Philosophy and Law [antikvár]

Translatons Introduction: The Argument of Philosophy and LawLeo Strauss's Philosophy and Law (Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und Seiner Vorlaüfer, Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1935) contains a ground-breaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors, and offers an argument on behalf of that philosophy which is also a profound critique of modern philosophy. Almost sixty years from its first publication, it retains all of its startling freshness and its power to awaken direct thought about the great human questions it addresses. In this sense the book introduces itself and speaks for itself. The purpose of the present introduction is only to serve as a tentative map of the territory that the reader will discover for himself in the book.I. Strauss's "Introduction"Strauss's professed aim in Philosophy and Law is to "awaken a prejudice" in favor of the view that Maimoni-des's médiéval rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism and, even more, to arouse a suspicion against the powerful opposing prejudice (p. 21). The powerful oppos-ing prejudice, as it turns out, is not so much that modem rationalism is the true natural prototype of rationalism as that there is no true natural prototype of rationalism.1