Abstract
The political philosopher Leo Strauss is famous for contending that any synthesis of reason and revelation is impossible, since they are irreconcilable antagonists. Yet he is also famous for praising the secular regime of liberal democracy as the best regime for all human beings, even though he is well aware that modern philosophers such as Spinoza thought this regime must make use of biblical morality to promote good citizenship. Is democracy, then, both religious and secular? Strauss thought that Spinoza was contradictory in teaching that reason and revelation should be separated from each other while also insisting that a secular democratic politics still requires the biblical morality of charity (love thy neighbor as thyself). The paradox that liberal democracy is both religious and secular, which is central to Spinoza, was dismissed by Strauss as a Machiavellian subterfuge or the cynical attempt to use religion for political purposes. In order to adhere to his dualistic separation of reason and revelation, Strauss turned to ancient Greek political philosophy, particularly the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, as the true ground of liberal democracy since this classical tradition was never exposed to biblical revelation. Yet, the illiberal and hierarchical implications of Greek political thought, which clash with Strauss’s modern views on human individuality and dignity, ultimately take him back to the biblically based philosophies of Spinoza and Kierkegaard, who teach the paradox that the Bible is the true foundation of human freedom.
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Notes
Strauss always suspected that Lessing may have learned the art of secrecy from Spinoza. Strauss even goes so far as to argue that Lessing and Spinoza were equally committed to the practice of ‘secret writing,’ a technique of philosophical argumentation that, according to Strauss, was first developed by ancient and medieval philosophers who wished to conceal their most subversive (that is, atheistic) thoughts from religious authorities that, since the trial and death of Socrates, threatened persecution of philosophers. See Strauss (1988a: 182).
Strauss’s dissertation on Jacobi was supervised by the famous Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer. See Strauss (1921). Michael Zank, in his notes to his English translation of a selection from Strauss’s dissertation, remarks that ‘Strauss’s interest in Spinoza may also have been stirred by his work on Jacobi, in that it was Jacobi (who rejected Spinoza) who was the first of his generation to argue that the only consistently rational philosophy was that of Spinoza).’ See Zank (2002: 58–59).
Just over 40 years after he wrote his dissertation on Jacobi, Strauss credited Jacobi with the insight that Spinoza presented a ‘novel conception of God’ that ultimately created a whole new religion suited to a liberal regime that would put an end to the ‘millennial antagonism between Judaism and Christianity’ by recognizing both Jews and Christians as human beings. Strauss adds that these Jews and Christians were to be ‘cultured human beings’ who ‘because they possessed Science and Art did not need religion in addition.’ (Strauss [1962] 1982: 17). Strauss wrote this preface in 1962, 32 years after the publication of his Spinoza study in German.
For a useful discussion of the Spinozastreit, see Schwartz (2012: 46–52). For an informative account of Strauss’s lifelong interest in the Spinozastreit, see Altman (2011: 32–42). Although Altman offers many insights, the impact of his analysis is severely compromised by his polemical portrait of Strauss as a Nazi sympathizer. See my review of Altman’s book (Havers 2013b: 78–82).
Throughout my discussion, I will be referring to various writings of Strauss on Spinoza that he composed from his early Weimar period to his later contributions as a scholar living in the USA. Although some readers of Strauss sometimes devalue his early writings as ‘pre-Straussean’ or works that do not compare well to the caliber of his more ‘mature’ writings, I do not accept this distinction on the grounds that Strauss’s dualistic separation of reason from revelation has its roots in his Weimar period and was never modified or repudiated by Strauss in his later scholarship. For this distinction between the ‘pre-Straussean Strauss’ and the later Strauss, see Bloom (1990: 246).
For Strauss’s critique of Locke, see Strauss (1953: 202–251).
In Letter 50 (to Jarig Jelles), Spinoza further elaborates upon the ‘difference between Hobbes and myself’ by claiming that he, not Hobbes, preserves ‘the natural right in its entirety, and I hold that the sovereign power in a State has right over a subject only in proportion to the excess of its power over that of a subject.’ See Spinoza (1995: 258).
Spinoza quotes from Exodus 19: 8 here.
In his early critique of Hermann Cohen’s attack on Spinoza’s attack on ‘orthodoxy,’ Strauss emphasizes that, ‘in Spinoza’s historical context, the politicizing interpretation of the Bible is sufficiently motivated.’ See Strauss ([1924] 1997: 146–147).
Strauss contends here that Spinoza does not expect ‘the mass of his readers’ to be harmed by this tension between his biblical criticism and his valuation of the seven dogmas, since he openly (exoterically) defends both. (Strauss 1988a: 180–181.) See also Bagley (1998: 142): ‘the characterization of the divine nature expressed through the seven dogmas of the universal faith presupposes and continues to inculcate a conception of God that Spinoza had previously denounced as vulgar and unphilosophical.’
Strauss is probably referring here to medieval Christian (Thomistic) philosophy, not medieval Jewish or Islamic philosophy, which, in his view, taught a superior understanding of ancient Greek political philosophy that avoided any synthesis of reason and revelation. See Merrill (2000: 77–106).
Strauss writes ‘The teaching of the classics can have no immediate practical effect, because present-day society is not a polis.’ (Strauss 1946: 332).
For a critique of Strauss’s interpretation of the Greek philosophers as proto-modern, see Gottfried (2012: 131–136).
Here, Strauss distinguishes between the historical Socrates, who is an openly skeptical rationalist, and the Platonic Socrates, who is a more cautious master of secret philosophizing.
In ‘Reason and Revelation,’ Strauss doubts that a philosopher could ever take seriously the theological argument that God punishes evildoers for their sins, since ‘he, the philosopher, would never take sins of less wise beings as seriously.’ (Strauss [1948] 2006: 162). For an insightful discussion of the vast difference between ancients and moderns on the necessity of secret writing, see Melzer (2014: 86–87).
As Allan Bloom pithily writes ‘Spinoza no longer believed in the permanent necessity of that art of writing. His use of it was in the service of overcoming it….Philosophy, instead of the secret preserve of a few who accept the impossibility of the many being philosophers, or truly tolerating it, could be the instrument of transforming society and bringing enlightenment.’ (Bloom 1990: 244)
In ‘The Three Waves of Modernity’ Strauss writes ‘Secularization means, then, the preservation of thoughts, feelings, or habits of biblical origin after the loss or atrophy of biblical faith. But this definition does not tell us anything as to what kind of ingredients are preserved in secularizations.’ (Strauss 1989c : 83) As we have seen, however, Strauss does not deny that the Bible has influenced both medieval and modern philosophy (see note 14).
Yet, Strauss also recognizes that Spinoza attributes this universal morality to both the Old and New Testaments (Strauss 1988a: 163, 173–175, 196).
Strauss is defending Spinoza here against the critique of Hermann Cohen.
Fackenheim dedicated this book to the memory of Leo Strauss.
In Letter 78 (to Henry Oldenburg), Spinoza writes ‘The passion, death, and burial of Christ I accept literally, but his resurrection I understand in an allegorical sense.’ Spinoza goes on to note that the ‘Evangelists’ (apostles) who claimed to witness the ascension of Christ into heaven ‘could have been deceived, as was the case with other prophets’ (Spinoza 1995: 348).
Strauss admits that there is a need ‘for argument between the various believers in revelation, an argument which cannot help but to allude somehow to objectivity’ (Strauss 1989a: 299). Yet, Strauss does not offer an objective interpretation of his own. Even in his 1957 lecture ‘On the Interpretation of Genesis,’ in which Strauss attempts an interpretation of the Bible, he declares that philosophy cannot comprehend creation, the most fundamental credo of Genesis, since there ‘is not a trace of an argument in support of this assertion.’ (Strauss 1997: 369). As he puts it in ‘Progress or Return?’: ‘God has said or decided that he wants to dwell in mist.’ (Strauss 1989a: 305) Steven B. Smith follows Strauss in arguing that Strauss leaves revelation as ‘an open question’ that reason cannot successfully address. See Smith (2008: 171).
Strauss ultimately claims that the main difference between Calvin and Spinoza is the former’s pious respect for the mystery of the Bible, See Strauss (1982: 193–214).
In chapters 7 and 15 of Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza deconstructs Maimonides’s reading of the Bible in greater detail.
I discuss Spinoza’s rather qualified liberalism elsewhere (Havers 2007: 143–174).
Strauss does not take into account Calvin’s own interpretation of scripture, which is more rationalist than Strauss allows. See also Strauss (1988a: 194–195). I discuss Strauss’s interpretation of Calvin, as well as his harsh, dualistic view of the relation between reason and revelation, in Havers (2013a: 73–76).
In his Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza, at times, insists that all citizens must obey the command to love one’s neighbor (Spinoza 2004: 156, 165). Yet, in an annotation to chapter 16, he appears to exempt rational individuals from the command to obey: ‘From reason’s guidance, therefore, we can love God, but we cannot obey him, since by reason we cannot embrace the divine rights as divine so long as we are ignorant of their cause, nor conceive God who constitutes rights as a prince’ (Spinoza 2004: 250). In ‘Cohen’s analysis,’ Strauss notes that Cohen fails to grasp the ‘hierarchy’ that Spinoza sets up between ‘obedience’ and ‘love’ of God (Spinoza 2004: 149–150). See also Nadler (2011: 184–187).
Strauss remarks in ‘Progress or Return?’ that ‘Spinoza still regarded it as necessary to underwrite liberal democracy with a public religion or a state religion.’ (Strauss 1989a: 254) In the same essay, Strauss cautiously praises liberal democracy for extending full political rights to Jews as long as ‘they accept the extremely latitudinarian state religion and they may then forget about the Mosaic law.’ (Strauss 1989c: 255) On Spinoza’s ‘authoritarian liberalism,’ see also Feuer (1958: 175–179) and Havers (2007: 143–174).
As Yaffe puts it ‘by Spinoza’s own lights, the theological merit of his seven dogmas is limited to their practical efficacy in promoting just and charitable behavior among those for whom the biblical text is already authoritative.’ (Yaffe 2004: 329)
Strauss writes in ‘Progress or Return?’: ‘Nietzsche’s criticism can be reduced to one proposition: modern man has been trying to preserve biblical morality while abandoning biblical faith. That is impossible. If the biblical faith goes, biblical morality must go too, and a radically different morality must be accepted.’ (Strauss 1989a: 265) Strauss does not challenge the validity of Nietzsche’s observation here. See also Strauss ([1962] 1982: 12).
Strauss cites Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments 87 here. See Polka (2005: 171): ‘the argument that solely the apostle possesses religious authority, which Kierkegaard makes in his piece entitled ‘The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle,’ is pathetic, if not risible….Kierkegaard refuses to acknowledge that the hierarchy that he claims to establish between the divine and the human, between religion and art, and between apostolic authority and the authority of the single individual collapses in light of his own profound concepts of spirit, metaphor, indirect communication, truth as subjectivity, etc., all of which are but variations on the dialectic of the love of God and neighbor: the absolute relation of the single individual to the absolute.’
For a useful discussion of Strauss’s misgivings over Kierkegaard, see Pelluchon (2006: 194–96).
Although Strauss admires Nietzsche, he does not, to my knowledge, address Nietzsche’s dismissal of the Greeks in ‘What I Owe to the Ancients’ (Twilight of the Idols): ‘One does not learn from the Greeks—their way is too alien, and also too fluid, to have an imperative effect, a “classical effect.”’ (author’s italics) (Nietzsche 1997: 87).
Willmoore Kendall (1909–1967) was an American political philosopher who was deeply influenced by Strauss.
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Havers, G. The Politics of Paradox: Leo Strauss’s Biblical Debt to Spinoza (and Kierkegaard). SOPHIA 54, 525–543 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-015-0505-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-015-0505-x