Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem
by Heinrich Meier
Translated by Marcus Brainard
Cambridge, 224 pp., $60
IN RECENT YEARS, the political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) has become something of a household name. This has been a mixed blessing.
With a few notable exceptions, reports in the press, journals, and even the odd book have betrayed a scandalous incompetence in their presentation of Strauss's thought and his "sinister" influence. Of course, these efforts will soon be forgotten, their damage to the study of Strauss's thought minimal. Strauss's work is of such a character that it will inevitably receive the attention of the thoughtful and open-minded. Still, it would be a great misfortune if this opportunity to introduce the newly famous/infamous Strauss to students today were squandered. For this reason, Heinrich Meier's excellent Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem is particularly timely and welcome.
With its publication, Meier is bound to begin to receive the sort of attention here that he has enjoyed in Europe as a prominent interpreter of Rousseau, the political theologian Carl Schmitt, and, above all, Leo Strauss. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that his monumental editorial labors and outstanding scholarship have made Meier--director of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation and professor of philosophy at the University of Munich--largely responsible for making Strauss a subject of serious study in Europe. Those editorial labors have already produced three massive volumes of Strauss's collected writings, with two more slated to appear in the coming years. He has made widely available Strauss's early books on
Spinoza and Maimonides (in the original German), as well as all of the young Strauss's shorter works, including some whose existence was previously unknown. In addition, Meier has uncovered a complete, hitherto unknown Strauss manuscript on Hobbes's critique of religion, and has published the remarkable correspondence between Strauss and some of his most distinguished contemporaries, including Jacob Klein and Gershom Scholem.
According to Machiavelli, there is no good thing, however splendid, that does not have its accompanying "inconvenience." Whatever the general merits of this contention, it certainly holds true in the academic world. Scholars have a gift for alchemy, of a peculiar kind: They transform the valuable into dust. Meier's focus on the early Strauss in the first volumes of the collected writings was, in part, dictated by the "scholarly" desire to fill the gaps in a remarkably incomplete historical record. Yet far more fundamental was his desire to understand, and to make understandable, the philosophic thoughts of the mature Strauss, the author of such works as Natural Right and History (1953) Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), and Socrates and Aristophanes (1966). In seeking to explicate "How Strauss Became Strauss," Meier does not provide a genetic account of Strauss's "development" that reduces the philosopher Strauss to a product of the opinions and influences of his youth. Yet, in recent years, Meier's labors have occasionally been used (and abused) by academics as part of their procrustean attempt to reduce Strauss to another case study in 20th-century intellectual history.
Put another way, the scholars in question seek to understand the late Strauss in light of the early one. Meier takes precisely the opposite approach: He seeks to understand the young Strauss in light of the mature one. He attempts to uncover the key insights that allowed, or caused, Strauss to become Strauss. In doing so, he takes guidance from the handful of personal statements Strauss made in his later years regarding the decisive moments in his philosophic education.
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