It all comes back to what one means by “political philosophy.” Daniel Tanguay has generously and calmly taken me to task for arguing that political philosophy could really be “first philosophy.” Strauss means by “political philosophy” a number of different things: (1) that part of philosophy concerned with human affairs, (2) the exoteric defense of philosophy, and (3) what is also called the “theologico-political problem.” In my book, I argue that the third meaning—though it might seem at times to be equivalent to either of the first two, and though it might include the second—has a much broader meaning. It covers the relation of city and man, that is, city and philosopher or human being (anthrōpos) as human being; the relation of revelation and reason; and the relation of morality and philosophy. That the theologico-political problem can refer to the relation between reason and revelation implies that quite a bit more than the mere exoteric defense of philosophy is at stake. After all, every significant issue of metaphysics is brought into play in working through the relation between reason and revelation—perhaps above all the question announced toward the end of City and Man: quid sit deus? If I am correct that political philosophy can be conceived of broadly enough to encompass the question “what is god?” then when Strauss claims in that same work that “political philosophy broadly understood is the core of philosophy or ‘the first philosophy’” (CM 20), I believe that he means something more than that political philosophy concerns merely what is “first for us.” Although it may in its beginnings concern itself with what is first for us, for example, the fate of Socrates in Athens (which also includes the second meaning), it also brings into play ultimately the highest questions of metaphysics. In other words, it encompasses the inquiry into what is “first by nature.”

Nevertheless, it seems strange to suggest that the highest philosophic or contemplative activity should not be purely theoretical—which has, at least since Aristotle, been limited to one of these three sciences: mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. The conception that Tanguay presupposes is roughly an Aristotelian one, and that conception of theoretical philosophy has at least appeared to dominate Western thought by way of Christian Scholasticism. One of my main tasks in this book was to explore the contours of Strauss's critique of the Scholastic approach to philosophy, especially political philosophy. (See especially part 2, “Strauss's Departure from the Christian Scholastic Paradigm.”) In the introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing (PAW 7–21), Strauss declares his intention to develop a new approach to the scholarly study of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy because the Scholastic lens distorts this philosophic trend. Although Strauss had already made a great deal of progress in recovering a novel (at least for the modern era) understanding of Alfarabi and Maimonides, it was not until he wrote the “Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed” (originally 1941, republished in PAW in 1952) that the real significance of attention to the difference between surface and depth came into focus. As Steven Frankel underlines, this discovery proved that attention to the surface could reveal what no amount of attention to the putatively profound theoretical depths could. Despite superficial similarities in the theoretical depths of Maimonides and Spinoza, it was the differences in their surfaces that were most revealing. That Maimonides appeared to be the greatest defender of Judaism in its history and Spinoza one of its most profound critics should not be ignored.

Martin Yaffe captures in a brief span what I take to be Strauss's mature interpretation of Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed. Far from the true depths of the Guide being metaphysics, this work reveals a stunning inversion of what we would come to expect in reading Strauss, that is, if we assume that political philosophy is merely exoteric philosophy. Rather, the surface of the Guide is what Strauss calls enlightened kalām (dialectical theology), and the depth is political philosophy. What is enlightened kalām? It is a defense of Judaism that is at the same time a defense of philosophy against those traditional practitioners of the defense of Judaism (the vulgar practitioners of kalām) who would repudiate philosophy altogether. The content of enlightened kalām is, if not metaphysics itself, in some sense meta-metaphysics. Maimonides engages in disputations between reason and revelation about eternity and creation, prophecy, and particular providence that presuppose one's knowledge of all of the relevant arguments in physics and metaphysics. Yet it would appear that none of those arguments take on their proper significance without reference to their significance for human life. The most revealing entry point for these disputations concerns prophecy and providence. According to Strauss's very early “Place of the Doctrine of Providence” (1937), Maimonides's arguments concerning particular providence appear as a part of his political science—rather than as a part of a pure theoretical metaphysics or theology. I believe that Strauss came to understand the full significance of this insight not at the end of the 1930s, but sometime later, in the 1940s. Indeed, at the end of the 1930s he identified the Guide simply as a work of political science (see PoP and SRPS). Yet in “Literary Character” he acknowledges the consensus against this view, as a way of acknowledging the key limitation of his previous work, namely, that he had not attended sufficiently to the surface of the Guide (see PAW 44).

Although I appeal to Tanguay's identification of the “Farabian Turn” toward the end of the 1930s in my book (83; see Tanguay 80), I'm not comfortable with speaking of what follows the shipwreck (1946) as the “Socratic Turn.” Rather, this is a key moment in Strauss's assimilating fully what he had already begun to discover through Alfarabi and Maimonides. Among his most important discoveries is surely a new approach to Plato, but that new approach remains rooted in his explorations of Alfarabi's interpretation of Plato. Still, as late as 1945, in “Farabi's Plato” Strauss does not seem to me to have clarified for himself fully the significance of the relation between surface and depth, especially in Maimonides's Guide. If we were to trust “Farabi's Plato,” political philosophy should provide the surface and theoretical philosophy, apparently on the Aristotelian model, the depth. If, however, the shipwreck revealed to him that he had not fully plumbed the depths of the relation between reason and revelation, then it may be that he did not fully comprehend the meaning of Maimonides's secretiveness about political philosophy. This might help explain why the most cryptic thing he ever wrote on Maimonides (“Maimonides’ Statement on Political Science”) was not published until 1953. That paper, which became the most obscure chapter in What Is Political Philosophy? (WIPP 155–69), addresses the final chapter of Maimonides's Treatise on the Art of Logic (see TAL), in which he merely seems to deny his community's need for political philosophy—much as Strauss would later observe Heidegger puts awaiting the return of the gods in the place of political philosophy.

All these things considered, I cannot agree with Tanguay that Strauss suffers from “an internal difficulty” or embraces “metaphysics light.” Rather, he holds that the Scholastic tradition misunderstood the place of metaphysics (see chapter 6, “The Differing Places of Metaphysics in Alfarabi and Thomas Aquinas”) when it argued that metaphysics is the ground or foundation of philosophy. It argued such a view less because it was an apt philosophic position than because that structure suited the vision of the Bible and philosophies or theologies structured with it as their model. This foundationalist view of philosophy, which thinkers like Heidegger ascribe to the whole Western tradition, has at many times appeared to prevail. It is this understanding of the nature of philosophy that I have tried to question since my first book, Metaphysics as Rhetoric (see MR).

Miriam Galston and I agree on the importance of dialectical interplay between the theoretical and the practical or political. Her comments on the importance of experience broadly construed in the acquisition of knowledge are well taken. I want to underline, however, that I am not trying to argue that, for the philosophic life to be complete, political action is somehow required. Rather, contemplation of action will suffice. In conclusion, it may help to frame the significance of what Strauss means by political philosophy broadly understood with reference to two other formulations of it that readers not even interested in Alfarabi and Maimonides might consider, formulations framed by reference to Plato, namely, noetic heterogeneity (CM 19 and RCPR 132, 142) or the relation between heterogeneous ends and homogeneous arts (WIPP 38–40). These two formulations enable us to conclude by saying that political philosophy broadly understood is the theoretical contemplation of the relation between the human, by which I mean not only the city but also and perhaps especially the human soul, and the whole.