9 - Theoretical Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and Happiness

Summary

As so many of my reflections on Strauss, Alfarabi, and Maimonides, the impetus for this chapter first came from reflections on Shlomo Pines's 1979 “Limitations.” Over the past three decades, much has been written contesting Pines's insinuation that, according to Maimonides, the only happiness for human beings is political happiness. I have myself added my voice to the chorus of consternation because it seemed to me Pines anachronistically assimilates Maimonides (as well as Alfarabi and Ibn Bajja) to Kant.

Pines's piece has led in two opposing directions: on the one hand, political happiness is the only happiness, a view one finds sometimes being voiced by some “Straussians,” and, on the other hand, since the highest theoretical knowledge is impossible, revelation must be our guide in human affairs. Both arguments place a great deal of weight on human things but one is resolutely rationalistic and the other resolutely religious. Both also seem, much as Pines's piece seemed, like a caricature of a moment in Leo Strauss's early interpretation of Maimonides. The moment to which I refer is in Strauss's (1935) Philosophy and Law, in which, on the one hand, he highlights the centrality of divine law as a political phenomenon in the Guide, and, on the other hand, he highlights Maimonides's insinuations that the prophet is superior to the philosopher(- king) because he is the recipient of supernatural insight, beyond the access of human reason (90–91). As Daniel Tanguay has noted, Strauss never appeals to supernatural insight (or the limits of knowledge that seem to demand such an appeal) after Philosophy and Law. Thus, a caricature of this particular moment in Strauss's oeuvre would be misleading about his own most considered views. For now, I want to consider what was missing from both Strauss's early account as well as Pines's very late account. The main thing missing was what Strauss would later call “political philosophy broadly understood” (CM, 20)—in other words, reflection on politics in its relation to the whole and human knowledge of the whole, which is quite different from so-called political happiness.