Joshua Parens's Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy challenges the reader with a jarring question: How was the meaning of medieval political philosophy lost in the first place? The surprising nature of the question is matched and even exceeded by its response. According to Parens's argument, medieval political philosophy, like the purloined letter in Edgar Allan Poe's story, was in fact hiding in plain sight all along. As Leo Strauss argued in Thoughts on Machiavelli, “The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things” (6, 36, 55, 60, 120). The surface is the heart because the appearance of a text, its point of entry, is the result of the author's careful consideration of the relation of the city and philosophy.

Parens describes Strauss's gradual recovery of the meaning of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy as Strauss worked through various obstacles to grasp its meaning, ranging from the philosophy of culture to Scholasticism and historicism. But the most fundamental and most serious obstacle to recovery of medieval philosophy was the deliberate shift away from the subtle interplay “between surface and the depth” (7). Among the main culprits for this shift, according Strauss in Persecution and the Art of Writing, is Spinoza (PAW 142–201). While fashioning a hermeneutic for scripture, Spinoza asserts that all texts fall naturally into one of two categories, “hieroglyphic” and “intelligible” (57). The surfaces of hieroglyphic texts are largely unintelligible either because they depend on obscure contextual and historical information, or because the text itself, like the Bible, was redacted over a long period of time by various authors with different goals. In contrast, intelligible texts like Euclid's Elements remain transparent to reason regardless of the changing historical or linguistic context.

Spinoza knew well that his list was incomplete. In chapter 7 of his Theologico-Political Treatise, he makes frequent reference to a third type of writing, Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed, a text with a deliberately chaotic surface designed to conceal a deeper teaching. Specifically, Maimonides attempted to impose covertly philosophy upon scripture by a simple hermeneutical trick, namely, wherever the literal sense of scripture appears to contradict reason, the interpreter should abandon the literal meaning in favor of a symbolic interpretation (TTP 97). Spinoza alleges that Maimonides knew that the city would never abandon superstition, so he attempted instead to co-opt religion by asserting that “the Prophets agreed among themselves in all things and were the highest caliber Philosophers” (TTP 99). Spinoza exposes this strategy and ridicules it as a futile attempt to establish the power of philosophy, not because he doubted the authority of reason. Rather, he rejects the Maimonidean strategy on practical grounds, namely, its failure to persuade the multitude.

Spinoza's case against Maimonides and esotericism may have been, as Strauss argues in his autobiographical preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion, “amazingly unscrupulous” (SCR 19), but it was undeniably effective. For one thing, it cast doubt on the prudence of medieval political philosophy. This impression, in turn, was strengthened as the early modern theological-political project advanced. Spinoza hoped to limit speculation on the Bible's meaning and thereby rein in superstition. Obscure passages in scripture should be left to scholars, who have mastered the linguistic skills and historical information well enough to describe the meaning of the text without recourse to mysticism or supernatural imaginings. As for believers, they must learn a handful of simple theoretical claims, the seven dogmas of universal faith, which support the moral teaching of caritas. In this way, Spinoza prepares the ground for toleration and freedom of thought, as well as liberal democracy in the West.

To return to our initial question: medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy was lost through the deliberate efforts of early modern philosophy to render it obsolete. The goal was first and foremost political, grounded in the hope that democratic regimes working together with a critique of the Bible could neutralize superstition and make way for stable and secure states. Parens is not so much concerned here with the evaluation of democracy or the meaning of the Bible; instead, he hopes to rescue medieval philosophy from the “forgetfulness and complacency” of contemporary scholarship, and help recover the permanent tension between the “philosopher and the state” (65).

Parens's effort to defend Strauss's scholarship and to recover medieval political philosophy constitutes a broad project that encompasses much of his work, including this book and a previous book, Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature (see MS). These works present Parens's efforts to confront modern scholarship—particularly scholarship after the death of Strauss—resulting as it has in further obscuring the meaning of medieval political philosophy. Why do contemporary scholars continue to neglect Strauss's scholarship even at the risk of further obscuring medieval philosophy?

Parens focuses on the extraordinary case of Strauss's erstwhile collaborator and friend, Shlomo Pines, particularly his 1979 article “The Limitations of Human Knowledge according to al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides.” According to Parens, Pines's article “may be the most influential article on Maimonides written in the last quarter of the twentieth century.” Moreover, the article “contributed profoundly” to the impression of a “deep affinity” between Maimonides and modern thought (137). Pines argues that Maimonides is a forerunner to Spinoza and, more generally, that Alfarabi and Maimonides anticipate the Kantian skepticism, not to say rejection, of metaphysics. Parens's case against Pines advances on two fronts: first, on the factual matter of whether the alleged similarities between the medieval and modern philosophy are more apparent than real; and second, on the unwarranted assumptions inherent in modern scholarship that make Pines's method plausible in the first place. In the limited space available to me, I shall focus on the broader question of method and modern scholarship.

Pines's approach to philosophy is characterized by historicism, the view “that the truth for our age must be different from that for other ages” (86). For Pines, the value of historical scholarship is not to gain access to transhistorical truths which in any case is not available. Rather, the goal is to observe and thereby confirm the progress, that is, the truth of modern philosophy (17–18, 56–59, 96–97, 108). Pines employs a method of reading which focuses on influence, that is, “drawing parallels between similar looking arguments in Maimonides” and Spinoza and then claiming that Maimonides influenced Spinoza. This looks plausible at first, Parens notes, until we consider that this method is the same one recommended by Spinoza for reading the Bible. “This tendency” is also consistent with “the historians of philosophy's conviction that when interpreting old texts they are within their rights to rearrange that text for the sake of greater lucidity or relevance” (138). What is the relevance of the claimed affinity of Spinoza and Maimonides?

Clearly there are strong theological and political motives for drawing these two thinkers more closely together. To soften Spinoza's reputation as a heretic by finding precursors of his thought in his religious predecessors helps justify his political analysis, particularly his novel defense of liberal democracy. Perhaps, had he lived in a more secular era (according to Harry Wolfson), Maimonides would have sympathized wholeheartedly with the Enlightenment's tendency toward secularization and skepticism. Parens suggests an additional motive: “Although Maimonides deserves his reputation as the most pathbreaking of thinkers in the Jewish tradition, that pathbreaking character may not derive from theoretical innovations. Instead… that character derives from the way he relates the Jewish tradition to philosophy” (MS 4). The most radical break between medieval and modern thought is not theoretical but political, that is, the relation of philosophy and the city. By extracting and comparing theoretical claims of Spinoza and Maimonides, modern scholars such as Pines are able to ignore the radical political differences between them which come to light only in their respective presentations.

To take just one of several examples offered by Parens, the question of miracles raises a host of issues about nature, physics, and metaphysics. If we compare Spinoza's and Maimonides's view of miracles, we can find several instances where their arguments are similar if not indistinguishable. But if we look at their respective presentations, the differences are dramatic. In chapter 6 of the TTP, Spinoza asserts the fully determined and permanent status of the laws of nature; consequently, miracles are impossible and betray the ignorance of the biblical authors. Maimonides's view on miracles is more difficult to work out. He presents a variety of possible opinions, and in the Guide his “arguments that seem to permit miracles effectively deny miracles in the true sense” (144). Nor is his caution simply a question of deception as Spinoza alleges. Rather, Parens shows that Maimonides teaches us to reflect on political questions even before turning to metaphysical questions, lest we fail to consider the needs of the entire community, which may not benefit uniformly from a metaphysical discussion of providence. In other words, the political question necessarily precedes any metaphysical questions (see also 128n9, 163n29, 178).

Contemporary scholarship has followed Spinoza so closely that it runs the risk of not reading him carefully enough. By recovering Strauss's argument, Parens teaches us that political philosophy is not simply our point of entry into medieval thought, but also the most profound presentation of its wisdom.