Reason’s Inquisition: On Doubtful Ground 9781666921953, 9781666921960, 9781666921977, 1666921955

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Reason’s Inquisition

Reason’s Inquisition On Doubtful Ground Christopher A. Colmo

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-66692-195-3 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-66692-196-0 (electronic) ISBN 978-1-66692-197-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Ann

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction

1

PART I: THEORY AND PRACTICE



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Chapter 1: Theory and Practice: Alfarabi’s Plato Revisited Chapter 2: The Platonism of Alfarabi



7



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Chapter 3: Neoplatonism and Alfarabi’s Politics



45

Chapter 4: Beyond Theory and Practice: The Natural and the Voluntary in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Aristotle 59 Chapter 5: Plato’s Phaedrus and the Rhetoric of the Human Things

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Chapter 6: Theory and Practice in Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed

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Chapter 7: East Meets West: Alfarabi and Hobbes

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PART II: REASON AND REVELATION



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Chapter 8: Reason and Revelation in the Thought of Leo Strauss Chapter 9: A Man’s World: Women in Macbeth



133



143

Chapter 12: History and Gnosis: Voegelin’s Reply to Bultmann Chapter 13: On Voegelin’s Interpretation of Political Reality vii

101

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Chapter 10: Lucien Febvre and the Right to Unbelief Chapter 11: Reasoning about Revelation





149 161

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Contents

PART III: ANCIENTS AND MODERNS Chapter 14: Thucydides and the Political



Chapter 15: War and Peace: The Relevance of Aristotle’s Politics Chapter 16: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus



171 173 195 207

Chapter 17: Politics and Education: Rousseau’s Emile and the Reversal of Plato

213

Chapter 18: About Subjectivity

225



Appendix A



239

Appendix B



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Appendix C



243

Appendix D



245

References Index

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259

About the Author



267

Acknowledgments

Four of the essays included here have been previously published in English and are reprinted by permission. “Reason and Revelation in the Thought of Leo Strauss,” Interpretation 18, no. 1 (Fall 1990): 145–60. “Theory and Practice: Alfarabi’s Plato Revisited,” American Political Science Review 86, no. 4 (December 1992): 966–76. “About Subjectivity,” in Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory: Essays in Honor of George Anastaplo, ed. John A. Murley, Robert L. Stone, and William T. Braithwaite (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1992), vol. I, 345–58. This material is used by permission of Ohio University Press, www​ .ohioswallow​.com. “Freedom, Nature, and Community,” The Political Science Reviewer 26 (1997): 164–213 at 192–99. Reprinted here with revisions as “Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.” The English original of chapter 2, “The Platonism of Alfarabi,” appears here for the first time. It has been previously published as “Al-Farabi” in Leo Strauss y otros compañeros de Platon, edited by Antonio Lastra and translated by Manuel Vela Rodriguez in Aperion. Estudio de filosofia 4 (April 2016): 69–78. Appendix A, which supplements chapter 7, is from Muhsin Mahdi, editor and translator, Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1962), 19–20. I wish to thank Elliott Colla for his kind permission to reprint.

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Introduction

In Breaking with Athens (2005), an interpretation of the thought of the great medieval philosopher Alfarabi (870–950), my minimum objective was to understand Alfarabi as he understood himself. In the nearly twenty years since that publication, I have come to see many things that he understood, and I did not. These discoveries have only reinforced my assumption that in his thinking Alfarabi was not the prisoner of what one scholar called an “almost closed system” of Neoplatonic thought current in his time. On the contrary, his mind was free to explore what we can know and how we can know it. His questioning extended not only to matters of religion, but also to philosophy as he found it in the works of Plato and Aristotle. He had learned from Plato to ask about the relation between knowledge and life, but his answer to that question was different from Plato’s. To put it in a formula, Plato was primarily concerned with the ascent from opinion to knowledge, while Alfarabi shifted the emphasis to a concern with the relation between opinion and action. In this Alfarabi was what Lucien Febvre might have called a “precursor” of later thought, for example, Hobbes. In point of fact, my initial work on theory and practice in Alfarabi emerged from my attempt to deal with the problem of reason and revelation in the thought of Leo Strauss (see the end of chapter 8). Alfarabi was a pivotal figure for Strauss, so much so that scholars sometimes speak of Strauss’s “Farabian turn” (e.g., Tanguay 2007). Strauss viewed Alfarabi, at least in part, through the prism of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns and explored Alfarabi’s kinship with Plato. Indeed, he saw Alfarabi and the falasifa as a positive response to “what Plato called for.” My own work led me to see that Alfarabi’s thinking overlapped in some ways with modern thought. While no clear division of the intertwining themes of theory and practice, reason and revelation, and ancients and moderns is enforced among the following essays, the essays differ in emphasis sufficiently to justify placing each under one or another of those rubrics. Alfarabi and the falasifa is a further connecting link joining all of the essays in part I under the heading of theory and practice. Alfarabi’s novel conception of the relation of theory and practice seems to me strikingly present in his altogether original introduction to his Philosophy 1

2

Introduction

of Aristotle, the subject of chapter 4. The essay on Plato’s Pheadrus grows directly out of my interpretation of Alfarabi in Breaking with Athens (2005). In writing about Plato, Alfarabi distinguishes between philosophic knowledge and the philosophic way of life in a way that creates some tension between the two. One might playfully say that Alfarabi raises a question: Are they two or are they one? In order to pursue this question, I turned to a study of the Phaedrus. How is the philosophic way of life portrayed in the Phaedrus, and how is it related to the kind of knowledge the philosopher seeks? Traces of Alfarabi’s novel innovations with respect to theory and practice can, I think, be found in his great successor, Maimonides, and these are the subject of “Theory and Practice in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed.” The contrast between Plato and Alfarabi, developed in Breaking with Athens, suggested to me the possibility of finding parallels between Alfarabi and modern thinkers. In Breaking with Athens, I had suggested that there might be such parallels in a chapter called “Alfarabi’s Discourse on Method.” In chapter 7 of the current collection, I continue that theme by exploring some of the altogether uncanny parallels between Alfarabi and Hobbes with respect to both politics and method. Hobbes tells us that it is “reason’s inquisition” to decide disputes between politics and religion, a sentiment with which Alfarabi would fully agree. But who is to decide in disputes between reason and religion? Is reason to be judge in its own case? In borrowing from Hobbes the expression “Reason’s Inquisition” for the title of this collection, I have stretched the meaning of Hobbes’s usage, to include this latter question, which is, after all, not alien to Hobbes’s thought. The opposition and rivalry of reason and revelation is the unifying theme of part II. Is reason to be judge in its own case, particularly in relation to the claims of revelation? I tackled this theme for the first time in “Reason and Revelation in the Thought of Leo Strauss,” the lead essay in this part. It might seem odd to place an essay on Shakespeare’s Macbeth in this part and, indeed, at the center of the whole collection. What has Macbeth to do with reason and revelation? Recent scholarship has pointed out that Macbeth has very much to do with the “gospelling” of Scotland (Cantor 2000; Burns 2013), but my main focus is not on Christianity in Macbeth’s world. I have chosen to start from a more naïve point of departure, beginning from the assumption that Macbeth is a play about courage. That assumption led me to explore how a brave man deals, tragically, with the equivocations of both prophecy and nature. “Nothing is but what is not.” Surprisingly enough, my reflections on Macbeth provide the ground for the skeptical approach to experience and the principle of contradiction in evidence in my early essay on reason and revelation in Leo Strauss as well as for my probing of first intelligibles in Breaking with Athens (47–48).

Introduction

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Lucien Febvre’s Rabelais and the Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century continues to be of interest to me because it challenges the basic assumption that a thinker, be it Rabelais or Alfarabi, cannot have well-grounded thoughts that are out of step with his or her time, particularly with respect to religion. In response to interpretations of Rabelais that present him as an atheist waging an esoteric war against religion, Febvre contends that Rabelais could have no right to unbelief prior to the emergence of modern science. He is altogether a man of the Enlightenment in asserting the claim of the modern scientific outlook to be the last arbiter, but does this not mean that history rather than science is the last judge? This essay makes explicit my tacit assumption, in the essay on reason and revelation in Leo Strauss, that the question of reason and revelation must be decided prior to any appeal to modern science. The inclusion in part II of chapter 11 on “Reasoning about Revelation” and of chapter 12 on the exchange about the Old Testament between Voegelin and Bultmann seems obvious enough given their relation to the theme of that part. The assumption that Voegelin makes concerning the oneness of our consciousness of the ground of being and its implications for his understanding of both philosophy and religion is scrutinized in chapter 13. I have added in appendix D a short comment on the subject of negative theology, which Voegelin touches upon briefly. The essays in part III explore the issue of ancients and moderns, Thucydides representing here an alternative to Voegelin’s modern understanding of history and also a contrast to the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. What are Thucydides’s first principles and how does he find them? In chapter 15, I play devil’s advocate, doing my best to find common ground between ancients and moderns, Aristotle and Montesquieu. While Thucydides’s theme is war, Aristotle and Montesquieu present peace as the goal. Whether in the case of Montesquieu peace is at the expense of either nobility or freedom is a moot point. The moderns move to the fore in my previously published response to George Anastaplo’s interesting case for Marlowe’s Faustus as a representative of modern principles. While I generally agree with Anastaplo, I am puzzled by the extent to which Faustus (not unlike Macbeth) seems to be a man of faith. Chapter 17 presents what I see as Rousseau’s reversal of Plato in the Emile. The concluding chapter, also previously published, uses Kierkegaard as a point of departure for surveying the difference between ancients and moderns with respect to how we know and what we know.

PART I

Theory and Practice

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Chapter 1

Theory and Practice Alfarabi’s Plato Revisited

One of the most conspicuous themes of the work of Leo Strauss is the relationship between theory and practice. Whether Strauss regards this relationship as the highest, or one of the highest, themes of philosophy, he certainly sees it as one of the most urgent or necessary (1953, 162–63). In a recent book on Strauss, Heinrich Meier draws attention to the relatively early article “Farabi’s Plato” (Strauss 1945), in which Strauss directly and specifically addresses this subject (Meier 1988a, 95–96). Despite the title, the article gives a strikingly explicit account not only of the views of Farabi, or Alfarabi, but also of Strauss himself, at least at that time, on what we can know about the dignity of philosophy as a way of life—the theoretical life—and about the practical alternatives to it. Alfarabi (870–950 C.E.) was an Islamic philosopher with whom Strauss concerned himself for at least twenty years.1 Strauss was interested in Alfarabi as a predecessor to Maimonides and as a representative of a kind of rationalism distinct from modern rationalism. While Strauss saw modern rationalism as somehow in the service of the conquest of nature and, as such, having an essentially practical aim, Alfarabi, as interpreted by Strauss, presented an alternative rationalism that was essentially theoretical or contemplative. Strauss, like Nietzsche, seems to have diagnosed a crisis of modern rationalism; but where Nietzsche is forced to turn away from reason in search of a cure, Strauss seeks a remedy in a return to an earlier form of rationalism. Meier finds in “Farabi’s Plato” a significant statement of the philosophical position Strauss continued to elaborate over the following quarter of a century. Since Alfarabi’s philosophy is of interest in its own right, we have two reasons for examining Strauss’s early essay. The full title of the short work of Alfarabi that I, following Strauss, shall call the Plato is The Philosophy of Plato, Its Parts, the Ranks of Order of Its Parts, from the Beginning to the End. It is part 2 of the three-part Philosophy 7

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of Plato and Aristotle, part 1 being The Attainment of Happiness and part 3, The Philosophy of Aristotle.2 Strauss focuses his attention on the Plato because he believes that Alfarabi has been more candid in that work (where Alfarabi speaks through the mouth of Plato) than in works where he speaks in his own name—for example, The Attainment of Happiness (Strauss 1945, 371–75). I shall consider three topics, with a view to reflecting on the proper relation between knowledge or science on the one hand and human life or practice and its aims, on the other: (1) Does the knowledge of the best way of life belong to what Strauss calls philosophy “in the precise sense” (1945, 365) or does it belong to moral and political philosophy? (2) How do Alfarabi and/or Strauss view the status of Plato’s philosopher-king? Is political ability ultimately identical with philosophic ability? Could the two ever be combined in one individual? (3) Can philosophy change the world, as Marx hoped? Or does the philosopher necessarily exist in an imperfect world, now and always, as Strauss’s Alfarabi contends? Is philosophy essentially practical or theoretical? While I try to review several aspects of Strauss’s argument, it may be helpful to state the most significant conclusion of the inquiry at this point. For Strauss, much depends on the question, What is the right way of life? The standard by which to judge the best political order depends on the right, or best, way of life. The practical question about the best political order can be answered only by answering the question about the best way of life. The question about the best way of life is also a practical question. It is a deeper—a more fundamental—practical question than the question about the best political order. For Strauss, the right or best way of life turns out to be philosophy “in the precise sense” of theoretical, not practical, inquiry. Philosophy as the right or best way of life is not a value. It is not an arbitrary belief, conviction, preference, or lifestyle. According to Strauss, philosophy can be known to be the best way of life. In “Farabi’s Plato,” Strauss does not try to prove that philosophy is the best way of life. Rather, he devotes his attention to the question, Given that philosophy can be known to be the right way of life, what is the status of this knowledge? Is this knowledge itself theoretical knowledge or practical knowledge? Without a coherent answer to this question, we cannot be certain that we know what we mean when we claim to know that philosophy is the best way of life. This knowledge is crucial for political philosophy as it is understood by both Strauss and Alfarabi. Strauss answers the question clearly by affirming that the knowledge of the best way of life is itself practical, not theoretical, knowledge. I give reasons why this position is not persuasive. In Strauss’s classification of the forms of knowledge, practical knowledge is of lower rank or dignity than theoretical knowledge. It is hard to avoid the

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conclusion that practical knowledge is of lower cognitive status. Given that Alfarabi treats theoretical knowledge as certain knowledge, one must wonder whether practical knowledge is not less than certain. The consequences are obviously serious if the claim that philosophy is the best way of life is not more certain or true than rival claims on behalf of piety, honor, or pleasure. We are forced at least to raise the question how the classification of the knowledge of the best way of life as merely practical avoids decaying into the view that such “knowledge” is in fact a value judgment, preference, or mere conviction. It may seem ludicrous to suggest that Strauss ascribes to Alfarabi—and himself subscribed to—a position that collapses into a value judgment; but it may be equally ludicrous not to raise this question. Nietzsche would have us believe that all philosophers make such judgments, and Rosen singles out Strauss as being on this point a Nietzschean who regards philosophy as an act of the will (Rosen 1987, 110–11, 122–23, 127, 137). Clearly, Strauss does not intend to make philosophy an act of the will (see my earlier work, Colmo 1990). It is equally clear, however, that Strauss’s own position collapses if he cannot give a coherent account of the knowledge by which he knows that philosophy is the best way of life. That account, as Strauss presents it in the totality of his writings, is by no means obvious. This problem is the motive for the critique of Strauss’s view I now offer, of which the first section contains the most important results. I subsequently draw out further implications of Strauss’s position and, in some cases, point to ways in which alternatives to Strauss’s interpretation of Alfarabi suggest alternative answers to the basic philosophical questions at issue. PHILOSOPHY PROPER AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Alfarabi makes it plain that the practical or political art (we would call it political philosophy) is concerned with discovering and providing for the “desired way of life” (Alfarabi 1969, 60). Let us begin with the question whether the desired way of life, the life that makes man perfect or happy, can be the virtuous way of life (54). More specifically, can the virtues practiced in mosques and temples (i.e., the virtues inculcated by religion) make human beings perfect and happy (61)? Strauss argues persuasively that for Alfarabi, religion and the virtues based on religion do not provide the desired way of life (1945, 373). Strauss contends, more openly than Alfarabi, that the moral life (including, of course, the moral life based upon religion) cannot be the desired way of life because the moral life as such does not allow one to ask why one should be moral: “The moral life consists of the submission to the demands of honor and duty without reasoning why” (388). The premise of Strauss’s Alfarabi is that the

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desired way of life must be a reasoned way of life or a way of life of which a reasoned account can be given. The desired way of life cannot be based on mere choice be that choice inspired, mysterious, arbitrary, or irrational. The way of life acceptable to philosophy must be justified by reason. But morality that is rationally justified is no longer morality. Moral actions must be “choiceworthy for their own sake,” that is, because they are moral, not because they are rationally dictated (Strauss 1964, 27). The virtuous way of life cannot be the desired way of life because morality as such is inherently unphilosophic. Moral philosophy, if such a thing is possible, cannot be a part of philosophy in the precise sense. Of course, it is important to add that nothing stops Strauss or anyone else from moving outside the assumption made here in order to seek a morality that is rationally grounded. The moral life by itself cannot be the best way of life because it is unphilosophic. That the best—or, as Alfarabi says, desired—way of life is the philosophic becomes plain in Alfarabi’s discussion of the Socratic way of life. Alfarabi asserts, in terms much harsher than those used by Plato’s Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living (1969, 63–64). The philosophic is the only desirable life. But what is the philosophic life? According to Socrates, philosophy includes the study of moral, political, or practical things. For this reason, even Socrates does not escape Alfarabi’s implicit criticism, according to Strauss (1945, 363–65, 382–83). The best way of life is not the one that examines practical matters. Man’s perfection is to be found in the knowledge of “the substance of each of the beings,” “the beings,” or the “natural beings” (Alfarabi 1969, 54, 56, 60, 65). The way of life devoted to the pursuit of such knowledge is what Strauss calls philosophic in the precise sense (1945, 365). Whereas the moral or practical things are the products of human action or choice, philosophy in the strict sense seeks knowledge only of the natural things, which are not products of any human knowing, making, action, or choice. Philosophy in the precise sense is strictly theoretical. If we go this far with Alfarabi, then we arrive at a pressing difficulty, the “difference between the truly virtuous way of life and all other ways of life is based, not on a difference of purpose, of quality of the will, but on a difference of knowledge” (Strauss 1945, 388–89). Philosophy, as the life of reason, cannot be based upon an arbitrary choice or an act of the will. The philosophic way of life must be known to be superior to the moral or political life. The difficulty arises when we try to classify the kind of knowledge by which we know that philosophy is the right, or desired, way of life. Alfarabi carefully distinguishes between the knowledge of the beings (whatever these may be) and the knowledge of the ways of life (1969, 56; Strauss 1945, 365). A way of life is not a being (Strauss 1945, 389). Strauss does not try to avoid the obvious conclusion that even knowledge of the best way of life is not

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philosophic or theoretical knowledge; knowledge of the best way of life is supplied by the highest practical art (365). Strauss’s interpretation would eventually have to be brought into harmony with three works in which Alfarabi asserts or implies that “only the theoretical rational faculty can attain real knowledge of what happiness is” (cited in Galston 1990, 69). This amounts to saying, contra Strauss, that knowledge of the best way of life is theoretical knowledge. In general, Galston seems to take the view that Alfarabi blurs the traditional distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge so that the former includes much of the latter. The assertion that the knowledge of the best way of life is not itself philosophic knowledge (strictly speaking) goes well beyond the assertion, discussed earlier, that the virtuous or moral way of life is not, as such, philosophic. This assertion is clearly based on philosophic knowledge. This knowledge in no way implies, however, that philosophy itself cannot be philosophically known to be the best way of life. Nor, certainly, does it imply that knowledge of philosophy as the best way of life is itself moral “knowledge,” rather than philosophic knowledge. Strauss moves in a different direction. In keeping with the differentiation of theoretical and practical knowledge, he suggests that it would be foolish to assume that philosophy exhausts itself in the investigation of the relation between philosophy and happiness (1945, 363). In other words, it would be foolish to assume that philosophy exhausts itself in the quest for the best way of life or that the philosopher has no leisure for anything other than this quest (1964, 21, 29). Indeed, the quest for the best way of life and the knowledge of that way of life are “strictly speaking merely preliminary” (1945, 366). The study of “the human or political meaning of philosophy” does not belong “to the same level” as philosophy proper (366, 368). One is even a little surprised to find that in the course of explaining Alfarabi’s remarks on the limitations of Plato’s Socrates as compared with Plato himself, Strauss says that Socrates was “merely a moral philosopher” who “neglected natural philosophy” (1945, 383; see Alfarabi 1969, 66–67). The moral philosophy that is disparaged here seems to include reflection on philosophy as the best way of life; Socratic reflection surely included this subject. Since it is not philosophy strictly speaking, what is the status of political philosophy understood as the investigation of the human meaning of philosophy? Strauss cannot deny that practical knowledge in this extended sense is really knowledge. The discovery of the philosophic life as the best way of life cannot be reduced to the level of an arbitrary choice or an act of the will. The superiority of the philosophic life must be known, not willed (1945, 389). This point is central to Strauss’s position.3 Hence, Strauss’s final formulation of the problem in “Farabi’s Plato” seems to be that knowledge of the right way of life can “be described as philosophic since only the philosopher is

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competent to elaborate that question and to answer it” (366). Such knowledge, however, is of a lower level than theoretical knowledge; even the highest practical knowledge is merely preliminary. Moreover, that the knowledge of the ways of life is not a proper subject of theory (because, to repeat, ways of life are not beings) is itself a theoretical insight (389). To summarize in a way that may be more precise than clear, the knowledge that the theoretical life is the best way of life can be theoretically known to be merely practical knowledge. Is merely practical knowledge certain knowledge? According to Alfarabi, theoretical knowledge is certain knowledge (Alfarabi 1969, 13; Mahdi 1973, 7–9). Strauss says that Alfarabi identifies philosophy with “the art of demonstration” (1945, 364). But in his Philosophy of Aristotle, Alfarabi calls the art of demonstration “the art of certainty” (1969, 87). If the distinguishing feature of theoretical knowledge is its certainty, is practical knowledge somehow uncertain? If it is, then how does philosophy ward off the rival claims of other ways of life? Ways of life that are openly based on faith, belief, or conviction would seem to be, at any rate, more consistent than a philosophic life dedicated to knowledge but itself based on faith or conviction (Strauss 1953, 75). The least one can say is that in “Farabi’s Plato,” Strauss defines a position that entails this serious dilemma without, however, acknowledging it or dealing with it. It is interesting to compare Strauss’s 1945 essay with his later writings. In The City and Man, Strauss raises the question whether it is possible to know that the philosophic life is the best life: Socrates could not know this if he did not know that the only serious alternative to the philosophic life is the political life and that the political life is subordinate to the philosophic life: political life is life in the cave which is partly closed off by a wall from life in the light of the sun; the city is the only whole within the whole or the only part of the whole whose essence can be wholly known. (1964, 29)

Knowledge of the best way of life comes from understanding the relationship between the philosophic life and political life, or life in the cave. But Strauss does not tell us whether this understanding is theoretical or practical, though the last clause in the passage just quoted seems to invite the conclusion that understanding politics is a very high, if not the highest, kind of understanding. Does Strauss here mean to suggest the possibility that practical knowledge is more certain than theoretical knowledge? From this perspective, there would seem to be no longer any reason to exclude practical knowledge (as being the most certain knowledge) from philosophy in the precise sense.

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In an essay first published toward the end of his life (1971), “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” Strauss returned to the issue of this relationship (1983, ch. 1). The closest equivalent to what Strauss calls moral philosophy in “Farabi’s Plato” is what he calls Weltanschauungsphilosophie (ibid.)—assuming it is not closer to what Farabi calls the religious investigation of the beings (1945, 373n42). Weltanschauungsphilosophie conceptualizes religious, aesthetic, ethical, political, and practical-technical experience. Although this kind of philosophy “presents the relatively most perfect solution of the riddles of life and the world,” it is nevertheless to be distinguished from philosophy as rigorous science for the same reason that Alfarabi distinguishes between moral philosophy and theoretical philosophy. Weltanschauungsphilosophie is the “philosophy” of the cave because in one way or another it presents as true things about which we cannot be certain, no matter how much we may want that certainty. If this is so, then the thought from The City and Man can be restated by saying that Socrates can know that the philosophic life is the best way of life only because he can know that philosophy as rigorous science is unqualifiedly superior to Weltanschauungsphilosophie. Moreover, the superiority of philosophy as rigorous science seems to depend on its more stringent standard of certainty. Our primary question now becomes whether knowledge of the competing claims of the two kinds of philosophy is itself practical knowledge or theoretical knowledge. This time Strauss gives us a fairly straightforward answer: Reflection on the relation of the two kinds of philosophy obviously belongs to the sphere of philosophy as rigorous science. It comes closest to being Husserl’s contribution to political philosophy. In order to see the relation between philosophy as rigorous science and the alternative to it clearly, one must look at the political conflict between the two antagonists, i.e., at the essential character of that conflict. (1983, 36–37)

I take it that knowledge of the essential character of the conflict between the two kinds of philosophy includes knowledge of the superiority of philosophy as rigorous science. But it is equally clear that in “Farabi’s Plato” this is not the case. There, reflection on the practical issue of the relation between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy or reflection on the human meaning of philosophy does not belong to philosophy strictly speaking or to philosophy as rigorous science. “Farabi’s Plato” leaves the reader in some uncertainty concerning the status of reflection on the best way of life. Knowledge of the best way of life, the philosopher’s self-knowledge (1945, 366), seems to be neither knowledge strictly speaking, nor religion, nor morality. But if it is none of these, what is it? Plato suggests that what lies between knowledge and ignorance is right

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opinion. There is considerable doubt as to whether even right opinion—much less, mere opinion—“can nevertheless be described as philosophic” (ibid.). Yet Strauss cannot settle for less if the superiority of the philosophic life is to be known, rather than merely willed. Such difficulties may have moved Strauss to elevate political philosophy—understood as comprehending the question of the best way of life—to the level of philosophy as rigorous science. While this clarifies the epistemological status of political philosophy, it seems paradoxical. How can the knowledge of the best way of life fail to be a kind of practical knowledge? Alfarabi, for one, always identifies the knowledge of the desired way of life as practical knowledge. Strauss insists upon this point and Miriam Galston reinforces it when she argues that for Alfarabi, the practical differs from the theoretical not in subject matter but in purpose, namely a concern with human happiness (Galston 1990, 55, 69). Even if we reclassify knowledge of the best way of life as theoretical knowledge, some problems remain. In making use of “Farabi’s Plato,” Meier runs the risk (as he is no doubt aware) that Strauss may have partially changed his mind in later years. But the risk may not be as great as we have made it seem. The difference between “Farabi’s Plato” and “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy” hides a basic agreement concerning one of the problems Strauss must surely have had in mind when he spoke of “the fundamental and permanent problems” (Strauss 1959b, 39). What is consistent in the two essays is the supremacy of theoretical knowledge over self-knowledge or practical knowledge.4 The knowledge of the best way of life is either practical and therefore the lowest level of philosophy (as in the former essay) or given full theoretical status (as in the latter essay).5 Strauss never adopts the view that philosophy proper consists of theoretical and practical philosophy on an equal level (1945, 366). He never suggests that if knowledge of the best way of life is to be ranked higher among levels of knowledge then this should be accomplished by elevating the rank of practical knowledge, rather than by removing the knowledge of the best way of life from the level of the practical altogether. The two essays share a fundamental assumption or tendency. THE PHILOSOPHER-KING Strauss’s interpretation is based on the distinction that Alfarabi obviously makes between the science of the beings and the science of the ways of life (Alfarabi 1969, esp. 56). But Alfarabi makes another statement that is difficult to reconcile with the implications of this distinction. Alfarabi explicitly identifies philosophy with the royal art. Indeed, he follows Plato in making

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human happiness dependent on the existence of a philosopher-king. The passage in question is worth quoting in full as Strauss translates it: [According to Plato,] the homo philosophus and the homo rex are the same thing. [(1) According to Plato,] each of the two (sc. the philosopher and the king) is rendered perfect by one function and one faculty. [(2) According to Plato,] each of the two (sc. the philosopher and the king) has one function which supplies the science desired from the outset and the way of life desired from the outset; [(3)] each of the two (sc. functions) produces in those who take possession of it, and in all other human beings, that happiness which is truly happiness. (Strauss 1945, 367)

For Strauss, none of the statements in the passage he quotes strictly identifies philosophy with kingship or the royal art. The statements do no more than assert that philosophy and the royal art exist together in the same man; the two things are not identical.6 Because the third statement goes so far, however, as to assert that philosophy produces the happiness of all human beings, it does “practically” identify philosophy with the royal art (367). But Strauss regards this “extravagantly philanthropic remark,” when taken literally, to be “sheer absurdity” (378). According to Strauss, such an extravagant remark on Alfarabi’s part has three purposes. First, if philosophy is the best way of life or the only true happiness, most human beings would be excluded from happiness (Strauss 1945, 381). The identification of philosophy with kingship helps to avoid or hide this conclusion, since the philosopher-king makes possible the happiness of “all,” or of the nonphilosophic many. Second, the royal art is the practical art that provides the desired, or right, way of life (Alfarabi 1969, 60). From this point of view, the identification of philosophy with kingship is a “pedagogic divide” leading the reader toward the view that philosophy supplies not only the science of the beings but also the right way of life (1945, 370). Philosophy is self-sufficient. If philosophy is itself the royal or political art, then it is in no way dependent upon politics for guidance toward the desired way of life. Alfarabi’s third point, as Strauss sees it, derives from the fact that the philosopher necessarily lives in political society and that his relations with his nonphilosophic fellow citizens are “naturally difficult” (1945, 382). The philosopher needs a kind of political art in order to deal with these difficulties. Another way to say this is that philosophy, or wisdom, on the one hand and self-knowledge, or moderation (sophrosyne), on the other “cannot be separated from each other” (366). The recognition that philosophy and the royal art cannot be separated does not require, however, that we take the identification of philosophy with kingship literally.

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Alfarabi, Strauss says, “leaves no doubt . . . that philosophy and the royal art are coextensive” (1945, 368). Philosophy and the royal or political art necessarily exist together in the same human being: “A human being cannot acquire the specific art of the philosopher without at the same time acquiring the specific art of the king and vice versa” (367). Strauss thinks that this view is an acceptable alternative to the view that philosophy and kingship are identical. Strauss provides the following gloss on statements 2 and 3 of the passage quoted above in which Alfarabi describes the relationship between philosophy and the royal art: The function of the philosopher supplies by itself both the science of the beings and the right way of life and thus produces true happiness in both the philosophers and all other human beings; the function of the king supplies by itself both the science of the beings and the right way of life and thus produces true happiness in both the kings and all other human beings. (1945, 367)

This restatement of Alfarabi’s text brings out the fact that the text is quite compatible with the view that the function of the philosopher and the function of the king are two separate functions. Since there are two distinguishable functions, Strauss is able to preserve “the difference of level between philosophy proper and moral or political investigations” (368). The reference to “all human beings” falls under the heading of philanthropic extravagance explained above. Strauss’s restatement, however, does not bring out the fact that the function of the philosopher is “one function”—or “a single skill,” as Mahdi translates it (Alfarabi 1969, 60)—just as the royal function is “one function.” Even allowing for some kind of distinction between the philosopher and the king, it is still the case that one function or a single skill supplies both the desired science (the science of the beings, according to Strauss) and the desired way of life.7 We would have to admit that the one function or the single skill somehow combines theory and practice. Since Strauss sees theory as being on a different level from practice, the notion that one function or a single skill supplies the desired theory and the desired practice requires clarification. Strauss offers the following explanation. Philosophy, while primarily and essentially directed toward the science of the beings, “cannot be exercised fully without producing the right way of life”; kingship cannot be exercised fully without producing the science of the beings, but it remains “primarily and essentially concerned with the right way of life” (1945, 368). In the best case, philosophy and kingship cannot be separated; but they are not identical. It is certainly not unfair to ask why, if philosophy is essentially concerned with one thing and kingship is essentially concerned with another thing,

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Alfarabi emphasizes that the single function—philosophy—is concerned with two things (one theoretical and one practical) and the single function— kingship—is likewise concerned with two things. To speak only of philosophy, it can supply both the desired knowledge and the desired way of life only if it supplies both theory and practice. Strauss himself draws the necessary conclusion from his own premises: “The identification of philosophy as the highest theoretical art with the royal art as the highest practical art can be literally valid only . . . if contemplation itself is the highest form of action” (1945, 386). Strauss does not indicate whether the single function or art that supplies both the desired science and the desired way of life also supplies the knowledge of the desired way of life. With this question, I return to the first topic of the essay. Alfarabi’s (1969) ambiguous expression desired science or desired knowledge certainly seems to suggest the possibility that the desired science might include not only the science of the beings, mentioned by Strauss in his gloss to the text but also “the science of the ways of life,” which Strauss mentions elsewhere (1945, 365). The knowledge of the right way of life would certainly seem to be some part of the desired science. The least one could say is that while Strauss emphasizes the difference of level between the theoretical and the practical, Alfarabi emphasizes the unity of the function or skill that supplies both theory and practice. For Strauss, a unity of theory and practice can occur only on the plane of the theoretical: theory or contemplation itself is the highest form of action. There is a place where Alfarabi, in a somewhat different way, considers the possibility of a man who combines theoretical science and practical science; but he does not there say whether the combination itself ought to be regarded as theoretical or practical (1969, 66). On the latter point, there is only one explicit statement in the Plato: Alfarabi treats the practical arts as the arts that combine knowledge and action (58). He is silent about the possibility of a combination of knowledge and action on the level of the theoretical. Indeed, shortly before the passages suggestive of a philosopher-king, Alfarabi lists three possibilities: a scientific art that supplies the desired knowledge, a practical art that supplies that knowledge, or a practical art that supplies the desired way of life (59). While Alfarabi at least entertains the possibility of a practical art that supplies the desired knowledge, he does not entertain the possibility of a scientific or theoretical art that supplies the desired way of life.8 Statements by Alfarabi relevant to the subject of the philosopher-king do more than open the question whether theory is not itself the highest form of practice. As we have seen, under Strauss’s scrutiny, Alfarabi’s statements also raise the question whether philosophy is coextensive with practice in the sense of political kingship. Could both functions exist in the same human

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being? Would the excellence of the philosopher complement that of the king and vice versa? Or would the attempt to perform both functions diminish the performance of each in itself? In the latter case, is division of labor—one person, one function—superior to any attempt at the coexistence of the two functions in one human being? Or does the perfection of any one function fall short of being the perfection of the whole person? As Strauss explains (and as we have seen), Alfarabi “leaves no doubt” that in the best case, philosophy and kingship coexist in the same human being. This does not mean that the best philosopher must rule a specific city or nation, but, rather, that the best human being combines the two capacities. Strauss goes so far as to suggest that the philosopher and the king have the same nature (1945, 368n28). Here, again, it is instructive to compare “Farabi’s Plato” with a later statement by Strauss. In “Xenophon’s Anabasis,” Strauss makes the following observation: Xenophon stands somewhere in between the older Cyrus [a manly or political man] and Socrates. By this position he presents to us not a lack of decisiveness but the problem of justice: justice requires both the virtue of a man . . . and the virtue of Socrates; the virtue of the [manly or political] man points to Socratic virtue and Socratic virtue requires as its foundation the virtue of the man; both kinds of virtue cannot coexist in their plenitude in one and the same human being. (1983, 128)

In “Farabi’s Plato,” Strauss presents the coexistence of political and philosophic excellence in one human being as an alternative to the identification of those two excellences. One cannot acquire the one “without at the same time” acquiring the other (1945, 367). In his essay on Xenophon, he presents the two virtues as incompatible “in their plenitude.” These two statements contradict each other. What remains constant between the two essays is the superiority of the virtue of Socrates, the theoretical human being, to the virtue of Cyrus, the political being. Indeed, the gulf between the two has widened from the first essay to the second; theory remains supreme. Galston presents evidence that Alfarabi shared the view espoused by Strauss in his article on Xenophon (1990, 84). The activities presupposed by practical perfection could be understood “to be incompatible with, and possibly to undermine, the activity comprising theoretical perfection.” This problem arises because of the passages in Alfarabi in which theoretical perfection requires the complete transcendence of the body. On balance, Galston (1990, 53–94, esp. 56 and 91n69) rejects this view in favor of what she calls the comprehensive understanding of happiness, wherein theoretical and practical activity are both part of the essential nature of happiness.

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My own view is that practical activity is somehow fundamental—though by this I do not mean to imply that public service for the benefit of others is necessarily fundamental (see Galston 1990, 87). Nor do I at all mean that one must actually win an election and hold public office in order to actualize one’s full potential as a human being. Rather, the effectual truth (to borrow a phrase from Machiavelli) of the notion that theoretical perfection requires the transcendence of the body is that one must write (Walzer 1985, 261). Writing is a practical activity in that it both aims at the author’s own happiness and is a creative activity. I can think of no compelling reason why legislative activity (writing the laws of a people) or, at any rate, preparing the ground for such legislative activity should not be included in the kind of writing that is essential to the philosopher’s practical activity. Nor do I see this practical activity as ultimately incompatible with theoretical perfection. On the contrary, if we know only what we make, then some kind of creative activity is essential to theoretical activity. I am aware that for many scholars, the notion that we know only what we make is a distinctively modern notion, certainly not one to be found in Plato or Alfarabi. For reasons that go well beyond the scope of this paper, I reject this view. Plato and Alfarabi (in contrast to Socrates, who wrote nothing) show by their deeds the importance of creativity to the highest human life. It is not necessary to separate knowing from making, theory from practice, in order to discover the difference between ancients and moderns. The distinction between ancients and moderns would be sufficiently established if it could be shown that only for the moderns does the knowability of what we make lead to the possibility of wisdom. Nowhere do Plato or Alfarabi reach the conclusion that through knowing (so far as we are able) the things that we have made, we may thereby hope to know everything, because we have in principle made everything. On the contrary, the admission that we know only what we have made is a recognition of human finitude. There is no necessity to follow Strauss in separating theory from practice, knowing from making, in order to avoid the hubris of trying to turn philosophy into wisdom (see Colmo 1990, 158). THE JUST CITY According to Strauss, Alfarabi clearly distinguishes between theory and practice, with theory ranking higher. The goal of the best way of life is essentially theoretical, not practical. Yet Strauss also insists that philosophy cannot be separated from self-knowledge or from moderation. Self-knowledge includes the realization of the need for the truth about the whole, as well as “of the difficulties obstructing its discovery and its communication” (1945, 366).

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Self-knowledge is essentially practical or political knowledge. Strauss seems to separate the theoretical and the practical while at the same time tying them together. The contradiction in Strauss’s position (at least within the Alfarabi essay) is merely superficial. With the problem of communication, which Strauss raises in this context, we are clearly in the realm of politics—not in the esoteric sense of the practical knowledge that leads to philosophy but in the ordinary sense of one’s political relations with one’s fellow human beings. The philosopher’s self-knowledge is essentially practical or political knowledge in a sense that includes knowing how to get along with one’s fellow citizens. The philosopher knows that his knowledge as a philosopher is strictly theoretical; for it is knowledge about the things that are independent of human choice or action, not about the objects of choice and action that concern the vast majority of the philosopher’s fellow citizens. The philosopher is not an expert of the sort that knows how to get things done. Only the fellow citizen who is a potential philosopher might benefit from the philosopher’s practical knowledge that philosophy is the best way of life. But this very knowledge might be harmful to most citizens, since it “is tantamount to closing the very prospect of happiness to the large majority of men” (1945, 378). Most human beings cannot be philosophers and are, hence, barred from the best way of life. But the philosopher must not communicate this knowledge, lest he drive his fellow citizens to anger or despair. For this reason, the philosopher’s self-knowledge, in so far as it governs his relations with other citizens, is primarily a knowledge of the need for moderation. Strauss does not go so far as to advocate, in the name of moderation, a philosophic withdrawal from political life, although he does mention this alternative (1945, 362). What he suggests is the abandonment of what he calls Socrates’s “revolutionary” quest for the just city. It is not necessary for the philosopher openly to challenge the city, as Socrates did, thereby incurring, as Strauss puts it, “persecution and violent death” (383), a phrase that seems to owe more to Hobbes than to Alfarabi. Alfarabi’s Plato offers an alternative to the revolutionary way of Socrates: Plato substituted for [the revolutionary quest] a much more “conservative” way of action, viz., the gradual replacement of the accepted opinions by the truth or an approximation to the truth. The replacement, however gradual, of the accepted opinions is of course a destruction of accepted opinions. But being emphatically gradual, it is best described as an undermining of the accepted opinions. (ibid.)

In keeping with this “conservative” line of action, the philosopher-king who rules openly is replaced by the “secret kingship of the philosopher who lives

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privately as a member of an imperfect community” (384). Although the philosopher lives privately, this does not necessarily mean that he altogether withdraws from politics. He will not openly confront the city, but he still may exercise a kind of “secret kingship”—through his writings, for example. Strauss and Alfarabi are in full agreement that any political influence exercised by this private or secret rule will be “emphatically gradual,” but it is still necessary to ask what the goal is of this gradual philosophic political action. Strauss answers, The goal of the gradual destruction of the accepted opinions is the truth, as far as the elite, the potential philosophers, is concerned, but only an approximation to the truth (or an imaginative representation of the truth) as far as the general run of men is concerned. (1945, 384)

The aim of the philosopher’s gradual political action with respect to the potential philosophers is to undermine—and ultimately to destroy—their belief in the accepted opinions of their community. But why does Strauss call this way of acting “conservative”? The fact that it is gradual and secretive merely makes it conspiratorial, not conservative. It is conservative, however, with respect to the accepted opinions of the vast majority of citizens. These opinions can be at best only approximations to the truth. This might suggest that the activity of liberating the philosophers is merely a more extreme version of the activity of approximating the truth for the majority of people. The two activities might seem to go hand in hand; but in fact, they are opposed to one another. No matter how close the accepted opinions might be brought to the truth, these opinions are false. For example, the political truth is that one should act morally because moral action is good for its own sake—or so says Strauss, though Galston reports that “the doctrine that actions must be chosen for their own sake to qualify as moral does not appear in Alfarabi’s writings” even where one would expect it for moral and political reasons (1990, 172).9 For the philosopher, however, morality is, in Strauss’s words, “merely a means toward” the true happiness of the philosophic life (1945, 387). The potential philosopher must somehow be taught the philosophic truth about morality in such a way that teaching does not corrupt the nonphilosophic many. A parallel situation exists with respect to religion: “Conformity with the opinions of the religious community in which one is brought up is a necessary qualification for the future philosopher” (383)—even though an equally necessary qualification is that these opinions not retain their grip on the mind. Certainly, no philosopher would expose the religious errors of his community in an irresponsible attempt to create a secular society in which error does not exist. Every philosopher recognizes the need for moral and religious belief in a healthy political community. He also recognizes that these beliefs can never

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be converted into rational knowledge. The philosopher, as secret king, will do his best publicly to promote the accepted opinions with respect to morality and religion while esoterically working, through his books, to destroy the hold of those opinions over the minds of potential philosophers. This is the goal of the gradual, secret political activity of the philosopher as understood by Strauss. The political activity of the philosophers aims at the benefit of potential philosophers, but what of the philosopher’s duty to the community as a whole? Certainly, the philosopher tries to avoid hurting the nonphilosophers through any action that would undermine the moral and political opinions of the community; but does the philosopher have a desire or an obligation to benefit the community as a whole in a positive way? Reforming the tax structure or improving the school system certainly are not the duty of the philosopher as philosopher; nor are they goals that are amenable to the secret, gradual activity of the philosopher. Strauss is altogether silent about this kind of political reform. Gradual improvements of the tax structure or of the school system are certainly possible; but they are not the business of the philosopher, and it is not likely that they could be brought about through esoteric writing (unless we are to interpret the Platonic dialogues as a massive contribution to school reform). Such reforms require just the kind of open, public participation in political affairs that Strauss’s philosopher eschews. Gradual reform of the moral and religious beliefs of his community might be more in the philosopher’s line of work, but this could only be done for the ultimate benefit of the potential philosopher. Altering the religious beliefs held by the vast majority of citizens can only mean the exchange of one darkness for another, for these beliefs can never be converted into rational knowledge. In the light of this philosophic conservatism with respect to political action, how are we to understand Plato’s claim that the just city comes into being through the rule of the philosopher (Republic 473d–e)? Alfarabi tells us that the rule of the philosopher is not possible in imperfect cities (1969, 62), and Strauss adds that imperfect cities constitute “the world as it actually is and as it always will be” (1945, 381). In other words, “there are examples of men of the highest excellence whereas there are no examples of cities of the highest excellence” (1964, 49, also 238). Hence, the philosopher must learn to live in the nonphilosophic city, a place in which he is always “in grave danger” (Alfarabi 1969, 67; Strauss 1945, 382). Part of the philosopher’s self-knowledge involves learning to cope with this danger. He must learn to “adjust himself to the requirements of political life, or to the ways and opinions of the vulgar” (1945, 383). To some extent, then, the philosopher must, after all, assimilate himself to the ways of the vulgar (362). The philosopher’s self-knowledge is moderation. Precisely because the theoretical way of life can never be translated directly into moral or political practice, it is necessary

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that theory not be separated from practical wisdom (though Strauss does not say whether philosophy and moderation can “coexist in their plenitude”). Strauss’s moderate conclusion is that there can be no revolution leading to the just city. I shall try to summarize Strauss’s interpretation of Alfarabi on the subject of the political activity of the philosopher. The philosopher will not confront the nonphilosophic community in which he lives. Indeed, because he is a philosopher, he is in danger from the moral and believing community. He may consider himself lucky just to be left alone. Moreover, his greatest pleasure and happiness is not political activity of any kind but, rather, theoretical contemplation. For these reasons, the complete withdrawal from political life must be tempting. If he does not succumb to this temptation, it can only be because of his interest in and care for those in the community who are potential philosophers (but see Galston 1990, 87). His attempt to communicate with these future philosophers poses a grave threat to the moral and religious beliefs of the community. Hence the philosopher must undertake to communicate the most daring or radical thoughts in a way that minimizes their political impact.10 In this respect, the political action of the philosopher can correctly be described as conservative. It is probably not possible in this case to repeat my approach of contrasting these sentiments with anything Strauss said later. He did not change his views. It is, however, instructive to compare Strauss’s conservative view with the last page of Alfarabi’s Plato, upon which he bases it. Alfarabi says that Plato mentioned the Athenians (his own people) and their ways of life. He described how to abolish their laws and how to turn them away from them. He described his view regarding the way in which they could be moved gradually, and he described the opinions and the laws toward which they should be moved after the abolition of their ways of life and laws. (1969, 67)

Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between Strauss’s “conservative” way of action (which is not to be confused with a conservative way of thinking) and the revolutionary tone of Alfarabi’s closing paragraph.11 Strauss and Alfarabi agree that change must be gradual, but Alfarabi mentions as the ultimate goal much more sweeping changes than anything even hinted at by Strauss. Indeed, Strauss does what he can to soften Alfarabi’s language. For example, while Alfarabi refers three times, in the full passage at the end of the Plato, to the destruction or abolition of the generally accepted ways of life and corrupt laws, Strauss says that this destruction is “best described as an undermining” (1945, 383). The best description, it would seem, was not Alfarabi’s. Strauss’s wording made it less shocking. Instead, Alfarabi

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goes out of his way, as it were, to alarm the reader with the thought that at least one philosopher, Plato, sought to abolish the ways of life of his own people. Moreover, Plato sought to act as a legislator, replacing the old laws with new laws. Strauss’s esoteric reading of the passage just quoted tends to make it more conservative, more moderate, than it appears to be on the surface. By Strauss’s own account of esoteric writing, however, one would expect the surface of a statement to be more moderate than the hidden truth. At least one detail of the passage suggests that Alfarabi’s true intention is more radical than what he says on the surface. We notice that Alfarabi explains that the Athenians are Plato’s own people. Is it possible to conceive of a student of the Plato who did not know this? And if this knowledge is helpful, why withhold it until the end of the book? Strauss is surely right in thinking that the Plato is an esoteric work; it teaches by implication and insinuation. Under the circumstances, the notion that a philosopher might attempt to destroy or abolish the ways of life and the laws of his own city or nation can only be taken as a subtle (but not too subtle) challenge by Alfarabi to his own people and to the Islamic shari’a.12 I do not think that Strauss’s overall interpretation of the Plato allows him to notice the possibility that Alfarabi may here be making an amazingly bold declaration of his own political purpose (see Mahdi 1973, 25n10). Strauss certainly does not mention this point. As we have seen, Strauss does notice and make use of a statement in the Attainment of Happiness in which Alfarabi counsels that “conformity with the opinions of the religious community . . . is a necessary qualification for the future philosopher” (Strauss 1945, 383–84 and 373n41). The philosopher accepts the world as he finds it; and this, certainly, is in some sense true. Strauss supports his “conservative” interpretation of Alfarabi by citing a reference in the Attainment of Happiness to outward conformity in matters of religion. Strauss interprets the last page of the Plato in the light of a statement made in the Attainment of Happiness and uses that statement to make the conclusion of the Plato seem more moderate or conventional than it might otherwise seem. This is surprising, to say the least, given the “canon of interpretation” that Strauss wishes the reader “scrupulously to follow”: “Apart from purely philologic and other preliminary considerations, one is not entitled to interpret the Plato, or any part or passage of it, by having recourse to Farabi’s other writings. One is not entitled to interpret the Plato in the light of doctrines, expounded by Farabi elsewhere, which are not mentioned in the Plato” (375). Strauss explicitly mentions that one must favor the Plato in any place where its teaching conflicts with the Attainment of Happiness. Moreover, it is clear that Strauss particularly has in mind the priority of the Plato on religious matters. He is aware of the “deep silence” of the Plato with respect to the other life, the immortality of the soul, the soul itself, and even

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the Platonic ideas and the nous (intellect) by which the ideas are known (364, 371–72).13 He is aware—and he has made us aware—that by this silence Alfarabi rejects these ideas or beliefs. But the Plato observes a deep silence (or at any rate, a direct or explicit silence) on the issue of religious conformity. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that by introducing the idea of the necessity of religious conformity into his interpretation of the Plato, Strauss does not pursue the implications of his own canon of interpretation.14 What are those implications? How will we understand the last page of the Plato if we do not read it in the light of pious statements that Alfarabi makes elsewhere? Certainly, the Plato does not deny that the philosopher must be circumspect; he is, after all, in grave danger. Indeed, Alfarabi makes it clear that the art of Thrasymachus (i.e., the art of the sophist) may be most useful to the philosopher in speaking to the multitude (1969, 66; Strauss 1945, 383). Alfarabi translates the title of the Platonic dialogue Sophist as “falsifier.” One of the most necessary aspects of such falsification in Alfarabi’s circumstances must surely have been outward conformity in matters of religion.15 Even so, it is clear that the Plato is much more reticent than the Attainment of Happiness in stating the need for conformity in religious matters. I do not believe that this difference of emphasis can be understood on the basis of Strauss’s interpretation of the Plato. Strauss is primarily concerned, in “Farabi’s Plato,” with the fact that most people “are eternally barred, by the nature of things,” from philosophy (1945, 381). Hence, if philosophy is to be possible at all, then it must be possible in imperfect, nonphilosophic cities. According to Strauss, Alfarabi’s “last word” on this subject is that philosophy and the perfection of philosophy do not require the establishment of the perfect political community (ibid.). Consequently, Strauss turns the focus of his attention away from the question of how to improve political life and toward the question of how the philosopher can survive and continue to philosophize in imperfect cities taken as they are. In trying to deal with this problem, Strauss pursues his inclination or tendency to separate the philosophic, or theoretical, from the practical, or political. Indeed, separation becomes opposition as philosophic radicalism is juxtaposed with political conservatism. Turning to Alfarabi, we see that he also recognizes the severe limits of political change (see, e.g., Strauss, 384n69). He recognizes that the philosopher will never be glorified or exalted by the cities (i.e., will never rule openly or officially) and that all change must be gradual (1969, 67). Strauss’s interpretation notwithstanding, however, the Plato emphasizes the political change that is possible.16 Outward conformity is not always necessary, at least not to the same degree or to the same kinds of laws. If anything, the Plato makes clear that Alfarabi may have overestimated, in a particular case, his ability to abolish the ways of life and the laws of “his own people.”

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Strauss suggests that when Alfarabi talks about the legislator who will bring into being the just city of the philosopher, Alfarabi means by legislator a prophet, “the founder of a revealed religion” (Strauss 1945, 380; see Alfarabi 1969, 66). On this interpretation, the just city would not be possible except on the basis of revelation. Strauss leaves no doubt that since the just city is possible only on this basis, it is not possible as an actual city, or the just city is possible only “in speech” (1945, 379). My own suggestion is that Alfarabi himself is an example of the kind of legislator he has in mind as the founder of what he always calls “the other city”—that is, other than the cities existing in his time but certainly not otherworldly.17 If this makes Alfarabi a prophet—a subject nowhere explicitly mentioned in the Plato (but see Alfarabi 1969, 61)—then so be it. Alfarabi’s “prophecy,” or legislation, is clearly not based on divine revelation. The only plausible source of Alfarabi’s legislative authority is his philosophic insight. Alfarabi’s efforts to be the founder of “the other city” presuppose less opposition and more cooperation between the theoretical life and the practical, political life than Strauss seems to grant. NOTES 1. Published works dealing with Alfarabi span the period from Strauss 1935 to Strauss 1957. 2. I have used the English translation of all three works by Mahdi (1969). Unless otherwise indicated, all parenthetical citations in the text are to pages of Mahdi’s translation of Alfarabi with the exception of references between 357 and 393, which refer to pages in Strauss 1945. 3. See, for example, Strauss 1965, 29–30. I have no explanation for Strauss’s statement, in the last paragraph of “Farabi’s Plato,” that philosophy is animated by a “conviction” about the life worth living—a word that seems to imply belief and will, rather than knowledge. 4. Meier correctly represents Strauss’s theoretical emphasis when he quotes Strauss’s reference to “the necessarily anonymous truth” (Meier 1988b, 765; cf. Strauss 1945, 377). On Farabi’s view of the “anonymous truth,” contrast the relatively lengthy account of Protagoras’s view (i.e., that the knowledge natural to man is not anonymous but relative to each individual) with the brief and obscure account of Plato’s rejection of Protagoras’s view (Alfarabi 1969, 54). This is one of only two places in the Plato (not counting the title) where Plato is mentioned by name. In the place where the anonymity of thinking is the issue, Alfarabi does not allow the philosopher to remain anonymous. I am reminded that the Socratic ideas make the human good anonymous. It is indeed strange that Socrates and Descartes should share in their thinking the common feature that what is truly intelligible (the ideas in one case, body as extension in the

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other) is not alive. It is not surprising that a rift between the intelligible and the good has become a problem (the problem?) in Western thought. The mature Strauss points out a similar or related “defect” in the mature Socrates (1966, 59). In my view, one would expect Strauss to share this “defect” and hence not to notice it in Socrates. Obviously, my net does not catch all the fish in Strauss’s waters. 5. These two alternatives are, in a way, present within “Farabi’s Plato.” Early in that essay, realization of the need to adjust to the requirements of political life belongs to “self-knowledge” (Strauss 1945, 366), while, later, that realization seems to derive from “insight into the nature of beings” (383). The latter view seems very close to the position Strauss takes in “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy.” 6. While she does not offer an interpretation of the passage just quoted, Galston cites with approval the passage in which Strauss says that philosophy and kingship are not the same art. But this observation is appended to a paragraph stating that “Alfarabi appears to maintain the more extreme thesis that [practical rational excellence and moral virtue] are constitutive parts of philosophy itself” (1990, 64). 7. Alfarabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences confirms the thought that the highest royal craft is supplied by one faculty, not two. See Mahdi 1975, 131–37. 8. Alfarabi says that the practical arts are not adequate for obtaining the desired knowledge or the desired way of life (1969, 59). But the desired way of life is by definition the product of a practical art (60). The first statement makes sense only if it is limited to the generally accepted practical arts or to the practical arts practiced by the multitude (59). 9. See note 13. 10. Strauss’s own publications from the last decade of his life might be thought to exemplify this kind of writing. 11. The contrast between the end of the Plato and Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed 2.17 is also striking. Maimonides presents himself as building “a great wall” around the Law to protect it, a project that certainly sounds conservative. Strauss tells us that he studies Alfarabi in order to have the necessary background for understanding Maimonides (1945, 357, 393). Is it not possible, however, that Strauss’s understanding of Alfarabi is colored by reading Alfarabi under the influence of a knowledge of Maimonides’s intention to protect and preserve the Jewish law? Does Maimonides in fact become the background for Strauss’s interpretation of Alfarabi? However that may be, the contrast I am suggesting between Alfarabi and Maimonides need not be explained in terms of basic philosophic differences. It is one thing to attack the shari’a at a time of Muslim power; it would have been quite another thing to attack the halackha during the Diaspora. On Alfarabi and Maimonides, see Berman 1974, esp. 163. 12. On the distinction between nomoi and shari’a, see Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed 2.40. Galston comments that there is no reason “to assume that Alfarabi must have viewed the conventions of his time as disparagingly as Socrates regarded the way of life of the Athenians,” but she offers no Alfarabian text as support for this claim or for her own view that “many features of Islam were a vast improvement over Greek morality and opinions” (1990, 173).

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13. As Strauss points out, Alfarabi is silent about immortality while mentioning the Phaedo, in which immortality is, of course, a major theme. Strauss concludes, rightly I think, that this silence amounts to a rejection of the doctrine of immortality. According to Alfarabi’s summary, the Phaedo seems to be a book about whether a man should be willing to die for the sake of the practice of the true moral virtues, this alone being sufficient reason to sacrifice one’s life if need be (1969, 63). I take it that there is a connection between Alfarabi’s rejection of immortality and his refusal to give a clear affirmative answer to the moral question he raises here. It might seem that if morality is to be treated as an end in itself and if human beings are to be expected to make sacrifices commensurate with such an end, then it is necessary to assume that the soul is immortal. Alfarabi does not agree, however, in making this last assumption. 14. One could avoid this conclusion if one assumed the Strauss is here writing esoterically. Given that Strauss is an esoteric writer, does that fact dispose of the present case? In this instance, we could avoid what seem to be contradictions in Strauss’s argument by ignoring his “conservative” remarks about political action, just as we are inclined to ignore Alfarabi’s admonitions to religious conformity or, at any rate, to minimize their significance. But the weight of the evidence is against this view of Strauss’s intention in the case in point. For one thing, it is possible to discover in Alfarabi a political alternative to the acceptance of the imperfect communities existing in his time. Strauss’s “conservative” remarks, however, seem to be his “last word” on the subject. I have placed the word conservative in quotation marks as a reminder that it applies only to Strauss’s attitude toward political action; there is nothing conservative about Strauss’s thinking. 15. This certainly does not mean that one compartmentalizes one’s thinking so that one is a believer on holy days and a philosopher on other days (Strauss 1945, 374). See Alfarabi’s criticism of the sophist Hippias, whom Alfarabi speaks of as if he were in fact two men (1969, 59). This passage helps us to understand how Alfarabi would distinguish between the philosopher and the sophist. The sophist is somehow a man in contradiction with himself. But then, we may ask, does anyone ever fully escape contradiction? 16. Muhsin Mahdi sees the realization of the political good as being Alfarabi’s “central concern.” Concerning the view that philosophers “should tend only their private gardens,” Mahdi writes, “Perhaps there are times and places which necessitate these views. But one need not make a virtue out of necessity” (1981, 19–21). 17. According to Alfarabi, the title of the book dealing with the legislator (Epinomis) means “investigator.” In the Plato, the one who is repeatedly said to investigate is Plato himself. Alfarabi is, of course, also such an investigating legislator.

Chapter 2

The Platonism of Alfarabi

THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS In his contribution to a memorial article on “The Achievement of Leo Strauss,” Harry Jaffa described the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns as the practical theme of the thought of Strauss.1 He juxtaposed this practical theme to Strauss’s theoretical theme, which Jaffa identified as the relation between reason and revelation. In distinguishing these two themes, Jaffa made use of yet a third theme of the works of Strauss, the relation between theory and practice. In attempting to introduce the reflections of Strauss on the medieval philosopher Alfarabi (870–950) and Alfarabi’s Platonism as Strauss came to understand it over more than a quarter of a century between 1931 and 1957, we will have occasion to touch upon all of these themes: ancients and moderns, reason and revelation, theory and practice. The beginning is always uncertain. We will focus in this essay on the collection that Strauss published in 1935 under the title Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors.2 The predecessors referred to by Strauss are the medieval falasifa, represented by Avicenna, Averroes, and, above all, Alfarabi, whom Strauss regards as the founder of the approach to philosophy taken by the falasifa. In what sense even Alfarabi is or is not the beginning becomes a question when we encounter the fact that Strauss traces Alfarabi’s own point of departure back to Plato. Philosophy and Law (PhL) consists of three essays collected into a book with the help of an “Introduction” written for the purpose of binding the essays together, of making a one out of a many. The first of the three essays is a review of Julius Guttmann’s Philosophies of Judaism to which Strauss gave the title “The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.” The “Introduction” and the essay on Guttmann reveal the complicated sense in which the quarrel 29

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between the ancients and the moderns is related to the problem of reason and revelation. Let me state the issue not as it appeared to me from the beginning but rather as it appeared after some reflection. The radical Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries centered on the critique of religion. In Strauss’s view, this critique succeeded at the level of practice but not at the level of theory. Orthodox belief was certainly susceptible to “mockery,” especially in light of the triumphs of the new natural science. One could defeat orthodoxy with ridicule and laughter. But the radical Enlightenment did not refute revelation at the theoretical level. The radical Enlightenment was forced to employ a Napoleonic strategy (PhL 32), leaving orthodoxy isolated but unconquered in the rear. Why did the theoretical refutation fail? According to what Strauss says, it is impossible to refute the unfathomable God (PhL 31). In light of the distinction between ancients and moderns, this weighty explanation can be seen to be too successful. It leaves any confrontation between belief and unbelief simply at a draw. One is left with an arbitrary choice between belief and unbelief. Whether this arbitrary character is an obstacle to belief, Strauss saw it as an obstacle to philosophy. Indeed, he saw an arbitrary choice in favor of reason and against belief as a dogmatic atheism that is fatal to any philosophy. One way to state the difficulty with the above explanation of the failure of the radical Enlightenment to refute orthodoxy is that it is too comprehensive. If the radical Enlightenment cannot refute belief in the unfathomable God, neither can the falasifa and neither can Plato. Does Strauss in 1935 think that this issue is simply undecidable from a philosophic point of view? We too must employ a Napoleonic strategy and leave this issue behind for the moment. As it happens, Strauss provides a second explanation of the failure of the radical Enlightenment to refute orthodoxy at the theoretical level. The radical Enlightenment could show that orthodoxy was a form of belief and not a form of knowledge. One might believe in the unfathomable God, but one could not know him. Mere belief does not have the binding character peculiar to the known (PhL 30, Liberalism Ancient and Modern [LAM] 254, Natural Right and History [NRH] 75). But what is the binding character or the binding power of the known? The radical Enlightenment saw knowledge as binding because it is the product of human consciousness. Knowledge is a union of theory and practice in which man is the master of the world and of his life. The world created by man would erase the world given to man (PhL 32). In a world created by man, we know only what we ourselves have made.3 Whereas for Plato, the cave is a world of man’s making from which he might ascend to the real world, for the radical Enlightenment the cave is the home of man in so far as he can furnish it with the products of his own mind. There is no ascent to a real world. It is the world as product of human consciousness

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from which there is no ascent to reality that Strauss in the notes to the “Introduction” calls the second, “unnatural” cave (PhL 136). Belief lacks the binding character of the knowledge we ourselves have made, but this critique of orthodox belief on the basis of the Enlightenment view of knowledge provides the means for an orthodox defense of orthodoxy. Orthodox belief is also a product of human consciousness or can be interpreted in this way. As the product of the human mind, belief can be understood as another kind of truth. In this way too, the truth of science cannot refute the truth of orthodoxy (PhL 65–66). Orthodoxy can reinvent itself, and thereby defend itself, by claiming for itself the ground first discovered by the radical Enlightenment in order to refute orthodoxy. In the earlier view, orthodoxy and unbelief might clash over claims to objective truth, such as the eternity of the world or the creation of man. From this new point of view, “the relation of God to nature is no longer intelligible and thus is no longer even interesting” (PhL 24). Within this new frame of reference, neither the eternity of the world nor the evolutionary development of man refutes orthodoxy. In the traditional view, the unfathomable God of revelation cannot be refuted because he is unfathomable. In the new view, made possible by the radical Enlightenment, God cannot be refuted because he is one of the “posits of consciousness” (quoted from Guttman by Strauss, PhL 47). Religion takes its place as an autonomous domain of culture created by human consciousness (PhL 42). The defense of orthodoxy on the ground provided by the radical Enlightenment “is bought at the cost of the belief in the authority of revelation.” “The Bible must no longer be understood as revealed, but as the product of the religious consciousness” (PhL 45). Strauss finds this point of view “unintelligible in itself” (PhL 63). “Whoever ‘believes’ in revelation in this manner actually, as Lessing puts it, keeps only the names and repudiates the things” (PhL 64). Strauss finds this view unintelligible in itself; he does not find it unintelligible on the basis of the radical Enlightenment’s theory of knowledge. We know only what we ourselves have made. It follows necessarily that the revelation knowable by us is a product of the religious consciousness. Strauss seeks to escape the perspective of religious consciousness, the perspective that sees religion as a product of human consciousness, by turning to the claims of the law, especially of the divine law. Philosophy and Law is a return to Plato and Alfarabi because it is a return to an encounter with the Law as a comprehensive way of life. Law as a comprehensive way of life subsumes what we might otherwise treat independently as ethics. One of the key things that Strauss found in Alfarabi or, at any rate, one of the things that was reinforced by his study of Alfarabi, was the notion that there is no ethics prior to or independent of politics and law.4 Law in this sense does not admit of being treated as a posit of consciousness nor is it one domain of

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culture among others (PhL 60). As Plato understands it, the Law claims to be given by the god and rooted in the truth about the whole. The Law points to and seeks to be grounded in the whole truth about the whole. The encounter between Philosophy and Law is intended to return philosophy to the level at which it engages the Law thus understood. As Strauss presents it, Alfarabi brings this understanding of law to completion. Alfarabi completes what might be thought to have been completed by Plato. What Plato Called For “The prophet is the founder of the Platonic state; the prophet carries out what Plato called for. The author of this view of prophecy appears to be Alfarabi.” (PhL 125, italics in original unless otherwise indicated). With these two sentences—the conclusion of one paragraph and the first sentence of the next—Strauss places Alfarabi squarely at the center of his effort to recover the meaning of Platonic politics as well as the meaning of Law as it was understood by the Greeks and by the falasifa. But what is the meaning of Platonic politics? Why does Strauss turn to the falasifa in order to uncover and recover the Platonic view? Why does Alfarabi—rather than Avicenna, Averroes, or Maimonides—take pride of place in this quest to discover the meaning of Platonic politics? In order to fully answer these questions, we would have to spell out something Strauss never explains, a question he never even directly raises. Why not turn to Augustine’s City of God as the key to the meaning of Platonic politics? If what Strauss tells us is that Platonic politics is somehow completed by prophecy, by revelation, then is it not Augustine who is the founder of this view of Plato? So far as I know, Strauss nowhere spells out in any detail the answer or answers to these last two questions. He offers at most the following hint. The Islamic and Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages are guided by “the primary, ancient idea of law as a unified, total regimen of human life; in other words . . . they are pupils of Plato and not pupils of Christians” (PhL 73). Needless to say, we cannot attempt here to supply the full and explicit account, which Strauss does not provide in Philosophy and Law, of what this difference between the pupils of Plato and the pupils of the Christians might be.5 Strauss does give a full and explicit account of what Plato called for. What Plato called for—that philosophy stand under a higher court, under the state, under the law—is fulfilled in the age of belief in revelation. With all their freedom in the pursuit of knowledge, the philosophers of this era are conscious at every moment of their answerability for the law and before the law: they justify their philosophizing before the bar of the law; they derive from the law their authorization to philosophize as a legal duty to philosophize (PhL 132).

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The contemporary reader misunderstands this statement if he takes it to mean merely that the Islamic and Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages labored under an historical accident or even misfortune. The accountability of philosophy before the law is not presented here as a mere historical fact testified to most famously by the trial of Socrates before the law of Athens. The accountability of philosophy before the law is what Plato called for—what Plato required or demanded—if philosophy itself is to be properly understood. “The freedom of philosophy depends upon its bondage” (PhL 92, also 88). This striking and paradoxical formulation is first of all a statement of the problem and only secondarily an explanation of the relationship between philosophy and law. Strauss’s interpretation of what Plato calls for raises several questions. Why does Plato call for the subordination of philosophy to law? What arguments lead Plato to see the need for such subordination? How did the revealed law as interpreted by the falasifa fulfill this need? What does it mean to interpret the revealed law as meeting a requirement first raised on simply rational or purely human grounds by Plato? Before turning to a consideration of the reasons behind Plato’s call for law, let us pause to consider the last question raised above. Assuming that the revealed law—Sharia or Torah—does fulfill the law called for by Plato, what does the simply human origin of this call mean? If we take Strauss at his word, then the more clearly Plato calls for or predicts the divine law the more clearly he becomes a stumbling block to belief in the divine law. Plato’s approximation to the revelation furnishes the medieval thinkers with the starting-point from which they could understand the revelation philosophically. But if they were not to lose confidence [lose faith] in the revelation because of Plato, then it had to be the case that Platonic philosophy had suffered from an aporia in principle that had been remedied only by the revelation. . . . [Plato’s] Laws point to the revelation but only point to it. (PhL 76)

What is Strauss saying here? Clearly Plato cannot be understood by the falasifa as fully elaborating a legal code comparable to the codes provided by Moses and Muhammad. The Islamic falasifa cannot entertain what Strauss calls Nietzsche’s “remarkable juxtaposition” of Plato and Muhammad (PhL 141n25 referring to Will to Power, Aph. 972). According to Strauss, Avicenna says that what has to do with prophecy and religious law is contained in Plato’s Laws.6 But Strauss realizes that this cannot be fully or simply true without undermining the truth of the revealed law. If Plato has fully accomplished in the Laws what the revealed law seeks to accomplish, then the revelation is not necessary. Human reason can provide everything that is necessary to human life. Human reason is sufficient to itself. It is in this sense

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that relying on Plato’s Laws threatens to cause the falasifa to lose faith in the revealed law. In order to avoid the unbelieving consequence of finding in Plato’s Laws a full and adequate statement on prophecy and the divine law, Strauss qualifies Plato’s achievement by saying that Plato only calls for the prophet and points to the divine law. Strauss even goes so far as to say that Plato “predicts” the revelation (PhL 128–29). Perhaps this prediction turns Plato himself into a kind of prophet. However that may be, Plato himself never enters the promised land. We find the need for the divine law in Plato only as a kind of aporia. We find this aporia spelled out most clearly in one fine sentence that Strauss writes in 1926 concerning Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine law. According to this doctrine, the divine law has the function of determining the means that serve the heterogeneous goals in life of the wise few and the unwise many through a single legal order.7

This sentence from an early essay on Spinoza helps to make clear what Strauss means when in Philosophy and Law he writes that in the Laws “Plato transforms the ‘divine law’ of Greek antiquity into truly divine laws, or recognizes them as truly divine laws” (PhL 76). Divine law would encompass both the welfare of the multitude and the “specific perfection of man,” that is, theoretical perfection (PhL 121), in a single law, but “such a law . . . can only be of divine origin” (PhL 76). In this approximation to the revelation without the guidance of revelation we grasp at its origin the unbelieving, philosophic foundation of the belief in revelation. (PhL 76)

The unbelieving motive that points Plato toward the divine law is, according to Strauss, the need to bring together in a single legal order the goals of both philosophic and non-philosophic human beings. But, as Plato shows in the Republic, such a legal order cannot be realized; it can only be wished for or, as Strauss might say, called for. Or as the Laws intimates, such a legal order could only be of divine origin. Strauss makes the point that while the divine law can only be called for or pointed to by Plato, the medieval falasifa actually lived under a divine law (PhL 75). Whereas Plato could only hope for a philosopher-king or for a divine legislator, the Islamic and Jewish falasifa could recognize in the actual prophet who existed in the past a realization of what Plato called for. What Plato “conceived in its potentiality” is available for the falasifa as an actuality. The falasifa complete what might be thought to have been completed by Plato. While we find this formula helpful, Strauss does not use it. To make the formula more precise, we would have to say

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that the falasifa complete what Plato could not complete by reason alone or without revelation. This account leaves us with several questions. Strauss writes of “the unbelieving, philosophic foundation of the belief in revelation.” But what for Plato was the foundation of this unbelief? Did Plato call for a revelation that he knew to be impossible? Did the falasifa share this unbelief? Ghazali certainly thought so. We need to look more carefully at what Strauss calls the philosophic interest in revelation. The Philosophic Interest in Revelation Strauss makes it clear that the falasifa modify or correct Plato. They do not simply see Plato as calling for a philosopher-king, but for a philosopher-prophet. It is not the case that, as Plato holds, the coincidence of philosophy and political power suffices for the realization of the true state; the ruler-philosopher must be more than a philosopher. In sketching the true state, Plato predicted the revelation; but just as, in general, it is only the fulfillment that teaches a full understanding of the prediction, so the Platonic sketch must be modified on the basis of the actual revelation, the actual ideal state. (PhL 128–29)

What is the reason for the philosophic interest in revelation? Why does Alfarabi substitute the philosopher-prophet for the philosopher-king? And why does Alfarabi, as interpreted by Strauss, see this substitution as the fulfillment of what Plato called for? Strauss first problematizes the interest in revelation. Does revelation make it possible for the many to know the truth even though they cannot discover it on their own? Or does revelation allow the philosopher to find truths accessible to reason that might nevertheless be arduous to discover and that might remain uncertain without revelation? Strauss finds these answers inadequate. They do not give the philosopher as philosopher an interest in the revelation (PhL 62, 67). “Rationalism with belief in revelation” is for Strauss “shockingly unintelligible” (PhL 64) if it means that revelation adds nothing to what can be known by reason alone. In order to elaborate the philosophic interest in revelation, Strauss “sharpen[s] the question: what is the final end of prophecy? Why does the human race depend on prophets?” (PhL 120). Strauss spells out an answer to these questions that he says Maimonides does not expressly give; we may add that Alfarabi also does not expressly give this answer, though it seems to be an answer that Strauss attributes to the falasifa, including Alfarabi and Avicenna (cf. PhL 123–24). “The specific problem of prophecy is a subject matter of politics” (PhL 70). Man is by nature a political animal. Human beings both desire to live with

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others and need association with others in order to perform the multiple tasks of life. These are, Strauss notes, two different reasons for living together (PhL 120, citing Politics 1278b19ff.). To this Aristotelian account of the origins of political life Strauss adds a Hobbesian note: “in no other species is there so great a variety, even an opposition, in the character of the individuals as there is in the human species,” and “men need a governor” so that “concord based on statute replaces the natural opposition” (PhL 120). In this striking account of the origin of the political, Aristotelian natural sociality is joined to the Hobbesian state of war. It is as if Strauss reverses Rousseau’s critique of Hobbes. According to Rousseau, men in a state of nature are not in conflict because they are asocial and live apart. In Strauss’s account, it is the natural sociality and interdependence of human beings that discovers their natural opposition and conflict. Rousseau is right to think that society produces comparison, competition, and conflict, but he is wrong to think that sociality itself is not natural. Man’s natural sociality forces him to find a remedy for his natural hostility to those who differ from him in character and opinion. Here we find the basis of the complex Platonism that Strauss attributes to the falasifa, including, we must assume, the first of the falasifa, Alfarabi. The existence, the survival, of the human race depends on the existence of human beings capable of governing. The need for a governor takes two forms, the need for legislation and the need for rule. Strauss focuses on the need for legislation. But why must the legislator be a prophet? Cannot unassisted human reason provide the legislation that human beings need in order to live together? Strauss’s answer to this question must be disentangled from his commentary on the work of Julius Guttmann. According to Strauss himself, only the most general and basic demands of morality can be discovered by reason. “[T]he principles of human community life, natural right,” can be discovered by reason, “but not the individual stipulations through which alone those principles can become effectual” (PhL 73). The philosopher as philosopher cannot legislate those things that are not decided by reason. The specific perfection of man, the ultimate end of the divine law, is decided by reason, but the “individual stipulations,” the particulars of the law are not decided by reason. Strauss is explicating Guttmann when he says that Guttmann calls these individual stipulations “norms of right of a purely technical kind,” but Strauss speaks in his own name when he says that for Saadia Goan “and the great part of the later Jewish philosophers of religion” (using Guttmann’s language in order to refer here to the falasifa) “these individual stipulations . . . can be properly determined only by revelation” (PhL 73). The philosopher can know without revelation that men must live in communities and that in order to do this they must have laws regulating the myriad details of life. The philosopher can know without revelation that philosophy itself is the specific perfection of man. What the philosopher cannot know, what only

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the prophet can legislate, is the “individual stipulations,” without which the law cannot be “a unified, total regimen of human life.” Despite the unity of the law, Strauss recognizes two kinds of law (PhL 70). There are human laws that aim at the welfare of the body and submission to which allows contentious human beings to live together in peace. The second kind of law aims at the perfection of man, at the perfection of his intellect. This is a “divine law—whose proclaimer can only be a prophet” (PhL 71). It is difficult to escape the expectation that revelation must provide for the specific perfection of man and that revelation therefore provides for the divine law that aims at this perfection. The philosophic interest in revelation would then follow from the philosophic interest in the perfection of man and from the philosophic interest in the divine law that aims at this perfection. However compelling the connection between revelation and the divine law may seem, it does not seem to be Strauss’s last word on the matter. On the contrary, the philosopher does not need revelation in order to know the specific perfection of man. But as a human being and a political being the philosopher does need the law to regulate many things that reason alone cannot decide. These are the laws “absolutely necessary to life” (PhL 66), laws the truth of which cannot be decided by reason. [T]he philosopher cannot give this law either to himself or to others; for while he can indeed, qua philosopher, know the principles of a law in general and the principles of rational law in particular, he can never divine the concrete individual ordinances of the ideal law, whose precise stipulation is the only way the law can become effectual, or simply, can become—law. The philosopher has therefore an interest in revelation, since he is essentially a man and man is essentially a political being (PhL 71).

This passage strongly suggests that revelation is the source of “concrete individual ordinances” and “precise stipulations,” whose content cannot be determined by reason alone. Is a man required to marry his brother’s widow or is he forbidden from doing so? The lawgiver must be a prophet because only revelation can answer this question. Reason alone cannot. Strauss does not give this example of a law that reason cannot provide. Indeed, the only example he gives seems to point to the necessary connection between revelation and the divine law. Only revelation can tell us whether the world is eternal or created, and the truth about this matter is said to be “absolutely necessary for life” (PhL 66). What does it mean to say of a law handed down by a prophet and stipulating the creation rather than the eternity of the world that this law is “absolutely necessary for life”? Does such a law aim at the perfection of the intellect or at the welfare of the body? Which of these two is absolutely necessary for life? Finally, what are we to make of the fact that

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Maimonides stipulates for creation but Alfarabi opts for eternity? Can one, in fact, build a healthy politics on either assumption? We have indeed “sharpened the question” (page 35 above). What is the final end of prophecy? Does prophecy provide for the welfare of the body or the welfare of the soul? Why does even the philosopher depend on prophecy? Does prophecy direct the philosopher to the specific perfection of man? Or does the philosopher’s interest in revelation stem from the fact that as a human being he is also a political animal? Strauss discusses two issues that might shed some light on this problem: the prophetology of Alfarabi and the command to philosophize as we find it in Averroes. Alfarabi’s Prophetology Alfarabi supplies what Plato called for—he completes what might be thought to have been completed by Plato—through his prophetology. Alfarabi’s prophetology, as presented by Strauss, brings together the perfection of the intellect and the perfection of the imagination. In a succinct summary, Strauss explains that the falasifa understood the acquisition of knowledge as “an actualization of the human intellectual capacity (‘the hylic intellect’) by the extra-human, super-human ‘active intellect’” (PhL 105). Strauss describes this as “the then prevalent view of the Aristotelian doctrine” (PhL 105). Extraordinary is the fact that Strauss nowhere subjects this view to philosophical examination. Or perhaps we should say that he treats this view of knowledge, as he emphatically treats the prophetology itself, as part of Alfarabi’s political doctrine. The prophet must not only acquire knowledge through the active intellect; he must also communicate that knowledge to the multitude through figurative speech. Hence, in the case of prophetic knowledge the active intellect must bring to perfection not only the intellect of the prophet but also his imaginative faculty (PhL 105). At no point in Philosophy and Law does Strauss question or submit to philosophical examination this strange conjunction and concoction of active intellect and imaginative faculty. He is content with, indeed he seems to take great interest in, metaphorical explanations of this prophetic activity in terms of “lightning flashes from on high” (PhL 126–27, 65). Strauss seems to have enjoyed supplying an explanation that is itself purely figurative and thus can only be intended for the enlightenment of the multitude. We have already seen that Strauss finds the need to communicate with the multitude to be an inadequate explanation for the philosophic interest in revelation (PhL 63–64). We have also seen that Strauss entertains the possibility that while “the most general basic demands of morality”—in other words, the need for a lawgiver to provide for human community—can be discovered by

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reason, “the individual stipulations through which alone those principles can become effectual” cannot be discovered by reason (PhL 73, italics in original). The necessity of supplying these particulars provides the link between prophecy and imagination. The philosopher as such, the theoretical man as such, is not suited to be a lawgiver (PhL 71, 121). Even if Strauss changed his mind on this point after 1935, it remains a crucial link in the argument of Philosophy and Law.8 Strauss emphasizes that Alfarabi gives two different accounts of prophecy. In one, the active intellect actualizes or perfects only the prophet’s imaginative faculty; in the second, the active intellect perfects both the intellect and the imagination (PhL 113). For our purposes, four points are noteworthy in Strauss’s account. (1) When the imaginative faculty receives content from the active intellect, “it takes over the functions of the (human) intellect” (PhL 114). In other words, in Strauss’s account, imagination takes on a very wide meaning, coextensive with the operations of the intellect. (2) While the theoretical intellect knows the intelligibles, the practical intellect has to do with particulars (PhL 114). It is the imagination that supplies the link between the particular and the intellect; or, perhaps, it is imagination (in its extended sense) that simply takes over the function of the human intellect in relation to particulars. This is the function that philosophy cannot supply by itself. (3) There is a second and higher kind of prophecy in which the active intellect perfects both the intellect and the imagination of the prophet. This kind of prophet “stands at the simply highest rank of humanity” (PhL 115). Strauss makes this last comment in spite of the fact that elsewhere in the same book he notes that the imaginative faculty is even “an impediment” to the philosopher (PhL 71). (4) Strauss argues explicitly that the second and higher kind of prophecy is distinguished by “its political mission” (PhL 125, italics in original). Strauss interprets Alfarabi’s prophetology entirely within a political context. The philosopher as such cannot perform this political function. It is clear that this limitation results from the necessity of “individual stipulations,” the necessity of legislating the particular. Only the prophet can legislate the particular because only the imagination—in the extended sense used here—can legislate particulars. The imagination can issue commands concerning particular things, which are for theoretical philosophy arbitrary or undecidable. The Command to Philosophize The second of the three essays Strauss collected to form Philosophy and Law begins with an interpretation of Averroes’s Decisive Treatise. The Decisive Treatise is a judicial statement that asserts the authority of philosophy in interpreting the Quran. Wherever the figurative language of the Quran admits

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of conflicting interpretations, the sacred text should always be interpreted in the way most consistent with philosophic reason. Averroes begins the treatise by following his own maxim. He interprets certain passages of the Quran as requiring that men philosophize. Philosophy thus becomes a form of obedience to a command of the Law. This certainly seems to be an interpretation of the Quran that is guided by philosophy. The scope of Averroes’s command to philosophize is a problem. Besides the classes of the required and the forbidden, Islamic law has three other categories: recommended, not recommended, and neutral or indifferent. The reader is, of course, puzzled as to how philosophy could belong to the class of required things. The Decisive Treatise is quite clear in its teaching that philosophy is an activity for the select few who are capable of it. It is then a paradox to speak of philosophy as required. Averroes seems to undermine his argument by presenting it too broadly, by making the command too comprehensive. Averroes makes the philosophic interpretation of the Quran authoritative. In so doing, one wonders if he does not make the command to philosophize into a philosophic command to philosophize. Strauss does not push any of these issues or even raise them. He seems to dwell on the legal requirement to philosophize that is presented on the surface of the text. Strauss himself raises the question of the philosophic interest in revelation. We raise the same kind of question here. What is the philosophic interest in the legal command to philosophize? Does the philosopher as philosopher need such a command? It would seem that the legal command to philosophize fulfills a philosophic purpose only if philosophy itself does not require the philosophic way of life. Perhaps philosophy, at any rate theoretical philosophy, issues no commands. Perhaps the problem becomes clearer if we raise the following question. Is not philosophy a dictate of nature? Is not philosophy rooted in nature and, in particular, in human nature? How could it be otherwise? Thirty years after Philosophy and Law, in The City and Man, Strauss supplies an alternative to philosophy as a dictate of nature. Philosophy as the perfection of man might be an “ideal,” and it might be something “figured out” by human reason (City and Man 44). As we might say today, philosophy as the highest perfection of man might itself be a construction. If philosophy itself is not an imperative of our nature, then we might well want to ground philosophy in a legal command to philosophize. This would certainly provide a philosophic interest in the legal obligation to philosophize. Now we see that what Plato wanted but could not find was a divine command to philosophize. Plato was forced to limit himself to rooting philosophy in a natural impulse, in a philosophic eros. Alfarabi and the falasifa supply the divine command that Plato lacked. The suggestion that Strauss offered such a radical interpretation of the falasifa in Philosophy and Law could easily be laid to rest if we could find in Philosophy

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and Law the notion of a natural support for philosophy, the discovery of a philosophic eros. This after all seems to be what Plato called for in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. Instead, he tells us that he “cannot fail to mention” the remarkable juxtaposition of Plato and Muhammed in Nietzsche’s Will to Power, Aph. 972 (PhL 141, n. 25). In the passage cited, Nietzsche draws into question Plato’s own self-understanding of his discovery of the good. In Nietzsche’s interpretation, the good becomes a product of Platonic legislation. Reorientation It is sometimes suggested, indeed by Strauss himself, that he did not consider a return to antiquity to be possible and that he then changed his mind on this point. Precisely if this is true, his early interpretation of Plato and the falasifa in Philosophy and Law might be more radical than his later interpretations. On the other hand, the later interpretations might be considered more radical in that they more consciously exploit Strauss’s insights into esoteric writing. Strauss wrote two more articles on Alfarabi after writing Philosophy and Law and “Some Remarks.” In 1945 he wrote “Farabi’s Plato.” In the preface to Persecution and the Art of Writing, he tells us that the introduction to this work makes “free use” of “Farabi’s Plato.” Ten years later he published an essay on Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s Laws called “How Alfarabi Read Plato’s Laws.” In concluding this article, I want to comment on both of these articles in relation to Philosophy and Law. “Farabi’s Plato” begins by offering an “essentially political” description of the philosophy of Alfarabi, but Strauss seems to draw back from this “essentially political” account. Alfarabi’s short book on the Philosophy of Plato revolves around the distinction between “a certain kind of knowledge” and “a certain way of life.” Strauss emphasizes that the knowledge indicated here is theoretical knowledge. The way of life that pursues this knowledge is the philosophic way of life. The theoretical things that the philosopher seeks to know are distinct from the ways of life. How does this account relate to the one Strauss gave a decade earlier in Philosophy and Law? If one puts the two works side by side, then one sees that in 1945 there is no longer any reference to a legal command to philosophize. In Philosophy and Law, Strauss found the command to philosophize in Averroes, but he interpreted Alfarabi in a way consistent with the need for such a command. Philosophy needs to live under a divine law that directs man toward his highest perfection. This is “what Plato called for.” In “Farabi’s Plato,” theoretical knowledge, “knowledge of the substance of each of the beings,” seems to be self-sufficient.

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Here we encounter a problem that I have wrestled with for many years.9 What exactly is the relation between theoretical knowledge and the philosophic way of life? A way of life is not a subject of theoretical knowledge, and “Farabi’s Plato” does not rely upon a legal command to philosophize. What is it then that directs us toward the philosophic way of life? Does Strauss here have tacit recourse to nature as we find it in philosophic eros? To be sure, Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato does explicitly mention the eros of Socrates. But Strauss does not elaborate on how this eros might fill the gap left by the absence of a command to philosophize. He does make it clear that the knowledge of the philosopher-king or the philosopher-prophet does not represent the “highest rank of humanity” (PhL 115). This place now belongs to the theoretical man alone. Strauss’s essay on Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s Laws emphasizes the importance of the details of Alfarabi’s work. It is clearly meant to give substance to Strauss’s claim that Alfarabi is an esoteric writer. But in comparing Strauss’s last essay on Alfarabi with Philosophy and Law, one passage stands out. In Philosophy and Law, Strauss emphasizes “what Plato called for—that philosophy stand under a higher court, under the state, under the law” (PhL 132). Indeed, Strauss does go so far as to say “Philosophy owes its authorization, its freedom, to the law; its freedom depends upon its bondage” (PhL 88. Italics in the original. See also 92). No wonder then that Strauss, writing over twenty years later, in 1957, says that the following quotation from Alfarabi’s Summary “still strikes us as unbelievable” (What Is Political Philosophy? 152). Strauss provides the following translation of Summary 41, 21–23. Then he explained that when men are good and most excellent, they do not need the laws and the nomoi at all and they are altogether happy; but the nomoi and laws are needed by those whose characters are not proper or right. (ibid.)

This passage is arresting in an Islamic context because of the way it challenges the need for the law. But it is even more challenging in the context of everything that Strauss says about what Plato calls for in Philosophy and Law. Plato calls for the philosopher to live under the divine law. Most importantly, the law commands us to philosophize. The law stipulates that philosophy is the highest end of man or that philosophy is the perfection of man. Perhaps we can go so far as to say that it is the philosopher-prophet who stipulates through the law that man has a perfection, and this perfection is theoretical philosophy. Certainly from the perspective of Philosophy and Law, it is unbelievable that in his Summary of Plato’s Laws, Alfarabi should declare that when men are “most excellent” (in Strauss’s translation) then the law is expendable.

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In his last essay on Farabi, Strauss seems to continue the movement away from “what Plato called for” in Philosophy and Law. As in “Farabi’s Plato,” so in “How Farabi Read Plato’s Laws,” the stipulation of philosophy as the perfection of man is no longer the work of a philosopher-prophet who legislates, through his authoritative interpretation of the divine law, the command to philosophize. What we do not know, what Strauss does not tell us in any of his writings on Alfarabi, is whether he, Strauss, came to see the perfection of man as somehow dictated by nature or by a philosophic eros (but see What Is Political Philosophy? 40). What is clear is that in Philosophy and Law Strauss lays out what he saw as the most important alternative to the possibility that philosophy is ultimately rooted in nature, namely, the possibility that philosophy as the end of man is something figured out by man (City and Man 44). NOTES 1. H. Jaffa, et al., “The Achievement of Leo Strauss,” National Review, December 7, 1973, 1347–57 at 1354. 2. Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, trans. Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). Cited as PhL. All italics in quotations from this work are in the original. Steven Harvey takes into account Strauss’s later writings on this subject in “Leo Strauss’s Developing Interest in Alfarabi and Its Reverberations in the Study of Medieval Islamic Philosophy,” in Gregory McBrayer, Rene Paddags, and Waseem El-Rayes, eds., The Pilgrimage of Philosophy: A Festschrift for Charles E. Butterworth (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019). I am grateful for his thoughtprovoking comment on the draft of the present essay. 3. Richard L. Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 136. 4. Leo Strauss, “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” trans. Robert Bartlett, Interpretation 18, no. 1 (Fall 1990): 3–30, at 9. Originally published as Leo Strauss, “Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maïmonide at de Fârâbî,” Revue des études juives 100 (1936): 1–37, at 11. See also David Lewis Schaefer, “On Restoring the Primacy of Politics to Ethics,” The Intercollegiate Review 44, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 42–47. 5. Was not Aristotle every bit as much as Plato a teacher of the “ancient idea of law as a unified, total regimen of human life”? For example, N. Ethics 1138a6–7: “What the law does not command, it forbids.” To repeat, Strauss seems to have found in this notion of law a remedy for the collapse in the contemporary world of an independent basis for ethics. On the Christian point of view, see Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 18–19. 6. In Leo Strauss, The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 1, Strauss cites Avicenna’s The Division of the Rational

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Sciences as the source of the epigraph: “[T]he treatment of prophecy and the Divine law is contained in . . . the Laws.” The full quotation is considerably more complex. See PhL 122. 7. Leo Strauss, The Early Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. by Michael Zank (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 177. 8. See the discussion of the insufficiency of human reason in Heinrich Meier, “How Strauss Became Strauss,” in Svetozar Minkov, ed., Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 363–82 at 370. 9. See chapter 1 above.

Chapter 3

Neoplatonism and Alfarabi’s Politics

The standard interpretation of Alfarabi is that he is a Muslim Neoplatonist whose political constructions rest firmly on a foundation of Neoplatonic metaphysics.1 My argument falls into two parts. The first part is that there is nothing obvious about the idea that politics should rest on metaphysics. Politics and religion are prior to philosophy in time. The idea that politics needs a metaphysical foundation is a novelty that presupposes the existence of philosophy. Indeed, one way to see what politics looks like is to watch Alfarabi inventing or reinventing a metaphysics to undergird it. The second part of my argument has to do with the philosophic truth of the Neoplatonic system that Alfarabi put to work as the foundation for the opinions of the people of the virtuous city. The political utility of such a system might become most obvious at the moment when metaphysical foundations have themselves begun to crumble. In hindsight, it strikes me that Leo Strauss wrote “Farabi’s Plato” (1945) largely as a contribution to the debate over the Neoplatonism of Alfarabi.2 Alfarabi’s Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City3 and his Political Regime4 discuss at length such characteristic Neoplatonic doctrines as the emanation of the world from the one as first cause and the resulting hierarchic structure, but the Philosophy of Plato5 attributes no such speculations to Plato. Indeed, as Strauss reads it, the Plato does not even mention the theory of ideas or the immortality of the soul.6 Whereas Plotinus has little to say about politics, Alfarabi’s Plato addresses the conflict of Socrates with the city and the search for a city where Socrates would be at home. Strauss is arguing that Alfarabi’s Plato is not a Neoplatonic Plato and that we may reasonably assume that Alfarabi is a Platonist, not a Neoplatonist. To use an expression from Philosophy and Law (1935), in Strauss’s view “what Plato called for” was a defense of the law, a wall around the law, in the shelter of which one could safely exercise the freedom of philosophy.7 While 45

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Philosophy and Law is sometimes treated as an early work in which Strauss does not fully eschew certain religious elements in his interpretation of the falasifa, it seems to me that Strauss’s view of what Plato called for never changed from the one expressed in Philosophy and Law.8 Charles Butterworth interprets the falasifa as calling for a kind of philosophic kalam, which would be not only a defense of the law but even more a defense of philosophy before the tribunal of the law.9 This is fully in accord with Strauss’s understanding of classical political philosophy as the attempt “to justify philosophy before the tribunal of the political community.”10 The only Neoplatonic work that Alfarabi cites is the Theology of Aristotle,11 which Alfarabi mentions at the end of a book called Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle.12 The author of the Theology of Aristotle is a subject of much scholarly debate. For our purposes we may simply call that author the Arabic Plotinus, though Peter Adamson seems to reserve this title for a body of work whose author he calls the Adapter.13 If one reads Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato alongside the Theology of Aristotle, the contrast is striking even in small details. Alfarabi’s Plato imagines a Socrates who thinks about a fish that calculates well like a man, and Alfarabi’s Socrates uses this image to show his moral condemnation of those who do not lead the examined life.14 When the author of the Theology of Aristotle entertains a similar possibility of an animal with a human soul, it is for the purpose of arguing that it is absurd to think that the soul alone without the body would be human (Theology of Aristotle, X. 63). The Arabic Plotinus (the Adapter, as Peter Adamson calls him) is making a theoretical point, not expressing moral indignation. Moreover, the theoretical point seems to be that the body is necessary to humanity, not that the unexamined life is worthless. Alfarabi’s discussion of an animal that calculates well like a man perhaps shows the influence of the discussion of an animal with a human soul in the Theology of Aristotle. Even more striking then is the contrast between Alfarabi’s Plato and the Arabic version of Plotinus in the Theology of Aristotle. Alfarabi’s Plato contains nothing about the One, even though it contains a discussion of Plato’s Parmenides. While the Adapter discusses at length the One, the intellect, the soul and the question whether the One is the immediate cause of the many or can be only an intermediate cause of the many, Alfarabi’s Plato is silent on all these issues.15 Alfarabi’s Plato is engaged in an examination of generally accepted opinion in a quest for the knowledge and way of life that lead to man’s perfection. The Adapter begins from a knowledge of the One and works out the possible consequences of this knowledge.16 What the Adapter does is what Alfarabi does in the Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City. Strauss is

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correct in concluding that Alfarabi had an independent interpretation of Plato remarkably free of the Neoplatonic elaboration that we find in the Theology of Aristotle and in Alfarabi’s own Neoplatonic works. One exception to this observation is the notion of perfection and the quest for human perfection that is a theme in Alfarabi’s Plato and that can be found also in the Theology. We will return to this point later in relation to imitation, specifically the way in which perfection is achieved through the imitation of that which is already perfect. One consequence of Alfarabi drawing our attention to the Theology of Aristotle in his book on the Harmonization is to highlight the difference in Alfarabi’s mind between Platonism (as we find it in the Philosophy of Plato) and Neoplatonism. Alfarabi’s Plato moves from dissatisfaction with all of the generally accepted opinions about knowledge and the way of life he seeks to the founding of his own city in which that knowledge can be sought and that way of life will be livable.17 At no point does Alfarabi’s Plato ground his political investigations on a metaphysical foundation. Indeed, metaphysics is not even mentioned in the Plato. Why the difference between Alfarabi and his Plato? Why do the politics of the Virtuous City and the Political Regime have a metaphysical foundation in a way that the politics of the Philosophy of Plato does not? Politics precedes philosophy in time. It is based on ancestral truth, not metaphysical speculation. Why try to change that? Two kinds of answers suggest themselves. One possible answer to this question is that the metaphysical speculation might simply be true, and Alfarabi knew it to be true.18 But there might also be a political reason for the political act of providing a metaphysical foundation for politics. Since metaphysical waters run deep, let us look first at the possible political reason for political things. Does Alfarabi’s turn to metaphysics in the Virtuous City and in the Political Regime meet a political need? Can it be explained simply in political terms? I believe it can. In the Book of Religion Alfarabi explains that there is no such thing as the last founder or the last first ruler.19 What the first laid down might be changed by another ruler of the same rank, a second first ruler, in order to meet the new conditions. His predecessor would have done the same under the new conditions. Alex Orwin has noted that Alfarabi mentions four such first rulers, and Orwin posits that what Alfarabi has in mind are the four rightly guided Caliphs of Islam.20 This would have the shocking implication that Mohammad was not the last prophet, the Seal of the Prophets, and that each of the four rightly guided Caliphs was of the same rank as Mohammad. If we want to go down this route, I would suggest that Mohammad should be number four, the last of the first rulers, and that perhaps Abraham, Moses, and Jesus are his three predecessors. But what if Alfarabi has an entirely different

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concern or aim in mind? What if he means to consider changing what Plato and Aristotle had laid down? Alfarabi tells us that Plato and Aristotle had one intention,21 and that if we want to discover what philosophy originally meant, we should turn to these two. Why might a thinker of the same rank change what Plato and Aristotle had laid down? Alfarabi tells us that time brings new circumstances. This is very vague. He gives no indication of what might have caused the new conditions. Or is the cause of the new conditions right before our eyes? The first ruler is not an accident without consequences. He is himself the cause of the new conditions in which his successor of the same rank will at a later date find himself. One first ruler brings about changes to which a subsequent first ruler will respond in fitting but novel and unprecedented ways. My thesis is that this hypothetical scenario defines the relation as seen by Alfarabi between Plato and Aristotle on the one hand and Alfarabi on the other. Perhaps this is the way in which we should understand the designation of Alfarabi as “the Second Teacher.” In the Summary of Plato’s Laws Alfarabi explains Plato’s method of writing by telling the story of the pious ascetic who must escape a jealous tyrant.22 The pious ascetic does not want to lie. Lute in hand he dances his way to the gates of the city and departs from the city after telling the guards that he is the pious ascetic. Dressed as he is and acting as he is, the guards do not believe him and laughingly allow his departure. Now it is not quite true that the man fleeing the tyrant in this story avoids lying. If his speech is true, if he is the pious ascetic, then his dress and dance are misleading and false. But it is just as possible that the dancing beggar who presents himself at the gate is the truth about the man who, to guard himself from tyranny, has always presented himself as a pious ascetic. If we turn from the Summary to the Philosophy of Plato, we see that philosophy as divine madness, and so depicted in the Phaedrus, is central to Alfarabi’s description of Plato’s philosophy.23 Would the philosopher of the Philosophy of Plato still need to escape a jealous tyrant? Alfarabi draws our attention to the fact that the philosopher is in grave danger. In his 1962 introduction to his translation of the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, Muhsin Mahdi attributes to Pico della Mirandola the description of Alfarabi’s style as “grave et meditatum.”24 It is easy to see the truth in this description, and yet in hindsight it may be a half-truth with respect to Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato, the full title of which purports to describe the whole of the philosophy of Plato from beginning to end. Is not this title an act of superbia when applied to a twenty-page pamphlet, even one written by Alfarabi? I suggest that the hubris on the surface of Alfarabi’s treatise is a perfect reflection of the comic impossibility of one of the goals of philosophy that Alfarabi attributes to Plato: “the knowledge of the substance of each of

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the beings.” The comic hubris both of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and of the Plato it describes is not fully obscured even by the “grave and austere” style that Pico notes.25 In the Philosophy of Plato, Alfarabi notes that Socrates saw the philosopher as being in grave danger, but shortly thereafter we see that according to Alfarabi it is the city that is in grave danger. According to Alfarabi, it was Plato’s intention to abolish the laws of his people, the Athenians, albeit gradually and through his writings.26 Apparently the tyrant in the Summary who sees the pious ascetic as a threat has good reason to be afraid. As Strauss points out, the one sentence devoted to the Laws in the Philosophy of Plato does not even mention laws.27 It does mention virtuous ways of life, but the final chapter of the Summary opens a gap between virtue and law. Strauss points out a sentence “which still strikes us as unbelievable: ‘Then he explained that when men are good and most excellent they do not need the laws and the nomoi at all and they are altogether happy; but the nomoi and laws are needed by those whose characters are not proper and right.’”28 If we recall Strauss’s assessment of “what Plato called for” in Philosophy and Law, and if we see a continuity at least on this point throughout Strauss’s work, then we are not surprised that he “still” finds this sentence from the Summary to be “unbelievable.” What Plato called for according to Strauss was, indeed, law, even divine law: according to Alfarabi, what Plato called for, even in the Laws, is an ascent beyond the law.29 For this reason, we are no longer surprised that Strauss omits from his own book on Plato’s Laws any reference to Alfarabi or his Summary. Michael and Catherine Zuckert also notice Strauss’s silence about Alfarabi when he himself comes to write about Plato’s Laws, and they try to explain it.30 They begin from the passage in which Alfarabi ascribes to Plato a desire to change the laws of his people through his writings. If I understand them correctly, they would agree that according to Strauss “what Plato called for” was a protective wall around philosophy. In their interpretation, Alfarabi does not consider this possibility and instead thinks of Plato as a philosopher who requires political action, albeit not the kind of confrontation in which Socrates engaged. That political action, as the Zuckerts see it, is not limited to an esoteric defense of philosophy but includes the gradual reform of the law through written works. The Zuckerts differentiate Strauss and his Plato from Alfarabi on the basis of this call to political action, be it ever so gradual. Did Alfarabi turn away from the ascent from opinion to knowledge in order to focus on the relation between opinion and action? To me it seems that Alfarabi and Strauss want the same thing. Both seek an authoritative law in the shelter of which they may philosophize (“aristotelize,” in Strauss’s memorable word).31 What Strauss and Alfarabi disagree about is their interpretation of Plato. For

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Strauss, the authoritative law is what Plato called for, and it is what Alfarabi and other falasifa were able to enjoy thanks to the sharia. For a man who sees Plato’s Laws as the search for just such a sheltering authoritative law, indeed, a divine law, the culmination of Alfarabi’s own Summary of Plato’s Laws with speculation on a man who does not need the laws at all must indeed be “unbelievable.” It would certainly be for Strauss a red flag indicating that he and Alfarabi did not at all interpret Plato (and not just the Laws) in the same way. This is where Strauss leaves Alfarabi in order to return to Plato, but I venture the following suggestion about Alfarabi’s view of Plato’s intention. Plato uses all of his strength to bring the philosophic Trojan horse surreptitiously into the city.32 It follows that for Alfarabi, even the Laws is not about the laws. It too, like Plato’s other writings, is about introducing philosophy into the city and recovering it when it is lost. Did Plato hope to introduce philosophy into the city in such a way that he would not fundamentally alter the true and healthy city (Rep. 372e)? Did Plato think that if he succeeded, then the city would always be able to appeal to the oracle at Delphi, even as it harbored the philosopher within its walls (Rep. 427b)? Did Alfarabi conclude that Plato wanted to have his cake and eat it too? Is the introduction of philosophy into the city ultimately a political action that makes the true and healthy city forever impossible? Yet the city cannot live without the opinions that sustain it. The city needs authoritative opinions. It needs authority. The preceding account of Plato’s intention at the origin of philosophy implodes as soon as we remember that Alfarabi attributes one intention to both Plato and Aristotle. Whatever may be true of the divine madness of Plato, the same cannot be said of Aristotle. Whatever dangers to the political community might be posed by the skeptical investigations of Plato as he surveys the human scene, the same cannot be said of the sober and moderate Aristotle. We hesitate to go down this road for three reasons. First, Alfarabi attributes the same intention to both Plato and Aristotle. Perhaps Alfarabi sees Aristotle as being as single-mindedly devoted to philosophy as Plato; possibly even more so. Second, the first sentence of the Philosophy of Aristotle seems to suggest the even greater hubris of Aristotle. “Aristotle sees the perfection of man as Plato sees it and more.” Finally, Alfarabi wrote a book, the Harmonization, which purports to show that Plato and Aristotle did have the same intention. Strauss interprets this as an esoteric work that seeks to shelter Aristotle within the cloak of a Plato who can be more easily reconciled with the religious community. I would like to entertain the possibility that the Harmonization elaborates the crucial truth asserted by Alfarabi in the Attainment of Happiness according to which Plato and Aristotle have one philosophic intention. It is an open question to what extent or in what way Alfarabi shares in that intention. It is almost unbelievable that when Alfarabi points his Arabic-speaking readers to the texts from which they might recover

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the original meaning of philosophy when it is lost, he directs them not to his own works written in Arabic but to the alien writings of Plato and Aristotle. One might say that deference or modesty prevents Alfarabi from pointing to his own writings as the way back to philosophy when it is lost, but this explanation is not very plausible when we remember that the recommendation of Plato and Aristotle for the recovery of philosophy immediately precedes Alfarabi’s brief and comprehensive, but in no way humble, summary of the philosophy of Plato from beginning to end. The suggestion I am developing here is that Alfarabi saw his own intention as different from the one he attributes to Plato and Aristotle. My own suggestion is that Alfarabi saw Plato and Aristotle as being almost too successful in introducing philosophy into the city. The city must always be the cave of opinion. Plato and Aristotle have forever undermined those opinions without putting anything in their place. Plato anticipates this objection in his Cleitophon when Cleitophon raises against Socrates the objection that his questioning undermines what his interlocutors believe but that Socrates does not put anything in place of the opinions he has destroyed.33 Alfarabi must see Cleitophon’s objection as premature in Plato’s own time, but the writings of Plato and Aristotle have brought about a situation in Alfarabi’s own time in which Cleitophon’s fears have been realized. Plato and Aristotle have destroyed the natural cave from which philosophy first emerged, but the political community cannot survive without the opinions of the cave. In Alfarabi’s own time, the first ruler, the one of the same rank as Plato and Aristotle, must be concerned not with the grave danger to the philosopher but with the grave danger to the political community. To use the language of Strauss against Strauss’s intention, Alfarabi sees in his time the need to build an unnatural cave, a cave beneath the cave.34 It is for this purpose that he turns to Neoplatonism.35 It has been noticed that Neoplatonism did not have a political philosophy.36 From Alfarabi’s point of view, this is exactly what Neoplatonism was missing. It failed to understand that philosophy is a problem for the city. Plato had understood this problem very well. His response was a kind of esotericism in which philosophy would enable the city or accommodate itself to the needs of the city.37 But this accommodation took the form of an impossible city, one that could exist only in speech and that was a threat to every existing city. To put it differently, openly calling the city the cave as Plato does in the Republic helps us to understand what philosophy is, but it establishes an education that ultimately threatens the city. Plato’s Laws is more realistic in the sense that it does not even mention philosophy until Book IX, and then only in the context of claiming that none of the existing laws has been properly laid down (Laws 857c–d). Alfarabi’s Summary of the Laws exaggerates this feature of the Laws by not mentioning philosophy at all. Nevertheless, Alfarabi agrees

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with Aristotle in treating the Laws as if it were by Socrates. In so doing, he not only exposes that he knows that the Laws is a dialogue. He also points to the fact that the Laws is Socratic. It too points beyond the city to philosophy. In grounding the city or the nation in Neoplatonic metaphysics Alfarabi has perhaps a better claim than Plato to be the creator of political philosophy. Plato can at best hide philosophy within the city. Not to make too much of a metaphor, philosophy is a kind of weed that will surely take over if it is not pulled up. Alfarabi takes a bold step. He politicizes philosophy. He transforms the apolitical philosophy of Plotinus into the lynchpin that secures the place of the city within a hierarchical universe that can serve as a model for the city itself. He treats Neoplatonism as providing the Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City. II I have been arguing two theses. The first thesis is that in response to the need to create an artificial cave, Alfarabi used the language of Neoplatonism to furnish the city with new gods or, more precisely, a new foundation to support the gods. Neoplatonism had not recognized this need. The second thesis is that the first cause, or better yet simply the first, posited by Neoplatonism is for Alfarabi an unknown that is not knowable or, as he might put it, an unknown that is unknown forever.38 Are these two theses separable? In raising this question, I am asking whether Alfarabi could have used the language of Neoplatonism to create an artificial cave while still accepting as the task of philosophy the ascent to realities beyond the cave. Anticipating this question, but leaving it for another occasion, let me turn now to the second thesis above. Let me consider two aspects of Neoplatonic philosophy as we find it in the Theology of Aristotle. The first is what we might call negative theology.39 The first, which is also the highest, has no equal. It is therefore radically unlike anything emanating from it. The second element might be thought of as the reverse of this first element. The lower is an image of the higher. The lower things are imperfect copies of higher things. The lower finds its perfection in imitating the higher, without which the lower could not even exist. The more perfect is prior to the less perfect in time. Juxtaposed in this way, we can see that two of the aspects of Neoplatonism that Alfarabi borrows contradict each other. One says that the high is radically unlike the low, while the other says that the low finds its perfection in being like the high. Alfarabi says of the first that it should be believed to be God (Political Regime 31: 12). But in the Theology of Aristotle we find that the first is called the One, and the One is so unequal to anything else and so unlike anything

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else that we can, in fact, say nothing intelligible about it. Chapter 10 of the Theology begins in this way. The absolute One is the cause of all things and is not like any of the things; rather, it is the beginning of the things and is not the things; rather, all things are in it and it is not in any of the things, for all things gush forth from it; in it is their sustenance and support and to it is their returning. . . . I say too that the absolute One is above completeness and perfection.

The One is not like anything else, but why does the Adapter say that it is above completeness and perfection? As Adamson (2002, 153) points out, this language, in which the One is above completeness and perfection, points to the difficulty of saying anything about the One. I will not try to explain here how the Adapter gets from the one to the many. That is a long story that involves the difficulty that the One can produce only the One.40 For our purposes it suffices to say that in the Theology of Aristotle there is an upper world of permanence and a lower world of perishable things. This leads to the possibility that the things in the lower world are somehow an image of the things in the higher world. Consider, for example, the following passage. Therefore the secondary man, an image of the first man in the world of bodies, perceives and recognizes the bodies. For in the last man, an image of the first man, are the words41 of the first man, by imitation of them. . . . [W]e say that within the corporeal man is the man of soul and the man of mind . . . because he is an image of them. For he performs some of the activities of the man of mind and some of the activities of the man of soul . . . because he is an image of an image. (Theology of Aristotle X. 77–80)

We see here the paradoxical doctrine that while the highest is absolutely unlike anything else, everything else in the Adapter’s world is an image of something above it. Alfarabi makes a similar use of images. Religion, for example, is said to be an image of philosophy (Attainment, sec. 55). As Alex Orwin points out, this use of images is quite surprising in an Islamic context. Rather than showing the influence of Islam on Alfarabi, it suggests a break with Islam, which forbids the making of images.42 I suggest the root of this is in the doctrine that the low derives from the high, the less perfect from the more perfect. We say that we have described how sense-perception comes to be in the man and how the sublime things do not derive from the lowly things but on the contrary the lowly things derive from the sublime things. (Theology X. 82)

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This passage goes beyond saying that the low must be understood in the light of the high. It asserts that the high is prior in time to the low. In Aristotelian language, the actual is prior to the potential. In the Harmonization, these two doctrines—of the one and of the priority of the actual—are said to lead the author of the Theology of Aristotle, whoever that may be, to try to say things that cannot be said.43 I do not think that Alfarabi limited this criticism to the author of the Theology. Plato and Aristotle share the quest for a kind of knowledge that would have to be present somehow from the beginning. But this means that what we do not know from the outset, we will never know. In the Harmonization Alfarabi attributes this thought not to Meno but to Plato, and he ascribes the same dilemma to Aristotle. In the striking formulation of the Philosophy of Plato, “the unknown is unknown forever.” Of course, Plato has a way out of this problem through the doctrine of recollection and Aristotle has a way out through the Active Intellect. It is surprising that in the Harmonization, Alfarabi does not appeal to the Active Intellect. Instead, he explains how starting from infancy a human being makes generalizations from sense-impressions. Some of these generalizations are intentional (conscious) and some are unintentional (unconscious) (Harmonization, sec. 49). The effort to derive the many from the one leads ultimately to our recognition that we can never achieve the certain knowledge that we seek. For Alfarabi, that aporia suggested a turn toward a different kind of knowledge, not certain and timeless, but knowledge all the same.44 I have argued that Alfarabi did two things, not necessarily related. One was a rhetorical grounding of the opinions of the people of the virtuous city in the principles of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Alfarabi invented, or reinvented, what we today call foundationalism. The second is that he saw the demanding standard of knowledge that Plato and Aristotle applied as leading not only to an ascent beyond the cave, but to a kind of extreme skepticism. Alfarabi does not deny that skepticism but turns toward the task of trying to understand the kind of knowledge that we in fact do have. NOTES 1. Richard Walzer, ed. and trans., Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 2. Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 357–93. 3. Translated in Walzer (1985). 4. In Charles E. Butterworth, trans. and commentary, Alfarabi: The Political Writings, vol. II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).

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5. In Muhsin Mahdi, ed. and trans., Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, revised ed. 2001), with foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas L. Pangle. 6. Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 364 and 371. 7. Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, trans. Eve Adler (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), 74, 125, 132. The original German version was published in 1935 and can be found in Heinrich Meier, ed., Leo Strauss: Gesammelte Schriften Band 2 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1997). 8. Heinrich Meier points to the “insufficiency of human reason” for Maimonides according to Philosophy and Law. See Meier, “How Strauss Became Strauss,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 363–82 at 370. Whether Strauss was a man of the left or the right at the time of writing Philosophy and Law is interestingly, and amusingly, discussed by Strauss in the material quoted by Meier in ibid. 379, n. 29. Joshua Parens also calls attention to the religious element attributed to Maimonides in Philosophy and Law. See Joshua Parens, Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016), 86–89. 9. See the translator’s introduction to Averroës Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2001). 10. Leo Strauss, “On Classical Political Philosophy,” in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 78–94 at 94; originally published in Social Research in 1945. That Strauss’s view of law as being what Plato called for continued beyond 1935 can be seen in a way from the title of a plan for a book sketched by Strauss in 1946, to be called Philosophy and the Law: Historical Essays. See Kenneth Hart Green, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 467–70. 11. I have used the English translation by Geoffery Lewis in P. Henry and H.-R. Schwyzer, eds., Plotini Opera, Tomus II: Enneades IV–V; Plotiniana Arabica ad codicum fidem anglice vertit G. Lewis (Paris and Brussels, 1959). 12. In Charles E. Butterworth, trans. and commentary, Alfarabi: The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). 13. Peter Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle (London: Duckworth, 2002). 14. Alfarabi’s fish that calculates well like a man while pursuing the purposes of a fish uses reason instrumentally after the manner of Hobbes and Hume. Does Socrates object to the instrumental interpretation of reason not on moral grounds but on grounds of consistency or wholeness? Is an animal that uses reason only as a tool somehow at odds with itself? Does the examined life try to put reason in the service of reason? Does Alfarabi see this as consistency or as a confusion of means and ends? Is reason properly instrumental for Alfarabi? Of course, it is possible to treat a means as an end. The falasifa treat philosophy as the end of man, but is this a natural end or

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a construction in which what is by nature a means becomes the end? See especially the opening pages of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Aristotle. 15. Philosophy of Plato, sec. 25, where Alfarabi speaks of the individual human soul but not the cosmic soul of Neoplatonism. 16. Cf. Cristina D’Ancona Costa, “Separation and the Forms: A Plotinian Approach,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71, no. 3 (1997): 367–403 at 367–72. In this very helpful review of the literature, D’Ancona Costa makes it clear that a “deductive pattern leading from the One to the Intellect, to the Soul and finally to the individual soul and its life” is characteristic of the older literature on Plotinus. Ibid., 370, n. 12. One would have to say that Alfarabi adopts a deductive pattern in the use he makes of the Arabic Plotinus in the Virtuous City and the Political Regime. The author also notes the view of W. Theiler that Plotinus is “deprived of the entire political dimension of Platonic thought.” Ibid. 370, n. 11. 17. For a detailed discussion of the Philosophy of Plato see Alexander Orwin, “In Search of the Comprehensive Science: The Way to Philosophy of Alfarabi’s Plato,” Interpretation 44, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 257–75. 18. Strauss would reject this answer on the grounds that Alfarabi expressed his own thought through the mouth of Plato in his Philosophy of Plato and not in Alfarabi’s own Neoplatonic works. 19. Alfarabi, Book of Religion, in Alfarabi: The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 93–113. 20. Alexander Orwin, Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 106. 21. On this important word and on the difference between intention and end, see R. E. Houser, “Let Them Suffer into the Truth: Avicenna’s Remedy for Those Denying the Axioms of Thought,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73, no.1 (Winter 1999): 107–33 at 108–9 and 109 n. 6. 22. In Alfarabi: The Political Writings, vol. II, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 130. 23. Orwin (2018) does not, I think, support this view. 24. Mahdi, Alfarabi: Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (2001), 10. 25. So far as I can tell, neither Strauss nor Alex Orwin would use the phrase “comic hubris” to characterize the Philosophy of Plato. 26. Philosophy of Plato, sec. 38. 27. Leo Strauss, “How Farabi Read Plato’s Laws,” in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 134–54 at 153. 28. Ibid., 152. 29. Mark J. Lutz, Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s Laws (DeKalb, IL: NIU Press, 2012), especially ch. 3. Lutz shows how the Athenian Stranger starts from the assumptions of his interlocutors in order to lead them beyond the divine law. 30. Michael P. Zuckert and Catherine H. Zuckert, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 136–43.

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31. Philosophy and Law, 133. In a letter to Paul Kraus in 1936, Strauss goes so far as to say, “The sharia is the human possibility of philosophizing.” In Svetozar Minkov, Leo Strauss on Science (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2016) 196, n.6. I suggest that the best way to understand this statement is in the light of Strauss’s assertion that the “prophetic legislator has fulfilled what the philosopher Plato called for but could only call for” (Philosophy and Law, 74, 132–33). Strauss writes, “Philosophy owes its authorization, its freedom, to the law; its freedom depends upon its bondage” (Philosophy and Law 88, 92). It is only fair to say that, while this may be true of Averroes and Maimonides, there is no such authorization of philosophy by law in Alfarabi. Alfarabi makes it clear that philosophy rules. 32. Did Strauss want what Virgil wanted, a kind of reversal, a recovery of the pre-philosophic world? For Alfarabi, in the tenth century, this seemed impossible. 33. The Cleitophon and the Minos are the only two dialogues not mentioned in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato. What Strauss’s Plato calls for in Philosophy and Law would fulfill what Cleitophon calls for in the dialogue that bears his name. At the time of Philosophy and Law, Strauss thought that Islam itself supplied this need for the falasifa (Philosophy and Law, 75, 125, and 132, and note 31 above). Alfarabi seems to have thought that what was called for in his time would need to look much more like philosophy or pseudo-philosophy; sharia is not enough. 34. Strauss’s intention is to recover the natural or prephilosophic cave, and it is for this reason that he turns to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon. Philosophy and Law, 136. 35. As Therese-Anne Druart succinctly says of Alfarabi, “Neoplatonism grounds Aristotelianism.” Druart, “Philosophy in Islam” in Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. S. McGrade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2003). The question I am raising concerns what we might call Alfarabi’s motive for this grounding. Is the motive philosophic truth or political utility? I am arguing for the latter. 36. “No one studies the political philosophy of Plotinus because, strictly speaking, there was no such thing in his system.” James V. Schall, “Plotinus and Political Philosophy.” Gregorianum 66, no. 4 (1985): 687–707 at 690. 37. Parens (2016, 30) makes the astute observation that the rule of the philosopher-king of the Republic “demands that the higher be put in the service of (that is, rule over!) the lower.” One might add that the Republic then allows the reader to see this; Plato exposes what is higher and what is lower. Parens seems right to suggest that the Neoplatonists do not see the problem here. Averroes did see it; see Averroes on Plato’s Republic, trans. Ralph Lerner (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 89 and 114. 38. Philosophy of Plato, sec. 6, and Harmonization, sec. 47. 39. Adamson (2002, 112–15) acknowledges the existence of negative theology, and tries to explain how it might be reconciled with the positive theology of the Theology of Aristotle. He also acknowledges that the reconciliation leads to some contradictions (ibid., 119 top). See my Appendix D for a short discussion of the problem of negative theology in a Christian framework. My assumption is that Alfarabi, Maimonides,

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and Meister Eckhart face exactly the same problem in trying to speak of what Eric Voegelin calls the ineffable. 40. Adamson 2002, 140, and C. Colmo, Breaking with Athens (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 121. 41. The Adapter tells us that “I mean by ‘word’ activity” (X. 64). 42. A. Orwin, Redefining the Muslim Community (2017), 128–29. 43. This is the logical implication of Alfarabi saying, “Thus if we say that He exists, we nonetheless know that His existence is unlike the existence of anything subordinate to Him.” Harmonization, sec. 67. I elaborate on this difficulty in Appendix D. 44. Deborah L. Black argues the interesting thesis that Alfarabi distinguished between certitude and knowledge. Black, “Knowledge (‘Ilm) and Certitude (Yaqin) in Al-Farabi’s Epistemology,” Arabic Science and Philosophy 16 (2006): 11–45. Does Socrates in the Meno distinguish between knowledge and certainty?

Chapter 4

Beyond Theory and Practice The Natural and the Voluntary in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Aristotle

At first glance at any rate, the Philosophy of Aristotle is a much less strange book than Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato, notwithstanding the strange first sentence of the former.1 The Philosophy of Aristotle seems to be for the most part a catalogue of the writings of Aristotle with a recognizable description of the contents of these works. Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics are not mentioned by name, though the subjects of will, choice, practical intellect, and politics are all mentioned on the penultimate page of the Philosophy of Aristotle. Why does Alfarabi not mention the Ethics and the Politics in this place? Indeed, Alfarabi mentions the Metaphysics in a place where one might well have expected him to mention the Nicomachean Ethics. Will and choice are, in fact, mentioned in many places in the Philosophy of Aristotle without any reference to the Ethics. The lack of any explicit mention of the Nicomachean Ethics can, I think, be explained by the new role that will and choice take on in the thinking of Alfarabi. The first dozen pages of the Philosophy of Aristotle do not clearly correspond to any work by Aristotle.2 They might be described as an essay on man’s natural faculties, on the relation between theory and practice, and on the relation between the natural and the voluntary. In this essay we will take a closer look at this part of the Philosophy of Aristotle. On the first page of the Philosophy of Aristotle, Alfarabi attributes to Aristotle the view that there are four things that everyone pursues from the outset: (1) the soundness of the human body, (2) the soundness of the senses, (3) the soundness of the capacity for knowing how to discern what leads to the soundness of the body and the senses, and (4) the soundness of the power to labor at what leads to their soundness. Obviously, this is Alfarabi’s list, 59

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not Aristotle’s. Alfarabi describes this knowledge and this labor as useful and necessary. He does not reap any immediate benefit from this fourfold division. What follows next can perhaps best be described as a caricature of Aristotle’s account of theoretical science. The main feature of theoretical science in this account seems to be that it is completely useless and is desired only for its own sake (60: 5–8, 24). Such knowledge is neither necessary nor useful for any of the four things mentioned in the opening paragraph (60: 17–18). The theoretical things are the knowledge of the causes of the sensible things and of the soul as well as certain other notions that insinuate themselves into men’s souls (60: 1–5). Why the knowledge of the causes of the sensible things should be described as useless for any of the four things man seeks from the outset is hard to know. Would not a knowledge of the cause of fire be very useful indeed? Perhaps in describing knowledge of causes as useless, Alfarabi has in mind formal causes such as “humanity” and “donkeyness,” which do not actually generate anything (130: 1–5). I think this is what we today would call a paradigm shift. At first we are told that only the men who delight in such knowledge for its own sake find it excellent, noble, and of high rank. But these men come to think that others should also recognize their rank, exalt them, and give them glory. Apparently they are quite successful in obtaining the recognition they seek, because in a few lines Alfarabi acknowledges that all men recognize the exalted and high rank of this unnecessary and useless knowledge (60: 10–20). Only after we are told that all men acknowledge the high rank of these useless things are we told that from the outset men divide all knowledge into two kinds, knowledge useful for the four things and knowledge that is not useful but is desired for its own sake. This is a bit surprising because in introducing the four things, Alfarabi tells us that only these four are desired from the outset (59: 8). Now it seems that from the outset man distinguished useful knowledge from useless knowledge. Did he also from the outset desire this useless knowledge? Only at this point does Alfarabi introduce the words practical and theoretical to designate the two kinds of knowledge the soul desires (61: 1–2). Alfarabi’s daring boggles the mind. He presents the theoretical as useless but exalted and noble, while he presents the practical as useful and necessary without mentioning its nobility. No wonder Alfarabi does not mention the Nicomachean Ethics at this point, since doing so would surely remind the reader that the goal of practical virtue is noble action and that the magnanimous man loves beautiful and useless things. For Aristotle, the two peaks of human excellence, magnanimity and philosophy, both aim at things good for their own sake, things neither useful nor necessary.3 Alfarabi has divided the useful from the useless and made these the distinguishing features of the practical and the theoretical respectively.

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Alfarabi follows up this distinction with an extended explanation of what makes things pleasurable. We desire pleasurable things not because they are useful, but simply for the sake of the pleasure we get from them (61: 5–8). Such things as statues and delightful sounds but also myths, stories, histories of nations, and listening to poems all give one pleasure (61: 5–20). It might be possible to think of these as the pleasures of the magnanimous man, at least during times of peace. Readers of Aristotle would hesitate to class them among the theoretical things, while readers of Alfarabi’s introduction are left with no place to put them except among the theoretical things. Alfarabi only confirms this classification when he adds that the more certain one’s apprehension of an object, the more perfect one’s pleasure (61: 20, 60: 8). Certainty is a plausible characteristic of theoretical things, and the theoretical man seems to value certainty for the pleasure it brings rather than for its utility. The practical sciences as described by Alfarabi in the next paragraph are the product of necessity. In our pursuit of the four necessary things, we use sense perception and our innate ideas. But these are not enough to preserve the soundness of our body or our sense or our power to labor. Man is not even innately directed toward the knowledge he needs (62: 15). “Through investigation, consideration, deliberation, and reasoning, he uncovers a knowledge he did not have originally” (62: 15–16). This passage anticipates one two pages later in which Alfarabi informs us that “man is one of the beings not given his perfection at the outset. He is one of those given only the least of their perfections and, in addition, principles for laboring (either by nature or by will and choice) toward perfection” (64: 13–14). Alfarabi has changed the question. He does not mention the eternal things. Instead, he poses the problem of how man, lacking even an innate direction toward the knowledge he needs, can discover something that is, for him, altogether new. Once again, Alfarabi mentions certainty, but in relation to the practical sciences certainty is a source of assurance and reliability rather than pleasure (62: 20–33). Alfarabi next sorts out three modes of apprehension in the practical sciences: (1) sense perception, (2) primary cognitions, and (3) investigation, consideration, and deliberation. He then informs the reader that these same three modes of apprehension are present in the theoretical sciences. Given the difference in origin and purpose of the practical and the theoretical sciences, this collapse of the theoretical into the practical is surprising. Does the exalted knowledge of theory have the same origin and character as the useful and necessary knowledge of practice? Are the same imperfect primary cognitions used to arrive at the cognitions apprehended through investigation and deliberation? Readers of Aristotle will remember that in Book Six of the Nicomachean Ethics, no one deliberates about the theoretical things, since these are the things that cannot be otherwise. Alfarabi has so transformed theoretical knowledge that it now includes deliberation (63: 1–10). These

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facts simply cannot be ignored. They force us to recognize that Alfarabi is substituting his own scheme of knowledge for that of Aristotle. As Alfarabi reminds us at the end of the Philosophy of Aristotle, the practical intellectual powers are all for the perfection of the theoretical intellect (130: 20–21). But in the introduction, it is not so clear what is for the sake of what. With respect to the four things, is the soundness of the body for the sake of the soundness of the senses? Or is it the other way around? Or are “all four given only for the sake of achieving every useful thing” (63: 15–20)? Alfarabi considers this question of whether there must be a hierarchy. How is it possible that of two things, each should be the end of the other? The question seems intended to imply that this is impossible, but in the previous sentence Alfarabi had suggested that each of two things might be “for the sake of the other in a circular way” (64: 6–7). In other words, Alfarabi knows that he has a perfectly adequate paradigm for a non-hierarchical world. Our senses could be for our power of labor just as our power of labor could be for the sake of the soundness of our senses. One cannot help but ask whether the theoretical could be for the sake of the practical, but this seems impossible for an obvious reason. At least in the introduction, the theoretical has been defined as the useless. It could not possibly be of service to the practical. Is there another kind of knowledge of causes of sensible things that might not be useless? In what follows, Alfarabi intertwines two kinds of questions. Is it possible for knowledge, whether practical or theoretical, to be excessive? Is the soul’s desire to know the causes of the visible things likewise a kind of excess? Alfarabi intertwines these questions with the question of the difference between man and the animals. He rules out the possibility that men and the animals differ with respect to the four things. The four things, man shares with other animals (65: 16, 67: 17). How then do they differ? Alfarabi gives two seemingly conflicting answers to this question. The first is that they differ in their desire to know the causes of the visible things in heaven and on earth (65: 17–19). In other words, men differ from animals with respect to theoretical perfection. In the second passage, men differ from the animals in that the former have will and choice, whereas animals have only the instruments given them by nature for pursuing the four things (66: 20–67: 5, 69: 18). These two answers are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Man might differ from the animals both through theoretical speculation and through will and choice. Of note is the fact that will and choice alone are enough to distinguish man from the animals. Alfarabi entertains the possibility that will and choice are an infirmity and intemperance on the part of nature (67: 3–4). Perhaps they ought to be suppressed. But by what will they be suppressed? By will and choice? The question seems to answer itself. But Alfarabi spells out another possibility: nature

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and choice might cooperate so that man attains by them some other thing (67: 8). Alfarabi’s hesitation in naming this other thing only draws attention to it. Two pages later he explains that nature and will together achieve the perfection for the sake of which man is made (69: 19–21). The reader is left to supply his own answer to the question of who the maker might be. After first raising the possibility that nature and choice cooperate so that man attains some other thing (67: 8), Alfarabi raises the possibility that nature supplies only the materials (67: 15). Subsequently, Alfarabi proposes that a special inquiry ought to be set up with respect to every part of nature (69: 10–15). This time it is clear that natural inquiry is not useless. It is to be an inquiry into nature that can cooperate with will and choice. Alongside natural science, there is to be a human and voluntary science (69: 17). As Alfarabi draws his introduction to a close, he says there emerge three sciences: logic, natural science, and voluntary science (72: 1–2). Theory and practice have disappeared. Theory has been replaced with a kind of useful knowledge that will provide the materials for will and choice. Practice has been replaced with a voluntary science that, ironically, is much more rooted in the useful and the necessary than was Aristotelian practical virtue, which aimed at the noble. NOTES 1. Philosophy of Plato and Philosophy of Aristotle are the second and third parts, respectively, of Alfarabi, The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, translated by Muhsin Mahdi (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1962). The curious opening sentence of the Philosophy of Aristotle is “Aristotle sees the perfection of man as Plato sees it and more.” Alfarabi presents the two perfect men as competitors. Cf. Plato, Republic 349e–350b. 2. Charles Butterworth offers a detailed interpretation of these pages, one in which he notes Alfarabi’s surprising silence about Aristotle. Butterworth, “Alfarabi’s Goal: Political Philosophy, not Political Theology” in Asma Afsaruddin, ed., Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 53–74. Unfortunately, I had not read this article when I wrote the essay above for delivery at the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2012. So far as I can tell, Butterworth regards Alfarabi as having the same intention as Plato and Aristotle under the radically new circumstance created by the Islamic revelation. I see Plato and Aristotle as primarily concerned with the ascent from opinion to knowledge, while at the very least Alfarabi gives greater weight to the consequences of opinion for action. Hence, Alfarabi’s greater emphasis on will and choice. 3. For an argument that magnanimity is both noble and useful, see Ann P. Charney, “Spiritedness and Piety in Aristotle” in Understanding the Political Spirit:

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Philosophical Investigations from Socrates to Nietzsche, edited by Catherine H. Zuckert, 67–87 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Education in nobility is “an education toward an object that is an end in itself” (ibid., 82).

Chapter 5

Plato’s Phaedrus and the Rhetoric of the Human Things

The point of departure for this essay on Plato’s philosophic and political rhetoric is the interpretation of Plato by Alfarabi presented in my Breaking with Athens: Alfarabi as Founder.1 As interpreted there, Alfarabi (870–950) alleges that Plato never overcomes the dualism between the knowledge that the philosopher seeks and the way of life of the seeker. The philosopher seeks the world of being and the human things belong to the world of becoming. In order for us to learn about the beings, they must become part of the world of becoming. But then they would no longer be beings. If we know the beings at all, we must know them from the outset. Socrates acknowledges this much in the famous Doctrine of Recollection. How then can the quest for being by mere mortals be anything but mad? This is the question that Nietzsche repeats nine centuries after Alfarabi in Human, All Too Human (Aph. 34), when he asks if truth as understood in Western philosophy is not an enemy to life. In thinking about Plato, Alfarabi points us in the direction of Plato’s Phaedrus, the dialogue that receives the most attention in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato.2 In this strange dialogue, both Lysias (as read aloud by Phaedrus) and Socrates present speeches in which a nonlover, by presenting the rival lover as selfish, tries to win the love of his beloved. The topic is mired in paradox: the supposed nonlover is a liar because he would not woo his beloved if he did not love the beloved. Socrates’s speech exposes both the nonlover and an unlovely truth: there is much that is ugly in the selfishness of love. Why does Socrates explore such ugly truths? Why does he love a truth that defeats the purpose of the lover who exposes it? Is it because Socrates is a philosopher? Does the philosopher by nature love that which does not love him in return? Is the wisdom of philosophy an enemy to life? Is Socrates’s first speech in the Phaedrus the clearest evidence that this is the Platonic understanding? Of course, all is made well in Socrates’s famous palinode, or retraction, in which he praises eros and especially philosophic eros. Is 65

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the retraction philosophic truth or Socratic rhetoric? Is it rhetoric, and only rhetoric, that bridges the gulf between philosophic detachment and the human things? As both Alfarabi and Nietzsche saw, the human things that are endangered by the Socratic understanding of philosophy include both the political things and the philosophic way of life itself. As part of his exposition of rhetoric, Socrates explains some of the defects of the speech written by Lysias and read aloud by Phaedrus. Lysias has produced a clever speech in which the lover of a young boy tries to persuade the boy that he is not the boy’s lover and that it is better to gratify nonlovers than lovers. At the beginning of Lysias’s speech, the nonlover says that the boy already knows what the situation is and has already heard why it is better to gratify the nonlover. Socrates points out that this is a bad way to begin a speech. One should not at the beginning present the conclusion of the argument. Lysias’s speaker, we are told, begins “not at all from the beginning but from the end” (264a, Nichols trans.). We are puzzled by this criticism for two reasons. First of all, Socrates’s own speech begins by explaining the situation much more clearly than Lysias does. It is Socrates, not Lysias, who begins by making clear that the nonlover is, in fact, a lover (237b). In what sense, then, is he a nonlover? Socrates begins by defining the lover as one who follows the natural desire for pleasure and the nonlover as one who follows an acquired opinion (237d). We are puzzled, then, secondly, by the fact that Socrates sets out at the beginning definitions that already presuppose all that will follow. It is Socrates who has the end in view already at the beginning, though he is subtler than Lysias in that he does not directly point out that he begins in a way at the end? Socrates says that rhetoric is not an art that can be safely practiced by one who does not know the truth about the things of which he speaks. In ignorance of the truth, he might deceive both himself and others. The good rhetor needs to have a knowledge of each of the beings (262b). But Socrates also seems to admit that there is some truth to the claim that truth alone is not enough. The art of rhetoric is right to say that without her, he who knows the truth cannot persuade (260d). Putting these two points together, we see that the good rhetor must from the outset know the truth of which he intends to persuade others. Lysias’s paradoxical beginning, which sounds like a conclusion, allows Socrates to point out a paradoxical truth. If rhetoric is to be an art, the end must indeed be somehow present from the beginning. How can the end be present at the beginning? This is understandable if one who knows the truth is persuading those who do not yet know. The truth is present at the beginning because the rhetor is also a knower. The situation becomes more baffling if it is at all necessary to persuade oneself of the truth. As Socrates points out, even one who wants to deceive another does not want to deceive himself (262a). But how are we to avoid deceiving

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ourselves through our initial ignorance? Of course, Socratic mythology contains an answer to this question. Historians call the answer the Doctrine of Recollection. Plato’s Phaedrus is one of the places where this doctrine is spelled out (249c–250a). Before the soul comes to earth it follows in the train of a god, and it is at this time that it has the opportunity to glimpse the truths. When we see beautiful or just or moderate things here on earth, they remind us of the truth we already know. In this way, the Doctrine of Recollection solves the problem of how the end can be present at the beginning. But Socrates complicates the picture. Because those who follow the god find themselves in a state of violence and confusion as they struggle to see the ideas, they do not all see all of the truth (248a). But this does not mean that these souls do not enter into human forms. While Socrates allows for the possibility that some souls, through vice, may ultimately become the souls of beasts, this is not the necessary consequence of seeing less than all of the truth. Souls that see only part of the truth do not yet become beasts. Indeed, some of those who do not see all of the truth become philosophers (248a–e). Socrates tells us that “every soul of a human being by nature has beheld the beings” (249e), but perhaps not all of the beings. It seems to be a matter of chance what beings we have already seen and can therefore recollect. That some of us recollect one thing and some another would certainly help to account for the human comedy we experience every day. It would also set the agenda for rhetoric, which presumably must divine what each soul has seen in order to persuade it of the truth it is able to recollect. Prudence we cannot recollect, because it has no visible form here on earth that could remind us of what the soul saw in heaven (250d). Sometimes it seems as if only beauty has a visible form that can remind us of the beings we have seen. But if we do know of prudence, how did we discover it? Socrates admits at the beginning of his story of the soul and its experiences that what he tells is only a likeness and not the truth (246a), but he does not suggest that the myth of recollection does not attempt to solve a real problem. Indeed, the mythical solution, since it is not really a solution, primarily calls our attention to the problem it fails to solve: if we are to persuade ourselves of the truth, the end must somehow be present at the beginning, though there is no rational way to account for this. This dilemma raises questions about philosophy itself. Is the music of the philosophers one that never sounds a note because it cannot make a beginning that satisfies it? Does the philosopher spend his life in the Sisyphean quest for the beginning that contains its own end? Socrates warns us of the fate of such a lover of the Muses through his story of the cicadas. He presents this story in response to Phaedrus’s question, “For the sake of what then would someone live?” (258e). The cicadas were once men who were lovers of music. They were so enchanted by the music they heard that they forgot to eat and drink

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“and brought their own lives to an end without noticing it” (259c). The cicadas continue to live a life of singing without care until they die. After their death, they report to the Muses on the humans who have honored the Muses. Those who spend their time in philosophy have honored Calliope and Urania (259d). Will those who philosophize also die, like the cicadas, enraptured by song without having noticed their own death? Is it for the sake of this kind of philosophic singing that humans should live?3 The Phaedrus is famous for its praise of madness and in particular of the divine madness that is philosophy. Socrates captures this divine madness in the image of the two horsemen and the charioteer (246a, 253c–256e). Reason, the charioteer, and the noble horse that knows shame both struggle to restrain the wild lust of the second horse. The tripartite soul has wings with which it tries to follow the gods to the vision of the beings that truly are (247c–e), though the wicked horse is heavy and pulls the soul down (247b). The struggle to see the beings as they truly are is presented by Socrates as the greatest human good (256b), both in this world and in the other world where we follow in the train of a god. But the tale of the cicadas puts the whole previous story in a different light. The quest for the beings is a frivolous enterprise in which nothing is gained except complete forgetfulness of our life and death here and of the goods we might truly have enjoyed if not lured away by the siren song of philosophy. Socrates’s kinship with the cicadas is nowhere more clear than at the end of his account of the art of speeches. After Socrates’s seductive account of the power, greatness, and beauty of the philosophic quest, Phaedrus says that it is altogether beautiful if someone is able to do it. Socrates responds that “for someone who attempts beautiful things, it is beautiful even to suffer whatever it befalls him to suffer” (274a–b). These fatalistic or tragic lines seem to describe the fate of the cicadas. Socrates surpasses the cicadas in that he is aware of the danger in a way that the cicadas do not seem to be aware of it. Amazingly, this awareness does not result from the quest for the beings strictly understood. Philosophy is ugly because it is Sisyphean. But is philosophy as Socrates understands it Sisyphean? Socrates goes out of his way to make us see the problem. He explains that Pericles was possibly the most perfect of all in rhetoric because of his relation with the philosopher Anaxagoras (269e–270a). Socrates follows this up with the claim that just as medicine must know the body, rhetoric must know the soul. But one cannot know the soul without knowing the whole of nature, of which the soul is a part (270c). As Phaedrus says, following Socrates’s more detailed account of the philosophic rhetoric he has in mind, accomplishing this “appears as no small matter” (272b). Knowing the whole prior to the part is, indeed, no small matter. If one is willing to believe that Socrates supplied the missing knowledge of the whole

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through a mystic vision, then all problems vanish. Reason and revelation are joined in agreement. If one is unable to believe this, then Socrates seems intent on bringing on a crisis by showing his own inability to give a satisfactory answer to Phaedrus’s question, “For the sake of what then would someone live?” (258e). I take it that the story of the cicadas is not a satisfactory answer. Socrates’s praise of philosophic madness goes hand in hand with the daring admission that it is madness indeed and that the greatest goods come through madness (244a). His praise of madness is presented as a recantation, or palinode, of his first speech exposing the evils of love and lovers. In recanting, Socrates follows the example of Stesichorus. Stesichorus recanted after he had been punished with blindness for defaming Helen (243a). But in his second speech, Socrates is cleverer than Stesichorus. Socrates combines his retraction along with his daring admission that philosophy is a kind of divine madness. The madness he praises in the palinode is for the most part the eros that is restrained by right opinion and by shame. Amazingly enough, this is nothing else than the moderation of the nonlover as presented in Socrates’s first speech. The lover and the nonlover of the first speech both desire to be gratified by the beloved. Socrates makes this plain in a way that Lysias did not (237b). The lover and the nonlover differ in that the former is driven only by pleasure while the latter is moved also by acquired opinion as to what is best. In the palinode, it is precisely the nonlover’s combination of erotic passion with shame and restraint that is praised. Socrates retracts nothing of his first speech. What is praised as the moderation of the nonlover in the first speech is praised as the moderation of the lover in the palinode. We remember that the first speech also praises divine philosophy (239b). What this shift in language does is to allow Socrates in the palinode to combine the praise of conventional morality or moderation with the praise of philosophy. Socrates’s divine madness is clothed with the appealing apparel of what the many think good. The possibility of weaving together conventional morality and philosophic eros is grounded in one consequence of philosophic eros. The philosopher’s eros is channeled away from what other human beings love. What seems to them to be his moderation is, in fact, only the reverse side of his immoderate desire for something they care nothing about (Republic 485d). The philosopher is moderate, but he is not the moderate man. He is moderate by virtue of caring nothing about the things that matter most to other men. What matters most to other men are the human things and about the human things the philosopher cares nothing (Republic 500b–c). We return again, by another path, to the ugliness of philosophy. How can Socrates make a life that cares nothing for the human things seem beautiful to the young men that he wants to attract to philosophy? In

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what can only be described as a race to the bottom, Socrates in the Phaedrus attempts to beautify philosophy by exposing the ugliness of the alternative. It is Socrates who exposes what is nevertheless clear from Lysias’s speech: Lysias’s nonlover is the moderate man. But as Socrates makes clear at the beginning of his own speech, conventional moderation is merely a calculation in the service of pleasure. The nonlover is not simply disinterested. He too wants to be gratified by the beloved. The nonlover of the Phaedrus shows in action the vulgar moderation that Socrates describes in the Phaedo (68e–69a). There Socrates describes the man who is moderate only out of a calculation about pleasure. He is moderate only out of fear that lack of self-restraint might cause him to lose some greater pleasure. Socrates in the Phaedo refuses to call this true moderation. Once we realize that the nonlover of the Phaedrus is identical with the man of vulgar moderation as described in the Phaedo, then we realize that the nonlover embodies the alliance of calculation or reason with desire or eros. At this point we can see the parallel between the Republic and the Phaedrus. In the Republic Socrates wrestles with the alliance between spiritedness and reason (Republic 440b), while in the Phaedrus he thinks through the alliance between eros and reason. In thinking through the eros of the nonlover, Socrates discovers that the inner being of the nonlover is, in fact, a lover. The nonlover’s ruthless critique of the wolfish intentions of the lover comes to light as a poorly veiled self-criticism. In this perspective, the fact that Socrates covers his face while he speaks (237a) can only be seen as a silent admission that he is just such a lover as the one he reveals in his speech. The ugliness of the nonlover comes to light as the ugliness of moderation, but these in turn are merely the outer growth covering the ugliness of love itself.4 All love is self-love. Socrates the philosopher is at once both the lover and the disinterested observer of the unlovely human scene. In what one might call the prologue to the Phaedrus, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss the myth of Oreithyia carried away by Boreas (229b–c). But Socrates says that he does not have leisure to spend on such topics. It appears to him laughable to spend time on alien things when he has not yet fulfilled the Delphic injunction to know himself (229e). Rather than examine alien things, Socrates wants to examine himself in order to discover “whether I happen to be some wild animal more multiply twisted and filled with desire than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler animal, having by nature a share in a certain lot that is divine and without arrogance” (230a). Socrates’s first speech, however, reveals a great deal of self-knowledge. He has seen through the guise of his own asceticism, the guise of the nonlover, to the wilder beast within. We cannot help but be reminded of the distinction Socrates makes in discussing the art of writing between the soul that is reminded from the

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outside, by writing, and the soul that is reminded from the inside (275a). If we look at Socrates’s first speech, the soul itself seems to have an outside and an inside (cf. 245e). When we open the nonlover what we find inside is the lover. We wonder: Has Socrates shown that the inner and the outer are at bottom the same, or has he shown the irreducible difference of the inner and the outer? What is the source of Socrates’s self-knowledge? How does he know the lover that lies behind the ascetic nonlover? Alternatively, how does he know that he is like the cicadas who sing without noticing the life that is the condition of their song? The reader of the Phaedrus is more than a little tempted to make a connection between Socrates’s self-knowledge and philosophy, but the Phaedrus itself makes it difficult to complete this circle. In the palinode, the soul struggles to see not itself but the ideas. But soul and ideas are decidedly two different things. While in the palinode Socrates proves that soul moves itself (245c–246a), the ideas have no motion (cf. 247c). Can the knowledge of the ideas lead us to self-knowledge? The ideas are exactly the kind of alien things for which Socrates says he has no leisure (230a). Is Socrates forced to look at alien things because we can know ourselves only by looking away into some kind of mirror (Alcibiades I 132c–133c)? Socrates playfully suggests that if he did not know Phaedrus, he would forget himself (228a), and Phaedrus takes up the same theme (236c). But looking at another human being is not the same as looking at the ideas. Is Platonic philosophy capable of self-knowledge or is it in need of some supplement, as Alfarabi suggests? In the Plato (sec. 2), he says that happiness requires a certain knowledge and a certain way of life. It is never clear from Alfarabi’s account that Plato is able to bring these two together. Is Plato able to connect knowledge of the ideas with knowledge of a way of life? The soul’s erotic longing for the ideas, as described in the palinode, suggests an entirely different interpretation of Socrates’s first speech. The speech itself tells us that the nonlover is really a lover. Otherwise, his interest in the beloved makes no sense. But what if the nonlover is really a lover of the ideas? Then he loves that which could never gratify him, and his rhetoric aims at entangling the beloved in that same love for the unloving ideas. We need not look far for confirmation outside the Phaedrus of this image of Socrates as the nonlover who truly does not wish to be gratified by the beloved, for this is just the image of Socrates that Alcibiades develops in the Symposium (219c). The ascetic Socrates is the image of the nonloving ideas. The nonlover of Socrates’s first speech need not be a calculating lover burning with desire, as Socrates there suggests. Rather the nonlover might be the philosopher who does not love the human things, who cares nothing for them, precisely because he loves the nonhuman things, the ideas. The two perspectives from which we have viewed Socrates’s first speech seem to belong together while being also contradictory. Only the detached

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ascetic, the true nonlover who is not feigning, would be willing to view love in the harsh light in which Socrates presents it. But precisely if Socrates is a nonlover without feigning, his speech does not give him self-knowledge. He does not learn about himself by exposing the lover. But without self-knowledge, how can Socrates answer Phaedrus’s question, “For the sake of what then would someone live?” (258e) The interpretation of the nonlover as the ascetic philosopher described by Alcibiades in the Symposium may rescue Socrates from the self-knowledge and self-criticism of his own description of the selfish lover, but it does not rescue the first speech from paradox. Why does the philosopher who loves the ideas also love young boys who might become philosophers? Why does he love the puppies of his race (Republic 539a–d)? Why does he develop a rhetoric to lure them to philosophy? The Phaedrus itself is an example of such philosophic rhetoric, but can Plato explain what he himself is doing? Having raised this question, we are struck by the fact that in the Phaedrus itself, Socrates puts forward a criticism of writing. The explicit criticism is that writing says the same thing to everyone and that it does not write on the soul (275d–277a). Speech can say different things to each individual and leave its writing on the soul.5 Perhaps the Platonic writings attempt to answer this criticism by saying different things to different people and in this way write on the soul of the reader. But even if the Phaedrus itself suggests this defense of Platonic writing, does it not also suggest a deeper criticism of writing intended to draw others to philosophy? Why do the cicadas sing? Is their singing intended to make others sing? In other words, why does a soul that loves the ideas love also other souls? And if it does not love other souls, then why does it write? Rather than avoid this issue, the Phaedrus forces it upon us. The proof that the soul moves itself creates more problems than it solves (245c–246a). If a soul moves itself, it is not moved by the ideas. The ideas do not move the soul or care for it. The self-sufficient soul somehow moves itself, but it does not love. What is self-sufficient has neither needs nor desires. Love requires some kind of poverty, as the Symposium (200b) reminds us. Self-moving soul is itself the nonlover. It has no need of the ideas. It loves the ideas, the nonlovers par excellence, only because it forgets itself. Self-moving, self-forgetting soul lacks the self-knowledge and the prudence to care for the human things. Socratic philosophy needs prudence, but there is no visible reminder of the idea of prudence (250d). One wonders if prudence is provided by Plato himself in the form of the plane tree that shelters the conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus (229a). In this case, one is forced to say that Plato provides something that philosophy itself, as Plato understands it, does not provide. Plato, through the poetic image of Socrates, provides for the

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possibility of philosophy as a way of life. This is something that knowledge of the ideas does not provide. According to Alfarabi, madness in the Phaedrus is divided into divine madness and human madness, and the human madness is frequently associated with bestial madness (Alfarabi, Plato, sec. 25). Ultimately, there is in Plato a dichotomy or dualism of divine madness and bestial madness. There is no simply human madness or eros. Humanism is not enough. Human beings must either ascend to the level of the gods or sink to the level of a beast (249b). Alfarabi rightly raises the question whether this dualism is the profound insight of Platonic philosophy or its fundamental flaw. By treating the human things as either divine or bestial, does Plato fail to recognize them for what they are, neither divine nor bestial, but simply human? NOTES 1. Chapter 5, “Why Philosophy? Alfarabi’s Platonic Comedy,” in Breaking with Athens: Alfarabi as Founder (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005) explains what I understand to be Alfarabi’s interpretation of Plato. See also, Christopher Colmo, “Comments on Special Issue on Islamic Philosophy: Remarks on Alfarabi,” Maghreb Review 41, no. 2 (2016): 316–24. 2. I have used the translation of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, translated by Muhsin Mahdi with a foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 53–67. For Plato’s Phaedrus I have used the translation by James H. Nichols, Jr., in Plato, Phaedrus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 3. I learned of the importance of the cicadas, or locusts, and much else about the Phaedrus from Joseph Cropsey, “Plato’s Phaedrus and Plato’s Socrates” in his Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 231–51 (for the locusts, see 248). I have also learned much about the Phaedrus from Mary P. Nichols, Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 90–151. For my review of the Nichols book, see Ancient History Bulletin, Online Reviews 2 (2012) 1–4 at AHBReviews, https:​//​ancienthistorybulletin​.org​/wp​-content​ /uploads​/2014​/08​/AHBReviews201201​.ColmoOnNichols​.pdf. 4. Leo Strauss suggests the “ugliness of moderation” as a useful notion in preparation for thinking about mania in the Phaedrus in Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 282. He mentions the ugliness of philosophy in Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy and Other Studies (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 40. 5. Writing on the soul suggests a blank slate, not the recollection of a text present from the outset. Writing on the soul also suggests an immediate communication, and even speech does not do this. Indirect communication leaves the recipient free to question and interpret.

Chapter 6

Theory and Practice in Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed

Some theoretical questions are too urgent to leave unanswered. Perhaps there is no hard and fast distinction between theoretical questions and practical questions. The situation for human beings would be terrible if the most urgent theoretical questions cannot be answered by us with certainty from the outset. Why is the situation terrible if these urgent questions, theoretical questions with dire practical consequences, cannot be answered from the outset? Can they not be answered eventually? Or is the resulting uncertainty the problem? Maimonides discusses the plight of human beings if the entire course of their lives is too short for them to know the existence of God and to know what that existence means for their lives (I 34, 75).1 How can this situation be avoided? These questions set the stage for the first two chapters of The Guide of the Perplexed. In the first chapter we are told that man’s likeness to God is his intellectual apprehension. This is man’s highest perfection. In the second chapter, Maimonides introduces an interlocutor of very questionable morals who poses the question how human beings could have been punished by being given knowledge when knowledge is their highest perfection. Can knowledge be both a blessing and a curse? The paradoxical assertion that man was punished through the acquisition of knowledge presupposes that man did not have his perfection from the outset. This situation would pose a very great dilemma indeed. Can man’s perfection come as the result of punishment? Can man be given his perfection after the fact? Can God give man his perfection retrospectively without so changing his nature as to make him a different creature altogether? These questions are forced upon Maimonides by his dissolute interlocutor, but they also derive from reflection on the account of the creation or the account of the beginning. Does God, in fact, begin and then begin again? 75

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Does he first create man in his own image and then begin again when he punishes man? We do not mean to deny that Maimonides was more open or more susceptible to these questions because of his study of philosophy and of Aristotle in particular. One of the most important premises of Aristotle is that the actual must be prior to the potential. The complete must somehow be prior to the incomplete, whether this priority is in time or in nature or in some other way. As Jacob Klein humorously puts it, for Aristotle the chicken— more exactly, the rooster—is in some sense prior to the egg.2 The problems involved in stating the exact nature of this priority force upon Aristotle the doctrine of the eternity of the species. Only if the species is eternal, can the actual always be prior to the potential (I 55, 128; II 4, 257; 6, 264; 12, 278; 25, 328). In this Maimonides follows Aristotle, but he does not want to follow Aristotle’s argument all the way. Aristotle’s argument leads to the belief in the eternity of the world, and Maimonides is only too clear in his understanding that the belief in the eternity of the world destroys the foundation of “the Law” (I 71, 180; II 23, 321; 25, 328). Maimonides’s attempt to leave a place for philosophy while at the same time defending the Torah involves him in the two-track strategy of showing at least the possibility of the eternity of the world while at the same time leaving open the possibility of belief in creation in time (I 71, 181). Let us return from the whirlpool of eternity to the text of the Guide. Maimonides recognizes the problems created by the question of his dissolute interlocutor. Man cannot acquire knowledge, which is man’s perfection, as a result of his sin. Man must have the knowledge that perfects him from the outset. Maimonides’s interpretation of the account of the beginning accomplishes both of these intentions. The knowledge that man acquires after he disobeys is not the knowledge that perfects him. Man does have his perfection from the outset, and this perfection is theoretical knowledge. This is the knowledge of which he is deprived through disobedience. The knowledge that he acquires as a result of disobedience is knowledge of good and evil. Whereas theoretical knowledge is knowledge of what is necessarily true or false, knowledge of good and evil is based on generally accepted opinion. This generally accepted opinion is not man’s perfection. Knowledge of good and evil is, instead, a punishment that brings with it shame and guilt. Maimonides’s interpretation of the creation of man and his first sin brings the Torah into line with the Aristotelian teaching according to which man’s perfection is contemplative knowledge of theoretical truth. Merely moral knowledge is of a lower rank and is not man’s perfection (III 27, 511; 54, 635). This interpretation of the account of the beginning accomplishes at one stroke Maimonides’s intention of harmonizing philosophy and the Law. It also gives a definitive answer to the question of man’s perfection. That perfection is theoretical knowledge or philosophy. Leo Strauss makes use of the

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second chapter of the Guide thus understood to support his own interpretation of Alfarabi, for whom theoretical knowledge is also said to be the highest perfection.3 Terence Kleven adds support to Strauss’s interpretation by drawing upon some of the details of Guide I 2. This chapter begins curiously by explaining the term Elohim. The Elohim are said to be the rulers in cities. In other words, the knowledge possessed by the Elohim is moral and political, not theoretical. Kleven points out that the Elohim are lower than God. God’s knowledge is theoretical knowledge, and this fact helps to establish the superiority of theoretical knowledge to knowledge of good and evil.4 Maimonides’s depreciation of knowledge of good and evil is disconcerting from the believing point of view. Moral knowledge and moral practice are good for their own sake. It is good to obey the commandments because they are commanded. Man’s obedience to God is his highest perfection. Indeed, one might question whether one who behaved morally without being commanded to do so had achieved perfection or should be rewarded for his moral act (III 17, 470). Can we be justly rewarded for our natural inclination to goodness? Must not morality cut against the grain? While the pious reader may be encouraged by Maimonides’s refutation of the dissolute questioner, he may not be fully reassured by the content of Maimonides’s interpretation. The philosophic reader, on the other hand, sees his own way of life, the theoretical life, affirmed as man’s highest perfection. The reader who perseveres will discover that Maimonides’s intention all along has been to build a wall around the Law to protect it from the arguments of philosophy (II 17, 298). Nevertheless, it is striking that the beginning of the Guide clearly affirms the philosophic way of life as man’s highest perfection by affirming the superiority of theoretical to moral knowledge. Indeed, it is striking that Maimonides presents the theoretical and the moral as alternatives, regardless of how he might rank them. One might wonder if the rest of the Guide is a calculated retreat from this initial affirmation. It is strange that I 2 begins with a discussion of the Elohim, because this does not seem to be the focus of the rest of the chapter (cf. II 6). Kleven points out that God is higher than the Elohim, and this is certainly true. The second chapter of the Guide, however, quotes the passage of scripture that describes man as being “created little lower than the Elohim” (Psalms 8:6). Now, this is confusing, because according to Maimonides man is created with theoretical knowledge. After his disobedience and punishment, man becomes “like Elohim, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5, which Maimonides quotes in I 2). Has man gone from being little lower than the Elohim to being like the Elohim? Is theoretical knowledge, in fact, lower in rank than the moral-political knowledge attributed to the Elohim, the governors of

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cities? Has Maimonides already begun to rehabilitate moral and political knowledge? More troubling still is the situation of man as described in the second chapter of the Guide. Man’s highest perfection was a theoretical knowledge that Maimonides clearly describes as lost to us. The confident tone with which Maimonides approaches his subject might well make the reader hope that the Guide is a guide back to the possession of the theoretical knowledge we have lost. We hesitate to interpret the Guide in this way, however, because the implication seems irreverent. Will Maimonides return us, or some of us, to Eden? Maimonides cannot be claiming to reverse the effect of God’s judgment by restoring to man his original perfection. Our refusal to go down the road in which Maimonides restores man’s original perfection is strengthened by his declaration that “man is not granted his ultimate perfection from the outset” (I 34, 73). In this connection, it is useful to remember that the form or substance of a thing does not come into being gradually (Guide II 12, 278). Of course, the infant does not have his perfection from the outset, but does the species also lack its perfection from the outset? Jews and Muslims do not believe in the Christian doctrine of original sin, so in what sense can a Jew claim that man does not have his perfection from the outset? In making this claim, Maimonides is following not Jewish tradition but the explicit statement of Alfarabi in the Philosophy of Aristotle.5 If Maimonides were a disciple of anyone, Lawrence Berman would be quite right in saying that he is a disciple of Alfarabi.6 The claim that man is not one of the beings that has his perfection from the outset forecloses the blasphemous pretension of restoring our lost perfection. But this gain is balanced by loss. Can Maimonides possibly mean that man does not have his perfection from the outset? The premise of Maimonides’s interpretation of man’s creation in I 2 is exactly the opposite: man began with theoretical perfection and lost it or had it taken away. Does Maimonides quote Alfarabi in an altogether new context? Does he mean to say that man no longer has his perfection from the outset, even though he was originally created with this perfection? However that may be, it remains the case that theoretical perfection, our original perfection, is now beyond our grasp. Of course, there are things in the Guide that might make the reader think that theoretical perfection is very much within our grasp. There is, for example, the chapter in which Maimonides, godlike, gives us a description of the world as a whole that “is demonstrated and is indubitably correct” (I 71, 183; the actual account of the whole is in I 72). Even more impressive is I 68, in which Maimonides describes in precise theoretical language the identity of the knower, the known, and the act of knowing. This identity is introduced as belonging to God, but it is not limited to God. A realist philosophy in which

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being and knowing converge requires some such account of the identity of thinker and thing thought. Our mind grasps the world in its true reality. Despite the clarity and force of Maimonides’s philosophic exposition in I 68, one cannot help but wonder if the doctrine presented there is not utterly fantastic. Maimonides concludes that chapter by stating that the unity of the knower, the thing known, and the act of knowing in God is the same as the unity experienced by us when we know something. This, of course, fits well with the teaching of the first chapter of the Guide in which the likeness between God and man—the creation of man in the image of God—is explained in terms of man’s intellectual faculty. The human intellect is the image of the divine intellect. But at other places in the Guide, Maimonides draws a sharp distinction between God’s knowledge and “our knowledge” (I 60, 144). God’s knowledge is of the eternal, while our knowledge is of that which changes. In other words, God’s knowledge is that which is described as wisdom by Aristotle in Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics. What is the eternal? Maimonides defines the eternal parenthetically in order to explain what it means to say that God is eternal. The eternal is that which exists without having come into existence in time (I 57, 133). I have added somewhat to Maimonides’s explanation because in the passage from which I am quoting Maimonides omits to affirm that the eternal exists; he merely says that it has not come into being in time. What Maimonides actually says fails to distinguish between the eternal and the merely possible, which also has not yet come into existence in time. Does Maimonides include in his idea of the eternal the idea of necessary existence? Certainly for Maimonides, God exists necessarily (I 57, 132). His essence involves his existence. In God there is no clear distinction between essence and existence because of his absolute unity and absolute simplicity (I 60, 145). God’s existence cannot be added to his essence. Is this true also of the eternal? Does the essence of the eternal involve existence? In the next chapter, Maimonides explains that saying that God is eternal means that he has no cause of his coming into being (I 58, 135–36). That which exists without a cause must exist necessarily, so to be eternal is to exist necessarily. But is our reasoning here correct? In one chapter of the Guide (II 18), Maimonides offers three proofs that take the existence of God as a premise in order to prove the eternity of the world. God is the necessary of existence. Everything that results necessarily from the existence of God also exists necessarily. If God is the cause of the world, then the world is not only eternal but also necessary: the world is a consequence of a being whose existence is necessary. If the world exists necessarily, as a necessary consequence of God’s necessary existence, then the world is eternal. It is coeval with God. Maimonides only introduces the arguments leading to this conclusion in order to refute them. He does not want to prove that the existence of the world follows necessarily from the existence

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of God and that the world is eternal. Maimonides wants to hold open the possibility that the world was created in time because this belief is the foundation of the Law. Nevertheless, the arguments that prove the necessary existence of the world and therewith the eternity of the world as a consequence of the necessary existence of God seem to me the strongest demonstrations in the first few chapters of Part II of the Guide. In Guide I 1, Maimonides offers several proofs of the existence of God based on the eternity of the world. The grand strategy of the Guide is a two-track strategy whereby Maimonides proves the existence of God both on the assumption of the eternity of the world and on the assumption that the world was created in time (I 71, 181). Thus, the most urgent practical question concerning the existence of God is answered affirmatively on the basis of two contradictory theoretical assumptions. The Guide puts theory in the service of practice and the high in the service of the low. It does so in spite of the fact that one of the assumptions explicitly stated in the Guide (II 11, 275) is that the high can never be in the service of the low. The performance of the Guide can be brought into conformity with its own explicit teaching only if practice is somehow higher than theory. But this would contradict another explicit teaching of the Guide, namely, that theory is higher than practice. The proof of the existence of God based on both the affirmation and the denial of the eternity of the world is effective only if both sets of demonstrations lead to the proof of the same God. Is the God that is the first cause or ground of existence the same as the God who is the maker of the world? Is the God of the philosophers the same as the God of the theologians? The mutakallimun (dialectical theologians) do not think so. Maimonides foresees this problem and spends a whole chapter (I 69) proving to us that first cause and first ground are the same thing as maker. The God of the philosophers is the same as the God of the believers. But the God of the philosophers is the cause of an impersonal order. He is not the God who cares for a particular nation or a particular person. Maimonides’s grand strategy is based on a grand equivocation. Is this the secret teaching of The Guide of the Perplexed? If it is, then the “true perplexity” (II 24, 326) of the Guide is how its secret could lie so near the surface. Maimonides’s argument for the unity of God, for his absolute simplicity, requires him to argue for the necessary existence of God. God’s essence and his existence cannot be two separate things. One aspect of the claim that cause or ground and maker are the same is to suggest to the reader that all three of these conceptions of God describe a necessary existent whose necessity in turn accounts for the necessity of the world. Let us return to the demonstrations of the existence of God based on the eternity of the world. Most of these arguments prove the existence of a first cause of the motion of the heavens or of the order of the world, the forms that exist within it. But

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the first cause of motion or order is neither a creator nor a necessary existent. Only one demonstration, the third or penultimate demonstration, proves the existence of a necessary existent. If there were no necessary existent, everything would be subject to generation and corruption. But when a thing is corrupted, it is annihilated. Therefore, the world would be annihilated. But we see that the world exists. Therefore, not everything is subject to generation and corruption and there must be something whose existence is necessary. This is a valid argument as long as one does not distinguish between corruption and annihilation. But Maimonides’s discussion of the philosophy of Plato in Guide II 13 depends on exactly this distinction. The generation of one thing is always the corruption of something else. An endless cycle of generation and corruption does not lead to annihilation. But it is only by introducing the possibility of annihilation, or nothingness, that Maimonides is able to argue for the necessity of the world we see around us. According to Maimonides, Aristotle’s arguments for the eternity of the world and the existence of a first cause begin from the nature of that which exists (II 17, 296). But in order to raise the question Maimonides is raising, one cannot start from what exists and explain the conditions of its existence. One must start from the nonexistence of what exists and demonstrate that its nonexistence is not possible. Without such a demonstration, the world in which we live is only a possible world. If the world is only a possible, not a necessary, world, then when we theorize, we do not want to prove too much. We do not want to prove that the number of the stars must be what it is, or that the motion of the heavens must be circular. Our theory should describe a possible world, not a necessary one. What are the theological implications of this position? Maimonides never pronounces the formula, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but it is clear that he has this question in mind. Indeed, the quest for something necessary of existence is prompted by the concern that “without it, there would be no existence at all” (II 1, 248). But Maimonides immediately problematizes the existence of such necessary of existence by problematizing its consequence, a thing not subject to generation and corruption, “if there is a thing that exists in this manner, as Aristotle states” (ibid.). Aristotle equates the eternity of the world with the necessary existence of the world. Therefore, he sees no need to ask “with regard to the world as a whole why it exists or how it exists thus” (Guide II 19, 303). But Maimonides does see a need to ask. Of course, we cannot help but wonder whether Maimonides’s need is prudential, based on a desire to build a defensive wall around the Law, or whether it is a theoretical need. Maimonides implicitly raises the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but in the end he leaves the question open. This is his two-track grand strategy. More exactly, he tells us that whether we answer

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in terms of a ground or a cause or in terms of a maker (I 69), we have not resolved the mystery. This is what I would call the theological implication for Maimonides of the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Ground, cause, and maker are all equally satisfactory or, depending on how you look at it, unsatisfactory answers to the question why the world as a whole exists. This unanswered question causes Maimonides to offer an alternative understanding of theoretical knowledge, one that does not require that theory be knowledge of the necessary truth. By examining his discussion of the meaning of theory we can get a better idea of the foundation on which the new structure is erected. Maimonides gives a very clear exposition of the alternative meaning of theory in Guide II 11. When an astronomer describes the motion of the heavens in terms of eccentricity and epicycles, he saves the phenomenon. His theory allows him to anticipate correct observations. He does not thereby commit to the true reality of eccentricity and epicycles. They are at best possible explanations of the phenomena we see. Demonstrations are never demonstrations of what must be, precisely because they begin from what is. The true reality of things is hidden from us. Alternatively, one might say that demonstrations are always by means of universals (I 73, 209), and universals exist only in the mind (III 18, 474 and 476). In the fourteenth century, William of Ockham proposed using the simplest solution to a question if two methods both lead to the same result. Maimonides already applies this rule to astronomical theories in Guide II 11. If we can account for the motion of the stars by assuming one sphere that moves them all rather than a separate sphere for each star, we should assume only one. Maimonides is very clear that this does not mean that there is only one sphere. The true reality might be that each star has its own sphere; we do not know. The purpose of a good theory is not to explain the true reality, but to present the simplest possible theory that accords with observation. What is the role of this alternative understanding of theory in The Guide of the Perplexed? What we have called the grand strategy of the Guide is very simple. Maimonides will prove the existence of God based on the belief in the eternity of the world and based on the belief that the world was created in time. Does the alternative meaning of theory somehow help Maimonides in his effort to build a wall around the Law, to protect the Law against the belief in the eternity of the world? This is certainly one possibility. The other possibility stems from Maimonides’s attempt to undermine the belief that the eternity of the world is a demonstrated truth. Theory for Aristotle is contemplation of the eternal truth, however elusive that might be. Maimonides launches an attack on a significant part of what Aristotle regarded as theoretical philosophy. The attack is carried out not on the basis of the Torah but on the basis of then recent discoveries in mathematical astronomy. By giving the

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discoveries of mathematical astronomy a merely hypothetical interpretation, Maimonides would seem to leave a place for Aristotle’s physics and cosmology. We must investigate whether this is, in fact, his purpose. It is not surprising that the existence of God based on belief in the eternity of the world should require a demonstration. It is surprising that the existence of God based on the belief that the world was created in time should require some proof. Creation in time presupposes a creator, and the creator is God. How could this require proof or demonstration? Did Maimonides want us to try to imagine generation in time without a creator? Surely not. Nevertheless, he does try to provide a kind of proof that creation in time requires a creator. The proof consists in showing that we can observe things that contradict Aristotle’s rational account of the heavens. Just as important, we can observe things that cannot be rationally determined. Why does the sphere of the fixed stars move from west to east while the sphere of the sun moves from east to west? And why does one sphere move faster than another? According to Maimonides, Aristotle can give no answer to these questions because in principle they cannot be answered (II 19, 306). Today we might ask, why is the speed of light what it is? There is no answer to such a question other than to say that we would not be here if it were different (the so-called anthropomorphic principle).7 Maimonides teaches that the motions of the spheres could not be determined without a will that particularizes the phenomena we see. There is no rational way to explain why they are what they are. The belief in the existence of God provides an answer to the question of why particular things in the heavens are the way they are, an answer that Aristotle cannot give. Let us return to our question. What is the role in the Guide of the alternative interpretation of theory presented at the beginning of II 11? By treating the mathematical theory of the heavens as hypothetical, it leaves open the true reality of the heavens. The reader is free to answer the question of the true reality in one of two ways, assuming either the eternity of the world or its creation in time. On either assumption, Maimonides is still able to demonstrate the existence of God. Unfortunately, this interpretation of theory and, hence, also of the Guide, is not simply neutral as between Aristotle and the Torah. Aristotle and the Torah become two rival interpretations of true reality, a true reality that is, in fact, hidden from human knowledge. As Michael Polanyi points out, the Lutheran pastor, Andreas Osiander, makes exactly this use of the hypothetical interpretation of physical theory in his preface to the first edition of Copernicus’s book.8 Copernicus, the pastor tells us, is not trying to give an account of the true reality of the heavens. Copernicus’s theory merely helps us describe what we see without attempting to explain its true cause. Osiander seems to have already accepted some kind of synthesis of Aristotle and the Bible. His

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interpretation of Copernicus’s theory as hypothetical does not leave the reader with a choice to make between two conflicting accounts of the true reality. But the reader of the Guide is left with that choice. This turn of events works out much better for the belief in Torah than it does for the practice of philosophy. The Torah is compatible with an act of faith in a way that philosophy is not. To put it differently, the urgent theoretical question with which we began this essay has been moved to the domain of practice. It is to be answered by an act of the will. In the most decisive case, theory is made subordinate to practice. Has Maimonides been too successful in building a wall around the Law? Is that wall built with marble from the ruined structure of philosophy? Maimonides almost seems to lose his train of thought in the chapter in which he proves the existence of God based on the creation of the world in time (II 24). That proof consists in pointing out that there are certain questions that lie beyond our knowledge. Clearly, Maimonides is suggesting that we can answer these questions by an appeal to divine will, but this is not actually what he emphasizes at the end of the chapter. Instead, the emphasis is on our liberation from the attempt to answer questions that human beings cannot answer. We need no longer fatigue our minds with useless questions (II 24, 327). The theoretical questions that we thought to be of such urgent practical importance seem to be relegated to the level of a temptation we should resist. Apparently, the practical teaching of the Guide does not depend on the answers to urgent theoretical questions. Practice has regained a level of autonomy. Maimonides seems to bid a fond farewell to the theoretical knowledge that belonged to man before his first sin. It is no part of the intention of the Guide to lead us back to the paradise from which we have been expelled or to restore the theoretical knowledge we have lost. It would be blasphemous to try. Man was created little lower than the Elohim, the governors of cities. Man should turn his attention toward developing the knowledge possessed by the Elohim. There is no suggestion in the Guide that that knowledge lies beyond us. The human things are the things beneath the sphere of the moon, and these things Aristotle did understand (II 19, 307). Is this the rest from our toil that Maimonides promised in the beautiful passage at the end of the introduction to the Guide? Have we with more pain than pleasure discovered in Maimonides a shallow positivism? Does Maimonides abandon the quest for knowledge of true reality in favor of a quest for theories that work? This is Michael Polanyi’s assessment of the similar views expressed by Osiander.9 Osiander may have intended to defend both Aristotle and the Bible, but, in fact, he subverted the foundations of both. The damage is done by the interpretation of theory as hypothetical, the same interpretation that we find in Guide II 11.

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As we have noted, Maimonides realizes, in a way that Osiander does not, the conflict between Aristotle and the Torah. Modern positivism is likely to group Aristotle’s science and the Bible together in a way that makes both equally meaningless. Notwithstanding the theological implications of equating cause and maker (I 69), Maimonides recognizes some kind of clash between Aristotle and the Bible. Beyond this, two other differences between Maimonides and positivism stand out. Maimonides announces the alternative view of theory after extensively developing a theology of negative attributes. From the point of view of the defense of philosophy, this is the most important part of the Guide. Rationalist critiques of theological positions are open to the criticism that they are external critiques. They start from a set of assumptions with which the believer does not agree. From the believing point of view, the critique is circular. It assumes what it is meant to prove. But as Maimonides makes clear, the assumption of God’s radical difference from every created thing is an assumption found in the books of prophecy (I 76, 228; cf. I 55, 128). Critique based on this assumption is not circular. The second difference concerns the possibility and necessity of political philosophy. Precisely because fundamental theoretical questions cannot in principle be answered, man must learn the art of the Elohim, knowing good and evil. While modern positivism culminates in the destruction of political philosophy, in the hands of Maimonides something very like a positivist view of scientific theory can be seen to be the foundation for political philosophy. NOTES 1. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, tr. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). Page numbers of this edition are cited in italics following the part and chapter numbers. 2. Jacob Klein, “Aristotle, An Introduction,” in Joseph Cropsey, ed., Ancients and Moderns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 60. 3. Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 357–93, at 365n25. 4. Terence Kleven, “A Study of Part 1, Chapters 1–7 of Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Interpretation 20, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 3–16, at 9–10. 5. Alfarabi, Philosophy of Aristotle, sec. 3, in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, translated by Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), 76. 6. Lawrence V. Berman, “Maimonides, the Disciple of Alfarabi,” Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): 154–78. 7. Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 8. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 146. 9. Ibid.

Chapter 7

East Meets West Alfarabi and Hobbes

Hobbes says that we only understand something when we know its genesis. In other words, we only understand the things that can come into being. This essay originated in a comparison of the two passages in appendices A and B below, one from Alfarabi’s Attainment of Happiness and the other from Hobbes’s On Man (in the original, De Homine). Both passages deal with the nature of mathematical knowledge, both give similar reasons for the claim that our knowledge of mathematics is greater or more certain than our knowledge of physics, and both list music and astronomy among their examples of physical science. The claim that Hobbes borrowed from Alfarabi, or that he had ever heard the name of his Arab predecessor, is no part of my intention. For all I know, Alfarabi and Hobbes meet for the first time in the pages of this essay. Instead, the claim being advanced is that the striking and profound similarities of thought lead to a better understanding of a shared philosophical position. This understanding is facilitated not only by discerning similarities between the two but also by noting the different ways in which they treat common themes or intentions. Through a deeper understanding of what Alfarabi and Hobbes share, we necessarily raise questions about what we mean by the West and where the West is located. POLITICS AND RELIGION Before turning to the difficult passages on mathematics and physics, it is useful to observe the differences and similarities between Alfarabi and Hobbes on matters of politics and religion. Alfarabi distinguishes between virtuous rulers on the one hand and ignorant, erring, or deceptive rulers, on the other hand.1 Alfarabi distinguishes between virtuous regimes and those that are not virtuous. Hobbes distinguishes between rule by the one, the 87

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few, or the many, but seemingly not between just and unjust regimes. In a striking phrase, Hobbes tells us that tyranny is merely kingship misliked.2 In other words, Alfarabi distinguishes between good and bad rulers, in a way that Hobbes rejects. In another apparent difference, Alfarabi brings together the political ruler and the philosopher.3 He follows Plato in envisioning a philosopher-king. For Alfarabi, philosophic knowledge is the title to rule. Hobbes distinguishes between sovereignty by institution and sovereignty by acquisition, but in neither case is wisdom, philosophy, or knowledge the title to rule. Once established, the will of the sovereign is absolute, whether right or wrong. Of course, Hobbes muddies the waters a little in two ways. At the end of chapter xxxi of Leviathan, he does suggest a parallel between Plato’s philosophic ruler and the sovereign who will have studied Leviathan. Moreover, he tells us that while the sovereign cannot commit an injustice, he can make a mistake, for example, by relinquishing any of the rights essential to a sovereign (Leviathan xxx). At first glance, Alfarabi’s virtuous religion might seem a striking contrast to Hobbes’s Kingdom of Darkness of the fourth part of Leviathan. But once we remember that Alfarabi distinguishes between virtuous religion, on the one hand, and erring or deceptive religion, on the other hand, we see that this striking contrast might, in fact, be a profound similarity. Alfarabi and Hobbes both recognize the problem of an erring or deceptive religion. For both Alfarabi and Hobbes, the place of religion within the political community is central. It may or may not come as a surprise that the two philosophers treat the relation between politics and religion in essentially the same way. Both subordinate religion to politics. In Hobbes, the place of religion within the polity is openly subordinate to the will of the sovereign.4 Alfarabi gets to the same place by a somewhat longer route. Religion is first made subordinate to philosophy or theoretical science, for example, in Alfarabi’s Book of Religion (Alfarabi 2001, 93–113; Mahdi 2001).5 It is then through the alliance of kingship and philosophy that religion is subordinated to the political. Alfarabi subordinates religion to an alliance between politics and philosophy. His approach seems more Platonic than Hobbesian. Hobbes subordinates religion to the will of the sovereign, not to reason or the philosophic knowledge of the sovereign. But the distinction is not quite so clear as might at first seem to be the case. In The Citizen (or De Cive), after suggesting a distinction between spiritual and temporal things, Hobbes writes, “But it is reason’s inquisition, and pertains to temporal right to define what is spiritual, and what temporal” (Hobbes 1991, 346, italics in the original; cf. Cropsey 1977, 308). Clearly the spiritual power is subordinate to the temporal in that it is the temporal power that defines what belongs to each sphere. More germane to our purpose is Hobbes’s stipulation that temporal right defines the

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two spheres in so far as it carries out “reason’s inquisition.” In so far as this is Hobbes’s position, it is identical with that of Alfarabi. Likewise, Alfarabi’s position is not quite so Platonic as it seems at first glance. Alfarabi explicitly says, in the Attainment of Happiness, that “according to the ancients, religion is an imitation of philosophy” (Alfarabi 1969, 44). As this essay tries to show, however, Alfarabi did not entirely accept the ancient understanding of philosophy. Ancient philosophy is politically useful in that it provides the kind of description of the world that religion can imitate. Such philosophy is political philosophy in the sense that it is politically useful philosophy. Whether the ruler who knows how to make use of this kind of philosophy is a philosopher in the sense that Alfarabi understood philosophy may be doubted. Like Hobbes, Alfarabi wants to subordinate religion to political authority. Unlike Hobbes, Alfarabi found ancient philosophy to be a useful tool for this purpose. It is clear in both Alfarabi and Hobbes, that the subordination of religion to politics is a special case of the subordination of opinion to politics. As I have tried to argue in Breaking with Athens, Alfarabi saw a link between opinion and action. The whole structure of his short treatise, The Book of Religion, revolves around the opinions and actions that are necessary to the virtuous city, and that book makes it quite clear that even so-called theoretical opinions, like those about God, the soul, and the afterlife, can have an impact on action. That Alfarabi’s main concern is with action is shown by the fact that the word opinion drops out of the text about a third of the way through. For the remainder of the book, with the exception of the final reference to opinion at the very end, Alfarabi’s focus is on action.6 It is in light of the influence of opinion upon action that we are to understand the title of Alfarabi’s chief political work, The Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City. What does Alfarabi understand by “virtuous city”? Is the virtuous city the one where the so-called theoretical opinions are properly coordinated with the actions the city needs from its citizens? In various places, using both arguments and myths, Plato suggests that it would be a good thing if the citizens believed that the soul is immortal and that it can be punished for injustice after death. Even if justice does not always lead to happiness in the worldly sense, it is a good of the soul nonetheless. Not all happiness is political happiness. Paradoxically, injustice does not destroy the soul. The soul is immortal, and the immortal soul can be punished in the afterworld, if not in the political world. In a striking reversal of Plato, The Principles of the Opinions of the Virtuous City teaches that the errant and the ignorant are the only ones who are annihilated at death.7 Ibn Bajja reports that in his commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, Alfarabi taught that all happiness is indeed political happiness.8 Whether this is true or not, it certainly seems to

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be the case that for Alfarabi all unhappiness and in particular all punishments for injustice are political punishments. Turning to Hobbes, we find an amazing coincidence. Hobbes makes it quite clear that he is not concerned with the dialectical ascent from opinions to knowledge: “when men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruin.”9 He is concerned, however, that starting from right opinion, we can bring about right action. “For the actions of men proceed from their opinions, and in the well-governing of opinions consisteth the well-governing of men’s actions, in order to their peace and concord.”10 Hobbes, like Alfarabi, aims at right action. For this purpose, right opinion is enough. One need only remember the Meno, in order to be mindful, that for Plato’s Socrates, right opinion is never enough. At the end of the day, what Plato calls for is the ascent from opinion to knowledge; Alfarabi and Hobbes, quite independently of each other, shift the emphasis to opinions that will lead to right action. I do not mean to suggest that Alfarabi and Hobbes were not themselves concerned with the ascent from opinion to knowledge.11 I do mean to suggest that in their political writings they shift the emphasis to the shaping of opinions that will lead to right action. This may have been due to historical circumstance, but it may also have been due to a way of reaching knowledge that did not depend on the ascent from opinion. This leads us to one more surprising point of agreement between Alfarabi and Hobbes. Hobbes as much as Alfarabi eschews any sort of afterlife in which unbelievers and those who live only for this world might be punished for their sins. At the beginning of chapter 38 of Leviathan, Hobbes even explains why. If the earthly ruler is to be truly sovereign he must control the supreme punishment. The notion of eternal punishment in the afterlife certainly outweighs anything an earthly sovereign might threaten. It would follow logically that one should obey the divine law rather than the human law. Hobbes wants to disabuse citizens of this possibility, which might cause them to disobey the earthly sovereign. Alfarabi does not try to explain why the errant and the ignorant are annihilated rather than punished. Whatever his reason, he takes a position remarkably similar to Hobbes, a position which is at odds not only with Islam but also with the rhetoric of Plato in the Republic, the Gorgias, and the Phaedo. Alfarabi shares with Hobbes a rhetoric focused on this life not on the next. Essence and Existence In his The Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle, Alfarabi gives a succinct definition of philosophy: “[I]t is knowledge of existing things insofar as they are existent” (Alfarabi 2001,

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125). The Harmonization is devoted to proving that, whatever other differences exist between them, Plato and Aristotle share this understanding of what philosophy is. One wonders what this minimal definition of philosophy achieves. Alfarabi raises and quickly dismisses the question whether the definition he offers is the correct definition of philosophy. What might the unstated alternative definition be? Knowledge of existing things in so far as they exist includes more than philosophy defined as knowledge of existing things in so far as we are able to know them. Moreover, knowledge of existing things in so far as they exist rules out possible things that might exist but do not exist or do not necessarily exist. It is possible that our knowledge does not include all of the existing things while it might include things that are merely possible but do not exist. The definition of philosophy that Alfarabi uses to harmonize Plato and Aristotle emphasizes the knowledge of all existing things. The definition of philosophy with which it implicitly contrasts would emphasize the limits and possibilities of our knowledge rather than the scope of existing things.12 In the Philosophy of Plato, the final perfection of human knowledge is said to be knowledge of the substance of each of the beings (Alfarabi 1969, 54). In the Philosophy of Aristotle, philosophy again leads to the quest for substance (Alfarabi 1969, 96). Substances are natural beings, not products of human will. The natural substances are existing things, not merely possible or imaginary beings. Moreover, each substance has an essence or what it is. Substance combines essence and existence. The same essence that exists in substance does double duty as the essence that is known in the mind. This double duty guarantees the essences we know an actual existence in the world. By contrast to this Platonic-Aristotelian view of the nature of philosophy as knowledge of existing things, Alfarabi concludes his discussion of the theoretical sciences in the Attainment of Happiness by asking whether any of the things known by these sciences have actual existence (Alfarabi 1969, 25). From the Platonic-Aristotelian point of view defined in the Harmonization, this question is impossible. The theoretical sciences in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle are only knowledge of existing things. When Alfarabi speaks in his own name, in the Attainment of Happiness, a manifest feature of the structure of the work is its separation of theoretical science from the knowledge of the actual existence of anything. What are we to make of this turning point? Does Alfarabi separate essence from existence? Does theoretical science treat essence prior to existence or in a way that abstracts from actual existence? In the Attainment of Happiness, Alfarabi gives the first of Aristotle’s four causes, the formal cause, as “what, by what, and how.” He then says that these have the same meaning. The English reader is forced to pause and to wonder at what a strange language Arabic must be if in Arabic what, by

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what, and how all mean the same thing. Of course, this is not the case. The meanings of these Arabic words are quite distinct. The passage calls for interpretation. One possible interpretation is that Alfarabi’s identification of these quite distinct terms is intended as a criticism of Plato and Aristotle. Neither Plato nor Aristotle adds how something is to the definition of what it is. From Alfarabi’s point of view, this indicates that the ancients do not adequately distinguish between what something is and how it is. How a thing is is its existence or nonexistence. A thing may exist “in the mind” or “outside the mind” (appendix A). For Plato and Aristotle, the same essence may have two different modes of existence. For Alfarabi’s purposes, this does not adequately convey the relation between what a thing is and how a thing is. Alfarabi is sometimes said to have been one of the first to distinguish between essence and existence (Rescher 1963). Perhaps it would be better to say that Alfarabi’s unintelligible equation of what, by what, and how forces the reader’s mind in the direction of a philosophy that separates one what from another according to how it is. Essence in the mind is never the same as essence outside the mind (cf. appendix C). Would Hobbes accept or reject the definition of philosophy as the knowledge of that which exists in so far as it exists? For an answer, we need look no further that the beginning of the second part of the English version of De Corpore (Hobbes 1958, 68). “In the teaching of natural philosophy, I cannot begin better (as I have already shewn) than from privation; that is, from feigning the world to be annihilated.” Hobbes summarizes this section by saying, “Things that have no existence, may nevertheless be understood and computed.” In the chapter that follows, he develops space and time “as species of external things, not as really existing, but appearing only to exist, or to have a being without us” (Hobbes 1958, 69). Hobbes constructs a world of definitions and draws conclusions from them. The actual existence of the things he defines is a separate issue. There is evidence that both Alfarabi and Hobbes cannot rest content with the definition of philosophy as knowledge of existing things in so far as they exist. That definition implies the union of essence and existence in substance. Alfarabi fractures that substantial unity. On this point the two sages of the post-classical world are in harmony. Mathematics and Physics Alfarabi and Hobbes both use mathematics as a polestar whereby to locate and evaluate other kinds of human knowledge. In particular, they both indicate that our knowledge of the causes of the mathematical things is more demonstrable or certain than our knowledge of the causes of physical things

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like music or astronomy. While Hobbes’s account is much more straightforward than Alfarabi’s, they share a common intention, to use a phrase that Alfarabi applies to Plato and Aristotle. We will begin with Hobbes. Hobbes claims that we know the cause of the mathematical things because their generation depends upon our will. Since the causes of the properties that individual figures have belong to them because we ourselves draw the lines; and since the generation of the figures depends on our will; nothing more is required to know the phenomenon peculiar to any figure whatsoever, than that we consider everything that follows from the construction that we ourselves make in the figure to be described. (appendix B)

We know what we ourselves have made, and the mathematical things fit this description better than anything else.13 By contrast, the causes of the natural things are not in our power. Some of the natural causes, like the ether, are invisible. Because they are not our own construction, we cannot know the natural causes so well as we can know the mathematical. We cannot deduce the qualities of the natural things from their causes. The most that we can do is to deduce what might have been the causes of the things that we do see or sense. Of course, we can, by deducing as far as possible the consequences of those qualities that we do see, demonstrate that such and such could have been their causes. (appendix B)

Hobbes is never willing to go beyond this with respect to the physical or natural world. In physics, we can construct causes that might be the causes of our experience, but the construction is only hypothetical, since the causes always go beyond our immediate experience (Hobbes 1958, 133). The test of a good construction is that it leads us to or predicts the experiences that we in fact have. For this reason, knowledge is power (Hobbes 1991a, 52; 1958, 7), even though the causes we assume are not necessarily the real causes of the things that we experience. Reality in this sense is beyond our grasp. Philosophy is not the knowledge of the existing things in so far as they exist. In order to give us power over nature, science need only invent and assume the operation of causes that could cause our experience. From Hobbes’s point of view, the theory of gravity is to be judged not by whether there is truly in nature such a thing as gravity (we cannot know) but rather by whether our experience of the world is such that gravity could produce the experiences we in fact have. In Hobbes’s view, politics and ethics are more like geometry than they are like physics because in politics and ethics “we ourselves make the principles” (appendix B).

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Hobbes sometimes presents his understanding of the constructed knowledge of mathematics as if the constructions were of things in the world but outside the mind. He asks us to envision the construction of a figure by the motion of an object of determinate length around a fixed point (Hobbes 1958, 6). We know that the resulting object is a circle because we ourselves have made it. Alfarabi seems to think of the process whereby a circle would come into being in some material, whether by nature or by will, as one in which the purely mathematical object is transformed into a material and natural thing. For Alfarabi, the mathematical thing is the thing “in the mind and stripped from the material” (appendix A). Mathematical things, thus understood, exist, we are told, “in the mind.” Alfarabi does not say how stripping from the material takes place. Nature or will can produce a material circle, but it is surely the human will, not nature, that strips away the matter in order to discover the mathematical thing that exists only in the mind. Whatever differences may exist between them, Alfarabi and Hobbes agree that the mathematical things are fully known by us to the extent that they are fully made by us. Beyond immediate sense experience, all that is known by us is the product of our will. Two Kinds of Knowledge Hobbes notes the distinction between things more known to us and things more known to nature. He does not think that the latter phrase indicates “that something is known to nature, which is known to no man” (Hobbes 1958, 45). What is more known to us are the experiences of sense perception; what is more known to nature are the causes of those perceptions. But the causes cannot be known if they are known to no man. We have just seen that Hobbes does not think that the causes of things can be known if those causes extend beyond our will. We know only the causes of the things that we ourselves have made. If the things more known to nature are the real causes of natural things, these are, indeed, known to no man. Alfarabi makes a distinction not unlike the distinction between the things more knowable to us and the things more knowable in themselves (Alfarabi 1969, 133, translator’s note to paragraph #5). He distinguishes between principles of instruction and principles of being. The principles of instruction are the primary cognitions, the things most known to us, the place from which our reasoning begins. The principles of being in a genus are the causes of the existence of the species in that genus (Alfarabi 1969, 15). Demonstrations based on principles of instruction that are not also principles of being lead to our knowledge that something is without telling us why it is. Demonstrations based on principles of instruction that are also principles of being lead to knowledge that something is and why it is. Alfarabi’s initial statement allows for only these two kinds of demonstrations, yet again and again in the first

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part of the Attainment of Happiness Alfarabi assumes a third possibility. The third possibility or option is that one can move from principles of instruction that are not principles of being to principles of instruction that are principles of being. The clearest statement of this method occurs in paragraph #8 of the Attainment of Happiness (Alfarabi 1969, 17). I have slightly altered the translation to bring it closer to the Arabic original. In this manner we ascend from knowledge of things which are inferior to the principles of being, to certainty about the principles of being, which are higher.

The intention of Alfarabi, the master logician, does not require him to pause in order to explain to the bewildered reader how he is to build the more certain upon the less certain. The reader is left to make the necessary corrections for himself. Alfarabi does explain the case in which the principles of instruction are from the outset also principles of being. The sole example of this situation is mathematics. Concerning the demonstrations of mathematics, Alfarabi explains that they are demonstrations both that something is and why it is (appendix A). He says that this is what “I mean.” Certainly it is not what most people would mean. Spinoza (in the appendix to Part I of the Ethics) treats the mathematical things as an excellent example of intelligible things that have no end or purpose. The mathematical things exhibit necessity without purpose. To judge by his example here, what Alfarabi means by why is a kind of necessity without final cause. He explicitly says that the mathematical things have only one cause, variously described as what, by what, and how or simply as what. Alfarabi also has an idiosyncratic notion of what it means to say that something is. The mathematical things are clearly described by him in the passage in question as existing only in the mind and stripped of their material. One might argue that this is a good example of what it means not to exist, if existence means coming into being outside the mind. In this connection, we need to remember that the mathematical things exist in the mind through the agency that strips them of their material existence. Alfarabi’s only hint as to what that agency might be is a reference to the will. Alfarabi’s sole example of principles of instruction that are also principles of being is of things that do not exist outside the mind and that have no purpose apart from the will of their human creator. We arrive at the thought, present also to the mind of Hobbes, that we know only what we ourselves have made. Nothing would be gained by principles of instruction that did no more than to confirm the existence of that which is already before our eyes. This would surely be to prove the more certain by the less certain. But as Alfarabi plainly says, one might discover principles that not only explain our primary cognitions—our immediate experience—but which also point to the existence of

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other things that were previously unknown (Alfarabi 1969, 17). The principles that lead us to the knowledge of these previously hidden things cannot and need not be understood as the cause of the being of those things. There is no obstacle to the assumption that the principles to which we ascend are, in Alfarabi’s suggestive phrase, the cause of our knowledge without being the cause of the existence of the things we come to know (Alfarabi 1969, 15). Beyond this, the mathematical things are evidence that it is possible to know the what or essence of things that do not exist outside of the mind. If existence is existence outside the mind, then Alfarabi separates essence and existence. The mathematical things have no natural end or purpose. Their essence is known to us by an act of the will that strips the things outside the mind of their material. Nature does not produce numbers or magnitudes because nature produces nothing without material. As Alfarabi suggestively says, the materials are called the natural things (Alfarabi 1969, 20). For just this reason, the essences that exist only in the mind, through an act of the will, can, through another act of the will, be imposed upon the natural material and in this way gain an existence outside the mind. As Alfarabi explicitly says, everything whose existence is willed is known prior to being made to exist (Alfarabi 1969, 26). Existence can be added to essence. The comparison of Alfarabi and Hobbes discloses a similarity of intention, but that intention is more openly stated by Hobbes. The difference is to be explained by saying that while Alfarabi wanted to gain acceptance for his radically new teaching by presenting it as an old teaching, Hobbes was content to openly break with Aristotle. But for just that reason the teaching is more clearly stated by Hobbes than by Alfarabi. Little apart from historical insight is gained by the speculative reconstruction of Alfarabi’s intention. On the other hand, the fact that Alfarabi forces his teaching to emerge from a radical statement of Aristotle’s own teaching provides a kind of dialectical proof that Hobbes forgoes. Moreover, the formulations Alfarabi suggests are sometimes more exact than those of Hobbes. For example, Hobbes says that our theories show us that such and such “could have been” the causes of the qualities we observe or experience. This seems misleading. A parabola almost certainly could not be the cause of the path of a projectile; a parabola is not the cause of the being of anything outside the mind. Hobbes’s language causes James Collins (1954, 111) to interpret him as saying that “philosophical knowledge of consequence of fact or cause-and-effect is always conditional or hypothetical.” Indeed, Hobbes does say this. Collins (1954, 116) goes on to ask, “Do the names and definitions used in scientific reasoning apply at all to real sequences in nature?” Collins’s assumption is that Hobbes wanted to find something that at least could be the real cause of a sequence in nature. Alfarabi’s formulation is not subject to this objection. Alfarabi is not looking for a real cause, not even a hypothetical one. In Alfarabi’s formulation, the

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principles of instruction are the cause of our knowledge that something is though not the cause of the being of that thing. A parabola might, indeed, be the cause of our knowledge of the path of a projectile without being the cause of the motion of anything. Alfarabi’s teaching is obscured by his repeated attempts to go beyond it, to discover how we might know the real cause of a thing. When those attempts are seen to fail—precisely by the clarity with which they are stated—then Alfarabi’s statement of the alternative appears in a form more exact than that offered by Hobbes. Redefining Philosophy Alfarabi’s definition of philosophy as the knowledge of what exists in so far as it exists is implicitly juxtaposed with a definition of philosophy as the knowledge of what exists in so far as we are able to know it. Even more simply, one can say that philosophy is the knowledge of all that is knowable. This definition characterizes the intention of Alfarabi as well as Hobbes. Both have made the move from ontology to epistemology as the foundation of philosophy, Alfarabi having made the move with greater clarity than Hobbes. On the other hand, both recognize the supremacy of the political over the religious. Alfarabi, at least, sees this as a return to the truth of classical political philosophy. In the subordination of religion to politics, Alfarabi and Hobbes attempt to repeat the politics of antiquity on a foundation provided by modernity. That foundation is the epistemological turn. If the Platonic-Aristotelian quest for ontology is the baseline of the West, then in Alfarabi the West meets a radical alternative. If that alternative is in any way Eastern, then East meets West in the encounter of Alfarabi with Plato and Aristotle. By the time we get to Hobbes, the sun that rose in the East has already become the pervasive light of the West. NOTES 1. See especially the first section of Alfarabi’s Book of Religion. 2. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1994), xix, 2, p. 118. 3. Attainment of Happiness, sec. 58. 4. See Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Curley, xlii, 70, p. 367: “the civil sovereign is the supreme pastor.” 5. Charles Butterworth mounts overwhelming evidence for the rule of philosophy over religion in Alfarabi. See for example, Butterworth, “Alfarabi’s Goal: Political Philosophy, not Political Theology,” in Asma Afsaruddin, ed., Islam, the

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State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), 53–74. 6. This is especially the argument of chapter 6 of Breaking with Athens (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), but the theme runs throughout the book. I have not persuaded all readers. See Robert L’Arrivee (2015) Al-Fārābī’s Cave: Aristotle’s Logic and the Ways of Socrates and Thrasymachus, The European Legacy, 20:4, 334–48, https:​//​www​.tandfonline​.com​/doi​/full​/10​.1080​/10848770​.2015​.1023980, especially note 18. Shawn Welnak, “Alfarabi: The Cave Revisited” in The Pilgrimage of Philosophy (2019), 153–74, treats Alfarabi as having the same intention as Plato and Aristotle (155), while lending support, I think, to the view that for Alfarabi the one intention that Plato and Aristotle share is the ascent from opinion to knowledge rather than explaining the consequences of opinion for action. 7. Colmo, Breaking with Athens, 105–6. 8. Schlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in I. Twersky, ed., Studies in Mediaeval Jewish History and Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 82–109. 9. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Curley, xxvi, 11, p. 176. 10. Hobbes, Leviathan, xviii, 9, p. 113. J. Weinberger, “Hobbes’s Doctrine of Method,” American Political Science Review 69, no. 4 (December 1975), 1336–53 at 1338: “For Hobbes, the traditional ascent from practice to theory simply exacerbated the original practical problems.” If I understand him correctly, Weinberger argues that the ascent from opinion to knowledge created insoluble practical problems, which Hobbes’s doctrine of method sought to circumvent in the interest of practice or action. 11. For an insightful and helpful account of Alfarabi’s attempt to discover a basis for certain knowledge, see Miriam Galston, “The Origin of Primary Principles: The Role of Nature and Experience” in The Pilgrimage of Philosophy (2019), 114–35. Not the least surprising thing here is the way that Alfarabi distinguishes between nature and experience. I do not have access to Alfarabi’s Great Book of Music, but I learn from Galston that Alfarabi there distinguishes between rational dispositions oriented toward action and rational dispositions oriented toward knowledge (125n27). 12. Charles Butterworth is very much aware of the limits on human knowledge in the teachings of the falāsifa, as one can see clearly enough from Butterworth, “Finding First Principles: Possibility or Impasse?” in R. Arnzen and J. Thielmann, editors, Words, Texts and Concepts: Cruising the Mediterranean Sea, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 139 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 211–22. 13. Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, edited Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken, 1994), 430, writes of “the entire modern age, whose central philosophical tenet—that we can know only what we have made ourselves—clashed with the whole body of past philosophy.” In contrast, Richard Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 136, writes of Leo Strauss that he “surely overstated the case that for the moderns in general ‘we know only what we make.’” When Alfarabi describes nature as the materials (Attainment of Happiness, sec. 13), he leaves the reader wondering what we need to know about those materials in order to make use of them.

PART II

Reason and Revelation

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Reason and Revelation in the Thought of Leo Strauss

While Leo Strauss presented himself as a thinker on politics, he came to politics through what he called the “theological-political problem” (Strauss 1979a and the Preface, 1, to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, cited throughout as Preface). It is certainly not clear at the outset what exactly this means, but it does prepare us for the fact that Strauss had some interesting things to say about religion and its relation to both politics and philosophy. It also prepares us for the fact that those who write about Strauss often find it necessary to try to understand Strauss’s theological position. Stanley Rosen, in his recent book Hermeneutics as Politics (HP), tells us in the introduction to that work that Strauss was an atheist (1987, 17). This is surprising because, as Rosen points out, Strauss explicitly argues that reason cannot refute revelation. Equally surprising, because it conflicts with Strauss’s stated claims, is Rosen’s revelation that, since Strauss’s atheism is not a reasoned conclusion, then Strauss must understand his own position, which he presents as being reasoned or philosophic, as being, in fact, an act of the will, that is, a choice for which there is no rational ground (HP, 110–11, 122–23, 127, 137. Cf. Preface, 30). Rosen’s view of Strauss moves from the question regarding Strauss’s theological position to the question whether reason or theory is not rooted in a practical act, an act of the will. In this way Rosen raises the question of the proper relationship between theory and practice. The following essay will address both of Rosen’s points; in so doing, it will move from the question about God as the basis for human knowledge and action to the question whether it is at all possible to formulate, on a merely human basis, a coherent view of the relationship between theory and practice. The inability to formulate a strictly human view of this issue would have obvious implications, it would seem, for a return to a theological position. Indeed, the question of God’s existence and his relation to humanity is urgent in the extreme because of its bearing upon the practical question of the right 101

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or best way of life. The viability of philosophy as an alternative answer to the question of the best way of life is very much at issue here (“The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy” (MI) 113). Strauss cannot be a reasoned atheist, we are told, for a reason that Strauss himself makes clear. Rosen succinctly summarizes Strauss’s argument by saying that since wisdom is impossible, reason, and philosophy as the life devoted to reason, can never refute religion (HP, 110). Let us assume for the moment that wisdom is impossible.1 What is the significance of this fact for the debate between philosophy and religion? Any attempt by philosophy to refute revelation is based on the assumption that rational arguments are true. But the believer need not, and in fact does not, grant the validity of this assumption. Wisdom, as the perfectly intelligible account of the world and of the place of reason in the world, would provide proof that rational argument, based on experience and logic, is valid, that is, does lead to truth. Philosophy needs to become wisdom because, in the absence of wisdom, the believer is free to begin with faith rather than with rational argument. For faith, all things are possible. But if revelation is possible, then philosophy, as the life of inquiry through unassisted human reason, cannot be known to be the right or best way of life. If the decision in favor of philosophy is not based on knowledge, then that decision becomes another kind of faith or belief. The fact that philosophy cannot refute religion undermines the fundamental claim of philosophy to be based on reason or knowledge. On the other hand, the believer cannot get beyond the assumption that reason is misleading or, at least, incomplete; he cannot prove that assumption without using reason. Indeed, since the believer himself insists that the object of his belief is not rational but is mysterious, that is, beyond human reason, it follows that he himself cannot claim to understand fully what it means to believe. (Kierkegaard might serve as an example of a believer who fully acknowledges the unintelligible or even irrational character of the truly mysterious. See also HP, 112.) Hence, the rational point of view cannot be rationally or intelligibly refuted. But this situation is damaging to religion, since the inability of revelation to refute philosophy merely confirms that religion is based on faith. In this crucial respect, then, the believing way of life seems more consistent, more rational, than the philosophic way of life (NRH, 75). Philosophy can receive only cold comfort from the observation that the apparent victory of revelation has been achieved by means of a reasoned argument. Philosophy as the quest for actual wisdom here and now contains the seed of its own negation. Philosophy thus understood self-destructs. Since Strauss was an atheist who could not by his own admission know that the claims of religion are false, Rosen concludes that Strauss’s dedication to the life of reason was itself based on an irrational choice or an act of the will. Rosen makes it clear that he does not see himself as drawing out

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implications that Strauss himself did not recognize. He is not bound, however, by “Strauss’s reluctance to make too explicit his Nietzschean conception of philosophy as an act of the will” (HP, 137. For Rosen’s own Nietzschean views, see 126, top). While Rosen’s Strauss is a willful or dogmatic atheist, Strauss is also presented as a philosophical skeptic. Rosen quotes him to the effect that “philosophy is knowledge that one does not know” (NRH, 32, quoted at HP, 118). At the same time, Rosen recognizes that to assert or will the superiority of the philosophic way of life over the believing or orthodox way of life is an instance of “claiming to know what [the philosopher] does not and cannot know” (HP, 111). The apparent contradiction between Strauss’s atheism and the understanding of philosophy as skeptical inquiry is the product of Rosen’s assumption that Strauss is an atheist. Thomas Pangle, in his introduction to Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, does not make this assumption. For Pangle, Strauss remains true to the vision of philosophy as the life-long quest for a wisdom one will never have. Pangle presents Strauss as an agnostic—though Pangle does not use this word—whose philosophizing consists above all in thoughtful dialogue with the believer or with the believing point of view (Pangle, 22, bottom). Rosen rejects this modest or moderate conclusion. He sees Strauss’s interest in religious authors as a deliberate red herring (HP, 112). But Rosen goes beyond this, to question even the possibility of a strictly skeptical or zetetic point of view. Knowledge that one does not know is not simply ignorance. (Strauss, by the way, would agree with this: What Is Political Philosophy? WIPP, 38, bottom.) If philosophy as the never-to-becompleted quest for wisdom is to make a claim to being the best or highest way of life for man—a claim Strauss surely made—then knowledge of ignorance must be knowledge of the irresolvable character of the most important or highest questions, of what Strauss called “the fundamental and permanent problems” (WIPP, 39, quoted at HP, 119). But if it is impossible to achieve answers to any of these problems, how can we know that they are either fundamental or permanent? If we cannot know this, “it reduces our knowledge of the fundamental problems themselves to the level of opinion.”2 Once again we are in the presence of “an act of the will,” this time of one that interprets or creates the world in a way that supports one’s own view of philosophy. Strauss must create the eternal problems in order for philosophy to be the purposeful yet never-to-be-completed quest for their answers. In Rosen’s hands, Pangle’s open, ever-questioning Strauss turns into the willful creator of his own zetetic world. It is difficult to accept Pangle’s view (as I interpret it here) that Strauss simply had an open mind on issues of religion. We need not rely here on Rosen’s personal testimony (HP, 112) or on the publication of Strauss’s

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private correspondence in The Independent Journal of Philosophy. In 1945, Strauss published an article called “Farabi’s Plato” (FP), in which he makes quite clear both the views of Farabi on religion and his endorsement of those views. Philosophy is incompatible with religion, and the choice of philosophy as the best way of life is based on knowledge, not belief (FP 372–73, 389). The relative status of philosophy and religion is not treated as an unanswered question. Strauss may have become more discreet in later years (Persecution and the Art of Writing [PW]), but there is no reason to think that he changed his mind. Even so, Rosen seems to agree with Pangle that Strauss did not know or claim to know the ultimate superiority of philosophy to religion. Rosen, to repeat, says that Strauss countenanced an atheism based on an act of the will. He further claims that if Strauss’s private views cannot be inferred from his published works, then those views are irrelevant. “I must rest my case on the evidence” (HP, 123). But if Strauss did consciously base philosophy on an act of the will, this was surely a private view that left no trace in the published record. Whenever Strauss publicly makes the argument that reason cannot refute religion, his own explicit conclusion is that, in this case, reason and philosophy self-destruct (Preface, 29–30: MI, 117–18). The assumption leading to this conclusion is obviously that philosophy, based not on reason but on an act of the will, is no longer philosophy. Rosen is tacitly asking us to consider the possibility that the conclusion Strauss draws in public is in a way the opposite of the one he drew in private. Esoteric writing, on which Strauss was clearly the foremost expert of our time, often works in exactly this way: a publicly stated false conclusion is used to conceal a valid but unstated conclusion of a publicly stated argument. Since the reasoning of such an argument leads logically to the unstated conclusion, the author can assume that in at least some cases the reader will follow the argument rather than the words on the page. (Descartes’s analysis of the metamorphosis of wax in the second of his Meditations is an example of such an esoteric presentation.) This kind of writing assumes the intention to communicate a rational conclusion. The reader must be able to see the logical, though unstated, implication. But the conclusion Rosen wants to draw from Strauss’s argument and actions is that philosophy should be pursued as an act of the will. To pursue philosophy as an act of the will, however, is to take a leap into the irrational. It is hard to see how this could be the rational conclusion of any argument. David Lowenthal, in his review of Strauss’s last book and Pangle’s introduction to it, rejects the view of Strauss as a man struggling with an irresolvable conflict between head and heart, reason and faith. But, at least by implication, Lowenthal also rejects the view that Strauss’s philosophic

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position is at bottom an act of the will. In an odd way, Lowenthal’s interpretation of Strauss’s theological position is the most comforting because it provides the greatest certainty. It provides the austere comfort of knowing, beyond hope or fear, that we are alone with our thoughts. In contrast to Pangle and Rosen, Lowenthal’s argument rests on the assumption that, armed with experience and the principle of contradiction, we can indeed refute the claims of religion (Lowenthal 1985, 315–17. Cf. Preface, 28). The all-powerful, all-knowing deity is the absolutely mysterious, the absolutely other, totally transcending all human experience. The believer not only admits these facts but insists on them. God is the absolutely other. But it is a violation of the principle of contradiction to introduce the absolutely other into our experience under the guise of revelation. Whatever is revealed is not the absolutely other. Experience and the principle of contradiction are sufficient to prove that revelation is impossible. Hence, the divinity that can be known only through revelation can also be known to be impossible. When Strauss says the opposite, Lowenthal seems to assume he is joking. Certainly, one might very much wish to have a rational and conclusive proof of God’s existence or nonexistence. Perhaps my own imagination is too full of sinners in the hands of an angry God to be able to grasp a proof that is obvious to calmer and clearer heads. At any rate, proof by experience seems to require that our experience be complete. To know that there is no God, we must have experience of everything, an obvious impossibility. Further, Lowenthal’s argument from the principle of contradiction is correct only if the principle is true. As for the principle itself, the best one can say is that it cannot be proved. The believer need not admit, as Lowenthal claims he must, that God cannot be both God and non-God. (Christianity asserts just this conjunction about the God-man, Christ.) However self-evident the principle of contradiction may seem to most of us, the believer is bound to view the principle as founded upon God’s power; God is not limited by the principle. Lowenthal’s premise seems to be the necessity of asserting that God must either exist or not exist, but the believer might deny even this. The word “exist” simply does not mean the same thing when applied to God rather than other things. In the language of Maimonides, “existence” is an equivocal term (Guide of the Perplexed, I, 56).3 The worst one might say is that if we use the principle of contradiction to prove that there is no God, then we have proved that there can be nothing that is simply different from our ordinary experience; there can be no absolutely other. But the proof that there can be no absolutely other known to us may well involve everything we know in contradiction, since it assumes that every other that can be known must be also somehow the same as the knower.4 Thus, in order to be known at all a thing must violate the principle of contradiction by being both same and other. The thing known must be both like and

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unlike the knower. The principle of contradiction cannot be proved because it can be disproved by experience. The traditional response to the preceding line of reasoning is that a thing may be the same in some ways and different in others; it cannot be the same and not the same in the same respect at the same time. In the above example, then, the knower could be like the known in some ways and unlike it in others without any contradiction occurring. But is this not another way of saying that it is not the same thing, which is both same and other? For example, a stick appears to be both long and short. The explanation, according to the principle of contradiction, is that the stick is short compared to a second stick but longer than some third stick. The first stick has disappeared. It has now become two sticks, one in relation to a stick longer than “itself” and yet another in relation to a stick shorter than “itself.” The short “itself” and the long “itself” are two different identities. The stick as short is self-identical only in its absolute difference from “itself” as long. The one thing with contradictory properties has now become two (or more) things with consistent properties. This defense of the principle of contradiction tries to explain away the underlying unity that allowed us to notice a contradiction in the first place. Is not such an explanation itself an example of closing the gate after the horse is out? Have we not seen the contradiction before we began to explain it away? Moreover, is not daily life full of instances of things that are in fact contradictory? To take the example of the run-away horse, is it not self-contradictory to close the gate now, when what I really want is to get the horse back in? And yet, if one wishes to appeal to it, do we not have plentiful experience of people doing just such contradictory things? Or, to turn to something more important than the inconsistency of individual actions, Strauss’s own thesis that the political problem is insoluble seems to hinge on the existence of an ineradicable contradiction in the nature of things (Preface, 6). One might say that from Strauss’s point of view the mistake of Marx was not in announcing the existence of contradictions in society but in thinking that there could ever be a world without contradiction. While Lowenthal wishes to refute religion on the basis of experience and the principle of contradiction, the believer might point out that in fact we commonly use the principle of contradiction to refute our own experience, by interpreting away the manifold contradictions. It is nevertheless true that the principle of contradiction—the premise that a thing cannot be its own opposite at one time and in any one particular way or aspect—is the necessary premise for the confrontation Strauss creates between philosophy and religion. Strauss presents philosophy and religion as providing two mutually exclusive answers to the same question, namely, “What is the best way of life?” Since there can only be one truth (Lowenthal 1985, 316), the answer must be one or the other, “either/or” in Kierkegaard’s words. This either/or makes plain that implicit in either the faith in reason or

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the faith in God is an even deeper faith, dubbed by Nietzsche “the faith in opposite values” (Beyond Good and Evil, #2). It is probably correct to assume, as Rosen does, that Strauss and Nietzsche share one or more common assumptions, though the possibility that Strauss regarded philosophy as an act of the will is the most remote (HP, 123, 137). It seems to me much more likely that Strauss shared Nietzsche’s assumption that a healthy human life requires a closed horizon and, hence, a faith in opposite values. Opposite values present us with the possibility of a meaningful choice of goals and standards. They allow us to say yes to some things and no to others. In this way we know where we stand and what we stand for. We can act with purpose. We can distinguish our friends from our enemies. Nietzsche sees faith in opposite values as a necessary condition for life. Strauss speaks not in terms of the conditions for life but rather in terms of practice or practical life in contrast to the theoretical life. We can try to understand what Strauss means by practice through looking at his interpretation of the Platonic cave metaphor (WIPP, 32; CM, 125). The city, that is, the political, is necessarily the cave because the political man, the citizen, needs something to believe in, a steady horizon by which to take his bearings. The political man, that is, almost all of us always and everywhere, cannot lead a healthy, purposeful life either in a world of universal flux where nothing has any permanent value or under the influence of a unifying dialectic for which everything is at bottom the same (Kierkegaard 1974, Fear and Trembling, 67). Without opposite values—without differences that make a difference— we lose the sense of our own identity, of who we are and where we are going. This, I take it, is the issue of nihilism. Nihilism might be defined succinctly as the failure of practice. With Nietzsche, Strauss recognizes the need for opposite values of the kind the city must have, but he does not think that it is the business of philosophy to provide these values. Philosophy as the never-to-be-completed quest for the truth about the whole is always at work overcoming or transcending any position it might discover. Any possible political truth is only a partial truth. It is for this reason that the Athenian Stranger indicates that he would not remain even in the best possible city that he himself might found (Laws 753a). In Strauss’s view, if philosophy itself has an opposite, then it is opposed, in the first place, to the political need for a closed horizon that affirms specific values while rejecting their opposites (CM, 29). As for the attempt to develop a secular wisdom that would provide a closed horizon by somehow encompassing all opposite values in one comprehensive, circular speech, he seems to have thought this to be impossible. Philosophy has a skeptical or zetetic character for Strauss because it rejects all choice or decision between opposite values without ever claiming to become the wisdom that would supersede the need for choice by comprehending all values in one system. Philosophy

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is the “gentle, if firm, refusal” (WIPP, 40) to live within a closed horizon whether that horizon is provided by a religious either/or or by a secular wisdom. As we will try to show, Strauss assumes that while secular wisdom tries to encompass all closed horizons, it in fact becomes simply one more horizon among others, luring us into yet another irrational choice between opposite values. The rejection of all closed horizons becomes the basis for Strauss’s distinction between philosophic theory and non-philosophic practice. Practice must always choose between opposite values; the choice is too urgent to permit delay. Religion and politics share the common need to make such a choice; this I take it is the justification for the hyphen in Strauss’s use of the phrase “theological-political problem.”5 While practice demands urgent choice, theory, on the other hand, can and must delay. Fortunately, there is no necessary connection between practical questions and theoretical ones (CM, 106). Practical decisions can be made without waiting for theoretical answers. Finally, the separation of theory from practice becomes Strauss’s way of by-passing the choice between the opposite values represented by two closed horizons, revelation and philosophic wisdom. As Strauss points out, to pass by in this way is to reject (Preface, 12). In by-passing the choice or decision between revelation and wisdom, Strauss sees himself as rediscovering a pre-modern form of rationalism that does not claim wisdom about the whole and, hence, does not become involved in a self-destructive competition with religion (MI, 114). Strauss’s position as presented here may seem to contain an obvious inconsistency. How can philosophy understand itself as an alternative to politics without seeing these alternatives as requiring a choice between opposite values? My own speculation—it is no more than that—is that Strauss might offer his own description of the choice that lovers make as a playful analogy to the philosophic choice. A choice excludes some alternative, but choices can be exclusive in different ways. The need to choose between two partial or incomplete alternatives will show itself as much in anger at or rejection of the defeated alternative as it will in satisfaction with the one chosen. On the other hand, when one’s choice is fully satisfying, it can be made without rejection of or victory over another. I think it is with this in mind that Strauss can write of the exclusivity of lovers that they seclude themselves from the world without opposition to the world or hatred of it (CM, 111). By analogy, the choice of the philosophic way of life is not for Strauss a choice between opposite values; nothing of value is rejected. Whether anything human can be as satisfying or complete as Strauss seems to claim philosophy is, is another question. We are now in a position to reconsider Rosen’s observation that for Strauss the inability of philosophy to refute religion stems from philosophy’s

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unsuccessful attempt to become wisdom (HP, 110). If philosophy were to become wisdom, that is, the complete and comprehensive account of the whole, then religion could no longer claim a place of refuge beyond reason and experience. Wisdom would by definition give the true and final account of everything, including religion. Indeed, in so far as religion has always tried to provide man with answers to the mysteries of life, wisdom would refute religion by replacing religion. How might such wisdom be possible? Since we can fully know only what we ourselves have made (HP, 51, 148, 152), wisdom is possible only if man is himself the creator of the world. Wisdom can be completed only if it is united with practice: “man has to show himself theoretically and practically as the master of the world and the master of his life; the merely given world must be replaced by the world created by man theoretically and practically” (Preface, 29). Here practice continues to be viewed as the attempt to provide a closed horizon, but now this aim is to be reached through a comprehensive wisdom rather than through a faith in one set of values that implies the rejection of their opposites. As Rosen correctly notes, Strauss regarded as impossible the wisdom that must be the intended outcome of such a project. Strauss speaks of the Hegelian system as the completion of reason while at the same time he speaks of the limitations of the Hegelian system (Preface, 9). Strauss gives the impression of thinking that the failure of Hegel’s wisdom is the failure of wisdom simply. We have asked, “Does the impossibility of wisdom indicate the ultimate failure of philosophy to give a rational self-justification?” If so, then the philosophic way of life is reduced to one faith among many. Like other faiths, philosophy would then be based upon an act of the will. I would suggest that we reach this conclusion by asking the wrong question. For Strauss, the right question was “Does the impossibility of wisdom show that the attempt to turn philosophy into wisdom was itself a mistake?” An affirmative answer to this question implies that it was a mistake for philosophy to try to replace religion by becoming wisdom. But for Strauss this is another way of saying that it was a mistake for philosophy to try to become practical, that is, to try to provide a closed horizon in the form of wisdom. Wisdom becomes possible through the conquest of nature because that conquest turns nature into something man himself has made. Theory in the service of practice can become wisdom. The attempt to achieve wisdom through the union of theory and practice is the distinguishing feature of modern philosophy as Strauss sees it (Preface, 2, 12, 15, 29). But this attempt failed. Philosophy as the never-to-be-completed quest for the truth cannot provide the practical answers to the mysteries of life that are needed so urgently here and now. It cannot create a world out of chaos for the sake of the relief of man’s estate. When philosophy promises to do these things but fails, then it stands refuted in its own eyes.

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What Rosen takes to be Strauss’s account of the downfall of philosophy due to its own inability to successfully refute religion is in fact Strauss’s bird’s-eye-view of the confusion of modern philosophy in even attempting to refute religion.6 Philosophy or philosophers guaranteed their own defeat when they sought to put philosophy in the service of practice or to unite theory and practice. To put this another way, modern philosophy set out to give theoretically correct answers to the pressing questions of life, questions to which religion had always given prophetic or imaginative answers. In Strauss’s view, philosophy could not compete at this level while being true to its own fundamental calling as the search for truth. According to this interpretation, the confrontation with religion that in Rosen’s view exposes the willful character of philosophy is, in Strauss’s view, an unnecessary confrontation based on a misunderstanding of the nature of philosophy. The misunderstanding stems from the failure to recognize philosophy as a theoretical rather than a practical enterprise. Philosophy cannot be an act of the will because it is not an action or practical act of any kind. Philosophy is the recognition of a situation in which all attempts at action end in contradiction, failure, or tragedy. Philosophy is more akin to comedy than to tragedy (cf. CM, 61 with Republic 388e5–7). Philosophy does not refute religion by attempting to achieve a secular wisdom. Rather philosophy is the sympathetic but incorruptible judge of the failure of all attempts at wisdom, sacred or profane. Above all, one does not choose the philosophic way of life as over against any other way of life.7 Philosophy is the recognition by a few of where we are whether we know it or not. Philosophy is not an act of the will because nothing we can will would alter the fundamental situation. How does the interpretation presented here differ from Pangle’s agnostic Strauss? Perhaps not at all. His Strauss rejects both rational and prophetic wisdom in favor of continuing inquiry. Yet Pangle gives the impression that Strauss is an agnostic in the sense that he wishes to hold himself open to the possibility of faith. I would make it clearer than Pangle seems to that Strauss is an agnostic because atheism is itself a form of faith. As Rosen points out, atheistic wisdom cannot avoid exposure as an act of the will. Because he is forced to assert what he cannot know, the atheist is as much a believer as is the orthodox adherent of a creed. As I understand it, Strauss’s agnosticism, if it may be called that, puts him further from belief than any form of atheism would. Strauss presents an account of the conflict between philosophy and religion in which religion triumphs over philosophy. But the argument as Strauss presents it applies only to philosophy that attempts to become practical wisdom by giving rational answers to the questions that religion answers only in a mysterious or prophetic way. It applies only to those philosophies that try to unite theory and practice in such a way as to achieve a comprehensive

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wisdom capable of refuting orthodox belief. Strauss’s own philosophy is unaffected by the triumph of orthodoxy over a failed wisdom, because Strauss steadfastly refuses to unite theory and practice. Rosen’s conclusion—that Strauss wants to will philosophy—is wrong. At least in his own view, the separation of theory and practice delivers Strauss as philosopher from the need to will anything at all. We can agree with Strauss that philosophy cannot become wisdom. But if this is the case, why should we resist the temptation to find solace in the answers to the human mystery provided by revelation? If philosophy has disappointed our deepest hopes, then why not find support where it is in fact offered, not as knowledge but as faith? Is the refusal to succumb to the security of faith itself a mere act of the will?8 Is Rosen right after all? If Strauss has an answer, it seems to be this. Revelation is always so uncertain to unassisted reason that it can never compel the assent of unassisted reason, and man is so built that he can find his satisfaction, his bliss, in free investigation, in articulating the riddle of being.9

One cannot help but wonder by whom “man is so built.” Is there a builder? Or is man built in a certain way “by nature”? Strauss certainly thinks that there are intelligent men—Averroës and Dante—who found the justification for philosophy in what they would have called natural science (Strauss and Cropsey, 267–68). Does Strauss, too, rely on nature to provide natural kinds, for example, the human kind, that have natural ends, discoverable by reason (HP, 130; cf. 133)? Nature surfaces explicitly in Strauss’s observation that philosophy “could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature’s grace” (WIPP, 40). Here Strauss appeals to nature, to what is simply given without any human choosing or making, as the support for the goodness of philosophy. As what is simply given, nature is the proper object of theoretical contemplation, not of practical knowledge or deliberation. Nevertheless, Strauss only seems to claim to know, in both of these passages quoted, that philosophy as theory is good, not in itself, but only for us. Theoretical contemplation satisfies our eros given the way we are built. Philosophy is good not because the truth is what it is but because we are what we are. The truth is good because we love it. (Consider Plato’s Euthyphro, where we are asked whether the gods love what is pious because it is pious, or, alternatively, whether something is pious only because the gods love it.) It seems to me that this argument makes the goodness of philosophy depend upon the philosopher’s self-knowledge of his own self-interest or what Strauss calls “the class interest of the philosophers qua philosophers”

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(NRH, 143). While there is certainly nothing wrong with such an argument (Republic 580d–583a), it is not clear that an appeal to one’s own self-interest, however natural, is properly or necessarily described as theoretical rather than practical.10 In addition, we must put the question whether self-interest or desire or eros, as the natural basis of our philosophizing, does not necessarily play a role in the formation of the categories of our theoretical understanding. If so, then the categories themselves have a practical basis in the satisfaction of our eros. Moreover, it is not clear that in order to find satisfaction, or even bliss, in philosophic inquiry, one need only have theoretical insight. Some truths might not be comforting or reassuring. If this is in fact the case, then a man who is fearless, who does not sense the danger, has simply for the moment forgotten himself and where he is. (Strauss, of course, has no intention of forgetting human finitude. See The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism [RCPR], 27.) Perhaps human beings are built in such a way that the courage we must have if we are to overcome our fear and take pleasure in the truth is just as much a potential of our nature as is the intelligence to perceive the truth. Such courage would be ancillary to knowledge and desire; while being necessary to man’s highest end it could not be said to create or will that end. Still, there would be a philosophic courage, a spiritedness compatible with reason.11 Along the same lines, philosophy as the refusal to think that one knows what one does not know requires a certain kind of moderation.12 Philosophy as a way of life, the practice of philosophy, requires theoretical as well as other virtues. The achievement of this combination of virtues in any particular case is not simply given by nature; it is the practical achievement of a thinking and desiring human being. Man’s highest end is the practice of philosophy, which requires a combination of theoretical and other virtues. If this is a correct description of the philosophic way of life, then it seems correct also to say that that way of life requires to the highest degree the union or cooperation of theoretical and practical virtues. That Strauss understands philosophy as a purely theoretical activity, and explicitly rejects an understanding of philosophy as both theoretical and practical, seems to be a consequence of his identification of the practical with “an act of the will or a decision” (Preface, 12). While Strauss clearly distinguishes between the ancient and modern views of theory, he seems to take practice as meaning essentially the same thing for the ancients as it means for the moderns. For example, the end or perfection of man as understood by the moderns is not something imposed by nature but rather something figured out by man, a project designed and willed by man, an “ideal” (preface, 16). But this is exactly what Strauss says about the practical or political reflections on the best regime in classical political philosophy. The best regime of Plato and Aristotle is an “ideal,” something

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figured out; this is what Strauss means by saying that the best regime exists only “in speech” (CM, 44; cf. 121). It does not come into being or have its being by nature. Even the best regime is still the cave; it is still a closed horizon to be created by man (CM, 125: “even political life at its best is like life in a cave, so much so that the city can be identified with the Cave.”). To bring it into being (were this possible), the best regime would have to be willed. But this is true of anything that is figured out by man; its coming into being depends on a human decision. Strauss at least leads the reader to consider the possibility that he is being asked to conclude that since practice always involves something figured out, a human project, it therefore always involves an act of the will. Ancient practice seems to have the same status as modern practice. Strauss distinguishes the pure theory of the ancients from modern theory, the latter being essentially united to practice, but he does not seem to distinguish ancient practice from modern practice. Practice, it would seem, always means for Strauss, not a dictate of nature, but an “ideal,” and, hence, something essentially dependent on man’s will. Since will is arbitrary, groundless, practice lacks the dignity of theory. But is every human project an act of the will? We may, indeed, ask whether any human project is an act of the will in the sense of a free or arbitrary decision. Is this kind of freedom, pure spontaneity, intelligible or possible? If not, then practice restricted to acts of the will either evaporates altogether or else becomes indistinguishable from fate or accident. Certainly, Plato did not unite theory with practice rooted in arbitrary willfulness, but it is not merely tendentious to ask whether Plato did not have a conception of practice different from the modern one with which Strauss works. Our reservations concerning Strauss’s view of the relation between theory and practice can be stated from the perspective of the difference between philosophy and religion. As suggested earlier, in Strauss’s view philosophy is not an act of the will because nothing we can will would alter the fundamental situation. Religion seems to assume that man, by his faith, can alter his fundamental situation; he can be redeemed. Is this assumption the ground upon which one must stand in order to pose the question of a life and death choice between philosophy and religion? Does this question assume that man can, by his choice, alter his fundamental situation? In making this assumption, does the question presuppose the religious point of view so that the triumph of religion becomes inevitable if the question is asked in this way? We can agree with Strauss, however, in thinking that philosophy assumes that there is no choice to be made but only the never-to-be-completed effort to understand where and what we are. Contra Strauss, such knowledge is both theoretical and practical. It is theoretical because it does not alter the fundamental situation, but it is practical because it cannot avoid taking the fundamental situation to be what is fundamental for us. The fundamental situation thus

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understood is the human situation. As knowledge of the human situation, philosophy is self-knowledge. As a never-to-be-completed situation, the human situation cannot help being changed in some ways, including, among others, the change from ignorance to self-knowledge. It is of the highest practical importance to know which changes are impossible. Philosophy is both theoretical and practical because it is necessarily knowledge not only of the unchanging or impossible but also of the always-being-completed as the highest possible human desire. As the preceding remarks make clear, in our interpretation Strauss’s argument depends, at least in part, on his ability to separate theory and practice. We would seem to have come full circle from Rosen’s interpretation, since if Strauss bases philosophy on an act of the will, then his argument depends on his ability to achieve the unity of theory and practice in will. Oddly enough, Rosen also criticizes Strauss for separating theory and practice. Strauss, we are told, “did not fully appreciate the deep connection between theory and practice” (HP, 140). It is not clear how this criticism can be reconciled with an interpretation of Strauss as the philosopher for whom even the questions theory raises and explores are themselves self-conscious acts of the will. How could the union of theory and practice be closer than in such a conception of philosophy? It is at least logically possible, however, that a failed attempt to make theory self-sufficient might end in fact as an unintentional act of the will. If knowledge that philosophy is the best way of life is necessarily somehow practical knowledge, then the attempt to separate philosophy from this practical knowledge might indeed reduce philosophy as a way of life to an act of the will. If this were the case with Strauss, then, Rosen notwithstanding, the result would clearly be contrary to Strauss’s own intention. As we have seen, much in fact does depend on Strauss’s effort to separate and hence free theory from the concerns of practice. One conclusion we have reached is that Strauss rejects both religious and secular claims to wisdom— claims to knowledge no finite knower could in fact have. It is also clear that Strauss ties this rejection to the separation of practice or practical demands from pure theory. It is not clear whether it would not be possible to reject the human claim to wisdom without also following Strauss in interpreting this as a rejection of practice in favor of theory alone. Be that as it may, Strauss does interpret the first rejection in terms of the second. The second rejection—in other words, his attempt to separate theory and practice—raises some questions. For example, what does theory mean for Strauss? Is theoretical knowledge indifferent to the human good? Is it concerned with the idea of the good but not with the human good (CM, 29)? While an affirmative answer to this question would support the separation of theory and practice, it would also seem to confirm that the human good is inevitably a choice, an act of the will. On the other hand, if theoretical knowledge includes knowledge of the human

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good, then the pursuit of that good is not an arbitrary act; the pursuit of one’s own good would seem, however, to be an eminently practical pursuit based on an eminently practical kind of knowledge. This very important kind of knowledge, knowledge of one’s own good or of the best way of life, would be practical and have practical consequences without being the product of arbitrary or groundless will. In this case, is it not misleading to speak of pure theory in preference to a combination or union of theory and practice? Is the separation of theory and practice tenable? Is there in fact a deep connection between theory and practice that is eschewed by Strauss? This question is explored most openly by Strauss himself in the article on “Farabi’s Plato.” It is to that article that we must turn in order to continue our inquiry with respect to Leo Strauss and, therewith, into the relationship between theory and practice. NOTES 1. An argument on this point is presented in Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), 228–29. It is not clear to me, however, whether Rosen proves the impossibility of the complete speech (=wisdom) or, alternatively, states the problem of the complete speech. In other words, if the complete speech were to be possible, it would of necessity explain the contradictions Rosen finds in the idea of the complete speech. Rosen assumes that no speech could provide this explanation, but in so doing he assumes the conclusion he wishes to prove. The existence of the contradictions Rosen develops proves only the inadequacy of incomplete speech and not, as Rosen thinks, the impossibility of the complete speech. 2. Rosen leaves it open whether Strauss sanctions this view “or cannot defend himself against being taken to sanction” it (HP, 121–22). 3. See chapter 9 for a discussion of equivocation in Macbeth. 4. In this light, not the principle of contradiction (as per Lowenthal) but rather the alleged overcoming of that principle leads to the death of God, that is, the final and certain atheism. God cannot be the absolutely other because the absolute is not other; I take this to be Hegel’s view. A more Platonic position might be that there can be for us no absolutely other because nothing absolute is known to us. This interpretation of Plato is supported by two views of those absolutes called by Socrates “the ideas.” Farabi “writes of Plato as if Plato had no doctrine of ideas” (Pangle 1987, 2n1). Strauss writes of Socrates’s doctrine of ideas that it is “utterly incredible,” “appears to be fantastic,” and has never been given “a satisfactory or clear account” (1964, The City and Man [CM]), 119). Cf. Rosen, 205n77, with 130, bottom. 5. The necessary limits to the horizons of politics and religion alike indicate that in Strauss’s view the attempt, which is at the core of liberalism, to separate politics and religion can be only partially or superficially successful (Preface, 6, 20–21). Does Strauss wish to transform the modern project by replacing the separation of religion

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from politics with the separation of the theological-political sphere from the strictly private domain of philosophy or theory? 6. “The sharia is the human possibility of philosophizing.” From Strauss’s letter to Paul Kraus, August 22, 1936, quoted in Minkov 2016, 196. 7. George Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1975), 273n33, end. The philosophic life is in a way necessary. But are there not practical as well as theoretical necessities? Consider Republic 458d. 8. In the Preface, 30, Strauss calls this “the atheism from intellectual probity” and ascribes it to Nietzsche. For a contrary view of Nietzsche, see Meier 2021, 143n181 and 167. 9. NRH, 75. While revelation is uncertain, Strauss would agree that revelation seeks both certainty and security (Preface, 10). Is it Strauss’s view that philosophy is superior to revelation because philosophy is more certain than revelation? Or does he mean to say that philosophy is superior to revelation because it eschews the certainty and security of revelation? On Alfarabi on certainty see chapter 1 of Breaking with Athens (Colmo 2005). 10. Strauss describes the philosopher’s self-knowledge (i.e., his knowledge of the dignity or superiority of the philosophic way of life) as theoretical knowledge or “rigorous science” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 36–37. On the other hand, in “Farabi’s Plato,” written thirty years earlier, Strauss treats the philosopher’s self-knowledge as practical, not theoretical. .A review of this article is necessary if we are to gain a more complete assessment of Strauss’s attempts to interpret the relation between theory and practice. 11. Cf. CM, 110–11 with Rosen (HP, 140), and with Republic 439b. Spiritedness or thumos would seem to be the closest Platonic equivalent to will. At least after Hume and Kant, however, reason seems to be a tool of the will; will is fundamental. By contrast, Plato seems to admit the possibility of thumos in the service of reason. 12. This is another way of saying that a certain kind of courage and moderation is always necessary because nothing human is fully satisfying or truly complete. There is no unassisted human bliss. On the unfinished character of human nature, see HP, 146. For Strauss, moderation is not a virtue of thought, and fearlessness takes the place of the need for courage (see WIPP, 32).

Chapter 9

A Man’s World Women in Macbeth

Profiles in Courage would not be a misleading alternate title for Macbeth. Former President Kennedy opens his book by that title with the thesis statement that it is “about the most admirable of human virtues—courage.”1 Is the most admirable of human virtues merely the most visible or must it not also be the highest? That courage is the highest virtue is the upshot of remarks made by General William Westmoreland to cadets at West Point. Men welcome leadership. They all like action and they relish accomplishment. Speculation, knowledge is not the chief aim of man—it is action. [A]ll mankind feel themselves weak, beset with infirmities, and surrounded with danger. The acutest minds are the most conscious of difficulties and dangers. They want above all things a leader with the boldness, decision, and energy that with shame, they do not find in themselves. He then who would command among his fellows, must tell them more in energy of will than in power of intellect. He has to have both, but energy of will is more important.2

Former President Nixon’s book, The Real War, certainly does not underestimate the need for will power. While certain that the United States has the resources to prevail over the Soviet Union, he wonders, not dispassionately, if we have “the will to use them.” But the one-sided emphasis on will could be balanced by further developing the observation that “even nations that had the edge in will and courage, were defeated because their enemies used power more effectively.” The strategy of America’s enemies, we are told, “involves the use and orchestration of all means as prudently as possible.” Moreover, we are reminded that the “uses of power cannot be divorced from the purposes of power.”3 Courage is in need of prudence and prudence must include the consideration of ends. 117

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If we do not count the witches, there are only three women in Macbeth. One is the gentlewoman attendant to Lady Macbeth; we know her only by her station, not her name. Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff are known to us only by their husbands’ names. Macbeth’s Scotland is a man’s world in which the virtue most admired is manliness or courage. What manliness alone can do the play dares show.4 I. WIVES AND WARRIORS Alone together on the heath, the three witches pass the moments before Macbeth’s arrival telling where they have been in the interval since their last meeting (1.3).5 The first witch tells us that having requested chestnuts of a sailor’s wife and being denied, she now plans to punish the husband, who is at sea, with a bad voyage. The sailor will suffer, but, since the witch’s story serves as a comic interlude, his ship will not be lost, and he too will presumably be spared. It is hard for us to know by what right the weird sisters punish the sailor for the fault or faults of his wife, but it is easy to see a parallel in the punishment of Macbeth for the crimes to which his wife incites him. Is this parallel valid? Is Lady Macbeth the cause of her husband’s corruption? Is Macbeth justly punished if he did not freely act? The witches prophesy that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor and, hereafter, king. When the first prophecy is promptly fulfilled, Macbeth is tempted to bring about the fulfillment of the second by the murder of King Duncan (1.3). Macbeth’s letter to his wife tells of the prophecies and of the fulfillment of the first one, but it does not even hint at the contemplated murder of Duncan. This thought Lady Macbeth conceives spontaneously and imparts to her husband immediately upon his arrival (1.5). From this point Lady Macbeth takes the lead. She supplies the indispensable motivation in the execution of a plot that, as mere possibility, had originally appeared to her husband as a “horrid image” (1.3.135). Lady Macbeth’s initial reaction involves no similar repugnance. She is resolute from the outset, and when Macbeth vacillates, she drives him on with taunts of “coward.”6 Is Macbeth’s fault then merely a weak character in the presence of a mind more independent or a will stronger than his own? Lady Macbeth can shame Macbeth only because of what he is. What he is, is his virtues. Macbeth is not lacking in moderation; he speaks with contempt of the “English epicures” (5.3.8). Nor is he insensitive to the claims of justice—a sensitivity that fights against his ambition (1.7.51–54). Justice and courage both call to action, but perhaps not the same action. He can, finally, admire what he perceives as Banquo’s wisdom (3.1.51–54). But above all Macbeth is “brave

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Macbeth”—and so we see him from the first time he is described up until the last words he speaks.7 Macbeth is brave, but he is not fearless. A man who fears nothing cannot be brave, and there are things that are rightly feared. Courage is a possibility only where fear is a possibility. To fear of danger the man who would be brave must add the fear of being a coward. It is this fear that Lady Macbeth evokes when she shames her husband. Macbeth would have courage as his “single state of man” (1.3.140). By arousing in her husband’s prolific imagination the image of a coward too like Macbeth himself, she threatens him with a state of alienation in which he would not know himself. Not to know himself as a brave man is for Macbeth more fearful than the murder of Duncan. (This, at least, is Macbeth’s opinion before the murder, but cf. 2.2.73.) Lady Macbeth can bring about her husband’s crime only because Macbeth both is and is not what he is. What Macbeth is—brave Macbeth—makes him responsible for the deed to which his wife incites him and justifies the dramatist’s providence in punishing Macbeth for what might from one perspective be thought to be the action of his wife. But if courage is Macbeth’s “single state of man,” the unity of his soul, why does his wife appear more daring, more resolute than he? Macbeth is never afraid to “die with harness on our back” (5.5.52). He never lacks that courage, which is mere endurance, mere long suffering of great pains. But Macbeth is not rash. He has no wish to act in ignorance of the perils that he faces; hence, his reflection and equivocation concerning the murder of Duncan. Nor is Macbeth like Banquo’s murderers, men made desperate by the “vile blows and buffets of the world” so that they are reckless even of the dangers they do see (3.1.108–14). Perhaps because of his powerful imagination, Macbeth is more fearful of the evils he does not see clearly than of the ones he knows. As we have seen, the knowledge he fears most to lose is his self-knowledge, which he derives not only from his courage but even more from the opinion he holds of what that courage means. Macbeth’s heroic services to Duncan and Malcolm in the recent rebellion “have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people” (1.7.32–33). “All sorts of people” matter because numbers matter. Military courage is the most visible of virtues, the one that can best be judged by the majority of men. The “golden opinions” Macbeth has gained at the expense of toilsome and dangerous labor give credence to his own judgment of his courage, quiet his self-doubts, and confirm his self-knowledge. Macbeth’s self-knowledge depends on the opinion of others, and he is loath to thwart that opinion by committing a deed the opinion of others would not condone. The one opinion that can outweigh the opinion of “all sorts of people” in Macbeth’s mind is Lady Macbeth’s. But why is Lady Macbeth not moved to maintain the “golden opinions” her husband has lately won? When Macbeth asks, “If we should fail?” his wife’s resolute but desperate answer is “We fail.”8 Lady Macbeth’s courage is more akin to that

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of Banquo’s murderers than to the courage of her husband. It is hard to say what blows and buffets of fortune have filled Lady Macbeth with nihilistic daring. The most probable interpretation of Macduff’s speech at 4.3.216 is that Macbeth has no children. The son which Lady Macbeth claims to have nursed is apparently dead (1.7.54–59). “Everything in . . . [Lady Macbeth] has been burnt out. . . . She is taking revenge for her failure as lover and mother.”9 Denied the possibility of being Macbeth’s partner in the raising of a family, Lady Macbeth finds an outlet for her energy and pride in being Macbeth’s “dearest partner of greatness” (1.5.11). The second partnership is born out of despair. By the end of the play, Lady Macbeth seems to have lost her reason, but in fact her speeches have been mad from the very beginning. Macbeth’s greatness is the greatness of a warrior, in which Lady Macbeth cannot directly share. Her unnatural, because impossible, attempt to do so transforms the heroism of a warrior into the stealth of a murderer. Deprived by nature of the natural or satisfying grounds of partnership with her husband, Lady Macbeth resolves to prove her worth by proving that she is truly a man. The first manly women we meet in Macbeth are on the heath. These reflections seem to shift the weight of responsibility for the murder of Duncan back to Lady Macbeth. The bravery that in Macbeth is guided by the opinion of the community and is hence moderated by considerations of what is good for the community is in the “unsexed” Lady Macbeth isolated from the community because she is isolated from the customary role of her sex. Macbeth is not the only character in the play whose self-knowledge and self-esteem derive from courage. Courage is central to almost every male character in the play.10 Only “some accident of fate” can explain why Macbeth “should be singled out to become the fiend of Scotland.”11 Lady Macbeth or Lady Macbeth’s barrenness is the accident that singles out Macbeth. Macbeth’s “single state of mind” needs to be moderated and guided by the prudence of a woman. In the only scene in which she appears, Lady Macduff shows concern for her family and a sense of dependence on her husband, both of which would have caused her, had she been Macbeth’s wife, to restrain her husband, to encourage him to enjoy the good opinion he has attained and use it for the security of his family. When Lady Macduff mocks her own “womanly defense” that she will suffer no harm because she has done no harm, she betrays an awareness of the vulnerability of both men and women that Macbeth and Banquo, Macduff and Siward are constantly trying to suppress.12 Macbeth and Lady Macduff are opposites such that each could supply the defects of the other. But Macbeth does not see courage as defective or in need of supplement; it is the whole of virtue or the only virtue that ultimately matters. Hence he sought a partner like himself and found one in Lady Macbeth. One wishes that a providence that justly punishes Macbeth would have instead, like a benevolent Oberon, matched Macbeth in marriage

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with a wife whose virtue would have made Macbeth’s own virtues appear to best advantage. But Oberon is missing. II. WITCHES AND BEWITCHING One might say that Macbeth is corrupted not by his wife but by the witches. But if Macbeth believed the prophecy of the witches, his crimes would be unnecessary. “If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir” (1.3.143–44). The witches do not inspire Macbeth to kill Duncan.13 As prophetesses of the future they assure Macbeth that his ambition may be attained without the illness that must seemingly attend it. But Macbeth does not trust the witches, whom he seems to equate with chance. Hecate calls him a “wayward son” (3.5.11). Hence Macbeth takes matters into his own hands. This self-reliance is the meaning of his courage, and it is in courage that Macbeth puts his faith. “I bear a charmed life, which must not yield / To one of woman born.” “Despair thy charm,” Macduff replies (5.8.12–13). But Macbeth’s despair is only momentary because the prophecies of the weird sisters were never his ultimate faith. Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damned be him that first cries “Hold, enough!” (5.8.32–34)

No harm can befall a brave man. This is the “metaphysical aid” in which Macbeth puts his ultimate faith (1.5.30). When Macbeth and Banquo first meet the witches, they are returning from a great victory. Success breeds hopes and the witches are, in part, the projection of these hopes. Banquo says that the witches greet Macbeth with “royal hope,” and Macbeth asks Banquo, “do you not hope your children shall be kings?” (1.3.56, 118). Macbeth’s courage is adequate to any certain danger, but his extravagant hopes joined by ignorance of the future and prolific imagination arouse in Macbeth equally extravagant fears. Macbeth’s greatest fear is fear of the unknown. He is better able to bear the reiteration of the prophecy that Banquo’s issue will be kings than he is able to bear ignorance of the answer (4.1.102 ff.). Macbeth can damn “all those that trust” the witches and yet seemingly continue to believe the prophecies concerning “none of woman born” and Birnam Wood (4.1). His imagination generates answers to questions prompted by the unrestrained hopes and fears that emanate from the same source. Macbeth lacks self-knowledge because he lacks the courage to know what he does not know. But since Macbeth does not fully believe

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the witches’ prophecies, his fears are not removed. The more Macbeth seeks certainty to expel his fears of the unknown, the greater his fears become when his uncertainty remains. Finally, as Macbeth’s fears grow, his cruelty grows with them. III. MANLINESS AND METAPHYSICS One can perhaps explain the prophecies by saying that they express Macbeth’s hope of greatness and his fear of ignorance. But Shakespeare uses prophecies with peculiar equivocations.14 Why? It is true that the equivocations help to deceive Macbeth, but an outright lie would have done as well in that respect. The prophecies do not tell Macbeth what to do but only what will happen or what cannot happen. Insofar as he is deceived by them, the deceptions indicate the kinds of things Macbeth believes to be impossible. The deceptive prophecies do not change the way that Macbeth acts, but they do in part reveal Macbeth’s understanding of the world by showing us the kinds of things he believes. It is his defective understanding and not the prophecies that bring about his fall. Of the five prophecies the witches make to Macbeth only two are misleading. Macbeth does become Thane of Cawdor as well as king, and Banquo’s descendants rule, not Macbeth’s. On the other hand, though “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth,” Macduff turns out to have been “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (4.1.80–81; 5.8.15–16). Likewise, though Macbeth cannot be vanquished until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, Malcolm (who may have known of the prophecy?) contrives a way to bring forest to castle (4.1.92–94; 5.4.4–7). When Macbeth first hears that he cannot be vanquished until a forest moves, his response is emphatic. That will never be. Who can impress the forest, bid the tree Unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements! Good! (4.1.94–96)

Why good? Because the good for Macbeth is rooted, fixed, unchanging, and because the prophecies have made his knowledge of his own good certain and secure? (Cf. Prince, de Alvarez, trans., 94, 144.) When Macbeth assumes that Macduff must have been born as other men are and that a forest cannot move, he mistakes the unlikely for the impossible because he confuses nature and custom (as he does with reference to the “lease of nature” at 4.1.97–100. Cf. 3.3.11–14).15

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What Macbeth does not understand is that nature as well as speech is capable of equivocation.16 The play abounds with examples: A battle is both lost and won (1.1.4; 1.2.67). Fair is foul and foul is fair (1.1.11; 1.3.38). The witches would be women but for their beards (1.3.45–46). Banquo will be lesser than Macbeth and greater (1.3.65). The Thane of Cawdor lives, but under sentence of death (1.3.108–11). Macbeth’s imagination is so consumed by the as yet “fantastical” murder of Duncan, that in his mind “nothing is but what is not” (1.3.139–42). Duncan’s “absolute trust” in the Thane of Cawdor was the very thing that deceived him (1.4.13–14). Lady Macbeth is a woman, but she does not have a womanly intent when she bids the spirits “unsex me here” (1.5.39). Duncan observes that “[t]he love that follows us sometime is our trouble” (1.6.11). Macbeth wishes that a thing “were done when ‘tis done” (1.7.1). Banquo wishes to lose no honor in gaining more (2.1.26–27). Macbeth says that “[s]tones have been known to move and trees to speak” (3.4.123). (Planets are stones, stones in earthquakes move, and trees speak in the wind. But perhaps Macbeth means something supernatural. To his surprise, the trees of Burnam Wood do not speak but move.) The night, says Lady Macbeth, is “[a]lmost at odds with morning, which is which” (3.4.127). Macduff’s son is fathered yet he is fatherless (4.2.27). The duplicity of Malcolm’s speech leads Macduff to admit that “[s]uch welcome and unwelcome things / at once ‘Tis hard to reconcile” (4.3.138–39). Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep, something her doctor calls a “great perturbation in nature” (5.1.10–11). Her eyes are open, but their sense is shut (5.1.27–28). The same might be said of Macbeth. He hears and sees the equivocations of men and nature, but he does not learn from them. Seyton’s name is surely an ambiguous one; language by its very nature equivocates. As for Siward’s son, “He only lived but till he was a man” (5.8.40), though this may be more an equivocation of speech than of nature. What Macbeth could learn is that a quality such as courage can never be absolute. Nature equivocates because it defines by contrast. Battles are both lost and won. The Thane of Cawdor’s loss is for Macbeth a gain. Macbeth is right to think of this gain as “borrowed robes,” though wrong to think it could ever be otherwise (1.3.109). No soldier is invincible. Hence, battles are only more or less lost or won, as can be attested by the bloody sergeant who reports the victory to Duncan (1.2.7). One man’s dusk is another man’s dawn, more or less. The sun is not absolute light, though it is light relative to the darkness of the earth. Hence the day is but brighter than the night and the degree of light that divides night from morning is itself divisible. A cloudy day is still day. But are bearded witches women, or can Lady Macbeth’s somnambulism be sleep? Nature equivocates not only because it defines qualities by contrasts, but also because it defines things only by their qualities. And these it tends to “tumble all together” (4.1.59). Surely it is extraordinary to the

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reader of Macbeth that the play should prove to be a study of the principle of contradiction by which we sort things out. In an eloquent statement, David Lowenthal argued that the principle of contradiction is known to us “by the clearest and most certain of all methods: immediate intuition.”17 Nothing can exist and not exist at the same time. Common sense tells us as much. For example, a battle cannot be both lost and won. But our immediate intuition may be “doubtful,” as was the sergeant’s who reported the battle to Duncan. When things are “tumbled all together,” the principle of contradiction helps us to sort them out. The battle is not lost and won; one side wins and one side loses. But our immediate intuition is of a unity that confuses us. In the Republic, Socrates suggests that these confusing experiences are summoners. They “summon” us to thought (523c; cf. 603c–d). The principle of contradiction explains our immediate experience without, however, explaining it away. Perhaps one might want to say that it articulates the riddle of being without removing it. Not the murder of Duncan but the play itself is “Confusion[’s] . . . masterpiece” (2.3.62) summoning us to thought.18 That a thing is the sum of its qualities and qualities are but contrasts raises problems for the character of a class and hence about the identity of individual members of the class. Macbeth himself indicates the problem but does not reflect upon his own words (3.1.91–107).19 When he seeks to test the willingness of the men he will commission to kill Banquo, one of them answers by way of assurance, “We are men, my liege.” But Macbeth is not satisfied with this answer. Does he regard it as equivocal? Greyhounds, mongrels, demiwolves, and spaniels are all dogs, but they are distinguished. every one, According to the gift which bounteous Nature Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive Particular addition from the bill That writes them all alike. And so of men. 3.2.96–100

Macbeth does not attempt to explain “the bill that writes them all alike.” Not even the mongrel is “just plain dog.” The qualities by which dogs are distinguished—“the swift, the slow, the subtle, / The housekeeper, the hunter”—all admit of more or less. A horse is larger than a dog, but dogs come in many sizes. “Dogness” appears to be a range of qualities. And what of demiwolves—are they too large to be dogs? There are borderline cases. Moreover, the same dog does not always have the same qualities. The greyhound is faster than the spaniel, but he is not always fast nor need he be so. The housekeeper and the hunter both share to some extent in the qualities

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in which only the other excels, which means that each has within himself opposite possibilities. “And so of men.” Is courage the essential characteristic by which men are written all alike? What of moderation and reason? No one quality seems adequate alone. But even if courage is the essential characteristic, there is a “rank of manhood.” Some are more courageous than others, while none are simply so. Yet the latter is what Macbeth would be. Who can be wise, amazed, temperate, and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man. (2.3.105–6)

Macbeth here appeals implicitly to the principle of contradiction. Opposites cannot coexist in a single, simple thing. But to be loyal one must also be neutral; one has most need of temperance when one is furious; and to be wise is sometimes to be amazed. Nature equivocates but courage does not.20 Even so, Macbeth equivocates as it were by necessity. Lady Macbeth warns him to “look like the innocent flower” (1.5.63). Malcolm says that Macbeth is treacherous (4.3.18). His spies are in the house of every lord (3.4.131–32). Macbeth explains the surreptitious murder of Banquo as necessitated by “certain friends that are both his and mine, / Whose loves I may not drop” (3.1.120–121). And yet Macbeth insists that he could “[w]ith barefaced power sweep” Banquo from his sight (3.1.118). Macbeth can play the fox as well as the lion, but he does so reluctantly, under pressure, and therefore badly. Nowhere is Macbeth more “bloody, bold, and resolute” (4.1.79) than in the murder of Macduff’s family; nowhere is he more foolish than in the murder of these potential hostages.21 Likewise, Macbeth murders Banquo. But Banquo’s failure to warn Duncan or to expose Macbeth implicates him in a way that wisely used might make him a safe and useful lieutenant.22 Courage alone is not enough. The mix of qualities that Macbeth attempts to suppress in favor of the “single state” of courage is in fact useful. Courage is relative to fear and these two are relative to the objects braved and feared. Macbeth fears Macduff but is brave in relation to all other men. Courage can be related to opposite objects and can, under differing circumstances, have different effects. The same cause can, and eventually will, produce opposite effects. Hence, one’s courage or manliness can be wise or foolish. Is Macbeth wise to fear Macduff? And, if so, does he fear him for the right reasons? What has been said of Macbeth’s manliness is true also of Duncan’s gentleness. Duncan’s kindness and trust are not coupled with prudence, and for this reason they become a breeding ground for successive rebellions. Macbeth is hated more than he is feared; Duncan is loved but too little feared. Each provides a basis for reaction: tyranny provides the circumstances for rebellion;

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love and favor create the possibility of rejection and ingratitude. Macbeth says of Banquo, ‘tis much he dares, And to that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. (3.1.50–53)

Macbeth and Duncan lack the wisdom that Macbeth praises in Banquo. (But is Banquo really wise?) Perhaps Duncan’s defect is the reason that Macbeth is never called a tyrant with sole reference to the murder of Duncan.23 The old man who talks with Ross gives his blessing to those “who would make good of bad and friends of foes” (2.4.41). According to Holinshed, Macbeth ruled “for the space of ten years in equall justice . . . partlie against his naturall inclination to purchase thereby the favour of the people.”24 Here Macbeth provides his own antidote to the evil he has done. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, on the other hand, tells his wife, “Things bad begun make themselves strong by ill” (3.2.55). Holinshed’s Macbeth is wiser than Shakespeare’s, but Shakespeare is concerned to show us a brave man, not a wise one. Macbeth blames the witches for “equivocation,” but is it not his own courage that equivocates with Macbeth? (5.5.43) Equivocation is the thread that joins the comic jests of the porter’s scene.25 Drink, says the porter, provokes three things, to which he immediately adds a fourth: “Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery” (2.3.25–28). Lady Macbeth asks Macbeth if his hope was drunk, and she says of the wine that makes Duncan’s chamberlain drunk that it has made her bold (1.7.35–36; 2.2.1). Hope is the drink that equivocates with Macbeth’s courage; it provokes the desire but takes away the performance. Macbeth’s hopes equivocate with his courage only because they are not based on an awareness of the equivocality of courage itself. He does not see the truth of his own words: “I dare do all that may become a man. / Who dares do more is none” (1.7.46–47). Macbeth’s desires exceed his powers because he overestimates the power of courage. He desires to be at one with himself and to be safely so (1.3.140; 4.1.83–84). To be safely king is necessary to the self-knowledge of a man who would be simply what he is. But the safety Macbeth seeks in the world of action can be purchased only with a flexibility of soul the admission of which would destroy Macbeth’s own self-understanding. Macbeth believes that courage can conquer all: “I bear a charmed life” (5.8.12). He believes that his body is merely the “agent” of his fearless soul and that soul controls body.26 He dares not recognize the dependence of soul on body; for Macbeth

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soul is eternal (3.1.67). Macbeth is defeated by Macduff not because Macduff is the braver of the two, but because Macbeth is tired, while Macduff, who has been saving himself for this encounter, is fresh (5.7.17–20). Macbeth sacrifices his political safety to a metaphysical dream of self-knowledge through the unity of action and desire. Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valour As thou art in desire? (1.7.39–41)

In fact, this is the one thing Macbeth most fears not to be. But since his desires are incommensurate with the powers he relies upon, his political safety is most improbable.27 The alienation of act from desire prompts the man of action to cruelty and tyranny, but alienation might have the advantage for the theoretical man of making visible the possibilities that Macbeth’s resolute soul suppresses. That act always dresses possibility in “borrowed robes” may well leave one wise and amazed, but this is a conjunction Macbeth disavows (2.3.105). He will unify what is composite. On the other hand, one could cease to be amazed by consigning to oblivion the unity Macbeth desires. But to be something, the unity Macbeth seeks must in some sense exist: nature equivocates but she is not silent. Despite their variety, one can see that courage is a common characteristic of the characters of the play. The variety is difference within unity. To ignore the unity for which Macbeth longs (his eros) is to suppress nothing except the desire for self-knowledge which is the source of his dignity and our interest in him.28 IV. HOPES AND FEARS Lady Macduff is another who suffers for the actions of a spouse. She seems to think that Macduff has left her unprotected in Scotland out of fear, but the description of Macduff’s “broad words” at 3.6.21 make this explanation impossible. Macduff has gone to England to aid Malcolm’s return. He has gone for love of Scotland and in hopes of restoring her rightful king. “The prophecy that Macbeth need fear no man of woman born points up Macduff’s radical patriotism. Who is Macduff’s true mother? Scotland?”29 Together Macduff and Macbeth illustrate the ambiguity of courage: the same virtue that Macduff puts in the service of the “general cause,” Macbeth uses for selfish ends.30 In his concern for the common good, however, Macduff forgets to take care of the goods that are his own and which the peace of his country ought

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to protect. The same thoughtlessness is evident during his interview with Malcolm. The pretended vices that concern him are not the voluptuousness and avarice that might harm individual citizens, but only those vices which would “confound / All unity on earth” and hence be harmful to Scotland as a nation (4.3.99–100). By the time Macduff is ready to face Macbeth, the courage born of love of Scotland has become mixed with a courage born of despair over the loss of his family (“Let grief / Convert to anger” 4.3.228–29). When Macduff hears of the fate of his family, he wonders, “Did Heaven look on, / And would not take their part?” (4.3.223–24). Macbeth’s hopes exacerbate his fears; Macduff’s hopes blind him to reasonable fears. Perhaps the failure of Macduff’s hopes should have warned Macbeth for his part not to trust the witches. Macduff might have made a good husband for Lady Macbeth, who has no family and who could share in her husband’s patriotism as a healthy outlet for her talents. Macbeth, Macduff, Lady Macbeth, and Lady Macduff each have virtues, but they are partial virtues. The providence that would have matched Macbeth with Lady Macduff and Macduff with Lady Macbeth is missing from the play. That the part sometimes exists without the whole that would fulfill it is the mystery with which the doctrine of providence must be concerned. V. MALCOLM AND MACDUFF At the end of the play Macduff is the hero who has defeated the enemies of his king. He stands in relation to Malcolm as Macbeth stood in relation to Duncan at the beginning of the play. Macduff’s great victory follows hard upon a tragic loss. We cannot know how this will affect his ambitions, but we can hope, with some reason, that Malcolm will know how to handle Macduff better than Duncan knew how to handle Macbeth. Indeed 4.3 gives us reason to believe that Malcolm’s duplicity has already mastered Macduff, for clearly Malcolm is the dominant character in the scene. Malcolm is gentle like Duncan, but not foolish in his trust. He has something of Lady Macbeth’s cunning without her despair. He is concerned like Macduff with the general cause, but he is more aware of his private interest. Like Macbeth, he admires courage, but is not ashamed to share somewhat in Lady Macduff’s sense of vulnerability. One may speculate that Malcolm combines the qualities of both male and female characters.31 At any rate, the teaching of the play is that manliness alone is defective, that it needs to be corrected by a proper admixture of womanliness. This combination can be brought about either by a proper matching of husbands and wives or by the combination of opposite qualities in one prudent soul. Whether a practical man like Malcolm can combine these

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qualities in the same way that Shakespeare does is an interesting question.32 Perhaps Shakespeare’s concern with the unity as well as the variety of qualities makes him the more manly of the two. EPILOGUE Macbeth’s ruthlessness can be regarded as Machiavellian. J. Bernardete compares Macbeth to Machiavelli’s description of Agathocles in a way that seems to suggest that Macbeth has the “virtues” Machiavelli sees in Agathocles.33 But Machiavelli teaches that the “lion” alone is defective, that a prudent man must combine the lion and the fox.34 Indeed, the quality of the lion that Machiavelli admires differs from the manliness of Macbeth because in Machiavelli the lion is subordinate to the fox: manliness is subordinate to intellect. The Prince attempts to replace “ancient valor” with modern prudence.35 In our time the emphasis on reason as Machiavelli understood reason has led men to despair of reason and to elevate will above reason, as in the speech by General Westmoreland quoted at the beginning of this essay. Where Machiavelli would have us combine the lion and the fox, Shakespeare would have us combine manliness and womanliness because in Shakespeare there is still a place, not for Macbeth’s cruelty and tyranny, but for the concern with unity of which Macbeth’s manliness is an inadequate expression. NOTES 1.John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 1. 2. Quoted in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1972), 679–680. 3. Richard Nixon, The Real War (New York: Warner Books, 1980) 6, 280, 313. 4. Sometimes in Macbeth it is difficult to tell the difference between manly contempt for death and Christian otherworldliness. See Timothy W. Burns, Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 67–68. For Burns, the “underlying problem of the play” is “Christian politics” (82). See also, Paul A. Cantor, “Macbeth and the Gospelling of Scotland,” in John Alvis and Thomas West, editors, Shakespeare as Political Thinker, second edition (ISI Books, 2000), 315–51. 5. All references are to the New Variorum edition of Macbeth, ed. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1873). 6. 1.7.43. In Plato’s Republic, the origin of the timocratic man is ascribed to a mother’s complaints concerning unmanly ambition on the part of the boy’s father (Republic 549c–d.). While it is true that women through the ages have been shaped and have shaped themselves to fit the expectations of men, men have likewise been made and made themselves in the image of the expectations of women. In Rousseau’s

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Emile, the men will always be what the women want them to be. See below, chapter 17. 7. 1.2.16. On 5.8.33–34, see Jose A. Benardete, “Macbeth’s Last Words,” Interpretation 1, no. 1, 63–75. This excellent article is a storehouse of useful suggestions about the play. 8. On 1.7.59, see Mrs. Jameson, Characteristics of Women (New York: AMS Press, 1971), 375n, on the different ways an actress might say this line. 9. Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1964), 82; also 79. Kott says of Macbeth that by the end of the play “he has realized that every choice is absurd, or rather, that there is no choice.” Ibid., 85. This seems true of Lady Macbeth but not of Macbeth. Macbeth’s world never becomes simply absurd because he never loses faith in courage. For this reason, “According to his own lights Macbeth is not damned,” see J. Bernardete (1970), op. cit., 64. 10. One exception is the doctor who attends on Lady Macbeth, for whom profit seems to be the central motive (5.3.61–62). Malcolm raises a special problem to which we shall return later. 11. J. Benardete, op. cit., 68. Benardete thinks the witches are the “accident” in question (ibid., 73), but I shall argue below that they are projections of the hopes that arise from Macbeth’s victory and hence not accidental to Macbeth in the way that his wife’s barrenness is accidental. 12. 4.2.72–78. For a different interpretation of Lady Macduff’s speech, see J. Benardete, op. cit., 70. 13. We of the Enlightenment are moved to explain away the witches of Macbeth and the ghosts of Hamlet. Shakespeare’s point seems to be that even assuming witches and ghosts, no revelation is possible because no revelation avoids interpretation and equivocation. As I argue at the end of chapter 10 below, Rabelais was aware of the same problem. 14. Macbeth uses the word at 5.5.43. 15. Michael Davis, “Courage and Impotence in Macbeth,” in Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan, Shakespeare’s Political Pageant (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 226, notes the contradiction between faith in witches and certainty that the forest will not move. “If you put part of your faith in preternatural beings, it does not seem very clever to put the rest of it in natural laws.” Davis goes on to note (227), “Drink and prophecy are not part fair and part foul but simultaneously fair and foul.” 16. Michael Davis, The Soul of the Greeks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 98: “To be means to be ambiguous.” Davis is not here writing about Macbeth, but his statement helps us to understand the meaning of equivocation in Macbeth. James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 156, in his chapter on equivocation, as taught by the Jesuits during the persecution of Catholics at the end of the sixteenth century, distinguishes between ambiguity and equivocation, the latter being the use of ambiguity for purposes of deception. This is often but not always its meaning in Macbeth. Shapiro focuses on the historical context of the play. Laurence Berns, “Transcendence and Equivocation: Some Political, Theological, and Philosophic Themes in Shakespeare,” in John Alvis and Thomas G. West, eds., Shakespeare as Political Thinker (Durham, NC: Carolina

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Academic Press, 1981), 43, focuses on Macbeth’s equivocation between two worlds: this world and the life to come. 17. David Lowenthal, “Comment on Colmo,” Interpretation, 18, no.1 (Fall 1990): 161. Judge Wilhelm advises his friend that “one can readily concede to philosophy that it cannot think an absolute contradiction, but it by no means follows from this that such a contradiction does not exist.” Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Vol. II (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 228. 18. Lowenthal’s own interpretation of Macbeth, in “Macbeth: Shakespeare’s Mystery Play,” Interpretation 16, no. 3 (Spring 1989): 311–57, is dedicated to proving that, contra Macbeth, life is not a tale told by an idiot. Lowenthal makes due note of the witches’ “taste for paradox” (314) and of the use of equivocation in the play (320), but in the end the fate of the Macbeths “is entirely natural” and “stems from the fixed natures of things” (354). 19. Timothy W. Burns, Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 78, notices a place where Macbeth, seeing an imaginary dagger, “enters into a philosophic dialogue with himself” on the very similar question of the relation between the form in the mind and the material thing. 20. Paraphrasing Lord Keynes, Greg Crecos remarked in conversation that Macbeth is a Euclidean man in a non-Euclidean world. 21. Howard B. White, “Macbeth and the Tyrannical Man,” Interpretation 2, no. 2 (Winter 1971): 147, points out that the murder of Macduff’s family is not a Machiavellian murder. Jan Blits, The Insufficiency of Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 144, suggests that “[t]he slaughter of Macduff’s family—Macbeth’s most tyrannical act—has no purpose other than the act itself.” Is Shakespeare suggesting that Machiavelli does not understand what moves a tyrant? Is the spring of tyranny incompatible with the prudent calculation Machiavelli urges? 22. Cf. Xenophon, Education of Cyrus, 6.1.31–41; 6.3.14–16. 23. The word is first used after the murder of Banquo, at 3.6.22. See H. White, op. cit., 143. 24. Kenneth Muir, ed., Macbeth, Arden edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 180. 25. 2.3.1–37. In commenting on the porter’s humor, Thomas De Quincey noted that the contrast with the preceding scene (Duncan’s murder) heightened the effect of both. “All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible, by reaction.” John Wain, ed. Macbeth: A Casebook (Nashville: Aurora Publishers, 1970), 92. The structure of the scenes is then an application of the theoretical teaching of the play. From our point of view, Coleridge, who thought the scene quite out of place in a play so “wholly tragic” and lacking in the “reasonings of equivocal morality,” missed one of the most prominent features of the play. Coleridge is quoted in the essay by Susan Snyder in Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, eds., Macbeth, Folger Shakespeare Library edition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 201. See also 4.2. Shakespeare mixes comedy and tragedy, but I can remember no scene in which Macbeth laughs. Cf. 4.1.79 and 5.5.2–3.

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26. 1.7.80. Is this not also the assumption behind King Edward’s healing powers? (4.3.140–59). Also Republic 403d. 27. But not impossible; chance might protect him. See Machiavelli, Prince, ch. 25, on Julius II. Macbeth’s metaphysical project is impossible, but his political failure is Shakespeare’s providence. 28. Does Macbeth agree with the Republic in identifying tyranny with eros? Or are Shakespeare’s tyrants anti-erotic through a claim to have fulfilled eros? For tyranny as the opposite of love, see Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.170; Twelfth Night, 5.1.127. While eros is need, “To be manly is to be self-reliant.” J. Benardete, op. cit., 72. In Twelfth Night, the real tyrant is the Duke, who demands to be loved. 29. George Anastaplo, “Human Nature and the First Amendment,” University of Pittsburg Law Review 40 (Summer 1979): 739. Ross calls Scotland mother at 4.3.166. 30. 4.3.196. Cf. Republic 375b–c. 31. Lowenthal (“Macbeth Mystery,” 353) suggests as much when he says that Malcolm avoids the extremes of masculinity and femininity. 32. J. Benardete, op. cit., 67, writes that “Malcolm (if I may say so) is a woman when juxtaposed with Macduff.” Benardete seems to mean this as a criticism. But see ibid., 74–75. 33. Op. cit., 70. Cf. H. White, op. cit., 147, 151. 34. Prince, ch. 18. 35. From this follows one irony of the poem from Petrarch quoted at the end of the Prince.

Chapter 10

Lucien Febvre and the Right to Unbelief

Fernand Braudel ranks Lucien Febvre among “the greatest of modern French historians.” He singles out one of Febvre’s books, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, for particular praise: “this time he had all the reins in his hands, and the book is his best one.”1 Febvre wrote The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century as a response to an interpretation of Rabelais by Abel Lefranc.2 Lefranc, the editor of the French edition of Rabelais’s collected works, alleged that Rabelais had a secret teaching, that he was a covert atheist who sought by implication and insinuation to attack the ruling opinions of his age. Stuart Clark epitomizes Febvre’s refutation of Lefranc in the following way: Febvre’s classic study The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, published in 1942, related a particular intellectual event to the structural conditions for its occurrence—in this case its non-occurrence. He argued that it was anachronistic to attribute atheistic beliefs to Rabelais and his contemporaries since the absence of certain linguistic and conceptual tools from their mental resources imposed limits on their capacity to disbelieve.3

According to Clark, Febvre’s intention is to prove that Rabelais could not have been insinuating atheism into the minds of his contemporaries because neither he nor they had the words or concepts that would enable them to think such a thought in its modern signification. In the introduction to her English translation of Febvre’s volume on Rabelais, Beatrice Gottlieb puts the same construction on what Febvre says. “Febvre thought that no one was ever really ahead of his times,” and this general assumption was confirmed, he thought, by the results of his investigation of Rabelais’s faith (xxvii). Gottlieb agrees with Clark in asserting that, for Febvre, neither Rabelais nor anyone else could legitimately have what Nietzsche called “thoughts out of season.” One wonders, however, what the 133

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force of the word “really” is in the quotation from Gottlieb. Was there, after all, some “unreal” sense in which Febvre did think that a thinker could be ahead of his times? Clark does not equivocate in this way. As we shall see, Febvre is making two claims. The historical claim emphasized by Clark and Gottlieb is buttressed by an epistemological claim about the difference between opinion and knowledge. Febvre is sometimes taken to claim that atheism was simply impossible in premodern times and this claim is now, according to Alec Ryrie (2019, 14), “routinely dismissed by historians of atheism.” But Ryrie immediately adds that “Febvre’s point was subtler than that.” We will explore that possibility. The claim that it would be anachronistic to attribute thoughts to men ahead of their times poses a challenge to the enterprise of this book. We have certainly assumed that Shakespeare, Alfarabi, and Maimonides had knowledge not determined or promoted by the mental climate of their time. Are we being anachronistic? Febvre brings to light an assumption we need to question. Commentators on Febvre are certainly justified in thinking that he denied the possibility of men being “ahead of their times,” for Febvre uses this very expression to deny the possibility (404). The last sentence of the book implies that even those who created the modern world saw the promised land but were not allowed to enter it. All in all, the deep religiosity of the majority of those who created the modern world, a phrase that applies to someone like Descartes, was, I hope I have shown, applicable a century earlier to Rabelais, and to those whose deep faith he knew how to express superbly. (464)

Rabelais and Descartes were believers; given the time in which they lived, it could not have been otherwise. It could not have been otherwise, because truth is the truth of a particular epoch, and no one can think the thoughts of ages yet to come.4 As Febvre puts it, truth is “that child of the times,” adding that in the Renaissance, truth was “recognized at last for what it was” (376). Recognized by whom? Did the men of the Renaissance recognize the historical character of truth in the same way that Febvre does, or is Febvre himself being anachronistic? The context of the clause suggests that the men of the Renaissance recognized truth as the child of the times, albeit they could not recognize it with the same “lucidity” or “[i]n the same spirit as our own today” (ibid.). It is Febvre, then, and the men of our time, who lucidly recognize truth as the child of the times. What does Febvre mean by distinguishing between those who lucidly perceive something and those who perceive it not quite so lucidly? Are those who perceive with less clarity ahead of their times, yet not “really” ahead of their times? If the men of the Renaissance could be ahead of their time with

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respect to the historical character of truth, might they not also have glimpsed the modern meaning of atheism, so that it would not, after all, be anachronistic to ascribe this insight to them? It is interesting to contrast Febvre’s notion of belief with Kierkegaard’s. For the latter, where everyone is a Christian, no one is.5 Christian belief requires an act of individual faith that stands apart from, and even against, the spirit of the times. Febvre’s assumptions negate the possibility of such individual faith. From Kierkegaard’s perspective, Febvre’s assumptions lead to the conclusion that the sixteenth century was a century without faith, at any rate, without “real” faith. In fact, Febvre did acknowledge that men could have thoughts and ideas that ran counter to the main currents of their time. Offering Cusa and da Vinci as examples, he calls these men “precursors” (404). Febvre did not “really” believe that no one can be ahead of his times, nor did he assert that the sixteenth century lacked the “structural conditions,” the “linguistic and conceptual tools,” that make unbelief possible. On the contrary, he gave a name to those who are ahead of their time, calling them “precursors.” The idea of a “precursor” is central to Febvre’s argument. In his use of the term, a precursor is, first of all, “an exceptional man—one of those men, few in number, who show they are capable of being a century ahead of their contemporaries, of stating truths that will not be taken as such till fifty, sixty, or a hundred years later” (352). Secondly, it is crucial to Febvre’s conception that the precursor, for example, Cusa or da Vinci, has only opinion, not knowledge.6 He cannot know the truth of what he believes, because the necessary prerequisites of knowledge are missing; to use Febvre’s vivid example, the telescope has not yet been invented (404). Finally, as a result of the untimely character of his thought, the precursor is a man without consequence. In this vein, Febvre writes, “The sixteenth century was a century of precursors—that is, of men without posterity, men who produced nothing” (422). It will be useful to provide more textual support to show that for Febvre there are, indeed, precursors who have the three characteristics here alleged. We may then turn to the task of assessing the validity, or lucidity, of this idea, particularly in relation to Rabelais. Could a man such as Rabelais have a rational right to unbelief, or did the mentality of his age foreclose this possibility? Febvre can portray in vivid terms the lives of intellectual solitaries, who seek the truth against the current of their times (417). He recognizes the possibility of truly independent thought and of discoveries made “with practically no guide or teacher.”7 Febvre, then, not only acknowledges but insists upon the existence of solitary, elite thinkers seeking a truth that they had no great desire to share with their contemporaries. But he also sees that “at that stage of science and

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philosophy,” this elite was bound to fail (462). Precursors fail because they are trying to think things they should not be thinking. For this, we may pity them (ibid.). They are, in a way, struggling against themselves. And they were putting all their effort and zeal into painfully worming their way into ideas and feelings that were partly in opposition to their own or, if you wish, the ones they should have had, the ones they were able to have. (364)

Is Febvre’s historiography normative? Does it tell us not what the people of the sixteenth century did think, but rather what they should have thought? Are there thoughts that they in their time had no right to think, though they did in fact think them? What does it mean to say that they had thoughts that they were not able to think? Does not our ability to think against our own presuppositions prove the possibility of philosophy? Perhaps the only legitimate starting point for testing the limits of a comprehensive point of view is from within that point of view, painfully worming our way into ideas in opposition to our own. We will return to this issue below. The paradox of a thinker who thinks what he should not or is not able to think, leads Febvre to introduce the second aspect of the precursor: he has opinion, not knowledge. All opinions are equal. The brilliant precursor may be just an “unbalanced genius” like Guillaume Postel, who nevertheless had thoughts ahead of his time (112). What is the touchstone by which to judge these thoughts? [T]he right scale on which to weigh opinions [is] a strong scientific method. Let us give it both of its names: the experimental method and the critical method. (462)

Here, then, is the essential core of Febvre’s argument. Prior to the scientific revolution, men do, indeed, have thoughts out of season, but these thoughts are bound to remain mere opinion, not knowledge. Unbelief was possible, but it was bound to be arbitrary, a stubborn whim, as dogmatic as belief itself. In his “emotional history of doubt,” Alec Ryrie (2019) draws our attention to the motivations to unbelief that can be found in anger and anxiety. Febvre does not at all deny that such motivations can lead to unbelief, but he does deny that they are a basis for knowledge. One might even say—Febvre does say (364)—that the holders of unorthodox belief should not have done so, for they hold their heterodoxy without knowledge and, therefore, without right. To his credit, Febvre sees that a merely dogmatic atheism is not “truly serious” (461). The right to unbelief can be supplied only by what one author calls a “reasoned atheism.”8 For Febvre “reasoned atheism,” knowledge of what is not, can exist only where modern

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natural science exists, in the form of the experimental and critical methods. Only from the superior vantage point of the twentieth century does the unbelief of the sixteenth century appear unfounded and, in that sense, unreal. From this it follows for Febvre that the historian can ignore the unbelief of the precursor. He is, Febvre has told us, a man “without posterity,” one “who produces nothing.” This is the third characteristic of the precursor. Because he has opinion, not knowledge, “whatever this man could say against religion did not matter, historically speaking” (352). The thought of such a man is “deprived of all historical and human meaning, value, and importance. And as a consequence there is nothing for the historian to do but to pass over him in silence, to leave him alone” (353). And what of the rationalism that such a precursor might have been imprudent enough to try to develop or promote? To speak of rationalism among precursors is “to speak of an illusion” (ibid.). Since it is an illusion, the historian can ignore it, except perhaps in the event that he writes a very long book to prove that it is an illusion. Febvre’s premise leads him to a paradox: the sixteenth-century precursors are both “men who produce nothing” and men who “created the modern world.” Febvre seems to assume that the illusion could only be refuted from outside, “from philosophy or science against religion” (353). He does not consider the possibility that a comprehensive point of view can be best disputed from within. A dispute with religion that begins from the point of view of an unbelieving philosophy or science would merely assume what it hoped to prove, i.e., the validity of reason. Febvre does not explore the possibility that the best way to offer a critique of religion is from within, by beginning where the believer begins.9 In that case, someone living in the Age of Faith would nevertheless have available the concepts and terminology most suited to his purpose. It would not be an anachronistic fallacy to explore the possibility that some men and women used these concepts to worm their way, perhaps painfully, out of them. Gathering together the threads of the argument thus far, we can say that Febvre never denies the possibility of atheism in the sixteenth century nor does he deny the possibility of other thoughts and thinkers that are ahead of their time. One could understand the notion of atheism in the sixteenth century, and one could believe in it.10 One could, after all, even have inklings of Christian socialism à la Postel! What an atheist could not do in the sixteenth century was to know that he was right.11 He could not convert his opinion into knowledge, as we can. As mere opinion, his thought “hardly deserves to be discussed, any more than the sneers of the drunkard in the tavern who guffaws when he is told that the earth is moving, under him and with him, at such a speed that it cannot be felt” (352).12 Given this opinion of the illusory and insubstantial nature of sixteenth-century unbelief, one wonders if Febvre

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gives serious thought, much less discussion, concerning such arguments as Rabelais did, in fact, make. His book gives no instance of his having done so. We have seen that Febvre had neither the desire nor the ability to defend the thesis that no one could be a thinker ahead of his times. Indeed, on at least one occasion Febvre gives a much weaker statement of his thesis. We want to know if the mental state we have tried to describe did or did not predispose men in the sixteenth century to free themselves from the tutelage of religion, to break with the revealed, organized religions to which they belonged by birth, environment, or choice. (451)

Thus stated, the conclusion toward which Febvre argues seems almost banal. No one doubts that the dominant order of things in the sixteenth century did not “predispose” men to unbelief, any more than life in the contemporary Middle East predisposes one to unbelief. Does life in modern France predispose one to unbelief or to belief, though of a different kind? Febvre tries to prove more than this obvious truism, but he does not try to prove as much as his expositors claim for him. He does not try to prove that unbelief was impossible or even that it did not exist in the sixteenth century. On this point, Ryrie (2022, 14) is correct. To the question, Was unbelief possible?, Febvre gives an equivocal answer. Unbelief was possible, but not in the way that it is possible for us. What is meant by this distinction? Did the word “atheist” mean different things in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth century? Febvre makes no such claim, and he certainly does not try to prove such a hypothesis. Sixteenth-century atheism differs from twentieth-century atheism as opinion differs from knowledge. This is the whole substance of Febvre’s argument. Under the circumstances, one would expect a careful survey of arguments made against the existence of God by sixteenth-century free thinkers. What is required is a study of the arguments in order to determine whether they are mere doxology or demonstrative knowledge. Febvre does not cite or analyze one such argument, not because there were none, but because they are not worthy of discussion, no more so than the argument made by a drunk in support of his belief that the earth stands still. In contrast to the men of the sixteenth century, Febvre has knowledge rather than opinion. The sine qua non of Febvre’s knowledge is that he lives in the age of modern natural science. That one could have an adequate understanding of or ground for atheism only after the development of modern natural science is the premise of the argument he presents. At this point the theologian reading Febvre’s book is confronted with some embarrassment. Does Febvre not know that the nonexistence of God not only has not but cannot be proved by modern science? Does he not know that

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the argument between reason and revelation moves on an entirely different plane? Perhaps Febvre would take refuge in his admission that “We are not theologians, and the men of the sixteenth century were” (202). Febvre means to include Rabelais among the theologians. Febvre himself betrays no zeal to understand the arguments that the theologian Rabelais may have made for or against the existence of God. Perhaps Febvre did not discover such arguments in Rabelais. He cannot be faulted for failing to examine arguments Rabelais never made. But what about the arguments Rabelais did make or at least draw to our attention? Might Rabelais, the theologian, be a better guide to the issues than Febvre? To give but one example, Febvre never discusses the striking way in which Pantagruel interprets Loxias, an epithet of Apollo, to mean “the Indirect” and calls our attention to the way in which this indirect speech might lead to equivocations and ambiguities in oracles.13 Perhaps Febvre did not see these equivocations as bearing upon the possibility of the existence of God, though they do have a ready application to the problem of revelation. An equivocal revelation is not really a revelation. Does our knowledge of the existence of God depend on the possibility of revelation? Rabelais might want to suggest that Febvre is asking the wrong question. Instead of asking about the existence of God he should be asking about the possibility of revelation.14 Revelation is a miracle, but it is a miracle that by its very nature claims to be to some extent intelligible. The believer as believer does not want to say that the revelation is meaningless.15 Perhaps Febvre would answer that a sixteenth-century mentality could not raise the questions I am attributing to Rabelais. The thought of the sixteenth century could not have “conclusive force” or “compelling power” (400). Febvre’s argument depends on the superiority of his own historical period to that of Rabelais. As we have seen, this superiority depends on the superiority of experimental science and the critical method. But does Febvre’s own assumption of the limitations imposed on one’s thinking by the mentality of one’s own time not raise a question about the hold of modern science on Febvre himself? Does science itself limit our ability to think freely? Or does Febvre’s core teaching, a teaching about historical mentalities not itself rooted in modern science, warn us of the possibility that modern man is also the prisoner of some mentality? Febvre never questions the belief that science has, in fact, refuted religion or the belief that atheism is true for those who live in an age of science (though many in our time have only superficial knowledge of what science is). If the scientific point of view is not only our inevitable presupposition but also a prejudice that we have no possibility of examining, must not the awareness of this limitation cast doubt on the refutation of religion through the authority of science? If Rabelais was the prisoner of his age, does not the same apply to us? If we make use of this unavoidable uncertainty to reopen the question of science and religion, we

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encounter first the difficulty that we cannot presuppose the validity of science in order to refute a point of view that rejects the fundamental assumptions of science. For Febvre, only science can free us from religion in a way that is grounded in knowledge; prior to this our unbelief is mere groundless opinion. In fact, the situation seems to be necessarily the opposite of this. The possibility of science presupposes that we have already freed ourselves from the assumptions of medieval faith. Unbelief cannot prop itself up on the crutch of science. The liberation from faith is the precondition for the possibility of science unless science itself is to be based on blind faith in reason. To have recourse to Febvre’s own classification and terminology, it is the precursors who lay the foundation on which science is free to build. The foundation does not become more secure retroactively by building the tower ever higher. Without looking at his arguments, there is no way that we can know that Rabelais was not one such precursor or that the ground he broke was mere opinion without knowledge.16 Within the narrower confines of this book, I have tried to show that reason can inquire into the reasonableness of reason or the ground of reason without relying on the authority of science, indeed, that it is compelled to do so. NOTES 1. Fernand Braudel, “Febvre, Lucien,” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), vol. 5, 348–50. 2. Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, trans. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1982). 3. Stuart Clark, “The Annales Historians,” in Quentin Skinner, ed., The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 181. For an example of the notion of mentalities as used by the Annales historians, see Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 325–61. 4. Febvre does seem to acknowledge, as does Collingwood, that one can think the thoughts of ages past. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 214–15. The progress Febvre takes for granted does not prevent us from understanding the past as it understood itself. 5. Kierkegaard, Attack Upon “Christendom,” trans. Walter Lowrie (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), 166–67. 6. David Wootton’s mistaken assertion that Febvre needed to prove “the absence of precursors” can be accounted for by Wootton’s failure to recognize the importance of the knowledge/opinion distinction for Febvre’s argument. David Wootton, “Lucien Febvre and the Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period,” The Journal of Modern History 60, no. 4 (December 1988): 723. Febvre does not mention that

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Plato’s Socrates claimed to know the difference between knowledge and opinion, even right opinion (Meno 98b), but Febvre could consistently claim (against Socrates) that in the case of Socrates this distinction was opinion, not knowledge. 7.His most extreme statements in this regard concern Descartes. With respect to the paradoxical nature of the Renaissance attempt to break with the Middle Ages by going back to classical antiquity, Febvre writes, “There was, in truth, only one way out of all these difficulties. And there was one person [Descartes] who did not deceive himself about it” (369). On another occasion he writes, “Not for nothing have we become used to clarity ever since Descartes established its conditions” (423). If it were not for the last sentence of Febvre’s book, one would be inclined to believe that Descartes is more than a precursor, that he himself established the conditions under which his opinions might become knowledge. To allow this possibility about Descartes or anyone else living in a pre-scientific and religious age would seem to destroy Febvre’s thesis about the dominance of historical mentalities. Wootton (1988, 726) notes the importance of Descartes for Febvre. 8. George Anastaplo, The Bible: Respectful Readings (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 230 (italics in original). Reasoned atheism is made difficult, I would argue, by the doubts involved in proving that anything does not exist. 9. See chapter 14. Thucydides begins where Nicias begins. 10. The fact that the accusation of atheism was brought against men who, by our understanding, certainly were not atheists, means that their accusers were given to hyperbole, not that they had a different concept than we do of what an atheist is. 11. John Stuart Mill expresses this point of view in his essay “Theism,” when he says with respect to miracles that “[i]t is evident that this argument against belief in miracles had very little to rest upon until a comparatively modern stage in the progress of science.” John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, edited Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York: Anchor Books, 1963), 434. 12. Ryrie 2022, 14–15, comments on this passage. 13. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel [1955], Book Three, ch. 19, 339. See above the discussion of equivocation in the chapter on Macbeth. Is it culpably anachronistic to be reminded here of what Kierkegaard has to say about indirect communication? 14. Boccaccio does present Guido Cavalcanti as being thought to be concerned with proving that God does not exist, though in the incident recounted Guido delivers a puzzling bon mot that requires interpretation. See the nineth story of the sixth day in Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (New York: Penguin, 1972), 503–5. 15. Timothy Haglund, Rabelais’s Contempt of Fortune (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 100, commenting on Book Three, ch. 30, speaks not only of “Panurge’s substantive critique of revelation” but also of “Hippothadée’s critique of science.” Haglund notes that God’s inscrutable will forces recourse to written revelation to know his will (ibid., 97). He does not, however, uncover the significance of equivocation in Book Three as a whole. Haglund’s very helpful book contrasts Rabelais with Machiavelli, while taking for granted important issues on which they agree.

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16. Wootton (1988, 727) criticizes Febvre on the ground that premodern men sometimes “reason well,” and he offers Montaigne as a precursor of the modern world whom Febvre should have taken seriously. It is curious that he does not say the same about Rabelais.

Chapter 11

Reasoning about Revelation

What reveals itself must have been to some extent hidden. Let us assume that what is hidden is to some extent capable of showing itself to us, even if this showing takes the form of being discovered by us. What is discovered by us or uncovered before us is perhaps only partially discovered. The knower, the one to whom it is discovered, sees only one side of a thing. The thing is seen only from a certain angle, and this is true even if over time one might see it from different angles. At any one moment, what appears to be the whole is really only a part. Even if the knower over time discovers what was hidden from every possible angle, nevertheless, something always remains hidden. In this sense, what is hidden is with us always. It is part of our common experience, and, however wonderful and mysterious, it is not miraculous. Nature equivocates, as we have seen from a different perspective in our discussion of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Can it be that what is hidden is hidden only to the extent that it is capable of showing itself? In that case, being hidden would exist essentially in relation to being seen, just as long exists essentially in relation to short. Nothing is short “in itself,” because shortness is essentially a relation to something outside itself. Is the same true of what is hidden? Or is it possible that there exists something essentially hidden, something hidden in itself, so that its hiddenness is not in any way related to its potential to be seen, to be discovered, to be known? Moreover, could something not relatively but absolutely hidden ever reveal itself, even partially? When what is hidden is discovered, then it is to that extent no longer hidden. It ceases to be hidden. Now the absolutely hidden could not cease to be hidden in this way without destroying itself. Perhaps the absolutely hidden could not even have self-knowledge, since if it were known to itself it would no longer be absolutely hidden. By the same token, a universe in which consciousness is impossible, hence, one in which there cannot be a knower to know it, would itself be the absolutely hidden. Is the absolutely hidden possible? Certainly, the knower could never prove the impossibility of the absolutely hidden. Its hiddenness makes it irrefutable, 143

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and the same would seem to be true of its absoluteness. The absolute itself is hidden by virtue of its having no relation to anything, not even the knower. How then could one disprove the existence of the absolute?1 No one has ever proved the existence of the Platonic ideas, but if they are posited, then it is impossible to disprove their existence. Proof and disproof are both rendered impossible by the absolute unknowability of the absolute. The theologian who would equate God with the absolutely hidden in order to reveal the impotence of all rational arguments against the existence of God would certainly succeed, but at what cost? Whether or not the absolutely hidden exists, it cannot exist for us. It can exist for us only by ceasing to be the absolutely hidden, in other words, only by not existing, by destroying itself. It is not even clear that existence has any meaning for that which is not a possible object of knowledge, so that the impossibility of existence for us, as knower, is the impossibility of existence simply. But one need not go this far. One can simply say that the idea of God as the absolutely hidden is incompatible with the idea of revelation. The absolutely hidden God cannot reveal himself. Such difficulties have led some theologians to speculate on the possibility that God reveals himself only by not revealing himself or that we know God only by what we cannot say about him or by his negative attributes. When we say that God is the creator or that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and loving, we cannot mean by these words what we mean in all cases in which they are not being applied to God. We can mean only that God is a creator in some sense radically different from the sense in which any finite being is a creator. Likewise, when we say that God is loving, we cannot mean this in any sense even remotely similar to the sense in which a human being is loving. Indeed, the same is true of existence, since even when we say that God exists, we cannot mean what we mean when we say that any other existing thing exists. Nor can we say what we do mean by saying God exists without violating God’s absolute hiddenness. Negative theology leads to the dilemma that when the negative theologian professes his belief in the existence of God, he does not and—by his own account—cannot know what he is saying.2 His words can have only a negative meaning, which is to say that they can have no positive meaning at all. The most radical negative theologian known to me is Kierkegaard, but all negative theology is of necessity radical. In the case of Kierkegaard, it becomes all too clear that one could not make the leap of faith in the absolute paradox while still retaining any sense of what it was in which one had faith. Here faith does not complete reason, it destroys it or leaves it behind. To put it differently, Kierkegaard pushes the separation of the Intellect and Will to the utmost limit in order to pose the question whether any human being can will such a separation. Try it.3

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The theologian might reasonably respond that the revelation of the absolutely hidden God is a miracle or, rather, the miracle. The absolutely hidden God who is also the omnipotent God can reveal himself without destroying either his own incomprehensible mystery or the reason of the believer. Revelation as miracle is the only way out of the dead end, the ultimate silence, of negative theology. To this the negative theologian in his role as skeptical theologian might respond that the mystery and the reason that are simultaneously preserved in the miracle of revelation cannot be mystery and reason in the sense that these words would have in all other cases. In the same way, when the theologian secures the possibility of God’s existence by asserting his incomprehensible mystery and, hence, absolute hiddenness, he must acknowledge that he introduces an equivocation into the meaning of the word possible. Reason cannot preclude the possibility of the existence of the absolutely hidden, but the possibility guaranteed here is miraculous possibility, the meaning of which is utterly different from the meaning of any other possibility, just as the existence of God has a meaning absolutely distinct from any other meaning of the word existence. Only if reason could achieve the comprehensive account of the whole, the completed system, could it demonstrate or discover the impossibility of miracle, but even finite reason—reason within the bounds of philosophy—can conclude along with the negative theologian that the possibility of miracle is no ordinary possibility with no ordinary meaning.4 To secure the existence of God by asserting his absolute hiddenness in a way that places him beyond rational argument can be achieved only at the price of a synthesis of the orthodox and the irrational. While the synthesis of reason and revelation is not possible if this requires the rational discovery of the absolutely hidden, the synthesis of revelation and unreason is by no means precluded. This result is not too surprising once we realize that we have been attempting to use reason in order to defend faith against the assaults of reason, since one rational way to defend against reason is surely to move beyond the range of reason, if that is humanly possible.5 Leo Strauss has objected that the defense of orthodoxy by means of the irrational is equally the defense of every or any orthodoxy and, therefore, unacceptable to the orthodox.6 To this one might respond that within the walls of the fortification provided by God’s incomprehensible mystery all orthodoxy is one. The synthesis of orthodoxy and the irrational is necessarily monotheistic. As Kierkegaard sternly reminds us in Fear and Trembling (1974), irrational monotheism is as compatible with human sacrifice as it is with justice and charity. This absurd conclusion suggests that the attempt to put reason in the service of the defense of orthodoxy was misguided from the beginning, that it was in its origin a synthesis of reason and revelation that is destructive of both.

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The philosophic use of reason is by its nature as extreme or radical as it is exact or precise. It is no wonder then that the philosophic defense of orthodoxy leads to extreme conclusions, conclusions more likely to remind us of God as Abyss than of God as Father. If orthodoxy at its root sought to feed that hunger of the heart because of which human beings seek certainty in an uncertain world, rest from their labors, and hope for the future, then the marriage of theological speculation and theoretical philosophy has been anything but fruitful. The marriage of theology and philosophy can be safely consummated only if its terms are brokered by political science or, at any rate, by political philosophy. This suggestion will no doubt seem offensively Machiavellian or at least Averroistic. Theologians will shudder to think that their pursuit of the divine, in spirit and in truth, should in any way be limited by the demands of politics. One wonders if they would also shudder to think that their pursuit of the divine should in any way be limited by a human concern for the good of their fellow human beings. Does this also sound Machiavellian? To put the same point somewhat differently, why should theology be any more open to the demands of philosophic rigor than to the demands of political prudence unless theologians have been tempted, seduced, by the undeniable hybris of philosophy? The root of the problem seems to lie not with the temptations of theology but with the hybris of philosophy, which claims the prerogatives of freedom notwithstanding the necessary limitations of human finitude. Philosophy would seem to be refuted by theology because of its admitted inability to disprove the claims of revelation. This would, in fact, be true only if philosophy and religion were rivals or had the same end in view, but they do not. This, for me, is the take-away from the first essay of this collection.7 Philosophy stops at the very point where faith begins. Philosophy as a way of life does not depend on the completion or the possibility of completing the metaphysical system that would give answers to the questions of life that rival or seek to supplant the answers given by theology. Rather philosophy and the freedom that it requires of the philosopher is rooted in humanity’s ineradicable finitude and it is sustained by that finitude. By the yardstick of our finitude, philosophy is more consistent and sincere than faith in immediate revelation from God. Philosophy is a more humble enterprise, and more easily justified, than theologians have been led to believe. Philosophers may be somewhat at fault here for too much loose talk about demonstrative certainty and the conquest of nature. From a certain point of view, it could seem that theology sought to co-opt philosophy as an ally against the hostility theology experienced from the political science of the Enlightenment. The absurd consequences of the rationalist defense of revelation might well cause us to reconsider the wisdom of

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this alliance. Is it not possible to envision a philosophically informed science of politics that provides a more rational defense of religion than philosophy can provide while being at the same time a political science that allows a space for the truth of which philosophy rightly reminds us? Such a political science would not provide a solution to the political problem, for which there is no solution. Rather it would provide only the framework for an ongoing exercise in prudence. The mutual influence of theology and philosophy would then bear fruit through the midwifery of a political science well-disposed toward both. NOTES 1. The same result would follow not from the hiddenness of the absolute but from the impossibility of knowing everything. 2. Colmo, Breaking with Athens (2005), 127. Also, Christopher Colmo, “God’s Perfection and Negative Theology in Alfarabi,” in René M. Paddags, Waseem El-Rayes, and Gregory A. McBrayer, eds., The Pilgrimage of Philosophy: A Festschrift for Charles E. Butterworth (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019), 97–113. 3. Søren Kierkegaard, Practice of Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1991), 95. 4. The consequences of the incompleteness of philosophy are spelled out in Ernest L. Fortin, “Faith and Reason in Contemporary Perspective Apropos a Recent Book,” Interpretation 14, no. 2 (May and September 1986): 383–84. Perhaps there is an “unresolvable tension” here (382), but only at the level of metaphysical ambition. The skeptical refutation of revelation does not require the achievement of a wisdom that would replace revelation. This contradicts what Strauss says at the end of his “Preface” to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, where Strauss takes the position that only the completed system could refute revelation. While the philosopher has an earnest desire to be a metaphysical atheist, reason’s inquisition limits him to a methodical or zetetic unbelief. Cf. Strauss on Hobbes’s materialism at Natural Right and History, 174. 5. So far as I am able to understand it, this is the strategy of the New Orthodoxy, which assimilates in full the deconstruction of reason in order to open the door to a powerful Christian rhetoric. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 2, where Milbank asserts that his “entire case is constructed from a complete concession” to the postmodern state of affairs (italics in original). One point of entry to this difficult book is the section on Maurice Blondel: “Thus Blondel, more than anyone else, points us beyond secular reason” (219). 6. Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 256. 7. Philosophy cannot claim the certainty that revelation claims. Nevertheless, I agree with Richard Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 151, that Strauss “does not leave the

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argument between reason and revelation at an impasse for both parties.” Strauss presents faith and philosophy as rival ways of life: “a life of obedient love versus a life of free insight.” Strauss, Natural Right and History, 74–75. Is it coherent to say that faith and reason are rival ways of life precisely because only one of them claims to have immediate revelation or certain knowledge? See Colmo, Breaking with Athens, 114.

Chapter 12

History and Gnosis Voegelin’s Reply to Bultmann

“History and Gnosis” is the title Voegelin gave to an article in which he responded to an essay by Rudolf Bultmann on the relation between the Old Testament and Christian faith.1 Crudely stated, Bultmann argues that the Old Testament is in fact irrelevant to Christian faith. Voegelin rejects this conclusion as symptomatic of a gnostic will to annihilate history. As the exposition of their respective positions will make clear, Bultmann’s reasons for denying what one might call the special relationship between Judaism and Christianity challenge Voegelin’s fundamental assumptions about the unity of mankind and the world history to which that unity gives rise. As Voegelin himself asserts in his response to Bultmann, “there is no less at stake than the meaning of theology, philosophy, and history” (64). The allegation that Bultmann’s position is characteristically gnostic gives Gnosticism a somewhat wider meaning than it has in some of Voegelin’s other writings and raises questions to which we shall return. Bultmann concedes what “Luther has already rightly perceived,” namely, “that Jesus, in so far as he engaged in teaching, is not different from the Old Testament prophets” (12). Both Jesus and the prophets teach the ethical monotheism that, as Bultmann sees it, almost all religions recognize. In this sense, the Old Testament raises the “genuinely historical” question of “what basic possibility it presents for an understanding of human existence”2 (13). Looked at in this way, the moral demands of the prophets “have by no means lost their authority.” These demands are “grounded in human relationship itself, and every period finds them simply by serious reflection upon this relationship.” It follows “for this very reason,” Bultmann concludes, that “they are not specifically Old Testament demands” (16). The specifically Old Testament demands speak to “a particular people who stand in a particular ethnic history which is not ours” (17). 149

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The concrete demands of the Old Testament, in so far as they are cultic and ritual in character, are either bound to a primitive stage of man’s social life, economics, government, and so on, or to the history of a particular people. They are obsolete. (15)

If one goes beyond the obsolete “cultic piety and nationalism” (9) of the Old Testament to the ethical monotheism of the prophets, what remains “is a refined Judaism or a humanism” (12). “Refined Judaism” is universally human; but, for just this reason, it is no longer Jewish. The Old Testament is useful to Christianity “only for pedagogical reasons” (17). The antithesis of “Law and Gospel” requires that one understand what Law is before one can grasp the faith of the Gospel. If Christ is not understood as the end of the Law, he is not understood “at all.” But to understand Christ as the end of the Law requires a prior understanding of what Law is (15). For this purpose, the Old Testament is useful but not essential. Law and the demands of the Law are notions common to Jew and Gentile alike. For this reason, when Paul proclaims Christ to the Gentiles, he finds it necessary to remind them of what is honorable, just, pure, lovely and gracious, but he does not find it necessary to bring them into any specific relation to the Jewish Law (16). He does not try to make them Jews before he makes them Christians. What is specifically Jewish in the Old Testament “is not theologically relevant at all” to Christianity (12). What is specifically Christian is “the idea that man’s relation to God is bound to the person of Jesus” (11). The Christian Church does not simply proclaim the ethical teaching that Jesus shared with the prophets. Rather, “it proclaims him, that is, it binds the God-man relationship to his person” (12). The attempt to inquire into the relationship between Old Testament religion and New Testament religion “raises the question from the outside by viewing the two . . . as historical phenomena and by determining their relationship from a higher vantage point” (12). For Bultmann, there is no higher vantage point than faith. Each of us exists in history, where a decision is required to believe or not to believe. One who attempts to inquire “from a higher vantage point” finds himself making “his own religion into an objectified phenomenon which can be incorporated into a historical development and, whether realized or not, it issues in relativism” (13). Voegelin sees that Bultmann does not merely mean to propound the “truism” that Judaism is not Christianity. He rather wants to break the continuum of revelation between them: the revelation of the Old Testament has to be an event entirely apart from that of the New Testament. It seems impossible, however, to achieve this separation on the level

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of history and historical method in their conventional sense—for who can deny the continuous stream of history in which early Christianity emerges from its Israelite and Jewish antecedents? (72)

Of course, Bultmann does in some sense deny this “continuous stream,” and Voegelin’s response seeks to explain how this is done. Voegelin’s diagnosis is succinct. Bultmann transforms the historical relation between the two Testaments, between Law and Gospel, into the “ontological tension between the natural existence of man and the Christian existence in faith” (69). With the words “natural existence,” Voegelin refers to Bultmann’s description of man confronted with a Law—an ethical demand—the obligation of which he recognizes but finds himself unable to perform. In the experience of his failure, man recognizes his own nothingness. In this experience he can come to humility or despair and, therewith, to faith in Christ and the Cross. But this pre-understanding or pre-apprehension (Vorverstandnis) that makes possible the experience of one’s own nothingness, while it is provided by the Old Testament Law, could be provided by any divine Law and, in fact, is available to man “everywhere” (17). In this “everywhere” we find the shift that Voegelin describes as the shift from history to ontology. Voegelin drives home the radical character of Bultmann’s shift from history to ontology with a series of penetrating questions. Why should the historical revelation reported in the Old Testament be treated any differently than the historical revelation in Christ? Is the Incarnation of the Logos not an historical event, again marking an epoch? Will the Christian theologian say that the Incarnation is theologically irrelevant to Christian faith, too? (70)

Voegelin is able to confirm his thesis by citing the opening sentences of Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament (70–71), but he might also have cited those parts of the essay on the significance of the Old Testament in which Bultmann finds the specifically Christian not in the teachings of Christ but in the Church’s proclamation that He is the Christ (11–12). In disregarding the actual teaching of Jesus, Bultmann comes perilously close to asserting that what really counts is “the idea . . . that God is accessible only in Jesus Christ” (11). What counts here is “the idea” of Christ and not the historically specific person of Jesus. Is not a mere “idea” accessible everywhere, to all men, so that the importance of Christ as the only way to God immediately vanishes? Kierkegaard, who traveled this road ahead of Bultmann, was forced at this point to claim that the idea that mankind has access to God only through one man was an idea so absurd that it could never have come into

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anyone’s head through reason, that it could only come from God (see “The Acoustic Illusion” in the Philosophical Fragments). Bultmann’s declaration of the irrelevance of the Old Testament for Christian faith can now be seen as of a piece with his efforts at demythologizing the New Testament. Both seek to get beyond the merely historically and, hence, accidental expression of an idea or experience in order to uncover what is of lasting human value. Voegelin’s point seems to be that in trying to recover the experiences behind the symbolism of the Gospel, Bultmann has, at least in part, fallen victim to the gnostic will to leap out of history altogether. The gnostic thinker focuses “attention on the means of escape into world-transcendent reality to the neglect of large sectors of mundane reality” (65). By implication, Voegelin turns against Bultmann the latter’s objection against the historian who, in treating the two Testaments as historical phenomena attempts to determine “their relationship from a higher vantage point.” Just as for Bultmann there is no higher vantage point outside of faith, for Voegelin there is no higher vantage point outside of history from which one might declare some part of history to be irrelevant. Voegelin makes this point on the first page of the “Introduction” to Israel and Revelation. There is no vantage point outside existence from which its meaning can be viewed and a course of action charted according to a plan, nor is there a blessed island to which man can withdraw in order to recapture his self.3 (I 1)

Since Bultmann agrees with Voegelin in thinking that there is no vantage point outside of existence from which man can understand or experience existence, is he not bound to agree with the presupposition from which Voegelin rightly concludes that the revelation to Israel is a revelation to us, namely, the premise that “[t]he order of history emerges from the history of order”? (I ix). Since Bultmann does not explicitly reply to Voegelin’s critique, we must try to assemble from the material available the arguments he might advance. In fact, every history must neglect vast stretches of mundane reality. While determining a principle of selection is always an uncertain business, no historian can avoid doing this. While the condition of finitude is such that no human being can step outside of history or existence, one can, indeed, transcend particular, finite experiences. No useful purpose is served by finding the specter of gnosticism behind every effort to distinguish the important and the unimportant. Bultmann might make his case more concretely by pointing to Voegelin’s own study of Israel. Not unlike Bultmann, Voegelin sees the history of Israel as an ongoing struggle between the cultic parochialism of a particular people and the universal significance for all mankind of the revelation granted to

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them. For example, Voegelin speaks of the prophets as “torn by the conflict between spiritual universalism and patriotic parochialism that had been inherent from the beginning in the conception of a chosen people” (I 357). This conflict gives rise to a “double course” that “is the key to the understanding of Israelite history” (I 210). Making use of his own distinction between compact and differentiated experiences, Voegelin writes, The nature of Israelite compactness can be summarized, therefore, as a perpetual mortgage of the world-immanent, concrete event on the transcendent truth that on its occasion was revealed. (I 164; also 180, 367, 369)

Even though Voegelin can say—what Bultmann presumably would not say— that Israel is “a new genus of society, set off from the civilizations of the age by divine choice,” he also suggests that the universalist implications of the revelation reported in the Old Testament “were never successfully explicated within Israelite history” (I 164). “The Covenant . . . was a divine revelation of true order valid for all mankind” (I 167), but this was so only to the extent that the truth of revelation could “divest itself . . . of the ethnic heritage of Judaism” (I 144). He draws the inevitable conclusion of this line of thought in the observation “that the existence or nonexistence of a Kingdom of Israel was irrelevant for the fundamental problem of a life in righteousness before the Lord” (I 182). What is irrelevant is not the universal message but the particular cult or nation.4 Bultmann argues that the Old Testament is not revelation for us because it “is bound to the history of a particular people” (29); is this not exactly what Voegelin means by a “perpetual mortgage” of the immanent upon the transcendent? At this point, Bultmann might contend that the evidence shows no difference whatsoever between his position and Voegelin’s, in so far as Bultmann too recognizes the significance of the ethical monotheism that is said to be Israel’s only claim to relevance for the whole of mankind. At one point in his reply to Bultmann, Voegelin asserts that he is not “overly interested” in Bultmann’s thesis, which “hardly raises a meaningful issue, since empirically we have no knowledge of a Christianity to which the Old Testament is theologically irrelevant” (77). In keeping with this assessment of the thesis, Voegelin devotes the last section of “History and Gnosis” to uncovering the gnostic motivation behind Bultmann’s construction. Voegelin here somewhat overstates his case. For Voegelin too there is much in the Old Testament that is theologically irrelevant to Christianity, namely, everything that belongs to the “perpetual mortgage.” Voegelin confirms this conclusion, toward the end of his article, when he cautions the reader against “hasty criticism” of Bultmann’s method. The “separation of the history of Israel from that of Christianity . . . is the only result at which one can arrive

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if philological method is used conscientiously” (87–88). Philological competence leads Voegelin to the same conclusion Bultmann reaches, and presumably in Voegelin’s case we need not look for gnostic motivations. Why then does Voegelin reject Bultmann’s thesis when philological conscience would otherwise cause him to agree? The difference between them lies not in their common rejection of political Israel in favor of the universal message of the prophets of Israel, but rather over the status of that universal message. In his response to Voegelin, Bultmann would have to concede that while he finds a universal message in ethical monotheism, he does not attribute that message to revelation in the way that Voegelin does.5 The universal message is available to and relevant to all men, according to Bultmann, but the revelation to Israel is not a revelation for us, for Christians (31, 66). “The events which meant something for Israel, which were God’s Word, mean nothing more to us” (31). Voegelin is by no means mistaken to recognize in these words a fundamental challenge not only to his historiography but also to his philosophic position. Voegelin’s historiography is made possible through a philosophic insight that allows him to go beyond the point to which he and Bultmann are both led on the basis of philology alone. For Voegelin, even more than for Bultmann, the argument occurs at the level of ontology. Voegelin’s fundamental insight or assumption—or, at any rate, one such— is that there is only one ground of being. Every revelation, every leap in being, is an eruption of the same underlying one. The multiplicity of experiences and the corresponding multiplicity of symbolizations all refer to the one ground and are experienced as referring to one ground.6 It is from the unity of the ground that Voegelin can confirm the unity of mankind and the existence of a truly world history. For Voegelin, the insight into the unity of the ground and the corresponding unity of mankind in history is the meaning of revelation.7 It is because he experiences the leap in being as an experience of the one ground that Voegelin finds continuity between the Greek philosophic experience and Christianity as well as between the Old Testament and the New (e.g., I 37, 131, 139, 167). Hence, Voegelin can cite with favor Clement of Alexandria’s reference “to Hebrew Scripture and Greek philosophy as the two Old Testaments of Christianity.”8 While Bultmann wants to declare the irrelevance of the Hebrew Scripture, Voegelin would add the Platonic dialogues to the canon in all but name. Or rather, this would be the case, were not Voegelin decidedly skeptical about having a canon of any kind (I 366–67). The implication of the unity of the ground extends beyond “the two Old Testaments” to include the cosmological symbolisms of Mesopotamia and Egypt: Although each of the great [symbolic] forms has an organizing center of experience of its own, they are parts of a continuum in so far as they are linked by

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the identity of the order of being and existence which man experiences, on the scale of compactness and differentiation, in the course of history. Neither does the cosmological form become senseless when the organizing center of symbolization has shifted to the experience of God’s revelation to man, nor does the history of the Chosen People become senseless with the advent of Christ. (I 299, emphasis added)

Here then is Voegelin’s reply to Bultmann in its fullness. The symbolic form of Israelite order is theologically relevant to Christians for the same reason that the cosmological forms of Mesopotamian order are relevant to us: they are all symbolic forms of the one, enduring order of being. From Voegelin’s point of view, Bultmann’s is a gnostic thesis because, in denying the theological relevance of the Old Testament, Bultmann denies the unity of being and of mankind. In this context, Bultmann’s notion of “revelation for us” manifests a kind of particularism that is the mirror image of what he and Voegelin both see as Jewish particularism. Bultmann, as it were, transfers the “perpetual mortgage” of Israel’s world-immanent experience to Christianity. Christian revelation excludes and negates all other revelations. While Voegelin’s objection to this is intelligible in itself, I doubt that it helps the argument along to call this gnosticism. Are all particularism and parochialism gnosticism? Perhaps Voegelin would reserve the term “gnosticism” for those forms of particularism that make a universal claim and, in so doing, treat a part of reality as if it were the whole of reality. But in that case the peculiar combination of universal message and Chosen People that Voegelin finds in ancient Israel is itself a form of gnosticism.9 The human failing of treating our own experience as if it were the comprehensive experience is ubiquitous, or nearly so. To equate this failing with gnosticism is to give that term so wide a meaning that it loses its analytical utility. Certainly it would no longer serve the purpose—intended by Voegelin—of revealing something essential about the nature of modernity. Gnosis or not, Bultmann’s contention that the revelation to Israel is genuine revelation, but not revelation for us, directly challenges a key assumption of Voegelin’s enterprise, namely, the unity of mankind of which we are made conscious through the experience of the one ground of being. While the basis of Voegelin’s rejection of Bultmann’s thesis has become clear, it is not clear what Bultmann might say in criticism of Voegelin’s view. Voegelin claims that to deny that the God of the philosophers is the same God who revealed himself to Moses is “to indulge in extraordinary theological assumptions” (IV 229). Bultmann might want to raise the question that Voegelin almost raises here. What are the extraordinary theological assumptions, eschewed by Voegelin, implicit in Bultmann’s conclusion that not every revelation is a revelation for us? Is it extraordinary to assume that a revelation is a

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particular revelation? Voegelin himself insists that the experience of Moses was unique and cannot be subsumed under general categories (I 388, 409). One might think that the particular character of a revelation was one of its most striking features. Even if Bultmann were to grant to Voegelin that the divine ground is always the same—which a theologian who dedicates his book to Heidegger might not grant (64)—is it obvious that the unity of the source is more important for us than the diversity of experiences and symbols? One of Voegelin’s recurring themes is that the history of mankind in time is “shrouded in the mystery of a meaning incompletely revealed” (69). Under the circumstances, might not the manifest discontinuities of the human record be at least as worthy of note as the posited unity of the underlying ground? Voegelin describes Heidegger’s existentialism as a type of gnosis, but the Heideggerian Bultmann might want to point out that Voegelin shares with Heidegger a disposition to turn away from beings while turning toward Being.10 One consequence of this orientation is a tendency to marginalize the political, so that in one instance Voegelin, the political scientist, can speak of the events of political history as being not “our concern” (I 249). Voegelin’s methodical merging of revelation and philosophy (“the two Old Testaments” of Clement) prevents him from raising two important questions: Is the oneness of the ground of being and the subsequent unity of mankind a philosophic insight available to all men everywhere at all times, or is it known only through the authority of divine revelation? Secondly, is it true? We return from these treacherous waters to the shallower but safer littoral of the problem of prefiguration. Using a striking quotation from Nietzsche, Voegelin notes that he and Bultmann share a common disgust with those historians who write as if “everywhere the Old Testament was supposed to speak of Christ and nothing but Christ” (74). The quotation is from Nietzsche’s Daybreak (Aphorism 84), but it closely parallels the title of an essay by Wilhelm Vischer, “Everywhere the Scripture Is about Christ Alone,” a companion piece in the volume where the Bultmann and Voegelin essays appear (90–101). Now the title of Vischer’s article is a direct quotation from Luther. Notwithstanding the implicitly harsh treatment of Luther and Vischer, Voegelin’s own assertion of the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament requires him to deal with what he calls the problem of prefiguration. “Christ is indeed prefigured in Isaiah and Deutero-Isaiah” (86). Voegelin explains how prefiguration is possible by having recourse to the previously mentioned distinction between compact and differentiated symbols. To the best of my knowledge, Voegelin defines this distinction only by using it in a great variety of contexts. For example, while Voegelin takes the revelation on Sinai to have created a people in “historical form, understood as the experience of the present under God” (I 130, or the similar formulation at I 241), he notes that the Hebrew Bible has no word for history. He further

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recognizes that the use of a modern word foreign to the text raises a problem for his interpretation (I 162–63). Voegelin contends that the experience of history is there in the Old Testament, but it cannot be fully articulated, that is, differentiated, because of the weight of cosmological, non-historical myth that the biblical symbols still bear.11 Hence, the use of more differentiated symbols makes it possible to bring out the full meaning of the more compact symbols. The result is that in Voegelin’s interpretation, History is an important focus whereas Law is not. One striking way in which Voegelin marginalizes the notion of Law in the Old Testament is by translating “Torah” as “Instructions” (I 164–65). The contrast between the two Testaments remains more striking for Bultmann because he still thinks of them in terms of Law and Gospel (14), not simply History and Gospel.12 Indeed, in writing of Deuteronomy, Voegelin goes so far as to say that in it “existence in the present under God has been perverted into existence in the present under the Torah” (I 364, emphasis added; see also I 373, 447–49, and, above all, 447n1). History, not Law, is the revelation that makes the Old Testament revelation “for us.” In his reply to Bultmann, Voegelin explains that [c]ompact experiences will be expressed by compact symbols; and the full meaning of compact symbols cannot be understood without analysis of the motivating experiences—an analysis which obviously can be conducted only from the historically later position of experiences that have differentiated from the compact complex. (87)

More compact symbols are properly understood in the light of more differentiated ones. Hence, for Voegelin, “from Christ a ray of light falls back over the past to illuminate Moses” (I 398). In Voegelin’s hands the distinction between compact and differentiated symbols is a powerful tool, but, as Voegelin himself warns, a dangerous one (74). A compact symbol is, of necessity, one that the historian understands more fully than it was understood by those who created the symbol (e.g., I 267). It is not quite clear whether this is because of the gifts of a particular historian, or whether it is due to the historian’s advantageous situation in a more differentiated epoch (e.g., New Science 61). If the latter, then it is hard to see why the progress from compact to differentiated does not imply a philosophy of history that gives a knowable meaning to history, notwithstanding the ineradicable mystery in which, Voegelin reminds us, the meaning of history is shrouded (69, quoted above).13 Whatever the verdict on this larger issue, it is clear that as a result of the compact character of the Hebrew Scriptures, if they are not everywhere about Christ alone, still, for Voegelin, they can only be rightly understood as containing a compact prefiguration of an experience that gains its full symbolic and experiential differentiation only in Christian symbolism (e.g.,

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I 131). If the gnostic runs the risk of ignoring areas of reality, the differentiation of compact symbols runs the risk of attending to areas of reality that are not there, of finding connections where there are none.14 As Voegelin rightly points out, Bultmann avoids one peril only at the risk of falling into its opposite. Perhaps Bultmann does not appreciate, as Voegelin does, that an older, more compact symbolism may be “richer” than a more differentiated experience and symbolism. “Differentiation, one would have to say, is not an unqualified good” (I 83–84). NOTES 1. Rudolf Bultmann, “The Significance of the Old Testament for Christian Faith,” in Bernard W. Anderson, ed., The Old Testament and Christian Faith: A Theological Discussion (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 8–35; Eric Voegelin, “History and Gnosis,” ibid., 64–89. Unless otherwise indicated, all references are to pages of this volume. 2. I have generally omitted Bultmann’s generous use of italics. 3. All references that include a volume number are to Eric Voegelin, Order and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956–87), I–V. Israel and Revelation is Volume I of Order and History. 4. “The . . . divine choice petered out into a communal separatism, which induced the intellectuals of the Roman Empire to attribute to the community an odium generis humani. What had begun as the carriership of truth for mankind, ended with a charge of hatred of mankind” (I 144). Voegelin does not say what he thinks of this charge or of communal separatism in general. Consider also the question he raises: “What has this new Israel to do with the old one?” (I 438) In a parallel case, Voegelin’s universalism causes him to conclude that Aristotle’s attachment to the polis as the society in which human nature can best flourish is at odds with the philosopher’s own experience of the divine ground (III 315–36). 5. While Voegelin clearly makes a leap in being essential to the foundation of Israel, he is, in comparison to Bultmann, reluctant to attribute to Israel monotheism in the strict sense (I 358–59). 6. Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis, trans. and ed. Gerhart Niemeyer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), 148. In contrast, Voegelin, citing Isaiah 63, can write, “To be sure, Yahweh was still the God of Israel, not of mankind” (I 239). But if Isaiah did not experience Yahweh as the God of all mankind, how could he be experiencing the one ground? The question follows logically from Voegelin’s own assertion that “[t]he leap in being, the experience of divine being as world-transcendent, is inseparable from the understanding of man as human” (I 235). 7. Along with the unity of the ground, Voegelin stresses its transcendent character, a transcendence so complete that it can give rise to “the anguish of life in a godforsaken world” (I 240; see also I 36–37). In order to properly understand the passage quoted, one must see that the anguish referred to is a consequence of an insight

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that Voegelin ascribes to King Saul: “The incompatibility of human and divine status seems to have been realized fully for the first time by Saul” (I 236). 8. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 80n7. As to why philosophy did not emerge in Israel and the consequences of this fact, see I 240, 327, 368, and 439. On the basis of the biblical text, Voegelin can write that the prophets were “handicapped” by their inability to break through to philosophy (I 446). In the light of this remark we conclude that Voegelin does not regard the Bible as the word of God in a fundamentalist sense. 9. “This metastatic faith, now, though it became articulate in the prophets, did not originate with them but was inherent, from the very beginnings of the Mosaic foundation, in the conception of the theopolity as the Kingdom of God incarnate in a concrete people and its institutions” (I 453). See I 451–58. 10. In the reply to Bultmann, Voegelin questions whether “Heidegger’s existentialism is philosophy at all” (69, but cf. 65), so that the reference to Heidegger’s Satz vom Grund in support of Voegelin’s own argument in Anamnesis (79) is quite striking. 11. History is to be understood in contrast to the “eternal recurrence” that is the experience of society in cosmological form (I 127). From the historical point of view that transcends cosmological civilizations, that sees their rise and fall, they appear in “meaningless sequence” (I 125). 12. The difference here between Bultmann and Voegelin is at most a matter of degree. Bultmann writes that “in the Old Testament man is seen in his temporality and historicity” and that “[t]his understanding of existence . . . is the same as that of the New Testament” (20). In other words, when Bultmann focuses on History as the primary mode of thought and experience, then he sees the same continuity between Old Testament and New Testament that Voegelin sees. 13. In New Science (120), Voegelin says bluntly that “history has no eidos.” That this axiom frees Voegelin from seeing history in terms of progress is evidenced in an interesting way by his assessment of Israel as “reversing the ordinary course of social evolution” (I 315–16). See also I 409, 436. 14. Voegelin’s own efforts to find prefiguration are not always persuasive, for example, I 398.

Chapter 13

On Voegelin’s Interpretation of Political Reality

Voegelin’s answer to the question “What Is Political Reality?” is given in an essay by that title, the only essay in the last part of his collection, Anamnesis (1966). Strikingly, that part is titled “The Ordering of Consciousness.”1 One can imagine a variety of other answers. Plato takes his bearings by the question “What is justice?” Thucydides, as we shall see, explores the conflict between justice and necessity. Alfarabi and Hobbes, each in his own way, see the political as that which moves from opinion to action. Leo Strauss sees a theological-political problem that leads him to explore law and philosophy, or the city and man. Voegelin’s answer in terms of human consciousness is on thoroughly modern, Cartesian ground. He is certainly entitled to claim that he attempts a return to antiquity from a point of view that fully responds to the challenge of modernity. Voegelin frames his task not by reference to Descartes but by setting up a contrast with the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell. This work deploys set theory in an attempt to achieve David Hilbert’s goal of the rigorous axiomatization of all of mathematics. As Voegelin presents it, Whitehead and Russell establish the axiomatic ground for an already existing body of knowledge. This axiomatization is surely an act of human consciousness, but its subject matter is mathematics, not human consciousness. Whitehead and Russell are reflecting on the axioms of mathematics, not on the axioms of consciousness. Consciousness of the ground of mathematics does not exist in opposition to or in rivalry with the content of mathematics. Knowledge of political reality presents an entirely different problem. The student of politics and history participates in the very subject he wishes to understand. The political reality of which he finds himself a part is already structured by a pre-philosophic or non-noetic knowledge of order. Knowledge of political reality emerges in history as a part of the reality it differentiates. It emerges of necessity in critical discussion (debate or dialogue?) with the already existing 161

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societal interpretation of order (285, 145). Indeed, political reality is constituted by its own self-understanding, and the philosophic or noetic understanding of that reality emerges in some way distinct from or even against the self-understanding of society. As a rival form of understanding, knowledge of political reality of necessity interacts with the reality it interprets and changes it (cf. 317, 177). One cannot announce the first principles of political science in the way that one announces the first principles of mathematics because in the case of political science the declaration of first principles is bound to have an impact, however limited, on the reality to be described. In this sense at least, “Reality . . . is not constant” (306, 165; but see 307, 166). It is obvious that the impact on the city of their philosophizing must have been a problem for Plato and Aristotle as students of nature. If the city is a part of nature like the heavens or the elements of physics, then it is an object of theoretical study. The city is prior to philosophy in time and in nature. This pre-philosophic city is the proper object of political science. Of course, both Plato and Aristotle recognize that there is a form of knowledge, practical knowledge or prudence, that does impact the city. The distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge allows Aristotle to cordon off the theoretical, to limit the impact of knowledge of politics upon its own subject matter. As Voegelin sees it, both Plato and Aristotle responded to the need for a fixed theoretical object by treating “the polis as the exclusive object of investigation” (348, 207). This, of course, was a mistake. Their thinking was bound within the limits of the polis because they were unable to appreciate the extent to which their own activity would transform the limits of the political. In the case of Aristotle, it was not only his own impact on politics that Aristotle failed to notice but also the impact of his student, Alexander. Voegelin contrasts the society based on cosmological myth with one that becomes open to the ground of being through its prophets and philosophers. He acknowledges his debt to Bergson in distinguishing between the closed and the open society, although he relies much more heavily than Bergson on the language of Aristotle in describing the noetic breakthrough that allows the philosopher to encounter the ground of being beyond any particular being (288–90, 148–50). The contrast between the closed and the open society seems to suggest that in Bergson’s case the noetic breakthrough can indeed become the basis of a new kind of society. Bergson seems more radical than Voegelin in asserting the possibility of a new kind of society in contrast to the pre-philosophic political reality. Voegelin never goes down this route. Every society creates its own symbolism to articulate the place of man in the world, but no society can simply base itself upon the truth of the tension toward the ground of being. “There are no societies whose constitutive self-interpretation would be noetic” (285, 144). Indeed, the confusion that

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results when the symbolic truth of this or that particular society is mistaken for the truth of transcendence toward the ground of being is the gnostic error upon which Voegelin focuses a great deal of his analysis of history, especially modern history. Whereas Bergson’s contrast of closed and open societies suggests a break in historical continuity, Voegelin relies upon the language of compactness and differentiation to explicate the impact of openness to the ground upon the multiplicity of symbolizations of order in history (293, 153; 299, 158–59). Every society has an experience, a consciousness, of man’s place in the cosmos. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia offer a variety of examples. For Voegelin, these symbolisms are not simply untrue. They represent the truth of their society, and they presuppose the ground of being that makes them possible. History, for Voegelin, is the emergence to consciousness of this presupposition through the experience of the one ground of being transcending all particular symbolisms. For consciousness is the existential tension (Spannung) toward the ground; and the ground, to which they are attuned (auf den hin sie gespannt sind), is for all men one and the same divine ground of being. History becomes a structurally intelligible field of reality through the presence of the one ground, in which all men participate, however different their experiences of participation may be. (320, 179)

The decisive breakthroughs occur in the philosophic experiences of what Voegelin sometimes calls the mystic philosophers, which seems to include Plato and Aristotle, but also in the experiences of the prophets of Israel. Indeed, Israel and Revelation takes pride of place as volume I of Order and History. The prophets and the philosophers experience the same divine ground. Voegelin can thus speak of the “rich spectrum of modes of knowledge . . . of which the rational is only one” (324, 184). How does Voegelin adjudicate the rival claims of reason and revelation? The problem we encounter in evaluating these competing claims is the lack of any common ground between the disputants. If we begin with reason, then we are limited by reason. It is impossible to reach a conclusion that transcends reason much less one that opposes reason. On the other hand, as Kierkegaard reminds us, for faith all things are possible. Reason’s inquisition requires that the rational man find some common ground with the believer in order to carry on the debate between them. In Plato, we regularly encounter a dialogue in which Socrates begins from the point of view of his interlocutor in order to bring him around to a surprisingly different point of view. Thucydides, as we shall see, adopts the point of view of the pious Nicias in order to show that his piety is refuted by Nicias’s own experience.

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It is worthy of note that Voegelin explicitly warns against the dialectical approach we have just outlined. One should never accept at the beginning the false assumption against which one wishes to argue (310, 169; 328, 188). Voegelin seems to have taken a page out of Karl Popper (1988) in warning us against closed systems of thought that cannot be falsified. Voegelin is thinking of systems like positivism, Marxism, historicism, and behaviorism (286, 146; 328, 187), but do we not face the same problem when confronted with religion based on a God for whom all things are possible? From Voegelin’s point of view, we have misconceived the problem of adjudicating the rival claims of reason and revelation. We located the problem in a lack of common ground between the rival interlocutors, but for Voegelin this is a decisive mistake. The common ground is our common humanity. We all live in tension with the one ground of being, whether or not we have become conscious of this fact. In our preceding study of his exchange with Bultmann, we encountered Voegelin’s assumption that there is only one ground of being which is experienced no matter how various the symbolisms that express it. In “What Is Political Reality?,” Voegelin is explicit about this assumption and spells out its place in his thinking. The oneness of the ground of being makes possible the unity of mankind, and this unity does not become known as a consequence of the investigation into order and history; rather it is an axiom that makes the investigation possible. It is the presupposition on which all else is built (296, 155). Voegelin began his discussion of political reality by stating emphatically that political science does not have first principles (286, 146; 351, 210). But the assumption that the experience of the ground of being is one for all mankind is explicitly presented as a principle that makes political science and the study of order in history possible. It is hard to know why this should not be called a first principle. It does not seem to be a principle that is somehow modified in the process of becoming known. The axiom guarantees that the experience of the Hebrew prophets and of the mystic philosophers of Greece is an experience of one and the same ground, though the symbolisms by which it is expressed are clearly different and the Greek experience may be more differentiated than the Hebrew experience. Even so, it is, if not the same experience, nevertheless an experience of the same ground. The unity of the ground does not depend on the unity of mankind, though the unity of mankind does seem to depend on the unity of the ground. Voegelin’s point of view is further elaborated if we raise with him the question of the existence of God. Is this something that can be proved or disproved by logical demonstration? What would he think of Thomas Aquinas’s attempt to prove the existence of God or of Guido Cavalcanti’s attempt to prove that God does not exist? From Voegelin’s point of view, the one would be as confused as the other. The ground of being is an experience that needs no proof. Attempts to turn God into a thing whose existence one would prove

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or disprove totally miss the point (302, 161; 316, 176). For Voegelin, these proofs belong to the ossified realm of dogmatic theology. It is not clear to me whether Voegelin would allow the experience of the one ground to be described as an immediate experience. He uses the Aristotelian language of nous in order to describe the experience, and in Aristotle nous is an immediate intuition of first principles.2 Voegelin explicitly says that the experience of transcendence does not mediate (vermitelt) knowledge of things (317, 176), but this is not quite the same as saying that it is itself an immediate experience. He calls consciousness a sensorium of participation (304, 163), and he uses language that suggests that the symbol itself is the reality that we experience (305, 164). This is an important point. I might be wrong in thinking that I see my friend on the other side of the room, but I cannot be wrong about the fact that I do think this. Immediate experience is just that. And what does it mean when Voegelin tells us that “[t]here is no other reality than that of which we have experience” (311, 170)? On the other hand, Voegelin asserts (in a voice that reminds us of Husserl’s phenomenology) that every consciousness is consciousness of something (307, 166). Furthermore, our interpretation of the something in question might be inadequate in the sense of being compact compared to a more differentiated experience. Some interpretations of transcendent experience are more differentiated than others, and on this basis they can be ranked. There are degrees or grades of truth (298, 158). Finally, in one of his boldest statements, we are told that we have no experience of a humanity that does not have experiences of transcendence (317, 176). This is another version of his assertion of the fundamental axiom concerning the unity of mankind. How would we test the claim that all humanity has the form of reality of transcending consciousness? If this consciousness makes us aware of our common humanity, then we might look to see if all men have such a consciousness. Homer’s Achilles pursuing Hector beneath the walls of Troy says he has no more kinship with Hector than a lion with a man or a wolf with a lamb (Iliad 22. 262–63). Or does Achilles’s reaction to Priam when he comes to beg for Hector’s body expose a common humanity? In Homer, that common bond seems to be pity and self-pity (Iliad 24. 485–570), not the shared experience of the divine ground. In his Ways and Means (4.17), Xenophon suggests that if Athens owned three slaves working in the silver mines for each citizen, these slaves would support the citizens in freedom. Could Xenophon make such a suggestion while at the same time recognizing the common humanity of free and slave? Bernard Knox points out, what Thucydides does not, that Nicias, the Greek general who was defeated and executed, owned a thousand such slaves, yet Thucydides could describe him as a man who “of all the Greeks of my time least deserved such a fate, since

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the whole course of his life had been regulated by strict attention to virtue.”3 Knox is obviously raising the question of the basis of Nicias’s virtue as seen by Thucydides. Had it anything to do with participation in the divine ground? Does Voegelin’s attempt to rest the unity of mankind on the unity of the divine ground make the more certain depend upon the less certain? Hobbes can argue for the equality of all men without appeals to the divine ground, and Frederick Douglass rightly assures us that “[t]here is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”4 Perhaps Voegelin would defend his strategy of making the unity of mankind depend on the unity of the divine ground by appealing to more and less differentiated experiences. He might also assert that reality is not constant (306, 165). Our reality is not the same as the reality experienced by Homer’s Achilles or by Xenophon or Nicias, although this does not seem to mean that the divine ground changes. Or he might assert that the kind of evidence we have presented is superficial. Random passages from Homer, Xenophon, or Thucydides cannot refute the claim that all human beings are in some way oriented toward one and the same ground. If we concede this point, is it fair to ask what kind of contrary evidence Voegelin would accept? What kind of evidence would, if available, falsify his fundamental assumptions that all human beings share, at least formally, in the experience of transcendence and that all experiences of transcendence are of one and the same divine ground? Or would Voegelin be satisfied with the acknowledgment that (reverting to the language of Popper) his theory of consciousness cannot be falsified? One might problematize Voegelin’s way of founding our common humanity by beginning with his own assumptions. Those who have the experience of transcendence, be they prophets or philosophers, are obviously a rare breed and their return to the cave is not an easy one. Their experience and their attempt to articulate it causes them to be seen by their respective communities as atheists and heretics (285, 145). Moreover, Voegelin is emphatic in denying that there can ever be a society that adequately embodies the experience of the divine ground (285, 144). Is it possible that this experience, rather than being the basis of our shared humanity, becomes the mark that separates the few from the many? Voegelin does not pose the question in this way, though he does make the curious remark that the philosopher might know only a “relatively small sector” of universal humanity (299, 158). How does consciousness as the sensorium of participation differ from and relate to consciousness as the noetic intuition of the divine ground? From a naïve point of view, the experience of participation looks like the opposite of an experience of transcendence. Participation means that there is no possibility of getting outside of our experience of history and politics and of becoming an objective observer. Voegelin is aware of the implications of this claim as we can see from the fact that he wrestles with the problems of subjectivity

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and relativism (305, 164). Our subjective participation is inescapable, yet it is not merely relativistic or idiosyncratic. How does Voegelin avoid this outcome? Does our subjective consciousness of participation escape relativism by being grounded in the consciousness of transcendence? Surprisingly, in order to answer the question “What is political reality?” one must ultimately answer the question “What is divine transcendence?” This need raises another question, not unrelated to the problem of the immediacy of revelation. Early in his essay, Voegelin asserts that the experiences in question are not ineffable (287, 147). We ought to be able to put them into words; they should be communicable (319, 178). We ought at a minimum to be able to say that one experience is like another. To be is to be like something else. But the hope of putting the experience of transcendence into words is disappointed later in the essay. The closest Voegelin comes to trying to put the experience of transcendence into words is the negative theology of Thomas Aquinas. We can say what God is not and that is all that we can say (338, 198). We are reminded of the medieval mystic and colleague of Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, who beautifully articulated his experience of the divine as “the lovely dark silence of the abyss.”5 Would Voegelin reject Tauler’s description? If so, why? How does the ineffable, as Voegelin experiences it, differ from the lovely dark silence of the abyss? Returning to the question of the immediacy of the experience, it would seem that it must be immediate since it cannot be mediated by speech. The mystic can simply remain silent. The faith in opposite values, as Nietzsche dubbed it, on the other hand, requires the believer, like Jeremiah, to assert the truth of his God against the false gods of the infidel (293, 153; 296, 156). Opposite values present us with a choice, a Kierkegaardian either/or. To articulate the true and the false, to proclaim the true in opposition to the false, the believer needs reason in the form of the principle of contradiction. He or she cannot simply remain silent, but speech leaves an opening for reason. The lover of reason who becomes aware of the Cartesian doubt about the relation between mind and world could simply rest there. Doubt is a good pillow. To close the gap between mind and world, Descartes needs a benevolent God to will the harmony of mind and reality or to guarantee that the truths of reason are more than just dreams of reason. The Enlightenment of Hobbes and Descartes sought to supply this missing God by substituting man himself as the master and owner of nature. In order to replace God by man, it was necessary to refute the God of faith. The impossibility of communicating an immediate revelation opened the possibility of such a refutation. What would it even mean to assert the existence of something whose existence or nonexistence cannot possibly have the same meaning as our existence? On the other hand, the realization that only an act of the will, divine or human, could close

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the gap between mind and world, suggested to the believer in opposite values an impregnable defense for the true God. This defense becomes even stronger when believer and unbeliever alike begin to realize that the conquest of nature is the greatest of all dreams of reason, and no more. Let us return to Voegelin’s attempt to escape these problems through a retreat into consciousness. While the experience of transcendence is ineffable, it gives rise to a vast multiplicity of symbolizations. The study of order and history would seem to be nothing less than the recovery of these symbolizations based on the rethinking of the experience or experiences that gave rise to them. Two things follow from this. The variety of religious symbolisms do not contradict one another. They all express one and the same divine ground in ways that are bound to be only partial but which are nevertheless images of the same reality.6 Each symbolism has its value. The lesson to be learned here is toleration, each practicing his own religion and recognizing the validity of other symbolizations. This is the upshot of Voegelin’s discussion of Jean Bodin (337, 197). Secondly, when the symbols are treated as being themselves the reality they represent, then they take on a life of their own to which they are not entitled. There are passages in which it seems that for Voegelin the vast structures of medieval metaphysics are the product of just such erroneous reification. The symbols are valid not in themselves but only as pointing to ineffable experiences. When the symbols become hardened into definitions, then metaphysics becomes dogmatic. Voegelin sees this dogmatism as misconceived and unwarranted. Voegelin does not see his theory of consciousness as something distinctively modern or post-Cartesian. For Voegelin, dogmatic metaphysics uses a language that has lost touch with the experiences that originally created the need for and gave meaning to a new vocabulary. His exegesis is a return to Plato and Aristotle, an attempt to recover the original meanings from the original experiences. As far as Voegelin is concerned, Aristotle never wrote a metaphysics in the sense in which that is understood by the tradition (333, 193). So far as I know, Voegelin never wrote about Alfarabi. The latter strikes me as an ideal candidate to illustrate the dogmatic metaphysician. Not only does he use the language of metaphysics in a way inherited from tradition, but he also freely uses, in his own name, the language of demonstrative proof. His Philosophy of Plato tells us that Plato is investigating and inquiring, but there is not a single illustration of a dialogue of the kind that Plato himself wrote. Indeed, Alfarabi calls the works of Plato books not dialogues. In Alfarabi’s summary, Plato’s conclusions are presented didactically or dogmatically, with no attempt to support them with argument. It is as if Alfarabi set himself the task, the almost comic task, of presenting Plato as a dogmatist rather than a philosopher. Voegelin suggests one explanation for what he calls dogmatic

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metaphysics (301, 160). Dogmatic metaphysics has lost touch with the experiences that originally motivated or constituted Platonic and Aristotelian philosophizing. The dogmatic metaphysician knows not that of which he speaks. For him, the language of metaphysics refers to “things” in the world rather than to experiences of his soul. This explanation is perfectly plausible and no doubt in some cases correct. But there might be another explanation in some cases. In Breaking with Athens, I suggested an alternative possibility in the case of Alfarabi, though it might have other applications. Alfarabi tells us that if we want to know what philosophy originally meant, we should turn to the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Those writings focus on the ascent from opinion to knowledge. They are of necessity skeptical, questioning, on doubtful ground. They have perhaps been all too successful. In his own time Alfarabi sees the need for a philosophy whose certainty could rival that of the revealed religions and provide a ground for political action in its rivalry with religion.7 Where Plato and Aristotle focus on the ascent from opinion to knowledge, Alfarabi’s focus in his political writings is on opinion as a basis for action. What Voegelin regards as a reification that has lost touch with the original experience from which it arose is in Alfarabi’s case a conscious rhetorical strategy carried out by a man who knows exactly what he is doing. Is Alfarabi’s success a problem? Does he turn us toward a dogmatic metaphysics that Voegelin rightly criticizes? Voegelin’s emphasis on consciousness is challenging in so far as it provokes us to search again for the philosophic experiences behind the always ambiguous words (305, 164). NOTES 1. Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik (Munich: Piper & Co.Verlag, 1966). All citations in parentheses are to the German edition, followed by numbers in italics of pages of the English translation by Gerhart Niemeyer, Anamnesis (Columbia, Missouri: Missouri University Press, 1990). In the English translation, this title, “The Ordering of the Consciousness,” is dropped altogether, and the title of Part III is given as “What Is Political Reality?” The subsections of the German essay then become the chapters of Part III in the translation. While I have in all cases consulted Niemeyer’s translation, I have freely altered it. 2. Aristotle gives different descriptions of nous, and Voegelin makes use of some rather than others. See David D. Corey, “Voegelin and Aristotle on Nous: What Is Noetic Political Science?” Review of Politics 64, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 57–79. This useful article highlights the importance of induction for Aristotle in contrast to Voegelin. On the problem that induction creates for Alfarabi, see Colmo, Breaking with Athens, 48–49. 3. Knox’s translation in Bernard Knox, Backing into the Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 235, and context. Knox asserts that many Greeks did recognize the

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injustice of slavery but saw no alternative. In the language of Thucydides, justice and necessity clash. 4. Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13; Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro,” in Philip S. Foner, editor, and Yuval Taylor, adapter, Selected Speeches and Writings (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999), 196. 5. Tauler is quoted in Bernard McGinn, “Theology and Mysticism in Meister Eckhart and the German Dominicans,” an unpublished lecture sponsored by the LundGill Chair at Dominican University in February 2010. The Lund-Gill Chair for that year was Fr. Richard Woods, a well-known Eckhart scholar, as is Professor McGinn. My response that evening to Professor McGinn’s lecture is in appendix D. 6. Alfarabi also asserts the many imitations of the one truth. For a discussion, see Alexander Orwin, Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 102, 122–26, 147. Would Alfarabi see this as a ground for toleration among various faiths? In any case, the immediate revelation is, in fact, mediated by a variety of imitations. 7. The need for certain opinion as a basis for action is the thought behind the title of the first chapter of Breaking with Athens, “Human Action and the Quest for Certainty.” See also ibid. 100. Alfarabi may have had his own doubts about metaphysics as a dogmatic enterprise (ibid. 31).

PART III

Ancients and Moderns

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Chapter 14

Thucydides and the Political

Implicit in Thucydides’s history of the war between Athens and Sparta is a definition of politics. Our purpose is to make that definition as explicit as we can. Defining politics might seem to be itself a political act. An Islamic fundamentalist would not, for example, define politics in the same way as would a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. One would define politics as being for the sake of the honor of God while the other would define politics as being for the sake of protecting individual rights. Both could intelligibly be described as seeing politics as for the sake of something ultimately superior to politics. We shall argue that it is Thucydides’s purpose to free the political from dependence on the transpolitical. Politics is not a means to a higher end; it has its own proper end. Discovering the truth about that end is not itself primarily a political act (politics is a given), even though freeing men from certain illusions about their own ultimate situation and intentions may very well be politically useful (1.22.4).1 The end of politics is itself political—not legal, moral, religious, scientific, or economic. Thucydides’s term for the kind of act in which politics finds its completion is metriotēs, a word usually translated as moderation but better rendered in Thucydides as temperate power or generous strength.2 Churchill’s phrase, “in victory, magnanimity,” sums up the attitude of Thucydides’s spokesman, Diodotus, toward the defeated Mytileneans. In place of fear and anger, Diodotus appeals to Athens’s generous strength (3.46.4).3 When Shakespeare writes that it is excellent to have a giant’s strength but tyrannous to use it like a giant (Measure for Measure 2. 2.107–9), giant strength used excellently rather than tyrannously captures the meaning in Thucydides of metriotēs. But is the endorsement of metriotēs creditable within the context of Thucydides’s overall attempt to give political reasons for political things, an attempt in which the necessities of political competition leave little room for acts of naive generosity? In other words, is this crucial notion properly political? Our answer to this question proceeds in four steps. The first stage defines 173

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the political and defends the assumption that Thucydides treats the political as an independent sphere of judgment and action not to be distorted by nonpolitical considerations. A second part explores Thucydides’s inquiry into the relative utilities of honor and fear as guides to policy in the strictly political world defined in part 1. Section 3 argues that for Thucydides the necessities of political life, and in particular war, cannot be clearly determined as products of a single cause, that is, of fear. The limits of fear open up possibilities of freedom. The fourth section clarifies the meaning of metriotēs as the core of political freedom. The conclusion questions the credibility of this notion of freedom within the boundaries of politics as Thucydides himself surveys them and suggests the advantages of broadening Thucydides’s definition of politics. I. THE MELIAN DIALOGUE AND THE AUTONOMY OF POLITICS Thucydides does not give an explicit definition of politics. One might infer something like the following formula. Politics is a competition the rules of which are competitively determined. Whether pushing or shoving will be allowed is decided, in other words, by a process that cannot rule out pushing and shoving. Of course, this formula does not even hint at the end or purpose of the competition. We shall reserve that issue for section 4 below. We shall also defer, until sections 2 and 3, a discussion of the forces that might necessitate our involvement in such a competition. Our first effort to link Thucydides to the definition of politics given above shall focus on his view of what politics is not. What, we ask, does not belong in the arena of competition? What, in other words, is not properly political? Fortunately, this issue is explicitly discussed, in book 5 of Thucydides’s history, in the well-known dialogue between the Athenians and the Melians. The Melian dialogue is one of the many speeches in Thucydides’s work. Politics is not simply a matter of pushing and shoving. It includes both speech and action. Athens is an imperial country whose rule is based on naval power. Therefore, it is of particular interest to her to control other cities that are also naval powers or potential naval powers. In particular, a city on an island poses at least a potential threat. Melos is one such city, and at the end of book 5 we are told that the Athenians send a fleet to subdue Melos. Before they attack, the Athenians send envoys to Melos to discuss what they call moderate (metria) terms: the Melians will become part of the empire, keeping their own territory but paying tribute to Athens (5.111.4). The Melian dialogue is a private conversation between the Athenian envoys and the leaders of Melos on the merits of the Athenian proposal.

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The Melians almost immediately point out the odd character of the debate into which they have entered. If they are persuaded by the Athenians that it is better to accept Athens’s terms than to risk war, the consequence of their acceptance will be the loss of their freedom (5.86). If they prove that the Athenian offer is not in the best interest of Melos, rejection of the offer will lead to war. In other words, Athens will ultimately be judge in her own case. There is no impartial umpire to decide this dispute. The decision must be made by the interested parties themselves. In the last analysis, a political situation is not a legal situation. Thucydides’s focus on foreign relations serves to emphasize politics as a competition the rules of which are, to repeat, competitively determined. Our everyday life under established rules of law tends to obscure for us the fact that laws are themselves the product of political agreements that are necessarily pre-legal. Recognizing no judges other than the interested parties, the Athenians are bold to suggest that justice exists only when the necessity (of restraint?) is equal on both sides (5.89; for an example of equal necessity see 5.14–15). If Melos were as strong as Athens, then we might talk of justice. In cases of inequality (such as the present), the weaker (Melos) must yield to the stronger, at least in the absence of an impartial judge. The Melians, however, do not believe that their case lacks an impartial judge. Indeed, the Melians look for help from two sources (5.104). One of these, the Spartans (or Lacedaemonians, as they are called here), could hardly be thought of as impartial judges, being kinsmen of the Melians as well as enemies of Athens. The second source of aid mentioned in this passage might be thought of as impartial. The gods, say the Melians, will help pious men against those who unjustly attack them. The gods are not simply impartial. They favor the pious rather than the impious. (The Melians at least imply that the unjust aggressors cannot be equally pious and, because pious, also worthy of the gods’ help. In the present context we will follow the Melians in assuming that justice and piety go together.) The Athenians are not worried about the Lacedaemonians. The latter have had one military disaster due to putting troops on an island (4.1–41); they are not likely to invite a second by sending troops to Melos. But what of the gods? Can they be depended upon? Perhaps one ought to answer this question by considering the massive inequality between gods and men. If the Melians cannot depend on the Spartans, who are their own kinsmen, is it not presumptuous to depend on the gods? Perhaps because the conversation they are having takes place in private between the leaders of both sides, the Athenians dare to scoff at what they call “hopes invisible”—divination, oracles, and the like, that is, the gods (5.103; cf. Hebrews 11:1). But we do not know whether Thucydides also scoffs at the idea of the gods as just judges taking the part of the weak against the strong, and this is what we want to find out because

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it helps us to decide what kinds of considerations Thucydides regards as properly political. Surely no one would feel the question to be settled merely by the fact that Athens does indeed defeat and destroy Melos (5.116.2–4). We do not know, for example, if the Melians were as virtuous as they claim to be and, hence, undeserving of their fate. Only their undeserved destruction would make the Melian reliance on the gods a questionable example to follow. The two books of Thucydides’s history that immediately follow the Melian dialogue are almost entirely devoted to the Athenian attempt to conquer the city of Syracuse and therewith the whole island of Sicily. There is no reason to think that the invasion of Sicily was in any way related to the conquest of Melos, other than that Athens did both things. Even so, Thucydides does not include in his history all speeches that he heard or heard reported (e.g., 1.119), so that the sequence Melian dialogue-Sicilian expedition might have some meaning beyond mere historical accident. The sequence might, in fact, indicate what Thucydides thinks about what other Athenians (Thucydides also was an Athenian) said on Melos. The supposition that the sequence is meaningful would be confirmed if the ultimate outcome of the Sicilian expedition confirmed our hope that what the Athenians said on Melos will somehow be discredited. If we take the sequence as meaningful, then this seems to be exactly what happens. The Sicilian expedition ends in a resounding Athenian defeat, which not only seems to discredit the wisdom of what the Athenians said but also to punish them for saying it. The argument of the preceding paragraph depends on at least one dubious assumption, that the Sicilian disaster shows us the triumph of the just, though weaker, side over the unjust. If the outcome of the Sicilian expedition is to somehow reverse the outcome of the Melian defeat, then the now victorious Syracuse must be comparable to the then defeated Melos. By Thucydides’s explicit account, this is not the case. Syracuse is a city not like Melos but like Athens herself (7.55.2). Moreover, in contrast to Melos, Syracuse does get outside help, not only from Sparta (6.93.2, 7.2; cf. 7.19 with 5.110.2) but also from the Athenian leader, Alcibiades. Alcibiades is primarily responsible for the plan to invade Sicily (6.15.2). When, however, for reasons that do not now concern us, he is forced to flee Athens, he goes then to Sparta, where he is responsible for causing the Spartans to help Syracuse (6.88.10, 6.93.1). The Sicilian war shows the defeat of Athens, but also the qualified victory of the imperialist, Alcibiades. It is Alcibiades of whom Thucydides says that he managed the war excellently and that Athens was ruined when the war was put into other hands (6.15.4; also 2.65). The hands that replace Alcibiades’s own in Sicily are those of his co-commander, Nicias. The Sicilian disaster proves to be the defeat, not of Alcibiades, but of Nicias, and Nicias proves to be a man not

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at all like the Athenian negotiators on Melos. Rather, there is an unfortunate similarity between Nicias and the Melians, so that the fate of Nicias continues the example set by the fate of Melos. This similarity can be seen in Nicias’s last speech, made to his troops before their final unsuccessful retreat from Syracuse (7.77). While Nicias is afraid that his army might have aroused the jealousy of the gods by attempting the expedition, he now thinks that in their present weakness, they are more deserving of pity by the gods than of jealousy. And so he is still confident in hope and encourages others to be so. Nevertheless, both Nicias and the larger part of his army perish at the hands of the now strong Syracusans, just as Melos had perished at the hands of the then stronger Athenians. The fate of Nicias, like the fate of Melos, confirms what the Athenians said on Melos: the powerful do what they can while the weak suffer what they must (5.89). The argument of the preceding paragraph seems to rest on the unjustified comparison of the just Melians and the unjust (because imperialist) Nicias. But precisely if the Melians were just, their final defeat provides testimony to the unpleasant Athenian view of invisible hopes (5.103). The defeat of Melos is inconclusive because we do not know if the Melians are as pious and just as they claim to be. We therefore cannot know whether Thucydides might not have thought that the Melians deserved to be defeated and did not, for some reason, deserve the help of the gods. The door that Thucydides leaves open in the case of Melos, he closes in the case of Nicias. Perhaps surprisingly, Nicias is not condemned as the commander in an unjust war, whose fate reassures us of the existence of a moral order.4 Instead, Thucydides tells us explicitly that of all the Hellenes of his time (including, we may add, the Melians), Nicias least of all deserved such a fate because of his life-long practice of virtue (7.86.5). Nicias deserved the help of the gods; that help did not come. Thucydides’s pious epitaph on an Athenian general and gentleman is a not-so-pious endorsement of the Athenian warning to the Melians against false hopes.5 As Thucydides shows, men are deceived not only by false hopes but also by false fears. Here again we may cite the example of Nicias. In the final months of the expedition, Nicias’s army in Sicily receives reinforcement from Athens under the command of Demosthenes. The newly arrived leader immediately attempts to take Syracuse but fails (7.42–44). In light of this defeat, but after some unnecessary delay, Demosthenes persuades Nicias that the army should leave Sicily and return to Athens. The departure is to take place after dark so as to be unseen by the Syracusans. On the night of the attempt an eclipse occurs. Naturally, an eclipse is to the benefit of a commander who wants his troops to move under cover of darkness. Nicias, however, takes the eclipse as an ill omen and delays the departure for at least twenty-seven days. When the Athenians finally make a second effort to leave, it is under much

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more difficult circumstances and the attempt fails. The Athenian army is in fact destroyed by the superstitious interpretation of an eclipse. Thucydides explicitly criticizes Nicias for being too much given to divination and the like (7.50.4). The Athenian envoys, we recall, ascribe the false hopes of the Melians to oracles and divination (5.103). We come to see that false hopes and false fears lead to similar practices. We will return later to the question of whether our fears are prior to and the source of our hopes or vice versa. Thucydides does not use the phrase “autonomy of politics.” We have used this phrase in order to indicate that politics is a competition that sets its own rules. Thucydides does speak of cities that desire to regain their autonomy (e.g., 1.67.2). By this he means that they seek to regain their political freedom so as to resume participation in the process through which the rules of politics are determined. In order to maintain that freedom, the Melians, as well as Nicias, trust to false hopes and fears. A proper defense of one’s freedom requires a proper understanding of what is politically relevant to the maintenance of that freedom. To know what is politically relevant we must know what politics is. The liberation from false hopes and fears is a perhaps painful part of what Thucydides tries to teach us about the reality of politics.6 The examples we have been using, however, especially that of the eclipse, seem to betray a confusion of politics and war. Hope of divine assistance may be a poor calculation in formulating a military strategy, but strategy ought to be subordinate to political ends. Given the role of the gods in creating bonds of community in the ancient city, preserving belief in those gods may well be more important than winning a battle. Thucydides would surely agree that battles must be fought and won for political reasons, that strategy must be subordinate to politics. But is there any disharmony between military means and political ends? The potential disharmony seems obvious. As one of Thucydides’s characters says, all men agree that peace is the best (4.62.2 and context). One must not fight a war in such a way as to undermine the peaceful form of life that the war was meant to preserve (see Aristotle, Politics 1333a35). Crucial to Thucydides’s understanding of the political is his understanding of the relation between war and peace. The argument of the preceding paragraph takes its bearings from the assumption that politics is essentially revealed in a people’s peaceful way of life (see 3.104). War disrupts this way of life; war disrupts the essentially political. Thucydides denies this assumption. We know that he denies it from the way that he has organized his book. The twenty-one years of Greek history recorded by Thucydides include the so-called Peace of Nicias (5.18–23). Let us say that the peace, based on a treaty between Athens and Sparta, lasts nine years, from 422 B.C. to 414 B.C. (see 6.105). Thucydides explicitly raises the question whether these years ought to be regarded as part of the history of the war. For nearly seven

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years of this time, the two sides do not invade each other’s territory (5.25.3). Nevertheless, Thucydides says, these are years of war, not peace (5.26.2). Cold war is still war. In Thucydides’s view, the war continues from beginning to end without interruption (2.1). It follows that he does not regard the Peace of Nicias as an interruption of the war already begun. And when does a war begin? It would seem that of necessity war begins during time of peace (2.2.3). Hence, there is never simply peace. War is more comprehensive than peace; peace is presented as a part of war. War provides the context for understanding both itself and peace. We do not go too far beyond what Thucydides explicitly says, if we conclude that he sees peace as a time of rest in which nations grow strong and prepare for war (1.2 and 1.12.1). Our way of war is thus not limited by our realization that war is only a means to preserve the way of life we enjoy during times of peace. Rather, our way of life is limited by the requirements of peace seen as a necessary preparation for war.7 What we have called the autonomy of politics as taught by Thucydides at last reveals itself as a liberation from those restraints that are not inherent in the political struggle itself. War liberates most fully and, hence, reveals most clearly the human nature that is at the root of politics (3.82.2 and 3.84.2). War reveals the illusory character of the “unwritten laws” upon which we had learned to base our hopes and fears (see 2.87.3). There proves to be, for Thucydides, no higher law to help us distinguish between a political community and a well-organized band of pirates (see 1.4). We cannot define politics by reference to things that are thought to transcend politics. We are liberated from the requirements of law and religion in the name of the requirements of war. Our liberation from the restraints upon war seems in fact to mire us even more deeply in the restraints that are inherent to war or in what one writer calls “the necessities of war.”8 What has been said of Machiavelli’s view of man seems to be true also of Thucydides’s view: man “must transcend humanity in the direction of the subhuman if he does not transcend it in the direction of the superhuman.”9 Ultimately, Thucydides challenges the view that if one does not strive to rise above humanity one will necessarily fall below it. But we can understand and evaluate this challenge only if we first share with Thucydides in thinking through the depths in which mere humanity may entangle us. II. NECESSITY, HONOR, AND FEAR While the bulk of the first section was devoted to the negative task of showing that Thucydides tries to free politics from the interference of nonpolitical considerations, we did, toward the end of that section, draw out one implication of these negative findings. In freeing politics from the restraints of religion

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and law, Thucydides brings the restraints or necessities of war more and more to the foreground. In this section we shall show how emphasis on the necessities of war diminishes the importance of honor as a guide to action. If one bows to the necessities of war, then fear becomes a better guide to policy than honor. At least by Thucydides’s account, a politics of fear is a harsh politics. Strength, not fear, provides the opportunity for gentleness and humanity. In the last two parts of this essay, we will show how Thucydides tries to restore a place for gentleness and humanity. We must first follow him, however, in giving a full hearing to necessity and fear. The Athenians anticipate that the Melians, in the dialogue we have been examining, will base their argument not on fear but on honor. More precisely, the Melians are afraid, not of Athens, but of dishonor (5.111.2–3). Those who fear dishonor or shame are contrasted with the moderate (sōphron), who fear real dangers. The danger to Melos from Athens is real because the contest with Athens is not on equal terms (5.101). The Athenians warn that the call of shame can lure a man into even greater disgrace if it causes him to act with folly. The alternative to folly is surrender. The Melians see the behavior recommended by Athens as base and cowardly (5.100). They seem to hold the view that courage can overcome all odds or that it can make the unequal equal. Thucydides begins to challenge this “Melian” notion of courage no later than his account of the first major Spartan naval defeat, during the third year of the war. Since this first battle pits forty-seven Spartan ships against twenty Athenian ships, the citizens of Sparta are furious about the loss they suffer (2.83.3). They cannot believe that so many ships have been defeated by so few. They are sure that there must have been some cowardice on the part of the Spartan soldiers and sailors (2.85.2). Was it, conversely, Athenian courage that in this case made the unequal equal? Does the Athenian example set a precedent for Melian heroism? Thucydides does not suggest affirmative answers to such questions. His view is not that of the Spartan people but rather that of the very untypical Spartan, Brasidas, who is sent to take command of the fleet after its defeat. Brasidas tells his men that it was not cowardice that brought about their defeat, but rather lack of experience and lack of knowledge (2.87.2–4). This is clearly Thucydides’s view of why the naval power, Athens, defeats the land power, Sparta, in a naval battle (2.84 and 2.85. 2). In fact, Thucydides often presents knowledge and courage as opposite but complementing qualities (e.g., 1.49.3, 6.68.2, 6.69.1, 7.64.2). The lesson seems to be that while knowledge or experience without courage can lead to defeat (2.89.7), courage alone is not enough.10 Each can fully show itself only in conjunction with the other. (Or is knowledge sometimes for its own sake, in which case it can subsist alone?)

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Hence, what the Corinthians say of the Athenians—that they are bold beyond their strength (1.70.3)—would, if true, be no more advantageous to Athens than it is to Melos. In fact, it is not simply true that the Athenians have this character. The Athenian commander, Phrynichus, echoes the sentiments of his compatriots at Melos when he says that he will not merely out of fear of disgrace fight a naval battle for which he is not properly prepared (8.27.2–3). Thucydides goes out of his way to tell us that in this as well as in subsequent actions Phrynichus was esteemed to be not without sense (8.27.5). Since most Athenians could not have thought well of some of Phrynichus’s subsequent actions (e.g., 8.50), the belief in his good sense must be Thucydides’s own.11 Whether or not Phrynichus was a typical Athenian, the advantage he rightly finds in caution implies that the Corinthians are wrong to find Athenian daring simply to be the source of her advantage over the Spartans. The latter are always slow and cautious, the former know when to be daring and when to be cautious. Athens’s greater flexibility is the source of her superiority. The best Athenian actions are based not on habit but on experience and knowledge. When Thucydides says that Syracuse was more successful than Sparta in making war against Athens because Syracuse was more like Athens, we must add the similarity is not in daring alone but in a flexible mix of daring and caution (8.96.5). In the remainder of this section, we will look more carefully at the merits of caution as a guide to policy. Euphemus goes further than any other Athenian speaker in trying to explain Athenian actions defensively, in terms of wariness and fear.12 Euphemus is trying to persuade the people of Camarina, in Sicily, to help Athens against Syracuse. He must persuade the Camarinians that Athens is no threat to them. They must come to believe that Athens is not an aggressor. It is in Athens’s interest to keep the Camarinians free from Syracuse, for the united strength of Sicily under Syracusan rule would be a threat to Athens (6.86.1). Athens is in Sicily to prevent the Syracusans from gaining control of all of Sicily and, thereafter, coming to the aid of Sparta against Athens (6.84.1). Athens’s purpose in Sicily is, therefore, merely defensive. In order to dispel the notion that an imperial city like Athens must of necessity be aggressive, not defensive, Euphemus explains that the Athenians have an empire only for defensive reasons. The empire was acquired out of fear (6.83.4). The Athenians felt threatened by the other cities of Greece. They now rule over those cities only to avoid being ruled by them; they are an imperial city only out of necessity (6.87.2). Euphemus does not say so, but we might say that Athens is an empire only to avoid the fate of Melos. No city, Euphemus says, can be blamed for providing for its own safety (6.83.2). By Euphemus’s account, Athens rules only in order to avoid being ruled (6.87.2). Socrates himself would rule in order to avoid being ruled by

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someone worse than himself (Republic 347 b–c). The injustice of Athens’s rule would seem to be absolved by the necessity of Athens’s rule (see 4.98.5– 6). We are then not a little surprised to hear Euphemus speak of Athens as if it were a “tyrant city” (6.85.1). Our surprise increases when we notice that neither Diodotus nor Hermocrates tries to excuse Athenian imperialism as merely defensive or necessary yet neither one of these characters calls Athens a tyranny (3.45.6–7 and 4.61.5).13 On the other hand, the Corinthians as well as Pericles and Cleon do call Athens a tyranny (1.122.3, 2.63.2, and 3.37.2). If we grant that Athenian imperialism is defensive, is Euphemus inconsistent when he calls it tyranny? We do not think so. The key to Euphemus’s speech is the link between Euphemus and Cleon, who also thinks of the empire as a tyranny. Cleon is the spokesman for Athenian anger and revenge (3.38.1). Cleon’s speech to the Athenians “appeals in turn to the two harshest passions: fear and anger.”14 Athens’s anger is rooted in Athens’s fear, which is brought on by the Mytilenean revolt. What particularly frightened the Athenians is that the Spartans ventured to send a fleet from the Peloponnese across the Aegean Sea to Lesbos, the island on which Mitylene is located (3.36.2). This act by the Spartans was both daring and threatening—daring because of Athenian naval superiority and threatening because without its island empire Athens could not hold out against Sparta. The Athenian decision to kill all the Mytilenean men while enslaving the women and children is the result of anger born of fear. The day after their decision to slaughter the Mytileneans, the Athenians, who are now more calm, seek to reconsider their decision. It is in this context that Cleon speaks in defense of the harsh measures agreed to on the day before. He represents Athens under the influence of fear and anger. Were the empire fully under the guidance of Cleon, it would rightly be spoken of as a tyranny (3.37.2). We are now in a position to understand not only Euphemus’s speech but also the strange name of this character, who appears once and only once in Thucydides’s history. Euphemus’s speech is euphemistic (the pun holds in Greek as well as in English), but not primarily because he tries to make Athens’s empire seem defensive rather than aggressive (though the latter is closer to the truth). Rather, the euphemism is in the benign connotation given to a defensive empire rooted in fear. On the contrary, fear is not conducive to benevolence or magnanimity. Reflection on Cleon reminds us that the children of fear are anger and revenge. We in the United States are inclined to think that power corrupts (hence, the Constitutional separation of powers). We are less inclined to remember that weakness can be an occasion of fear and that fear in those who feel themselves weak or vulnerable may well be harsh when it is not craven.15 In this light, weakness and fear appear as the

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source of injustice and tyranny. Thucydides would not dissent from the opinion of Rosseau: “All wickedness comes from weakness.”16 To put a speech connecting fear and tyranny into the mouth of an Athenian is euphemistic in yet another way: it spares the Spartans. Fear and harshness are more characteristic of Sparta than of Athens.17 The most succinct reminder of the way in which Sparta combined these traits is in her treatment of the Helots. The Helots are descendants of a native population of the Peloponnese who were enslaved by the Spartans (1.101.2). Thucydides tells us that on one occasion the Lacedaemonians promised freedom to those Helots who performed useful service in time of war. Thinking that those who claimed their freedom would be the most high-minded and, therefore, potentially dangerous, the Spartans had them secretly murdered (4.80.3–4). In their harshness toward the slaves, whom they fear, the Spartans are not unlike the Chians, who have almost as many slaves as the Lacedaemonians (8.40.2). Thucydides praises the Spartans and Chians above all others for being moderate (sōphrosynē) in prosperity. But Thucydides also makes clear that the Spartans are moderate in foreign policy because of wars at home (1.118.2). The wars in question were Helot rebellions.18 Reflections such as these lead Thucydides to distinguish between two kinds of moderation: sōphrosynē as restraint produced by fear and metriotēs as restraint growing out of generous strength.19 III. THE CAUSES OF WAR Euphemus tries to persuade us that war, even imperial war, is justified by being necessary. Necessity is the influence of an outside force. An agent who acts of necessity acts under the dominance of a cause external to himself. In a sense, the agent has no choice. It follows that one cannot be blamed for what he cannot avoid doing. Fear and the actions taken under the guidance of fear are necessary responses; the cause is not in the agent. Not only are there “necessities of war,” but war itself seems to be a necessary response to fear of real danger. Add to this the thought that the best defense is a good offense (see 4.92.5), and one has not only an explanation of imperial war but at the same time a justification of it. That the best defense is guided by fear and hence tends to be harsh is a reflection of the harshness of the human situation.20 Euphemus’s view, the core of which is also the Spartan view, is illustrated by Nicias’s last speech, parts of which we have already discussed. Nicias and his army are about to make their desperate retreat over land. Nicias exhorts his soldiers to be brave, telling them that they must of necessity be brave since there is nothing they can safely do but fight (7.77.7). The pressure

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of circumstance has caused Nicias to see things through Euphemus’s eyes, though his enlightenment comes too late to save his army. Euphemus’s vision, however, seems too narrow to account for the actions of Gylippus, the Spartan commander, and his Syracusan army. When the Athenians want to leave Sicily, Gylippus wants to stop them. Now Gylippus does not exhort his men with warnings of the danger that will come if the Athenians are allowed to leave. On the contrary, he assures them that they will suffer little harm if they lose and the Athenians get away safely (7.68.3). Instead, the Syracusans are to fight for what is noble, glory and honor (7.66.1, 7.68.3). In response to this appeal the Syracusans not only fight the Athenians but defeat them. The action of Gylippus and the Syracusans puts Thucydides’s account of the origins of the Peloponnesian war in a new light. According to that account, the truest cause (prophasis) of the war is Spartan fear of the growth of Athenian power; this fear made it necessary for Sparta to go to war.21 Thucydides’s account of why Sparta goes to war accords well with Euphemus’s account of why Athens builds the empire. Both Athens and Sparta act out of fear. According to Euphemus, Athens is afraid of Sparta; according to Thucydides, Sparta is afraid of Athens. Spartan fear would then be the successor to Athenian fear. Fear is the truest cause of the war because it is the ultimate cause or the cause of causes. But fear here is itself the product of an external cause, that is, the situation of anarchy that prevails in relations between sovereign powers. The situation itself comes to sight as the truest cause or as “the cause of causes.” While the argument of the last paragraph is not inconsistent, it does not take into consideration all the facts as they are known to Thucydides. Thucydides knows from the actions of Gylippus and the Syracusans (7.66–68) that cities fight for reasons other than fear. Also relevant is the testimony of the Athenian ambassadors who speak in Sparta before the war. They list three reasons for Athens’s acquisition of the empire: fear is one, but honor and self-interest are also important (1.75.3, 1.76.2). Finally, we may cite the testimony of Diodotus, who argues (contra Euphemus) that fear never prevails over hope and desire (erōs) (3.45). While for Euphemus, men are determined by necessity imposed from without, Diodotus seems to go to the other extreme in arguing that there is a kind of internal necessity that always triumphs over the external (see Plato, Republic 458d). Whether or not Diodutus is serious in going to such an extreme, there is sufficient evidence for us to doubt that Thucydides accepts Euphemus’s assumption of the primacy of fear.

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IV. GENEROSITY AND EMPIRE The ill-advised actions of the Melians lead us to reflect that fear might be a better guide than honor to the necessities of politics and war. Euphemus can go a long way in making fear the motive force of politics, but with one unfortunate consequence. While fear that we share with another may produce pity, fear of others may very well make us harsh, even cruel. Cleon’s actions remind us of these facts. Thucydides’s history obviously includes acts of humanity, most conspicuously Diodotus’s plea for mercy for the Mytileneans. Diodotus’s action is not motivated by fear. Perhaps Euphemus’s point of view is, then, inadequate to give a comprehensive account of the political as Thucydides presents it. The alternative possibility would be that Diodotus’s action is not properly political. We have tried to show, in the third section above, that even as regards the causes of war, Euphemus’s account in terms of fear is not comprehensive. But are we likely to find a better ground for humanity and gentleness in aggressive passions like love of glory and desire to rule than we find in fear? Paradoxically, Thucydides answers in the affirmative.22 Precisely those who desire to rule because they are able to rule and confident of their ability to rule are most free to act with generous restraint (cf. 6.87.2). The word metriotēs and its derivatives are used throughout Thucydides to mean a kind of self-imposed equality of the powerful in their relations with the weak.23 A few examples will help to illustrate the point. 1.  The first use of metriotēs (as an adjective, metria) occurs at 1.6.4, where the wealthy Spartans of antiquity are said to follow a manner of dress and a way of life that puts them as much as possible on an equality with poorer citizens. Here then we have a self-imposed equality stemming from a kind of noblesse oblige. 2.  At 1.76.4–1.77.3, the term is used twice (as a verb and as an adjective) in a passage where the Athenians claim to treat their tributary cities more generously than they need to or than others would, given their power— appearing, for example, in courts of law in disputes with subject cities as if they were equals.24 In this passage, metriotēs is used as a synonym for epieikeia, which at least in Aristotle, seems to be a standard of equity both higher and more generous than the normal political-legal standard (see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1137a31–1138a3). 3.  Diodotus uses the term (as an adverb) when he pleads with the Athenians to punish the Mytileneans moderately, in a sense that includes gentleness and generosity.25

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4.  After their defeat at Pylos (4.14.5), the Spartans go to Athens to ask that the war be brought to an end. In this context, the Spartans express the wish and the hope that the Athenians will “win a victory in virtue” by treating the Spartans more generously, that is, more as equals than the actual power situation requires. Metriōs (the adverb) appears twice (4.19.2 and 4.20.2; in the former it is again identified with epieikeia). Here is perhaps the most emphatic use of metriotēs to refer to a freely performed act of nobility. The Athenians, under the influence of Cleon, refuse to deal generously with Sparta (4.22.3) and later come to regret that decision. 5.  The success of the Spartan, Brasidas, in bringing about the revolt of Amphipolis from Athens is said to be due to the moderate or generous terms offered by Brasidas to Amphipolis (4.105.2). Indeed, Brasidas’s general success in bringing about the revolt of Athens’s allies is said to be due to his moderation (4.108.2) and gentleness (praotēta at 4.108.3). In addition, the first time that Thucydides speaks of Brasidas’s generous strength he identifies it with Brasidas’s justice (4.81.2). 6.  The Athenian ambassadors to Melos use the term to describe the restraint of the strong in their dealings with the weak. They characterize their own initial proposal to the Melians (5.111.4, used twice) in this way. 7.  The best regime Athens has during Thucydides’s time is a moderate (metria) blending of oligarchy and democracy.26 The mixed regime at Athens (the so-called “Five Thousand”) is made possible by the return to Athens of the exiled Alcibiades (8.107.3). It helps us to understand the role of Alcibiades in a mixed regime if we recall his own statement to the Spartans of the moderate (metrios) influence of his family in Athenian politics, an influence due at least in part to the family’s acceptance of the necessity of the democracy while limiting the abuses of democracy and in this way contributing to the greatness and freedom of the city (6.89.3–6). 8.  Finally, though metriotēs is not used, it is not misleading to mention in this list Pericles’s claim that Athens exercises liberality in benefiting others without fear or calculation (2.40.5). Metriotēs in Thucydides seems to be a reasonable form of liberality, without fear but compatible with calculation.27 The notion of “generous strength,” exemplified in the preceding paragraphs, provides a political end for political things. The end is political in the sense that it is not imposed on the political from above. That the term is applied by Thucydides to the eminently successful Brasidas is proof of its intended compatibility with political realism. It is even compatible with the

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“safety first” realism recommended to the Melians by the Athenians (cf. 5.87 and 5.89 with 5.111.4). On the other hand, while generous strength is not incompatible with the demand of necessity, it is not dictated by necessity. It is not for the sake of dealing with some threat or danger. It is an end in itself, a free act by which a strong individual or community may take pleasure in their strength. It originates in and is the fulfillment of the desire for political freedom.28 As such it provides a goal and, hence, a meaning to political life without appealing to anything above or beyond political life. Without an end of some sort, politics would be no more than “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceases only in death.”29 In finding a political meaning in political things we do not wish to imply, however, that Thucydides does not recognize something above politics. His own activity as a historian is seen by him as somehow above politics.30 The contrast between Thucydides, the historian, on the one hand, and a political man, on the other, becomes clear enough if we look at Thucydides and Alcibiades in exile. Alcibiades makes every effort and employs every stratagem to return home, for only Athens can bring to fruition Alcibiades’s own political ambitions (7.47). Thucydides, in contrast, records no effort on his own part to return from exile. Instead, he tells us that exile actually helped the writing of his history by giving him leisure and a better acquaintance with the affairs of Sparta (5.26.5–6). The historian’s dignity derives from being a partisan of the truth, not of his fatherland. The historian is a philosopher. The noble transcendence of political things is not, however, the source for Thucydides of political nobility. A transpolitical standard of nobility is one that would by definition disregard or suppress the requirements of the merely political. Just such disregard in the name of a higher standard is the folly of the Melians. Thucydides defines politics within safer, if lower, limits.31 Within these lower limits, however, politics has its own proper nobility. The generous strength that dignifies politics for Thucydides is the culmination of politics itself and, hence, fully consistent with the necessities of political life.32 The reader might infer from the episode of Nicias and the eclipse that Thucydides’s point is somewhat different from that just indicated. The obvious point of that episode seems to be that the political man must be open to the philosophic truth in order to avoid needless and disastrous errors. Thucydides accepts this conclusion only in a restricted sense. Politics has its own proper end, apart from philosophy. As we have seen, the end of politics is metriotēs. Philosophy and science, including political science, are seen by Thucydides as useful to political man, but only in the sense that they provide the citizen and statesman with more rational means to a political end or with a clearer view of the political end. Philosophy and science are to be made use of within a context that assumes politics itself to be purposeful and

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meaningful. Inquiry that examines too deeply into the end of politics might have the adverse effect of undermining one’s dedication to politics and to the good at which politics aims. However useful philosophy may be politically, it also poses a threat to politics. It raises the questions whether political ends are not illusory and whether philosophy is not more choiceworthy than politics. In the last analysis, a wall of separation must be maintained between politics and philosophy. This conclusion is not contradicted by the fact that Thucydides combined the roles of historian and philosopher, on the one hand, with the roles of naval commander and political leader, on the other hand. As we have pointed out, Thucydides, the exile, was able to choose between the two roles. We are even inclined to think that Thucydides’s opinion on the relation between politics and philosophy is consistent with the view of those who hold that these two talents or capacities cannot exist in their plentitude in the same human being.33 Whether this Thucydidean dualism is coherent will be the focus of our conclusion. V. CONCLUSION On the sanguine and, therefore, tentative assumption that we have understood him, how are we to evaluate Thucydides’s teaching? We will try to do so by answering two questions. First, given a definition of politics that excludes the best in humanity as somehow above politics, is Thucydides right to think that generous strength makes sense on simply political grounds? When Gylippus and the Syracusans act to destroy the Athenians rather than letting them flee, they are motivated by revenge (7.68). They might, however, be motivated by calculation. Would not the Syracusans be right to fear that the Athenian they spare today will attack them again tomorrow?34 If one examines the dangers with enough foresight, is there anyone so strong that he can be generous without some harm or peril to himself? In this light, metriotēs might reveal itself as tinged by naiveté or romanticism. Consider also Diodotus’s generous effort on behalf of the Mytileneans. Part of Diodotus’s intention is surely to bring the Athenians to deliberate without anger (3.42.1). “The thought of Diodotus leaves as little room for anger and indignation as that of Socrates.”35 But is anger necessary if one is to help one’s friends and, hence, harm one’s enemies? Is Diodotus’s action properly or responsibly political within the bounds of Thucydides’s definition of the political? One is bound to question the political “realism” of Diodotus’s evenhanded justice when one remembers that the Mytileneans revolt a second time and against a much-weakened Athens (8.22.2). Can Thucydides suppress anger (and fear) in favor of metriotēs without blurring the distinction between politics and philosophy in a way that would be incompatible with his own presentation of an

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autonomous or “realistic” politics? We think the answer to this question must be negative, in which case we cannot regard metriotēs as a simply political solution to the question of the highest or best in politics. Perhaps we should not be so exacting. Perhaps Thucydides ultimately agrees with a suggestion made by the Melians: precision—the good of philosophy—is incompatible with the political good (5.90). Here we have the deepest reason for separating politics and philosophy. Nevertheless, if we are precise (in order to avoid being arbitrary), then we are led to conclude that Thucydides does not fully succeed in finding a political end for political things. We may then pose our second question. Could he be more successful, that is, more precise, in finding such an end if he abandoned the dualism of politics and philosophy, which we have seen in his thought? Do not all dualisms try to eliminate questions that cannot be fully answered or resolved by divorcing the elements whose union gives rise to the questions? Such a tactic only makes us think that we know more than we do by exempting us from raising certain troublesome questions. Does not the dualism of philosophy and politics parallel in some ways the Cartesian dualism of mind and body?36 Do not both dualisms wrongly discourage us from asking how mind is integrated into the conditions of its own existence? Thucydides clearly shows us how the necessary conditions of political life limit the way in which we think about the end of politics. He shows us the limits of the political world, in which the philosopher too must live. Yet his dualism allows him to treat the philosopher as if the latter were in the world but not of it. Obversely, politics is treated as ultimately independent of philosophy. Even if philosophy is assumed to be somehow a higher good than politics, Thucydides’s dualism prevents the rule of philosophy over politics. The political action of a philosopher will be dictated by political ends, not by philosophic ones. The question of what a philosopher per se would do in a particular political situation cannot arise. Without suggesting that Diodotus is a philosopher, let us take his speech as illustrative of the limits within which Thucydides thinks even a philosopher would have to argue. Diodotus defends the Mytileneans in a way that appeals to Athenian self-interest.37 He does not invoke too openly the noble moderation that is, as we have tried to show, the silent basis of his position. That moderation is also the basis for his sympathy with the Athenian empire. As I understand him, this is a sympathy that Thucydides, from a political point of view, shares. Thucydides, of course, raises deep questions about an empire whose driving force is fear. But he sees a more confident imperialism, such as Athens might be capable of, as reaching a kind of fulfillment in the freedom of metriotēs. Even speaking under favorable circumstance, Diodotus, so far as he speaks for Thucydides, would not be likely to question the desirability of Athenian imperialism per se. One wonders, however, if Thucydides the

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philosopher, shared the opinion of Thucydides, the Athenian. Could not the philosopher see the somewhat futile quality of Alcibiades’s boundless schemes for Athens’s imperial expansion? Is not this insight politically relevant (see Plato, Gorgias 519a)? Or would we here be violating Thucydides’s unwritten rule against appealing to a transpolitical standard? Certainly that rule limits Diodotus to an appeal to imperial metriotēs; it prevents any criticism of imperialism per se. Thucydides’s reasons for this rule are sound in so far as the rule weeds out the irrational and foolish from politics. But is philosophy transpolitical in this sense? If a fully mature human being is aware of the best in life as well as of its risks and danger, then how can the prudence with which such a person governs his own life be irrelevant to the life of the community?38 Thucydides as we have presented him tries to give political reasons for political things. He does not give transpolitical reasons for political things. He does not try to make philosophy the goal of politics as do Plato, Aristotle, and Alfarabi. Whether his politics benefits from this separation or is hurt by it is a moot point. NOTES 1. Citations are to book, paragraph, and, where appropriate, section of the bilingual edition of Thucydides, trans. C. F. Smith (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1976). 2. Metriotēs in Thucydides is usually, but mistakenly, treated as a synonym for sōphrosynē (moderation), for example, in Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 102, 113–14. 3 Mary Nichols, Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), p. 34: “Athens’ freedom is thus based on its strength and self-sufficiency.” At 2.65.5 she translates metrion as balance or measure (42) and does not try to spell out any specific connection with freedom. Pericles is presented as representative of freedom in the sense that Thucydides champions. 4 But see the reference to Bernard Knox in chapter 13 (this volume) at note 3. 5. See Lowell Edmunds, Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 140–41. Edmunds, however, claims, incorrectly, that the statement at 7.86.5 is made not from Thucydides’s point of view but from the point of view of Nicias (ibid., p. 142). In ascribing the point of view of the passage to Nicias, Edmunds follows Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 208. Nicias does say, in an earlier passage (7.77.1), that his troubles are undeserved, but in saying so he unconsciously questions his own view, which is, as stated by Strauss (ibid.), “that the fate of men . . . corresponds to their justice and piety.” The implicit questioning of this view at 7.86.5 is quite consciously

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done by Thucydides himself. We miss the point if we take the statement as an expression of Nicias’s piety rather than of Thucydides’s own view of the logical implication of Nicias’s fate. Strauss seems tacitly to correct his earlier interpretation in Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 100 (“According to Thucydides himself . . . ”). 6. See 3.82.2. See also, Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “Nature and Convention in Thucydides’ History,” Polity 10 (1978): pp. 479–80. 7. Thucydides’s view of peace is more akin to the Soviet view of détente than to the view of the United States. But Thucydides is also closer to the Athenian view than he is to the Soviet view, which one might call, with some qualification, the Spartan view. See also, Plato, Republic 351a–352c. It is necessary to elaborate on the difference between Thucydides and Aristotle on this point. Aristotle creates a hierarchy in which war is for the sake of peace and peace, like all else, is for the sake of philosophy (Eudemian Ethics 1249b15–25). Aristotles’s heirarchy seems based on the assumption that philosophy needs leisure and, hence, peace. While Thucydides may share Aristotles’s view that philosophy is higher than politics, our historian does not need peace for the sake of philosophy; Thucydides philosophizes in the midst of war. What Thucydides needs is his own individual peace (5.26.5), but he does not see that as implying a model or an end for politics. For the similarities between Aristotle and Thucydides, see Richard D. Sears, “The Classical Understanding of International Politics,” in Power, Principles and Interests: A Reader in World Politics, ed. Jeffrey Salmon, James P. O’Leary, and Richard Shultz (Lexington, MA.: Ginn Press, 1985), pp. 81–97. 8. Peter R. Pouncey, The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides’ Pessimism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). By contrast, Marc Cogan, The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides’ History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) makes too much of rhetoric (e.g., pp. 237 ff.). 9. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 78. 10 See chapter 9 (this volume) as well as Jan Blits, The Insufficiency of Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). 11. See Machiavelli, Discourses III, 41, where the Roman Lentulus gives advice very similar to that given by Phrynichus. Machiavelli’s endorsement of Lentulus’s advice cannot be used to distinguish Machiavelli from Thucydides, as Strauss attempts to do in Thoughts on Machiavelli, pp. 292 and 345n213. Strauss ignores the fact that Thucydides endorses the advice of Phrynichus. 12. M. Cogan, The Human Thing, p. 108. 13 For a positive assessment of Hermocrates, see Iacovos Kareklas, Thucydides and International Law and Political Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), pp. 22–24. “Here, the so-called law of the stronger (in terms of crude political realism) becomes an injunction for the weaker to unite forces, fight hard, repel the opponent, and live in freedom” (p. 23). Hermocrates does not blame those who would build an empire but rather those who would fail to fight for their freedom. Nichols, Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, p. 44n40, sees Hermocrates as a “shadowy figure.”

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14. Clifford Orwin, “The Just and the Advantageous in Thucydides: The Case of the Mytilenaian Debate,” The American Political Science Review 78 (1984): p. 487. As Nichols (Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, pp. 55–56) reminds us, Cleon does not appeal to speech or reason but instead draws into question those who appeal to reason. It is Cleon who uses speech to question reason in the name of the law. It is no little surprise to see that Thucydides has raised the question of the validity of reason through a speaker who seems so little rational. Diodotus responds not by defending reason but by admitting the power of eros and hope. 15. Weakness is, of course, relative to the situation. The Athenians are not weak in absolute terms but in Sicily they may indeed be overextended. Euphemus’s speech belongs to this context of relative Athenian weakness. See M. Cogan, The Human Thing, pp. 163–64. 16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 67. But cf. 7.29.4; cruelty and strength is a possible combination, though not a rational one. 17. What the Athenians say about the Spartans (5.105.3) is confirmed by the behavior of Spartans like Pausanias (1.130.2; also 1.132.5) and Alcides (3.32). Brasidas is not at all a typical Spartan (4.81.2–3 and 4.108.2–3). 18. One is reminded of the restraining effect that Eastern Europe must have on Soviet involvement elsewhere. 19. For sōphrosynē as unwilling restraint, see 6.87.4. See also Plato, Phaedo 68e. Another revealing use of sōphrosynē is 6.79.2: “unreasonable moderation.” 20. See 3.82.2. To this writer, the parallel between Euphemus and Machiavelli seems striking. 21. See 1.23.6. The use of the word prophasis in this passage is puzzling, since the word usually means an excuse or pretext, the opposite of true cause. Cf. 2.87.9 and 5.53 with 7.13.2. 22. For a contrary view, see Steven Forde, “Thucydides on the Cause of Athenian Imperialism,” American Political Science Review 80 (June 1986): pp. 433–48. 23. See Michael Palmer, “Love of Glory and the Common Good,” American Political Science Review 76 (December 1982): p. 834n16, which first brought the distinction between metrios and sōphrosynē to our attention. The examples above, however, do not support Palmer’s understanding of metrios as a measured or proportionate “means to an end that in itself may be immoderate.” Only the usage at 6.88.1 might fit Palmer’s interpretation, and even here the end is not immoderate. John A. Wettergreen, “On the End of Thucydides’ Narrative,” Interpretation 9 (August 1980): pp. 97–99, could perhaps be read to mean that metrion combines mildness with calculation and is, therefore, “more reasonable” than Spartan moderation. This view would be consistent with our own interpretation. 24. On this passage and its context, see Clifford Orwin, “Justifying Empire: The Speech of the Athenians at Sparta and the Problem of Justice in Thucydides,” Journal of Politicss 48 (February 1986): pp. 72–85, especially p. 78. 25. See 3.46.4. Because of Diodotus’s rhetoric, his argument seems somewhat more “utilitarian” and less concerned with justice than it in fact is (cf. 3.44 with 3.47.3). For a discussion that takes account of Diodotus’s rhetoric, see Clifford Orwin, “The Just

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and The Advantageous,” pp. 485–94. Orwin, however, makes too much of Diodotus’s “sympathy” with the Mytileneans and not enough of metriotēs (ibid., pp. 491, 493). 26. See 8.97.2. On blending (xugkrasis), see also 6.18.6. See, as well, Diodotus’s patronymic (“well-mixed”) at 3.41. Is metriotēs the best because it is an effective blend of necessity with freedom and justice? 27. The remaining relevant uses of some form of metriotēs are at 1.38.5, 2.35.2, 2.65.5, 4.30.4, 6.88.1, 8.24.6, and 8.84.5. See E. A. Betant, Lexicon Thucydideum, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1961). 28. See 3.45.6; also, on Athenian justice as an act of “free will,” Orwin, “Justifying Empire,” p. 83. 29. The quotation is from Hobbes (Leviathan, ch.11), who is also Thucydides’s most famous translator. The practical bearing of such a political goal or end can be seen in a negative way from the following passage: “One of the problems for Soviet-U.S. stability posed by this Hobbesian view of the threat is the inability of Soviet leaders to settle on any natural end point to their efforts at arms accumulation.” Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Contemporary Soviet Military Policy,” in The Soviet Calculus of Nuclear War, ed. Roman Kolkowicz and Ellen Propper Mickiewicz (Lexington, MA.: D.C. Heath, 1986), p. 28. But see also, Thucydides 6.18.2–3 and 6.18.7. 30. Consider the defect in Pericles implied at 2.35.1. See also Edmunds, Chance and Intelligence, p. 209. 31. Evidence for this view of Thucydides is provided by the fact that his focus is war, not peace. 32. For a contrary account of the source of Athens’s “manly gentleness,” see Leo Strauss, The City and Man, pp. 228–30. 33. See Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 128. Thucydides 2.40.1 expresses Pericles’s opinion not Thucydides’s own. 34. See 6.18.2–3; also Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 3 end, and Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 11. 35. Christopher Bruell, “Thucydides’ View of Athenian Imperialism,” The American Political Science Review 68 (1974): p. 17. 36. On the unsatisfactory character of Cartesian dualism, see Joseph Cropsey, “On Descartes’ Discourse on Method,” in Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 280, 288. 37. See note 25 above. 38. This is not to deny the need for Diodotus’s rhetoric. The question is whether that rhetoric is to serve a narrowly political end or a fully human end. Nichols, Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, pp. 109, 133, however, sees nothing transpolitical in taking note of the futility of Alcibiades’s boundless schemes (“without ‘measure’”). Pericles, she argues, could reject such foolishness on eminently political grounds. Her criticism of Brasidas’s “one-man show” is based on the same kind of realism (p. 102).

Chapter 15

War and Peace The Relevance of Aristotle’s Politics

I. INTRODUCTION The relevance of Aristotle to the problems of the contemporary West is brought into question by the distinction between ancients and moderns. If there is a crisis of the West, it is a crisis of modernity. Modern political philosophy has promoted, perhaps it has been the root cause of, the coming into being of a kind of society unknown to Greek political philosophy, which was tied to the ancient city. Notwithstanding certain superficial similarities between Athenian democracy and proposals from the contemporary left for participatory democracy, no one today believes the re-creation of the ancient city to be either possible or desirable. If Aristotle’s thinking is bounded by a kind of society that will never again exist, then his political philosophy can be only accidentally useful to those whose concern is the crisis of modernity in the West. The crisis of the West is a loss of purpose. At least since Hobbes and Descartes, the purpose of the West has been peace. If the crisis of the West concerns our faith in the primacy of peace, then it is not only a crisis of modernity. The gulf between ancients and moderns in political philosophy is bridged by a consensus on peace as the goal of politics. Machiavelli, in the sixteenth century, and Nietzsche, our contemporary, stand as the principal dissenters in this tradition. It is possible to see the status of peace in Aristotle’s Politics by examining the dominance of music over gymnastics in the concluding book on education. And it is possible to see the understanding within modernity of its difference from antiquity by examining Montesquieu’s interpretation of the ancient emphasis on music. That this interpretation involves something of a misinterpretation reveals the hidden agreement between Aristotle and 195

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Montesquieu while bringing into relief the real differences between liberals, ancient and modern. II. ARISTOTLE ON EDUCATION The following numbered paragraphs sketch lines of thought that bear upon our thesis. They do not attempt to give an adequate summary of the seven chapters of Politics VIII.1 CHAPTER 1 (1) Like Machiavelli, Aristotle distinguishes between establishing a regime and preserving it. For Machiavelli, the preservation of a regime ultimately requires the same flexibility and perhaps the same extraordinary measures that were necessary to establish it. Aristotle says that the same ethos or moral character that establishes a regime usually preserves it. A question arises if we remember that the end for which the city is established differs from the end for which it is preserved: the city comes into existence for the sake of life, but it exists for the sake of the good life (1252b30–31). An ethos that is consistent with the end for which the city is established may be inconsistent with the end for which it is preserved. Machiavelli resolves this tension in favor of the end for which the city was established and hence in favor of the means necessary to that end, whether or not those means are consistent with the “higher end” for which the city is preserved. Aristotle, on the other hand, refuses to resolve this tension. (2) Every city has one end that makes it a whole. Since the care of the parts is for the sake of the care of the whole, there ought to be one education common to all, as there is in Sparta. But this would be true only if all the parts were similar. Aristotle seems here to ignore his own criticism of Socrates in the Republic: Socrates makes the city too much a one and destroys its necessary variety (1261a17–25). CHAPTER 2 (3) The view emerging from the education around us (“at our feet”) is confusing (1337a40). This statement makes it difficult to accept Adam Smith’s opinion that the Greek sages made music a part of education simply out of respect for ancient custom.2 Aristotle recognizes the inadequacy of the tradition.

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(4) Aristotle considers three possible aims of education: the useful, virtue, or something uncommon or extraordinary (1337a41–42). The useful things that are necessary ought to be taught, but not all useful things ought to be taught. Arts that deform the body and work for hire make thought busy (without leisure) and low. These are unfit for freemen, as are even the liberal sciences if we study them too closely in an effort to attain perfection. Since this last remark would argue against philosophy, Aristotle changes his ground in the next sentence: A study is not illiberal if the gratification one seeks is for oneself or for a friend or is through virtue, but it is unfree if done for the sake of others. Aristotle does not try to reconcile this statement with the assumption in chapter 1 that the part is for the sake of the whole, unless perhaps he does so by identifying the whole with its highest part. CHAPTER 3 (5) Of the four parts of education, grammar, gymnastics, music, and drawing, music is the one having the most dubious purpose. Grammar and drawing are useful in daily life, while gymnastics is useful in teaching courage. Why is music a part of education? (6) Aristotle considers the preceding question with respect to utility, relaxation, and leisure. In chapter 2, the aims of education are utility and virtue. In this chapter, Aristotle is silent about virtue or moral education until the end of the chapter, where, however, the theme is gymnastics, not music. (7) Aristotle distinguishes between play, relaxation, and leisure. Music can be a kind of play that allows us to relax after being busy. Play is a kind of pleasure that is necessary after the pain of being busy. Aristotle compares it to a kind of medicine. Play for the sake of relaxation is a necessity, but leisure is for its own sake. Leisure is the ruling principle of all (1337b33). In addition to being a kind of play, music can also serve as the pastime of our leisure3 (1338a22–23). Music is a proper pastime for freemen, and the ancients (Aristotle cites Homer) made it a part of education because they recognized the place of the noble and the free as well as of the useful and necessary. Perhaps the highest form of leisure (scholē) is serious thought. CHAPTER 4 (8) Aristotle interrupts his discussion of music in order to consider courage. After criticizing an athletic habit that distorts both the form and growth of the body, he reflects on the Spartans. The painful labor that the Spartans think most useful in building courage turns out perfect beasts (1338b13).

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Care ought not to be taken for one thing only or most of all (1338b14–16; cf. paragraph 2 above). Moreover, the Spartan method is not even suitable for producing courage. It is not the wildest or fiercest who are bravest but rather the good man who is gentler. Nobility, not brutality, should be the source of courage (1338b17–20, 30–33). The Spartans are mistaken, first, in the unity they impose on education (by aiming only at courage) and, second, in that they try to produce courage through harsh training. Aristotle rejects both the form and substance of Spartan education. (9) There is a tension between thought and body: the labor that perfects the body impedes thought and the labor that perfects thought impedes the body. CHAPTER 5 (10) We must consider whether music is for the sake of play or moral education or pastime (cf. paragraph 6 above; utility is here replaced by moral education). For any one of these three purposes, it is sufficient to be able to listen to music. One need not actually learn to perform on an instrument. (11) In chapter 3, music was treated as suitable for both relaxation and leisure. The ancients considered it to be a pastime suitable for a freeman (paragraph 7 above). Now we have learned that the ancients were mistaken. Leisure is the end of life, but most men never reach that end (1337b34, 1339b38). Play and relaxation can seem to be a kind of freedom. They are harmless pleasures that we enjoy for their own sake (having forgotten the painful labor that made them necessary). Relaxation can serve as an illusory substitute for leisure, and music can serve to produce such relaxation (for the role of philosophy in leisure, see 1334a23–24). (12) Play and pastime partly share a common purpose, though the purpose is better understood by those who see it as pastime than by those who see it as play. Aristotle does not hesitate to use this shared purpose in order to bridge the gap between music and leisure so that the charms of music may strengthen his defense of leisure. In a similar way, medieval thinkers sometimes tried to justify philosophy by pointing out that it aimed, however inadequately, at the same end as religion. (13) Aristotle drives a wedge between relaxation and leisure in order to create a place for moral education. Music can imitate leisure and the pleasure of the listener imitates the highest pleasure. This imitative function of music brings to light its power in moral education. Music is capable of imitating the passions by which we enjoy, love, and hate rightly. We learn virtue through our sympathy with music, through our imitation of its imitations (1340a12ff.). Because the soul can imitate harmony, Aristotle considers the possibility that the soul is a harmony (cf. 1340b18–19 with de Anima 407b27–408a29).

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CHAPTER 6 (14) Aristotle reopens the question whether children ought to learn to perform on an instrument or only learn to be good listeners (1340b20ff.). He notes that there is a toy, called the rattle of Archytas, which is given to children in order that being so occupied they will not break things about the house. Teaching young men to perform on musical instruments may serve the same purpose. The instruction, however, should not last so long as to make the body unfit for the mature pursuits of war and politics (cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia III, 12). In this context, Aristotle almost seems to praise mediocrity, at least as far as musical skill is concerned. (15) The ancients did not always use music rightly. With growing wealth came leisure and magnanimity with respect to virtue, so that both before and after the Persian war they became high-minded with respect to learning. They inquired into all things, even some, such as the flute, which might be harmful. We note that the highest achievement of the ancients came before and after the war, not during (1341a26–32). Even while his language seems to praise the ancients, Aristotle backs away from the ancient use of music as being indiscriminate. Perhaps the ancient use of music was indiscriminate because the ancients did not investigate the end or purpose of music. (16) Youths should also learn to play because it is impossible to become a good or mature judge of something if one has not shared in the work oneself (1340b24). Knowledge here takes priority over the aristocratic contempt for work. That this is Aristotle’s thought is confirmed by the story at the end of the chapter. Athena found a flute but then threw it away. Aristotle’s preferred interpretation of this story is that flute playing does not educate us for thinking and Athena rejects the flute in favor of science and art. Aristotle first introduces music into education in order to establish the dignity of leisure, but then rejects music in favor of something higher. Like Athena, he finds the flute but throws it away. At one point Aristotle even suggests a ban on all instruments that require “manual sciences” (1341b2). It is hard to see what instrument (other than the voice) could escape this restriction (1341a24–26). And yet, a pied piper must play something. The musicians of the city will surely be allowed a variety of instruments, sometimes even the flute perhaps, in order to provide pleasure and relaxation to others (paragraph 11 above; also 1342a5–16).

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CHAPTER 7 (17) Aristotle turns from consideration of the different kinds of instruments to the different modes of music, particularly the Doric and the Phrygian. The Doric is the most moral mode, fittest to make men steady and courageous. The Phrygian mode, on the other hand, incites enthusiasm (literally, the indwelling of a God) and is more suitable for Bacchic songs. Aristotle criticizes Socrates for keeping both the Doric and the Phrygian mode while rejecting the flute, which is the instrument most appropriate to the Phrygian mode (Plato, Republic, 338e–339a). Might the combination of the Doric and Phrygian modes lead to a people who mistakenly direct their enthusiasm toward war? Aristotle would retain instead the Lydian mode, which is more relaxed than the Phrygian and less austere than the Doric. (18) The dispute between those who advocate the Phrygian mode and those who advocate the Lydian mode would probably be quite tame, one might say academic, especially when compared to a political dispute such as that between oligarchs and democrats. The conflict would surely be milder than those between religious denominations, unless, of course, music was involved in a religious difference. Like moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats, the partisans of different modes of music might be able to learn to tolerate one another. It is as if Aristotle took Swift literally, providing a quarrel between Big-Endians and Little-Endians, in order to solve the problem Swift satirized (Gulliver’s Travels, I 5). (19) The modes of music are considered in relation to three functions: moral education, catharsis, and pastime or relaxation. One notes a lowering of expectations in this chapter. Aristotle no longer distinguishes between pastime and mere relaxation (1341b41). In addition to the moral education that can come from the musical imitation of the virtues, Aristotle now emphasizes the cathartic function of music (1341b38). Music can serve as a harmless release for the passions of pity, fear, and enthusiasm. As such it is useful not only for the free and educated but also for mechanics and hired laborers, who are thus brought within the scope of the city’s educational concerns. III. MONTESQUIEU ON MUSIC One chapter of the Spirit of the Laws (IV, 8) is devoted to explaining what Montesquieu regards as the paradoxical emphasis of ancient thinkers on music in their political arrangements. The “principal object” of Greek cities was war. Commerce and agriculture were despised among them as unfit occupations for freemen. The only alternative to war was idleness. This posed a

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dilemma for the Greek thinkers (Montesquieu explicitly mentions Aristotle), who hit upon music as an occupation that would also soften or sweeten the manners of an otherwise warlike and even savage people. The dilemma of the ancient thinkers might have been solved less paradoxically if they had been able to change their attitude toward commerce. Commerce softens manners, encourages peace, and provides a peacetime occupation accessible to most men. Moreover, commerce is more certain to achieve its aim because it depends on the natural desire to acquire, not habits gained by education (Spirit of the Laws, XX, 1–2 and IV, 5). Montesquieu makes three claims: (A) Ancient thinkers valued music only because it softened the manners of an otherwise military regime. (B) Commerce as a substitute for music diminishes the need for education and makes the result more certain. (C) Unlike music, commerce provides a peaceful alternative to war. Our evaluation of Montesquieu’s interpretation can be organized around these three contentions. IV. ARISTOTLE AND MONTESQUIEU A. Montesquieu’s opinion that Aristotle provides music to soften a regime that is devoted above all to war is refuted by Aristotle’s explicit statements in Politics VII: war is for the sake of peace and business is for the sake of leisure (1333a35, 1334a3–6, 15–16). In this surprising teleology, things are for the sake of their opposites. Aristotle’s statements in Politics VII are not inconsistent with our analysis of book VIII. That analysis may be summarized as follows; the first two chapters draw our attention to the need for education and to the tension that exists between the individual and the collective aims of education. Chapter 2 considers education as aiming at utility, moral education, or something higher. In chapter 3 the edifying does not appear until the end of the chapter. Music is considered as aiming at utility or play or leisure. Music is proper for play and relaxation but also for leisure. Aristotle reassures his reader: in spite of the novel and subtle distinction between play and leisure, nothing unsettling is being introduced. Leisure, the activity of freedom, is properly occupied in the traditional activity of music. As if to prove Adam Smith’s contention that the ancient sages dignified music out of respect for ancient custom, Aristotle cites Homer as the authority for his views on music.4 Rhetorical reassurances notwithstanding, the superiority of leisure becomes the ground for the devaluation of courage in chapter 4. Courage is not the only or even the highest thing. War is a necessity, but it is for the sake of peace. Montesquieu’s opinion

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that Aristotle introduces music only to gentle the ferocity of men whose normal and highest business is war is difficult to reconcile with Aristotle’s severe strictures on the dangers of that other traditional part of education, gymnastics (cf. Republic 376e). Of the seven chapters of book VIII, the one devoted to gymnastics attempts to limit it while the four devoted to music justify and encourage it. In chapter 5, music is considered in relation to moral education, play, and leisure or pastime. Comparison with chapter 3 shows that utility has been dropped as a theme while moral education has reemerged. The reemergence of moral education as a theme is a consequence of Aristotle’s reconsideration of the link established in chapter 3 between music and leisure. That link, which lent the weight of traditional authority to the dignity of leisure, served Aristotle well as the basis for his reevaluation of the status of courage. But Aristotle realizes that at best he has used one part of the tradition against another. The reevaluation of courage must be put on firmer ground. The leisure that is higher than war is devoted to thinking, not music. Music is related to leisure only as a vulgar imitation is related to the original. The devaluation of courage is a consequence of the elevation of philosophy. Courage is devaluated, however, only if courage means savage cruelty and love of war. In the light of philosophy, courage is redefined. Philosophy makes possible clarity of purpose that calms our fear and anger but strengthens our resolve. This resolve is courage in a gentler mode; it is not weakness, which comes not from civilization but from loss of purpose (cf. 1334a21–22). The imitative powers of music suggest its usefulness in teaching the moral virtues, which are the conclusions of good judgment made habitual in our conduct. Chapter 6 allows the learning of music as an alternative to idleness but as inferior to the learning of science or art. The final chapter expands the edifying function of music to include catharsis as well as moral education. B. Assuming that Aristotle and Montesquieu both make peace, not war, the goal of politics, what are the comparative merits and demerits of Montesquieu’s proposal that commerce should be substituted for music as the activity of peace? The advantage in making music the peacetime occupation of men is the possibility of creating a link between music and leisure: listening to music looks like leisure; business is the opposite of leisure. Commerce and war both belong to the necessities of life, not to the end (1333a31–36). Montesquieu’s decision to make commerce the activity of peace causes him to remain silent about the end. For Aristotle, the end is leisure, which is in turn justified by the freedom of the self-conscious thinker. Freedom is by nature higher than necessity. The freedom of the hero is mere illusion when compared with the

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freedom of the thinker, while the freedom of the merchant is freedom from thought. In the last sentence of book 11 of the Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu tells us that his purpose is not to make us read but to make us think. Yet the Spirit of the Laws helped to create a society in which Nietzsche observed that men think with their watches in their hands.5 Montesquieu’s response might be that all attempts to make philosophy the public end of politics are essentially comic. Philosophy cannot appear in person, and proxies such as music are of very limited utility. Music may soften a savage way of life, but it is inconceivable that music might inspire virtue (Spirit of the Laws IV, 8). Wisdom is the end at which philosophers aim; it is not the end at which other men aim. If the foundations of peace are to be firmly established, they must be in accord with the nature of man not the nature of philosophers. Commerce is the most certain means to peace because man is by nature acquisitive. Music is a surrogate for a goal Aristotle admits most men will never reach (paragraph 11 above). The aim of commerce is within the capacity of the majority of men. The aspirations of the majority should set the tenor of the society. The philosopher should avail himself of the ensuing peace to enjoy his solitude. There is no reason to force the philosophic justification of peace upon a reluctant public. Montesquieu seems here to follow more consistently than the ancients the classical teaching that philosophy is simply incommensurable with other ways of life (Plato, Statesman 257b). The difference between philosophers and other men is a difference in kind. Did Aristotle share this view? In the last chapter of the Politics he remarks that the passions that stir some souls strongly are to be found more or less in all (1342a5–7). If the difference between philosophers and other men is a difference of degree, not of kind, then Montesquieu’s procedure might appear as a ruthless attempt to sever man from his humanity for the sake of guaranteeing the success of the modern project. Can anything guarantee the success of any political project? Montesquieu thinks he has found a way to bring about a convergence of the desires of the many (in so far as they are different from the philosophers) toward a political situation favorable to the philosophers. In Aristotelian language, Montesquieu has tried to resolve the tension between the necessary and the good by proving the harmony of the two.6 For Aristotle the necessary and the good never converge toward a common end. Necessity is oblivious of the good for man. A perpetual tension arises from the fact that man is bound by necessity yet characterized in his humanity by the desire for freedom. This incommensurability of philosophy and politics reflects not an absolute bifurcation of humanity but rather the duality of human nature. The soul is not a harmony (cf. the citation to de Anima in paragraph 13 above). The gulf between freedom and necessity, peace and war, leisure and commerce can be

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bridged only by that statesmanship that is sensitive to the demands of each. Aristotle’s statement of the place of music in education is meant to contribute to one pole of this sensitivity. The influence of such a statement might ameliorate the crisis of the West if it helped Western leaders to regain a sense of purpose both for themselves and for their peoples. It might create courage among those who now merely oscillate between fanaticism and sentimentality. Aristotle shows more concern than Montesquieu for what we today would call the quality of life. In this concern he may be motivated partly by reflection on our common humanity, but he is also motivated by a realistic concern over the demands of political stability. The mass of men long for security and comfort but they cannot simply be made oblivious of their highest longings. Political life rests on a precarious human effort to balance two unequal weights. Montesquieu is no doubt right in regarding this Sisyphean endeavor as comic, but he is mistaken in trying to overcome, rather than cope with, the comic aspect of man’s situation. Aristotle and Montesquieu share a common purpose, but Aristotle moves toward it with a better sense of humor. C. Notwithstanding the necessity of defense, it is likely that a regime dedicated to peace will sometimes find it. How will the most energetic citizens employ themselves during times of peace? To this question commerce provides an answer. Music on the other hand would seem to be an implausible alternative. The rattle of Archytas may occupy a child, but it is only a comic answer to a serious question in the case of mature men. Agriculture might provide a suitable alternative. Aristotle accepts this possibility with respect to the best democracy but seems to reject it in the case of the best regime (cf. 1318b6ff. with 1329a35–39). The citizenship of the best regime is to be restricted to the military and deliberative parts of the city. Strangely enough, this makes the citizenship of the best city narrower in the Politics than in the Republic. Socrates never excludes the money-making classes from citizenship. Aristotle’s own version of the best city seems subject to the criticism that he directs at Socrates: Aristotle makes the city too much a one (paragraph 2 above; cf. also paragraph 19). Including the farmers and artisans among the citizens might provide more scope for agriculture, trade, and other peacetime activities. Perhaps Aristotle’s reevaluation of war and peace in favor of peace made inevitable certain changes in the aristocratic city that Aristotle was hesitant to mention. Montesquieu reminds us that according to Plato one cannot change the form of music without changing the constitution. Our interpretation of the last book of the Politics has raised a difficulty that requires reexamination of the Politics as a whole. This is not an altogether unsatisfactory state of affairs.

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V. CONCLUSION The crisis of our time has its core in the doubt of what we can call “the modern project.” That modern project was successful to a considerable extent. It has created a new kind of society, a kind of society that never was before. But the inadequacy of the modern project, which has now become a matter of general knowledge and of general concern, compels us to entertain the thought that this new kind of society, our kind of society, must be animated by a spirit other than that which has animated it from the beginning.7

The modern project has carried forward, albeit with some impatience, the fundamental intention of classical political philosophy in so far as peace is the goal. If this statement is true, it complicates our understanding of the crisis of the West. The crisis of the West is the crisis of the modern project, but that project does not stand or fall alone. The failure of the modern project may implicate classical political philosophy as well. On the other hand, Aristotelian political philosophy may be capable of rejuvenating the modern project because it shares in the aim of that project without sharing its defects. Aristotle aimed at peace along with freedom and nobility. The relevance of Aristotle may mean modernity without a philosophic crisis. NOTES 1. I have used the following chapter divisions: 1 (1337a10ff); 2 (1337a34ff); 3 (1337b24ff); 4 (1338b9ff); 5 (1339allff); 6 (1340b20ff); 7 (1341b19ff). 2. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), 729. 3. At 1339a25, H. Rackham adds the following note to his translation: “The term diagōge, ‘pastime,’ is idiomatically used of the pursuits of cultured leisure—serious conversation, music, the drama.” Aristotle, Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 650. 4. According to Rackham, only one of the three passages cited by Aristotle actually occurs in the Odyssey. Aristotle, Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 642–43. 5. Karl Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, trans. David E. Green (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 283. It is useful to remember that Montesquieu redefined political liberty in terms of security not nobility. Spirit of the Laws, XI, 6. 6. Cf. the remarks on Machiavelli in paragraph 1 above. 7. This quotation is from Leo Strauss, “Political Philosophy and the Crisis of our Time,” in George J. Graham Jr. and George W. Carey, eds., The Post-Behavioral Era (New York: David McKay Company, 1972), 217.

Chapter 16

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

The second essay in George Anastaplo’s On Trial is called “Lucifer and Faustus” and is an interpretation of the play by Marlowe that deals with that theme.1 Throughout his essay, Anastaplo uses Marlowe’s play and the character of Faustus to illustrate both what he, Anastaplo, takes to be the meaning of modernity or the modern and what is wrong with modernity. Though Anastaplo does not name the Enlightenment, his essay clearly speaks to the meaning and limitations of that movement under the rubric of modernity. To judge by that essay, for Anastaplo, the characteristic features of modernity seem to be mostly its blemishes. Our suggestion is that Faustus is eager not to refute the ancient faith but to replace one faith with another. In the struggle for Faustus’s soul, the Bad Angel tries to lure him with what Anastaplo calls “a prospect that can serve as the motto for the enterprising modern” (28). Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art Wherein all nature’s treasure is contained. (1.1.75–78)

Note that the treasure here is in the art, not in nature herself. Such passages surely remind us of Bacon’s program for the conquest of nature as well as Descartes’s invitation to become “masters and possessors of nature.”2 Such similarities with the modern project (Anastaplo does not specifically mention modern philosophy), prompt Anastaplo to remark that for the Bad Angel “as for much of modernity, nature is something to be exploited, not something to take one’s bearings by” (30). When nature becomes something to be exploited,3 it can no longer serve as a guide or a standard. The “enterprising modern” must forge ahead under the guidance of his own fortitude or resoluteness.4 At one point, Faustus goes so far as to instruct Mephistophilis: “Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude” (1.3.85). Anastaplo tells us that “Resolution . . . is intimately related to willfulness.” He continues: 207

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Is there not, in such an emphasis upon resoluteness, something distinctively modern? It has found expression in existentialism, providing a respectable way of dressing up self-assertiveness. (31)

Anastaplo wonders whether the modern emphasis on resoluteness does not derive “from a perspective which sees mankind as essentially at war all the time.” He questions whether this “Faustian scheme of things” leaves any place for good will (31). Here the “Faustian scheme of things” seems to be the modern scheme of things. Faustus is also a modern in his willingness to challenge accepted norms, in his restlessness and love of liberty, and in his constant experimentation and desire for novelty, even when this leads him into triviality, on the one hand, or “unnecessary” risk, on the other (22, 25). Anastaplo sees in the career of Doctor Faustus parallels with Marlowe’s “own troubled character and turbulent life” (22). He sees in Marlowe’s play another aspect of modernity. Doctor Faustus brings on stage not the charm of virtue but rather the ugliness of vice. Marlowe never shows us that virtue is good for its own sake. The play does a better job of showing us what to avoid than what to seek. In this, too, there is a lesson about modernity, about its “propensity” to take its bearings by the greatest evil rather than by the greatest good (29). The negative is clearer, more certain than the positive. Variants of the word “modern” occur thirteen times in “Lucifer and Faustus” and they occur in each of the seven sections of the essay except in the fourth section. Does the fourth section of the essay somehow stand apart from the other sections? Section 4 deals with Faustus’s opinions as distinct from his deeds. Faustus’s deeds, at least in Anastaplo’s opinion, are not “intrinsically wicked,” something Anastaplo finds to be an “odd feature of this story” (24). Faustus’s opinions, on the other hand, could be seen as “treason toward the Divine Governor of the universe” (25). The opinions in question seem to concern mostly matters of faith. “That is the way [i.e., in terms of faith],” Anastaplo adds in a parenthesis, “the pious Christian would put it, whereas the Classical thinker would have preferred to put it in terms of judgment” (26). Section 4 seems concerned, and to see the play as concerned, with the difference between judgment and faith. Is this a difference that transcends the difference between ancients and moderns? Ancient and modern philosophy share a common resistance to the humble obedience of piety, relying instead on the judgment of reason. Faustus’s judgments do, indeed, seem flawed, especially in his bargain with the Devil. He will give his soul to Lucifer’s kingdom in exchange for twenty-four years of Mephistophilis’s service. We are put in mind of Esau, who sold his birthright to his brother, Jacob, for a mess of pottage.5 Within Marlowe’s play, Faustus’s bargain puts us in mind of Robin, the Clown, to whom and of whom Wagner says, “I know he would give his soul to the devil

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for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood-raw” (1.4.7–9). Faustus’s bargain with the Devil is hardly much better. Faustus does not show a foresight Machiavelli would have admired, unless one assumes that Faustus believes in hell no more than Marlowe’s Machiavelli, who regards religion as “a childish toy.”6 Machiavelli seems to doubt both God and the Devil, both heaven and hell. Is it possible that Faustus believes in Beelzebub, but not in hell? “I think hell’s a fable,” he tells Mephistophilis (2.1.125). Earlier, Faustus had made a sort of confession of faith in Beelzebub (1.3.57–61). Anastaplo reminds us of “Faustus’s refusal to adjust, in time, his opinions about the afterlife” (27). Faustus’s skepticism about hell is paradoxical given his credulous belief in Mephistophilis’s powers. His situation reminds us of contemporary moralists who, while they have lost their faith in God, continue to cling to the morality taught by Christ and His church, even without its indispensable foundation. Marlowe’s Faustus seems to be a fundamentally inconsistent character, saying “no” to both hell and Christ, but saying “yes” to the Devil. Much is made by Anastaplo of negativity in the “Faustian scheme of things” (22–23, 25, 29). We must ask whether or in what way Faustus himself (as distinct from the play as a whole) displays this characteristic. Is Faustus negative? Anastaplo calls the Devil “the great Nay-sayer”; is the same true of Faustus? When Faustus says “yes” to the Devil, is this fundamentally different from faith because it is fundamentally negative? Despair in God, and trust in Beelzebub. Now go not backward; Faustus be resolute. (2.1.5–6)

Here Faustus is moved not by doubt but by despair. His despair is overcome only by a new act of faith, this time in Beelzebub. We are reminded of the old saying that “it is better to believe in nothing than to have nothing to believe in.” Does Anastaplo discount this “yes” because of the Devil’s negativity? “Vital to Faustus’s fate, then, is the issue of his faith” (26). Two sentences later Anastaplo restates his point: it is Faustus’s “lack of [faith]” that is vital. To speak of Faustus’s faith is to speak of something notable by its absence. But we miss certain parallels with faith if we fail to recognize that Faustus does, in a way, believe in something. Anastaplo acknowledges that the show of the Seven Deadly Sins (2.2.103–62) provides “the devilish counterpart to the attractions of paradise” (26). Are there other “counterparts”? Is not the faith of Faustus the truly devilish counterpart to the faith of the pious Old Man who tries to save Faustus’s soul in the last act of the play? Anastaplo acknowledges as much when, in the final section of his essay, he says that “[t]he Old Man, too, is shown as resolute.” He goes on to say, of

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the resoluteness he finds characteristic of Faustus and of modernity, “This steadfastness mimics, in a way, that of the Christian martyr” (31). “[T]he faith [i.e., Christianity] had meant so much for so long” that Anastaplo can find in the steadfastness of faith a genealogy of the resoluteness that “has become so important in modernity” (31). Given the correctness of these observations, it follows that Marlowe’s Tragical History exposes to doubt two faiths at once. Faustus is blind to the obvious inconsistency of what he believes. His blind faith is the prototype of faith as such, a fact that makes Marlowe’s play both circumspect and daring. In the notes to this essay, Anastaplo tells us that its original title was “Negation and Affirmation: Some Perhaps Salutary Lessons from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.” Anastaplo’s “salutary lessons” about the defects of modernity are skillfully elicited from a text that provides “glimpses of the modern movement” (23). These glimpses derive from a coincidence of aims on the part of Faustus and the founders of modernity. While the aims may be similar, the means diverge in a way that seems significant. Bacon and Descartes, while they share Faustus’s longing to be master of the physical world, would hardly confess, in Faustus’s words, “‘Tis magic, magic, that hath ravished me” (1.1.111). Nor did Descartes share Faustus’s contempt for medicine, which he thought more likely to prolong human life than the necromantic arts in which Faustus trusts (1.1.12–27, 51). Even Faustus’s ends are not identical with those of modernity or the Enlightenment: he seems throughout the play more concerned to flatter and win fame among the nobility than to provide for the relief of man’s estate. As an example of the former, Anastaplo cites the incident in which Faustus sends Mephistophilis to fetch “grapes out of season for a pregnant duchess” (24–25). In the same scene in which the duchess gets her grapes, Faustus is confronted by the angry complaints of four commoners against the way they have been treated by him (4.7). Faustus makes sport of these men for the diversion of the duke and duchess. There is here none of the democratic sympathy or bias that one thinks of in connection with the Enlightenment. Faustus seems more akin with respect to both means and ends to the Pope, who asks defiantly, “Is not all power on earth bestowed on us?” (3.1.152). Who is Marlowe’s Faustus? Why is Marlowe interested in him? Faustus seems to be a mixture, inherently unstable, of philosophic skepticism (“My ghost be with the old philosophers!”) and credulity encouraged by all-too-human weaknesses. How strange it is to couple a desire to join the ancient philosophers with a belief in the ghosts of these same philosophers (1.3.61). We mention also the fact that Faustus hopes his art will bring him worldly benefits of the greatest kind (1.1.54–56). Is the tragedy of Faustus perhaps the tragedy of those who are great-souled (or, at any rate, ambitious) and philosophically inclined yet who cannot rest content with a situation in

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which philosophic virtue must, indeed, be good for its own sake? Faustus belittles his own accomplishments as a physician with the apostrophe, “Yet art thou still but Faustus and a man” (1.1.23). Unaware almost of his own ambition, when Mephistophilis tells Faustus that hell can be here on earth if one is, like Mephistophilis himself, separated from God, Faustus scoffs at this. How can “sleeping, eating, walking, and disputing” be damnation (2.1.137)? Marlowe’s subtle irony allows us to see Faustus’s lack of selfknowledge: to live within the limits of a man—rest, motion, conversation—is precisely the “damnation” Faustus seeks to escape through his bargain with the Devil. We venture the suggestion that philosophy has become “odious” to Faustus because it does not provide the power and fame he seeks, at least not in a form recognizable by him (1.1.107). It also does not provide answers to questions Faustus wants answered, e.g., about the heavens and the origin of the world (2.2.33–75). Faustus is a man who wants answers, if not from God, then from Mephistophilis. Philosophy has become “odious” to him because it is always rooted firmly in human nature, which is to say, within the bounds of human limitations. To put it differently, there is something of the sophist about Faustus, as can be seen from his first speech in the play. Faustus will give up the study of logic because its purpose is merely what we might call reason’s inquisition, to explore the many sides of an argument. Affords this art no greater miracle? Bid on cay mae on farewell (1.1.9, 12)

Has Faustus renounced his faith in miracles or put his faith in miracles that man will now control? As Marlowe’s on cay mae on [being and not being] reminds us, there is more to logic than disputation. Logic is not rhetoric, but Faustus cannot see the difference. The final chorus encourages us “to wonder at unlawful things,” but not to practice them (Epilogue 5–6, 8). While there is no suggestion here that the philosopher should curb his wondering, there is a philosophic resignation about the extent to which knowledge can be converted into power. To the extent that modernity does treat power, not knowledge, as the goal of human striving, to that extent the play does provide “salutary lessons” about modernity. Faustus can be seen to have despaired of merely human knowledge precisely because of its limits. Modern philosophy did not despair of knowledge, though it may, indeed, have thought that it had found a way for knowledge to join with power. To the extent that virtue is knowledge and “there is no sin but ignorance,” to that extent Marlowe’s play may (if only in a negative way) present virtue “as something good in itself”

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(cf. 29). Anastaplo sounds a similar note toward the end of his very intricate and challenging essay. All this reflects the pervasive sense of the play, however muted, that the virtuous man is a whole, someone of integrity, and hence truly self-sufficient, which self-sufficiency is something for which the ambitious scholar may strive in a misguided manner. (32)

NOTES 1. Page numbers in the text refer to George Anastaplo, “Lucifer and Faustus,” in Anastaplo, On Trial: From Adam and Eve to O. J. Simpson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 21–32. All references in this chapter to Marlowe’s plays are to the versions found in I. Ribner, ed., The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963). 2. Bacon, Novum Organum, trans. Peter Urbach and John Gibson (Chicago: Open Court, 1994), 131; Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. Donald Cress (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980), 33. 3. Heidegger would have said Bestand, often translated as “standing reserve.” See Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, ed. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 17. 4. Anastaplo (40n.115) gives numerous references to passages in the play dealing with despair and the resolution that counters it. 5. Genesis 25: 29–34. 6. The Jew of Malta, Prologue, 12–13. In Ribner 1963, 179.

Chapter 17

Politics and Education Rousseau’s Emile and the Reversal of Plato

Rousseau’s philosophy of education is contained in his lengthy Emile, which is more like a novel than a treatise on education. An average boy, Emile is the sole pupil of a tutor who seems to be Rousseau himself, and the book is the story of their relationship from the time of Emile’s birth through the time of his marriage and the birth of his first child. The Emile may be dealt with in terms of the three principles that lie at its core, one pagan, one Christian, and one distinctively modern. The pagan principle is that of the radical inequality between the wise and the unwise, the prudent and the imprudent. Compassion is the Christian principle, designated by a word that literally means “to suffer with” and in a Christian context referring especially to God’s suffering with men for the sins of man. The modern principle may be called by a term Rousseau does not use: humanism. In order to explain this term, let us turn to the Emile. I. HUMANISM Rousseau criticizes both what children are usually taught and the way in which it is usually taught to them. There is much in Rousseau’s critique of education that will remind the reader of the views of Charles Dickens in such works as David Copperfield. The briefest way to indicate what Emile is not taught is to mention the fact that he does not even learn to read until ten years of age, and then he learns to read notes from parents or friends. At twelve years old he will hardly know what a book is (E 80–81; G 115–17).1 His introduction to books takes place through Robinson Crusoe (E 147; G 211). Emile is to learn self-help; he is to learn how to take care of himself even if 213

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he were shipwrecked alone on an island. He learns only useful things, and this means primarily things useful to his own preservation and the satisfaction of his immediate needs (E 142; G 202). It is hardly necessary to mention that when he reaches the appropriate age Emile is given a sound vocational training. He learns to be a carpenter, to provide for himself by his own labor (E 163; G 234). Nevertheless, Emile lives for the present; he is never encouraged to take thought for the morrow.2 He is taught to rely on his own versatility, on his ability to cope with any new situation that might arise. Conversely, he is never taught to be afraid of the many things that parents fear for their children and thereby teach their children to fear also. Rousseau attempts as long as possible to preserve for Emile the carefree, happy aspect of a child at play. In accordance with the thought that Emile is only to learn things useful to himself, Emile learns only by doing. He is not taught by means of rules and commands which his little mind cannot understand: never reason with children, says Rousseau (E 53; G 76). Let the child learn from experience. If he steals something, do not deliver a long and pointless lecture on the evils of theft. Wait until he himself has grown attached to the thing he stole; then arrange to have it stolen from him. When he comes to you choked with tears and rage over his loss, this is time enough to point up the moral of the story (E 62–63; G 90–92). If he breaks the window in his room, let him sleep in the cold until he himself comes to you and asks you to show him how to repair it (E 64; G 92–93). If at a later age he does not see the purpose in studying geography and astronomy, go for a walk in the woods. When you have both gotten tired and hungry, announce that you are lost. In the face of your alleged helplessness, the child will be forced to apply what he knows about the direction of the forest from the town and about the position of the sun at a certain time of day. When he has found his own way home, he will fully understand the importance of the facts you try to teach him (E 144; G 204–7). Do not order children to imitate the actions of adults when the reasons for those actions must remain a mystery to the child. This only causes the child to play a false role and to become what we would call an other-directed person, that is, a hypocrite. Indeed, in this matter of imitating those around him there lies a great danger for the child. He may learn thereby to compare what he has with what they have. By this means his desires will increase, but his power to fulfill them will not. He will lose his self-reliance; he will learn to be dissatisfied with himself and his condition. He will begin to demand that others provide for him the things that he cannot provide for himself. One should never give in to these childish demands for useless things, says Rousseau. One only makes the child learn to expect obedience in situations that in fact he cannot control. A spoiled brat beats the table in rage; the Persian tyrant Xerxes beat the sea with whips when it did not obey his whims (E 52; G 74).

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Emile is to learn to be stoical rather than tyrannical. He is to learn that there are many things in nature over which he has no control and which he must simply learn to endure. Emile is to be given no commands (in conscious contrast to the Biblical practice), but this does not mean that Emile will do whatever he wants. On the contrary, while he will never meet with resistance from people, he will often meet with obstruction from things. Rather than do whatever he wants, Emile will learn to want only what he can do (E 48; G 69).3 Rousseau is famous for having distinguished between amour propre and amour de soi. Amour propre is the kind of love that makes us try to keep up with the Joneses. By comparing ourselves with others, by trying to imitate others, we learn only to become unhappy with ourselves and frustrated in our attempts to acquire things beyond our reach (E 197; G 279). Emile is to avoid this at all costs. He is never to want what he cannot have or to depend on the help of others where he cannot help himself. Most of all, Emile will never learn to imitate the great men of the past, neither the great philosopher, Socrates, nor the great citizen, Cato (E 205; G 290). As for the imitation of Christ, Rousseau does not even mention it. For the same reason Rousseau never holds himself up to Emile as a model (cf. E 160n; G 229n). Emile is to be his own man. He is to grow up content, happy, useful to himself, neither jealous nor envious of anyone, harming no one. This self-satisfaction is what Rousseau means by amour de soi. It is what we have here labeled Rousseau’s humanism: men must never imitate anything higher than themselves. Imitating no one, Emile never develops desires incommensurate with his own powers. He has, therefore, no need to injure his fellows by demands made upon them for the satisfaction of those desires (E 69; G 99). As he harms no one through his dependence upon them, he feels truly at liberty in a society of men who are free in all things wherein they do no harm to others (Social Contract, IV, 8). Amour de soi replaces amor habendi in Rousseau’s more consistent formula for liberal society. Men will live together in harmony only when the abatement of emulation has severely moderated their expectations. The flaw in this formula derives from the fact that consistency in the pursuit of moderation leads ultimately to extremism, if Nietzsche’s last man can be thought of as an extreme. Emile is to be the paradigm of all well-adjusted, normal children, and Rousseau is fully aware of the political implications of this educational model. Emile is born the son of a French nobleman, but it is obvious that the education he receives makes him unfit for his birthright, that is, for the enjoyment in leisure of unnecessary if pleasant things that are provided by the labor of others. Rousseau’s educational scheme is an outline for a revolution that would cause the demise of hereditary aristocracy. The reading of Robinson Crusoe hardly perpetuates the latter. Emile is no gentleman in the aristocratic

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sense of the word (E 321; G 445). We have not even yet seen the full effect of the political changes initiated by Rousseau’s influence on education. The subtitle of the Emile is On Education, but near the very beginning of the book Rousseau says of Plato’s Republic, “It is not at all a book about politics, as is thought by those who only judge books by their titles: it is the finest treatise on education ever written” (E 8; G 10). This ought to be enough to warn us of the possibility that in Rousseau’s mind the Emile is not at all a book about education but the finest treatise on politics ever written. II. Compassion In criticism of Rousseau, one might say that Emile so educated is a dumb ox leading a life of stupid contentment, or one might point to Rousseau’s own language referring to Emile’s tutor on several occasions as a kind of a gardener (E 6, 193, 216; G 8, 274, 305); Emile is by implication a plant or a vegetable. Nor need one agree that an alienated child, a child who is not normally adjusted, cannot be properly educated. The Jewish renaissance in twelfth-century Spain proves that a nation of pariahs can produce individuals superlatively well educated. Against Rousseau, we need to consider the possibility that alienation may be a positive factor in education. This thought parallels Kierkegaard’s judgment that where everyone is a Christian, no one is a Christian. In response, Rousseau might point to his own account in such works as The Reveries of a Solitary Walker as evidence that he is not unaware of the positive aspects of alienation. In truth the Rousseau of the Emile seems merely to follow Socrates when, in the Republic, the latter suppresses as far as possible the justified claims of the solitary. It is Plato who, through the image of Socrates, keeps before the eyes of his reader a character who individually cannot be easily submerged below the surface of collectivization. Rousseau, hidden behind the mask of an impersonal tutor, is not manifest in the Emile to nearly the degree that Socrates is manifest in the Republic. Rousseau’s rejection of the imitation of great men is paralleled by Socrates’s expulsion from the best city of the poets who sing of the heroes of old. At least in this respect Rousseau is more akin to Socrates than to Plato. Rousseau implies that the Greek and medieval ideas of education are haughty and overbearing. They depend too much on the imitation of superior examples, Christ or Socrates. Emile is an average boy who will grow into an average man; to set such examples before him is to condemn him to a life of frustration and unhappiness. It is for this reason that Plato’s Republic is not at all a book about politics: it offers to a few an education based on the imitation of Socrates, but it has nothing at all to give to the politically weightiest part, the people, the common man. It is this need that Rousseau attempts to meet.

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The question arises whether the political intention of the Emile does not, perhaps of necessity, sacrifice the educational aspirations of the Republic. The political goal of the Emile requires that it reverse the educational priorities that direct Plato in his Republic. Rousseau’s book is explicitly addressed to a good mother who wants to raise her child properly. By Rousseau’s own account, mothers are bound to their children by pity or compassion. Rousseau seeks to become the teacher of these good mothers only because he shares in their compassion: his compassion extends to all the sons of women. Is Rousseau guilty of an extravagant philanthropy? (As we shall see, he is not unmindful of the daughters of women, either). Rousseau’s defense of his own scheme implies the rejection of Plato on the grounds that Plato has no pity for or is too little moved by aversion to the sight of human suffering. Might Plato reply that Rousseau ought to learn not to desire what cannot be changed? III. Inequality In order to understand the way Rousseau’s compassion works, one must recall that Rousseau shares with Plato a belief in the radical inequality between those who know and those who live by opinion, between philosophers and non-philosophers. It would be a mistake to think that the kind of education Rousseau wants for Emile is the kind he wanted for himself. Rousseau makes no secret of the fact that his life is meant to imitate and surpass the life of Socrates. The man who compares himself with others and aspires to their achievements is usually condemned by Rousseau for his amour propre. This should not blind us to the fact that the French propre can mean simply right or appropriate, so that amour propre means “the right kind of love.” While Emile reads Robinson Crusoe, Rousseau will read Plato and Descartes. How then can Rousseau, moved by compassion, bridge the gulf between himself and an ordinary youth like Emile? Both the problem and the solution can be stated by recourse to a Christian parallel. In Christianity the radical inequality between God and man, which means that man cannot become God, requires that God in his love must become man (E 263n; G 366–7n). Rousseau replaces the inequality between God and man with the inequality between Rousseau and other men. His inequality combined with his compassion leads Rousseau to the astounding conclusion that he must humble himself and conceal himself (E 208, 215, 225, 258; G 294, 304, 316, 359). We are now in a better position to understand why Emile is not to imitate Socrates or Cato and why Rousseau has from the beginning picked an ordinary boy as the object of his educational scheme. Emile is no prodigy. If Emile were to attempt to imitate Socrates or Rousseau, his life would be one

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of self-dissatisfaction and frustrated hopes. If Rousseau cannot make Emile happy by raising the latter to the level of a philosopher, then he must devise a means by which to bring happiness down to Emile. Like Kate in the play by Oliver Goldsmith, Rousseau must stoop to conquer.4 Rousseau’s compassion for Emile causes him to lower the standards by which he will judge Emile. Rousseau is resigned to the fact that he must teach Emile to be himself because he knows that Emile could never succeed in being anything more. As for Emile, he has never learned to feel discontent with himself and he judges himself by no standard at all. He is simply happy. In the Christian faith death is conquered through submission to death. Christ died for our sins so that we might rise again. If death is part of the natural order, as it surely is, then Christianity teaches the conquest of nature through submission to nature, where nature is understood as indifferent or hostile to man. This is the formula that Rousseau follows, but that formula is by no means unambiguously Christian. It is also the formula for modern science as understood by modern science. Rousseau seems to build on an assumption common to both Christianity and science. Perhaps he has solved one version of the riddle of the so-called two cultures. This account of Rousseau’s doings might leave one with the impression that Rousseau does nothing at all for Emile, either by way of help or hindrance: he provides no model for Emile and issues no commands. That this cannot be quite true is clear from the fact that according to Rousseau amour propre is the first and most natural of the passions (E 171; G 244).5 If Emile does not have this passion, if he is at one with himself without struggle or regret, it is because his education has weeded out the most natural passion. Emile’s education is repeatedly said by Rousseau to be an education according to nature, an assertion which might be rightly understood if we recall that Rousseau’s own prudence has a natural rather than a supernatural source. Emile is to experience obstruction from things, but not from people. How then does a human teacher suppress the growth of Emile’s amour propre? In fact, Emile is manipulated by his teacher. Recall the misadventure in which Emile and his tutor get lost because he wants Emile to feel lost and to become of necessity self-reliant. Emile is never allowed to see the connection between the obstacle he meets and the human hand that places it there. This sort of manipulation seems, however, to be politically irrelevant since it requires that all of one’s time and effort go into the rule of only one other human being. It is similar to the rule that a wife exercises over her husband rather than to political rule. In the present context we must leave it at saying that the “general will” as conceived by Rousseau is an elaborate device whereby a multitude of men come to believe that in the restraints that the law places upon them they are thwarted by an impersonal thing rather than by the arbitrary will of a man (E 49; G 70–71). Rule by law replaces rule by men. In judging

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of these stratagems, we must not neglect to apply Rousseau’s own observation: “there is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom” (E 84; G 121).6 We are forced to wonder if Rousseau’s compassion for mankind does not lead him too far in the direction of attempting to relieve us of the burden of being human. The extremism of Rousseau’s humanism seems to make it antithetical to humanity. One can say that Rousseau imitates only a distorted version of the Christian story. While Christianity teaches that God became man in order to restore man to communion with God, Rousseau’s act of compassion culminates in a severance of man from his highest goals and aspirations. Divine providence as a source of order both just and merciful is replaced by the prudence of Emile’s tutor. His education to versatile self-reliance in the service of self-indulgence without over-indulgence is merely the other side of Emile’s habituation to a natural order indifferent or hostile to man. Rousseau’s humanism can be described as a return to the earth or to the realm of nature in what is perhaps the only sense of the term recognized by Rousseau, that is, mechanistic nature. There is a price to be paid for this eschewal of the divine and enclosure of nature within a mechanistic horizon. While the ancients offer us the imitation of Socrates7 and the medievals offer us the imitation of Christ, Rousseau can offer us nothing but the imitation of a self-satisfied mediocrity named Emile.8 Even this would not be altogether a misfortune if Emile were really content and so in a fashion happy, but it is to be doubted if any education could fully root out of man’s soul the desire to achieve, the desire to be more than the sum of one’s immediate and most easily satisfied wants. Because Rousseau cannot discover a unity or wholeness in the full articulation of human possibilities, he seeks for human nature in the most universally shared and therewith least extraordinary of human characteristics (E 217; G 306).9 Since he therefore gives to each his own only by giving to each what remains to all after the suffocation of man’s highest longings, he is a poor guide in showing us the direction those longings should take. IV. Sophie This might not be too misleading a judgment to pass on the first half of Rousseau’s book. As mentioned at the outset, however, Emile’s marriage is also part of our story. The tutor has had his charge’s life’s mate picked out for a long time, though Emile thinks that they find her by chance.10 The girl’s name is Sophie. She is a kind, generous, noble-minded girl, but she is quite different from Emile. She has never been taught to be content with herself, nor has her imagination been satisfied so that she has nothing toward which she aspires. In fact, she has learned to aspire to a man much like Emile. Emile may read of ancient heroes, but he is not inspired by their stories as Sophie

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is (E 367, 377; G 512–13, 525). In the strong, self-reliant, versatile Emile, she sees what she wants. It does not matter, or rather it is an advantage to her, that Emile has no ambition to be a military hero or a philosopher: neither Alexander nor Socrates made good husbands. Emile cares nothing for the opinions of other people, but Sophie cares very much (E 328; G 455). Because she cares what Emile will think of her, she must also care what others will think of her, for, paradoxically, Emile is swayed by rumor and reputation. He has been hitherto impervious to the opinion of others largely because he has been isolated from it through the efforts of his tutor. The quest for a wife will make the continuance of that isolation impossible, not to mention the fact that it has perhaps become undesirable. Through this curious maze it comes about that in order to win Sophie, Emile too must begin to accommodate himself to the standards by which men judge one another (E 380–81; G 530–31). It is not fair to say that Rousseau gives no thought to that within his pupil which reaches his amour propre in his love for his wife and in the sacrifices he must make in order to win her. The Emile culminates in a picture of the bourgeois family, with the father as the head of the house. This latter point must be carefully understood. Emile will be head of his house, but he will order it by standards that he has received from his wife, and his joys and sorrows will be meted out to him by her in a manner calculated to maintain his loyalty (E 441; G 610–11). According to Rousseau, the influence of women over men depends on the focus of women within the home. Women’s liberation as we see it today does not offer women half the power over men that they might have under the domestic arrangements proposed by Rousseau. Emile will be manipulated by his wife just as he has been manipulated by his tutor. Indeed, Rousseau will teach Sophie how to govern Emile, and a sort of alliance will grow up on this basis between Emile’s wife and his trusted teacher (E 387; G 539). Under Rousseau’s guidance, Emile will learn to imitate, not Socrates or Christ, but rather his wife’s ideal of a good husband.11 “Men,” says Rousseau, “will always be what is pleasing to women.”12 Emile’s highest aspirations will be reinforced by the strong pull of sexual desire, a force Socrates had failed to utilize properly for this purpose. Socrates repeats the error of the sophists: he relies too heavily on the power of speech.13 Sophie will replace Socrates. This should come as no great surprise: her name, Sophie, is the Greek word for wisdom. I do not think we distort Rousseau’s intention if we say that Sophie will rule Emile, Rousseau will read Plato (and occasionally flirt with Sophie), and Emile will live in happy anticipation of the pleasures of marriage.

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V. Conclusion In order to put Rousseau’s educational proposals into perspective, we may recall that they represent a reaction against Plato. Plato has no pity, no compassion; he expects too much of men: in asking them to imitate Socrates he aims too high. This criticism is in direct contrast to the criticism that Nietzsche makes of Plato: Plato does not expect enough of men; his Socrates is a country parson who preaches not greatness but moderation, not the high road but the middle of the road.14 Do not these two great critics of Plato answer each other? One must combine both the high and the low. Unlike Nietzsche, Rousseau has seen that Plato does not neglect the high. The advantages and disadvantages of Rousseau’s position derive from his sober attempt to place man entirely within the mechanism that he understood nature to be; the advantages and disadvantages of Nietzsche’s position derive from his attempt to escape from nature through a radical freedom created in the interest of nobility. Rousseau’s criticism of Plato seems to testify that Plato has not neglected freedom and nobility. This suggests the possibility that Plato’s moderation, not to mention his courage, leads him to a more comprehensive, a less one-sided, account of human life than that given by either of these great modern critics.15 This suggestion does not belittle Rousseau. It is through the eyes of Rousseau that we may see both Plato and ourselves more clearly. NOTES 1. Page numbers preceded by the letter “E” in a citation refer to Rousseau, Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1911); page numbers preceded by the letter “G” refer to Rousseau, Emile (Paris: Garnier, 1964). This lecture was originally delivered in 1977 at a convocation in the Memorial Chapel at King College (now University), Bristol, Tennessee, during my first year of teaching. Rousseau’s hint that there is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom continues to shape my view of the distinction between ancients and moderns. 2. This helps to explain the ambiguous attitude toward doctors in the Emile: preoccupation with one’s future health makes impossible the enjoyment of the present. Cf. E 46; G 66 with E 96; G 136; see also the similar ambiguity in Plato, Republic 406b–e. 3. Is teaching mankind to want only what it can do the main thrust of the modern project? Does Thomas Mann reverse this intention when, in Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp learns to “play King”? 4. For the similarity between the means by which a woman conquers and the means employed by Rousseau, see E 348; G 486–87. 5. Rousseau contradicts himself, however, by claiming the same distinction for amour de soi. See, for example, E 173; G 247, as well as John Plamenatz, Man and

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Society (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), I, 375–83. Perhaps the following quotation is a helpful one from which to begin thinking about the interrelationship between the two passions in question: Expand these ideas and you will see where we get that form of amour propre which we call natural, and how amour de soi ceases to be an absolute [simple?] sentiment and becomes pride in great souls, vanity in little ones, and in both feeds continually at our neighbor’s cost. (E 176; G 250)

Amour propre seems to come about through an evolution, not to say full articulation, of amour de soi. If the latter is the acorn, the former is the oak. The fact that there will be no oak tree if the acorn is deprived of soil and water hardly proves that oak trees are unnatural. By the same token it is hard to see that amour propre is unnatural simply because it will not emerge without the soil of human society. 6. It is not impossible that this quotation is also intended to give the reader to understand that Rousseau’s own freedom is a full self-consciousness of the unfreedom of man rigorously integrated into the mechanism of nature. 7. The explicit, that is, Socratic teaching of the dialogues is, of course, not the imitation of Socrates but the imitation of the timeless ideas. 8. In a different context, Rousseau counsels the reader to “Desire mediocrity in all things” (E 372; G 520). 9. While it is possible that Rousseau finds the simplicity and therefore unity of man’s nature in the reveries he describes, it is just as possible that those reveries only reveal the fullest possible fragmentation of man’s soul. Cf. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 98–99. 10. Cf. Plato, Republic 460a. 11. See, however, E 404; G 562–63. 12. Cf. E 353; G 494. The quotation is from Rousseau’s Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, in The First and Second Discourses, ed. Roger D. Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), 52–53, note at the bottom of the page. Rousseau continues: “[T]herefore if you want them [men] to become great and virtuous, teach women what greatness of soul and virtue are. The reflections occasioned by this subject and made long ago by Plato greatly deserve to be better developed by a writer worthy of following such a master and defending so noble a cause.” Rousseau is not indifferent to magnanimity, but he is forced to give precedence to the need for unity or simplicity of soul (cf. E 368; G 514). In the Republic, Socrates seems to be aware of the influence of women over men (e.g., 549c–d), but finding that influence to be objectionable, his solution is to abolish the family. It is Rousseau who has “better developed” these reflections by discovering a way to direct the domestic influence of women toward a morally and politically salutary purpose. If the Emile is Rousseau’s response to the need for a book developing Plato’s reflections “by a writer worthy of following such a master,” then support is thereby provided for our contention that Rousseau did not apply to himself the consequences of the condemnation in his text of the imitation of great men. 13. Cf. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 127: “[T]he Republic repeats, in order to overcome it, the error of the sophists regarding

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the power of speech.” This does not necessarily mean that the error in question was overcome by Socrates. 14. Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro, Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 94. 15. The fact that scholars both accuse Rousseau of totalitarianism and praise his liberalism does not parallel the contrasting censures of Plato. To us the possibility and even the necessity of raising the question whether Rousseau is a liberal or a totalitarian does not support the hypothesis that Rousseau is more comprehensive than either his admirers or his critics or that he combines the requirements of both liberty and order. Rather it illustrates the thought that “there is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom.” Rousseau has recognized the extent to which even a liberal society, which he advocates, is a closed society. It is closed to the very aspirations to which Emile is closed: the only publicly recognized virtue of its citizens is to “harm no one.”

Chapter 18

About Subjectivity

The medieval philosopher, Alfarabi (870–950), surprises us with the thought that “philosophy must necessarily come into being in every man in the way possible for him.”1 A concern with subjectivity is forced upon us, say more recent thinkers, by the need to escape from the sterility and, indeed, nihilism of the modern quest for objective detachment. The subjective task, however, is not to define subjectivity, but to become subjective. To write “about subjectivity” seems to miss the point of subjectivity. To write and, hence, to think “about” subjectivity would seem to treat subjectivity objectively, for example, by asking “What is subjectivity?” or “What is the aim of subjectivity?” The proper focus in becoming subjective is not “what” is changing or “what” one becomes, but the “how” of becoming. Surely we do not become subjective by stepping back to ask “What is subjectivity?” The question of subjectivity draws our attention away from the theoretical question as to abstract possibilities and toward the practical question of how those possibilities might be actualized. Hence, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, to name two examples, have tried to guide us away from concern over the substance of “what” we would become and toward or into concern with the process or “how” of becoming. The following five examples are intended to help clarify historically the modern emphasis on process (which becomes in Kierkegaard an emphasis on subjectivity) as distinguished from content or substance. Descartes, to begin with, can describe his now-famous method in the second part of the Discourse on Method without any reference to a particular subject matter or purpose. True, his method is for the purpose of “searching for truth in the sciences.” Yet it allows us to find truth because it focuses on “how” things move and eschews any reference to what they move toward, the so-called final cause (Meditations IV). What is true of Descartes’s science is true of Hobbes’s politics. When, in the introduction to the Leviathan, Hobbes tells us that self-knowledge will give us knowledge of the passions of other men as well, he is careful to note that knowledge of the passions is not the same as knowledge of the objects of passion. Hobbes’s political science is based on 225

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knowing “how” men desire, fear, and hope, not “what” they desire, fear, and hope, since, as he says, the objects of the passions vary with each individual. The Hobbesian view becomes the foundation for constitutional systems aiming at procedural rather than substantive justice. What is true of Hobbes’s politics is true of Kant’s morality. “So act that you can will that your maxim could become a universal law, regardless of the end.” Morality for Kant is determined by the universalizability of its form, not by the substance of its prescriptions.2 What is true of Kant’s morality is true, in the fourth case, of Kierkegaard’s account of subjectivity. “The objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective accent on HOW it is said.”3 The work from which this quotation is taken, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript, is devoted to the problem of becoming a Christian, but becoming a Christian is treated almost entirely as a subjective problem. The reader is told amazingly little about “what” Christianity is, other than that it is a paradox. It is impossible to say precisely what the paradox is. Subjectively this is seen by Kierkegaard to be an advantage. It helps him to focus emphatically on how one becomes a Christian. What is true of Kierkegaard’s account of subjectivity is true of Heidegger’s account of man (at least in 1925).4 What is to be determined is not an outward appearance of this entity [man] but from the outset and throughout solely its way to be, not the what of that of which it is composed but the how of its being and the characters of this how.

The concern with process, which dominates Descartes’s science as well as Hobbes’s politics and Kant’s morality, eventually dominates the understanding of man in Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Taking the Kierkegaard-Heidegger view as our point of departure, the remainder of this essay divides conveniently into five parts. Thesis I. When Kierkegaard and Heidegger turn away from concern with what they want to become in order to observe the process of becoming itself, they treat subjectivity objectively, thereby unintentionally creating an obstacle to subjectivity. Thesis II. Only through our passionate concern with the “what” or essence of virtue, beauty, goodness, and so on, do we truly become subjective, living within our concern rather than as spectators of it. Thesis III. Not mere curiosity, but the passionate, subjective yearning to be whole or more complete is the source of our concern with the objective “what” as well as the measure of the inadequacy or partiality of any particular “what.” Thesis IV. A notion of essence or idea that is not absolute and is not incommensurable with the particularity or temporality of human life relativizes all

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meaning and thereby undermines the possibility of both language and morality. This thesis would, of course, be incompatible with Thesis III. Thesis V. Socratic subjectivity, which focuses on the “what,” is defective. Socrates’s insistence on the simple and timeless character of the “what” or idea makes the idea incommensurable with human life, which each of us necessarily experiences as particular and temporal. Socrates is forced to choose the “how” (in his case, philosophy as the best way of life) without reference to the “what,” of which he is necessarily ignorant. This ignorance stems from the fact that the simple and perfect ideas cannot be known by the temporal and imperfect knower. Part I. A Critique of the “How” Question. Does it increase subjectivity if we turn our attention away from what we are doing to consider how we are doing it? Kierkegaard says that it does, but consider the case of a man on trial for his life. The jury brings in a verdict of guilty and the condemned man’s response is publicly and calmly to calculate how many votes need have gone the other way in order to have secured his acquittal (Apology of Socrates, 36a). Kierkegaard himself refers in this case to the condemned man’s “freezing irony.”5 Kierkegaard, of course, thought of irony as a form of inwardness or subjectivity, but is it? Has not Socrates deprived the event of all subjective validity for himself by placing himself objectively at a distance from the verdict, not to mention the execution, so that from this objective distance he can muse on the voting behavior of the jury? Indeed, Socrates’s response to the verdict would seem mad or stupid if we thought that the mathematical possibilities for a division of the jury were his only concern. In fact, we assume (and Socrates invites us to assume) that his frivolous response is an indication neither of inwardness nor of self-forgetting, but of a focus on objectives higher than any of which the jury could be aware. In ordinary parlance, how something is to be done is the means. Would it not be perverse to credit a man with heightened subjectivity at the very moment when he has become so preoccupied with the means as to have forgotten the end?6 A man desires to be a good father to his child. Could this man be said to have become more subjectively aware in that, as we learn, he seldom sees his child, so dedicated has he become to the job through which he hopes to provide for the child? Is not such a self-forgetting obsession with means rather than ends the very opposite of subjectivity? Like Kierkegaard, Descartes and Kant seek to turn our attention away from “what” is to be done and toward the “how” of method or universal form. But when Descartes and Kant focus on form rather than substance, they

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clearly seem to be leading the reader in the direction of greater objectivity. They want to look at things “from the outside,” so as to avoid self-interest or an all-too-human point of view. They would be puzzled to learn that for Kierkegaard the formal perspective had become a path to subjectivity.7 Kierkegaard might reply that my argument (against the claim that orientation on “how” something is done is a subjective orientation) attacks a straw man. Whether one looks at the “what” or the “how,” the act of looking is objective so long as it focuses attention on the object being looked at. The onlooker, the spectator, must be made aware of his own act of looking, “how” he sees rather than “what” he sees. This is the proper subjective emphasis. Of course, the attempt to make one aware of one’s own act by naming it (by calling it the subjective “how,” for example) might merely have the effect of turning that act—be it knowing or loving or fearing—into another object to be looked at, to be studied. Kierkegaard could say that this points to a limitation of language, which tends to objectify things, rather than to a defect in his understanding or intention. Turning away from the “what” to the “how” is the only way to describe the path toward subjectivity given the limits of language. Against this claim, Part II tries to present an alternative path toward subjectivity. Part II. The Socratic Formulation of the “What” Question. In contrast to modern thought, the beginning of Plato’s Meno illustrates the limitation of making the “how” primary.8 Meno asks Socrates how virtue is acquired, by teaching or by practice or by nature or in some other way. In other words, how does virtue come to be possessed by man? The question comes upon Socrates as abruptly as it comes upon the reader. There seems to be no context. Why is Meno asking this question? The rest of the dialogue makes clear both Meno’s motivation and the appropriateness of the abrupt beginning. Meno wants a reputation for knowing and he enjoys being known to talk with those who can enhance that reputation. He has, however, no serious interest in virtue, so that Socrates exhorts him to show concern or take care about virtue.9 Meno’s motive for asking his question is only superficially related to virtue. The lack of dramatic context for the question reflects what we might call the lack of existential context. As long as Meno is what he is or as long as his soul is as it is, his question lacks the only context that could give it meaning. “How is virtue acquired?” In Meno’s mouth this seemingly practical question is entirely theoretical. Meno does not care about virtue. Nearly the first half of the dialogue is devoted to Socrates’s efforts to direct Meno away from the question “How is virtue acquired?” toward the question “What is virtue?” What is Socrates’s intention? The question “What

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is virtue?” seems much more theoretical, much more objective and detached, than Meno’s question. My suggestion is that Socrates reverses this view. Only the question “What is virtue?” truly involves the questioner. Only this question is rooted in a practical, even erotic, concern that can give meaning to Meno’s essentially derivative question about the “how.” A human being asks the question “What is virtue?” when he or she wants to find out what they are or what they can or should become. Whether the other “What is?” questions have the same practical significance is, to be sure, a moot point. Socrates, of course, asks about the essence of virtue because he himself wants to be the best possible human being. One might ask why the reader of this essay thinks about subjectivity. Can he progress in his understanding of subjectivity if he approaches this question in a detached way, like Meno, merely curious about what does not really concern him? Or must the inquiry be rooted in one’s concern with one’s own good? Socrates’s handling of Meno suggests a new point of departure for the present inquiry into subjectivity. The subjective desire to acquire virtue, to become virtuous, must be oriented toward the thing itself, not toward the process of acquisition. Form and procedure cannot stand alone. Becoming is meaningless without the being toward which we move. From Kierkegaard’s point of view, the detached, objective concern with what we believe or love or fear deprives modern men of the ability to believe, love, or fear. But one might say, and I think Socrates would say, that it is the prior loss of any serious concern with what one believes that makes it difficult to go on believing. To want to be, one must want to be something, simply because to be is to be something, here and now. The corrective, then, to the loss of subjective passion, is not a retreat into process but a renewed understanding of the importance of the quest for objective essences. We love the things we love for what they are, or, at any rate, for what we are in loving them. We are reminded of the problem of what the gods love as it is discussed in Plato’s Euthyphro. Part III. Subjectivity and Curiosity. The quest for essences may be the way we become subjective, but at the same time it seems to push subjectivity itself quietly into the background. The focus moves to virtue, justice, courage, peace, or whatever other objective idea we seek. Of course, if we seek virtue, for example, we seek the whole of virtue (see Meno 77a). One does not seek some part of virtue or the virtue of some one kind of person. How could we know that these bits and pieces are truly virtue without knowing what virtue itself or as a whole is? Certainly one does not seek merely one’s own virtue. Instead, one seeks a standard by which to recognize and acquire one’s own virtue. The standard

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must be whole or complete because, as Socrates says, “nothing incomplete is the measure of anything” (Republic 504c). One cannot measure with a defective measuring stick. Socrates’s statement suggests a clue to the meanings of object and objectivity. An object is complete in itself, and the objective observer sees it as complete. But is not everything in a sense complete, complete as what it itself is? In this sense, even a broken chair is complete. The broken chair is incomplete only from the perspective of one who wants to sit in it. But the objective observer does not want to sit in the chair. Such an observer must himself be complete so that his own needs do not mistakenly cause him to see imperfections in a reality that does not meet those needs. The detached observer is able to see, as Spinoza did, that all reality, as it is, is perfection. As subjectivity moves into the background, objectivity begins to look more and more like mere curiosity. To the extent that the detached observer is complete, why should he seek or observe? To the extent that he sees reality as complete, is not the completeness arbitrary or fortuitous? Should one in this way adjust one’s definition of completeness to fit the reality at hand? For Hobbes, curiosity is the passion that distinguishes man from the other animals.10 For us, curiosity is a falling away from subjectivity. It is a falling away from something essential to man. Without subjectivity, objective completeness becomes merely arbitrary. Indeed, anything can be judged as complete if it is not measured against our own subjective desire for sufficiency or wholeness. Moreover, if it is intelligible to ask why a self-sufficient God would create the world, is it not also reasonable to ask why an objective, that is, detached, observer would want to see? What could he gain from the sight? How, indeed, could the things seen have any meaning to one with no needs and, hence, no interests? A chair would be meaningless without someone’s desire to sit. This desire to sit is a kind of weakness or need. The subjective desire to fill this need, to fulfill or complete it, is necessary if I am to distinguish between a good chair and a broken chair. Can curiosity alone make this distinction? Would it want to? A chair is a human artifact. Perhaps its meaning is rooted in human purpose, but it would surely be crude anthropomorphism to extend such subjective intention to true knowledge, for example, to astronomy or atomic physics. Certainly in these matters we are objective because we cannot be anything else. The largest stars and the smallest particles are not designed to serve any human purpose. While agreeing with this claim, we might still wonder if modern physics does not itself serve a human purpose. The ultimate goal of physics today seems to be to combine partial theories, such as general relativity and quantum mechanics, into a complete unified theory. Of this unified theory, Stephen Hawking writes,11

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the search for the ultimate theory of the universe seems difficult to justify on practical grounds. But ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

Humanity’s deepest desire and yearning is for a unified perspective. It is the subjective desire for greater completeness that causes us to seek a more unified theory. Despite Hawking’s disclaimer, this subjective desire does indeed justify the search for the ultimate theory on practical grounds, that is, on grounds that meet a human need, in this case, perhaps, the most comprehensive human need. Moreover, when Hawking elsewhere says that “general relativity is only an incomplete theory,” he uses the human need for completeness as a ground on which to judge a scientific theory.12 Curiosity, seeking as it does diversity rather than completeness, could not provide such a standard, nor could stars or atoms, neither of which has a need for a comprehensive theory. Our passionate, subjective concern is rooted in human finitude, in our own incompleteness, yet without that concern we would have no criterion by which to judge the wholeness or partiality of the objective “what” that we seek, nor would we have a reason to seek. We must seek the objective “what” while conscious that we do so subjectively.13 At this point, it will be helpful to place in perspective our earlier critical remarks on subjectivity in Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Our argument eschews, not all subjectivity, but only that kind of subjectivity that emphasizes form, style, commitment, or enthusiasm, without regard to content or goal. Our longing for completeness does not, of course, assure that that longing can be satisfied, at least not in all its forms. It may well be the case that nothing is ever simply complete, and our subjective longing can at most help us to distinguish the more complete from the less complete. Oddly enough, we do sometimes talk in this way, as when we speak of a more complete version of a book. Above all, we must resist the temptation to settle for ersatz fulfillment under the pressure of our desire to have satisfaction here and now. Against such temptation we may well fortify ourselves with the verse Socrates quotes from Hesiod: “the half is more than the whole” (Republic, 466c). Part IV. The Problem of Absolutes. Against the argument of Part III and the authority of Hesiod stands the authority of Socrates: “Nothing incomplete is the measure of anything.” Subjective desire cannot be the measure of objective completeness. Rather, the objective must be the measure of the subjective. We must, of course, beware of taking

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Socratic statements from Platonic dialogues out of context. Nevertheless, Socrates seems to express this sentiment in a number of different contexts. At the beginning of Part III we sketched, with respect to virtue, the reason we might need to have something like a Socratic idea of virtue if we are to recognize any specific instance of virtue. In the Meno, Socrates seeks the idea of virtue through a definition of virtue, and he seeks to make the definition complete in two ways. It must be comprehensive, covering all instances of virtue, and it must be simple in the sense that it is not itself divided by or into the parts or kinds of virtue (e.g., Meno 72b–c, 74a). Again, in the Phaedrus (249b), it is the distinguishing characteristic of a human being to be able to bring many perceptions into one according to their form or essence. In this case the standard for determining what something is, its true being, seems to be an unchanging universal. On the other hand, Plato’s Parmenides presents a critique of the Socratic ideas. If Parmenides proves anything in this dialogue, it would surely seem to be that nothing can be simply and absolutely one. If this were the case, then the simple and, hence, unchanging forms would seem to be impossible. It is all the more significant, then, when in this dialogue Parmenides himself points out the importance of the forms or ideas. “But, of course,” said Parmenides, “if anyone, Socrates, will not allow forms of the beings to be, out of regard for all of the things just now said and for other similar things, and will not define a form of each one, and will not consider this option in his thinking, not allowing the idea of each of the beings to be always the same, in this way he will also destroy altogether the power of discourse.” (Parmenides 135b–c, trans. mine)

Parmenides here seems to be of the opinion that words would lose their meanings if unchanging ideas did not ultimately provide for each word a fixed referent or antecedent (see Thesis IV above). It seems safe to say that no one will ever resolve the dispute about the Socratic ideas. Taking the ideas for granted, therefore, in the final part of this paper we shall consider the consequences for subjectivity implied in positing them. Part V. The Problem of Socratic or Pure Subjectivity. As stated in Thesis V above, Socrates’s insistence on the simple and absolute character of the ideas makes it impossible to explain clearly how the objective “what” is related to the subjective “how” in a world where everything happens in stages and by degrees, that is, where everything is temporal. Both the Phaedrus and the Meno provide illustrations of this problem.

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In a famous speech in the Phaedrus, Socrates sets out to praise love (eros). He expands the praise of love into a kind of cosmological myth. The highest love is of the ideas, which are said to be beyond space and, it is implied, beyond time (Phaedrus 247c–d). They are pure being. The soul is moved by its love, that is, need for (Symposium 199c–201c), the ideas. Hence, soul is not self-sufficient; its motion cannot be strictly speaking self-caused. Soul is moved by the ideas. But Socrates explicitly denies this implication of his own argument. His speech in praise of love almost begins with a proof that the soul is so completely self-moved as to be immortal (Phaedrus 245c–246a). Socrates, we suggest, is forced into this dual and contradictory view of the soul by his understanding of the ideas. On the one hand, love moves the soul toward the ideas in a way that is described so as to intimate mechanical necessity (251a–e). The soul has no choice but to be moved by love of the beautiful toward the pure being of the ideas. On the other hand, nothing could be more self-evident than that the pure being of the ideas is incommensurable with the world of becoming of which love is a part. The absolute cannot participate in the temporal, that is, gradual, movement of the soul toward it. If soul moves toward the ideas, it does so without any influence or help from the ideas (consider Republic, 382e). The soul is eternally self-moved. Nothing causes or determines the direction of that motion. The end of human action is simply and freely chosen.14 As in Kierkegaard, the “how” of motion has become severed from the “what” toward which the soul moves. Objectively speaking, the “how” thus isolated from the “what” may be called pure subjectivity. The much-mooted problem of Socrates appears, in fact, to be the problem for Socrates: How can the objectively complete ideas be linked to the subjectively incomplete human being in a non-arbitrary (non-tyrannical?) way? Plato’s Meno shows Socrates in a similar difficulty. Toward the middle of the dialogue, Meno objects to the Socratic quest for virtue on the grounds that if one knows what virtue is, then there is no point in looking for it, while, if one does not know what virtue is, one will not know when he has found it (80d). The problem bears some similarity to that of looking in the dictionary for the spelling of a word one does not know how to spell. It seems to us that Socrates might have responded to Meno’s objection pointing out that no one is ever completely wrong about everything (see Phaedrus 235e). One always understands something, just as, early in the dialogue, Meno says that he understands Socrates’s question, yet not as well as he would like to (Meno 72d). Knowledge is not an all-or-nothing proposition, as Socrates himself admits when he says that even blindfolded one could tell from talking with him that Meno is beautiful and still has lovers (76b). Contrary to what Socrates says early in the dialogue, it is not true that one must know everything about

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Meno before one can know anything about him (71b). Socrates might have pointed out that knowledge comes by degrees, so that the premise of Meno’s “all-or-nothing” question is wrong. He might also have pointed out the inconsistency of Meno’s question, which seems to imply both that Meno knows nothing and that Meno knows what knowing is well enough to distinguish it from not knowing (consider 98b). In fact, however, Socrates seems to accept Meno’s “all or nothing” premise when he tries to show that knowledge is possible because it is recollection of things we already know. Socrates does not say that starting from what it knows the soul is able to learn what it does not know, but rather that, having learned all things in some past life, the soul may start from one thing to remember others (81d). One cannot acquire what one already has, yet the premise of this discussion of acquisition is that our knowledge is already complete and comprehensive. In support of the notion of recollection, Socrates launches into the famous demonstration wherein Meno’s slave discovers the solution to a geometrical construction by “remembering” the answers to Socrates’s questions. The geometry problem consists in constructing a square the area of which is double that of a given square. The solution to this problem is as timeless and comprehensive as the answer Socrates seeks to the question “What is virtue?” In this light it is interesting to note that Socrates’s demonstration of recollection is not itself a mathematical demonstration. The eternal truths of geometry do not explain how (in what manner, by what means) one learns geometry; rather, this is explained by recollection.15 In geometry, nothing moves, nothing is acquired, because everything is eternal or, at any rate, timeless. One cannot, it would seem, acquire (= learn) geometry geometrically. Does the parallel truth hold for the Socratic answer to the question “What is virtue?” If virtue is an eternal truth, can virtue be acquired virtuously (Meno 78d–79a)? Is the mode of acquisition incompatible with the thing to be acquired? Socrates seems acutely aware that the simple and comprehensive answer to the question “What is virtue?” would aid only indirectly or negatively in answering Meno’s question, “How is virtue acquired?” Early in the Meno (72c–e), virtue is the same form whenever it occurs, a simple unity. But if virtue were simply one, it could never be acquired gradually and, hence, could never be taught. In the second half of the Meno, when Socrates turns to consider under what hypothesis virtue could be learned, he assumes that virtue is knowledge or prudence, either in whole or in part (89a). But prudence is hardly simple, for the following reason. The other parts of virtue, for example, courage and moderation, prove to be sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the circumstances (88b). Prudence tells us when something is good or bad by taking into account the circumstances. Virtue itself is ever-changing because the dictates of prudence change with the particulars

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of time and place. Even if prudence somehow remains similar under changing circumstances, it is not simple. In its acquisition through prudence, virtue shows itself to be complex. The “what” question is again severed from the “how” question, the simple from the complex. We are left to wonder about the relationship between the ideas and philosophy as a way of life. There is an idea of wisdom, but no idea of philosophy. The ideas themselves do not seem to explain how or why a man becomes a philosopher (see Republic, 496c). This, however, would seem to be the one question most necessary to answer. Is philosophy itself freely chosen? Or do philosophers merely chance to have a certain odd inclination or bent of character? Is there no natural or knowable ground for the Socratic contention that philosophy is the best way of life? Would a natural ground for philosophy require a modification of the Socratic version of the ideas? Is there any difference between Plato and Socrates on the issue of the relation between the knower and the ideas or between subject and object? Does Plato, too, end in pure subjectivity? Socrates points us in the direction of the ideas; clearly Plato does too, speaking through Socrates. On the other hand, the student of the Platonic dialogues must study not only the ideas but also the dramatic situations and characters in Plato’s dramas. On this issue, George Anastaplo quotes Jacob Klein: “All depends not only on what, but on how, under what circumstances, where, and in what context something is being said.”16 To this we might add that much depends on the character of each speaker (e.g., Meno’s love of a reputation for knowing). To some extent, Plato turns his readers away from the ideas and toward a study of the incomplete souls who seek the ideas. It is an open question whether the ideas measure the soul, or whether, at least in part, the yearning of the soul for completeness does not become a natural measure of the limits of the ideas (see Part III above). If the latter is the case, then the practical is in some sense the ground of the theoretical. (In Part II, we used Meno’s question about virtue to illustrate, in his case, the lack of such a practical ground.) Subjectivity and objectivity belong together, without negating themselves or each other (consider Meno 74e). The objectivity of science remains rooted in subjective human concern. One might well have reservations about the modern philosophy that places considerable emphasis on subjectivity. Kierkegaard and Heidegger simply make too much of willful choice regardless of what one chooses.17 Even so, there is a subjective element in human nature. I have sought, in the inquiry above, an understanding of subjectivity, not as a freedom opposed to nature, but as a self-consciousness integrated into nature. In this task it has been and continues to be most helpful to look to Socrates and, ultimately, to Plato for a better way of understanding the subjective aspect of our nature.

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NOTES 1. Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), 130. 2. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, trans. L. W. Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 42, and Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L. W. Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 26. 3. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. Swenson and W. Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 181 (italics in original). 4. Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 154 (italics in original). 5. Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, trans. Lee M. Capel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 120, 123, 219. 6. Wherever form has not replaced substance, then the end does indeed justify the means. Machiavelli’s moral neutrality is, in fact, a product of his fascination with means and his disregard of ends or of his tendency to treat effective or successful means as ends in themselves. The notion that the end “justifies” the means becomes dangerous only when we conceive of the end as so radically disjunct from the means as to create the possibility that any means would be consistent with the end. 7. In the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard develops the thesis that starting from subjectivity, one necessarily ends in objectivity, while starting from objectivity, one always ends in subjectivity. For Kierkegaard, subjectivity and objectivity are each, as concepts, self-negating in a way that makes them identical. See Henry E. Allison, “Christianity and Nonsense,” Review of Metaphysics 20, no. 3 (March 1967): 432–60, especially 446–47. See also, Plato’s Meno 74e3–5. 8. I have used the translation of Plato’s Meno prepared by John Gormly and George Anastaplo for the introductory close textual reading tutorial of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, the University of Chicago. 9. For the translation of melete as concern or care, compare Meno 75a9 with 99e3. See also the Gormly translation. 10. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), ch. 6, 36. 11. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 13. 12. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 50. 13. On finitude and completeness, see Thomas L. Pangle, “On the Theages” in Pangle, ed., The Roots of Political Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 165–67. 14. Compare, for a more Platonic view, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1975), 273n33 end. See also, Joseph Cropsey, “Plato’s Phaedrus and Plato’s Socrates,” in Cropsey, Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), 243. 15. Indeed, it is one of the paradoxes of modern physics that motion is explained mathematically, whereas in mathematics nothing moves. Galileo assumed that geometry could explain continuous motion, but quantum mechanics, which is highly

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mathematical, assumes, we are told, that nature is discrete, not continuous. The non-physicist can do no more than wonder whether this outcome was not inevitable given a mathematical methodology. 16. Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 86. 17. Kierkegaard and Heidegger also make too much of death: we preserve our life in order to expend our talent and energy.

Appendix A

Alfarabi, Attainment of Happiness, secs. 11 and 12, in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 19–20. 11. It is characteristic of this science that inquires into numbers and magnitudes that the principles of instruction in it are identical with the principles of being. Hence all demonstrations proceeding from its principles combine the two things—I mean they give an account of the thing’s existence and of why it exists: all of them are demonstrations of both that the thing is and why it is. Of the principles of being, it employs [only the formal, that is] what the thing is and by what and how it is, to the exclusion of the other three. For numbers and magnitudes, in the mind and stripped from the material, have no principles related to their genus apart from the principles of their being just mentioned. They possess the other principles only on account of their coming into being by nature or the will, that is, when they are assumed to be in materials. Since this science does not inquire into them as being in materials, it does not deal with what is extraneous to them so far as they are not in materials. 12. One begins, then, first with numbers [that is, arithmetic], proceeds next to magnitudes [that is, geometry], then to all things in which number and magnitude are inherent essentially (such as optics and the magnitudes in motion), and then to the heavenly bodies, music, the study of weights, and mechanics. In this way one begins with things that may be comprehended and conceived irrespective of any material. He then proceeds to things that can be comprehended, conceived, and intellected by only slight reference to a material. Next, the things that can only be comprehended, conceived, and intellected with slightly more reference to a material. He continues thus toward the things wherein number and magnitude inhere, yet that which can be intellected in them does not become intelligible except by progressively greater reference to the material. This will lead him to the heavenly bodies, then music, then the study of weights and mechanics, where he is forced to deal with things that become intelligible only with difficulty, or that cannot exist, except when they are in materials. One is now forced to include principles other than what, by what, and how. He has 239

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come to the borderline between the genus that does not have any other principle of being apart from what it is, and the genus whose species possess the four principles. It is at this point that the natural principles come into view.

Appendix B

Chapter 10, sec. 5, of Hobbes’s De Homine, in Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive), ed. Bernard Gert and trans. Charles T. Wood, T. S. K. Scott-Craig, and Bernard Gert (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1991), 41–43. Therefore many theorems are demonstrable about quantity, the science whereof is called geometry. Since the causes of the properties that individual figures have belong to them because we ourselves draw the lines; and since the generation of the figures depends on our will; nothing more is required to know the phenomenon peculiar to any figure whatsoever, than that we consider everything that follows from the construction that we ourselves make in the figure to be described. Therefore, because of this fact (that is, that we ourselves create the figures), it happens that geometry hath been and is demonstrable. On the other hand, since the causes of natural things are not in our power, but in the divine will, and since the greatest part of them, namely the ether, is invisible; we, that do not see them, cannot deduce their qualities from their causes. Of course, we can, by deducing as far as possible the consequences of those qualities that we do see, demonstrate that such and such could have been their causes. This kind of demonstration is called a posteriori, and its science, physics. And since one cannot proceed in reasoning about natural things that are brought about by motion from the effects to the causes without a knowledge of those things that follow from that kind of motion; and since one cannot proceed to the consequences of motions without a knowledge of quantity, which is geometry; nothing can be demonstrated by physics without something also being demonstrated a priori. Therefore physics (I mean true physics), that depends on geometry, is usually numbered among the mixed mathematics. For those sciences are usually called mathematical that are learned not from use and experience, but from teachers and rules. Therefore those mathematics are pure which (like geometry and arithmetic) revolve around quantities in the abstract so that work in the subject requires no knowledge of fact; those mathematics are mixed, in truth, which in their reasoning also consider any quality of the subject, as is the case with 241

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astronomy, music, physics, and the parts of physics that can vary on account of the variety of species and the parts of the universe. Finally, politics and ethics (that is, the sciences of just and unjust, of equity and inequity) can be demonstrated a priori; because we ourselves make the principles—that is the causes (namely laws and covenants)—whereby it is known what justice and equity, and their opposites injustice and inequity, are. For before covenants and laws were drawn up, neither justice nor injustice, neither public good nor public evil, was natural among men any more than it was among beasts.

Appendix C

Alfarabi, Political Regime, 37–38.2, sec. 11, in Alfarabi: The Political Writings, Volume II, “Political Regime” and “Summary of Plato’s Laws,” trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 34–35. As long as souls are not perfected and do not perform their actions, they are merely faculties and traits disposed to accept the traces of things: like vision before it views and before the traces of things viewed are attained in it, the imaginative [faculty] before the traces of things imagined are attained in it, and the rational [faculty] before the traces of the intelligibles are attained in it and they [all] become forms. For when the traces are actually attained—I mean, the traces of sense perceptions in the sense perceptive faculty, imagined things in the imaginative faculty, and the traces of intelligibles in the rational faculty— they then become different from the forms, even though these traces attained in the previous traits are similar to forms in material. They are called forms only due to similarity. Those most remote from being forms are the traces of the intelligibles attained in the rational faculty. They are almost separate from material, and their existence in the rational faculty is very dissimilar from the existence of form in material. When the intellect actually reaches the point of being similar to the active intellect, it is not then a form nor similar to a form even though one faction homonymously also calls all disembodied substances forms. They establish some forms as separate from material, [that is,] not needing it and being rid of it; and others as not [38] separate from material, namely, the forms we have mentioned. This is one of the divisions of the homonymous noun.

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Below is my brief response following a lecture by Professor Bernard McGinn, “Theology and Mysticism in Meister Eckhart and the German Dominicans,” delivered at Dominican University, February 10, 2010. The lecture was in conjunction with a conference discussing a book by the 2009– 2010 Lund-Gill Chair, Father Richard Woods, OP, Eckhart’s Way (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2009). References in the text are either to this work or to Professor McGinn’s unpublished lecture. RESPONSE TO BERNARD MCGINN Let me first thank Professor McGinn for his very interesting and challenging paper. He makes a very complex subject arrestingly clear. I am thinking especially of the following statement. “All Christian theologians agree that God is unknowable” (McGinn). Let that sink in for a minute. Try to imagine it. But do not try too hard. If you think that you have imagined the unknowable God, let me interrupt you with the words of Meister Eckhart. “But if God is neither goodness nor being nor truth nor one, what then is He? He is pure nothing: He is neither this nor that. If you think of anything He might be, He is not that” (Eckhart, quoted in Woods 44). Professor Richard Woods, holder of the Lund-Gill Chair that is sponsoring tonight’s lecture, describes these words as having an “orthodox meaning.” The shocking thing is that Professor McGinn seems to agree, and I can think of no reason to question their assessment. I think they are both right. “If you think of anything God might be, He is not that.” This is the Christian view. But if God is neither this nor that, what is left but that God is nothing. Eckhart says that God is nothing, pure nothing, and the Church condemns what Eckhart says. I do not know what Eckhart said in his own defense, but I have learned from Professor McGinn that Eckhart was well read in Maimonides, the great Jewish sage. So let me take a guess at what Eckhart 245

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might have said if he had Maimonides as a defense counsel. Eckhart might have reminded his accusers that words like good and being and true and one simply do not have the same meaning when they are said of God that they have when said of any other thing. But the same is true of nothing. One need not feel threatened when Eckhart says that God is nothing, because the word nothing simply does not mean the same thing when applied to God that it means when we say it of any other thing. I would be very curious to know if the Eckhart scholars in the room think that Eckhart would agree with Maimonides on this. How did theologians get themselves in such a pickle? Michael Buckley, in his book, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (1990), argues that when one tries to give a rational proof of the existence of God, what one comes up with no longer feels like God. God becomes an abstract first cause indifferent to the beings emanating from it. But if we do not look for God in rational proofs, where shall we look for him? Buckley’s answer, which he does not develop, is that we must look for God in religious experience. At this point, I would like to introduce Buckley to the mystic, Meister Eckhart. How do we get past the unspeakable character of God? Eckhart’s answer is that we know God by direct union with God. We experience God, as Professor Woods says, “unmediated by any concept” (Woods 102). Professor McGinn describes this as reaching “a direct, but inexpressible, consciousness of God” and he quotes the words of John Tauler: “No one can speak of it and no one can ever tell another about it. He alone knows it who has experienced it, but he can tell you nothing about it, because God has taken possession of this ground” (McGinn). As Eckhart sometimes very boldly says, we experience a union with God (Woods 114, 121). If I understand him correctly, Professor McGinn goes so far as to say that for Eckhart in the mystical union we become God, a conclusion Professor Woods rejects (Woods 115). In either case, logos or speech is replaced by silence. It is only in the infinite silence that we know God. No wonder that Eckhart calls it a desert (Woods 114). According to Professor McGinn, John Tauler, in a wonderful phrase, calls it “the lovely dark silence of the abyss.” But can an argument from silence ever be anything but precarious? (Woods 180). Is the lovely dark silence of the abyss really the same as God the creator? Is the lovely dark silence of the abyss the God who redeems me from sin? What does it mean to say that such a God is just or merciful when justice and mercy have lost all humanly intelligible meaning? I ask these questions for a purpose. Have Eckhart and his followers merely been corrupted by philosophy? Is it reason that seeks the absolute and, in the end, finds only the abyss? In that case nothing at all has been proven about the God of faith. Reason merely discovers the absence of the God it denied to begin with. But if Eckhart and his fellow mystics speak out of the heart of faith, if faith itself

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at its farthest limit discovers only the lovely dark silence of the abyss, the infinite silence of the desert, then in a terrifying way faith and philosophy are in complete agreement. One is no longer comforted or reassured by Professor McGinn’s quotation from Eckhart to the effect that “Moses, Christ and the Philosopher teach the same thing.” It is strange to me at least how the ineffability of God so easily gives rise to an infinity of speech. Let me mention just one more aspect of Professor McGinn’s paper, without making any attempt to reach closure on the issue he and Eckhart raise. Professor McGinn says that for Eckhart we all live in unity with God though we are for the most part in ignorance of this life-transforming truth. Knowledge of our union with God will help us to “live without a why.” To live without a why is a thought that somehow sounds very modern to me. Why is there something rather than nothing? The modern answer seems to be that we are simply thrown here. We have no purpose beyond the immanence of simply being. For Eckhart, our simply being is a union with God, but that union is an end in itself. It is not going anywhere. It has no why. God has no ends, just as he has no words. Fortunately, my comments do have an end, though hopefully they have not generated the silence of the abyss.

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Index

absolute(s), 115n4 absolute hiddenness, 143–45 absolutely other, 105, 115n4 absolute One, 53 absolute simplicity, 79, 80 abyss, 146, 167, 246–47 “The Achievement of Leo Strauss” (Jaffa), 29 actions, 10, 20–23, 101, 110, 117–19, 126–27, 161, 174, 180, 184, 188; moral, 21, 22; opinions and, 1, 22, 89–90, 161; political, 22–23, 28n14, 49–50, 169, 189; practical arts, 17; theory/contemplation as, 17 active intellect, 38–39, 54 Age of Faith, 137 agriculture, 200, 204. See also commerce; music Alcibiades, 71, 72, 176, 186, 187, 190, 193n38 Alfarabi, 1–3, 168, 169, 225; Attainment of Happiness, 8, 24–25, 50, 87, 89, 91–92, 95, 239–40; Hobbes and, 87–97, 161; human things, 66; innovations, 2; just city, 19–26; Maimonides and, 78; Neoplatonism and, 45–54; philosophy and kingship, 15–19; Philosophy of Aristotle, 2, 12, 59–63, 91; Platonism, 29–43; Plato’s

Phaedrus and, 65, 73; political philosophy, 9–15; prophetology, 38–39; Strauss’ interpretation, 1, 7, 8, 11–27, 29–43, 77; Theology of Aristotle, 46–47, 52–54 amour de soi, 215 amour propre, 215 Anastaplo, George, 3, 235; on Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 3, 207–12 Anaxagoras, 168 ancient(s), 1, 3, 19, 29–32, 92, 207, 208, 221n1; imitation of Socrates, 219; music and, 195–203; philosophy, 89; theory and practice, 112–13. See also modern(s) anger, 136 anxiety, 136 apprehension, 61 Aquinas, Thomas, 164, 167 Aristotle, 1, 3, 93, 96, 97, 162–63, 168, 169; Alfarabi and, 2, 12, 46–54, 59–63, 90–93, 96, 97, 168, 169; Bible and, 83–85; on education, 196– 200; hierarchy, 191n7; Maimonides and, 76, 81–85; on music, 197–205; Nicomachean Ethics, 59–61, 79; nous, 165, 169n2; peaks of human

259

260

Index

excellence, 60; Politics, 195–200; Torah and, 83, 85 ascent, 1, 30–31, 49, 52, 54, 63n2, 90, 98nn6, 10, 169 astronomy, 82–83, 87, 93, 214, 230 atheism, 141n10, 147n4, 166; dogmatic, 30, 136; Febvre, 134, 136–39; as a form of faith, 110; premodern times, 134; Rabelais, 133, 134; reasoned, 136–37; Renaissance men, 135; Rosen, 110; Strauss, 101–3, 110 Athens, 33, 165, 173–90 Attainment of Happiness (Alfarabi), 8, 24–25, 50, 87, 89, 91–92, 95, 239–40 At the Origins of Modern Atheism (Buckley), 246 Averroes, 29, 32, 38, 40, 42, 111 being: ground of, 3, 154–56, 162–64; principles of, 94–95, 239 beliefs, 21–22; arbitrary choice, 30; Christian, 135; orthodoxy/ orthodox, 30–31 bestial madness, 73 bewitching, 121–22. See also witches Bible, 31, 83–85 Boccaccio, Giovani, 141 Book of Religion (Alfarabi), 47, 88, 89 Boreas, 70 Brasidas, 180, 186 Braudel, Fernand, 133 Breaking with Athens (Colmo), 1, 2, 65 Buckley, Michael, 246 Bultmann, 3 Burns, Timothy, 129n4, 131n19 Butterworth, Charles, 43n2, 46, 54n4, 55nn5, 9, 12, 56nn19, 22, 63n2, 73n2, 97n5, 98n12, 147n2, 243 cause, 45, 46, 48, 52, 53, 60, 70, 79–83, 85, 90, 91, 93, 95–97, 118, 125, 128, 146, 154, 183–84, 195, 215, 225, 230 Cavalcanti, Guido, 141n14, 164 cave, 12, 13, 30–31, 51, 52, 54, 107, 113, 166

choice, 59, 61–63. See also will Christianity: inequality, 217 The Citizen (Hobbes), 88 The City and Man (Strauss), 12, 13 Clark, Stuart, 133, 134 Cleitophon (Plato), 51 Collins, James, 96–97 comedy, 67, 110, 131n25 command to philosophize, 40–41 commerce, 200–204. See also music compact experiences/symbols, 153, 156–58, 163, 165 compassion, 216–17 consciousness, 3, 30–32, 143, 161, 163, 165–69 contradiction, 2, 20, 28n14–15, 103, 105–6, 110, 115nn1, 4, 124, 125, 130n15, 131n17, 167 Corinthians, 181, 182 courage, 2, 112, 116n12, 117–29, 180, 197–98, 200–202, 204, 221 creation, 31, 37–38, 75–76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 195 Dante, 111 David Copperfield (Dickens), 213 death, 218 Decisive Treatise (Averroes), 40 De Corpore (Hobbes), 92 demonstrations, 94–95 Demosthenes, 177 Descartes, Rene, 134, 141n7, 161, 167, 195, 207, 210, 217, 225–28 desired way of life, 9–10 dialectic, 107 dialectical ascent from opinions to knowledge, 90 dialectical proof, 96 dialectical theologians, 80 Dickens, Charles, 213 differentiated experiences/symbols, 153, 156–57, 164–66 Diodotus, 173, 182, 184, 185, 188–90, 192nn14, 25, 193n38 divine, pursuit of, 146

Index

divine command, 41 divine ground, 156, 163, 166 divine intellect, 79 divine law, 31, 34, 36–38, 42–43, 49, 50, 90 divine madness, 48, 50, 68, 69, 73 divine providence, 219 divine will, 84 Doctor Faustus (Marlowe), 3, 207–12 dogmatic atheism, 30, 136 Doric mode of music, 200. See also Phrygian mode of music doubt, 14, 16, 18, 89, 136, 138, 139, 167, 169, 184, 204, 205, 209–10 Eckhart, Meister, 245–47 education: aims of, 197; Aristotle on, 196–200 Emile (Rousseau), 213–20 Enlightenment, 30 equivocation, 2, 80, 119, 122, 123, 126, 130–31n16, 139, 141n15, 145 eros, 41–43, 65, 69, 70, 73, 111, 112, 127 essence and existence, 91–92 eternity, 31, 37–38, 76, 79–83 Euphemus, 181–85 Euthyphro (Plato), 111, 229 exceptional man, 135 faith, 3, 12, 34, 102, 104, 106–7, 109, 111, 146, 246–47; atheism as a form of, 110; Bultmann, 150–52; Christian belief, 135; Faustus, 208–11; Kierkegaard, 144, 163; liberation from, 140; Macbeth, 121, 130n9; Old Testament, 149–52; opposite values, 107, 109, 167; peace and, 195; science, 140; sixteenth century without, 135 “Farabian turn,” 1 “Farabi’s Plato” (Strauss), 7, 11–27, 41–43, 45, 104, 115 Faustus (Marlowe’s character in play Doctor Faustus), 3, 207–12

261

fears, 127–28, 179–83 Febvre, Lucien, 1, 3, 133–40 form, 78, 228, 229, 236n6, 243 freedom, 3, 198, 201–5, 219, 221, 235; limits of fear, 174; philosophy, 32–33, 42, 45, 146; political, 174, 175, 178, 183, 186, 187, 189, 190n3 Galston, Miriam, 11, 14, 18, 21, 27nn6, 12, 98n11 geometry, 93, 234, 241 God, 52, 75, 77–85, 89, 167–68, 209, 211, 245–47; absolute hiddenness, 144–45; as absolutely other, 105, 115n4; absolute simplicity, 79, 80; Christian/Christianity and, 149–58, 213, 217, 219, 245; creation, 75–76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 144; death of, 115n4; existence of, 75, 79–84, 101, 105, 138–39, 144–46, 164–65; immediate revelation, 146; incomprehensible mystery, 145; knowledge, 77; maker, 80, 82, 85; man’s highest perfection, 75–78; miracle, 145; nature and, 31; proof of existence, 79–80, 83, 105, 164–65; refuting unfathomable, 30–31 Goldsmith, Oliver, 218 Gottlieb, Beatrice, 133–34 The Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 75–85 Guttmann, Julius, 29–30, 36 gymnastics, 195, 197, 202. See also music happiness, 11, 14–16, 18–21, 23, 71, 89–90 The Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages (Alfarabi), 90–91 Hawking, Stephen, 230–31 Hebrew Bible, 156 Heidegger, Martin, 156, 225, 226, 231, 235 Hermocrates, 182, 191n13 Hilbert, David, 161

262

Index

history: knowledge of political reality, 161; Thucydides’s history of war, 3, 173–88; Voegelin’s understanding, 3, 149–58, 163, 164, 166, 168 Hobbes, Thomas, 1, 2, 20, 36, 98n10, 161, 166, 193n29, 195; Alfarabi and, 2, 20, 87–97, 161; The Citizen, 88; curiosity, 230; De Corpore, 92; Leviathan, 88, 90; On Man, 87; mathematics, 92–97; physics, 92–97; politics, 87–90, 225–26; religion, 87–90 Homer, 201 honor, 179–83 hopes, 127–28 “how” question, 92, 225–28, 232, 233, 235. See also “what” question Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche), 65 human laws, 37, 90 human madness, 73 human things, 65, 66, 69–73, 84 Ibn Bajja, 89 ideas, 232, 233, 235 imagination, 38, 39 immediate experience, 93, 94, 96, 124, 165, 167 immediate intuition, 124, 165 immediate needs, 214, 219 immediate revelation, 146, 147–48n7, 167, 170n6 immortality, 24, 28n13, 45, 89 imperfect cities, 22 imperfections, 230 incomprehensible mystery, 145 The Independent Journal of Philosophy, 103 ineffable experiences, 167, 168 inequality, 217–19 injustice, 88–90, 182, 183, 242 instruction: principles of, 94–97, 239 intellect, 38, 39 Islamic law, 40 Jaffa, Harry, 29

justice, 18, 89, 118, 126, 145, 161, 175, 188, 226, 229, 242, 246 Kennedy, J. F., 117 Kierkegaard, Søren, 3, 106, 135, 141, 144, 145, 151, 163, 167, 216, 225– 29, 231, 233, 235, 236n7 Klein, Jacob, 76, 235 Kleven, Terence, 77 knowledge, 30–31, 65–72; Alfarabi, 8–24, 38, 39, 41–42, 46–49, 54, 60–63; of desired or best way of life, 10–14; opinions vs., 134–38, 140, 140–41n6; as power, 93; radical Enlightenment, 30–31; self-knowledge, 13–15, 19–20, 22–23, 70–72, 111–12, 114, 116n10, 119–22, 126–27, 143, 225; Socrates, 66, 68–72; as union of theory and practice, 30; virtues, 9, 18, 27, 49, 60, 63, 69, 112, 117–21, 127–29, 144, 177, 197–200, 203, 208, 211– 12, 228–35. See also philosophy Knox, Bernard, 165–66, 170n3 laws, 19, 23–25, 31–43, 45–46, 49–52, 76–77, 80, 81, 84, 150, 151, 157, 161, 175, 179, 180, 218; absolutely necessary to life, 37–38; defense of, 45; divine, 31, 34, 36–38, 42–43, 49, 50, 90; human, 37, 90; unwritten, 179 Laws (Plato), 33–34, 41–43, 49–52 Lefranc, Abel, 133 Leviathan (Hobbes), 88, 90 liberality, 186 liberation, 179 logic, 102, 211 Lydian mode of music, 200 Lysias, 65, 66, 69, 70 Macbeth (Shakespeare), 2, 117–29 Machiavelli, 19, 129, 146, 179, 196, 209; moral neutrality, 236n6

Index

madness: divine, 48, 50, 68, 69, 73; human, 73 magnanimity, 60, 61, 63n3, 182, 199, 222n12 Mahdi, Muhsin, 16, 26n2, 28n16, 48 Maimonides, 2, 7, 27n11, 245–46; The Guide of the Perplexed, 75–85 maker, 63, 80, 82, 85 manliness and metaphysics, 122–27 Marlowe, Christopher: on cay mae on (being and not being), 211; Doctor Faustus, 3, 207–12 mathematics, 87, 92–94 McGinn, Bernard, 245–47 Meier, Heinrich, 7, 14, 26n4, 55n8 Meno (Plato), 90, 228–29, 232–35 metaphysics, 45, 47, 146; dogmatic, 168–69; language, 168, 169; manliness and, 122–27; Neoplatonic, 53, 54 metriotēs, 173, 174, 183, 185–90 modern(s), 1–3, 19, 29–32, 97, 155, 157, 161, 163, 195–96, 205, 221n1, 225, 228–30, 235, 246, 247; Febvre’s views, 133–40; Marlowe’s Faustus as a representative of, 3, 207–12; philosophy, 109–10; positivism, 85; rationalism, 7; theory and practice, 109, 112–13; wisdom, 109 Montesquieu, 3, 195–96, 200–204. See also music moral actions, 10 morality, 10, 21–22; Kant, 226 moral life, 9; as unphilosophic, 10 moral philosophy, 10, 13 music: ancients, 198, 199; Aristotle on, 197–204; imitative powers, 198, 202; leisure, 197, 198, 201, 202; modes, 200; Montesquieu on, 200–204; moral education, 198, 200, 202; as occupation, 201; play, 197, 198; relaxation, 197, 198, 201, 202 musical instruments, 199, 200 mutakallimun, 80

263

nature, 2, 7, 18, 25, 31, 36, 40, 42, 43, 62–63, 67, 68, 75, 76, 81, 93–96, 98n13, 106, 109–13, 122–27, 137–39, 143, 146, 162, 167–68, 179, 202–3, 207, 211, 215, 218, 219, 221, 228, 235 necessity, 21, 24–25, 39, 85, 87, 89, 91, 112, 161–62, 197, 201–4; courage and moderation, 116n12; faith in opposite values, 107; God’s existence, 79–81, 105; intimate mechanical, 233; justice and, 175; laws, 37–38; mathematical things, 95; political competition, 173; practical knowledge, 60, 61, 114; reason, 34; strength, 187; theoretical knowledge, 60, 76, 114; war as, 179–84 negative theology, 3, 52, 57n39, 144–45, 167 Neoplatonism, 45–54 Nicias, 163, 165–66, 176–79, 183–84, 187, 190–91n5 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 59–61, 79 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7, 9, 33, 41, 65, 66, 103, 107, 134, 156, 167, 195, 203, 215, 221 Nixon, Richard, 117 Old Testament, 3, 149–52 One, 46, 52–54 On Man (Hobbes), 87 opinions, 1, 136, 169, 183, 188, 201–2, 208, 209, 217, 220; accepted, 20–22, 76; acquired, 66, 69; action and, 89–90, 161; knowledge vs., 134–38, 140, 140–41n6; Macbeth, 119–20; Neoplatonism, 45–47, 49–52, 54; religious conformity, 21–22, 24–25; right, 13–14, 69 orthodoxy/orthodox belief, 30–31 Osiander, Andreas, 83–85 Pangle, Thomas, 103–5, 110

264

Index

Parmenides (Plato), 46, 232 peace, 3, 37, 61, 90, 128, 178–79, 191n7, 195–205. See also music; war perfection, 53, 197, 230; of knowledge, 91; of lower things, 52; of man, 10, 18, 34, 36–38, 40, 42–43, 46–47, 50, 61–63, 75–78, 112; of philosophy, 25; practical, 18; specific, 36–37; theoretical, 18, 19, 34, 62, 78 Pericles, 68, 182, 186, 190n3, 193n38 Phaedrus (Plato), 2, 41, 48, 65–73, 232–33 philosopher(s): duty to community, 22; philosopher-king, 14–19; political activity, 22, 23; self-knowledge, 13–15, 19–20, 22–23, 70–72, 111–12, 114, 116n10, 119–22, 126–27, 143, 225. See also specific philosopher philosophy, 1–3; as an act of will, 9, 11, 84, 96, 101–4, 107, 109–15, 167–68; ancient, 89; as knowledge of existing things, 90–92; as life of reason, 10; redefining, 97; revelation and, 35–38; as rigorous science, 13; and royal art or kingship, 14–18; Socrates on, 10. See also knowledge; specific philosopher’s name Philosophy and Law (Strauss), 29–43, 45–46, 49 “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy” (Strauss), 13, 14 Philosophy of Aristotle (Alfarabi), 2, 12, 59–63, 91 Philosophy of Plato (Alfarabi), 65, 91 Phrygian mode of music, 200. See also Doric mode of music Phrynichus, 181 physics, 87, 92–94. See also mathematics Plato, 1–3, 112–13, 115, 161–63, 190, 204, 216–17, 220–21; Alfarabi and, 7–27, 29–43, 45–54, 65, 71, 73, 88–92, 97, 168, 169; Cleitophon, 51;

Euthyphro, 111, 229; Laws, 33–34, 41–43, 49–52; Meno, 90, 228–29, 232–35; Parmenides, 46, 232; Phaedrus, 2, 41, 48, 65–73, 232–33; Republic, 34, 51, 57n37, 70, 90, 124, 129n6, 132n28, 196, 204, 216–17, 222n12–13; Strauss’ “Farabi’s Plato,” 7, 8, 11–27, 41–43, 45, 104, 115; subjectivity, 235; Symposium, 41, 71, 72 Plotinus, 45, 46, 52, 56n16 Polanyi, Michael, 83, 84 political happiness, 89 political punishments, 90 political truth, 21 politics: as competition, 174; definition, 173; religion and, 87–90; Thucydides, 173–90 Politics (Aristotle), 195–200 Postel, Guillaume, 136 practical vs. theoretical knowledge, 8–9, 11–14 practice. See theory and practice precursors, 1, 135–37, 140, 142n16 Principia Mathematica (Whitehead and Russell), 161 principles, 37, 45, 54, 61, 239–40; of being, 94–95, 239; compassion, 213; of human community life, 36, 39; of instruction, 94–97, 239; of mathematics, 162; modern, 213; pagan, 213; of political science, 162, 164 The Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City (Alfarabi), 89 The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century (Febvre), 3, 133–40 Profiles in Courage (Kennedy), 117 prophecy, 2, 26, 32–36, 38–39, 85, 118, 121–22, 127 prophetology, 38–39 prudence, 234–35

Index

quality, 10, 93, 96, 123–25, 128–29, 180, 190, 204 Quran, 40 Rabelais, François, 3, 133–35, 138–40, 141n15, 142n16 rationalism, 7, 35, 108, 137 rational knowledge, 22 The Real War (Nixon), 117 reason: revelation and, 1–3, 29–31, 69, 101–15 “Reason and Revelation in the Thought of Leo Strauss” (Colmo), 2 reasoned atheism, 136–37 reasoning about revelation, 143–47 reason’s inquisition, 2, 88–89, 147n4, 163, 211 recollection, 54, 65, 67, 73n5, 234 refutation, 30, 31, 77, 79, 101, 102, 104–6, 108–10, 133, 137, 139, 140, 146, 147n4, 163, 167, 201, 207 regime: citizenship, 204; establishing and preserving, 196; as an ideal, 112–13 religion, 1–3, 179, 198, 200, 209; Alfarabi and, 9, 13, 21–25, 53, 87–90, 97; Bultmann’s views, 149, 150; Febvre’s views, 133–40; Hobbes and, 87–90, 97; politics and, 2, 45, 87–90; radical Enlightenment, 30–31; reason and, 2; Strauss’s views, 102–14; Voegelin’s understanding, 3, 164, 168, 169 religious beliefs, 22, 23 religious conformity, 21–22, 24–25 religious consciousness, 31 Republic (Plato), 34, 51, 57n37, 70, 90, 124, 129n6, 132n28, 196, 204, 216–17, 222n12–13 revelation, 26, 29–35; equivocal, 139; immediate, 146, 147–48n7, 167, 170n6; as miracle, 139, 145; philosophic interest in, 35–38; rationalist defense of, 146–47; reason and, 1–3, 29–31, 69, 101–15;

265

reasoning about, 143–47; refuting, 30, 31, 101, 102; uncertainty, 111, 116n9; Voegelin’s study, 150–57; wisdom and, 108 The Reveries of a Solitary Walker (Rousseau), 216 Rosen, Stanley, 9, 101–5, 107–11, 114, 115nn1–2 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3, 36, 213–21 Russell, Bertrand, 161 Ryrie, Alec, 134, 136 secret kingship of philosopher, 20–21 self-knowledge, 13–15, 19–20, 22–23, 70–72, 111–12, 114, 116n10, 119–22, 126–27, 143, 225 self-love, 70 sexual desire, 220 Shakespeare, W., 2, 122, 126, 129, 130n13, 131n25, 134, 143, 173 Sicily, 176–77, 181, 184, 192n15 slaves, 165–66, 183, 234 Smith, Adam, 196, 201 Socrates, 10–13, 18–20, 26–27n4, 27n12, 45, 46, 49, 55n14, 90, 220; Aristotle and, 196, 200, 204; Cleitophon (Plato), 51; doctrine of ideas, 115n4; imitation, 215–17, 219; Laws (Plato), 33, 42, 49, 51–52; Phaedrus (Plato), 65–73, 232–33; praising love, 233; subjectivity, 227–35; summoners, 124 Socratic way of life, 10 soul: immortality, 24, 45, 89; love, 233; motion, 233 sovereign/sovereignty, 88 Sparta, 173, 175, 176, 178, 180–87, 192n17, 196–98 The Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), 200–201, 203 Strauss, Leo, 1, 2, 161; atheism, 101–3, 110; “Farabi’s Plato,” 7, 8, 11–27, 41–43, 45, 104, 115; interpretation of Alfarabi, 1, 7, 8, 11–27, 29–43, 77; orthodoxy, 145; philosopher’s

266

Index

self-knowledge, 116n10; Philosophy and Law, 29–43, 45, 46, 49; reason and revelation, 101–15 Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Pangle), 103 subjectivity, 225–35; curiosity and, 229–31; problem of, 232–35 substance, 10, 48–49, 78, 91, 92, 198, 225, 226, 228, 236n6 Summary of Plato’s Laws (Alfarabi), 42–43 summoners, 124 Symposium (Plato), 41, 71, 72 Syracuse, 176, 177, 181

unbelief, 3, 30, 31, 133–40. See also atheism

Tauler, John, 246 theology: negative, 3, 52, 57n39, 144–45, 167 Theology of Aristotle, 46–47, 52–54 theoretical knowledge: man’s highest perfection, 78; vs. practical, 8–9, 11–14 theoretical questions, 75 theoretical science, 91 theory and practice, 1–2; Alfarabi’s Platonism, 7–27, 29–43, 45–54, 65, 71, 73, 88–92, 97; ancient, 112–13; “Farabi’s Plato” (Strauss), 7, 8, 11–27, 41–43, 45, 104, 115; The Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 75–85; modern, 109, 112–13; Phaedrus (Plato), 2, 41, 48, 65–73; Philosophy of Aristotle (Alfarabi), 2, 12, 59–63, 91 Thucydides, 3, 161, 163, 165–66, 173– 90; autonomy of politics, 179; exile, 187; history of war, 173–88; Melian dialogue, 174–79 Torah, 33, 76, 82–85, 157 tragedy, 110, 131n25, 210–11 truth, 134–36; approximations to, 21; as child of the times, 134; effectual, 19; political, 21; Renaissance men, 134–35

war: causes, 183–84; and peace, 3, 178– 79, 195–205; at root of politics, 179; unwritten laws, 179. See also music warriors, wives and, 118–21 Weltanschauungsphilosophie, 13 Westmoreland, William, 117 “what” question, 91–92, 225–29, 231– 33, 235. See also “how” question Whitehead, Alfred North, 161 will, 59, 61–63, 91, 93, 95, 116n11, 117, 144, 218, 241; act of, 9, 11, 84, 96, 101–4, 107, 109–15, 167–68; divine, 84; gnostic, 149, 152; material circle, 94; mathematical things, 96; quality of, 10; of sovereign, 88 wisdom, 102 witches, 121–22. See also bewitching wives and warriors, 118–21 women: liberation, 220; in Macbeth, 117–29; Rousseau on, 217, 220, 222n12; Socrates on, 222n12 Woods, Richard, 245 Wootton, David, 140–41n6, 142n16

virtues, 9, 18, 27, 49, 60, 63, 69, 112, 117–21, 127–29, 144, 177, 197–200, 203, 208, 211–12, 228–35; as eternal truth, 234; as prudence, 234–35 virtuous city, 89 virtuous way of life, 9, 10 Voegelin, Eric, 3; Anamnesis, 161; dogmatic metaphysics, 168–69; on political reality, 161–69; responding to Bultmann’s essay, 149–58 voluntary science, 59, 63

Xenophon, 18, 165, 166 “Xenophon’s Anabasis” (Strauss), 18 Zuckert, Catherine, 49, 56n30, 64n3 Zuckert, Michael, 49, 56n30, 64n3

About the Author

Christopher A. Colmo is professor emeritus of political science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. Breaking with Athens was published in 2005. He has also published articles on Plato’s Greater Hippias and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Most recently he published “Does Kierkegaard Have a Concept of Excellence?” in Equality and Excellence in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy, edited by Steven Frankel and John Ray and dedicated to Joseph Cropsey.

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