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‘In the Court of a Great King’: Some Remarks on Leo Strauss’ Introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed

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Abstract

This essay, which will be divided between two SOPHIA editions, proposes to test the consensus in Maimonidean scholarship on the alleged intellectualism of Leo Strauss’ Maimonides by making a close interpretive study of Strauss’ 1963 essay ‘How to Begin to Study the Guide for the Perplexed’. While the importance of this essay, which is Strauss’ last extended piece on the Guide, is established in Maimonidean scholarship, its recognised esotericism has been matched by a dearth of detailed studies of the piece. We aim in this essay to try to rectify this situation, by reading ‘How to Begin to Study’ as Strauss directs us to read esoteric texts in Persecution and the Art of Writing. As one control on our exegetical claims, we will close by situating our reading of ‘How to Begin to Study’ and Strauss’ positions there on philosophy, prophecy and the Torah alongside the claims of his earlier, much less esoteric, but also rarely studied: ‘Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi’. Because of the now widely recognised foundational importance of Maimonides in understanding Leo Strauss’ own lasting positions, this work will have wider importance in Strauss scholarship, and hopefully make a contribution to the continuing task of trying to understand Strauss’ important thoughts on Athens and Jerusalem, reason and revelation, the city and man.

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Notes

  1. David Novak, ‘Responding to Leo Strauss: Four Recent Maimonidean Studies’, Conservative Judaism 44/3 (1992) 80-86, p. 80.

  2. Hereafter, for sake of convenience, we will mostly abbreviate this title, to ‘How to Begin to Study’. For reasons stated in a moment, I will refer to ‘How to Begin to Study’ by the paragraph number (#), followed by the page reference. In preparing this essay, I have used the version printed in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (pp. 140-184), to which the page numbers refer

  3. Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 48.

  4. Michael Zank, ‘Arousing Suspicion against a Prejudice: Leo Strauss and the Study of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed’ (pdf copy provided by the author), pp. 1-24; Joseph A. Buijs, ‘The Philosophical Character of Maimonides’ Guide—A Critique of Strauss’ Interpretation’ Judaism 27, No. 4 (Fall, 1978), pp. 448-457. The exceptions the author has been able to discover are Hillel Fradkin’s ‘A Word Fitly Spoken’, in Leo Strauss and Judaism (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 55-86, and Alfred L. Ivry, ‘Leo Strauss and Maimonides’ in Leo Strauss’s Thought. Ed. Alan Udoff. Boulder: Lynne Reiner, 1991, pp. 75-91, esp. pp. 86-89; Kenneth Seeskin, Kenneth Seeskin, ‘Maimonides’ Conception of Philosophy’, in Leo Strauss and Judaism, ed. David Novak (USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp.87-110; as well as Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, pp. 54-64 and pp. 69-82; to which we shall be returning as we proceed in the central part of the essay.

  5. Fox for instance argues that Strauss’ repetition of Maimonides’ esotericism in today’s political and pedagogic conditions is ‘neither possible nor desirable’. For ‘all its brilliance and ingenuity’, Fox contends that Strauss’ Maimonides essays, particularly ‘How to Begin to Study…’:… seem to do little to advance the cause of sound understanding, even for readers who are well prepared and sophisticated. If the only way to expound an esoteric text is by compounding and complicating the esotericism, then perhaps we should give up the effort altogether.” At Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, p. 63. Compare Seeskin, ‘Maimonides’ Conception of Philosophy’, at p. 92: ‘… and there is no reason why an interpreter cannot discuss Maimonides’ contribution in a forthright manner.’

  6. In Yeshayahu Leibowitz, ‘Maimonides—An Abrahamic Man’, Judaism 6:2 (1957). See Paul Mendes-Flohr, ‘Maimonides in the Crucible of Zionism’, in Maimonides and His Heritage ed. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein et al (Suny Press: Albany, 2009), p. 184. ‘The enture spiritual atmosphere’ of Maimonides’ writings refute the ‘absurd and fallacious’ reading of him as primarily a philosopher, Leibowitz argues (at loc cit.).

  7. Menachem Kellner, ‘Strauss’ Maimonides vs. Maimonides’ Maimonides: Could Maimonides have been both enlightened and Orthodox?’ in Le-aleh, December 2000, pp. 29-36, at p. 30. Kellner’s other, less flattering, comparison of Strauss’ intellectual is with autistics.

  8. Strauss ‘How to Begin’, paragraph 4, p. 142. In his essay on Judah Halevi in Persecution and the Art of Writing, again Strauss comments that ‘Jews of the philosophic competence of Halevi and Maimonides took it for granted that being a Jew and being a philosopher are mutually exclusive …’, Persecution and the Art of Writing, p.90. In ‘The Literary Character …’, we read again that Strauss believes that: ‘He [Maimonides] obviously assumes that the philosophers form a group distinguished from the group of adherents of the law and that both groups are mutually exclusive.’, loc cit., pp. 41-42; and ‘Since he [Maimonides] himself is an adherent of the Law, he cannot possibly be a philosopher, and consequently a book of his [ie. the Guide] in which he explains his views concerning all important topics cannot possibly be a philosophic book. (II. 15, 21, 26; III, 17, 20, 21)’, ‘Literary Character, p. 43. Buijs strongly disputes this Straussian premise or conclusion in Buijs, ‘The Philosophical Character of Maimonides’ Guide—A Critique of Strauss’ Interpretation’, esp. p. 449. As for the issue of there being no possible synthesis between philosophy and revelation, we would add that Strauss, far from being univocal, contradicts himself in ‘The Literary Character’, in the space of seven pages wherein he has been discussing Maimonides’ use of contradictions, on this fundamental issue. At page 69, we are told: ‘From this result, the inference must be drawn that no interpreter of the Guide is entitled to attempt a “personal” explanation of its contradictions. For example, he must not try to trace them back to the fact, or the assumption, that the two traditions which Maimonides tried to reconcile, i.e. the Biblical tradition and the philosophical tradition are actually irreconcilable.’ But then at page 76, we are instructed by Strauss: ‘Returning to Maimonides’ use of contradictions, one may assume that all important contradictions in the Guide may be reduced to the single fundamental contradiction between the true teaching, based on reason, and the untrue teaching, emanating from imagination …’ This perplexity in Strauss’ thoughts on Maimonides makes the consensus on his supposed esoteric teaching itself unusual.

  9. Kenneth Hart Green, Jew and Philosopher (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 128.

  10. Green, Jew and Philosopher, pp. 128-129.

  11. Warren Zev Harvey, ‘The Return of Maimonideanism’, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3/4 (Summer-Autumn 1980), pp. 249-268; at p. 254.

  12. Kellner, ‘Strauss’ Maimonides’, p. 34, n. 2.

  13. Leo Strauss, ‘Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi’, translated by Robert Bartlett, in Interpretation Fall 1990, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 3-30.

  14. To inventory: Strauss wrote some 11 essays on Maimonides in his career, while three of the fifteen chapters of Strauss’ last book, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, are devoted to Maimonides. Strauss’ ‘The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed’ is the central third out of five chapters in Persecution and the Art of Writing. See the interpolation added by the translators at p. 549 of Leo Strauss, ‘The Place of the Doctrine of Providence According to Maimonides’ trans. Gabriel Bartlett and Svetozar Minkov, in Review of Metaphysics 57 (March 2004): 537-549. See also particularly Green, Jew and Philosopher, whose whole work defends this notion, of Maimonides’ primary import to Strauss; but also Remi Brague’s strong assessment in his ‘Leo Strauss and Maimonides’: ‘The relationship of Strauss to Maimonides is central, permanent, and decisive. Maimonides is the permanent object of his scholarly [erudite] researches, he is the source of what Strauss estimates as his grand discovery, and the inspiration of his method (which, in its actuality, is also a style), his [personal] way of philosophy. Maimonides is present at all the stages, chronologically speaking, of Strauss’ career.’ In the original: ‘(L)e rapport à Maimonide est chez Strauss central, permanent, et décisif. Maimonide est l’objet permanent de ses recherches érudites, il est la source de ce qu’il estimait être sa grande découverte, il est l’inspirateur de sa méthode (qui, en l’occurrence, est plutôt un style) philosophique personelle. [...] Maimonide est présent à toutes les étapes, chonologiquement parlant, de la carrière de Strauss.’ Rémi Brague, ‘Leo Strauss et Maimonide’, in: Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel (eds.), Maimonides and Philosophy. Papers Presented at the Sixth Philosophical Encounter, May 1985, Dordrecht 1986: 246-268, at p. 246. Shlomo Pines is reputed to have said, when asked whether there were any Maimonideans alive today, that ‘there is Leo Strauss’. Cf. Shlomo Pines, ‘Al Leo Strauss [On Leo Strauss]’, Molad, 7, nos. 37-38 (1976), 455-57. In this article, Pines states that ‘he [Strauss] was perhaps the first one, after the medieval commentators, who read with attention Maimonides' book [the Guide].’ We note that he states here also: ‘[Strauss] saw himself as a philosopher’; and ‘he was a philosopher.’

  15. See in particular the titular chapter one, ‘Persecution and the Art of Writing’, pp. 22-37.

  16. For reasons stated in a moment, I will refer to ‘How to Begin to Study’ by the paragraph number (#), followed by the page reference. In preparing this essay, I have used the version printed in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (pp. 140-184), to which the page numbers refer.

  17. Strauss, ‘How to Begin to Study Maimonides’ Guide’, p. 140.

  18. Strauss spends more time on this in Leo Strauss ‘The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed’, in Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 53-55. Note that Kenneth Seeskin forcibly challenges Strauss’ literal reading of Maimonides’ claim about ‘chapter headings’, in Seeskin, ‘Maimonides’ Conception of Philosophy’, at p. 100, where he claims that Maimonides’ claim concerning ‘chapter headings’ ‘may simply be his way of saying that he cannot resolve every issue or provide a complete account of every theory’. This claim sits with Seeskin’s overall situation of Maimonides as an Aristotelian aware of the limits of human reason, writing on very obscure matters, whose esotericism can be at least largely explained by this difficulty concerning the topics the Guide addresses (cf. esp. pp.92-99).

  19. One of many enigmas is that Strauss states that the Guide on his count has 38 subsections, when the plan he has just given has 37. One solution to this, presuming the error is intentional, is to indicate that the Epistle dedicatory, plus the Introductions to the three Parts, forms an extra subsection. Given the numerological commitments indicated in the 26the paragraph on the number 26 9see anon), however, Strauss may also be pointing some readers towards ‘37’ as having some particular, hidden, importance. As indicated concerning other such possible ‘hints’, it is not possible to do more than speculate about this. Compare Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, pp. 56-63.

  20. As Fox registers and complains, at Interpreting Maimonides, p. 56.

  21. Following the formatting in Liberalism: Ancient and Modern, and to distinguish the Strauss sections from the Romanised book numbers from the Guide, I have used the smaller font here and throughout for numbering the Strauss-Guide sections.

  22. This is the guiding hermeneutic insight from the beginning of Strauss, ‘The Place of the Doctrine of Providence According to Maimonides (1937)’, trans. Gabriel Bartlett and Svetozar Minkov. The Review of Metaphysics 57 (March 2004): 537-549, p. 539. See p. 540 for Strauss’ inference from this structural or formal feature of the Guide: this doctrine has little philosophical merit, so we must ‘attribute this doctrine to the practical or political philosophy’ of Maimonides. See also Conclusion below.

  23. Cf. Leo Strauss, ‘The Place of Providence According to Maimonides (1937)’, esp. pp. 537-541.

  24. Fradkin, ‘A Word Fitly Spoken …’, p. 69.

  25. To try to minimise confusion between talking of the Guide and its own exoteric divisions and Strauss’ view of the Guide, when we talk of Strauss’ divisions of the Guide, we will do so by talking of ‘Strauss-Guide’ or ‘Strauss’-Guide’ in all of what follows. We will also abbreviate the full title of Strauss’ essay to ‘How to Begin to Study’.

  26. Cf. Ivry, ‘Leo Strauss on Maimonides’, pp. 86-88; Fradkin, ‘A Word Fitly Spoken …’, pp. 73-77; Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, p. 59; Ivry, ‘Leo Strauss on Maimonides’, pp. 87-88.

  27. It in addition does not appear possible to divide the sections or subsections of Strauss’ essay by 7s, as if it aimed to wholly or simply duplicate the Guide.

  28. Paragraph 55 interrupts or steps back from a discussion of Maimonides’ views on God, the intellect and the Will to a general consideration which might plausibly mark a section beginning: ‘The reader of the Guide must consider with the proper care not only the outlines of Maimonides’ way but also all its windings.’ (#55/180) However, this paragraph then returns to these obscure metaphysical matters, in a way which I have taken to indicate a continuity with previous paragraphs. Perhaps with more exegetic force, one could see a subsection between paragraphs 35 and 29, girt by two interpolated chapters on providence (#34/164-165 and #40/168-169).

  29. For instance, Michael and Catherine Zuckert in The Truth of Leo Strauss point out how Strauss deliberately produced a chapter of 26 paragraphs on Niccolo Machiavelli’s Prince, which has 26 chapters, a numerical fact Strauss finds significant (Michael and Catherine Zuckert, The Truth of Leo Strauss(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 138. See in particular Strauss Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 52; also p. 37 (end of Chapter I, paragraph 26), and the end of paragraph 26 in ‘How to Begin to Study The Guide for the Perplexed’: being ‘the court of a great king’ (#26/158; also our end below).; also The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 55. In Kim A. Sorenson Discourses on Strauss (University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, 2006), the author divides the last chapter of that work into hidden subsections, on the basis of numbered paragraphs, at pp. 166-167; similarly, Lawrence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) numbers the paragraphs of Strauss’ ‘Note on the Plan of Beyond Good and Evil’, at pp.188-205.

  30. We note that Fox again has questioned the orthodoxy or accuracy of these numerical attributions, at Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, p. 58. Fox also presents an interesting reading of the association of 14 by Strauss with man, given that 14 is associated closely by Maimonides (as per the 14 books of the Mishnah Torah) with the Torah.

  31. A strong reading would suggest that this numerological principle in Strauss essays takes the place of the allegoric principle for reading Torah in the Guide, as the key to understanding the whole. This temptation needs to be balanced, and subordinated, to considerations of content.

  32. For instance in Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 24-25 and p. 185; compare for instance Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 73, bottom. Interestingly, this Straussian emphasis on the centre is at once widely accepted in secondary texts, but rarely cited.

  33. Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, p. 59.

  34. Principally, not exclusively. Strauss also notes that the defence of creation ex nihilo, in the parts of the Guide devoted to, is not identical with philosophic metaphysics. Indeed, Maimonides is at pains to stress the non-identity between Aristotle’s teachings and those of Moses. See Guide II. 1-31) See Seeskin, ‘Maimonides’ Conception of Philosophy’, pp. 96-99 for a very different understanding of Maimonides’ engagement with these metaphysical issues.

  35. Cf. Zank, p. 6.

  36. If not to Leo Strauss. The reader is left to ponder these things. Strauss’ total critique of modern political thought, and ‘progress’ in this sense, as culminating in nihilism invites the hypothesis that Strauss’ choice of such extreme esotericism in ‘How to Begin to Study the Guide’ and contemporary texts reflects his belief that the progress Maimonides observed and responded to had reversed. Here as elsewhere, the interpreter must recognise the folly in asserting the thesis categorically, when its contrary is certainly not demonstrable. (cf. Guide I.32)

  37. Cf. Leo Strauss, ‘Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi’, Interpretation, Fall 1990, Vol. 18, No. 1, p. 18; and our Conclusion below.

  38. Strauss, ‘Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi’, pp. 3-30.

  39. As Fox raises, but offers no interpretation. For the reasons given in-text, we have made this poetic figure the title of this essay.

  40. A series of more controversial implications are suggested—but that only—by the notion that the Tree of Life in the biblical story grants immortal life: particularly given the special heed Strauss pays to Maimonides’ ‘silence on the future life in his presentation of the Torah view on providence’ (#40/168) and if the reader recalls the philosophical or Aristotelian view of the philosopher as the most God-like man (see v. below).

  41. Cf. Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, p. 57.

  42. We note for one thing that Strauss acknowledges Maimonides’ attempt to distinguish between God Himself and His actions, noting that this allows Maimonides to continue speaking of attributes of God’s actions. But Strauss acknowledges this Maimonidean position only to then dispute that this should be permissible on his own terms, since if we were to speak even of God’s actions causing ‘effects’ in the lower world, this would imply that God ‘caused’ these effects. Then Strauss: ‘it is difficult to see how “cause”, if applied to God, can leave more than the name in common with “cause” as an intelligible expression.’ (#50/177)

  43. By non-Maimonidean, we mean that this comparison or implication is not explicitly drawn in the Guide.

  44. The attentive reader should be reminded as s/he reads this of the culminating paragraph of the central (sub)section of Strauss’ own essay (#47/174-175). We will return to this in connection with our next exegetical point, v.

  45. In the Guide’s own words: ‘God has therefore, with reference to the world, the status of a form with regard to a thing possessing a form, in virtue of which it is that which it is: a thing the true reality and essence of which are established by that form.’ (Guide I.69/p. 169)

  46. One plausible, again potentially heterodox, reading is that we are meant to think of God’s self-intellection as his essence, and this essence as equivalent without remainder to the formal cause of things in the world, including the sublunar world: viz. as that which provides for their essential intelligibility for all minded beings. Yet in I.69, Maimonides also looks at arguments for God as the efficient cause of partial motions of things within the world, and their final cause or telos. Strauss implies that Maimonides’ emphasis on God’s self-intellection either contradicts these doctrines (on a strong reading), or at least that the self-intellection of God cannot readily ‘help’ readers in understanding these other teachings. As per Strauss final, 58th paragraph, so here we can only draw greater attention to the manifest, manifold perplexities Strauss’ ‘How to Begin to Study’ deliberately poses.

  47. Fradkin, ‘A Word Fitly Spoken …’, pp. 75-76. This provides for Fradkin a philosophical ground, if that is the appropriate adjective, for understanding the Guide as a Jewish book, in Strauss’ eyes.

  48. Cf. Guide I.71 (Pines translation), pp. 177-178 with pp. 180-181.

  49. Citing Guide out of its textual order ‘(cf. II.2 then II.1)’ in a way which is unexplained.

  50. A third set of reasons in this 6th (sub)section justifies a citation. Maimonides’ attempts to defend the Mosaic teaching concerning creation ex nihilo must see his refutation not simply of the Aristotelian teaching concerning the eternity of the world. He needs also to refute the Platonic teaching from the Timaeus concerning a creator-God who creates the world as we know it from eternal matter. Such a teaching can, Strauss says, allow for an acceptance of some miracles, which Strauss states here as sufficient reason for its being ‘not inimical to the Law’. (#55 end/182) Yet Plato’s understanding of providence as following ‘naturally the intelligence of the individual being’ mitigates against the types of miracles Strauss is associating here, through assertion, with a belief in the Law: namely, God’s special providence, and perhaps ‘eternity ex parte post’, for Israel. Yet, Strauss stress, Maimonides the proceeds to fail to refute this doctrine as it has not been demonstrated—an argument Strauss finds unsatisfactory, given that neither the biblical nor the Aristotelian teachings have been demonstrated, yet each is explicitly addressed. Here as elsewhere, the reader is left pondering what, if any, implications concerning Maimonides’ relationship to the Platonic teaching Strauss sees here. These implications are not stated by Strauss.

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Sharpe, M.J. ‘In the Court of a Great King’: Some Remarks on Leo Strauss’ Introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed . SOPHIA 50, 141–158 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0200-x

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