Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss’s “Muslim” Understanding of Greek Philosophy Rémi Brague Phitosophy, Paris 7 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 asa motion from Jerusalem (Spinoza, Msimonides) 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 exotericise— 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 loggerbeads im 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 Isbyrinthine history of the present text: A first version was prepared in ‘English and sent to symposium that, for reasons of health, I could not attend. Its pro~ ceedings were due to be published but finally were not. My article was later translated into French (Brague ig8ga). The present version takes advantage of remarks by the lave David R. ‘Lachterman (Lachterman 1991: 298-45). Poetics Teday 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 in 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 19408, hence, before he could have read Shestov’s book. This theme is voiced at a relarively 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 1 know of is a letter to Karl Lawith, dated from August 15, 1946 (Strauss 1g8ga: 108, 111). 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 acience, is the life that is devoted to knowledge and looking for it. From the vantage- point of the Bible, the hen enagksion [the only necessary thing] is totally different. One reaches no plausible aim by covering up this contrast, by denegating the tertiun non datur. Every synthesis is in fact a choice either for Jerusalem or for Athens” (Voegelin et al. 1993: 30)- ‘The theme was firat made public in 1952: “The iasue of traditional Juda- iam versus philosophy is identical with the issue Jerusalem versus Athens” (Strauss 1952: 20). On the content of this contrast, Strauss gives ua 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 (!); 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 staterient of the theme: 1. See the quotation by Goethe in Strauss 1959: 5, probably alluded to in Stranm 1995: 28. g. Strauss 1959: 9-10. with a quotation without references to Isaiah 1: 261.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- tagoniam 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 needfill proclaimed by Greek philosophy. According to the Bible, the one thing needful is obedient love; according to phi- losophy, the ane thing needful is free inquiry. The whole history of the West can be viewed aa 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 rynthesis of ita two elements, but only of their tension: this is the secret of the vitality of the West. (Scrauss 1989: 72-73) Unfortunately, though, some lines afterwards, we read an important craliicetion, not to iy a recantation: Speaking ofthe Wester traction ax Strauss did is “impossible . . . in the last analysis,” and acceptable, nay eurary, only “as eng. as we speak polisally ic, crudely” By tie oben, wwe cannot ascertain to what exent Straus macau his own statement 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 1989b).* 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,’ 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- gotren way of reading‘ Unfortunately for our present purpose, he rediscov- ered an art of writing, too: Since “people write as they read” (Strauss 1959: 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 blasphemics) under 3+ Strum 1999: 72-75, On the date, see ibid: xxxt-anunii. 4 This text may be the same as the one referred to in Strauss 1983a. On the “classical. ‘Struggle in the Middle Ages,” ace ibid: 165. 5 See Momigfiano 2987: 197 n. 29, 198. A useful introduction appears in Sales 1 Coderch and Montserrat i Molas 1991. 6. On Straum’s hermeneutics, see Brague 1991, which the present cmay presupposes and completes, and Rosen 1987: 107~98. On Strauss's thought in general, the best overview I knew of is Marshall 1985 (which has exceptionally rich foomotes).ze Poatiks Today 19:2 the veil under which he has hidden them” (Strauss 199: 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 fandamental 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 bere choose a safer way of inquiry, which consists in looking at Strauas’s career, as seen from the outside. It can be described as a journcy 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.’ Yet Strauss's interest in the ancients is relatively late, since his first published text on a Greek author is the 1939 essay on Kenophon (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 Strause’s main purpose was to explore medieval thought. See, for instance, the re- search program Strauss drafted at the end of his 1996 French essay on Maimonides’ and Farabi’s political science. Plato is to be studied ex Mai- monides’ source or inspirer: “One cannot avoid to ask the questions, cru- cial 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 1995 and the ensuing discussion.Brague - Leo Strauss’s “Muslim” Understanding of Greek Philosophy = 239 cosmology of the Morsk (that is, the discussion about the creation of the world) to the doctrine of the Timacus” (Strauss 1936c: 95). 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, a3 sources for the British philoso- pher’s thought (Strauss 19968). ‘A Stop-Off In Mecca: Farabl 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. Straus, 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 ia 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, Nietzache* An aphorism that Strauss, to the best of my knowledge, never uses" can be read as a program for Strauss, or at least for his early work on the medievals.” The influence of Avicenna and Razi notwithstanding, the most impor tant source of Strauss’s hermeneutics is probably Farabi. Especially im- portant 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 1996a: 100 n. 5), 8. See Brague agg: 104-5, Let me add sone words om Nietesche’s influence on Stranss, Let me firet state that my intention never was to blame Strauss for that, nor to debunk him as a Nietzsche. critique of Nictmche, This argument suppowes that this critique is to be taken einer ene ee Moncove, his lens open the pony cure, Seraum, eave agreed: general diagnosis proposed by 9. Nevertheless, Stranas himself points to the parallel draws by Nietzsche between Plato and Muhsnmad in The Will te Proer (Straus 1935; 62 1. 1), 10. The Den of Dey, V, § 496, in Nictasche 1974 [1911]: 345-47. See Brague 1996.240 ~—— Poetics Today 19:2 aacribes long fragments of Falgcra’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 aa 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 fom its Hebrew adaptation. The origi- nal text had just been published in a critical edition by F, Rosenthal and R. Walzer in 1949. Some pages of this article became part of the introduc- tory essay to Strauss’s main “hermeneutical” text (Strauss 1945: 371-73; 1952: 13-14). The third and last article is devoted to the analysis of a newly published summary of the Lazes (Strauss 1959 [1957]). Strauas’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 politi- cal 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], 964 [ideas], 371-72 [soul], 3913 Strauss 1959: 194, 248, 153). The question must arise as to whether Farabi was faithful to Plato. Strauss supposes he was not: “He (Farabi) conccives of the Laws not, as Piato 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 hermencutical 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; 19g6b: 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- lpgues. For instance, we have good reasons for surmising that his under- standing of the Rafublic, set forth in The City and Man, stems from 2 para- graph in Farahi'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 Other fragments of Falgera's work, which Straus tentatively ascribed to nother wosk by Farah (pce Seramme 1956396, 19967 * gO M. 3), could be identified as translations from the Sree Bel ofan Soe Pas satobs rien 92, 9751969! 1b 2Brague + Leo Strauss's “Musiim" Understanding of Greek Philosophy 241 science and their character formed by those ways of life, whether the method was more able than Socrates to form the character of the youth and instruct the multitude; Socrates possessed only the ability to conduct a acientific 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 philoso- pher, the prince, and the legisiator ought to be able to use both methods: the Socratic method with the elect, and Thrasymachus’ method with the youth and the multitude. (Farabi 1949: X, § go, 21-29, or 1969, X, § 96, 66-67). ‘The whole background of the passage seems to be an exegesis of the Ghtophon, 2 dialogue whose Platonic anthenticity is dubious (Slings 1981). In this text, Clitophon, who ia named here, as elsewhere (Plato, Republic I, 40a), as a friend of Thrasymachus, launches a violent attack on Socra- tes, taunting him with one-sidedness in a way that reminds one of Hege!’s critique of subjective morality on behalf of objective Sitlichkeit, The Chto- 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 Straum’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, 125- 24, 194). The very way Strauss puts Thrasymachus at the center of his interpretation, bringing into relief the impartance of the friendship that finally arises between him and Socrates, is borrowed from Farahi (Strauss 1945: 383; 1959: 159). On the other hand, the combination of “Socratic” bold izing 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 fram the former to the latter. By this token, he may be the most perfect link be- tween the two worlds. We possess a fragment by him which was handed down to us by a Muslim biographer and daxographer and in which Farabi explains how he received his training in Aristotelian philosophy (and above all in higher logic and epistemology, through Aristotle's Pusterior Analytics) 12. Another reference to Thragymachus is in Farabi 1968: 10.me Poetics Today 19:2 from an uninterrupted chain of direct master-disciple transmission that reaches back to the last scions of Greek philosophical schools. To be sure, Farahi's text is not devoid of any self-praise: He wants to appear as the last heir of antique wisdom. Nevertheless, his account, barring soroe details, has an authentic ring.” Now, this claim, which prerumes the presence of a historical continuity between later Greek (pagan) thought and Islam, raises still other ques- tions: 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 to put it bluntly, Farabi “just cribbed the whole thing” from some second- Tate 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 paint of the historian of ideas: Strauss read Plato from Farabi’s point of view, but Farabi himeclf’ 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 commen feature supposed to run through the whole history ef philosophy up to the Enlightenment: esoteric style. It is a matter of common knewiedge that the most impertant thing in Strauss’s hermencutics 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 (ee Hokzhey and Zim- merli 1977). Eaotericiam as a means of communicating dangerous truths without endangering one's own security or civil peace is as old as pliloso- phy. 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, ia not essentially linked’ to the ides of religious ortho- doxy. We can spot traces of this basic attitude in the ancient world prier to the emergence of monotheistic world religions. The danger is older than they are—as the case of Socrates illustrates, viewed against the background 1g. Thm Abt Upaybi'a n.d. 604-5, The classical seudy on the historical background is Meyer- bof 1ggo. Discussion in S, Stroumsn 1991.Brague - Leo Strauss’s “Muslim” Understanding of Greek Philosophy 243 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.* 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. The reason alleged there—Plato wanted to hide that he had stolen ideas from Democritus!|—may be apocryphal and may stern from the increasing trend of late antiquity toward personalizing the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, some later philosophers toyed with this idea: Prochus, according to his biographer, thought that every philo- sophical book should be hidden from the youth, with the exception of the Chaldean Oracles and Plato’s Timasus (Marinos 1814: chap. 98). 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 (¢.g., “enlightened” writers concealing their “Spinozism”). Since Strauss avowedly took his departure from their study and 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." One point deserves to be heavily streased: Strause’s hermencutical origi- nality does not lie in the claim that there is a difference between (a) levels of readers, more or Jess 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 fimction (Gaiser 1959), Normally, written texts are exo- teric, whereas esotericiam belongs to oral teaching, which takes place in the inner circle of disciples. All those facts are relatively well-known. On the other hand, Straus’s central assumption is the existence of eso- teric writing, that is, written texts that are meant, in themselves and out of Hesse geet nt ert on Frotagaras (IX, 59) For examples in Rome, vee Momi- Gxher plenaae i Bec 96 me * 16. Seo, for insamce, the open-minded review in Beleval 1955 and Straum's rejoinder in Seraus i939: 208-ga. For an analogous bat la fair attack on Stranm’s method appBed to medieval falésfe, ee, for instance, Leaman 1980,244° Poetks Today 19:2 themselves, to convey their full meaning to the acute reader while keeping it out of the reach of run-of-the-mill people. The paradax lies in the blend- something like, if I may coin a bold formula, silent oral teaching. The singularity of the kind of esotericism Strauss supposes is ita 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 ac- cording 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 Tabingen school (Kramer 1982), not the discussions at the Academy, understood as a living inquiry and communication (spnusia) 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, immer Academic debates, or even death, thar prevented Plato from giving the Zavws the last touch-up might have played their patt 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 Jost dialogues), the choice being made by later transmitters with regard to criteria that are not necessarily to be supposed identical with the author’s books should be read as sacred, as a critique commonly leveled against Strauss has it,” 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 90 far as their flawless composition unswervingly mirrors di- vine perfection.” 17. See the cartoon in Burnyeat 1985: g2—small people paying obsisnnce to dusty old folios. 18. Cf. the description of the “Jerusalemite” understanding of contradictions in a sacred