CULTURE AND LAW IN WEIMAR JEWISH MEDIEVALISM: LEO STRAUSS'S CRITIQUE OF JULIUS GUTTMANN

Abstract

The German Jewish historian of political philosophy Leo Strauss is best known for mature works in which he proposed the existence of an esoteric tradition in political philosophy, attacked the liberal tradition of political thought, and defended a classical approach to natural right against its modern counterparts. This essay demonstrates that in his youth, beginning during a scholarly apprenticeship at the Berlin Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, Strauss championed “medievals” (rather than ancients) against “moderns,” and did so through a sparring match with his postdoctoral supervisor Julius Guttmann, whom he cast in the role of representative “modern.” While for Guttmann the stakes were scholarly, for Strauss they were political. Strauss's Weimar Jewish “medievalism” was a deliberate rejection of the tradition of modern Jewish thought Strauss associated with Guttmann's teacher Hermann Cohen, whom Strauss accused of neglecting the political distinctiveness of Jewish thought. While the conflict between Strauss and Guttmann has been neglected in much of the literature on Strauss, it served as the crucible in which many of his mature views, including his famous exoteric (sometimes called “esoteric”) writing thesis, began to take shape.