How can Leo Strauss’s critique of modernity and his return to tradition, especially Maimonides, help us to save democracy from its inner dangers? In this book, Corine Pelluchon examines Strauss’s provocative claim that the conception of man and reason in the thought of the Enlightenment is self-destructive and leads to a new tyranny. Writing in a direct and lucid style, Pelluchon avoids the polemics that have characterized recent debates concerning the links between Strauss and neoconservatives, particularly concerns over Strauss’s relation to the extreme right in Germany. Instead she aims to demystify the origins of Strauss’s thought and present his relationship to German and Jewish thought in the early twentieth century in a manner accessible not just to the small circles devoted to the study of Strauss, but to a larger public. Strauss’s critique of modernity is, she argues, constructive; he neither condemns modernity as a whole nor does he desire a retreat back to the Ancients, where slaves existed and women were not considered citizens. The question is to know whether we can learn something
from the Ancients and from Maimonides—and not merely about them.
Innehållsförteckning
Translator’s Note
Introduction
The Crisis of Rationalism
Two Historical Shocks and a Threat
The Crisis of Political Philosophy
Modern Rationalism as the Destruction of Reason
The Archeology and Overcoming of Nihilism
Part I. The Dissection of the Modern Religious Consciousness
Introduction: The Perplexity of the Modern Religious Consciousness
1. Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment
The Jacobi Question
The Pantheism Debate
The Critique of Natural Religion
There Is No Such Thing as Moderate Enlightenment
The Rejection of the Kantian Solution
The Controversy over the French Revolution
The Crisis of the Tradition
The Science of Judaism and the Dialectic of Assimilation
The Discontinuity of the Ancients and Moderns
The Aporias of Zionism
2. Critique of Religion and Biblical Criticism
The Critique of Religion and Revelation in Hobbes
Epicureanism
The Interpretation of the Bible
Socinianism and the Radical Enlightment
The Need to Reconsider the Radical Enlightenment
Spinoza’s Particular Contribution to the Critique of Religion
Persecution and the Art of Writing
The Religion of the Ignorant and Weak
Biblical Criticism (
Bibelswissenschaft)
The Social Function of Religion
The Universal Religion and the “Christianity” of Spinoza
The Ambiguity of Spinoza
The Limits of Secular Morality
The Enlightenment of Spinoza
The Legacy of the Critique of Religion
The Critique of Revelation Has Not Destroyed the Interest in Revelation
The Challenge of Philosophy
The Debt of the New Orthodoxy to the Enlightenment and Religious Liberalism
3. The Return to the Tradition
Rationalism and Mysticism
Allegory and Symbol
Reason and Experience
The Human Experience of the Absolute
Religion and Philosophy
Ethics and Spirituality
Redemption and Politics
The Jewish Enlightenment of Maimonides
Cohen and Strauss
From Morality to Politics
The Rational Critique of Reason
Part II. The Dissections of Modern Political Consciousness
Introduction: The Foundations of Modern Political Thought
1. The First Wave of Modernity
Machiavelli, the Originator of the Modern Enlightenment
The End of the Renaissance Humanist Ideal
Power, the Mastery of Men, and the Mastery of Nature
Philosophy, Propaganda, and Barbarism
Hobbes or the Founding of the Modern State
Political Science
Vanity and Fear
Individualism, Liberalism, and Absolutism
From War to Commerce
The Crisis of Liberalism: The Dialogue between Strauss and Schmitt
From the
Rechtsstaat to the Total State in the Era of Technology
War and the Affirmation of the Political
Decisionism and Political Philosophy
Resoluteness in Heidegger
2. The Second and Third Waves of Modernity
The Rousseauian Movement
The Paradoxes of Rousseau
Society and the Rich
Revolution, and History, and the General Will
Modern Tyranny, Marxism, and Capitalism
The Dialogue between Strauss and Kojeve
Philosophy and Politics
Locke’s Liberalism
The Contemporary Form of Tyranny
Nihilism according to Nietzsche and after Nietzsche
The Repetition of Antiquity at the Peak of Modernity
The Law as Denaturing and the Religious Atheism of Nietzsche
The Radicalism of the Straussian Critique of Christianity
3. Political Philosophy as First Philosophy
The Return to Socrates
Political Philosophy as the Fulfillment of Phenomenology
The Conflict between Poetry and Philosophy
Wisdom and Moderation
The Medieval Enlightenment
The Platonism of Farabi and Maimonides
The Enlightenment of Maimonides
The Natural Conditions of Prophecy
Esoteric Teaching and the Enlightenment
The Task for Thinking and the Rebirth of Philosophy
Phenomenology and the Meaning of the Law
The Conception of Truth in Maimonides
What Is Called Thinking?
Surpassing Heidegger on His Own Ground
Conclusion: The Straussian Enlightenment
Strauss’s Radical Questioning
From Jacobi to Maimonides: Neither Kant nor Hegel
This Is Not an Ethics
Strauss’s Legacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Om författaren
Corine Pelluchon is Full Professor in Philosophy at the University of Franche-Comté in France. In addition to her book on Leo Strauss, which was awarded the François Furet Prize in 2006, she has written several other books.
Robert Howse is Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law and the author of
Leo Strauss: Man of Peace.
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