Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism, livre ebook

How can Leo Strauss's critique of modernity and his return to tradition, especially Maimonides, help us to save democracy from its inner dangers? In this book, Corine Pelluchon examines Strauss's provocative claim that the conception of man and reason in the thought of the Enlightenment is self-destructive and leads to a new tyranny. Writing in a direct and lucid style, Pelluchon avoids the polemics that have characterized recent debates concerning the links between Strauss and neoconservatives, particularly concerns over Strauss's relation to the extreme right in Germany. Instead she aims to demystify the origins of Strauss's thought and present his relationship to German and Jewish thought in the early twentieth century in a manner accessible not just to the small circles devoted to the study of Strauss, but to a larger public. Strauss's critique of modernity is, she argues, constructive; he neither condemns modernity as a whole nor does he desire a retreat back to the Ancients, where slaves existed and women were not considered citizens. The question is to know whether we can learn something from the Ancients and from Maimonides—and not merely about them.
Translator’s Note
Introduction
The Crisis of Rationalism
Two Historical Shocks and a Threat
The Crisis of Political Philosophy
Modern Rationalism as the Destruction of Reason
The Archeology and Overcoming of Nihilism
Part I. The Dissection of the Modern Religious Consciousness
Introduction: The Perplexity of the Modern Religious Consciousness
1. Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment
The Jacobi Question
The Pantheism Debate
            The Critique of Natural Religion
            There Is No Such Thing as Moderate Enlightenment
            The Rejection of the Kantian Solution
            The Controversy over the French Revolution
The Crisis of the Tradition
            The Science of Judaism and the Dialectic of Assimilation
            The Discontinuity of the Ancients and Moderns
            The Aporias of Zionism

2. Critique of Religion and Biblical Criticism
The Critique of Religion and Revelation in Hobbes
            Epicureanism
            The Interpretation of the Bible
            Socinianism and the Radical Enlightment
            The Need to Reconsider the Radical Enlightenment
Spinoza’s Particular Contribution to the Critique of Religion
            Persecution and the Art of Writing
            The Religion of the Ignorant and Weak
            Biblical Criticism (Bibelswissenschaft)
The Social Function of Religion
            The Universal Religion and the “Christianity” of Spinoza
            The Ambiguity of Spinoza
            The Limits of Secular Morality
            The Enlightenment of Spinoza
The Legacy of the Critique of Religion
            The Critique of Revelation Has Not Destroyed the Interest in Revelation
            The Challenge of Philosophy
            The Debt of the New Orthodoxy to the Enlightenment and Religious Liberalism
3. The Return to the Tradition
Rationalism and Mysticism
            Allegory and Symbol
            Reason and Experience
The Human Experience of the Absolute
            Religion and Philosophy
            Ethics and Spirituality
            Redemption and Politics
The Jewish Enlightenment of Maimonides
            Cohen and Strauss
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