Abstract
The publication of the correspondence with his contemporaries Gerhard Krüger, Jacob Klein and Gerschom Scholem in 2001 offered readers of Leo Strauss a new and in many ways surprising perspective on the genesis of his thought. The epistolary exchanges reveal both the intensity and the scope of Strauss’s engagement with the “theological-political problem,” which he later identified as “the theme” of his investigations. This chapter focuses on Strauss’s correspondence with Gerhard Krüger. More specifically, it aims to clarify an issue that is at once central to it while remaining partially implicit: Strauss’s attempt to recover the Socratic question concerning the good and just life as the viable foundation for a human life, after his critical dismissal of the two alternatives that initially presented themselves to him: the modern Enlightenment and revealed religion.
Daß die entschiedene Frage wahr bleibt, auch
wenn sie keine Antwort findet, kann den, der
so fragt, das Beispiel des Sokrates lehren.
Gerhard Krüger
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Notes
- 1.
Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, tr. by Elsa M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), 1; “Preface to Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. by Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 453. Henceforth referred to as “JPCM.” For a more detailed account of the context in which Strauss made these statements, see D. Janssens, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophy, Prophecy, and Politics in Leo Strauss’s Early Thought (New York: The State University of New York Press, 2008), Ch. 1.
- 2.
For an excellent and comprehensive discussion of the Strauss – Krüger correspondence and its context, see Thomas L. Pangle, “The Light Shed on the Crucial Development of Strauss’s Thought By His Correspondence With Gerhard Krüger” (Chap. 3), in this volume.
- 3.
GS-3 379.
- 4.
Gerhard Krüger, “Besprechung von L. Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft,” in Deutsche Literaturzeitung 51 (1931), 2410.
- 5.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. XLVI.
- 6.
GS-2 377–391, 393–436, 441–464, respectively. In this chapter, I shall refer to the English translations that have since become available.
- 7.
L. Strauss, “Religious Situation of the Present,” translated by A. Schmidt and M. D. Yaffe , in M. D. Yaffe and R. S. Ruderman , Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 227. Henceforth “RSP.”
- 8.
L. Strauss, “The Intellectual Situation of the Present,” translated by A. Schmidt and M. D. Yaffe , in M. D. Yaffe and R. S. Ruderman , Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 245. Henceforth “ISP.”
- 9.
Leo Strauss, “Cohen and Maimonides ,” tr. by M. D. Yaffe and I. A. Moore, in Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Maimonides : The Complete Writings, ed. by K. Hart Green (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 199. Henceforth “CaM.”
- 10.
Cf. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953), 32: “[…] philosophy in its original, Socratic sense: philosophy is knowledge that one does not know; that is to say, it is knowledge of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamental problems and, therewith, of the fundamental alternatives regarding their solution that are coeval with human thought.” Henceforth “NRH.”
- 11.
CaM 199. This insight finds a striking echo almost 30 years later in Natural Right and History, when, elaborating on the “Socratic answer to the question of how man ought to live” mentioned at the beginning, Strauss writes: “By realizing that we are ignorant of the most important things, we realize at the same time that the most important thing for us, or the one thing needful, is quest for knowledge of the most important things or quest for wisdom.” (NRH 36)
- 12.
Cf. H. Meier , “Why Political Philosophy ?” in H. Meier , Political philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion (Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 2017), 1–22.
- 13.
CaM 200.
- 14.
CaM 201.
- 15.
Like the Socratic question , the Socratic answer is essentially political, and this characteristic constitutes a point of particular affinity with Plato : what remains a quasi-tacit premise in the lectures of the 1930s is made almost explicit in Natural Right and History. When we return to the passage in the second chapter where the “Socratic answer” is said to argue the priority and necessity of the quest for knowledge , we find Strauss adding the following: “That this conclusion is not barren of political consequences is known to every reader of Plato’s Republic or of Aristotle’s Politics.” (NRH 36)
- 16.
ISP 242.
- 17.
ISP 242.
- 18.
Leo Strauss, “Conspectivism,” translated by A. Schmidt and M. D. Yaffe , in M. D. Yaffe and R. S. Ruderman , Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 372: “If one understands that thought is conditioned by the situation, it does not follow that one cannot come to see the situation originally, free of the dominant viewpoints. This freedom does not fall into anyone’s lap: it must be won by understanding the tradition as such in which we are caught up,” and 373: “[…] to make this fate (Schicksal) of all research into the principle of research.”
- 19.
Cf. RSP 231: “[…] our fate is not our task.”; ISP 250: “We cannot escape the fate of historicity – but we need not be concerned about that in our thought.”
- 20.
Leo Strauss, “Review of Julius Ebbinghaus , On the Progress of Metaphysics (1931)” in Leo Strauss, The Early Writings (1921–1932), tr. and ed. by Michael Zank (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), 214–216.
- 21.
RSP 235: “But we cannot answer immediately as we are; for we know that we are deeply entangled in a tradition: we are yet much further down than Plato’s cave-dwellers. We have to raise ourselves to the origin of the tradition, to the level of natural ignorance. If we wanted to concern ourselves with the present situation, we would be doing nothing other than the cave-dwellers who described the interior of their cave.” A little later, Strauss states that the attempt to recover the question regarding the right life requires “[…] the uncompromising scrutiny of the supposed ‘achievements’ of history.” Strauss used the concept of the “second cave ” in many subsequent publications: see, among others, “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History” Review of Metaphysics 5, no. 4 (Jun.), pp. 559–86, esp. 577, 585; “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” Social Research 13, no. 3 (Sep.), 326–67, esp. 328; “Correspondence Concerning Modernity” (with Karl Löwith ), Independent Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4, 1983, 105–19, esp. 107. See also Philosophy and Law, 25 n. 2; Persecution and the Art of Writing, 155–156; What is Political Philosophy ?, 68; “The Crisis of Our Time,” in H. J. Spaeth (ed.), The Predicament of Modern Politics, Detroit: The University of Detroit Press, 1964, 54.
- 22.
ISP 243.
- 23.
NRH 20.
- 24.
ISP 253.
- 25.
Most of these writings are now available in an English translation in Leo Strauss, Hobbes’s Critique of Religion and Related Writings, translated and edited by G. Bartlett and S. Minkov (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011). Henceforth “HCR.” An additional source I will use is an untitled typescript with handwritten additions, beginning with a paragraph entitled “Einleitung” (Introduction), which can be found in the Leo Strauss Papers, Box 15, Folder 2 (formerly Box 10, Folder 5). Henceforth “Einleitung.” This typescript was not included in the English translation, mainly for reasons of space and overlap: see HCR 3–4.
- 26.
Cf. HCR 148: “From the factual failure of the earlier [teachings], nothing follows against the [im]possibility of their undertaking.” Cf. “Einleitung,” 1 and 5.
- 27.
Cf. HCR 29–30; “Einleitung” 34–43; NRH 168.
- 28.
HCR 145.
- 29.
Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, tr. by E. M. Sinclair (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1936). Henceforth “PPH.” See PPH 81, on Hobbes’s turning from the question of rational precepts to that of their application (and thereby to history): “Because the formulation and the explanation of these precepts had been fully and adequately completed by Aristotle , because the primary philosophic problem had been solved, because its solution had become a matter of course, because of all this a philosopher like Hobbes had the leisure and the opportunity to give thought to the secondary problem of the application of precepts.”
- 30.
“Einleitung” 47. When, in Natural Right and History, Strauss observes that Socrates “[…] was as much concerned with understanding what justice is […] as with preaching justice,” he adds the following caveat: “For if one is concerned with understanding the problem of justice, one must go through the stage in which justice presents itself as identical with citizen-morality, and one must not merely rush through that stage.” (NRH, 150) Could this be an implicit censure of modern political thinkers like Hobbes, who rashly disparaged citizen morality and its accompanying understanding of justice, and who thereby rushed through the crucial stage?
- 31.
Cf. “Einleitung” 46, 49–50; HRC 28–30, 113–114; PPH 81, 152; NRH 167.
- 32.
Cf. “Einleitung” 43. In the introduction to Philosophy and Law, published in 1935, Strauss refers to Hermann Cohen’s portrayal of Maimonides as the “classic of rationalism ,” and classic rationalism is subsequently understood as the natural model and measure of modern rationalism . Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and his Predecessors, tr. by E. Adler. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, 21–22.
- 33.
PPH 1 (emphasis added). Cf. PP. 5.
- 34.
PPH 141.
- 35.
PPH 145.
- 36.
PPH 142.
- 37.
PPH 153 (emphasis added).
- 38.
The only other reference is part of a quote from Ernest Barker’s Plato and His Predecessors. Cf. PPH 155. On PPH 145, Strauss elaborates on Plato’s turn to the logoi: “[…] he opposes to ‘physiology’ not ‘ontology’ but ‘dialectic’ […].” One may wonder whether “ontology ” includes “fundamental ontology .”
- 39.
Letter to Gerschom Scholem , October 2, 1935, in GS-3 716.
- 40.
See also Heinrich Meier’s considerations in his introduction to HCR 8–9.
- 41.
Heinrich Meier , Leo Strauss and the Theological-Political Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 64.
- 42.
NRH 166.
- 43.
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958), 294.
- 44.
RSP 227.
- 45.
Handwritten note, in Leo Strauss Papers, Box 10, Folder 4. A little further in the same manuscript, the problem is expressed as follows: “As far as the biblical world is concerned, it does not commit us anymore, for we no longer believe in the creator-god. The question regarding the just life thus focuses on the question: how can man live without god ?”
- 46.
Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft,” in JPCM 454.
- 47.
Gerhard Krüger, Philosophie und Moral in der kantischen Kritik (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1931), 236.
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Janssens, D. (2018). The Example of Socrates: The Correspondence Between Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger. In: Shell, S. (eds) The Strauss-Krüger Correspondence. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74201-4_4
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