Corine Pelluchon 
Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism 
Another Reason, Another Enlightenment

How can Leo Strauss’s critique of modernity and his return to tradition, especially Maimonides, help us to save democracy from its inner dangers? In this book, Corine Pelluchon examines Strauss’s provocative claim that the conception of man and reason in the thought of the Enlightenment is self-destructive and leads to a new tyranny. Writing in a direct and lucid style, Pelluchon avoids the polemics that have characterized recent debates concerning the links between Strauss and neoconservatives, particularly concerns over Strauss’s relation to the extreme right in Germany. Instead she aims to demystify the origins of Strauss’s thought and present his relationship to German and Jewish thought in the early twentieth century in a manner accessible not just to the small circles devoted to the study of Strauss, but to a larger public. Strauss’s critique of modernity is, she argues, constructive; he neither condemns modernity as a whole nor does he desire a retreat back to the Ancients, where slaves existed and women were not considered citizens. The question is to know whether we can learn something
from the Ancients and from Maimonides—and not merely about them.

Table of Content

Translator’s Note




Introduction

The Crisis of Rationalism

Two Historical Shocks and a Threat

The Crisis of Political Philosophy

Modern Rationalism as the Destruction of Reason

The Archeology and Overcoming of Nihilism




Part I. The Dissection of the Modern Religious Consciousness




Introduction: The Perplexity of the Modern Religious Consciousness




1. Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment

The Jacobi Question

The Pantheism Debate

            The Critique of Natural Religion

            There Is No Such Thing as Moderate Enlightenment

            The Rejection of the Kantian Solution

            The Controversy over the French Revolution

The Crisis of the Tradition

            The Science of Judaism and the Dialectic of Assimilation

            The Discontinuity of the Ancients and Moderns

            The Aporias of Zionism



2. Critique of Religion and Biblical Criticism

The Critique of Religion and Revelation in Hobbes

            Epicureanism

            The Interpretation of the Bible

            Socinianism and the Radical Enlightment

            The Need to Reconsider the Radical Enlightenment

Spinoza’s Particular Contribution to the Critique of Religion

            Persecution and the Art of Writing

            The Religion of the Ignorant and Weak

            Biblical Criticism (
Bibelswissenschaft)

The Social Function of Religion

            The Universal Religion and the “Christianity” of Spinoza

            The Ambiguity of Spinoza

            The Limits of Secular Morality

            The Enlightenment of Spinoza

The Legacy of the Critique of Religion

            The Critique of Revelation Has Not Destroyed the Interest in Revelation

            The Challenge of Philosophy

            The Debt of the New Orthodoxy to the Enlightenment and Religious Liberalism




3. The Return to the Tradition

Rationalism and Mysticism

            Allegory and Symbol

            Reason and Experience

The Human Experience of the Absolute

            Religion and Philosophy

            Ethics and Spirituality

            Redemption and Politics

The Jewish Enlightenment of Maimonides

            Cohen and Strauss

            From Morality to Politics

            The Rational Critique of Reason




Part II. The Dissections of Modern Political Consciousness




Introduction: The Foundations of Modern Political Thought




1. The First Wave of Modernity

Machiavelli, the Originator of the Modern Enlightenment

            The End of the Renaissance Humanist Ideal

            Power, the Mastery of Men, and the Mastery of Nature

            Philosophy, Propaganda, and Barbarism

Hobbes or the Founding of the Modern State

            Political Science

            Vanity and Fear

            Individualism, Liberalism, and Absolutism

            From War to Commerce

The Crisis of Liberalism: The Dialogue between Strauss and Schmitt

            From the
Rechtsstaat to the Total State in the Era of Technology

            War and the Affirmation of the Political

            Decisionism and Political Philosophy

            Resoluteness in Heidegger




2. The Second and Third Waves of Modernity

The Rousseauian Movement

            The Paradoxes of Rousseau

            Society and the Rich

            Revolution, and History, and the General Will

Modern Tyranny, Marxism, and Capitalism

            The Dialogue between Strauss and Kojeve

            Philosophy and Politics

            Locke’s Liberalism

            The Contemporary Form of Tyranny

Nihilism according to Nietzsche and after Nietzsche

            The Repetition of Antiquity at the Peak of Modernity

            The Law as Denaturing and the Religious Atheism of Nietzsche

            The Radicalism of the Straussian Critique of Christianity




3. Political Philosophy as First Philosophy

The Return to Socrates

            Political Philosophy as the Fulfillment of Phenomenology

            The Conflict between Poetry and Philosophy

            Wisdom and Moderation

The Medieval Enlightenment

            The Platonism of Farabi and Maimonides

            The Enlightenment of Maimonides

            The Natural Conditions of Prophecy

            Esoteric Teaching and the Enlightenment

The Task for Thinking and the Rebirth of Philosophy

            Phenomenology and the Meaning of the Law

            The Conception of Truth in Maimonides

            What Is Called Thinking?

            Surpassing Heidegger on His Own Ground




Conclusion: The Straussian Enlightenment

Strauss’s Radical Questioning

From Jacobi to Maimonides: Neither Kant nor Hegel

            This Is Not an Ethics

            Strauss’s Legacy



Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Corine Pelluchon is Full Professor in Philosophy at the University of Franche-Comté in France. In addition to her book on Leo Strauss, which was awarded the François Furet Prize in 2006, she has written several other books.
Robert Howse is Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law and the author of
Leo Strauss: Man of Peace.