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April 24, 2007
Though Strauss and Levinas originated intellectually from the same place---Heidegger---they went in very different directions, and they made very different assessments of modernity. According to this review of Leora Batnitzky's Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation, Strauss argued for the following:
1. Judaism and philosophy are based on irreconcilably opposite "attitudes" since the former requires absolute obedience to revealed law, whereas the latter represents the "unending quest for the nature of the good" (p. 5). If this is true, any attempt at reconciling Judaism and philosophy fails either as Judaism or as philosophy, and possibly represents neither.
2. Modern philosophy represents an internalization of the medieval, Thomistic coordination of philosophy and revelation, attributing to this new philosophy qualities derived from revelation. This secularization of philosophy constitutes a bastardization of both philosophy and revelation and it is based on medieval Christian metaphysics. As law, and as opposed to philosophy in the classical (pre-scholastic) sense, Judaism (or, as Batnitzky puts it, Jewish revelation) remains, or ought to remain, aloof from both the medieval and the modern forms of Christian thought.
3. The amalgamation of biblical faith and philosophical metaphysics characteristic of modern philosophy has imbued philosophy with unrealizable salvific qualities on the historical and political plane.
Levinas, in contrast, was an example of modern philosophy. Batnitzky holds that Levinas is committed to a thoroughly modern philosophical project that comes with all the problems diagnosed by Strauss.
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Gary, Another rant.
I am not much of a philosopher but can you spot the inherent totalitarian agenda in Strauss's insistence in absolute obedience to "revealed" law. We (Srauss & co ) are the inheritors, guardians and interpreters of this "law"---what extraordinary hubris.
And despite the "religious" pretense all of Strauss's "philosophy" was entirely and only within the reductionist materialism that had banished the Divine Radiance & Possibility from the dreadful sanity of European consciousness by the time of Nietzsche. Real God was well and truly dead---Real God was never ever a part of the religious consciousness of European man (male & female) ---it was a hotch-potch of self-serving essentially childish half baked "wisdom"---leftovers from the childhood of "man", surrounded by the supposedly protective parental deity.
This inherently toxic totalitarian meme infests all right wing "certainties"---including of course those of the Islamic variety.
We have revealed "truth" on our side, and you had better watch out---we have "god's" mandate to restore "righteousness" to the entire planet---which of course means purging the "unrighteous" from the collective body politic to make the body politic healthy again. One of the original examples of this "purifying" project was Calvin's reign of terror in Geneva---corpses everywhere.
All the right wing Christian outfits in the USA share this totalitarian "certainty". Some even write books with the title Total Truth. If you check out their "religious" background they are rigid Calvinists---His-story trying to repeat itself.
These Total Truth zealots align themselves with the euphemistically called "Discovery" Insitute.
Why euphemistic?--- Because there is really nothing left to discover!---the scriptures are the inerrant "law of god" and "righteousness" comes about through adhering to these laws---and we have the mandate to restore this "righteousness". Some idiots even write books to "prove" that the founding fathers were christian inspired "deists" and as such they provide us with the mandate/template to restore the christian "god" to USA culture.
What about the insights into the Human/Divine condition of all the other Wisdom Traditions of Humankind.