What Leo Strauss Learned from Moses Maimonides

Reviewing Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings—a new collection, edited by Kenneth Hart Green, that includes several heretofore unpublished or untranslated essays—Steven Lenzner explains the 13th-century rabbi and philosopher’s impact on his 20th-century student:

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) is the only author on whom Strauss wrote in each decade of his life; he was the one, above all, to whom Strauss always returned. . . . In fact, studying these writings leads the reader to the opinion that, to the extent one can employ such a label for a thinker of Strauss’s rank, he was a “Maimonidean.”. . .

Why was Maimonides of such singular importance to Leo Strauss? Let me note his most important debt: it was in and through his study of (and writing on) [Maimonides’ philosophical magnum opus], the Guide of the Perplexed, that Strauss made his great rediscovery of the art of esoteric writing, by which philosophers communicate their serious thoughts only to the most intelligent and careful readers. . . .

But it was not simply the art of writing that Strauss learned from Maimonides. The medieval philosopher also served as Strauss’s chief guide in navigating the problem that the art of writing serves to ameliorate—namely, the theologico-political problem. That problem is a special version of the more general one of the relationship of philosophy to the political community, the “city.” The city demands unquestioning allegiance to its way of life; philosophy questions everything—not least, the authoritative opinions to which the city demands allegiance. This political problem became the theologico-political problem due to the introduction (as Maimonides notes) of authoritative revealed texts that also demand the unquestioning allegiance of adherents, but in a manner that sets up an additional tension, a third party with pretensions to challenge the claims of both philosophy and city.

So Strauss learned from Maimonides how to navigate a minefield denser than the one faced by the classical philosophers, albeit with the same end in mind: to promote philosophy while giving political society and revelation their due.

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More about: History & Ideas, Leo Strauss, Moses Maimonides, Philosophy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF