Reading Between the Lines: Leo Strauss and the History of Early Modern Philosophy

233 Pages·2015·2.851 MB·English

by  Winfried Schröder (ed.)

Winfried Schröder (Ed.)
Reading between the lines
New Studies in the History and
Historiography of Philosophy
Edited by
Gerald Hartung and Sebastian Luft
Volume 3
Reading between the
lines – Leo Strauss and
the history of early
modern philosophy
Edited by
Winfried Schröder
ISBN 978-3-11-042749-3
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042429-4
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042437-9
ISSN 2364-3161
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Table of Contents
Winfried Schröder
Introduction 1
Jonathan Israel
Leo Strauss and the Radical Enlightenment 9
Adrian Blau
The Irrelevance of (Straussian) Hermeneutics 29
Dietrich Schotte
The Virtues and Vices of Leo Strauss, Historian
A reassessment of Straussian Hermeneutics 57
A. P. Martinich
Leo Strauss’s Olympian Interpretation: Right, Self-preservation, and Law in
The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes 77
Gianni Paganini
Art of Writing or Art of Rewriting?
Reading Hobbes’s De motu against the Background of Strauss’
Interpretation 99
Edwin Curley
Resurrecting Leo Strauss 129
John Christian Laursen
Spinoza, Strauss, and the Morality of Lying for Safety and Peace 171
Antony McKenna
Pierre Bayle and the Red Herring 193
Subject index 221
Index of Names 223

Winfried Schröder
Introduction
The questions addressed in this volume are fundamental and by no means
novel. They have always stirred controversy and are still unresolved: How are
wetoreadearlymodernphilosophicaltexts?Theremightbeafundamentaldif-
ferencebetween17th-or18th-centurytextsontheonehandandbookswrittenin
the 20th or 21st century on the other. No one would doubt that what Wittgen-
stein, for example,wanted to teach in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is di-
rectly expressed in that book. But what about Hobbes’ Leviathan, Spinoza’s
Theological-Political Treatise, or Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique?
These authors lived long before the struggle for the libertas philosophandi suc-
ceeded. Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle did not enjoy the freedom of openly ex-
pressing their thoughts. A number of theses and theories had no place in the
public philosophical arena. Denying the existence of God or of divine provi-
dence,callingintoquestiontheimmortalityofthesoul,orrejectingtheconcept
of free will were, of course, not options in a culture in which severe sanctions
were imposed on those who entertained deviatingviews. So, isn’t it reasonable
tosuspectthatthese authors might have intendedto deliver messages different
from those they wrote? And isn’t it then the interpreter’s task to uncover those
unexpressed – ‘esoteric’ – messages? If so,what are the risks of such a herme-
neutical procedure? Well, there is as danger that we might produce an inade-
quate picture or even a caricature of the respective philosopher’s views. In the
worst case, we might become guilty of a special kind of Whig history, i.e., we
might ascribe our modern conceptions and the views we endorse today to au-
thors of the past who didn’t share them at all. Thus, it follows that there can
be no unlimited license toascribe heterodoxdoctrines toearly modern philoso-
phers whose manifest teachings are in harmony with the orthodox positions of
theirtime.Butwhatarethelimitsimposeduponthereaderbytheexplicitword-
ingof the texts concerned?
Very clearly,these are not novel problems. In fact,the opposing stances of
two ‘grand old men’ of early modern scholarship – Paul Oskar Kristeller and
Leo Strauss – are still paradigmatic. According to the latter, of course, we do
enjoy a most extensive license in interpreting early modern authors by making
explicittheesotericteachingshiddenbetweenthelinesoftheirwritings.Bycon-
trast, Kristeller, back in the 1960s,wrote: “As historians we must stand on the
written record. The secret thoughts of a person that are not expressed in his
wordsarebeyondthegraspofthehistorian[…].Wemustadmit[…]thatthewrit-
tenrecordalwaysrepresentsonlyapartialandsometimesamisleadingorfalse
2 WinfriedSchröder
pictureofaperson’s[…]thought.Weshouldalwayskeepthisinmind,andhence
appreciateascepticalattitude”.¹ThisishowKristellervoicedhisdiscontentwith
the hermeneutical licentiousness of scholars like Charbonnel² and others who
claimed to have discovered radical heterodox and even atheistic tenets in the
works of some 16th-century philosophers and established the “myth of Renais-
sance atheism”, as Kristeller put it. In the article just quoted Kristeller did not
referto Leo Strauss. But hiswarningseems toapply perfectly to the hermeneu-
tics proposed in Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing.
Since then numerous studies have been published by historians of early
modern philosophy unwilling to take Kristeller’s warning seriously, but readily
following Strauss’s principles of interpretation. However, at least some of
these studies – albeit by negative example – illustrate that Kristeller had
made an important point indeed. A number of David Berman’s studies come
tomind here.One hundred of the 250 pages of his History of Atheism in Britain
aredevotedto17th-and18th-centurythinkerswhomhelabelsas“atheists”.Ber-
man ascribes atheisticconvictions toauthors inwhoseworkswedon’tfind any
atheisticconfession.Althoughheis,ofcourse,awarethattheearliestdocuments
of an“avowed atheism” date from as late as the 1780s,³ Berman claims that in
thepreviousgenerationsphilosopherssuchasThomasHobbes⁴,CharlesBlount
orAnthonyCollinsdidinfact–thoughnotovertly–rejecttheexistenceofGod.⁵
Recently Descartes’s Meditations were subjected to a distinctively Straussian
reading by Anne Staquet. According to her, an adequate understanding of the
Meditations must be based on the Cartesian device Larvatus prodeo: ‘My real
philosophical convictions’, he wants to indicate with this metaphor, ‘are con-
cealed behind a mask’. Staquet takes this device as an unequivocal invitation
to look for arcane libertine tenets in Descartes’s work. Consequently, her aim
isnottoreconstructthemetaphysicsoftheCartesianMeditations,buttodecon-
 Kristeller,“TheMythofRenaissanceAtheismandtheFrenchTraditionofFree-Thought”,p.
.
 Charbonnel,LapenséeitalienneauXVIesiècleetlecourantlibertin.
 Berman,AHistoryofAtheisminBritainfromHobbestoRussell,pp.–.
 Cf.Strauss,Whatispoliticalphilosophy?,p.:“Hobbesteaches‘directatheism’.”;Jesseph,
“Hobbes’satheism”,p.:“Hobbes[…]wasreallyaslyandironicatheistwhoconcealedhis
disbeliefbehindascreenofdisingenuoustheologicalverbiagewhileconstructingaphilosoph-
icalsystemthatmakestheconceptofGodinadmissible”.Amorecautiousreadingisofferedby
Schotte,DieEntmachtungGottesdurchdenLeviathan.
 Berman,“DisclaimersasOffenceMechanismsinCharlesBlountandJohnToland”;Id.,“An-
thonyCollinsandthequestionofatheismintheearlypartoftheeighteenthcentury”.Cf.Rap-
paport,“Questionsofevidence:ananonymoustractattributedtoJohnToland”,whoquestions
Berman’stheses.
Introduction 3
structit:“déconstruirelapenséecartésienne”⁶.EncouragedtodosobybothJac-
ques Derrida and Leo Strauss, she proceeds in avery peculiar manner.Textual
evidencewhichtellsagainst her understandingof Descartesas an antichristian
libertine is easily put aside: Staquet acknowledges that Descartes emphatically
expressed his commitment to a metaphysics compatible with and supportive
of Christian dogma. But, according to her, these confessions are nothing but
means of disguising his real views by strategies of writing: “stratégies de l’art
d’écrire”⁷. And hence the Meditations are in fact a heterodox and subversive
text: “un ouvrage […] hétérodoxe et […] subversif”⁸. Descartes employed the
“pratiquedeladissimulationetdel’équivoque”⁹inordertoshatterthefounda-
tions not only of Christianity, but of religion altogether: “en effet, Descartes y
sape les fondements de la religion”¹⁰.
Itisnotonlytheflamboyancyofsuchcontemporaryresearcherswhichisapt
tonourishdoubtsconcerningthelegitimacyofaStraussian‘readingbetweenthe
lines’.EarlymoderntheologiansandChristianphilosophers,too,practicedsuch
an excessive mode of reading,casting a most dubious light on this hermeneut-
ical approach. In particular some protagonists of17th-centuryanti-atheist apol-
ogetics stated and defended principles of interpretation analogous to Strauss’s
method.Intheearly17thcenturyFrançoisGarasse,forexample,didnothesitate
to stigmatise several of his contemporaries as crypto-atheists, and he was con-
vinced that he did so for good reasons. For atheists are used to expressing
their thoughts with “ambiguity” and “subterfuge” (“ruses”). Hence it must be
the firststepofthe apologeticenterprisetodiscoverthe monstrosityofatheism
under these “ambiguités & sous-ententes”.¹¹ Ralph Cudworth later echoed this
view:Atheistsdarenotspeakoutopenlyinpublic:“Atheists”,Cudworthstates,
“havecommonlyhadtheirVizardsandDisguises;[…]prudentlychusing[sic]to
walkabroadinMasquerade”.¹²So,orthodoxconfessionsmadebysuspiciousau-
thorsmustbeunderstoodascunningdissimulations.Therefore,accordingtoGa-
rasseandCudworth,theguidingprincipleofinterpretingasuspicioustextcan-
 Staquet,Descartesetlelibertinage,p..
 Ibid.
 Ibid.,p..
 Ibid.,p..
 Ibid.,p..
 Garasse, La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, ou pretendus tels, p. .
 Cudworth,TheTrueIntellectualSystemoftheUniverse,ii.,p.:“AndasEpicurussoother
Atheistsinlikemanner,havecommonlyhadtheirVizardsandDisguises;[…]forthemostpart
prudentlychusingtowalkabroadinMasquerade”;cf.Schröder,UrsprüngedesAtheismus,p.;
Id., “VerteidigteThesenunderschlosseneAbsichten.ProblemederInterpretationheterodoxer
TextederfrühenNeuzeit”.