stanley rosen, leo strauss and the possibility of philosophy, (2000)

Leo Strauss and the possibility of philosophyStanley RosenThe Review of Metaphysics; Mar 2000; 53, 3; Research Library Corepg. 541

LEO STRAUSS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

STANLEY ROSEN

I

NINETEEN NINETY-N!:::-;E WAS THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY of the birth

of Leo Strauss. It is a pleasure and an obligation for a former student

to accept an invitation to reflect in public on the thought of that ex-

traordinary man. I say "obligation" because Strauss, despite or per-

haps because of the apparent lucidity of his best-known work, is not at

all easy to understand. His friends and admirers are rightly compelled

to present his teaching in its deepest and most beautiful form. Like

many another charismatic teacher and subtle writer, he has been

praised and vilified for what are too often the wrong reasons. One

wants to set the record straight. But this is as it happens not a simple

task, since Strauss's understanding of the nature of philosophy is

aporetic, and there is good reason to suppose that his very formula-

tion of this aporia is itself aporetic.To put this in another way, Strauss articulated a public teaching

that was not necessarily in conflict with his private views on philoso-

phy, but which served as an ambiguous surface to still more ambigu-ous depths. Strauss takes his bearings in part from Nietzsche's analy-sis of the defects of late modernity, and still more fundamentally, from

TNidegger's attempt to return to the origin of western philosophy by a

destruction of its history. But Strauss differs sharply with his twoteachers on the nature and the destination of that destruction. He de-fends modern liberalism in a way that is both invigorated and ob-

scured by a rhetoric derived from the ancients (and medievals). At atheoretical level, he seeks to return, not to the archaic Greeks (as

Nietzsche does) or to the aboriginal moment just prior to the fatefulbeginning of the Greek epoch in the history of being (as Heideggerdoes), but to the pretheoretical dimension of Greek political

Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, 745 Commonwealth Av-enue, Boston, MA 02215-1401.

The Review of Metaphysics 53 (March 2000): 541-564. Copyright © 2000 by The Review ofMetaphysics

542 STANLEY ROSEN

experience and common sense. The vigor derived from the return tothe common roots of political life, undistorted in the texts of Plato,Xenophon, and Aristotle by twenty-five hundred years of theoreticalconstruction, is obscured if not in fact diminished by a stubborn theo-retical problem. The pre theoretical experience to which Strauss re-turns is precisely the precondition of the emergence of Greek, and sowestern European, theory. If we think this through, the following di-lemma arises. Either the truth of Greek pretheoretical experience isavailable in principle at any time, and so a return to the Greeks is su-perfluous; or else Strauss advocates the historicist thesis that ourGreek heksis has predisposed us to search for the origin of philoso-phy in the pretheoretical understanding of the Greeks themselves.

If then we put to one side for the moment all questions of politi-cal doctrine and scholarly interpretations, the central fact about thethought of Leo Strauss is his confrontation with Heidegger on the na-ture of philosophy (a point to which Iwill return at greater length).For reasons which I have just indicated, Heidegger's "return" is tooradical, because it directs us back to a moment that is outside our his-tory, and poses in prophetic terms (the only terms suitable to the en-terprise) that we make a different choice, not just a radically differentchoice but one that can be made only after we have pulled up ourroots. I will not comment here upon the content of Heidegger's pro-phetic vision of "the other way," except to say that it is not as free ofwestern elements as he seems to believe. This to one side, the very at-tractiveness of the Heideggerian return must rest upon his interpreta-tion of Western philosophy, and thus not only of its origins among theGreeks but its ostensible distortion by Platonism throughout its sub-sequent history.

The first step in assessing the merit of Heidegger's wish to returnto the origin is then to consider his interpretation of Platonism. Wecannot enter into the trance-like atmosphere of the Beitrtiqe withouthaving worked our way through the Nietzsche lectures, to say nothingof other central texts in the Heideggerian corpus.' Now whatever onemay think of the results, Heidegger gives us such an interpretation;and Iwish to say that he gives us an account of the depths as well asthe surface. A genuine confrontation with Heidegger, something that

I See my The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger (New Haven:YaleUniversityPress: 1993).

LEO STRAUSS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY 543

Strauss saw to be necessary for the future of philosophy, must thenprovide us with an account of the depths of Platonism that refutes theHeideggerian account, and in so doing, demonstrates that the Heideg-gerian return is neither possible nor desirable. Strauss did not give ussuch an account. Perhaps he believed that to do so is undesirable, ifnot impossible.

That one of these alternatives is correct is strongly suggested byStrauss's actual presentation of the central question of the possibilityof philosophy. In the balance of my paper, I want to focus upon thispresentation. In so doing, I mean to honor the memory of a greatteacher, not by contradicting him, but by illuminating a puzzle that hewas the first to call to my attention.

II

I want to begin in a way that may seem odd at first, but which Ihope will place Strauss's thought more directly in contact with the in-terests of contemporary English-speaking philosophers. One does nothave to turn to Heidegger in order to appreciate the deep pessimismcurrent in the 20th century with respect to the possibility of philoso-phy. In Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Philosophy oj Psychology, thefollowing statement occurs without conunent: "In order to climb intothe depths one does not need to travel very far; indeed, for this you donot need to abandon your inunediate and accustomed environment."Upon reading this passage, I was struck by its similarity to a frequentlyrepeated observation by Leo Strauss to the effect that the depths arecontained in the surface and only in the surface. For example, inThoughts on Machiavelli, Strauss says: "There is no surer protectionagainst the understanding of anything than taking for granted or other-wise despising the obvious and the surface. The problem inherent inthe surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart ofthings. "3

2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I,trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1980),71. Ihave slightly modified the translation.

3 Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press,1958), 13.

544 STANLEY ROSEN

A comparison between Strauss and Wittgenstein is not as odd asit might seem. Both were influenced, directly or indirectly, by the

antimetaphysical passion of 19th century continental thought after

the age of the great system builders. Both shared in the 20th century

concern with pre theoretical or everyday experience. Both were influ-enced, however differently, by the quarrel between Athens and Jerus-

alem. And both celebrated the virtues of ordinary language, that is,

the language of the surface, in a rhetoric of obscurity, that is, of the

depths. It is therefore fitting that both have produced, not only nu-merous enemies, but disciples of sharply contrasting views on the

substance of their master's teaching. More important, both raise the

fundamental question of the possibility of philosophy, and not the su-perficial question of whether philosophy has corne to an end.

In their respective statements concerning the surface and the

depth, I take both Strauss and Wittgenstein to be cautioning usagainst the tendency to replace the inunediate context of experience

with a theoretical artifact. But this does not mean that both are op-posed to theory in the same sense or to the same degree. For Wittgen-

stein, theory is erroneous or obfuscatory conceptual construction:

'''Don't look for anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are

the theory' (Goethe)."! And again: "Since everything lies open to view

there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no

interest to US."5 Wittgenstein is objecting primarily to recourse by phi-

losophers to inner or subjective processes, as opposed to the public-

ity of the common language, and to semantical entities like meanings

or Platonic forms, as opposed to the syntactic or granunatical rules of

the aforementioned language. Strauss, on the other hand, is opposed

to theories that are not grounded in our direct experience of the natu-

ral order of human affairs, an order that is not the product of gram-

matical rules but determines them. Wittgenstein speaks inconsis-

tently on the crucial point of the regulative sense of nature. In

apparent harmony with Strauss are assertions like this: "the common

behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we

interpret an unknown language.t" In the same sense, we are told that

4 Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, 157. Compare 117: Simplelanguage-games "are poles of a description, not the ground-floor of a theory."

5 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M.Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998), 50, par. 126.

6 Philosophical Investigations, 82, par. 206.


language corresponds to how things actually are, or to what Wittgen-stein calls "normal cases,"? and so to "ordinary language" (dieqeuiohnliche Sprache).8 He describes his work in the PhilosophicalInvestigations as "remarks on the natural history of human beings; weare not contributing curiosities, however, but observations which noone has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because theyare always before our eyes. "9

But the expression "natural history" is compatible with a histori-cist view of human nature. Furthermore, according to Wittgenstein,"Essence is expressed by grammar."lO Since grammars define familiesof language-games or constitute a "life-form,"!' and life-forms are mul-tiple as well as diverse, or in other words, since there is no universallife-form, any more than there is a universal form of the proposition, itseems that human nature, and so what counts as ordinary or healthyuse, is a function of history, that is to say, of chance. Wittgensteinsays that his interests include the conformity of concepts to "very gen-eral facts of nature," but the latter are not invoked as causes of theformer. Weare instead instructed to imagine different facts of natureas producing different concepts; the main point here is not the naturalorder but the contingency of concepts.F

This point has to be emphasized. For Wittgenstein, the "surface"or familiar environment of everyday life is conceptually defined by lin-

guistic practice. What we call "the world" or "reality," and so theaforementioned facts of nature themselves, is a function of how wecarve up the conceptual and so discursive space of ordinary experi-ence.P But this does not mean that ordinary experience is available tous as a standard prior to the act of carving up. Wittgenstein's empha-sis upon ordinary language is at best only ambiguously accompaniedby an appeal to human nature, to the nature of discourse or logos, let

7 Philosophical Investigations, 56, par. 142.8 For example, Philosophical Investigations, 129,par. 436.9 Philosophical Investigations, 125, par. 415.10 Philosophical Investigations, 116, par. 371; compare par. 373.11Philosophical Investigations, 8, par. 19 and following.12 Philosophical Investigations, 230. With this, contrast Husserl's doc-

trine of eidetic variation via the imagination.13 "The connection between 'language and reality' is made by definitions

of words, and these belong to grammar, so that language remains self-con-tained and autonomous"; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar,trans. Anthony Kenny (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPTess, 1978), 97,par. 55.

546 STANLEY ROSEN

alone to a natural order that is accessible to contemplation. The am-biguity arises from the fact that Wittgenstein excludes the possibilityof theorizing on questions of this sort. He begins from the conven-tional or historical fact of the linguistic community whose membersspeak in more or less the same way." It is as a member of this com-munity that the philosopher or speech therapist has access to stan-dard idioms and rules of linguistic use, by which to eliminate mistakesarising from misuse of those idioms and rules."

For Wittgenstein, as I understand him, nature is itself a theoreti-cal construction, which is to say that he takes for granted the sense ofnature that derives from 17th century philosophy and the new phys-ics. This includes the sense of the expression "natural history," as it isused in the 18th and 19th centuries. By rejecting nature in the senseof phusis, that is to say, of an order external to human linguistic in-vention, Wittgenstein is left with nomos or custom. His analysis of theordinary use of language is thus endless; it has no beginning and noend. Otherwise stated, it has no bottom and no top. There is no the-ory of correct linguistic use in either of the two senses of "theory."We cannot as it were intellectually perceive something about humannature or experience that is regulative of discursive practice, nor canwe construct a unique and comprehensive conceptual framework forthe rank-ordering of this practice. Ordinary language is ordinal onlyin a local or historical sense.

Nevertheless, I do not wish to suggest that Wittgenstein differscompletely from the Socratic teaching that is defended by LeoStrauss. The Platonic dialogues illustrate two of Wittgenstein's owntheses or assumptions, of which the first is that human discourse, andin particular, philosophical discourse, has no beginning and no end.We are always in medias res. Second, therefore, there are no final orcomprehensive discursive constructions, or theories in the sense dep-recated by Wittgenstein. But for Plato, contrary to Wittgenstein, there

14 "What has to be accepted, the given, is-so one could say-forms oflife"; Philosophical Investigations, 226.

15 Consider: "philosophical problems are misunderstandings which mustbe removed by clarification of the rules according to which we are inclinedto use words"; Philosophical Grammar, 68, par. 32. The German "nachdenen wir die Worte gebrauchen wollen" brings out the notion of custom. Inother words, the rules are determined by the linguistic community withinwhich we happen to find ourselves, and not by an extralinguistic natural or-der.


is a top and a bottom to philosophical discourse, and this is repre-

sented by the Ideas on the one hand and the doctrine of eros on the

other. In more prosaic terms, we are united by our desires, and thesein turn are regulated by the natures of the objects of our desire. Whatone could call ordinary or ordinal discourse is thus defined pragmati-cally by the intelligibility of desire.

This way of formulating the classical position may seem anachro-nistic. But there is a conceptual parallel, even a continuity, between

eros and the Ideas on the one hand, and desire and its objects on the

other. There are of course also crucial differences. One such differ-ence, especially important for us, is that the founders of modernity de-

politicize desire and thereby reduce the difference between thumosand epithumia to the homogeneous notion of "the passions of the

soul," as Descartes expresses it. For Socrates and his students (in-cluding Leo Strauss), the question of the proper satisfaction of humandesire is necessarily a political question-for the simple reason thatwe depend upon each other for that satisfaction-but it is also a ques-tion that takes us outside, or rather, above, the city, to natural differ-ences in the nobility and baseness of desires. By rendering this depen-dence physiological, Descartes shifts the emphasis from thecommunity to the isolated ego, that is, from politics to psychology.Nobility and baseness do not quite disappear, but they are redefined

as qenerosiie or autonomous greatness of soul, that is, egotism. The

subsequent shift back to the predominance of society and history, be-gun in the 18th and completed in the 19th century, while in one sense arepoliticizing of desire, retains its physiological foundations; that is, itretains the modem scientific conception of nature, which is incapableof sustaining the natural distinction between the noble and the base.

In short, the shift from the political to the physiological, that is to

say, from the public to the private, initiates the materialist interpreta-

tion of the spirit, soul, or mind. Still more precisely, the soul-body

problem is replaced by the mind-body problem, which makes possible

the gradual redefinition of the mind as the faculty of analytical dis-

course that can be duplicated by machines. The transformation of na-

ture from politics to physiology is the necessary prerequisite for the

rise of political science and sociology, that is, for the quantitative or

descriptive study of external human behavior. Wittgenstein, to repeat,

starts with the modern scientific conception of nature and, if I under-

stand him correctly, attempts to repair its defects through religion

548 STANLEY ROSEN

rather than through philosophical theory. In other words, the ordinal

analysis of language turns out to be rooted in silence rather than in

more language, since the latter can be correctly used only to describeor express facts (including experiences), and so relative values, butnot the absolute values of ethics or religion. 16 Wittgenstein's linguistic

therapy points to the triumph of Jerusalem over Athens. He is as itwere a Socrates without Platonic Ideas.

If the general picture I have presented thus far is accurate, thedifference between Wittgenstein and Strauss in their approach to thesurface is now obvious. Wittgenstein is very close to Nietzsche on the

following crucial point. Nature in itself, that is, as effectively definedby the philosophers of modern science, is in the extreme case a dis-cursive artifact, and in any case its value for human existence is de-

rived from the particular linguistic horizon or life-form of the commu-

nity to which we the evaluators belong. It follows that the surface is alinguistic convention. There is no depth lying beneath the surface;

thus we enter the depth only in the act of immersing ourselves withinthe surface. There is a multiplicity of surfaces, but no common depth.

The attempt to penetrate the surface leads either to the malfunction-ing of language-of which the outstanding example is the construc-tion of metaphysical theories-or to silence. For Strauss, on the con-

trary, the surface is the manner in which the depth renders itselfaccessible to discourse. But this is to say that there is a depth. It is

not, however, of a sort to lend itself to metaphysical theories.

To summarize this portion of my paper, it looks as though Witt-

genstein appeals to the ordinary in order to abolish philosophy,

whereas Strauss makes a similar appeal in order to preserve philoso-

phy. Wittgenstein's enterprise is flawed by the fact that the ordinary

is for him already a theoretical artifact that presupposes a conception

of philosophy that he wishes to repudiate. Wittgenstein inadvertently

plunges us back into the depths, whereas Strauss, whether intention-

ally or not, bars our access to the depths. It is to this feature of

Strauss's work that I now turn.

16 Ludwig Wittgenstein, "A Lecture on Ethics," in Ludwig Wittgenstein:Philosophical Occasions, ed. James Klagge and Alfred Nordmann (Indianap-olis: Hackett, 1993),37-44.


III

Leo Strauss devoted his life to the defense of philosophy in thegrand tradition of Socratic rationalism. According to Strauss, the cen-tral characteristic of this tradition is the claim to knowledge of igno-rance. The possibility of philosophy rests upon the coherence of thisclaim. The question is then whether Strauss provides us with a satis-factory argument, or let us say more modestly a plausible account ofthat coherence. Before we can articulate the problem itself, we mustfirst face the puzzle of Straussian rhetoric.

One can discern a prevailing dualism in the surface appearance ofStrauss's teaching. On the one hand, Strauss's style reminds us, espe-cially in his later publications, of two of his particular favorites, Xeno-phon and AI Farabi. But there is an important difference: the exotericteaching of the two ancient thinkers was in apparent conformity withthe traditional doctrines of their time and place. By seeming to advo-cate a rehabilitation of the ancient tradition, Strauss adopted the pos-ture of a man at odds with the predominant views of his own time andplace. He was fond of saying that one is better positioned to under-stand Xenophon if one prefers the novels of Jane Austen to those ofDostoevski.'? But Strauss presents us with the curious figure of a rev-olutionary Jane Austen. His highly charged critique of the nihilism oflate modernity is more reminiscent of Dostoevski than Jane Austen. Ibelieve that Strauss would have applied to the 20th centuryNietzsche's rhetorical question: "Is not the 19th century, especially inits commencement, simply a strengthened, brutalized 18th century,that is to say, a decadence-century?"18 To answer this question in theaffirmative about our own century is to commit oneself to certain rhe-torical precautions. However, it is a complete misunderstanding ofStrauss's views to associate him with Nietzsche's positive program.PStrauss was a strong and constant spokesman for liberal democracywhose political sympathies lay with Abraham Lincoln and Winston

17Leo Strauss, On Tyranny (New York: The Free Press, 1991),185.18Friedrich Nietzsche, Gotzen-Dtimmerunq, in Kritische Studien-Aus-

gabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980),6:152.

19As has been done, in anger by Shadia Drury in The Political Ideas ofLeo Strauss (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), and in praise by LawrenceLampert in Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1996).

550 STANLEY ROSEN

Churchill, not with Attila the Hun, for whom Nietzsche seems at timesto be speaking.

In brief, Strauss saw his task as that of contributing to the modifi-cation of contemporary liberalism by the conservative or, better put,moderate tendencies of the classical political thinkers on the onehand and the liberal rationalists of the 17th and 18th centuries on theother. Strauss could be called a reactionary only by the most extremepartisans of the revolutionary left, but he shared an important traitwith the intelligent left-wing radicals: scorn for the version of liberal-ism that has been emptied of content by historical relativism.

This was Strauss's political program. As I believe, and as hewould have agreed, the highest political goal of the philosopher is thepreservation of philosophy.P Suffice it to say that for Strauss, thiswas in the best interests of the nonphilosopher as well. For our pur-poses, the main point is that this philosophical intention complicatedStrauss's rhetorical task. For example, it sometimes obscures hisown political liberalism. Let me immediately dissipate if not removethat obscurity. In his evaluation of Hermann Cohen's interpretationof Spinoza's treatment of Judaism, Strauss writes:

One may say that in his critique of Spinoza Cohen commits the typicalmistake of the conservative, which consists in concealing the fact thatthe continuous and changing tradition which he cherishes so greatlywould never have come into being through conservatism, or withoutdiscontinuities, revolutions, and sacrileges committed at the beginningof the cherished tradition and at least silently repeated in its course."

Strauss frequently stated the view that thought should be daring,even mad, whereas action should be moderate.F Rhetoric, as the pub-lic presentation of thought, is an action, and Strauss, even when hewas daring, never exercised the exaggerated idiom of Nietzsche. Nev-ertheless, he had his own mode of daring, as is mandatory for everyheterodox teacher. There are Straussian texts for the few and thereare other texts for the many. Strauss's rediscovery and extensive pre-sentation of esotericism falls into both categories.

20 See Leo Strauss, "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari," in Persecutionand the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IlL:The Free Press, 1958),8 and 18.

21 This passage appears in the preface to the English edition of Strauss'sbook, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965),27.

22 See the title essay in Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?(Glencoe, II.:The Free Press, 1959),32.


I say this in part because it is easy to see that Strauss's revelationswere in proportion to the urgency with which the author whom he in-terpreted requested discretion. As Strauss pointed out, modern eso-tericism is easier to penetrate than its ancient and medieval predeces-sors. Strauss is accordingly quite explicit in the case of thinkers likeMachiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Locke, but extremely obscurewhen he discusses the ancient and especially the medieval philoso-phers or sages. As Strauss himself often pointed out,23how much onecan say in public about esoteric doctrines is in part a function of theparticular historical circumstances. He also held that, in a time whenthe older teaching is in danger of being lost entirely, it is permissibleto be slightly more daring or frank than the authors themselves. Butnot too daring! Thus, in the very act of what seems to be an expositionof Maimonides's hidden teaching, Strauss says that the position ofMaimonides's interpreter (namely, Strauss) is "to some extent identi-cal with that of Maimonides himself." He clarifies this as follows:"Since the Guide contains an esoteric interpretation of an esotericteaching, an adequate interpretation of the Guide would thus have totake the form of an esoteric interpretation of an esoteric interpreta-tion of an esoteric teaching." Although Strauss adds that "this sugges-tion may sound paradoxical and even ridiculous" to US,24it is, I sug-gest, the procedure that he himself follows when writing aboutMaimonides, and not only about Maimonides.

In sum, as Strauss observes with respect to the extreme cautionof Jehudah Halevi, "the line of demarcation between timidity and re-sponsibility is drawn differently in different ages."25There is a radicaldifference between our age and that of Xenophon, Farabi, or Halevi,and even of Jane Austen. In a fragment from the Nachlass of 1885-86,

Nietzsche explains that "it is today necessary to speak temporarily in acoarse [grab] manner and to act coarsely. What is fine and concealedis no longer understood, not even by those who are related to us. Thatof which one does not speak loudly and cry out, is not there. "26 Tothis, one should add that "coarseness" is a relative term; coarse

23 Persecution and the Art of Writing, 32 and following.24 But not to Joseph Ibn Kaspi; Ibid., 56.25 "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari," 110.26 Freidrich Nietzsche, Werke, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari, in Kritische

Studienausgabe (Berlin: Walter DeGruyter, 1980), 12:41.

552 STANLEY ROSEN

Straussian rhetoric is much closer to that of Winston Churchill than tothe rhetoric of Nietzsche.

Strauss often asserts that a careful reader is also a carefulwriter." The careful reader should pay close attention to the possiblerelation between frankness and concealment. Nietzsche is once again

helpful here. In the Nachlass to 1882, he says: "to speak much of one-

self is also a way of hiding oneself."28 I would modify this statementas follows. To make many heterodox pronouncements is a way ofspeaking of oneself, even if the pronouncements are partially con-cealed by rhetorical disavowals of one's own gifts and are oftencouched in hypothetical statements or ambiguous parentheticalclauses.

In sum, Strauss combines, or alternates between, classical esoter-icism and modem daring. He shifts back and forth from the subtleflirtation of Jane Austen to the relative frankness of Nietzsche, andthen at last into the darkness that might remind us of the late Henry

James. Strauss's last works on Xenophon and Plato's Laws make me

at least think of James's The Sacred Fount. This is in part why his de-

fense of modem liberal democracy is often overlooked.

In my view, however, the main reason for Strauss's obscurity isthe ambiguity of his portrait of philosophy, and it is to this that I now

tum. To begin with, it is worth noting that Strauss, as far as I am

aware, never referred to himself as a philosopher. He insisted that

only a very few human beings in the recorded history of the racecould be regarded as genuine philosophers. Strauss gave no exact

tally, as did his friend Jacob Klein, according to whom the number

was somewhere between twelve and fifteen.P I believe that Strauss

was a bit more generous; he occasionally observed that there were

normally only one or two philosophers in each generation. As to him-self, he told some of his students in private that he regarded his own

accomplishments to be on a level with those of Lessing, who was in-

strumental in Strauss's discovery of the art of esotericism.s?

27 Leo Strauss, "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise,"in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 144. Compare "On a Forgotten Kindof Writing," in What is Political Philosophy? 230.

28 Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, 10:95.29 Klein made this statement in my presence in a public lecture given

many years ago at Pennsylvania State University. He was reading a text thathad been published in The Saint John's Review, a publication of the smallliberal arts college at which he taught, and to which I do not have access.


The serious question here is how the nonphilosopher is able to

penetrate the exoteric surface of the genuine philosopher's esotericdepths. In this crucial case, the maxim that the depths are accessible

in the surface seems to be implausible. It is Strauss himself whopoints out this implausibility. The following passage about Heideggermust be quoted in its entirety:

The same effect which Heidegger produced in the late twenties andearly thirties in Germany, he produced very soon in continental Europeas a whole. There is no longer in existence a philosophic position, apartfrom neo-Thomism and Marxism crude or refined. All rational liberalphilosophic positions have lost their significance and power. One maydeplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophi-cal positions which have been shown to be inadequate. I am afraid thatwe shall have to make a very great effort in order to fmd a solid basis forrational liberalism. Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectualplight. But here is the great trouble: the only great thinker in our time isHeidegger.

The only question of importance, of course, is the question whetherHeidegger's teaching is true or not. But the very question is deceptivebecause it is silent about the question of competence-of who is compe-tent to judge. Perhaps only great thinkers are really competent to judgethe thought of great thinkers. Heidegger made a distinction betweenphilosophers and those for whom philosophy is identical with the his-tory of philosophy. He made a distinction, in other words, between thethinker and the scholar. I know that I am only a scholar"

If we were to take Strauss's modesty literally, it would seem to

follow not only that philosophy disappeared from the face of the

globe, at least temporarily, with the death of Heidegger, but also that

neither Strauss nor we could understand Heidegger's writings. What

precisely did the sage of the Schwartzwald mean when he said, "Only

once or twice in my thirty to thirty-five years of teaching have I ever

spoken about what really matters to me"?32 Or, to ask essentially the

same question, how did Strauss, as he claimed, find an antidote to the

doctrines of Heidegger in the exoteric writings of Plato, who tells us

30 For a statement on Lessing, see, for example, Leo Strauss, "ExotericTeaching," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 1989), 64.

31 Leo Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," in TheRebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 29.

32 Martin Heidegger, "Zurcher Seminar," in Seminare, Gesamtausgabe(Frankfurt-am-Maim: Klosterman, 1986), 426.

554 STANLEY ROSEN

that he never, let alone once or twice, wrote down his deepestthoughts'S"

The first ambiguity in Strauss's account of philosophy is then thedoctrine of esotericism, which, together with the thesis of the paucityof genuine philosophers, seems to make philosophy inaccessible atthe outset to more than one or two persons in each generation. Onthis basis, knowledge of ignorance is for the rest of us, includingStrauss, too ignorant to count as knowledge. We must instead returnto the maxim that the depths are contained in the surface. This is ofcourse no proof that the surface will yield a consistent meaning.

I begin with a quotation from Strauss's most famous book, Natu-ral Right and History:

The historicist contention can be reduced to the assertion that naturalright is impossible because philosophy in the full sense of the term isimpossible. Philosophy is possible only if there is an absolute horizonor natural horizon in contradistinction to the historically changing hori-zons or the caves. In other words, philosophy is possible only if man,while incapable of acquiring wisdom or full understanding of the whole,is capable of knowing what he does not know, that is to say, of graspingthe fundamental problems and therewith the fundamental alternatives,which are, in principle, coeval with human thought."

This is one of several passages in which Strauss states the neces-sary hypothesis for the refutation of Heidegger. The passage is pecu-liar because it can be read in two different ways. The first way is totake Strauss to be saying that genuine philosophy is accessible to usthrough a return to the pretheoretical surface of political life, which isintelligible, if not directly to everyone, certainly to the endoksoi orpersons of sound judgment, and through their mediation, to a wideraudience. On the second reading, however, the species term "man"must be understood as naming a class with one prominent memberand one only: Socrates. For the most superficial inspection of the his-tory of philosophy is enough to dispel the notion that philosophers, orthose whom even Strauss regarded as philosophers, restricted them-selves to posing the fundamental alternatives.

The first question to be addressed to Strauss is then: What is ac-cessible in pretheoreticallife, and to whom is it accessible? What are

33 Plato, Epistulae, 2.314b7ff,7.341b5ff;in vol. 5 of Platonis Opera, ed.John Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937).

34 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press, 1950),35.


we to make of the maxim that the depth is contained in the surface?For Wittgenstein, the meaning is in effect that philosophy is replacedby the wisdom appropriate to surfaces. This is not always acceptableto his readers, but it is quite clear, despite Wittgenstein's ostensibleobscurity. For Strauss, the meaning seems to be that it is knowledge

of ignorance that is accessible, or knowledge of the fundamental alter-natives, but not of the foundation or fundament. But is this not the

practical equivalent of saying that there is no depth?

Without leaving this point entirely, I tum now to the developmentof a second question for Leo Strauss concerning the possibility of phi-

losophy. One of the main themes of Strauss's work, from the begin-ning to the end, is the quarrel between Jerusalem and Athens. It is ofextreme interest that a number of careful students of Strauss's work

have arrived at the conclusion that he was himself a believing Jew. Icall your attention to Strauss's own ambiguous remarks on this point.

The ambiguity is a consequence of two sets of statements, clear inthemselves, but which have the net effect of blurring if not quite con-tradicting each other. On the one hand, Strauss notes frequently that

our western tradition consists of two antagonistic and ultimately in-compatible answers to the question of what is the one thing needful:faith or philosophy." The same point is made with respect to the case

of Judaism in particular: "Jews of the philosophic competence of Ha-levi and Maimonides took it for granted that being a Jew and being a

philosopher are mutually exclusive.Y" As this expression makesclear, one may be a Jew and possess philosophical competence, butthis is not the same as to be a philosopher. What is the nature of the

difference? The philosopher denies miracles, or rejects the creation

ex nihilo, and so on. The general distinction is that the philosopher

rejects the authority of revelation and relies on unassisted human rea-

son for the pursuit of truth and happiness."On the other hand, Strauss says with equal regularity that philoso-

phy is not in a position to refute the possibility of revelation. A repre-

sentative passage is to be found in Natural Right and History. Ac-

cording to Strauss,

35 Leo Strauss, "Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History," in TheRebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 72.

36 See the introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing, 19.37 See for example Natural Right and History, 74, for the contrast be-

tween "a life of obedient love versus a life of free insight."

556 STANLEY ROSEN

Philosophy has to grant that revelation is possible. But to grant thatrevelation is possible means to grant that philosophy is perhaps not theone thing needful, that philosophy is perhaps something infinitely unim-portant. To grant that revelation is possible means to grant that thephilosophic life is not necessarily, not evidently, the right life. Philoso-phy, the life devoted to the quest for evident knowledge available toman as man, would itself rest on an unevident, arbitrary, or blind deci-sion. This would merely confirm the thesis of faith, that there is no pos-sibility of consistency, of a consistent and thoroughly sincere life, with-out belief in revelation. The mere fact that philosophy and revelationcannot refute each other would constitute the refutation of philosophyby revelation. 38

This is an extremely important passage. I will mention brieflythat I find the reasoning far from persuasive. There are many things

that reason cannot prove; this in itself does not make them more plau-

sible than a reliance upon reason, or even, perhaps, unreasonable. It

is part of being reasonable to know what cannot be proved. More

generally, the following dilemma seems to arise. Either reason can re-

fute revelation, or it cannot. If it can, this will in no way impress thepartisan of revelation. But if it cannot, this will not in itself transform

the man of reason into a man of faith or partisan of revelation. This,

however, by the way.

The main point for us is as follows. I know of no Straussian text,

published or unpublished, in which Strauss shows, or even claims,

that philosophy can refute revelation. The written evidence is all to

the effect that no such refutation is possible. This being so, it must

follow on Straussian grounds that philosophy has been refuted, and

indeed, that it was impossible from the outset. At the same time, it is

at least one of the two or three main themes in Strauss's work that

philosophy, understood as knowledge of ignorance, is exemplified in

Socrates, who therefore represents the possibility of philosophy for

us. Nor could anyone seriously deny that Strauss regularly praises

philosophy as the highest form of human existence, or, to make a

more modest claim, that philosophy is necessary in order for natural

right to be possible, and with it, the basis for a just and rational politi-

cal life.This point has to be stressed. Regardless of the cogency of the

argument, Strauss never deviates in his writings from the youthful as-sertion about religion in Philosophy and Law that "there can be no

38 Natural Right and History, 75.


question of a refutation of the 'externally' understood basic tenets ofthe tradition. For all of these tenets rest on the irrefutable premisethat God is omnipotent and His will unfathomable.v" In a very late es-say, Strauss writes that "the genuine refutation of orthodoxy" dependsupon the systematic proof of the intelligibility of the world and lifewithout the assumption of a mysterious God." This in turn requiresthe success of the Cartesian project to replace the "merely givenworld ... by the world created by man theoretically and practically. "40

Please note carefully that in these texts, either the quarrel be-tween philosophy and religion has been resolved in favor of religion,or else philosophy is preserved by the solitary labors of Socrates in ad-vancing and sustaining the thesis of knowledge of ignorance. As weare about to see, the argument becomes more complicated, and in twoways. The portrait of Socratic wisdom shifts from one set of texts toanother, and the quarrel between Athens and Jerusalem is replaced bywhat we can call the quarrel between Paris and Jerusalem, that is, be-tween Descartes and his progeny on the one hand and Moses and hisprogeny on the other. As to Socrates, evidence can be offered that it isnot quite clear in which camp he belongs.

I mean by this last remark that Strauss frequently redefines theSocratic or favored version of the Athenian position in such a way asto render tenuous if not invisible the difference between it and revela-tion. Consider the following text from the essay "What is Political Phi-losophy?" Strauss asserts that the question of the nature of man pointsto the problem of nature in general, and so to cosmology, and thensays:

Whatever the significance of modem science may be, it cannot affectour understanding of what is human in man. To understand man in thelight of the whole means for modem natural science to understand manin the light of the sub-human. But in that light man as man is wholly un-intelligible. Classical political philosophy viewed man in a differentlight. It was originated by Socrates. And Socrates was so far from beingcommitted to a specific cosmology that his knowledge was knowledgeof ignorance. Knowledge of ignorance is not ignorance. It is knowledgeof the elusive character of the truth, of the whole. Socrates, then,viewed man in the light of the mysterious character of the whole."

39 Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, trans. and with and introduction byEve Adler (Albany, SUNYPress, 195), 29.

40 From the preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion, 29.41 What is Political Philosophy? 38 and following.

558 STANLEY ROSEN

Classical philosophy now defends itself against the modems byadapting elements of the language of revelation. Whereas revelationsays that the intelligibility of the world and human life depend uponbelief in a mysterious God, the opposite or philosophical thesis de-pends upon "the light of the mysterious character of the whole." Thatthese are not quite the same as one another is strongly suggested by apassage from the closing paragraph of Strauss's famous reply to Alex-andre Kojeve. Strauss observes that the idea of philosophy itself re-quires legitimation. He then contrasts his own hypothesis about phi-losophy with that held by Kojeve: "I assume, then, that there is aneternal and immutable order within which history takes place, andwhich remains entirely unaffected by history."42 A mystery is re-placed by a hypothesis or assumption. But the shift is not strongenough to refute Kojeve, let alone Heidegger. The superiority of rivalhypotheses can be demonstrated only by deriving their consequences,and in philosophy this means something more than stating the funda-mental alternatives. One could therefore defend modernity, or the re-placement of knowledge of ignorance by knowledge of knowledge, bysaying that we must wait for the telos or end of history, not return tothe pretheoretical beginnings.

As Strauss himself reminds us with respect to Maimonides's dis-cussion of Aristotle's physics, one can hardly reconcile the creationex nihilo with the belief in an eternal and immutable order. Still, thisis only an assumption. In short, knowledge of ignorance is at once thedistinguishing characteristic of the genuinely philosophical life, acharacteristic that separates Socrates from the believer, and it is de-fined in terms of hypotheses and mysteries that attenuate, if they donot dissolve altogether, the difference between philosophy and revela-tion. Differently stated, the life of the knowledge of ignorance is sup-ported and guided by the pretheoretical or commonsensical accessi-bility of nature, whereas the life of faith in revelation is a directrejection of common sense and a tacit denial of the notion of regula-tive nature, whether pre- or post-theoretical. Strauss both distin-guishes and blends together these two distinct lives. The great riddleof his work is whether he does so intentionally or unintentionally.The riddle is what to make of statements to the effect that "the wholeas primarily known is an object of common sense,"43or that the dis-

42 "Restatement," in On Tyranny, 212.


covery of human nature is as it were pre cosmological and preontolog-ical,44as opposed to talk about hypotheses and assumptions, termswhich we are about to supplement with a strange reference to So-cratic piety.

In his most extensive published analysis of Aristotle's Politics,Strauss distinguishes between Socrates and Plato on the one hand andAristotle on the other. For the former, "while the roots of the wholeare hidden, the whole manifestly consists of heterogeneous parts."Nothing is said here about knowledge of these parts. Instead, Straussspeaks of the Socratic turn to common sense and "the highest opin-ions," which are the pronouncements of the law, in accord with which"a pious man will ... not investigate the divine things but only the hu-man things. It is the greatest proof of Socrates' piety that he limitedhimself to the study of the human things. His wisdom is knowledge ofignorance because it is pious and it is pious because it is knowledge ofignorance."45 This passage thus blurs the distinction between thephilosophical and the religious life on the decisive point.

As to Aristotle, in Natural Right and History Strauss makes thevalidity of Aristotle's political philosophy contingent upon a solutionto the problem posed by modern science for a teleological physics. InThe City and Man, Strauss says that "Aristotle's cosmology, as distin-guished from Plato's, is unqualifiedly separable from the quest for thebest political order."46 In unpublished lectures on the NicomacheanEthics from the 1960's, Strauss says that Aristotle's apparently circu-lar reliance upon the existence of virtuous persons to train others ingenuine virtue in fact depends upon the eternity of the cosmos, and soof human cities and hence of political philosophers. But this to oneside, we know that piety is not a virtue for Aristotle and his corpusdoes not sustain the thesis that he was an advocate of knowledge ofignorance. Strauss evidently leans upon Aristotle's authority in oneset of texts and silently rejects him as un-Socratic in others. But even

43 See "Social Science and Humanism," in The Rebirth of Classical Polit-ical Rationalism, 4, and the introduction to The City and Man (Chicago:Rand McNally, 1964), 12.

44 For clear general statements of this component of Strauss's argument,see the essay "On Classical Political Philosophy," in The Rebirth of ClassicalPolitical Rationalism, 49-62 (previously printed in What is Political Philos-ophy?).

45 "On Aristotle's Politics," in The City and Man, 19-20.46 Compare Natural Right and History, 7-8, and The City and Man, 21.

560 STANLEY ROSEN

more confusingly, he presents us with contradictory statements aboutthe crucial question of the relation between physics and politics in Ar-istotle's teaching.

Strauss pays very little attention to physics, or more broadly, to

the inner nature of modem science, not because he denies its extraor-

dinary power, but because the problem of cosmology is for him rele-

vant only as it illuminates the nature of human life. Modem science

becomes defective to the degree that it obscures the whole, or let us

say the place of man as man within the whole, and so as a heteroge-

neous element of nature that cannot be reduced to the super- or sub-

human. Strauss does spend considerable time in tracing the influence

of modem science on the history of philosophy. For our purposes we

can summarize that influence as one of the reduction of the human to

the subhuman. By rejecting the commonsense beginning of everyday

political life, scientific philosophy replaced the concrete with abstrac-

tions, and thereby arrived at an abstract version of the concrete.i" In

short, philosophy is for Strauss primarily political, not scientific, al-

though science of course plays an essential role within the economy

of political life. The whole is the whole of common sense, not of New-

ton, Einstein, or quantum mechanics. It is the whole of noetic hetero-

geneity.

The question thus reduces to, or let us say intensifies into, thequestion of Strauss's understanding of Socratic philosophy. This

brings us to the doctrine of the Ideas. To employ the phrase I intro-

duced a moment ago, Strauss endorses the Socratic beginning from

"noetic heterogeneity," that is, the recognition that the whole is articu-

lated into distinct natural kinds. I cite the following pivotal statement:

Only if there is essential heterogeneity can there be an essential differ-ence between political things and things which are not political. Thediscovery of noetic heterogeneity permits one to let things be what theyare and takes away the compulsion to reduce essential differences tosomething common. The discovery of noetic heterogeneity means thevindication of what one could call common sense. Socrates called it areturn from madness to sanity or sobriety, or, to use the Greek term,sophrosyne, which I would translate as moderation. Socrates discov-ered the paradoxical fact that, in a way, the most important truth is themost obvious truth, or the truth of the surface."

47 See the title essay in What is Political Philosophy? 28 and 75, inwhich Strauss makes his point with reference to Hegel's statement on the dif-ference between ancient and modern philosophy.


In this very interesting passage, Strauss states explicitly the easytransition from the commonsensical approach to human things to therecognition and investigation of natural kinds. He is obviously imply-ing that this Socratic discovery is the basis for the subsequent elabora-tion of the doctrine or hypothesis of the so-called Platonic Ideas. Butthere are two serious difficulties here. The first is that the principle ofnoetic heterogeneity seems to remove the difference between Platoand Aristotle, or in other words, to disconnect politics from physicsfor Plato as well (or at least for the Platonic Socrates). Yet, as wehave just seen, Strauss distinguishes between Plato and Aristotle onthis point, and even refers to the famous passage in the Phaedrus inwhich Socrates says that, in order to know the nature of the soul, onemust understand divine nature."

The second difficulty is perhaps even more important. Whereasthe discovery of noetic heterogeneity is a mark of sanity, commonsense, or moderation, the doctrine of Ideas is a product of philosophi-cal madness or extreme daring. As Strauss himself puts it whenspeaking of the Republic, "The doctrine which Socrates expounds tohis interlocutors is very hard to understand; to begin with, it is utterlyincredible, not to say that it appears to be fantastic .... No one hasever succeeded in giving a satisfactory or clear account of this doc-trine of ideas. It is possible however to define rather precisely thecentral difficulty." In the continuation, the difficulty seems to residein two points, (1) the separation of the Idea from its particulars, and(2) the attribution of Ideas not only to mathematical forms and moralproperties but to things of all kinds, including artifacts like beds/"

Please note that we have moved from Socratic piety to Socraticcommon sense and moderation to a daring and even fantastic philo-sophical hypothesis. Strauss seems to soften the fantastic quality ofthe hypothesis in other texts. For example, in a previously cited pas-sage, Strauss is discussing the Socratic knowledge of ignorance and,contrary to his view in other texts, its detachment from any specificcosmology.

48 "The Problem of Socrates," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Ra-tionalism, 142.

49 See for example Natural Right and History, 122.50 "On Plato's Republic," in The City and Man, 119-21. In the same pas-

sage, Strauss says that the interlocutors would have been helped in their at-tempt to understand Socrates by their experience with the Greek gods.

562 STANLEY ROSEN

Knowledge of ignorance is not ignorance. It is knowledge of the elusivecharacter of the truth, of the whole. Socrates, then, viewed man in thelight of the mysterious character of the whole. He held therefore thatwe are more familiar with the situation of man as man than with the ul-timate causes of that situation. We may also say he viewed man in thelight of the unchangeable ideas, i.e. of the fundamental and permanentproblems. For to articulate the situation of man means to articulateman's openness to the whole."

I call your attention once more to the apparent fluctuation inStrauss's understanding of the connection between nature, and sophysics, on the one hand, and politics on the other. If noetic heteroge-neity emerges from common sense but leads to the Ideas, does it by-pass nature? This is obviously impossible. If politics is to be indepen-dent of physics, there must be two senses of "nature," one human andthe other cosmic. But this would lead us away from Socrates and to-ward modern philosophy.

Otherwise stated, Aristotle's political philosophy is on this hy-pothesis no longer embarrassed by his erroneous cosmological phys-ics. The quarrel between the ancients and the moderns can be re-opened on the political front, regardless of the problems that exist atthe deeper and concealed theoretical level. But this quarrel is soontransformed within modernity itself, not into the quarrel between Ath-ens, or Paris, and Jerusalem, but between two different Cartesian de-scendants: let us say between England and Germany. This is the quar-rel between two conceptions of politics, one as common sense andthe other as metaphysics.

Even more pressing for the understanding of Strauss, however, isthe question how Socrates is aware of the fundamental and perma-nent problems, given his ignorance of nature, or let us say given his re-liance upon common sense. There seems to be here a distinction be-tween the sober and commonsensical recognition of the Ideas ornoetic heterogeneity, and the elusive and mysterious notion of thewhole. Strauss regularly states that philosophy is awareness of thefundamental problems. But he never tells us how we can discover orunderstand the foundation. Let me cite one more important text,taken from his extremely interesting reply to Kojeve:

Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems,i.e. of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. It is impossible to

51 From the title essay in What is Political Philosophy? 38-9.


think about these problems without becoming inclined toward a solu-tion, toward one or the other of the very few typical solutions. Yet aslong as there is no wisdom but only quest for wisdom, the evidence of allsolutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems.Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment atwhich the "subjective certainty" of a solution becomes stronger than hisawareness of the problematic character of that solution. At that mo-ment the sectarian is born. The danger of succumbing to the attractionof solutions is essential to philosophy which, without incurring this dan-ger, would degenerate into playing with the problems. But the philoso-pher does not necessarily succumb to this danger, as is shown by So-crates, who never belonged to a sect and never founded one.52

Once more we catch a glimpse of a Socrates who is neither a sys-tem-builder or Cartesian nor an inadequate alternative to revelation.My point is not that Strauss is wrong, but that he owes us an accountof how the Socratic path between Scylla and Charybdis can be main-tained without shipwreck. And we need to know whether Socrates isor is not a genuine alternative to Moses and Abraham.

To summarize this line of reflections, academic philosophy,whether empiricist, phenomenological, or scientific, is marked bywhat Strauss called "the charm of competence"53 or the constructionof ingenious technical artifacts called "theories." I think that Strauss,like Wittgenstein, is right to scorn the excessively technical concep-tion of philosophy, and to deny that artifactual originality or the abilityto construct philosophical systems is by itself a sign of philosophicaldepth or genuine originality.54 But the difficulty remains. If the Ideasare problems, then the foundation is problematic. Does it make senseto speak of problematic problems? Is this another instance of an eso-teric interpretation of an esoteric interpretation of an esoteric teach-ing?

Thus far in my lecture, I have documented every point with cita-tions from the Straussian corpus. In my conclusion, I put the texts toone side and indulge in speculation; whether mad or sober it is not forme to say. Our study of Strauss's texts has terminated in an impasseor aporia. The quarrel between Athens and Jerusalem is formulated interms of an equivocation on the nature of philosophy as fluctuating

52 On Tyranny, 196. Compare "Progress or Return?" in The Rebirth ofClassical Political Rationalism, 240.

53 What is Political Philosophy? 40.54 "On a Forgotten Kind of Writing," in What is Political Philosophy?

230.

564 STANLEY ROSEN

between Socrates and Descartes. The Socratic conception of philoso-

phy is weakened to the point that it accepts at least part of the funda-

mental premise of Jerusalem. Philosophy remains within the camp of

poetry; the quarrel between the two, if it occurs at all, is internecine

or political rather than cosmic or philosophical. There is good reason

to infer from Strauss's texts that the truly secret teaching is the impos-

sibility of philosophy, an impossibility that must be concealed from

the human race for its own salvation. That is to say, philosophy, un-

derstood as the quest for universal knowledge, for the replacement of

opinions by knowledge, for knowledge of the whole, is impossible.

We are left with knowledge of ignorance. No wonder that philosophy,

as Strauss conceives it, is incapable of refuting revelation. One could

almost be persuaded to entertain the hypothesis that the main differ-

ence between Strauss and Wittgenstein is exoteric. That is, Strauss

believes that philosophy is a noble lie, whereas Wittgenstein regards it

as neither noble nor base but harmful. On this reading, both thinkers

were psychiatrists whose therapies, sometimes similar and more of-

ten different, were directed to two different conceptions of spiritual

health.

I leave this as a conjecture. In so doing I do not mean to implythat I know it to be true but am unwilling to affirm it. On the contrary,

the conjecture may well be literally false while symbolically illuminat-

ing. In speaking about Strauss, we should understand fully the ex-

traordinary benefits that are to be derived from a fruitful portrait of

the ambiguous nature of philosophy. On the other hand, we do no

honor to Strauss by refusing to attempt to clarify this ambiguity, and

that is to say, we must accept the full significance of his maxim that

the depths are contained in the surface, and only in the surface. This

is precisely why the surface is itself ambiguous. Its value lies not in it-

self but in its ambiguous content."

Boston University

55 Different versions of this paper were delivered at three conferencesdevoted to the thought of Leo Strauss, held at The University of Paris (1998),Middlebury College (1999), and The New School (the 1999 Hannah Arendt!Reiner Schunnann Colloquium). I am grateful to all those who commentedon those papers, and more generally, to the occasions themselves, each ofwhich led to modifications in my text.

stanley rosen, leo strauss and the possibility of philosophy, (2000)

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