Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors PDF
Preview Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors
PHILOSOPHY AND LAW SUNY Series in the Jewish Writings of Leo Strauss Kenneth Hart Green, editor PHILOSOPHY AND LAW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF MAIMONIDES AND HIS PREDECESSORS Leo Strauss TRANSLATED BY EVE ADLER STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1995 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Fran Keneston Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Strauss, Leo. IPhilosophie und Gesetz. Englishl Philosophy and law: contributions to the understanding of Maimonides and his predecessors / Leo Strauss; translated by Eve Adler. p. cm. - (SUNY series in the Jewish writings of Strauss) Includes index. ISBN 0-7914-1975-4. - ISBN 0-7914-1976-2 (pbk.) 1. Philosophy, Jewish. 2. Law (Theology) 3. Maimonides, Moses, 1135-1204. Dalalat al-ba'irin. I. Title. II. Series. B757.L38S7613 1995 181' .06-dc20 93-34046 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Translator's Introduction 1 Introduction 21 Chapter 1. The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the Philosophy of .J udaism: Notes on Julius Guttmann, The Philosophy of Judaism 41 Chapter 2. The Legal Foundation of Philosophy: The Commandment to Philosophize and the Freedom of Philosophizing 81 Chapter 3. The Philosophic Foundation of the Law: Maimonides's Doctrine of Prophecy and its Sources 101 Notes 135 Index 155 v Translator's Introduction: The Argument of Philosophy and Law Leo Strauss's Philosophy and Law (Philosophie und Gesetz: Beitriige zum Verstiindnis Maimunis und Seiner Vorlaiifer, Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1935) contains a ground breaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors, and offers an argument on behalf of that philosophy which is also a profound critique of modern philosophy. Almost sixty years from its first pub lication, it retains all of its startling freshness and its pow er to awaken direct thought about the great human ques tions it addresses. In this sense the book introduces itself and speaks for itself. The purpose of the present introduc tion is only to serve as a tentative map of the territory that the reader will discover for himself in the book. I. Strauss's "Introduction" Strauss's professed aim in Philosophy and Law is to "awaken a prejudice" in favor of the view that Maimoni des's medieval rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism and, even more, to arouse a suspicion against the powerful opposing prejudice (p. 21). The powerful oppos ing prejudice, as it turns out, is not so much that modern rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism as that there is no true natural prototype of rationalism. 1 2 Translator's Introduction Strauss will take issue with the view that nature has been proved by modern thought to have been a delusion. His aim, then, is twofold: first, to arouse a suspicion against the view that it is irrational to inquire after the true natural prototype of a thing; and only in the second place to awaken a prejudice to the effect that as for rationalism, not modern rationalism but Maimonides's rationalism is its true natu ral prototype. Strauss begins from the present situation of Judaism. This situation, like all phenomena peculiar to the present, has been determined by the Enlightenment. The Enlight enment has undermined the foundations of the Jewish tra dition by appearing to have defeated orthodoxy once and for all. Strauss however, comparing the "so-called victory" of the Enlightenment over orthodoxy to a prematurely con ceded battle, and remarking that victories are in any case very dubious evidences of the just cause, proceeds to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment, with a view to reaching a well-founded judgment. Thus the core of the Introduction has the dramatic character of a trial. The re-hearing of this old case is motivated by the urgent suspicion that the untenable situation of Judaism may have resulted from an error in the original disposition of the case. Ce~rtainly there was an error in the original jurisdiction: world history, indeed just the history of the last two or three hundred years, was mistaken for a compe tent court (p. 28). For what, after all, is the Enlightenment's case against orthodoxy? As a party whose interest lies both in solving the Jewish problem and in getting to the bottom of things, Strauss considers the arguments of both sides. It goes with out saying that the Enlightenment did not directly refute the irrefutable premise of orthodoxy that God is omnipo tent and His will unfathomable, or any of the claims of orthodoxy-thE~ creation, miracles, the revelation-that de pend on that premise. Nor does the Enlightenment have a case in its supposed indirect refutation of orthodoxy, its elaboration of a philosophic system to prove that the world Translator's Introduction 3 and life are perfectly intelligible without the assumption of a mysterious God; for its attempt to show that man is theo retically and practically the master of the world and of life has run into obstacles (p. 32). Nor can the new natural science legitimate the Enlightenment, since it always had latent in it the modern "idealism" which finally under stands modern natural science as one historically condi tioned form of world-construction among others, and by which therefore the natural world-view of the Bible is certi fied as equally eligible (p. 33). Nor can the Enlightenment rest its case on the modern ideal of freedom as the autono my of man and his culture. This ideal only temporarily seemed viable at a moment when, "after the decisive entry into the state of civilization, one had forgotten the state of nature." But the state of nature was not to be disposed of merely by being forgotten. The ideal of freedom as the au tonomy of man and his culture was only an unstable, absent-minded derivative ofthe original, the primary ideal of civilization as the self-assertion of man against overpow ering nature (p. 35). Here, then, is the true basis of the Enlightenment's case against orthodoxy: the ideal of civilization as the self assertion of man against overpowering nature. Strauss characterizes this ideal as a species of Epicureanism, though to be sure profoundly transformed: the original Epi curean animus against the terror in the delusion of religion has become the Enlightenment animus against the delu sion in the comfort of religion. Epicureanism so trans formed, Enlightenment Epicureanism, is marked by a new virtue-intellectual probity-borrowed though from the morality of the Biblical tradition against which it was as serting itself: "This atheism with a good conscience, or even with a bad conscience, differs from the conscienceless athe ism at which the past shuddered precisely by its conscien tiousness, by its morality." The new Epicurean, instead of being willing to "live in hiding" safely, "learned to fight and die for honor and truth," and finally to reject the belief in God "for reasons of conscience." The true meaning of
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