—the enemy is not Christianity but the classical philosophy embedded within it” (Republics Ancient and Modern, Vol. 2: New Modes & Orders in Early Modern Political Thought [Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1994], 328n7 and 343n67Google Scholar). Rahe does not explain whether it seems likely Machiavelli would have launched his radical critique of the ancients had he not seen ancient philosophy as the intellectual core of an ecclesiastical and theological order which, for the benefit of humanity, he felt compelled to overthrow and replace with a new order.

50 See Strauss, , “Restatement of Xenophon's Hiero,” in On Tyranny, p. 183Google Scholar. One of Strauss's extremely rare direct references to Jesus occurs in his description of Machiavelli's design to destroy Christianity not by armed might, the way of Moses, but by propaganda, the way of Jesus himself. See also Strauss, , “What Is Political Philosophy? in What Is Political Philosophy?, p. 45Google Scholar. We should also make a distinction between classical philosophy's use of rhetoric in its relation to the city and modern philosophy's use of propaganda in its relation to the city. Propaganda, as used by both the Christian church and the modern philosophers, is intended to change the world, to make a new and better world. Rhetoric, in the classical sense, aims no higher than a modicum of justice, simply giving each his due. The medieval philosophical tradition (as opposed to the theologizing tradition) maintained the subtle art of rhetoric. See Strauss, , On Tyranny, pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

51 Strauss, , Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 178, and see 177–79.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., p. 178.

53 Regarding the charge made against the classical philosophers for a lack of sufficient realism, see Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter 15; René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part I; Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, letter of dedication; Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration, Preface, and The Advancement of Learning, Book 2; Benedict Spinoza, Political Treatise, chapter 1, Introduction.

54 Strauss, , “What Is Political Philosophy?” in What is Political Philosophy?, p. 44Google Scholar; and “Marsilius of Padua,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 201. Cf. Platt, Michael, “Leo Strauss: Three Quarrels, Three Questions, One Life,” in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, ed. Deutsch, Kenneth L. and Soffer, Walter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 20Google Scholar. “Is not Machiavelli's animus against ancient ideal republics really an animus against an excessive and unpolitical understanding of virtue, which flows from Christian teaching? Machiavelli allows anger at God to become anger at the good. In this want of discrimination Strauss saw a failure of philosophy to be philosophic.” Classical virtue had remained moderate and realistically political in that it had never denied the necessity to cultivate the virtues required for war. Even the philosophers, despite their transpolitical aspirations, acknowledged the binding authority of the law, whose end was the unity and preservation of the particular, earthly city. Christianity openly taught a doctrine that diminished men's respect and awe of the particular law of their earthly city; it exposed to the multitude the merely provisional character of human law and thereby sowed the seeds of public contumacy. Between the religious fear of those who believe they know the ways of God and the scientific pride of those who claim to know and control the ways of nature (and who, therefore, claim to be able to make or re-make nature, including human nature), lies the modest wonder of the Platonic philosopher.

55 Strauss, , “Marsilius of Padua,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 201.Google Scholar

56 On the distinction between the Latin Averroist and Machiavellian critiques of religion, see Rahe, Paul, Republics Ancient and Modern, 2: 7,18, and 334–35n58.Google Scholar

57 See Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Introduction.

58 Ibid., p. 296.

59 Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive, VI, 11, note.Google Scholar

60 See Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 92.Google Scholar

61 Laurence Lampert paints a forceful picture of the antitheological motive at work in Bacon's rejection of classical philosophy. “Bacon's characteristic opposition to Plato is required by the times: Plato most effectively brought together what Bacon was forced to separate, philosophy and theology. Bacon forbids natural theology, one of the principle parts of Platonism for the people, because it no longer serves philosophy's purpose to allege that it has access to the gods, that it can serve the city by restoring the power of gods gone dead. Bacon's times are not marked by a death of the gods but by a God grown all-powerful, dominating even philosophy, a God whose religion is now rent by discords that threaten European civilization” (Lampert, Laurence, Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993], 124)Google Scholar. We may question, in passing, whether Strauss actually reads the history of philosophy in quite the same way as Lampert. If he did, then we might suppose that Strauss chose to defend religion in the mid-twentieth century, albeit in his typically paradoxical manner, because he saw that we are once more confronted, like Socrates, with the death of the gods, and because he lacked confidence in Nietzsche's joyous science—the embracing of immanent and eternally recurring nature—as a popular alternative to religion as a foundation for political order. Inthis sense, Strauss's attitude would be that which Gibbon attributed to the magistrates of ancient Rome: “[T]he various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosophers, as equally false; and by the magistrates, as equally useful” (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 2). For an example of such a Roman magistrate, see the account of Scipio Africanus in Polybius, The Histories, Book 10, 2.

62 See Kriiger, Gerhard, “Review of Leo Strauss' Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage Seiner Bibelwissenschaft,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy 5/6 (1979): 174.Google Scholar

63 Strauss, , “Notes on Lucretius,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 135.Google Scholar

64 Strauss, , “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 19.Google Scholar

65 See Strauss, , Thoughts on Machiavelli, pp. 207 and 296Google Scholar. Philosophy, in the Socratic sense of quest for everlasting truth, tends to be thrown out along with Biblical religion.

66 Strauss, , “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, p. 36.Google Scholar

67 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 34.Google Scholar

68 Hobbes, Thoma, Leviathan, ed. Oakeshott, Michael (New York: Collier Books, 1962), I, 6, pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

69 Green, , Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 19Google Scholar. Green refers to the following passages in works by Strauss: Philosophy and Law, p. 12,15–19; Natural Right and History, p. 167–70,178nll, 188–89; “Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion,” p. 29–31.

70 Strauss goes so far as to condemn the modern political society brought about through technological mastery of nature as unnatural; and its very success has made the return to a more natural political society almost impossible. See letter to Karl Löwith (15 August 1946), in “Correspondence Concerning Modernity,” Independent journal of Philosophy, 107–108. “I know very well that today [the small city state] cannot be restored; but the famous atomic bombs—not to mention at all cities with a million inhabitants, gadgets, funeral homes, ‘ideologies’—show that the contemporary solution, that is, the completely modern solution, is contra naturam.”

71 Strauss at least seems to have had considerable respect for the philosophical acuity of Thomas Aquinas. One thinks of Strauss's numerous citations of Aquinas's works in Natural Right and History, especially in chapter 4. Strauss accuses contemporary writers who attempt to interpret and make use of Aquinas's doctrines of having been misled by modern assumptions. See Leo Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato's Political Philosophy,” in Social Research, 347n24. And as for neo-Thomism, Strauss's attitude is clearly dismissive. See Strauss, , “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, pp. 29, 34.Google Scholar

72 Strauss, , “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

73 See Strauss, , “Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion,” inLiberalism Ancient and Modern, pp. 257Google Scholar: “I began therefore to wonder whether the self-destruction of reason was not the inevitable outcome of modern rationalism as distinguished from premodern rationalism, especially Jewish-medieval rationalism and its classical (Aristotelian and Platonic) foundation.” Maimonides exercised immense care in veiling the inquiries of speculative reason. He was aware that, in providing the necessary setting for the moral or political life, religion meets philosophy at the level of divine law. But what will happen if religion itself becomes a source of political instability? In that case, religion will no longer serve the best interests of either the political or the philosophical life. May we not suppose that, as with Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, potential philosophers also constituted Spinoza's primary intended audience? But Spinoza's circumstances had changed; he could no longer employ a respectful rhetoric concerning the ruling opinions of his day. Those ruling opinions had become a source of disorder rather than order. Spinoza did not so much declare a revolution as decamp from a city already in the grip of sectarian strife. Can we even perhaps say that Spinoza attempted to rescue a rationalism that was one of the highest fruits of Judaism from the self-destruction of the city of faith? Surely, any speculation on Spinoza's actual judgment of the relative merit of the two testaments must take into account his condemnation of the “dualism of spiritual and temporal power, and therewith for perpetual civil discord”—a dualism that is far more apparent in the New Testament than in the Old. Strauss, , “How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, p. 205.Google Scholar