Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides
Kenneth Hart Green
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0226307018
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
An invaluable companion to Green’s comprehensive collection of Strauss’s writings on Maimonides, this volume shows how Strauss confronted the commonly accepted approaches to the medieval philosopher, resulting in both a new understanding of Maimonides and a new depth and direction for his own thought. It will be welcomed by anyone engaged with the work of either philosopher.
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Leo Strauss, Education, and Political Thought
The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy
him, as likewise by the Jewish mystics: “Undoubtedly both the mystics and the philosophers completely transform the structure of ancient Judaism.” In other words, once both had completed their work, Judaism was not the same as it had been in its original form. This is because, according to Scholem, “both have lost the simple relation to Judaism, that naïveté which speaks to us from the classical documents of rabbinical literature.” Compare “How to Study Medieval Philosophy” with Gershom Scholem,
Aristotle, in the same fashion as the modern Thomists tend to treat Thomas Aquinas, because their recourse is in a certain measure based on a common faith, while a reconsideration of Plato and Aristotle cannot honestly proceed on the same basis. Although Wild was not a modern Thomist, but rather a type of existentialist, he had recognized the contemporary crisis of modernity in modern thought and had attempted to resolve it by recommending a (seemingly) unmediated return to the ancients. Strauss
reconsideration of Cohen’s attempted vindication of Maimonides, as well as by his critically reviewing Spinoza’s well-established critique of Maimonides, he did start to discern in Maimonides certain theological and political features of his thought which, strangely enough, seemed to him to be of greater philosophic persuasiveness than almost anything available to him in the arguments presented by the full array of modern Jewish thinkers. Consider the passing comment that Strauss made about
thought, according to lenses which corrected and shaded the vision, but not according to the man as he made himself visible to the “enlightened,” i.e., as he had wanted to be glimpsed by those who would read him carefully. Indeed, as Strauss recognized, he had gone to great trouble in his books to ensure that they would be able to do this. Among the attributes of mind that elevated Maimonides and made him great, in Strauss’s view, are several worth stressing at the very start, even though this
Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. Alan Udoff (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991), p. 162. 24. For the evidence of human beings as may be observed around us, and as is not such as to require us to believe in the march of reason in history and its victory against every challenge, we must consider those facts about human life which may make us wonder if we are not in need of thinking through again what Maimonides teaches about the grandeur of human rationality as well as about