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Nietzsche, the Muslim Falāsifa, and Leo Strauss's Avicennan Turn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2024
Abstract
Impressed by Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of liberalism but alarmed by its consequences, Leo Strauss turned in the 1930s to the medieval Islamic philosophers (falāsifa). A review of a key cleavage in their political philosophy—reflected in the contrasting positions of Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina—identifies the fundamental alternatives Strauss found available to him on the role of religion in politics, and on the necessity and efficacy of political activism more generally. It thus illuminates the trajectory of Strauss's thoughts on the relationship between reason and revelation: from an initial appreciation for the “golden mean” between Nietzsche and liberalism he believed he had found in the writings of al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, to a more apolitical “Avicennan” stance after his arrival in America. This last, it is suggested, was a contingent stance requiring reconsideration in light of new circumstances in American politics today.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame
Footnotes
I thank Ruth Abbey, the anonymous reviewers, Rob Devigne, and Vickie Sullivan for their helpful comments.
References
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61 Strauss, “German Nihilism,” 372 (“of all philosophers . . . nihilism,” Strauss's emphasis), 357 (“clear positive conception”).
62 Ibid., 360.
63 Ibid., 361.
64 Strauss to Löwith, May 19, 1933.
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71 Ibid., 6. For Strauss's consideration of Nietzsche on cruelty, see “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil,” esp. 185.
72 Leo Strauss, “Course Transcript: Plato's Laws (St. John's College, 1970–1971),” ed. Lorraine Pangle, session 4, 86; available at the website of the Leo Strauss Center, University of Chicago, https://wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leostrauss/s3fs-public/Laws%201971-72.pdf. Plato in this reading thus “compels” (Strauss's emphasis) philosophers to return to the cave and care for others: Leo Strauss, “Cohen and Maimonides” (1931), trans. Martin D. Yaffe and Ian Alexander Moore, in Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 218–19.
73 Leo Strauss, “How Fārābī Read Plato's Laws” (1957), in What Is Political Philosophy?, 153. See also Brague, “Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca.”
74 Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 81.
75 Strauss, “Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” 125–26.
76 Ibid., 126n98, 140. See Mufti, Art of Jihad, 72–73.
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82 Ibid., 137.
83 Ibid., 139.
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85 Ibid., 370.
86 Ibid., 381. See also Strauss's 1952 introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing, 15–16.
87 Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return?” (1952), in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 270.
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91 Leo Strauss, “Reason and Revelation” (1948), in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 149.
92 Ibid., 150.
93 Farabi, Kitab al-Huruf, ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dar al-Mashreq, 1970), part 2, 131.
94 Ibid., 155–56.
95 Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 177. See also Strauss, “Some Remarks,” 4–5; Brague, “Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca,” 252.
96 Leo Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews: Can Jewish Faith and History Still Speak to Us?” (1962), in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker, ed. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 46–47.
97 Ibid., 49.
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99 Strauss, “How Fārābī Read Plato's Laws,” 146.
100 Strauss, “Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” 110.
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103 Ibid., 5.