Content area
Full Text
Joshua Parens : Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy . Rochester Studies in Medieval Political Thought. (Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press , 2016. Pp. xvi, 191.)
A Symposium on Joshua Parens's Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy
Why does Joshua Parens say we need to look to Leo Strauss to recover the thought of Moses Maimonides, among others? The simple answer has to do with what's wrong with the currently fashionable expression "Jewish philosophy." According to Strauss--and Maimonides--it is a contradiction in terms. The contradiction does not show up in the corresponding term "Christian philosophy," since as Parens (following Strauss) points out, Christianity and philosophy can be said to be in harmony and therefore amenable to a synthesis. Christianity is at bottom a religion of belief, whereas Judaism (like Islam) is a religion of law. Thomas Aquinas calls philosophy a "handmaid" to revealed theology; his Summa Theologiae justifies revealed theology before the bar of philosophy--something prima facie inconceivable within the bounds of Jewish law. The Torah claims to be comprehensive yet is silent about philosophy; biblical Hebrew does not even have a word for "nature," Genesis 1 and Job 38 notwithstanding. Any synthesis between Jewish law and philosophy like that between Christian belief and philosophy is thus ruled out. Parens quotes Strauss saying as much: "Jews of the competence of Halevi and Maimonides took it for granted that being a Jew and being a philosopher are mutually exclusive" (49). Again, "The philosopher... asserts the superiority of contemplation as such to action as such: from the philosopher's point of view, goodness of character and goodness of action is essentially not more than a means toward, or a by-product of, the life of contemplation. ... Moral man as such is the potential believer" (50). And from Maimonides directly: "[The perfection of moral virtues] is, as it were, only the disposition to be useful to people; consequently it is an instrument for someone else" (ibid.). Parens also cites Strauss on how Maimonides shows that the divide between Jews and philosophers over whether the world is created or eternal is irresolvable by demonstration, so that Jews must adhere to what the prophetic books teach about creation more or less literally (ibid.).