After the “Strauss wars”

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Notes

1. Aschheim, Beyond the Border, 82.

2. Zuckert, “Straussians,” 263.

3. Ibid., 264.

4. Ibid., 286.

5. Kraemer, “Medieval Arabic Enlightenment,” 141–2.

6. Batnitzky, “Leo Strauss,” 61.

7. For a convenient collection of his texts on Strauss, see Smith, Reading Leo Strauss.

8. Cited in Fuller, “Political Thought and Liberal Education,” 262.

9. Batnitzky, “Leo Strauss,” 58.

10. Ibid., 60.

11. Galston, “Leo Strauss’s Qualified Embrace,” 214.

12. Behnegar, “Strauss and Social Science,” 229.

13. Fuller, “Political Thought and Liberal Education,” 253.

14. Batnitzky, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas, 209.

15. Smith, “Drury’s Strauss,” 70.

16. Drury, “Reply,” 74.

17. Smith, “Drury’s Strauss,” 69.

18. Drury, “Reply,” 73.

19. Aschheim, Beyond the Border, 91.

20. Ibid., 92.

21. Ibid., 111.

22. Ibid., 92.

23. Benjamin and Scholem, Briefwechsel, 192–3. Smith’s statement that the correspondence between Scholem and Benjamin is “one of the great literary correspondences of this or any other age” (Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 43) can hardly be reiterated often enough.

24. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 725

25. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 52.

26. Ibid., 77.

27. Smith, “How Jewish Was Leo Strauss?” 13–4.

28. Biale, “Leo Strauss,” 34.

29. Ibid., 38.

30. Ibid., 39.

31. Smith, “How Jewish Was Leo Strauss?” 14.

32. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 49.

33. Ibid., 60.

34. Ibid., 74.

35. Ibid., 73.

36. Ibid., 65.

37. Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, 84. For the background here cf. Jacobs, “Horkheimer, Adorno and the Significance of Antisemitism.”

38. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 73.

39. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 44–5.

40. Aschheim, Beyond the Border, 91.

41. Zank, “Beyond the ‘Theologico‐political Predicament’.” I am grateful to Michael Zank for allowing me to cite from this paper, which is currently being revised for publication.

42. Sheppard, Leo Strauss, 3.

43. Smith, “Outlines,” 20.

44. Marcuse and Heidegger, “An Exchange of Letters,” 30–1.

45. Cf. Wolin, “Introduction,” 19.

46. Cf. Fischer, “Carl Schmitt.”

47. Aschheim, Beyond the Border, 117–8. Smith seems to be implying something similar when discussing the contention that “liberalism may be as prone to thoughtlessness as authoritarianism.” With this insight, Smith suggests, “Strauss had discovered what would later become known as ‘the dialectic of the Enlightenment’” (Smith, “Outlines,” 27). It would be interesting to know why Smith opted to refer to “‘the dialectic of the Enlightenment’” at this juncture, rather than “the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’”.

48. For the suggestion that Strauss may have appropriated forms of rhetorical antisemitism for tactical reasons, see Sheppard, Leo Strauss, 41–4.

49. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 699–772.

50. Sheppard, Leo Strauss, 100.

51. Kraemer, “Medieval Arabic Enlightenment,” 138.

52. Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 3.

53. Smith, “Gershom Scholem and Leo Strauss.”

54. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 43–64.

55. Ibid., 44.

56. Ibid., 16.

57. Smith, “Outlines,” 20.

58. Sheppard, Leo Strauss, 111.

59. Ibid., 118.

60. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 44.

61. Cited in ibid., 43; Cf. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 740.

62. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 700.

63. Ibid., 725.

64. Ibid., 769.

65. This was presumably in response to the receipt of Scholem’s “Zehn unhistorische Sätze über Kabbala.” On this text cf. Biale, “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms on Kabbalah.”

66. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 738

67. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 47.

68. Ibid., 16.

69. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 78–9.

70. Even so, we do know that Strauss also drew the attention of trusted colleagues like Eric Voegelin to Scholem’s published work. Cf. Strauss’s letter to Voegelin of 9 May 1943 in Emberley and Cooper, Faith and Political Philosophy, 16.

71. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 722–3

72. Ibid., 717.

73. Ibid., 718.

74. Ibid., 720.

75. Ibid., 721.

76. Ibid., 719.

77. Ibid., 720.

78. Ibid., 728. Strauss eventually went to Jerusalem as a visiting professor in 1954/5. The lecture series, “What Is Political Philosophy?” (1959) was a revised version of the Judah L. Magnes Lectures he gave during this stay in Jerusalem. Cf. Smith, “Outlines,” 34–5.

79. Perhaps one of the most impressive and touching examples for this is the poem he wrote in 1967 in response to Ingeborg Bachmann’s text “Was ich in Rom sah und hörte” (What I Saw and Heard in Rome). Cf. “An Ingeborg Bachmann. Nach ihrem Besuch im Ghetto von Rom” (To Ingeborg Bachmann. After Her visit to the Ghetto of Rome), in Scholem, The Fullness of Time, 122–5; Weigel, “Gershom Scholem und Ingeborg Bachmann.”

80. It seems worth quoting these little texts to give a sense of their flavour and of Scholem’s technique in producing them. The first piece is based on a relatively well‐known letter (27 September 1827) to the literary translator, Carl Jacob Ludwig Iken (1789–1841), discussing the third act (the so‐called “Helena Act”) of Faust Part Two. I have italicised the direct quotations. Scholem switched them around and the numbers in square brackets indicate the order in which they appear in the original letter.

 [2] Not least because of other dark passages in earlier and later poems I want to raise the following [issue]. Quite a few (!) of our experiences cannot be squarely expressed and conveyed directly. I have therefore for a long time now resorted to the means of revealing to those paying attention the more obscure meaning by juxtaposing images that mirror each other, as it were.

 My right honourable friend will soon find more about such noteworthy connections and recurrent reflections in a publication by Leo Strauss with the telling title: “Persecution and the Art of Writing.” Its still youthful author may substantiate his thesis in a somewhat surprising manner – based mainly on Jewish authors of the middling ages that for a variety of reasons are as close to him as we find them remote. Even so, [4] the participation of such young men is indeed gratifying [3] for it bears testimony to increasing education and in so doing leads us to fresh prosperity.

 [1] That we educate ourselves is the main demand; whence we educate ourselves would not matter if we did not have to fear that we might mis‐educate ourselves by drawing on wrong models. (Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 730)

The second piece is based on a letter (4 December 1827) by Goethe to his long‐standing friend and collaborator, the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), in which he comments on Sir Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon:

  It is indeed evident, though, that he speaks as a righteous and polite man who strives to judge the [i.e. Napoleon’s] deeds in a pious and conscientious way and carefully avoids all Machiavellianism. Yet without it one would hardly want to concern oneself with world history.

 If, my loyal friend, [your work] … should leave you the time for some not very extensive but rather difficult reading, I should like to alert you as a case in point to the studies on Hobbes and political philosophy more generally by the young Jewish Dr Leo Strauss. I recently also made the superb chap Iken aware of him. In this case freedom is an obstacle: recently he has the cranky idea of publishing in Hebrew. Your enlightened Jewesses in Berlin will hardly be able to offer you any help in understanding that. (Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 730–1)

For the originals cf. Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 546–9, 570–2.

81. Scholem, Judaica 2, 20–46.

82. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 759.

83. Scholem, “Wider den Mythos vom deutsch‐jüdischen ‘Gespräch’,” and “Noch einmal: das deutsch‐jüdische Gespräch,” reprinted in Judaica 2, 7–19.

84. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 753.

85. Scholem, Judaica 2, 9.

86. Ibid., 11.

87. The three italicised terms are in Hebrew script.

88. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 753.

89. Ibid., 759.

90. Ibid., 766.

91. Strauss, “Re‐education,” 534–5.

92. Ibid., 538.

93. Smith, “Leo Strauss,” 150.

94. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 46. For a slightly different version of these two lectures, cf. Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 147–73.

95. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 770.

96. Here too, the italicised terms are in Hebrew script.

97. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 771.

98. Ibid., 742.

99. Ibid., 770–1. None too surprisingly, perhaps, given the nature of the “Strauss wars,” the “playful and somewhat mischievous side of Strauss’s personality” (Smith, “Outlines,” 15) has most certainly drawn rather less attention than it deserves.

100. Jews are spoken of in many ways, i.e., what being a Jew actually means is open to interpretation.

101. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 769.

102. Ibid., 770.

103. Zank, “Review,” 441.

104. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, 769.