Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism: Another Reason, Another Enlightenment

322 Pages·2014·3.36 MB·English

by  Strauss

Leo Strauss and the
Crisis of Rationalism

Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment 35
leads to the God of Leibniz, understood as monad of monads. Return-
ing to the metaphor of the city, which one finds in paragraph 57 of the
Monadology, if one conceives the divinity on a subjectivist model, one can
think the totality of points of view without falling into pantheism, because
this conception reconciles the unity of consciousness with the multiplic-
ity of representations. Likewise, in Leibniz, human reason is a part of
divine reason and revealed truths, which, supra sed non contra rationem,
can be reconciled with the rationalism of natural religion. The problem
is that Lessing denies to Revelation the heteronomy that constitutes its
real meaning. Not only is this natural religion disembodied, but as well
Mendelssohn—like Lessing and Spinoza—believes that reason is capable
of self-grounding. He denies the irrational moment at the heart of reason
itself that Jacobi calls Revelation. There is, says Jacobi, an abyss between
this natural religion and positive religion. It is this abyss that is brought
to light in addressing the “authentic Spinozism” (authentisch) of Lessing.
Jacobi met Lessing at Wolfenbüttel in 1780. It was in the course of a
conversation with Jacobi that Lessing confided in him something he had
not revealed to anyone, not even to his friend Mendelssohn. Jacobi read
to him a poem by Goethe titled Prometheus. The rebellion of Prometheus
is associated, according to Jacobi, with the Spinozism and pantheism of
Goethe. What could be the religion of a free people? Could one believe
in a transcendent God, creator of the world and benevolent, or is the
God of Spinoza alone tenable? Lessing, in making Goethe’s ode his own,
said of Spinoza: “If I must put a label on myself, I don’t see any other.”
Jacobi reported this statement of the late philosopher in a letter to Men-
delssohn dated November 4, 1783.13 Lessing would have said: “There is
no philosophy but the philosophy of Spinoza.” He denounced the heter-
onomy of positive religion and affirmed that man must put himself on
the path of an authentic religion, in which progress will be characterized
by the union of transcendence and immanence. He denied that there was
a transcendent God, Providence, or salvation.
The revelation by Jacobi of Lessing’s Spinozism launched the pan-
theism debate and provoked the indignation of Mendelssohn. Jacobi saw
in Lessing a “convinced Spinozist”: he is aware that the consequence of
rationalism is a critique of the concept of the biblical God, the negation
of human freedom or fatalism—which follows from a system that has
eliminated final causes—and pantheism, which is the result of nihilism or
constructivism that dissolves the object and subject of knowledge. Men-
delssohn, for his part, had referred to a “purified Spinozism,” cleansed of
those elements undermining morality and religion.
44 Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism
To dissect the modern religious consciousness and to explain that
modernity evolves irresistibly toward secularization, toward the reduction
of religion to a morality where the respect of the other is the only ves-
tige of a relation to transcendence, as a relation to something other than
oneself, Strauss returns to the moment where the Enlightenment decided
our fate. He returns to Kant, who belonged to the moderate Enlighten-
ment, and opposed the latter to the radical Enlightenment, represented by
Hobbes and Spinoza. And if the radical Enlightenment buried all revealed
religion, if Spinoza is more dangerous than Mendelssohn, the moder-
ate Enlightenment represents nevertheless a real danger. It conceals the
problem and pretends to preserve something that it destroys. Kant is thus
more formidable than Mendelssohn: the relation between transcendence
and immanence that follows from his thought concerning finitude and
that is manifest in his morality based on the immanent law of reason
signifies that the heteronomy of the Law and Revelation are not neces-
sary to morality and that religion is subordinate to morality. This attack
against religion as Revelation is all the more effective in appearing to be
gentle. While the radical Enlightenment uses the weapons of mockery and
derision against orthodoxy, thus limiting the consequence of its critique
and allowing the idea of a conflict—then of a choice between two stances,
two opposite interests—to remain, the Kantian Enlightenment pretends to
preserve that which, at bottom, it annihilates: with Kant, religion becomes
the auxiliary of morality, and the path toward secularization is assured.
Strauss is thus required to avoid the Kantian solution and, to do that, to
say that it has been discredited. Such is the role of Jacobi. Awareness of
the danger that the Kantian Enlightenment represents for religion explains
in part19 Strauss’s silence on Kant.
Strauss doesn’t speak of Kant, but this silence is eloquent. It has a
function and a precise significance. Further, it is not a matter of genuine
absence: Kant is indirectly addressed by Strauss, because the critique of
the relation between transcendence and immanence is at the source of the
pantheism controversy and the debate concerning the French Revolution,
and because Kantianism distinguishes Strauss from Cohen. The impasse
of the Kantian solution first appears, in Strauss’s view, in Cohen, who, in
The Religion of Reason Derived from the sources of Judaism, interprets the
morality of the prophets as if it culminated in Kantianism. This method of
interpretation, linked to the Kantian scheme of Enlightenment, prevented
Cohen from seeing what was distinctive in Judaism and in the articula-
tion of theology and politics specific to the notion of the Law. In the
philosophy of Cohen, which asserts the primacy of ethics, religion appears
Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment 61
Maimonides in Book I of the Guide.48 This version of the principle of
accommodation served to address the problem of the consistency between
biblical cosmology and modern science.
Funkenstein returns to the minimalist thesis of Ibn Ezra (1055–
1135), who (according to Funkenstein) foreshadows the Spinozist critique
of the Bible. This tour de force is connected to the separation of Scripture
and science that characterizes the minimalist conception of the principle
of accommodation. Genesis is not read as an account of the creation of
the world out of nothing, as was conceived by the theologians, but as
an explanation of the nature of celestial bodies, that is to say, facts that
have a relation to man and his status. The Torah speaks the language of
human beings, and in his writing, Moses, who is a man, addresses himself
to other men. Funkenstein sees in the exegetic principle of Ibn Ezra the
beginning point of the Spinozist thesis according to which the Bible is a
purely human document; there is already in Ibn Ezra a sort of secular-
ization of Scripture. But if the Bible is a book written by human beings
for human beings, that means that there is no question of an esoteric
meaning. Strauss disputes both points.
Far from being the conduit between the minimalist principle of
accommodation of Ibn Ezra and the biblical criticism of Spinoza and
also in the science of Judaism, Maimonides is conscious of the dangers
implicated in divulging the secrets of the Torah without an art of writing.
Allegories are not simply attributable to the nature of language but also to
the esoteric character of the Law. There are several levels of decoding for
allegories, because there is a time for each thing and a way of relating to
religion that depends on the level of intelligence of each. This awareness
of the different levels of reading of a text and the idea that, for political
reasons, not everything can be disclosed, are what separates the Ancients
from the Moderns.49
When Funkenstein, and before him, Schlomo Pines, see in the
meaning of the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament a prefiguration
of the philosophy of history and interpret the graceful ruse of which
Maimonides speaks as an anticipation of the Hegelian cunning of reason,
they commit a twofold error. According to Strauss, one must not read
an ancient text in applying to it modern categories. The interpreter must
also be attentive to the hidden meaning of the text, which requires that
one give up the notion that there are neither political censorship nor
secrets to preserve. The writers of the past ought to be understood as they
understood themselves. The reader should pay attention to the political
context, which explains certain precautions, and the apparent disorder of
70 Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism
claims of a particular kind of orthodoxy, perhaps not genuine. In the lat-
ter case, the interest in Revelation would remain intact, which would give
complete freedom to maneuver to the movement for a return to tradition
to which Strauss subscribes.
The Critique of Religion and Revelation in Hobbes
Epicureanism4
The Epicurean critique of religion, which is connected to concern with
human happiness and peace of mind, the idea that man can take his life
in hand without worrying about Stoic fatalism or imagining that the gods
have any concern with him, is the most important source of the critique of
religion in the seventeenth century. “We understand by Epicureanism not
first of all the doctrine of Epicurus and his school, but rather an interest
natural to man, a uniform and elementary outlook [Gesinnung] . . . the
will to free man from fear, determined by nature, of the divine and death,
so that on the basis of a prudent calculation of the chances of pleasure
and pain that present themselves to man, . . . one might lead a thoroughly
happy life.”5
Nevertheless, the modern Enlightenment modified the arguments of
Epicurus in his Letters to Menoeceus. The precursors of Spinoza rejected
religion because it was consoling, while, for Epicurus, it was connected to
the fear of divine punishment. This has nothing to do with the argumenta-
tion of Spinoza, who considers revealed religion as superstition, deriving
from fear of the unknown. According to Spinoza, this fear drives men to
believe in the existence of revealed Laws and in miracles. But the rejec-
tion of this superstitious fear, which is really a purely human fear that
Spinoza does not distinguish from the authentic fear of God, is linked
to the certitude, central to Epicurus, that human happiness depends on
liberation from false representations of the deity and of life after death.
This is because these products of a false imagination prevent men from
dedicating themselves to the only good that belongs to them: this life.
The difference between Epicurus and the Moderns is that, for the former,
religion is terrifying, while for the latter, it is a form of alienation and
comfort, the opium of the people. It puts men to sleep, in making them
believe that after their life of misery, they will experience eternal happi-
ness; they are not pushed to change the course of things or the course of
history, which is the rule of the powerful, including the Church. More-
96 Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism
by nature to suspicion and intolerance. What does obedience to the laws
of a state mean when it is not supported by ideals that encourage it? To say
that belief in a transcendent God and in Providence supports civil peace
and social consensus, is this not to suggest that civic spirit and morality
based on reason alone are impotent to guarantee a stable order? Is not
the analysis of the civil function of the universal religion of Spinoza an
occasion to rethink the limits of the morality of human rights, that is, of
an abstract and secular morality based on humanism?
The Ambiguity of Spinoza
The definition of piety that Spinoza provides is not self-evident, especially
in a democracy. It is a matter of respecting other human beings, their
persons, their property, and their religious opinions, because these acts or
particular duties reinforce the state of which the end is individual liberty
and the realization of democracy. A state in which criminality and law-
breaking are frequent, writes Spinoza, is not one where human beings are
more wicked than elsewhere due to race or geography but a state where
the laws are not infused with an adequately wise spirit. This is a question
of the pedagogical virtue of the laws, which help human beings to become
citizens and form a type of individual more or less adapted to community
life. What will give men the love for justice? How can one combat the
impression that, in an imperfect and nonideal democracy, the just suffer
while the wicked prosper? Who will be able to understand that it is better
to submit to injustice than to commit it? The universal religion, support
for the universal morality necessary to the proper functioning of liberal
democracy, does it not enter into this political project, and does it not
constitute a chapter in man’s civil education?
If Spinoza, in the TPT, takes pains to cite the seven dogmas of the
minimal credo and to propose a universal religion that is opposed to the
philosophical conception of God expounded in the Ethics, is it not because
he believes the common people would not be able to behave reasonably
without the fear of heaven and that right, which merely requires the con-
formity of external actions with law, legality and not intention, neverthe-
less requires morality? It seems, at first glance, that Spinoza is close to
Kant here, which makes Pines right to emphasize that the importance for
both of obedience and rational duty and the idea that general duty—for
Spinoza, obedience to the state—takes precedence over particular duties.
But in the TPT does not Spinoza have a message concerning the major-
ity of men, which he addresses to posterity? Spinoza would belong to
The Return to the Tradition 131
the Creator and the creation and maintain the unity and transcendence
of God. Cohen shows that Maimonides does not deny the possibility that
man can relate to God through his reason, but only metaphysics, the
knowledge of God by positive attributes. This limitation is the indicia of
an essentially moral relation to God. The negation of privations amounts
to speaking of God’s attributes of action. Revelation thus addresses man
as an essentially moral being, and its function is to provide knowledge
of God as the model for morality.
Revelation as Cohen conceives it is a fact of reason, which is a
practical reason, and indicates the relation between God as the idea of
the Good and man as a moral being. Reason is the site of this relation.
It is reason that receives the commandment of God. This definition of
reason is at once Kantian in its practical orientation while following Jacobi
in the emphasis on the dimension of receptivity. Reason in Cohen goes
beyond what is understood by the philosophers, but it does not corre-
spond with Jacobi’s understanding of faith. Its elaboration owes a great
deal to the opening provided by the practical philosophy of Kant, but
this opening does not postulate as necessary the heteronomy of the Law.
There is nothing of the historical in Revelation. This accords neither with
the view of Maimonides nor of orthodoxy. Cohen understands himself
as continuing the effort of Maimonides to provide a rational foundation
for the 613 precepts of the Law and the classification of the different
types of commandments. But this analogy between the neo-Kantianism
of Cohen, which represents the synthesis of philosophy and faith, and
the enlightened Judaism of Maimonides is false. Maimonides does not
reconcile Revelation and reason.
Even if there is a coincidence between idealizing interpretation and
the principle of allegory, Cohen and Maimonides have two opposed con-
ceptions of reason. While Maimonides presents a rationalism that is also
a critique of the limits of reason, Cohen places all the value of Revelation
in reason. Cohen deifies reason. He does not want to put in question the
autonomy of man, as is evidenced by the question with which he begins
his 1908 study: “Can one reconcile ethics in general with a moral doctrine
of the essence of religion, thus with the worship and love of God?” The
autonomy of reason goes hand in hand with belief in the capacity of man
to work on his own toward his salvation, without recourse to anything but
his reason. He rejects an interest in Revelation or the need for a divine Law.
That which is religious in the ethics of Cohen, that which leads
him to articulate morality in religious terms, is precisely the Kantian—or
Fichtean—distinction between what is and what ought to be, and the idea
140 Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism
opposing itself to opinion, this political thought will assimilate with opin-
ion. The relationship of philosophy to the political community, the link
between knowledge and power, but also the meaning of philosophy itself
change with Machiavelli and Hobbes.
The philosophical reflection of Plato and Aristotle is guided by the
consideration of the ends of the political, which means the human good,
virtue, and justice. By contrast, the Moderns speak of the material inter-
ests that impel human beings toward political order. Far from being a
political animal unable to fulfill itself other than in the political com-
munity or through laws that educate it and help it develop its logos, the
human is considered by the Moderns as a needful whose fundamental
tendency is self-preservation. The human being is not a rational animal
in that reason itself is nothing but the slave of passions. The human being
is an asocial animal, a being that sees the good as what is expedient
for himself. In order to create a political order and to subject the self-
interested individual to rule, one must provide for peaceful coexistence
and the fulfillment of the rights of each. The limits posed on the seeking
of pleasure are linked to the need to maintain order and not to a higher
philosophical ideal where a human being fulfills his nature in combating
his passions. The first wave of modernity begins with Machiavelli because
he decided to take human beings as they are, not as they ought to be.
He chose a “low but solid ground” far removed from the idealism of the
classical political philosophers.
This break with classical political philosophy affects all subsequent
politics, right up to communist and Nazi totalitarianism, and including
as well the problem of representation in our democratic regime. To lay
bare the foundations and assumptions of modern political science is to
dissect the modern political consciousness, which is blind with respect
to its own origins. Modern political philosophy differs from ancient and
medieval philosophy in that it is the product of an intellectual revolution.
The Moderns take as given or natural categories that are themselves the
products of modern philosophy. The separation of politics from religion,
pluralism, individual rights, the modern concept of the state, its distinct-
ness from civil society, the question of power, the introduction of equality
into all consideration of justice, the priority given to legal justice are the
essential givens of our political experience, but they were born in a radical
break from an earlier manner of thinking. Political philosophy is not only
a matter of analysis of the non-philosophic world, but also of a world that
is already the product of modern philosophy. There is not only a tension
between philosophy and the political community, but political philosophy
must also liberate itself from the assumptions of modern philosophy.