Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy

Winfried Schröder

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9783110424379
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Hermeneutics

Since its publication in 1952, Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing has stirred considerable controversy, particularly among historians concerned with early modern philosophy. On the one hand, several scholars share his view that it would be inadequate to generally take at face value the explicit message of texts which were composed in an era in which severe sanctions were imposed on those who entertained deviating views. 'Reading between the lines' therefore seems to be the appropriate hermeneutical approach. On the other hand, the risks of such an interpretative maxim are more than obvious, as it might come up to an unlimited license to ascribe heterodox doctrines to early modern philosophers whose manifest teachings were in harmony with the orthodox positions of their time. The conributions to this volume both address these methodological issues and discuss paradigmatic cases of authors who might indeed be candidates for a Straussian 'reading between the lines': Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle.

Endnotes

Introduction

1	Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free-Thought”, p. 243.
2	Charbonnel, La pensée italienne au XVIe siècle et le courant libertin.
3	Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain from Hobbes to Russell, pp. 110 – 2.
4	Cf. Strauss, What is political philosophy?, p. 183: “Hobbes teaches ‘direct atheism’.”; Jesseph, “Hobbes’s atheism”, p. 140: “Hobbes […] was really a sly and ironic atheist who concealed his disbelief behind a screen of disingenuous theological verbiage while constructing a philosophical system that makes the concept of God inadmissible". A more cautious reading is offered by Schotte, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan.
5	Berman, “Disclaimers as Offence Mechanisms in Charles Blount and John Toland"; Id., “Anthony Collins and the question of atheism in the early part of the eighteenth century". Cf. Rappaport, “Questions of evidence: an anonymous tract attributed to John Toland”, who questions Berman’s theses.
6	Staquet, Descartes et le libertinage, p. 35.
7	Ibid.
8	Ibid., p. 385.
9	Ibid., p. 51.
10	Ibid., p. 385.
11	Garasse, La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, ou pretendus tels, p. 1007.
12	Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, ii.2, p. 61 : “And as Epicurus so other Atheists in like manner, have commonly had their Vizards and Disguises; […] for the most part prudently chusing to walk abroad in Masquerade"; cf. Schröder, Ursprünge des Atheismus, p. 25; Id., “Verteidigte Thesen und erschlossene Absichten. Probleme der Interpretation heterodoxer Texte der frühen Neuzeit".
13	Strauss, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing”, and Clay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading".
14	Toland, “Clidophorus; or of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy”, part II of his Tetradymus, pp. 61 -100. Cf. Patterson, “Reading Between the Lines”, pp. 7 and 22.
15	Toland, Origines judaicae, p. 117: “Mosem […]fuisse Pantheistam, sive, ut cum recentioribus loquar, Spinosistam".
16	Toland, “Clidophorus”, p. 69.
17	Ibid., p. 67.
18	Ibid., pp. 68 – 9.
19	Cf. Mori, Bayle philosophe, p. 231.
20	Bayle, Nouvelles de la république des lettres (juillet 1685) art.VIII, (Œuvres diverses,vol. I, p. 334b). Cf. Mori, Bayle philosophe, pp. 27 f. Quite plausibly this advice has been applied to Bayle’s works themselves by scholars who challenged the view that Bayle was in fact the Christian philosopher he professed to be shortly before his death in a letter to André Terson (december 1706), “je meurs en Philosophe Chrétien, persuadé et pénétré des bontés et de la miséricorde de Dieu"; cf. Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, vol. I, pp. 266ff.; Mori, Bayle philosophe, p. 52; Id., “Strauss, Skinner et Pierre Bayle"; McKenna, “Scepticism at Port Royal: the perversion of pyrrhonian doubt”, pp. 259 – 60.
21	Cf. Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism”, pp.238 – 9; Schröder, Ursprünge des Atheismus, p. 25; Id., “‘Hydra multiceps’ ou ’negatio existentiae dei’? Garasse, Voetius et le concept d’athéisme".

Leo Strauss and the Radical Enlightenment

22	May in his The Enlightenment in America firmly established the distinction between ‘moderate Enlightenment’ and ‘revolutionary Enlightenment’ as fundamental to his account of – and to the general debate about – the American Revolution; Donald H. Meyer, although he does not use the term ‘Radical Enlightenment’ moved toward a similar broad distinction between a moderate Enlightenment that compromised with traditional ideas and a ‘democratic Enlightenment’ that did not, Meyer, The Democratic Enlightenment, pp. xiv-xxiv.
23	Mühlpfordt, Halle-Leipziger Aufklärung, 2011, p. 388.
24	See, for instance, Mühlpfordt, “Bahrdt und die radikale Aufklärung”; see also Israel, “Radikalaufklärung: Entstehung und Bedeutung einer fundamentalen Idee”, p. 242.
25	For these insights I am much indebted to Frederik Stjernfelt who delivered his paper ‘Radical Enlightenment – and abstraction in the Humanities’ at the Brussels conference on ‘The Radical Enlightenment’ held on 16 and 17 May 2013.
26	Further on the early development of the concept ‘radical Enlightenment’ see Israel, “An Answer to Four Critics”, pp. 237-8, 240-1, 257.
27	As was pointed out several years ago by Nicolas Dubos, see Dubos, “Hobbes et Les Lumières radicales”, p. 39.
28	Although, as Yakira implies when designating Strauss’s Spinoza ‘the founder of the “radical enlightenment”, there is some ambiguity; certain passages of early Strauss suggest that he did at times consider Spinoza ‘the’ rather than ‘a’ founder, Yakira, “Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza”, p. 170.
29	Tanguay, Leo Strauss, pp. 18 – 22, 31.
30	Yakira, “Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza”, pp. 161 – 3, 166.
31	Strauss, “Preface”, p. 15; Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity. Mendelssohn, Lessing and Heine, pp. 279 – 80; Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, pp. 191, 201.
32	Strauss, “Preface”, pp. 15 -17; Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity. Mendelssohn, Lessing and Heine, p. 280 n. 2; Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, pp. 190-1.
33	Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, pp. 199, 201.
34	Strauss, “Preface”, p. 15; Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, p. 202.
35	Strauss, “Preface”, p. 18.
36	Strauss, “Preface”, p. 18; Yakira, “Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza”, p. 170; Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, pp. 17 -18.
37	Tanguay, Leo Strauss, pp. 109 -110, citing Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?”, pp. 182 – 9.
38	Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. 35; see also Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life, p. 191.
39	Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft, p. 2; see also Roothaan, Vroomdheid, vrede, vrijheid, p. 44.
40	Strauss, “Preface”, pp. 15, 17.
41	Burgh, “Albert Burgh to Spinoza”, pp. 303 -12, here pp. 303 – 4; Strauss, Spinoza’s Critque of Religion, p. 140; on this point see also Lloyd, “Spinoza and the Idea of the Secular”, p. 10.
42	Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. 143.
43	S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Leo Strauss and the Radical Enlightenment
• The Irrelevance of (Straussian) Hermeneutics
• The Virtues and Vices of Leo Strauss, Historian
• Leo Strauss’s Olympian Interpretation: Right, Self-preservation, and Law in The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
• Art of Writing or Art of Rewriting?
• Resurrecting Leo Strauss
• Spinoza, Strauss, and the Morality of Lying for Safety and Peace
• Pierre Bayle and the Red Herring
• Subject index
• Index of Names
• Endnotes