How To Begin To Study Medieval Philosophy by Leo Strauss

To return to the point where I left off: the belief in the superiority of one’s own approach, or the approach of one’s time, to the approach of the past is fatal to historical understanding. This dangerous assumption, which is characteristic of what one may call progressivism, was avoided by what is frequently called historicism. Whereas the progressivist believes that the present is superior to the past, the historicist believes that all periods are equally ‘immediate to God.’ The historicist does not want to judge the past, by assessing the contribution of each person, for example, but rather seeks to understand and to relate how things have actually been, ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen ist,’ and in particular how the thought of the past has been. The historicist has at least the intention to understand the thought of the past exactly as it understood itself. But he is constitutionally unable to live up to his intention. For he knows, or rather he assumes, that, generally speaking and other things being equal, the thought of all epochs is equally true, because every philosophy is essentially the expression of the spirit of its time. Maimonides, for example, expressed the spirit of his time as perfectly, as, say Herrman Cohen expressed the spirit of his time. Now, all philosophers of the past claimed to have found the truth, and not merely the truth for their time. The historicist, however, asserts that they are mistaken in believing so. And he makes this assertion he basis of his interpretation. He knows a priori that the claim of Maimonides, to teach the truth, the truth valid for all times, is unfounded. In this most important respect, the historicist, just as his hostile brother the progressive, believes that his approach is superior to the approach of the thinkers of old. The historicist is therefore compelled, by his principle if against his intention, to try to understand the past better than it understood itself. He merely repeats, if sometimes in a more sophisticated form, the sin for which he blames the progressivist so severely. For, to repeat, to understand a serious teaching, one must be seriously interested in it; one must take it seriously. But one cannot take it seriously if one knows beforehand that it is ‘dated’. To take a serious teaching seriously one must be willing to consider the possibility that it is simply true. Therefore, if we are interested in an adequate understanding of medieval philosophy, we must be willing to consider the possibility that medieval philosophy was simply true, or, to speak less paradoxically, that it is superior, in the most important respect, to all that we can learn from any of the contemporary philosophers. We can understand medieval philosophy only if we are prepared to learn something, not merely about the medieval philosophers, but from them.

It remains true, then, that if one wants to understand a philosophy of the past, one must approach it in a philosophical spirit, with philosophical questions: one’s concerns must be primarily, not with what other people have thought about the philosophical truth, but with philosophical truth itself. But if one approaches an early thinker with a question which is not his central question, one is bound to misinterpret, to distort his thought. Therefore, the philosophic question with which one approaches the thought of the past must be so broad, so comprehensive, that it permits of being narrowed down to the specific, precise formulation of the question which the author concerned adopted. It can be no question other than the question of the truth about the whole.

The historian of philosophy must then undergo a transformation into a philosopher, or a conversion to philosophy, if he wants to do his job properly, if he wants to be a competent historian of philosophy. He must require a freedom of mind which is not too frequently met with among the ’professional’ philosophers: he must have a perfect freedom of mind as is humanly possible. No prejudice in favor of contemporary thought, even of modern philosophy, of modern civilization, of modern science itself, must deter him from giving the thinkers of old the full benefit of doubt. When engaging in the study of the philosophy of the past, he must cease to take his bearings by the modern signposts with which he has grown familiar since his earliest childhood; he must try to take his bearings by the signposts which guided the thinkers of old. Those old signposts are not immediately visible: they are concealed by heaps of dust and rubble. The most obnoxious of the rubble consists of the superficial interpretations by modern writers, of the cheap cliches which are offered in the textbooks and which seem to unlock by one formula the mystery of the past. The signposts which guided the thinkers of the past must be recovered before they can be used. Before the historian has succeeded in recovering them, he cannot help being in a condition of utter bewilderment, of universal doubt: he finds himself in darkness which is illuminated exclusively by his knowledge that he knows nothing. When engaging in the study of then philosophy of the past, he must know that he embarks on a journey whose end is completely hidden from him: he is not likely to return to the shore of his time as the same man who left it.

True historical understanding of medieval philosophy presupposes that the student is willing to take seriously the claim of medieval philosophers that they teach the truth. Now, it may be justifiably objected, is this demand not most unreasonable? Medieval philosophy is based, generally speaking, on the natural science of Aristote: has that science not been refuted once and for all by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton? Medieval philosophy is based on an almost complete unawareness of the principles of religious toleration, of the representative system, of the rights of man, of democracy as we understand it. It is characterized by an indifference (touching on contempt) to poetry and history. It seems to be based on a firm belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and in the Mosaic origin of the moral Law. It stands and falls with the use of a method of Biblical interpretation as unsound as the allegoric interpretation. In brief, medieval philosophy arouses against itself all the convictions fostered by the most indubitable results of modern science and modern scholarship.

Nor is this all. Medieval philosophy may have been refuted by modern thought, an yet it could have been an admirable and highly beneficial achievement for its time. But even this may be questioned.