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Leo Strauss on Maimonides' Prophetology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Andrew Patch
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Leo Strauss's “political” interpretation of Maimonides′ doctrine of prophecy is well known, as is his claim that the Guide of the Perplexed has two fundamentally different teachings: a literal teaching, and a more radical philosophic teaching. This essay attempts to show that, in Strauss's view, Maimonides′ doctrine of the prophet as philosopher-statesman belongs to the former only, while according to the latter, prophecy (revelation) simply does not exist. It does so by showing that, in Strauss's view, Maimonides indicates that the preconditions he lays down for the existence of prophecy—in particular, the combination of intellectual perfection with extreme asceticism—cannot possibly be met. It attempts to explain, moreover, why in Strauss's view Maimonides denies the existence of prophecy: namely, because irrational moral opinions are an essential cause of all so-called prophecy.

Type
Research Article
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The Review of Politics , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , Winter 2004 , pp. 83 - 104
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Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2004

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References

I wish to thank the Earhart and Bradley Foundations for their support, and Bob Bartlett and David Bolotin for their comments on earlier versions of this essay.

1. See “On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” in Isaac Abravanel, ed. Trend, J. B. and Loewe, H. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1937), pp. 95–98;Google Scholar and Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 8–10.Google Scholar This view is more fully developed in Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, trans. Adler, Eve (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995);Google Scholar and “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” trans. Bartlett, Robert, Interpretation 18, no. 1 (1990): 3–30.Google Scholar

2. See especially “On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” p. 100.Google Scholar On Strauss's view of Maimonides‘ esotericism, and the reasons for it, see Fradkin, Hillel, “A Word Fitly Spoken: The Interpretation of Maimonides and the Legacy of Leo Strauss,” in Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisited, ed. Novak, David (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 55–85;Google ScholarSeeskin, Kenneth, “Maimonides‘ Conception of Philosophy,” pp. 87–110Google Scholar in the same volume; Ivry, Alfred L., “Leo Strauss on Maimonides,” in Leo Strauss's Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. Udoff, Alan (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 1991), pp. 75–91;Google ScholarBrague, Remi, “Leo Strauss and Maimonides,” pp. 93–114, in the same volume; Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990), especially pp. 4–5, 10, 15–16, 35, 54–62, 69–71, 76–78, and 85;Google ScholarHyman, Arthur, “Interpreting Maimonides,” in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Buijs, Joseph (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1988), pp. 19–29;Google ScholarHarvey, Warren Zev, “The Return of Maimonideanism,” Jewish Social Studies 42 (1980): 253–55;Google Scholar and Green, Kenneth, Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany, NY: SUNY Press: 1993), especially pp. 7, 111–38.Google ScholarSeeskin (p. 88), Ivry (p. 77), Brague (p. 97), Fox (pp. 54–62), Harvey (pp. 253–54), and Green (p. 7),Google Scholar all suggest that Strauss himself imitated Maimonides' esotericism in some degree in his own commentaries on the Guide.

3. Philosophy and Law, pp. 21–22 and 135 n. 1.Google Scholar

4. Compare the passages cited in the previous note with Strauss, “Preface to the English Translation,” Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. Sinclair, E. M. (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), especially pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

5. For the importance of Strauss's studies of Maimonides to that return, and to his treatment of what he called “the theological-political problem” and described in 1965 as having been “the theme of my investigations” (Preface to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft [Berlin: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1965], p. 7),Google Scholar see Meier's, Heinrich “Vorwort des Herausgebers,” in Leo Strauss: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2 (J.B. Metzler: Stuttgart and Weimar, 1997), pp. ix–xxxiv;Google ScholarBruell, Christopher, “A Return to Classical Political Philosophy and the Understanding of the American Founding,” in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker, ed. Deutsch, Kenneth and Nicgorski, Walter (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), pp. 325–38;Google Scholar and Green, , Jew and Philosopher.Google Scholar

6. Philosophy and Law, pp. 64–67, 90–91, 95, and 108–111.Google Scholar

7. References to The Guide of the Perplexed are to the translation of Pines, Shlomo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).Google Scholar

8. Philosophy and Law, pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 108. Cf. p. 65.

10. Ibid., p. 111.

11. Ibid., p. 60; cf. p. 58.

12. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” originally published in 1941Google Scholar (in Essays on Maimonides, ed. Baron, S. W. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1941], pp. 37–91).Google Scholar In an essay published in 1963 (“How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Pines translation, 1963, pp. xi–lviGoogle Scholar), Strauss begins by presenting the plan of the Guide “as it has become clear to me in the course of about twenty-five years of frequently interrupted but never abandoned study” (p. xi).Google Scholar Since according to him, understanding of the plan of the Guide is essential for understanding its teaching, he appears to suggest that prior to about 1938 (or perhaps 1937: see below)Google Scholar, his understanding of the teaching of the Guide was, in some important point or points, mistaken. Now his first publication chiefly and expressly devoted to the Guide after 1937 was, if I am not mistaken, “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed.” Perhaps then it deserves the title we have given it in the text. The chief contender for that title would be his 1937 article “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis” (Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 [1937]: 93–105).Google Scholar For in that article (p. 98 n. 17) he corrected an error in one of his earlier publications precisely regarding the plan of the Guide. Moreover, the essay in which the remark we have quoted occurs, though published in 1963,Google Scholar had already been completed and sent to the printer early in the previous year. See Strauss's, letter to Gershom Scholem of March 15, 1962, in Leo Strauss: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Heinrich, and Meier, Wiebke, vol. 3 (J. B. Metzler: Stuttgart and Weimar, 2001), p. 744.Google ScholarStrauss's, letter to Klein, Jacob of 02 16, 1938Google Scholar (ibid., p. 549) seems however to confirm our original suggestion. In this letter, written after the publication of “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” Strauss speaks of the results of his novel approach to the study of Maimonides as of a “bomb” to be let loose “in a few years.”

13. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed” p. 78.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 75.

15. Ibid., p. 76.

16. Pines, translation, 1963, p. 24 n. 7.Google Scholar Cf. Strauss, “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 97.Google Scholar See also Schriften, Gesammelte, 2:193 (and 188),Google Scholar where Strauss himself uses ενδοξον denote the moral principles of which (according to Guide I 2) Adam had initially no awareness.

17. On the teaching of Guide I 2 regarding “Adam's pristine unawareness of the noble and base” (as Strauss, put it in a letter of August 11, 1960 to Scholem, Gershom [Gesammelte Schriften, 3:740Google Scholar]), see also “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” p. 103Google Scholar and note 32; and “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xxvii. In “Farabi's Plato” (Essays in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, ed. Hyman, Arthur [New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1977], p. 365 n. 25), Strauss gives the following explanation of Guide I 2:Google Scholar “[P]rior to the fall, Adam possessed the highest intellectual perfection; he knew all the νοητα (and, of course, the αισθητα), but had no knowledge of “good and evil,” i.e., of the кαλα and σισχΡα.”

18. See “Farabi's Plato,” p. 365 and “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed” p. xxvii–xxviii.Google Scholar Cf. Lerner, Ralph, “Moses Maimonides,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph, third edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 245.Google Scholar

19. See “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xxii;Google Scholar“How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Pangle, Thomas L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 224;Google Scholar“Preface to the English Translation,” Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. Sinclair, E. M. (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), p. 24;Google Scholar and “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” p. 97.Google Scholar

20. “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” pp. 96–97;Google Scholarcf. Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 11.Google Scholar

21. Eight Chapters, VI (cf. Guide II 33).Google Scholar Strauss cites this remark in “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari” p. 97 n. 6, and 133 n. 120;Google Scholar“How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xxii;Google Scholar and “Maimonides‘ Statement on Political Science,” in What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 167 n. 21.Google Scholar

22. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” p. 76.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 76 n. 107. Moreover, in that chapter Maimonides uses again the misquoted statement of Aristotle to support his praise of asceticism. He certainly wished, in Strauss's view, to promote asceticism in some of his readers. See “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xxviii.Google Scholar

24. Should any doubt remain that, in Strauss's view, Maimonides wished to draw his careful readers‘ attention to the connection between (a) the misquoted statement of Aristotle, which reminds the careful reader that ascetic morality rests on irrational opinion, and (b) the context in which it occurs, viz., an assertion that extreme asceticism is an essential precondition of prophecy, we ask the reader to consider the other passages in the Guide cited by Strauss (p. 75 n. 104)Google Scholar in which the misquotation appears, in the light of his remark in the same place that it is something like a leitmotif of the Guide: that is, something like a theme associated throughout the work with a particular character or sentiment. Especially helpful in this regard are the passages he cites from Guide II 40 and III 8. The misquotation appears in connection with the prophet or the one who apprehends “God and the angels.”

25. As Strauss points out (“The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” p. 41Google Scholar), Maimonides says that prophecy is one of the “secret” subjects, the truth concerning which ought to be concealed from the multitude, and in speaking of which he has himself exercised extraordinary caution (Guide I 35;Google Scholar cf. I Introduction).

26. “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed” p. lv;Google ScholarPhilosophy and Law, pp. 65, 91 and n. 17, and 108Google Scholar. Paraphrasing a remark in Guide I, Introduction, Strauss says that the deep dark night in which we live, and which conceals from us the upper world or the divine things, is occasionally illuminated by lightning flashes from on high, “so that we believe it is day” (Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und Seiner Vorläufer [Berlin: Schocken Books, 1935], pp. 53, 94 italics added).Google ScholarIn “How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy,” p. 219,Google Scholar Strauss raises the question why Maimonides expressly excludes the discussion of “religious subjects” from the Guide. He all but expressly answers it elsewhere by referring to that exclusion while explaining Farabi's view, according to which religion has no cognitive value whatsoever (“Farabi's Plato” p. 373 and n. 41).Google ScholarAs for Maimonides‘ treatment of religion generally, Strauss made the following remark in a letter to Klein, Jacob (02 16, 1938):Google Scholar “You cannot imagine with what endless finesse and irony Maimonides treats ’religion‘: a remark about the stench in the Temple owing to the many sacrifices finds nothing comparable in the whole of Voltaire, and 1000 other things besides. One does not understand Maim[onides] simply because one does not reckon with the possibility that he was an ’Averroist’” (Gesammelte Schriften, 3:549Google Scholar). The meaning of “Averroist” for Strauss is clear enough. Speaking of certain medieval thinkers who “reject … revelation and the characteristic teachings of revelation,” Strauss says that “[t]hey are falâsifa or ‘Averroists’” (Thoughts on Machiavelli [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], p. 175).Google Scholar

27. Philosophy and Law, p. 147 n. 34.Google Scholar

28. See ibid., pp. 110–11.

29. Cf, however, the text accompanying notes 54–57 below.

30. In his own name, Strauss remarked that “[o]ne has not to be naturally pious, he has merely to have a passionate interest in genuine morality in order to long with all his heart for revelation: moral man as such is the potential believer” (“The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” p. 140Google Scholar).

31. Philosophy and Law, p. 111.Google Scholar

32. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” pp. 45 and 70–71.Google Scholar

33. Compare ibid., pp. 69–70 with p. 45 (and pp. 56–58 with p. 45 n. 28). See also “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xvi.Google Scholar

34. Philosophy and Law, p. 108;Google Scholar“The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” p. 42.Google Scholar

35. “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed” p. xvii.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. xviii.

37. Strauss had referred to the passage he paraphrases here (from Guide I 34) in confirmation of his interpretation of Guide II 36, according to which extreme asceticism is a necessary precondition of prophecy. See Philosophy and Law, pp. 111 and 146 n. 21.Google Scholar

38. “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xxviii;Google Scholar emphasis added.

39. Ibid., pp. viii-xix.

40. Ibid., p. xxvii.

41. Ibid.

42. Review of Religion 3, no. 4:448–56.Google Scholar

43. Maimonides, , The Mishneh Torah, ed. Hyamson, Moses (Bloch Publishing: New York, 1937) Book I.Google Scholar

44. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed” pp. 86–87, 93–94.Google Scholar Cf. “Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, p. 192.Google Scholar

45. “Farabi's Plato,” p. 381 n. 58.Google Scholar

46. Philosophy and Law, pp. 62–64.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., pp. 64–68, 90–91, and 108–11.

48. See note 12 above.

49. In a letter to Gershom Scholem of June 22, 1952 concerning Julius Guttmann's belief that Strauss had abandoned the position he had taken in opposition to Guttmann in Philosophy and Law, Strauss concedes that Guttmann was correct “insofar as I openly agreed with G[uttmann]’s thesis concerning the identity of reason and revelation in the Middle Ages”; but, he adds, in his later agreement his earlier objection to Guttmann is ‘“aufgehoben”’ (Gesammelte Schrīften, 3:727–28, and 2: xxiv-xxv n. 29).Google Scholar That he did not simply abandon the earlier position is indeed manifest from his later writings. See, e.g., “How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise” (in Persecution and the Art of Writing), pp. 200–201.Google Scholar These facts have not been given the attention they merit in some accounts of Strauss's thought. See Brague, , “Leo Strauss and Maimonides,” pp. 94 and 106 n. 2;Google Scholar and Seeskin, , “Maimonides‘ Conception of Philosophy,” p. 95.Google Scholar In another letter to Scholem (November 17, 1972), Strauss suggested the following explanation for why Guttmann had “in a manner retracted” his critique of Philosophy and Law. “he seems to have realized that I am somewhat more flexible or slippery than he originally thought” (Gesammelte Schriften, 3:765).Google Scholar For a recent attempt to ascertain the changes in Strauss's position, see Green, , Jew and Philosopher.Google Scholar Strauss mentions in Philosophy and Law the striking contradictions occurring in Maimonides' treatment of prophecy. (1) “Prophecy is in its essence an emanation from God through the active intellect first to the intellectual faculty and then to the imaginative faculty” (pp. 105–106;Google Scholar cf. Guide II 36Google Scholar); (2) “veridical dreams and prophecy differ only in degree,” not in kind (146 n. 23; cf. Guide II 36Google Scholar); (3) “the active intellect acts, in the case of veridical dreams, only on the imaginative faculty” (pp. 146 n. 23;Google Scholar cf. Guide II 37Google Scholar); (4) “the active intellect acts only on the intellect” (p. 146 n. 23;Google Scholar cf. Guide II 38Google Scholar). Yet, apparently in violation of a rule he later established for the interpretation of the Guide (“The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” pp. 69–70)Google Scholar, he attempts to reconcile these contradictory statements with one another (Philosophy and Law, p. 147 n. 34).Google Scholar

50. See the text accompanying note 2 above, and consider “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. lvi.Google Scholar

51. See Philosophy and Law, p. 145 n. 1.Google Scholar

52. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed” pp. 66–74.Google ScholarStrauss's, Cf. Review of Hyamson, pp.453–54.Google Scholar

53. Philosophy and Law, pp. 65, 108, 91 and 143 n. 17.Google Scholar See also “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. lv,Google Scholar and note 6 above. Fox, Cf., Interpreting Maimonides, pp. 18–19, 84–85;Google Scholar and Pines, Shlomo, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge according to Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays, pp. 91–121, especially 103, 108, and 119 n. 65.Google Scholar

54. Compare Philosophy and Law, pp. 65, 66, and 91, with p. 89Google Scholar, where Strauss repeats Maimonides' statement (in Guide I 50) that “[b]elief … is not just lip-service, but understanding of what is believed.”

55. See Philosophy and Law, pp. 66–67 and especially p. 140 n. 18.Google ScholarOn the meaning of the “necessary beliefs” in Guide III 28, see also “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” p. 104 n. 35;Google ScholarSpinoza's Critique of Religion, p. 170 and n. 218;Google Scholar and “On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” p. 99.Google Scholar On the question whether the doctrine of creation belongs among the necessary beliefs, i.e., among the pia dogmata rather than the vera dogmata, see ibid., pp. 101–102. In a letter to Klein, Jacob of 01 20, 1938,Google Scholar Strauss says that Maimonides “was convinced of the eternity of the world” (Gesammelte Schriften, 3: 545).Google Scholar

56. So we understand (in the light of pp. 66–67 and p. 140 n. 18)Google Scholar Strauss's statements, at first glance unintelligible, that according to Maimonides the philosopher must both leave unanswered the question, creation or eternity of the world, and accept or subject himself to the answer supplied by revelation, although he cannot demonstrate or even understand that answer (Philosophy and Law, pp. 64, 66, 91).Google Scholar It may be objected that Strauss could possibly have meant that Maimonides demands that the philosopher in some sense believe as a member of the (political or religious) community what as a philosopher he cannot believe, and that Maimonides himself, as an adherent of Judaism or a subject of the Jewish law, in some sense believed what as a philosopher he could not believe (cf. “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed” p. xiv):Google Scholar in other words, that Maimonides possessed himself and encouraged in others that type of mind which is “so confused as to consist of two hermetically sealed compartments” (“Farabi's Plato,” p. 374).Google Scholar This explanation is ruled out by a later statement in “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. xxxix.Google Scholar After having repeated there Maimonides' suggestion that one must accept the doctrine of creation although it has not been demonstrated, he adds that “this solution does not satisfy Maimonides,” and that Maimonides is therefore induced to say that the only certainty of belief is provided by demonstration, that even the existence of God remains doubtful if it is not demonstrated, and that “man's intellect can understand what any intelligent being understands,” i.e., that there are no suprarational truths communicated by prophets. For a somewhat different interpretation of Strauss's view of the importance of the doctrine of creation in the Guide, see Kochin, Michael S., “Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Review of Politics 64 (2002): 273–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57. Philosophy and Law, pp. 66–67 and 91–92.Google Scholar

58. Compare the title of Chapter Three with pp. 60–61.Google Scholar

59. Philosophy and Law, p. 116.Google Scholar

60. “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” pp. xxxvii and xxxix.Google Scholar Cf. note 56 above, and Seeskin, , “Maimonides' Conception of Philosophy,” p. 95.Google Scholar

61. We cannot discuss here the question whether or not this essay reflects Strauss's mature view of Maimonides' discussion of providence. See note 12 above.

62. Guide III 22;Google Scholarcf. Spinoza's Critique of Religion, p. 189.Google Scholar

63. “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” pp. 99–101, and n. 20.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., pp. 93–94.

65. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” pp. 77.Google ScholarCf. “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” p. 94 n. 4.Google Scholar

66. “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” pp. 94–97.Google Scholar Although Strauss proceeds here on the basis of Maimonides' identification of ma'aseh bereshit and ma'aseh merkabah with physics and metaphysics, he adds in a footnote the necessary qualification (94 n. 3).

67. “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” pp. 104–105 and n. 35;Google Scholar“The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” p. 77.Google Scholar

68. “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” pp. 104–105Google Scholar and n. 35. At the head of a copy of this essay found among Strauss's papers, one finds a note in his handwriting, referring to footnote 14 of his essay “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari” (Gesammelte Schriften, 2:191).Google Scholar That footnote includes the following statement: “The view that the question of Divine Justice, and the implications of that question do not belong to ‘theology’ (or metaphysics) and hence not to theoretical knowledge altogether, is shared by Maimonides as is shown by the place where he discusses them in both the Mishneh Torah and the Guide: he discusses them in both works after having completed his treatment of physics and metaphysics. (Cf. Teshuba, H., the heading and V ff. with H. Yesode ha-Torah II 11 and IV 13; and Guide, III 8–24 with III 7 end and II 30.)”Google Scholar The italics are not in the original. See also Brague, , “Leo Strauss and Maimonides,” p. 108 n. 21.Google Scholar

69. See “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” p. 95 and n. 9.Google ScholarCompare “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” xxxii.Google Scholar

70. See “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” pp. 104–105 and n. 35.Google Scholar Strauss had previously referred us to footnote 35 for information regarding “the secret arrangement” of the Guide (p. 94, note 3. See also Gesammelte Schriften, 2:194 (and 190).Google Scholar In the text, we have quoted the passage from Guide III 28 as Strauss renders it (“Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” p. 101).Google Scholar

71. As in fact he does according to Strauss. See “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” pp. xxxix, xlix-l, and liii.Google Scholar We note here the qualification Strauss adds to his characterization of I l–III 7 as the part of the Guide devoted to theoretical philosophy, and of III 8–54 as the part devoted to practical or political philosophy. Since the entire Guide is devoted to the science of the law, the Guide as a whole has a political theme, and is a work of political science (“Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” p. 104).Google Scholar

72. To this conclusion the following objection may be made. Strauss suggests that the edifying, exoteric opinion regarding providence, required for healthy political life, is, according to Maimonides, the doctrine that God rewards and punishes men in accordance with the merit of their actions. Now Maimonides, (in Guide III 17) ascribes this opinion to (the literal sense of) the Torah.Google Scholar But, as Strauss points out, in his interpretation of the book of Job, Maimonides distinguishes quite clearly this opinion from his own opinion regarding providence (and in such a way, we may add, that the former is characterized as “senile drivel” [Guide III 23]).Google Scholar Of course he also suggests that his own opinion, according to which providence follows the intellect, is also the esoteric or hidden doctrine of the Torah. But what is more important here is that this doctrine, that is to say, Maimonides' own opinion regarding providence, is ascribed to Job. (“Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” pp. 99–102).Google Scholar Job is the spokesman for Maimonides' own opinion regarding this subject. Surely, then—so one might object to the conclusion stated in the text—what is said of God and knowledge of God in connection with Job is to be understood as expressing Maimonides' own opinion about those subjects. Strauss, however, expressed doubts, or repeated Maimonides′ own expressions of doubt, whether the opinion ascribed to Job, which is admittedly called “my opinion” by Maimonides, in fact expresses his true view. He noted that when Maimonides discusses that opinion thematically in Guide III 18 and 51, he uses the device, whose significance for Strauss we have already explained, of stating his conclusion in conditional sentences. Furthermore, Strauss remarked that it would be rash, in the present stage of research, to exclude the possibility that “my opinion” regarding providence—which is, according to Maimonides′ express declaration, not “the conclusion to which demonstration has led me,” but merely “nearer to intellectual reasoning” than, for example, the opinion taught by (the literal sense of) the Torah (Guide III 17)—is also (merely) exoteric. See “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed;” p. 78 n. 117; and pp. 83–84 (cf. 62–64).Google Scholar

73. “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” p. lv.Google Scholar The “sublunar world” is, for Maimonides, the natural world, the world which is accessible to the human intellect, and concerning which the philosopher's (i.e., Aristotle's) conclusions are absolutely valid. See Gesammelte Schriften, 2: 191;Google Scholar and Philosophy and Law, pp. 91 and 65.Google Scholar

74. “The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed,” p. 88.Google Scholar

75. Ibid., pp. 64–65, 71–73.

76. Ibid., pp. 89–90.

77. “Interpreting Maimonides,” pp. 24–29.Google Scholar

78. Ibid., p. 25.

79. Rearding Maimonides' critique of conventional moral opinion, Strauss occasionally refers us to Guide III 17 (and III 19), where Maimonides discusses the problem of the freedom of the will. See “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” p. 97 n. 6,Google Scholar and Strauss's, Review of Hyamson, p. 451.Google ScholarBut see also “Maimonides' Statement on Political Science,” pp. 166–67.Google Scholar Apparently, Strauss had at one time intended to write an essay devoted to “Maimonides' Ethics.” See Strauss, , Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Green, Kenneth (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), p. 469.Google Scholar

80. Philosophy and Law, pp. 21–22 and 135 n. 1.Google Scholar