Brague, Remi - Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca - Leo Strauss s Muslim Understanding of Greek Philosophy

Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss's "Muslim" Understanding of Greek PhilosophyAuthor(s): Rémi BragueSource: Poetics Today, Vol. 19, No. 2, Hellenism and Hebraism Reconsidered: The Poetics ofCultural Influence and Exchange II (Summer, 1998), pp. 235-259Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773441Accessed: 27/09/2010 14:24

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Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss's "Muslim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy

Remi Brague Philosophy, Paris 1

Abstract The contrast "Athens vs. Jerusalem" played a major part in the late work of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). His scholarly career, from the outset, can be described as a motion from Jerusalem (Spinoza, Maimonides) to Athens (Plato, Xenophon). Nevertheless, a third city, Mecca, and what it stands for, unspokenly synthesizes the first two. For instance, Strauss's interpretation of Plato is grounded on Farabi's view of philosophical style. His rediscovery of esotericism -that is, of the possibility of a silent oral teaching-depends on an Islamic conception of Revelation, which

opposes the Christian one: Athens and Jerusalem meet in Mecca, but they are at

loggerheads in Rome.

The Athens and Jerusalem Theme

The second-century church father Tertullian may have been the first to de-

clare, What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?, but it was not until the Rus- sian philosopher Leo Shestov used the two city names as the title of a book

(1951, posthumous) that they became a kind of catchword for the opposi-

Some words on the labyrinthine history of the present text: A first version was prepared in English and sent to a symposium that, for reasons of health, I could not attend. Its proceedings were due to be published but finally were not. My article was later translated into French (Brague 1989a). The present version takes advantage of remarks by the late David R. Lachterman (Lachterman 1991: 238-45).

Poetics Today 19:2 (Summer 1998) Copyright ? 1998 by the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics.

236 Poetics Today 19:2

tion between Hellenism and Hebraism. Among the people who took up Shestov's yoked pair, Leo Strauss must probably be given pride of place.

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) began his career in Germany as a student of

Jewish and Muslim philosophy. In the 1930s, he fled to France, Britain, and

finally settled in the United States, where he taught first in New York, then in Chicago. He is famous for his attempt at reviving the idea of Natural

Right, to which he devoted one of his most well-known books, as well as for his rediscovery of the classical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, which he contended to be still relevant for our time and age, if we read them as

they wanted to be read. Strauss put the theme of "Athens and Jerusalem" at the very core of his later thought, from the late 1940s, hence, before he could have read Shestov's book.

This theme is voiced at a relatively late date in Strauss's progress. But the thing is present from the outset in his writings, if we take the phrase in its broadest meaning-that is, the relationship between both cities that stand for two "cultures," two "worldviews," and so on, whose conflict is

supposed to be the backbone of European history.' As for the formula, the earliest occurrence I know of is a letter to Karl Lowith, dated from

August 15, 1946 (Strauss 1983a: 108, 1ll). It only announces a lecture by the same title, to be held in November 1946. In 1951, Strauss wrote: "Classi- cal authors bore witness to the fact that truly human life, life of science, is the life that is devoted to knowledge and looking for it. From the vantage- point of the Bible, the hen anagkaion [the only necessary thing] is totally different. One reaches no plausible aim by covering up this contrast, by denegating the tertium non datur. Every synthesis is in fact a choice either for Jerusalem or for Athens" (Voegelin et al. 1993: 30).

The theme was first made public in 1952: "The issue of traditional Juda- ism versus philosophy is identical with the issue Jerusalem versus Athens"

(Strauss 1952: 20). On the content of this contrast, Strauss gives us brief hints only. The same complex of ideas received a full treatment in a series of lectures given in Chicago in 1952 and partially published two years later, in a Hebrew translation (Strauss 1979). But there the names of Athens and

Jerusalem are missing. They make their first, very stealthy appearance in

1954, on the occasion of a paper given in Jerusalem (!).2 There the faithful

city stands for prophecy, and Athens for political philosophy. Finally, some

years before 1964, Strauss began a lecture on Thucydides with a statement on Western tradition that may constitute the first full-fledged orchestration of the theme:

1. See the quotation by Goethe in Strauss 1952: 5, probably alluded to in Strauss 1935: 28. 2. Strauss 1959: 9-1o, with a quotation without references to Isaiah 1: 26.

Brague * Leo Strauss's "Muslim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy 237

[Western] tradition has two roots. It consists of two heterogeneous elements, of two elements which are ultimately incompatible with each other-the Hebrew element and the Greek element. We speak, and we speak rightly, of the an-

tagonism between Jerusalem and Athens, between faith and philosophy. Both

philosophy and the Bible assert that there is ultimately one thing, and one thing only, needful for man. But the one thing needful proclaimed by the Bible is the very opposite of the one thing needful proclaimed by Greek philosophy. According to the Bible, the one thing needful is obedient love; according to philosophy, the one thing needful is free inquiry. The whole history of the West can be viewed as an ever repeated attempt to achieve a compromise or a synthesis between the two antagonistic principles. But all these attempts have failed, and

necessarily so. ... The Western tradition does not allow of a synthesis of its two

elements, but only of their tension: this is the secret of the vitality of the West.

(Strauss 1989: 72-73)

Unfortunately, though, some lines afterwards, we read an important qualification, not to say a recantation: Speaking of the Western tradition as Strauss did is "impossible ... in the last analysis," and acceptable, nay nec-

essary, only "as long as we speak politically, i.e., crudely."3 By this token, we cannot ascertain to what extent Strauss meant his own statements seri-

ously. The theme finally becomes central in 1967, on the occasion of the

publication of the proceedings of a conference given in the same year under this very title (Strauss 1983b).4 Again, we are at a loss how to understand a text that does not claim to be more than "preliminary reflections" and whose content is highly cryptic. It has already puzzled several scholars,5 so a frank avowal of perplexity might be the least dishonorable evasion.

Between Athens and Jerusalem: To and Fro

The main discovery that Strauss made, or claimed to have made, is a for-

gotten way of reading.6 Unfortunately for our present purpose, he rediscov- ered an art of writing, too: Since "people write as they read" (Strauss 1952: 144), he wrote in the same way as the authors he studied are supposed to have done, and he concealed what he believed to have found. Hence such sentences as: "Let us then keep them (sc. Machiavelli's blasphemies) under

3. Strauss 1989: 72-73. On the date, see ibid.: xxxi-xxxii. 4. This text may be the same as the one referred to in Strauss 1983a. On the "classical struggle in the Middle Ages," see ibid.: 165. 5. See Momigliano 1987: 197 n. 22, 198. A useful introduction appears in Sales i Coderch and Montserrat i Molas 1991. 6. On Strauss's hermeneutics, see Brague 1991, which the present essay presupposes and completes, and Rosen 1987: 107-38. On Strauss's thought in general, the best overview I know of is Marshall 1985 (which has exceptionally rich footnotes).


the veil under which he has hidden them" (Strauss 1959: 41). Therefore, in-

terpreting Strauss is an almost desperate task. One can never tell whether one is probing the depths of his thought or merely blundering about and

sliding on its glittering surface. Our task is made all the more difficult by the facts that Strauss, on the one hand, underwent an evolution as to his

style, and that the trend of this evolution, on the other hand, led him to an

avowedly esoteric style in which his real thought, if any, was deliberately buried under either painstaking and fastidious analyses of texts, or moral

and/or political preaching. Strauss excelled in the art of window-dressing and paying lip service to conservative and "square" opinions. His pleading for Natural Right might belong to that kind of rhetoric, as well as other theses the refutation of which always runs the risk of becoming an exercise in shadow-boxing.

The "Athens and Jerusalem" theme furnishes us with a good example of both dimensions of Strauss's thought, as well as of the predicament we face when we try to interpret him. For we cannot tell to which layer of

thought this theme actually belonged: Is it Strauss's last position on some fundamental questions, or merely the ultimate, and most elaborate, way of concealing an original and/or subversive standpoint under the mask of a traditional formula?

I will here choose a safer way of inquiry, which consists in looking at Strauss's career, as seen from the outside. It can be described as a journey from Jerusalem to Athens: Whereas the first publications dealt with Jew- ish thinkers like Maimonides-not to mention Mendelssohn, Hermann

Cohen, and so on-or Jewish in origin like Spinoza, the last ones, for the most part, are commentaries on Greek philosophers and writers like Plato,

Aristotle, Xenophon, Thucydides, or Aristophanes. These interpretations are the most famous and the most controversial.7 Yet Strauss's interest in the ancients is relatively late, since his first published text on a Greek author is the 1939 essay on Xenophon (Strauss 1939b). When, in 1946, he wrote a scathing critique of a book on Plato's political philosophy, he was

already in his late forties (Strauss 1946). Initially, classical Greek thinkers were studied as sources, but Strauss's

main purpose was to explore medieval thought. See, for instance, the research program Strauss drafted at the end of his 1936 French essay on Maimonides' and Farabi's political science. Plato is to be studied as Mai- monides' source or inspirer: "One cannot avoid to ask the questions, crucial to the understanding of Maimonides, as to the relation of the theology of the Moreh to the Platonic doctrine of the One, and the relation of the

7. See, for example, Burnyeat 1985 and the ensuing discussion.


cosmology of the Moreh (that is, the discussion about the creation of the world) to the doctrine of the Timaeus" (Strauss 1936c: 35).

Or we can point to the parallel thrust of his book on Hobbes: unveil- ing the second book of Aristotle's Rhetorics (his "treatise on the passions"), as well as Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, as sources for the British philosopher's thought (Strauss 1936b).

A Stop-Off in Mecca: Farabi

Nevertheless, this backward movement from medieval or modern thinkers to their ancient forerunners or inspirers is not the only one. We can spot another trend: reading the ancients with medieval eyes. Strauss, in my opinion, did exactly that, and never ceased to do that, although he seldom acknowledged it explicitly. Thus, the thesis I should like to defend in this

essay is that the pattern of reading Strauss applied to the Greeks is neither ancient nor modern, but medieval-to be precise, Islamic-in origin. In other words, Strauss read the Greeks from a point of view that is neither Greek (Athenian) nor Jewish (Jerusalemite), but Muslim-"Meccan," if I

may coin the phrase. This outlook seems to stem from a thinker who deeply influenced the

young Strauss, Nietzsche.8 An aphorism that Strauss, to the best of my knowledge, never uses9 can be read as a program for Strauss, or at least for his early work on the medievals.?1

The influence of Avicenna and Razi notwithstanding, the most important source of Strauss's hermeneutics is probably Farabi. Especially important is the view of Plato that is to be found in the writings of this tenth- century thinker (872-950). It is therefore apposite that we should pause in order to examine briefly Strauss's relationship to him. Strauss wrote three articles on Farabi, the first two of which were not republished in book form.

In the first one, Strauss, who follows a suggestion by Moritz Stein- schneider (Steinschneider 1869: 176-78, quoted in Strauss 1936a: 1oo n. 5),

8. See Brague 1991: 104-5. Let me add some words on Nietzsche's influence on Strauss. Let me first state that my intention never was to blame Strauss for that, nor to debunk him as a crypto-Nietzschean (if the latter adjective had to be derogatory), let alone to expose him as having copied Nietzsche. Second, it was pointed out to me that I overlooked Strauss's later critique of Nietzsche. This argument supposes that this critique is to be taken seriously- which is a more or less safe bet, but only a bet. Moreover, this leaves open the possibility that Strauss, while disagreeing with the cure, agreed with the general diagnosis proposed by Nietzsche-which is my hunch. 9. Nevertheless, Strauss himself points to the parallel drawn by Nietzsche between Plato and Muhammad in The Will to Power (Strauss 1935: 62 n. i). 1o. The Dawn of Day, V, ? 496, in Nietzsche 1974 [1911]: 346-47. See Brague 1996.


ascribes long fragments of Falqera's Reshit Hokmah to a lost work by Farabi: The third part of the Jewish author's compendium on philosophical sci- ences excerpts Farabi's writing on Plato and Aristotle (ibid.: 100-104)." Strauss invites the reader to reconsider the history of medieval philosophy as a whole by giving Farabi the place that becomes him: the place of pri- macy (ibid.: 105-6). The second essay (Strauss 1945) deals with the very work that the first one tried to elicit from its Hebrew adaptation. The original text had just been published in a critical edition by F. Rosenthal and R. Walzer in 1943. Some pages of this article became part of the introduc-

tory essay to Strauss's main "hermeneutical" text (Strauss 1945: 371-72; 1952: 13-14). The third and last article is devoted to the analysis of a newly published summary of the Laws (Strauss 1959 [1957]).

Strauss's Plato is basically the same as Farabi's. Let us quote some salient points: According to Strauss's and Farabi's common outlook, Plato is first and foremost a political thinker. Aspects that transcend the political realm are systematically given short shrift: the doctrine of "ideas," the soul and its immortality, the gods and religious aspects in general. The views of Farabi's Socrates are distinguished from Plato's own views, not to

say criticized by the latter (Strauss 1945: 362 [politics], 364 [ideas], 371-72 [soul], 391; Strauss 1959: 134, 148, 153).

The question must arise as to whether Farabi was faithful to Plato. Strauss supposes he was not: "He (Farabi) conceives of the Laws not, as Plato himself had done, as a correction of the Republic, but as a supple- ment to the Republic .... Farabi's views are closely akin to that of Cicero"

(Strauss 1945: 380 n. 55). A difficulty must then arise: If Farabi corrected

Plato, he must have understood him better than Plato himself had done.

Now, this is a modern hermeneutical rule, defended by Kant and Schleier- macher-and a rule that Strauss never tired of exposing as inadequate (Strauss 1991: 25; 1946: 329; 1959: 66-68; 1936b: xv).

The important point is not our assessing Strauss's importance or short-

comings in his interpretation of Farabi. What I want to emphasize is that Strauss made use of Farabi as an interpretive key to unlock Plato's dia-

logues. For instance, we have good reasons for surmising that his under-

standing of the Republic, set forth in The City and Man, stems from a para- graph in Farabi's Philosophy of Plato. We read in this work:

When he had done this, he afterwards investigated the manner and the method

by means of which the citizens of cities and nations ought to be instructed in this

11. Other fragments of Falqera's work, which Strauss tentatively ascribed to another work

by Farabi (see Strauss 1936a: 98, 1936c: 30 n. 3), could be identified as translations from the hitherto lost Book of Letters. See Farabi 1969b: ? 144, 152, 9-13; 1969: 151-52.


science and their character formed by those ways of life, whether the method

ought to be the one used by Socrates or the one used by Thrasymachus. Here he delineated once again Socrates' method for realizing his aim of making his own people understand through scientific investigation the ignorance they were in. He explained Thrasymachus' method and made it known that Thrasymachus was more able than Socrates to form the character of the youth and instruct the multitude; Socrates possessed only the ability to conduct a scientific inves-

tigation of justice and the virtues, and a power of love, but did not possess the

ability to form the character of the youth and the multitude; and the philosopher, the prince, and the legislator ought to be able to use both methods: the Socratic method with the elect, and Thrasymachus' method with the youth and the multitude. (Farabi 1943: X, ? 30, 21-22, or 1969, X, ? 36, 66-67).12

The whole background of the passage seems to be an exegesis of the

Clitophon, a dialogue whose Platonic authenticity is dubious (Slings 1981). In this text, Clitophon, who is named here, as elsewhere (Plato, Republic I, 34oa), as a friend of Thrasymachus, launches a violent attack on Socra-

tes, taunting him with one-sidedness in a way that reminds one of Hegel's critique of subjective morality on behalf of objective Sittlichkeit. The Clito-

phon may have been interpreted on the basis of the Hellenistic ideal, as

expressed in Cicero, of the unity of the philosopher and the orator (Walzer in Farabi 1985: xiii).

Be that as it may, the general thrust of Strauss's reading of the Republic reminds one of Farabi's utterances. This fact has already been highlighted (Benardete 1978: 9; Berrichon-Sedeyn 1987: xxix; Strauss 1964: 116, 123- 24, 134). The very way Strauss puts Thrasymachus at the center of his

interpretation, bringing into relief the importance of the friendship that

finally arises between him and Socrates, is borrowed from Farabi (Strauss 1945: 383; 1959: 153). On the other hand, the combination of "Socratic" bold philosophizing and "Thrasymachean" cautious speech characterizes Strauss's own art of writing.

Farabi is all the more interesting for us because we are dealing with Athens and Jerusalem-in this context, with the relationship between Greek philosophy and revealed, monotheistic religion. From the point of view of the historian, Farabi's works happen to embody the passage from the former to the latter. By this token, he may be the most perfect link between the two worlds. We possess a fragment by him which was handed down to us by a Muslim biographer and doxographer and in which Farabi

explains how he received his training in Aristotelian philosophy (and above all in higher logic and epistemology, through Aristotle's Posterior Analytics)

12. Another reference to Thrasymachus is in Farabi 1968: lno.


from an uninterrupted chain of direct master-disciple transmission that reaches back to the last scions of Greek philosophical schools. To be sure, Farabi's text is not devoid of any self-praise: He wants to appear as the last heir of antique wisdom. Nevertheless, his account, barring some details, has an authentic ring.'3

Now, this claim, which presumes the presence of a historical continuity between later Greek (pagan) thought and Islam, raises still other questions: Can we speak of Farabi's interpretation of the Greeks as his own

achievement, or should we rather look at it as arising from Farabi's half-

critically taking over some Hellenistic and/or middle Platonic epitomizer or commentator? This last approach was, broadly speaking, supported by Richard Walzer. One often gets the impression that, according to Walzer, to put it bluntly, Farabi "just cribbed the whole thing" from some second- rate treatise of late Hellenistic origin, a view criticized by Strauss (Strauss 1945: 359, 377). In any case, Strauss's winding way from the Greeks and back to them is not easy to assess from the vantage point of the historian of ideas: Strauss read Plato from Farabi's point of view, but Farabi himself

may have taken up ideas from the Hellenistic (Stoic or middle Platonic) interpretation of Plato.

Esoteric Style

In any event, putting on medieval spectacles in order better to look at ancient texts is made possible by the (alleged?) rediscovery of a common feature supposed to run through the whole history of philosophy up to the

Enlightenment: esoteric style. It is a matter of common knowledge that the most important thing in Strauss's hermeneutics is his rediscovery of esoteric writing. His book Persecution and the Art of Writing bears sufficient witness to this. It gives a large harvest of facts in a field that still requires detailed historical study-and has received little (see Holzhey and Zim- merli 1977). Esotericism as a means of communicating dangerous truths without endangering one's own security or civil peace is as old as philosophy. For the danger to be coped with is itself as old as philosophy.

The possibility of an esoteric meaning, and hence of an esoteric inter-

pretation of texts, is not essentially linked to the idea of religious ortho-

doxy. We can spot traces of this basic attitude in the ancient world prior to the emergence of monotheistic world religions. The danger is older than

they are -as the case of Socrates illustrates, viewed against the background

13. Ibn Abi Usaybi'a n.d.: 604-5. The classical study on the historical background is Meyer- hof 1930. Discussion in S. Stroumsa 1991.


of the various lawsuits for impiety leveled at Anaxagoras and others. Burn-

ing books was a very old way of eliminating heterodoxy, even in classical

antiquity, before the very idea of orthodoxy had even emerged.'4 More disquieting is the fact that philosophers themselves were reported

not to have had misgivings against such a practice. This is at least the case if we are to trust Aristoxenos's report on Plato's proposal that Democri- tus's books be burned.'5 The reason alleged there-Plato wanted to hide that he had stolen ideas from Democritus!--may be apocryphal and may stem from the increasing trend of late antiquity toward personalizing the

history of philosophy. Nevertheless, some later philosophers toyed with this idea: Proclus, according to his biographer, thought that every philosophical book should be hidden from the youth, with the exception of the Chaldean Oracles and Plato's Timaeus (Marinos 1814: chap. 38).

Esoteric writing is traditionally admitted or simply discussed in con- nection with phenomena belonging either to the medieval world (the so- called Averroists, crypto-Jewish literature among Marranos, etc.) or to the modern period (e.g., "enlightened" writers concealing their "Spinozism"). Since Strauss avowedly took his departure from their study and broadened his ken to other thinkers, an easy objection is that he saw esotericism not

only where it is actually to be found but where it never was, too.'6 One point deserves to be heavily stressed: Strauss's hermeneutical origi-

nality does not lie in the claim that there is a difference between (a) levels of readers, more or less gifted and acute, and (b) levels of meaning, more or less superficial. Neither is this originality to be looked for in his assert-

ing that some texts are esoteric. For these can be explained, completed, corrected, and the like orally by the master who wrote them, in living communication. Written works can very well be meant to lure the reader

through their very aporetic character so as to drive him or her toward a

living encounter with their author. Some dialogues by Plato, for example, may have had this function (Gaiser 1959). Normally, written texts are exo- teric, whereas esotericism belongs to oral teaching, which takes place in the inner circle of disciples. All those facts are relatively well-known.

On the other hand, Strauss's central assumption is the existence of esoteric writing, that is, written texts that are meant, in themselves and out of

14. See Diogenes Laertius on Protagoras (IX, 52). For examples in Rome, see Momi- gliano 1980. 15. Aristoxenos, frgt. 131 Wehrli = Diogenes Laertius IX, 40. See Spinoza, Letter56, end. Other explanation in Bollack 1967. 16. See, for instance, the open-minded review in Belaval 1953 and Strauss's rejoinder in Strauss 1959: 228-32. For an analogous but less fair attack on Strauss's method applied to medievalfaldsifa, see, for instance, Leaman 1980.


themselves, to convey their full meaning to the acute reader while keeping it out of the reach of run-of-the-mill people. The paradox lies in the blend-

ing of orality and writing. Written esoteric communication makes possible something like, if I may coin a bold formula, silent oral teaching. The

singularity of the kind of esotericism Strauss supposes is its capability of

establishing communication between philosophers in spite of their being kept apart by centuries. It enables a philosopher A to "speak," to convey his oral teaching, to a hearer B still to be born, through a text written according to definite rules.

Since such a text is planned to be accessible to men of future gen- erations, when death will have definitely precluded the possibility of any "living" communication, it is necessary that it should be completely self- sufficient. Plato, for instance, must have written not only esoteric texts in

general also but self-sufficient esoteric texts. This may be the reason why Strauss could not abide the idea of an oral teaching of Plato, at least if this implies a definite doctrine, for example, Plato's alleged metaphysics of numbers, such as it is reconstructed by the Tubingen school (Kramer 1982), not the discussions at the Academy, understood as a living inquiry and communication (synusia) in philosophical leisure, without any definite

doctrine, let alone orthodoxy. Strauss agrees with Harold Cherniss's at-

tack on the former (Strauss 1946: 349-50). Plato must be the author of books comparable to sacred books. They

must at least have been written with a view to a way of reading analogous to the way sacred books are read. Strauss tacitly discards or downplays the admission that external circumstances such as the adventure in Sicily, inner Academic debates, or even death, that prevented Plato from giving the Laws the last touch-up might have played their part in Plato's literary

activity (Strauss 1991: 25). Foremost among these external circumstances

is the very fact that the texts were transmitted to us or lost (e.g., Aristotle's

lost dialogues), the choice being made by later transmitters with regard to

criteria that are not necessarily to be supposed identical with the author's

own tastes. The comparison with sacred books does not mean that these

books should be read as sacred, as a critique commonly leveled against Strauss has it,'7 that is, as absolutely true and free of contradictions. The

accent does not lie so much on "sacred" as on "books": Their being sacred

and their being books are two aspects of a single fact. They must be sacred

as books, in so far as their flawless composition unswervingly mirrors di-

vine perfection.'8

17. See the cartoon in Burnyeat 1985: 32-small people paying obeisance to dusty old folios.

18. Cf. the description of the "Jerusalemite" understanding of contradictions in a sacred


The link between external circumstances and inner meaning is pro- vided by the author's statement about his work and the way he wanted it to be read. A general problem arises as to whether the author of an esoteric piece of writing has to confess that he is writing in an esoteric way: "The case of the authors who explicitly say that they intentionally contra- dict themselves in order to indicate a secret teaching to an elite among the readers, is entirely different from that of authors who neither say nor indicate anything of that kind" (Strauss 1959: 224).

It must be said somewhere: "This very work you are actually reading is an esoteric work." Otherwise, readers may mistake their own fancies for the elicitation of the secret meaning the author intended to veil/unveil in his or her work. Hints are not enough. Therefore, the authors about whom the use of esoteric style cannot be denied just let the cat out of the bag without further ado about their making use of such a style. There are some examples of such writers. Maimonides is among them, at least in the introduction to the Guidefor the Perplexed, as well as the anonymous authors of the Encyclopedia of the Pure Brethren, who wrote: "Know, brother, that in this

epistle (risala) we have made clear what final end is sought. Do not think ill of us and do not regard this epistle as an amusement of adolescents and as an idle tale of the Brethren; for (according to) a habit we follow, we cover

up truths by words, expressions and indications in order that we should not be (forced to abandon our present way of life)" (Ihwan as-Safa' 1983, 2:377).19

In view of such examples, we feel compelled to qualify the statement according to which "it is essential to the success of this style that the fact that an author is employing it should be communicated indirectly" (Mahdi 1957: 118). Now, to what extent are we allowed to interpret works in which no such open statements occur as fraught with a secret meaning?

Esotericism and the Three Medieval Religions

Even if we may admit the existence of esoteric texts outside of religious traditions, the use of esoteric style is more convenient when a religious orthodoxy has seized power. Maimonides alludes to this fact: He quotes Alexander of Aphrodisias's On the Principles of the Whole on the three main causes of error (Badawi 1978 [19671: 276). He then adds that there now

book in Strauss 1979: 116 with, on the other hand, Strauss 1981: 19-20, where the Bible and Plato's dialogues are played off against one another. 19. Translation in Pines 1980: 185-86. It should be noted, however, that the text of this crucial passage is not entirely sound. In Dieterici's edition, we read words that are to be translated otherwise. See Brague 1993b: 99.


exists a fourth cause of difficulty in the attainment of truth that did not exist in ancient times-habit and education. He means thereby, he ex-

plains, the existence of religions founded on texts whose authority should not be challenged.20 This crucial difference between medieval and Greek

thought should preclude any too harsh reasoning upward from the former to the latter. At any rate, the question of the relationship between "Athens" and "Jerusalem" could not be asked in a meaningful way before the latter became powerful enough to match the former. We thus have to ask what kind of relationship obtains between the Straussian enterprise and the three main versions of monotheism.

The first one to come to the dock must be Judaism. A current image of Strauss is that of a rabbi turned mad, of a perverse reading of philosophical texts as if they were the Talmud. This image, in my opinion, is radically mistaken. The question at stake is not whether the man Strauss was Jewish or not: He himself stated that he was (Strauss 1968: 260), and the question of the worth of this statement, of the meaning of "Jewish," and so on must be left aside. The only question we have to face is the Jewish nature of Strauss's enterprise. We thus have to ask, Is the Straussian idea of esotericism a Jewish one? Now, the interpretation devices that are brought to bear, insofar as they are technical, have nothing specifically Jewish or "Greek" about them, nor any specificity whatsoever. Strauss may allude somewhere to the Jewish way of dealing with words, to the utmost particular way of eliciting meaning from obscure texts (Strauss 1924: 295). But what really matters is, in my opinion, his general view of the context of esotericism. Strauss's discovery arose from the study of a Muslim (Farabi) and of an outcast (Spinoza). Strauss repeatedly points toward a more general medieval background, the basic assumptions of which were shared by Jews and Muslims-although not by Christians. The idea of a secret doctrine may have been extant in some stages of Christian intellectual history, but it was expelled at a relatively early date (G. Stroumsa 1986). Strauss, we may surmise, was aware of the non-Jewish origin of esotericism as he understood it. He often endeavored to enhance the non-Jewish character of the phenomena he stumbled on. For instance, he is eager to underline that a certain doctrine in Maimonides cannot be traced back to the Tal- mud but comes from a Muslim source. He always looks for non-Jewish, Islamic sources of Maimonides (Strauss 1935: 115 n. 4; 1939a: 455).

As a matter of fact, some dimensions of esotericism can be assessed

20. Maimonides 1929: I, 31, 44, 29-45, 16; Maimonides 1963: 66-67. Quoted or alluded to in Strauss 1959: 164-65, and 1963: xx. See Brague forthcoming.


more easily in the Islamic world, for historical reasons.2' A permission, and in some extreme cases, a duty of dissimulation (taqiyya) is present in Shi'ism, and especially in the Ismaeli circles with which thefaldsifa shared some ideas.22 Esotericism could link up philosophy with a more or less

political mysticism. As for the fact of esotericism in Islamic philosophers, it is commonly admitted, we are at no pains for how to find examples. The central witnesses in medieval times are, as is well-known, Ibn Tufayl's preface to his Hayy ibn raqzan (1936: 1-16) and the suspicion leveled by Averroes against al-Ghazali (1987 [1930]: I, ? 52, 30). Moreover, in recent times, many medieval works on which Strauss never published, including treatises by Avicenna (1969; see Gardet 1951), are commonly recognized as meant for an elite only.

The fact of esotericism in Muslim thought is manifest. Hence, Straus- sian hermeneutics takes its bearings from, and finds its stronghold in, the historical exploration of this field, although some results of previous and, for Strauss, paradigmatic research on Islamic esotericism have undergone criticism. For instance, Paul Kraus, following suggestions by Saadia Gaon and al-Biruni, had supposed that the Brahmins quoted by Islamic heretics were sheer puppets on which they could foist their own critique of Reve- lation (Kraus 1994: 167). Strauss had taken this procedure as a model of esoteric communication (Strauss 1952: 125 n. 95). But in fact, the Islamic writer probably relied upon sound historical evidence on Indian-Muslim encounter.23

But even supposed that assumption of esotericism can be true by and large, we should not content ourselves with mere fact. This means that esotericism should not be considered as stemming from merely exterior causes that the historian could assess without further ado. It corresponds to inner features of the Islamic conception of Revelation, that is, to the way it conceives of the basic relationship of man to the Absolute. First, Revelation in Islam is a mere fact, afactum brutum. This is the way Strauss conceives religious Revelation: "There is only one objection to Plato- Aristotle: and that is the factum brutum of revelation, or of the 'personal' God. I say: factum brutum-for there is no argument whatsoever, theoretical, practical, existential .. ., not even the argument of paradox (a paradox as such, after all, can be calledfor by reason, as Kierkegaard shows all too well)

21. See Keddie 1963. The same method is applied to the study of modern thinkers of the Arabic renascence in Keddie 1972. See Jadaane 1973: 26-32. 22. On the Shi'ite conception of taqiyya, see Kohlberg 1975. On the idea of a progressive, processual coming to light of truth, originally created by God, see Meyer 1980: 263. 23. The fatal blow against Kraus's thesis, after S. Pines, was given in S. Stroumsa 1985.


from the agnoia theou, which characterizes the genuine philosopher, to be- lief" (Strauss 1983a: 108).

Second, its content is a text, a written text, a book. The phenomenon of the Sacred Book24 is far more peculiar to Islam than to Christianity. In

Islam, what is revealed by God is the Sacred Book itself. The latter is, liter-

ally speaking, the word of God, dictated to the Prophet (through the angel Gabriel). Christianity possesses sacred books, too, one of which it shares with Judaism. But what is revealed, properly speaking, is not so much a book as a person. The Word of God is first and foremost Jesus Christ, and

only derivatively the written records of his teachings and life in the New Testament. Judaism stands midway: Unlike Christianity and like Islam, it does not admit an incarnation, and what is revealed is a law; unlike Islam,

however, its sacred writings are not immediately present but mediated

through the very process of their reception, discussion, and interpretation.

Basic Concepts of Esotericism

We can lend some probability to our hypothesis about the Muslim origin of Strauss's conception of esotericism by examining the basic concepts it involves.

Historicity In a very interesting article, Aviezer Ravitzky (1981: 108-9, 110o-1 n. 95, 111) has shown that Strauss's reading of Maimonides was anticipated by some medieval commentators to the Guide. To begin with, this is espe-

cially the case with Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon, the very translator of the Guide: Some quotations can't help but remind us with an outstanding clarity of Strauss's hermeneutics, a point Ravitzky himself underlines -for

example, on Solomon (considered as the author of Qohelet), on repetition of

contradictory teachings, or on our having to pick up the rarest statement

as expressing the author's view. On the other hand, Ravitzky underlines elsewhere that there are momentous differences between Strauss and the medieval commentators. In particular, their views about the content of the hidden doctrine is that the hidden teaching of the Bible is identical to

Aristotelian physics and metaphysics; Strauss's view, on the other hand, is

that what Maimonides endeavors to conceal from the common reader is

that the two cannot be reconciled (Ravitzky 1990: 178-82). As for the idea of history, Ravitzky mentions, "Ibn Tibbon's intrigu-

24. See the implications of the text by Machiavelli (Discorsi, II, 5) quoted in Strauss 1983b: 226.


ing notion of the dynamic nature of the spiritual history of Israel and the

gradual purification of the religious concept of the community through- out the ages" (1981: 111). He quotes fascinating statements by Ibn Tibbon

according to which esotericism is a necessity under certain circumstances

only and, consequently, may vary according to them. A greater or lesser

degree of esotericism can be apposite in certain times. The general trend is toward progress: Enlightenment increases steadily.25 The issue at stake is the provisional character of esotericism or its definitive necessity. Mai- monides' early commentators viewed esoteric communication as a device whose usefulness varies according to the more or less widespread enlightenment of their contemporaries.

Strauss's outlook, on the other hand, apparently denies progress in quite a radical way. His view of history is a static one. On this point, too, he is a follower of Maimonides. Therefore, esotericism cannot be provisory; no Enlightenment whatsoever will ever be able to bridge the gap between the elite and the vulgar: "They believed that the gulf separating 'the wise' and 'the vulgar' was a basic fact of human nature which could not be influenced by any progress of popular education: philosophy, or science, was essentially a privilege of 'the few'" (Strauss 1952: 34). This is more in keeping with Muslim than with Jewish views. According to the former, Revelation (in philosophical terms: man's relationship to the Absolute) does not take place through history--although it does take place in history, because of man's historical nature; therefore no idea of a salvation history is available (Falaturi 1977), and consequently, no secularization of this idea is "progress": "It is characteristic that the believers in progress are found

largely among the sectarians and those not in good standing with ortho-

doxy" (von Grunebaum 1961: 71)-for example, Razi (1939: 301).

The Idea of Elite Strauss's esotericist hermeneutics supposes that philosophical writings are

genuinely addressed to elite readers to whom their real purpose is dis- closed, whereas common people are paid lip service and consolidated in their unfounded but socially useful opinions by edifying speeches. The elite may consist of one individual. Since Socrates always addressed a single man, esoteric writing is "Socratic" (Strauss 1939b: 535; 1983b: 172). This idea has clear antecedents in later Greek philosophy, for instance in Galen.26 The same holds true for the idea of a "philosophy of the elite."27

25. See in particular the last pages of Moses ibn Tibbon 1837: 172-75 and Moses of Nar- bonne 1852: 34a (both quoted by Ravitzky 1981: 115). 26. See De dif. puls., III, 3 (VIII, 656 Kuehn), quoted in Walzer 1949: 39. 27. See Porphyry 1856: Prologue. The title "Philosophy of the Elite" occurs in the so-called


The constitution of an elite is quite a common feature of all religious or scientific systems. Yet, a further step is taken when the existence of an elite is thematized. As a rule, this happens in the elite itself and through its reflection on its own status. This leads to the coining of a special word, something like the "rest" of the Prophets. Such a word is not extant before medieval Judaism. Jewish esotericism is rooted in the Talmud. The Sages considered themselves as representatives of Israel, which stands for mankind: "Rabbinical Judaism understood itself as a vicarious elite, which means that a group separates itself inside of an over-arching bond. The isolation of rabbinical Judaism was not primarily socially motivated, but its roots were in the theological idea of Israel's isolation vis-a-vis the nations of the world, in the inner isolation of Israel that was rendered necessary by that, and which the rabbis used to represent" (Wevers 1975: 193, and see

203, my translation). The idea of representation is the central one: There is no knowledge reserved to a select elite, since the elite itself is meant to function as a substitute for the vulgar. The elite is not an end in itself. Its role is a vicarious one. Therefore, it is not self-centered but responsible for the rest of the community to which it belongs.

On the other hand, if an elite is conceived of as radically severed from the rest of mankind, for which it does not stand and toward which it bears no responsibility, the gap that separates it cannot be bridged. Its separa- tion must then be definitive, whereas a representative, hence responsible, elite is but provisionally separated from mankind. Islamic conceptions of the elite may vary (Beg 1978). But "the philosophers restricted the elite

most, and had no hope of bringing the masses up to elite status, as the other groups [shi'a, sufis] might" (Keddie 1963: 59). An extreme example of the philosophic attitude is to be found in Farabi's identification of the

elite, absolutely speaking, with the philosopher who is a philosopher in the absolute meaning of the term (1969b: III, 19, ? 113, p. 133). In another

work, the same author appears to have a more balanced stance toward the rest of the city:

We [philosophers] are political in nature. It is incumbent to us therefore to (a) live in harmony with the public, love them and prefer doing what is useful to them and redounds to the improvement of their condition (just as it is incumbent on them to do the same in our regard). (b) Associate them in the good whose care is entrusted to us (just as it is incumbent on them to associate us in the good things whose care is entrusted to them) by showing them the truth

concerning the opinions they hold in their religions; for when they share with

Theology of Aristotle, IV, ? 61, in Badawi 1977 [1955]: 61; English in "Theology of Aristotle"

1959: 2: 381. See Brague 1997.

Brague ? Leo Strauss's "Muslim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy 251

us the truth, it will be possible for them, to the extent of their ability, to associate with philosophers in the happiness of philosophy. (c) Move them away from things-arguments, opinions, laws-in which we find they are not right. (Kitab al-Jadal, English translation cited in Mahd, 1986: 112-13)28

The best thing that the philosopher can do toward the vulgar is to cor- rect their opinions. Basically, however, the philosopher has no responsibility whatsoever toward nonphilosophers, but only toward potential philosophers. The nonphilosophical mob must be kept at bay. It is cared for

only insofar as its existence and well-being secures the existence of a society in which philosophy is possible. The vulgar are always a means, never an end. Esotericism could be justified, and actually was, as a means of pro- tecting the faith of the weak (see, for instance, 1 Corinthians 8: 9-13). For the philosopher, it does not protect anything but the philosopher's knowl-

edge. For even "respect," if any, for the faith of the weaker ones is a way of

avoiding rioting among the rabble, of preserving social order, and hence of

allowing the philosopher to go on pursuing his own goal, contemplation. In later Jewish thought, the idea of an elite does occur. The question

is to which of the two models of the "elite" we have just briefly outlined this idea belongs, when it is handled by Jewish authors. Now, everything remains ambiguous. To quote only Maimonides' forerunners, the under-

lying model in Saadia is probably the "vicarious" one: The benefits result-

ing from the choice of an individual (khass, same root as khassa) are ori- ented toward the well-being of the community.29 In Bahya, the idea of an elite is undoubtedly present but has as balance-weights, on the one hand, the general consideration according to which every privilege involves an enforced responsibility, and, on the other hand, the traditional warning against standing apart from tradition and community.30 In Jehuda Halevi's Kuzari, the idea of an elite, or "substance," or "heart" (safwa / Ibn Tibbon: segula) of mankind, transmitted from Adam to the Patriarchs, and so on, is well-known. But its ultimate origin should be most probably looked for in the Muslim world, more precisely in Shi'ism (Pines 1980: 167-72).

It looks as though Maimonides' idea of an elite is the second, "philosophical" one, which originates in pagan or Islamic cultural surroundings (Heinemann 1926: 70 n. 2). But his elitism did not remain unchallenged; for example, Gersonides polemicizes against Maimonides' taste for esoteric communication and the devices he makes use of-lack of order,

28. The ms. translated is now published, for instance in Farabi 1987: 1:382, 1-6 (I omit to signal two textual emendations by Mahdi). 29. Saadia 1970: III, 116; 1948: 137, and see III, ? 2; Saadia 1970: 121; 1948: 143. 30. Bahya b. Paquda 1912: III, 6, 156-58; III, 3, n? 7, 139-40; VIII, 2; V, 5, 241, 1-2.


obscure phrases, and so forth. The duty of communicating one's results, which behooves the scholar, is deduced from an ontology that Gersonides, in his introduction to the Wars of the Lord, grounds on a theory of ema- nation: the well-known Neoplatonic or Bonaventurian bonum difusivum sui

(Gersonides 1569: 3ab and 2d; 1866: 8, 6-30, and 5, 33-36, 2; 1984; 1:1oo-

lol; see Strauss 1935: 79-86).

Christianity as a Third City

It looks like that for Strauss the real alternative to "Athens" and "Jeru- salem" (as Strauss understands the latter's fundamental stance) is Chris-

tianity. Strauss expresses this idea in a text that, in my opinion, is particu- larly instrumental to our understanding of what is at stake with the "Athens and Jerusalem" theme, his 1936 French essay on Farabi's and Maimonides'

political science. We read at the beginning:

What lead to the break with ancient thought was neither the Bible nor the Koran, but perhaps the New Testament, and doubtless Reformation and modern philosophy. The leading idea upon which Greeks and Jews agree is precisely the idea of divine Law as of a unique and all-encompassing law that is at the same time a religious law, a civil law and a moral law. And actually, a Greek

philosophy of divine Law lies at the ground of Jewish and Muslim philosophy of Torah or of shari'ah: according to Avicenna, Plato's Laws are the standard work on prophecy and shari'ah. (Strauss 1936c: 2; on Reformation, Strauss

1946: 338)

We can find other statements to the same effect. For example, "Islamic and Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages are more 'primitive' than modern philosophers, because they are not led, as these are, by the deriva- tive idea of natural right, but by the original, ancient idea of Law as of a unified, total order of human life. In other words: because they are dis-

ciples of Plato and not disciples of Christians" (Strauss 1935: 62). Or again: "Judaism and Islam on the one hand and Christianity on the other." As

against Christianity, the Islamic-Jewish world is said to resemble classical Greece (Strauss 1952: 9, 18-19, 21).

We can elicit from these statements a basic idea: A deep harmony obtains between "Athens" and "Jerusalem" when the latter is understood from what we could call a "Meccan" vantage; this harmony is dispelled when both are seen from the point of view of Christianity (perhaps "Rome" could do). Nietzsche's critique of culture, if we are to trust Strauss, "strove downwards to the depths of pre-'Christian' Jewish as well as Greco-

European mind" (Strauss 1923: 241a). If Christianity is seen as a shallow


phenomenon that underlies and conceals the deeper truth of both Athens and Jerusalem, it is little wonder that Strauss should not simply forget (Beneton 1987: 79-80), but should systematically neglect, every Christian element in Western history. Silence is for Strauss the best way to indicate that a subject does not deserve interest (Strauss 1958: 30). What is more, we read under his pen phrases like "the whole kingdom of darkness with Thomas Aquinas at its head" (Strauss 1968: 213).

We could complement Strauss's explicit contrast of Athens and Jeru- salem by our giving names to their possible coming together, on the one hand, and to their greatest divergence, on the other hand. I should like to take advantage of the meaningful character of the names of some other cities and propose the following schema:

[Rome]

Athens J\erusalem

[Mecca]

At the bottom of this more or less explicit structure lies the (very ex-

plicitly emphasized) idea of Law. "Revelation, as understood by Jews and Muslims, had the form of Law" (Strauss 1937: 97). This statement is an obvious truth. Strauss generalizes it and supposes that the content of any Revelation must be a law (Strauss 1983b: 234, 244). Christianity does not present itself as a Law, not even as a "New Law," so the characterization of Christianity-even by its own supporters-as a "New Law" should not be taken for granted, as it commonly is. The phrase "new law" (kainos nomos), which occurs in some Christian writers,31 is utterly absent from the New Testament. What does exist there is the idea of a "New Covenant" or, in John's Gospel, "new commandment." It does not seem that Strauss has reflected on the parallel between the passage from the Old Covenant to the New, that is, from the law to Jesus Christ as the man on the one hand, and the Socratic revolution, seen as the passage from the cosmos to the human soul, on the other hand. Still more remarkable is the fact that, according to Strauss, the same idea of Law holds true for the "world." Both "Athens" (the cosmos) and "Jerusalem" (revealed Law) are basically laws. Strauss draws a parallel between cosmos and Law: "The Torah is, like the world, as 'world,' before philosophy" (Strauss 1935: 86). By so doing,

31. See, for example, Bernard of Clairvaux 1963 [1145?]: 418 (Jesus as a legislator); Aqui- nas's treatise on the laws in Summa theologica, Ia IIae, q. 90-108, esp. q. 106.


Strauss reminds us of- strange bedfellows- Schelling, who wrote: "Juda- ism and Paganism, though they differ in other respects, have in common that both are under the Law" (Schelling 1857: 57).

On the other hand, one could perhaps look at the antithesis between Athens and Jerusalem from a non-"Meccan," nay "Roman," point of view. One would have then to see to what extent the very antithesis between Athens and Jerusalem owes its survival and its permanent fruitfulness in Western culture to the "Roman" character of the latter. But that is another story.32

Conclusion

Be that as it may, we may conclude, as for Strauss himself, that his hermeneutics arose from a study of medieval thought, more especially of its Jew- ish version, and later on extended to the study of classical Greek thought. But the Jewish philosophical writers from whom he took his bearings were

precisely those upon which the influence of Islamic thought patterns pre- vailed. At any rate, his understanding of the Greeks betrays unmistakable "Muslim" features. This holds true, on the one hand, because of the obvious influence of the faldsifa, whom we may safely call Muslims since they lived in a Muslim surrounding, although, according to Strauss, they were

hardly devout believers (or even if, like Razi, they were outspoken free-

thinkers). On the other hand, we should acknowledge the more discreet

presence of some basic "Islamic" assumptions as to the nature of Revela- tion and "religion." Strauss's interpretation of the ancients, on the face of

things a Jewish one, bears witness of the deep influence Islam exercised on the way in which medieval Judaism had to formulate its basic tenets. If we want to understand him more deeply, we should complement the "que- relle des anciens et des modernes" by an older, medieval quarrel among the three religions that claim a share in Abraham's heritage.

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Documents

Brague, Remi - Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca - Leo Strauss s Muslim Understanding of Greek Philosophy