Int J Philos Relig (2014) 75:73-76
DOI 10.1007/s 11153-013-9431 -4
BOOK REVIEW
Book Reviews
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
Received: 18 September 2013 / Accepted: 24 September 2013 / Published online: 8 October 2013
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Leo Strauss and the rediscovery of Maimonides, by Kenneth
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, ix + 203 pp., $35.0
Leo Strauss on Maimonides: the complete writings, edited with
by Kenneth Hart Green. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20
pp., $45.00 (hb)
In a recently discovered 1960 lecture, given at the University of Ch
entitled "Introduction to Maimonides' The Guide of the Perplexed,"
that an awareness of the political horizon in which Maimonides li
wrote "compels us to make an entirely new beginning, which is i
with Maimonides' own beginning. That beginning consists in not ta
for granted.. .Philosophy must be understood as in need of justifyi
higher or a prephilosophical tribunal" (Leo Strauss on Maimonides
434). If Maimonides allows readers a new beginning with respect to
of philosophy, and if Strauss allows readers a similarly new begin
Maimonides' thought, then surely Kenneth Hart Green's two impre
allow readers an analogous beginning concerning the thought of L
pertains to the question of revealed Law and reason—or, as Strauss p
and Athens." Does this comparison place too much importance, or to
on Green's work?
I believe it does not, and this for the following reason: From his early Jew and
Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (SUNY
Press, 1993) to his two new volumes, Green has argued in sustained fashion for the
central importance of Maimonides to the thought of Strauss. Moreover, in so doing,
J. A. Bernstein (El)
College of the Holy Cross. 1 College Street Box 183A, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
e-mail: jbernste@holycross.edu
Ô Springer