Philosopher’s Guide

Moses Maimonides (ca. 1135-1204) is the only author on whom Strauss wrote in each decade of his life: He was the one, above all, to whom Strauss always returned. Moreover, he was the author on whom Strauss wrote most extensively (beating Xenophon by a nose). This fact should give pause to those who believe that Leo Strauss was a “Platonist.” In fact, studying these writings leads the reader to the opinion that, to the extent one can employ such a label for a thinker of Strauss’s rank, he was a “Maimonidean.” They would seem to provide copious evidence that Maimonides was the thinker with whom Strauss’s thought had the greatest kinship.

In a letter, Strauss once claimed that:

Yet, in 1970, in “A Giving of Accounts,” Strauss said, “One day, when reading in a Latin translation Avicenna’s treatise On the Division of the Sciences, I came across this sentence (I quote from memory): the standard work on prophecy and revelation is Plato’s Laws. Then I began to begin to understand Maimonides’ prophetology and eventually, as I believe, the whole Guide of the Perplexed.” There is no other great work—not Plato’s Republic or Machiavelli’s Prince—about which Strauss makes a similar claim to understanding it as a whole.

Why was Maimonides of such singular importance to Leo Strauss? Let me note his most important debt: It was in and through his study of (and writing on) the Guide that Strauss made his great rediscovery of the art of exoteric writing, by which philosophers communicate their serious thoughts only to the most intelligent and careful readers. Strauss immediately followed the statement quoted above by noting—with a playful jab at his lifelong friend Jacob Klein—that it was in writing the first of his two great essays on Maimonides that he had fully rediscovered exotericism: “When Klein had read the manuscript of my essay on the literary character of the Guide of the Perplexed, he said: ‘We have rediscovered exotericism.’ To this extent we completely agreed.”

But it was not simply the art of writing that Strauss learned from Maimonides. The medieval philosopher also served as Strauss’s chief guide in navigating the problem that the art of writing serves to ameliorate—namely, the theologico-political problem. That problem is a special version of the more general one of the relationship of philosophy to the political community, the “city.” The city demands unquestioning allegiance to its way of life; philosophy questions everything—not least, the authoritative opinions to which the city demands allegiance. This political problem became the theologico-political problem due to the introduction (as Maimonides notes) of authoritative revealed texts that also demand the unquestioning allegiance of adherents, but in a manner that sets up an additional tension, a third party with pretensions to challenge the claims of both philosophy and city.

So Strauss learned from Maimonides how to navigate a minefield more dense than the one faced by the classical philosophers, albeit with the same end in mind: to promote philosophy while giving political society and revelation their due.

In reading this collection, one is struck by the difference in character between Strauss’s writings before and after his rediscovery of exotericism. Earlier on Strauss is most concerned with Maimonides’s teaching on such grand matters as God, providence, and prophecy. After the rediscovery, Strauss is, above all, concerned with Maimonides’s manner of teaching us how to overcome the authoritative prejudices and opinions that obstruct our access to these questions. It was not indifference to the big questions that induced Strauss to focus primarily on the manner of writing and teaching. It was, rather, a recognition of the fact that, if the teaching is not reached properly, it can never be truly understood. Even if various formulations are correct, they are nothing but doctrine or dogma if the process leading to those insights is short-circuited. So the mature Strauss sought to make it possible for readers to come to understand the questions at hand—especially in his two complementary essays on the Guide, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed” and “How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed.”

The relationship between these two essays is suggested in the very first sentence of the latter: “I believe that it will not be amiss if I simply present the plan of the Guide as it has become clear to me in the course of about 25 years of frequently interrupted but never abandoned study.” That quarter-century or so dates back to the composition of “Literary Character” in 1938, so the two studies are, in a sense, one. But when the reader places them side-by-side, one is struck by the realization that the explicit picture of the Guide provided by each seems opposed to the other. Yet the differences between these two essays correspond not to a difference in understanding but to a difference in purpose: “Literary Character” is designed to shatter the contemporary complacency that understanding the Guide is, essentially, unproblematic. To do this, Strauss went to great lengths to make this enchantingly mysterious book even more mysterious. But it is “How To Begin,” a more difficult and serious essay, that is meant to be the true introduction to the study of the Guide.

Leo Strauss on Maimonides, while excellent in general, is marred to some degree by unfortunate editorial decisions. Kenneth Hart Green obtrudes himself too much in the book, attaching copious notes to nearly every page of the text that amount to a running commentary. He seems to employ this celebration of Strauss’s achievement to promote his own understanding of Strauss’s Maimonides. (In fact, those who want Green’s impressive interpretation can seek it out in his Leo Strauss and the Rediscovery of Maimonides.)

Green also alters Strauss’s most carefully chosen title—”The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed“—to “The Literary Character of The Guide of the Perplexed” on the grounds that this better accords with Strauss’s mature understanding. But changing Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to Measure of Measure would be no more defensible. Even if it were true that the difference in the articles reflects a maturing of Strauss’s thought, would it not be appropriate for students to be able to observe and ponder the change for themselves?

In fact, the differences between the way Strauss refers to the Guide in his two essays is due to their difference in purpose. Green takes a singularity in Strauss’s texts—the employment of “The” as part of the Guide‘s title in “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed“—and turns it into a commonality; but as Strauss noted in “Literary Character,” the fact (were it fact) that Maimonides employed a title only once would mean that he “attached an extremely high and secret importance to the name.” Something stated just once can be far more important than its endlessly repeated variable. Strauss’s singular use of The Guide suggests that, for him, it was the guide par excellence to the philosophic problems.

Steven J. Lenzner is a Salvatori research fellow in political philosophy at Claremont McKenna College.