Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem by Heinrich Meier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Saving Politics

Most of us take for granted that the Enlightenment of the 18th century created a permanently liberal political culture in which unrestrained thought rather than religious tradition would define the values of society. But the success of political democracy, if success it be, did not resolve either the theoretical or the existential issue of philosophy (as the apotheosis of thought) and theology (as the justification for religious authority). Leo Strauss identified this issue almost exactly a century ago and presciently noted that “The fundamental alternative is that of the rule of philosophy over religion or the rule of religion over philosophy.”

I say presciently because isn’t this alternative being debated now within every major democracy in the world. While pundits like Fukuyama were declaring the End of History after the apparent triumph of democratic capitalism over the quasi-religious Communism of the Soviet Union, what Strauss called the Theologico-political problem simmered in the West, then boiled with talk of the failed ‘Enlightenment Project’, eventually blowing the lid off the stew pot of liberal democracy around the world with the election of decidedly anti-liberal leaders. The re-organised forces of religion are now pushing their theological norms in civil society on every continent.

Part of the reason for the resurrection of Theologico-politics according to Strauss is that religion is purported to be a way of life that philosophy is not. Religion gives certitude about what to believe and how to behave, or failing that, an authority from whom certitude may be achieved. Philosophy is not equipped to respond to such certainty. So it tends to ignore the claims of religion as obviously nonsensical or attempts to reconcile (or to obscure) the conflicts between doctrinal Faith and scientific Reason via shallow apologetics.

In addition, the Enlightenment effort to free politics and political thinking from the constraints of religious authority have now, paradoxically, created an ignorance and mistrust of the nature of politics. Meier summarises the progression concisely:

“What begins with the emancipation of politics from theology results ultimately, after the successful unleashing of a world of increasing purposive rationality and growing prosperity, in a state of incomprehension of and indifference towards the original sense of the theologico-political critique, a state in which the demands of politics are rejected with the same matter-of-factness as those of religion.”

Whether democratic politics have deteriorated, or their unsavouriness has simply become more visible, the widespread political disillusion and ennui is apparent. This is the opening, once again, for religion to reassert its claims amid the resulting turmoil.

Strauss’s philosophical programme neither ignores religion nor does it minimise the fundamental differences between philosophy and theology. Rather, as Heinrich Meier says, for Strauss, “there is no more powerful objection to the philosophical life imaginable than the objection that appeals to faith in the omnipotent God and to his commandment or law.” Religion, that is to say, the Judaeo-Christian religion (and by implication Islam) must be confronted squarely in its most fundamental claim: the idea of divine revelation.

The study of revelation as a religious topic is called Fundamental Theology. And the theologian who re-invented Fundamental Theology in the 20th century, Karl Barth, was a contemporary of Strauss. Both Barth and another contemporary, the political philosopher Carl Schmitt (who similarly reinvented political theology justifying the Nazi regime), essentially provoked Strauss’s response. As Strauss insisted,

“Only through the Bible is philosophy, or the quest for knowledge, challenged by knowledge, viz. by knowledge revealed by the omniscient God, or by knowledge identical with the self-communication of God. No alternative is more fundamental than the alternative: human guidance or divine guidance. Tertium non datur”[there is no third way].

But Strauss’s intention was not to create an alternative religion out of philosophy (this is in fact part of his criticism of modern philosophy). Rather he wants to use philosophy to create and maintain better politics. This is the justification for philosophy, not thought alone but a better way to live together. His critique of Spinoza is that his Ethica did not categorically establish this essentially moral superiority of philosophy over theology. Spinoza had left the possibility of revelation open. In that case, philosophy would be just as much a matter of faith as religion.

Part of Strauss’s answer to the religious challenge is to point out the personal paradox of faith. Faith creates humility before an infinitely external entity, say the theists. But Strauss contends that this is not humility at all but arrogant pride, specifically pride in the certainty of one’s formulaic faith (essentially faith in language). Faith’s mark of distinction is a prideful ignorance, a purposeful self-deception called revelation. Idolatry is inherent in revelation since its necessary formulation in doctrine prevents spiritual progress.

Strauss’s key insight is that religion, has always been a political activity, at least since the time of the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Eastern civilisations, including that of Israel. But the religions of revelation take politics in a new and dangerous direction. Essentially, revealed religion is smug, self-satisfied politics which cannot distinguish between truth and falsity because it has fixed the terms of debate and discussion. Revealed religion is simply bad politics. It creates relationships and behaviours which are inadequate for successful social existence.

I think that another way to express this Strauss’s idea is to note that the politics of revealed religion is based on a particular concept of power. In all three ‘religions of the book’, the One Sovereign Authority is the source of all power. Power is distributed to religious and secular leaders by divine will, and then further distributed through ecclesial and civil hierarchies. Religion based on revelation rather than variable myth, communal ritual, or evolving tradition is power politics. The fact that its presumptions justify not only the existing social establishment but also the hierarchical character of the very revelation at its core is an open secret. Even Karl Barth recognised this as a danger to religion itself.

That revealed religion is about power, not justice, love, peace, or human welfare in general is apparent at any level one cares to investigate the matter. Christianity, Islam, and even Judaism have always sought power, certainly over others, but in the first instance over their own members. As an empirical matter, this has always been the case. The Bible screams of the pursuit of power in every page of the Christian as well as Jewish components, as does the Quran. It is certainly debatable whether Moses, Jesus, or the Prophet were power-seekers. But what is incontrovertible is that those who wrote, transcribed, and promulgated their stories were just that.

The downside of religious power politics is that it is obdurately and intentionally blind as well as intolerant. It cannot learn, particularly about itself. The simple multiplicity of contradictory revealed ‘truths’ demonstrates the problem of fake news long before the internet. There is simply no way to “distinguish true faith from frivolous arbitrariness or obstinate self-deception, on the one hand, from mere opinion or simple conjecture, on the other hand, and finally and above all, from the diverse temptations of false belief.”

It is simply not in the political interests of religion to know of competing revelations. Indeed, in the Catholic Church it is a heresy to contend that we need to know anything other than that contained in biblical revelation and their official interpretations in order to either live a moral life or be redeemed at the end of it. The Church claims to be a societas perfecta (a claim more than remarkable in light of the continuing evidence of its institutionalised paedophilia). Most religious adherents, in any case, have no real understanding of the revelations that supposedly bind them together. Instinctively they recognise the essential political nature of their association.

Strauss saw that religion as unconditional belief could not be countered by a philosophy of unconditional belief (or for that matter unconditional unbelief). But such is the trap laid by religion, which claims that ultimately we must be committed to beliefs about the world that we cannot prove (including the rejection of beliefs). So why not a religious revelation rather than a philosophical presumption?

The difference of course is that philosophy has no unconditional beliefs, no firm presumptions. One of the principle activities of philosophy has been the identification of its own inadequate presumptions - in language, in mathematics, in the character of physical and mental reality. Whatever can be thought is potentially its field of operation. The only belief involved is that the field of inquiry is infinite, but even that belief is subject to revision. Philosophy is self-referentially coherent in a way revelation cannot be.

For Strauss this is not just an intellectual conclusion; it is a train of thought which implies a way of life. In this sense it is, not unlike the thought of Spinoza, Jewish in the best sense. Scripture and tradition as a source of questions not answers, the continuous never-ending search for search for truth, even the feeling of being ‘chosen’ and not quite settled are characteristics of the authentic humility of Spinoza’s as well as Strauss’s philosophy.

This is the opposite of the religious politics of power. Philosophy of the Straussian kind, in Jungian terms, is a politics of Eros rather than Logos. That is, it is a programme for evolving forms of direct human relatedness not a static state of intermediated being. Probity and security do not derive from something outside of humanity. They don’t even originate in philosophical thought, but only from the relations that permit philosophical thought.

This is what I take Strauss to mean by philosophy as a way of life. According to him, philosophy is about saving politics, that is, the relationships we need in order to thrive. The message is as urgent and timely as it was a century ago.

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