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Maimonides’ Secret: Leo Strauss’s “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed

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This article offers a new account of Leo Strauss’s interpretation of Maimonides’ esoteric teaching in the Guide for the Perplexed, which Strauss offers in his seminal essay ‘The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed.’ According to the generally-accepted view, for Strauss, Maimonides’ esoteric teaching is the identity of the secrets of the Torah with Aristotelian philosophy, and—since that philosophy contradicts the foundational beliefs of the Torah—that the Torah has the merely instrumental function of bringing about political well-being. By contrast, I argue that, for Strauss, Maimonides’ esoteric teaching is the necessity of breaking the laws of the Torah for the sake of restoring Israel’s sovereignty. Additionally, I claim that Strauss’s interpretation depends on Carl Schmitt’s ‘decisionism.’

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Notes

  1. Leo Strauss, ‘The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,’ in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  2. Strauss claimed that Maimonides was an esoteric writer before ‘Literary Character’ but did not interpret him on this basis; see Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, trans. Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 14, 95-6, 102-3. Strauss’s many writings on Maimonides—which range from the period of his engagement with Spinoza in the 1930s, to his short essays posthumously published in Studies on Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983)—have been collected in Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013).

  3. See Carlos Fraenkel, ‘From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon: Interpreting Judaism as a Philosophical Religion,’ in Traditions of Maimonideanism, ed. Carlos Fraenkel (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Aviezer Ravitzky, ‘Samuel Ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,’ AJS Review, 6 (1981), 87–123.

  4. See, for example, Warren Zev Harvey, ‘The Return of Maimonideanism,’ Jewish Social Studies, 42:3/4 (1980), 249–268, 251 ff.; Howard Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought: Studies in Ethics, Laws, and the Human Ideal (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), ‘Maimonides’ Political Thought: Introductory Essay’; Yair Lorberbaum, ‘On Contradictions, Rationality, Dialectics and Esotericism in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,’ The Review of Metaphysics, 55:4 (2002), 711–750; Aviezer Ravitzky, ‘Maimonides: Esotericism and Educational Philosophy,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 304 ff.; Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 393 ff.; Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 3 ff.; Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 49 ff.

  5. In Essays on Maimonides, ed. S.W. Baron (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941).

  6. Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, Band 3: Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften—Briefe, ed. Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2008), 549.

  7. See Kenneth Seeskind, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 188; Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works, 393 ff.; Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 37–8; Menachem Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 15; Laurence Lampert, ‘Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, ed. Steven B. Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 63–5; Catherine Zuckert, “Strauss’s Return to Premodern Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, 106–8; George Y. Kohler, ‘Finding God’s Purpose: Hermann Cohen’s Use of Maimonides to Establish the Authority of Reason,’ Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 18:1 (2010), 75–105, 89; The Matter and Form of Maimonides’Guide, 50.

  8. Joel L. Kraemer, ‘Moses Maimonides: An Intellectual Portrait,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, 55–6, n. 135, 42. Lampert, ‘Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism,’ 63, also believes that Strauss’s interpretation is esoteric (although Lampert understands this interpretation along the lines of the consensus view). Additionally, a number of scholars claim that Strauss gives an esoteric interpretation of Maimonides in his late essay, ‘How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed,’ in Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963); see Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 55; Hillel Fradkin, ‘A Word Fitly Spoken: The Interpretation of Maimonides and the Legacy of Leo Strauss,’ in Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisited, ed. David Novak (Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996), 63; Matthew Joel Sharpe, ‘“In the Court of a Great King”: Some Remarks on Leo Strauss’ Introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed,’ Sophia, 50:1 (2011), 141-58, and 50:3 (2011), 413-27.

  9. ‘Literary Character,’ 56.

  10. Carl Schmitt, Dictatorship: From the origin of the modern concept of sovereignty to proletarian class struggle, trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014); Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985) [Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004)]; The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).

  11. Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995). Meier’s focus is the ‘hidden dialogue’ that took place between Strauss and Schmitt, and which can be discerned in Strauss’s 1932 review article of Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political; see Leo Strauss, ‘Notes on Carl Schmitt,’ in The Concept of the Political. But Meier still draws general conclusions about Strauss’s relation to Schmitt, above all: ‘[w]hereas the political does have central significance for the thought of Leo Strauss, the enemy and enmity do not,’ as they do for Schmitt (The Hidden Dialogue, 87). Strauss’s dependence on Schmitt in ‘Literary Character’ undermines this view.

  12. Miguel Vatter, ‘Strauss and Schmitt as Readers of Hobbes and Spinoza: On the Relation between Political Theology and Liberalism,’ The New Centennial Review, 4:3 (2004), 161–214; John McCormick, ‘Post-Enlightenment sources of political authority: Biblical atheism, political theology and the Schmitt-Strauss exchange,’ History of European Ideas, 37:2 (2011), 175–180.

  13. See fn. 8.

  14. Martin D. Yaffe, ‘Kenneth Hart Green’s Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss,’ Jewish Political Studies Review, 9:3 (1997), 77–86, 79.

  15. “Literary Character,” 38–9, 43.

  16. “Literary Character,” 39.

  17. ‘Literary Character,’ 39.

  18. ‘Literary Character,’ 39.

  19. ‘Literary Character,’ 40.

  20. ‘Literary Character,’ 40–1.

  21. ‘Literary Character,’ 41.

  22. ‘Literary Character,’ 42.

  23. ‘Literary Character,’ 44.

  24. ‘Literary Character,’ 44–5.

  25. ‘Literary Character,’ 45.

  26. ‘Literary Character,’ 45–6.

  27. Strauss uses both terms, ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ in ‘Literary Character’ as well as Persecution as a whole. I cannot give a full account here of the difference between these terms, but I hope that my argument will clarify it. For an attempt to distinguish them, see Paul J. Bagley, ‘On the Practice of Esotericism,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 53:2 (1992), 231–247.

  28. Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 397 ff.

  29. ‘Literary Character,’ 80, 87–8.

  30. Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 248.

  31. ‘Samuel Ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the “Guide of the Perplexed,”’ see especially 96, fn. 32.

  32. ‘Samuel Ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the “Guide of the Perplexed,”’ 118.

  33. Cited in Moses Maimonides: The Man and his Works, 391, brackets in the original.

  34. Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works, 392.

  35. See Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. E.M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 47-8; Philosophy and Law, 141, n. 25; Persecution and the Art of Writing, ‘Introduction,’ 13, ‘Persecution and the Art of Writing,’ 27.

  36. See ‘The Law of the Reason in the Kuzari,’ in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 95-8.

  37. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953), 157-9.

  38. Natural Right and History, 159 ff.

  39. See Philosophy and Law, 129 ff.; Leo Strauss, “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” trans. Robert Bartlett, Interpretation, 18:1 (1990), 3–30, 4 ff.; ‘Farabi’s Plato,’ in Louis Ginzberg: Jubilee Volume (New York: The American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 357 ff. (Strauss revised ‘Farabi’s Plato’ and incorporated it into the ‘Introduction’ of Persecution and the Art of Writing); Joshua Parens, ‘Strauss on Maimonides’s Secretive Political Science,’ in Leo Strauss’s Defense of the Philosophic Life: Reading What is Political Philosophy?, ed. Rafael Major (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 132, fn. 10. For the falasifa’s ‘modification’—and even ‘critique’—of Plato, see Philosophy and Law, 74-6, 129; ‘Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,’ 27, fn. 15; ‘On Abravanel’s Philosophic Tendency,’ in Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings, 591, fn. 23; ‘Farabi’s Plato,’ 381, fn. 55.

  40. ‘Literary Character,’ 46.

  41. Namely, at The Guide for the Perplexed, I: Introduction, 6.

  42. ‘Literary Character,’ 46–7.

  43. ‘Literary Character,’ 47.

  44. ‘Literary Character,’ 49.

  45. ‘Literary Character,’ 53.

  46. ‘Strauss’s Return to Premodern Thought,’ 103.

  47. ‘Literary Character,’ 48.

  48. This might seem too subtle a point, but compare ‘Literary Character,’ 78: ‘[c]annot miracles be wrought by such little words as “almost,” “perhaps,” “seemingly”?’

  49. ‘Literary Character,’ 49.

  50. I will return below to this technique, which Strauss ascribes to Maimonides himself.

  51. ‘Literary Character,’ 52.

  52. ‘Literary Character,’ 56.

  53. Compare Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), XVIII; Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), I: 25-7, III: 2. Strauss’s discussion of Maimonides’ ‘middle course’ anticipates his discussion of Machiavelli’s ‘middle course’ in Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 237 ff., especially 240.

  54. ‘Literary Character,’ 49.

  55. One might still claim that, in spite of all of this, Maimonides ‘make[s] his explication of the “secrets” far from clear’ insofar as he explains the secrets of the Torah via chapter headings. But note that Strauss understands this kind of explanation as belonging to the ‘method of oral teaching,’ in accordance with which, he suggests, the Guide is not written. Indeed (and as I will discuss below), in the fifth section of ‘Literary Character,’ which is devoted to Maimonides’ techniques of esoteric writing, Strauss focuses not on explanation via chapter headings, but rather what he calls ‘repetition’ or ‘addition,’ and, in reference to this technique, he asks ‘whether, in accordance with the terminology of the philosophic tradition, the Guide ought not to be described rather as an exoteric work’ (‘Literary Character,’ 70, italics added). Zuckert overlooks this passage.

  56. ‘Literary Character,’ 49.

  57. Strauss quotes Salo W. Baron, ‘The Historical Outlook of Maimonides,’ Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 6 (1934–5), 5–113, 105.

  58. ‘Literary Character,’ 50-1.

  59. Zuckert is therefore incorrect in claiming that ‘Maimonides was forced to disobey the letter of law’; Maimonides “decided” to break the law. Compare Natural Right and History, 196, fn. 39: ‘the extreme situation does not reveal a real necessity.’

  60. According to Lampert, ‘Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism,’ 64, for Strauss, ‘everything essential [in the Guide] is hidden in plain sight. What is needed is the proper perspective for viewing the surface of the text in its planned complexity.’ While Lampert also believes that Strauss’s interpretation is esoteric and, presumably, must be approached in the same way (‘Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism,’ 63), he does not recognize that Strauss states his interpretation via the explanation described above, nor that Maimonides states his esoteric teaching in a similar way.

  61. ‘The Law of the Reason in the Kuzari,’ 139.

  62. Natural Right and History, 158.

  63. In a later text, ‘Marsilius of Padua,’ in History of Political Philosophy: Third Edition, eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 292, Strauss writes that, for Marsilius, ‘the universally admitted rules of right are not rational since there exists a natural necessity to transgress them ….’

  64. See Dictatorship, 118–9, and John McCormick, ‘The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers,’ in Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, ed. David Dyzenhaus (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

  65. Political Theology, 5–7, 15; The Concept of the Political, 46.

  66. Political Theology, 6–7.

  67. Political Theology, 7.

  68. Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), ‘The Four Forms of Philosophical Esotericism.’

  69. Philosophy Between the Lines, 236.

  70. Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta‘amei Ha-Mitzvot) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).

  71. See Commentary on the Mishnah, ‘Introduction to Perek Helek’; Mishneh Torah, ‘Laws of Kings and Wars,’ 11; Guide for the Perplexed, II: 39.

  72. Natural Right and History, 158.

  73. Natural Right and History, 158–9.

  74. Natural Right and History, 159.

  75. Natural Right and History, 160.

  76. Natural Right and History, 161.

  77. See, for example, Dictatorship, 7–8, 102, 150–1; Political Theology, 6, 14, 30, 31, 34; The Concept of the Political, 27, 45–6; Constitutional Theory, trans. and ed. Jeffrey Seitzer (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 78, 112, 125.

  78. The Concept of the Political, 61.

  79. The Concept of the Political, 45.

  80. ‘Literary Character,’ 85–6.

  81. Compare Leo Strauss, ‘Notes on Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology,’ in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 207: Strauss explains that, in his Letter, Maimonides remarks that ‘[w]e lost our kingdom since our fathers sinned by turning to astrology, i.e. to idolatry, and neglected the art of war and conquest … [This] remark is at the same time a beautiful commentary on the grand conclusion of the Mishneh Torah: the restoration of Jewish freedom in the Messianic age is not to be understood as a miracle.’

  82. Compare ‘Farabi’s Plato,’ 378 (Farabi ‘substitutes politics for religion’).

  83. See fn. 81.

  84. Compare Josef Stern, ‘Maimonides on Wars and Their Justification,’ Journal of Military Ethics, 11:3 (2012), 245–263, 246: ‘it would not be an understatement to say that [Maimonides] created a domain for legislation as well as a new body of laws when he wrote his “Laws of Kings and Their Wars”’ (italics in original).

  85. ‘Literary Character,’ 70–1.

  86. ‘Literary Character,’ 86–7.

  87. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 54.

  88. Compare ‘Preface to the English Translation,’ in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 25: contrasting Maimonides (favorably) to Spinoza, Strauss writes, ‘[t]his is indeed the question: whether the loyal and loving reshaping or reinterpretation of the inherited, or the pitiless burning of the hitherto worshiped is the best form of annihilation of the antiquated, i.e., of the untrue or bad.’ In ‘Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism,’ 63–5, Lampert reviews a number of Strauss’s letters to Jacob Klein detailing his work on what would become ‘Literary Character.’ Referring to Strauss’s letter in which he calls his interpretation a ‘bomb,’ Lampert comments that, for Strauss, Maimonides ‘was absolutely no Jew; he was a philosopher, and philosophy and Judaism are incompatible—that is the bomb.’ Lampert proceeds to quote another letter: ‘[w]hat N[ietzsche] had in mind with his Zarathustra, namely a parody of the Bible, succeeds in the Guide in far greater measure … The guide of the perplexed or the instruction of the perplexed is a repetition of the Torah (=instruction) for the perplexed, i.e., for the philosophers—i.e., an imitation of the Torah with “little” “additions” which only the expert notices and which imply a radical critique of the Torah.’ The considerations provided above suggest that, for Strauss, the Guide is a ‘parody of the Bible’ in the sense that it both undermines and replaces the authority of the Bible, and that Maimonides thereby does the same with respect to the author(s) of the Bible. This is Strauss’s ‘bomb.’ Lampert’s interpretation, while not, strictly speaking, incorrect, misses this crucial political meaning by focusing (in a Christian mode) on Strauss’s view of Maimonides’ personal beliefs.

  89. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 29, 517, 520.

  90. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 32, 526.

  91. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 29, 514–5.

  92. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 32, 530.

  93. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 32, 526.

  94. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 32, 527.

  95. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 32, 528.

  96. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 32, 526

  97. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 51. Compare Problems and Parables of Law, 43; and Menachem Kellner, ‘Maimonides’ Disputed Legacy,’ in Traditions of Maimonideanism, 259 ff.

  98. For a similar ‘repetition’ with respect to God in the Guide, see Miguel Vatter, ‘Machiavelli and the Republican Conception of Providence,’ The Review of Politics, 75:4 (2013), 605–23, 610.

  99. What might be called Maimonides’ war against the mystical understanding of the secrets of the Torah can be understood in this context. See Howard Kreisel, ‘From Esotericism to Science: The Account of the Chariot in Maimonidean Philosophy till the End of the Thirteenth Century,’ in The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought, ed. James T. Robinson (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 34–5.

  100. The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 29, 514.

  101. Compare ‘Farabi’s Plato,’ 383–4.

  102. Compare The Guide for the Perplexed, 1: 26 (the same considerations apply to this chapter as apply to Maimonides’ explanation of Moses); and Natural Right and History, 152–3 (which, in the present light, is Strauss’s clearest expression in that book of his interpretation in ‘Literary Character’).

  103. Compare ‘Introduction,’ in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 17–8.

  104. Compare Miriam Galston, ‘The Purpose of the Law According to Maimonides,’ The Jewish Quarterly Review, 69:1 (1978), 27–51, 42: for Maimonides, ‘[i]n the sphere of opinions, the law can at most command belief in opinions the knowledge of which would constitute perfection’ (italics in original). This view is close to Strauss’s, but different: for Strauss, the knowledge ‘of’ the opinions that the law commands is knowledge that they are decisions via authoritative statements of the law, and so does not ‘constitute perfection,’ i.e., is not knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy. Indeed, from Strauss’s perspective, Galston makes the critical error of conflating knowledge of law with knowledge of nature (Aristotelian philosophy); this is the position of Christian theology. Compare ‘Introduction, in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 9: ‘[r]evelation as understood by Jews and Muslims has the character of Law (torah, shari‘a) rather than of Faith. Accordingly, what first came to the sight of the Islamic and Jewish philosophers in their reflection on Revelation was not a creed or a set of dogmas, but a social order …’

  105. ‘Literary Character,’ 47.

  106. The Guide for the Perplexed. I: Introduction, 16, italics in original.

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Shaw, B. Maimonides’ Secret: Leo Strauss’s “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed”. SOPHIA 59, 247–271 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0685-2

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