Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors (Suny Series in the Jewish Writings of Leo Strauss) (Suny Series in the Jewish Writings of Strauss) - Softcover

Strauss, Leo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791419762 ISBN 13: 9780791419762

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1995

Synopsis

A groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors.

Leo Strauss’s Philosophy and Law contains a groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors, and it offers an argument on behalf of that philosophy which is also a profound critique of modern philosophy. Here is an entirely new and complete English translation of Strauss’s work, which takes as its ideal the exacting standards of accuracy that Strauss himself emphasized in his own work. It includes a prefatory essay introducing the argument of each of the four sections of Philosophy and Law.

This is a fresh and challenging treatment of the perennial conflict between reason and revelation, or philosophy and religion. Strauss’s key contention in this book is that the most influential modern approaches to this conflict have run aground in ways that reflect their loss of key insights developed by the medieval philosophers of Islam and their Jewish pupils, especially Maimonides. Strauss challenges the modern view that scientific enlightenment must ultimately amount to atheism, and that therefore there can be no such thing as enlightened religion. Through a careful, original, and detailed treatment of central works of the medieval Islamic-Jewish tradition, especially Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, Strauss aims to recover their key insights into this question.

About this title

About the Author:

Leo Strauss was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Eve Adler is Professor of Classics at Middlebury College.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0791419762
• ISBN 13: 9780791419762
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 164