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Revelation and Reason in Leo Strauss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Kim Sorensen
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Abstract

Revelation and reason are pivotal in Strauss's project. Yet nearly three decades after his death, questions remain about the essential meaning of this core dimension of his project. Scholarship of recent years has tended to approach his project by situating its position in relation to revelation and reason—to one or the other or to both. Among those who hold Strauss in high regard and inclusive of his former students, those often called Straussians, the view is far from clear. Was Strauss's allegiance with reason alone, that is, with Athens and classical political philosophy? Did his vocation as a political philosopher and his loyalty to the party of Athens preclude his being open to revelation, that is, open to the possibility that the Bible conveys truth regarding the good life? Or was he beyond a dogmatic attachment whether to reason or to revelation?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , Summer 2003 , pp. 383 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2003

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References

1. In this essay, I focus upon tracking Strauss on revelation and reason and, to add to this largely interpretive goal, use the work of others who have engaged with this core dimension of his project. For a summary of the revelation-reason gulf and nexus, by a former student of Strauss's, see Jaffa, Harry V., “Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy,” in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker, ed. Deutsch, Kenneth L. and Nicgorski, Walter (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994)Google Scholar. For extended discussions of the matter, see Green, Kenneth Hart, Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar, and Orr, Susan, Jerusalem and Athens: Reason and Revelation in the Work of Leo Strauss (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995)Google Scholar. For a variety of essays and perspectives bearing on the revelation-reason question, see Novak, David, ed., Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisited (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996)Google Scholar.

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5. Though I agree overall with those single-author works cited in footnote 1, and particularly their conclusions that Strauss the political philosopher was open, not closed, to the possibility of revelation, this essay takes its own exegetical and interpretive path to that conclusion.

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65. In JP, p. 267Google Scholar (essay hereafter cited as IEHC). On Strauss's observation about the Jewish-philosophic character of Cohen's book, cf. SPPP, pp. 192, 194, 205fGoogle Scholar; W1PP?, pp. 156–59, 161–62Google Scholar.

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69. First published in Hebrew, in Iyyun. Hebrew Philosophical Quarterly 5, no.l (1954): 110–26Google Scholar; reprinted in an English translation, in The Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1978): 111–18Google Scholar, and later reprinted as Part III of POR?, in IPP, pp. 289–310Google Scholar. Part III hereafter cited as MITP (as reprinted in IPP).

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77. MITP, p. 309Google Scholar. Given the above discussion, I contend that while Robert Sokolowski is correct in saying that Strauss sees a fundamental divide between the life of philosophy and the life of piety, he errs by not acknowledging that Strauss called for dialogue or openness between revelation and reason. See Sokolowski, Robert, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 158–63Google Scholar; see also Nicgorski, Walter, “Leo Strauss and Christianity: Reason, Politics, and Christian Belief,” Review of The God of Faith and Reason, by Sokolowski, Robert, Claremont Review of Books (Summer 1985), pp. 20–21Google Scholar.

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87. The volume (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1962) contains essays by Berns, Walter, Storing, Herbert J., Weinstein, Leo and Horwitz, RobertGoogle Scholar. (Strauss's epilogue hereafter cited as AE.)

88. AE, p. 322Google Scholar. See also MITP, pp. 309–10Google Scholar.

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94. POR?, pp. 270, 287Google Scholar. Strauss does not provide a reference to Aristotle, but, Schall points out, he had in mind Metaphysics 982b29. Schall, James V., Reason, Revelation, and the Foundations of Political Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), pp. 209–10Google Scholar. Aristotle explains that to pursue knowledge about life and the world simply for oneself “might be justly regarded as beyond human power; for in many ways human nature is in bondage, so that according to Simonides ‘God alone can have this privilege’, and it is unfitting that man should not be content to seek the knowledge that is suited to him” (Metaphysics 928b29–32, Complete Works of Aristotle, 2:1555Google Scholar).

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96. Gildin, , “Déjà Jew,” pp. 125, 127Google Scholar.

97. Originally read at a conference about Strauss, and Judaism, at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, 10 and 11 10 1993Google Scholar. Papers from the conference were published in Novak, , ed., Strauss and JudaismGoogle Scholar.

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100. In JP, pp. 317, 319Google Scholar (lecture hereafter cited as WWRJ).

101. “A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss,” in JP, p. 460Google Scholar (exchange hereafter cited as GA).

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