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on Maimonides: The Complete Writings—a new collection, edited by Kenneth Hart Green, that includes several heretofore unpublished or untranslated essays—Steven Lenzner explains the 13th-century rabbi and philosopher’s impact on his 20th-century student: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.
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/philosophers-guide/article/2005002