Research Seminar January 8th: Leora F. Batnitzky - Leo Strauss and the Legacy of Protestant Judaism

This paper considers Leo Strauss’ attempt to expose the historical, philosophical, theological, and political shifts that required Jews to define Judaism within the Protestant conception of religion as a private matter of individual belief, what Max Weber described as the “inward emotional piety of Lutheranism”.  Beyond its analytic import, Strauss’s diagnosis of the legacy of Protestant Judaism is remarkable for two reasons.  First, Strauss anticipates a number of contemporary criticisms of simplistic and ahistorical conceptions of the “secularism” and of “religion.” Second, while Strauss’s name is often evoked (for better or for worse) in contemporary discussions of American neo-conservatism, Strauss was actually devoted to revitalizing Islamic philosophy, as opposed to Christian thought, for the very sake of the future of western civilization.  In fact, Strauss maintains that Islamic philosophy offers a remedy to the legacy of Protestant Judaism.