Leo Strauss - Liberalism Ancient and Modern

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LEO STRAUSS
Foreword by Allan Bloom
LIBERALISM
ANCIENT and
MODERN
Leo Strauss
Foreword by Allan Bloom
The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London
Reprinted by arrangement with Basic Books, a division of
HarperCollins Publishers
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1968 by Leo Strauss
Foreword by Allan Bloom copyright© 1989 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Originally published 1968
University of Chicago Press edition 1995
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 23456
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77689-7 (paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-77689-1 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strauss, Leo.
Liberalism ancient and modern / Leo Strauss; foreword by Allan
Bloom.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Basic Books, 1968.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Liberalism—History. I. Title.
JC574.S76 1995
320.5T—dc20 95-21951
CIP
© The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements

of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
3 1223 10007 8451

i
n
Foreword
Leo Strauss is sometimes reviled as an enemy of liberal democracy by defensive

and dogmatic liberals who cannot tolerate friendly criticism and who cannot
be bothered to read what he wrote. Strauss, however, cautions us in this book
that “we are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we
are friends and allies of democracy.” Too many current would-be defenders
of liberalism confuse defense with flattery, as too many critics ignore the evi¬
dent merits of liberal democracy. Strauss’s book could teach them both that
“while we are not permitted to remain silent on the dangers to which de¬
mocracy exposes itself as well as human excellence, we cannot forget the ob¬
vious fact that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those
who care for human excellence” (p. 24).
In this volume Strauss adumbrates in various ways the difference between
ancient liberalism with its direct orientation toward human excellence and
modern liberalism with its orientation toward universal freedom. But he does
not treat them as polar opposites, let alone mortal antagonists. On the con¬
trary, he reminds us that the aspirations of contemporary liberals have their
roots in the Western tradition (p. vii) and that there is a direct connection
between the ancients’ notion of the mixed regime and modern republicanism
(P- 15).
Strauss shows here how liberal democracy derives powerful support from
the premodern thought of our Western tradition (see also p. 98 of “The Three
Waves of Modernity” in Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss, ed.
Hilail Gildin [Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs Merrill/Pegasus, 1975]). Early
modern liberals sought a responsible electorate through religious education of
the people based on the Bible. Modern liberals such as Locke, the authors of
The Federalist, and Mill sought public-spirited popular representatives through
liberal education based on the classics (pp. 15—19). Strauss would remind us of
the very complex pros and cons regarding liberal democracy (p. 223), but he
vi / Foreword
knows we cannot return to traditional aristocracies, whose hypocrisy tried to

conceal that they were really oligarchies rather than aristocracies and that their
rulers were not by nature superior to the ruled (pp. 5, 11, 19). He would
recall us to the original understanding of such founders of modern democracy
as Spinoza, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Jefferson that democracy with its
orientation toward universal freedom is nonetheless meant to be a regime of
virtue and even “an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristoc¬
racy” (pp. 4-5). Strauss is therefore indeed a friend of liberal democracy when
he summons true liberals to counteract the perverted liberalism that forgets
quality, excellence, or virtue (p. 64).
Strauss’s discussion of liberal education in the first two chapters speaks power¬
fully to our renewed debate. We would do well to listen to his powerful plea
for the urgency of reading the Great Books, which also enables us to ap¬
preciate the difficulties and limitations of that approach. Chapters 3-7 help
one to understand Strauss’s almost single-handed recovery of classical political
philosophy, while the critique in the eighth chapter continues to sear the con¬
science of our social science. The ninth chapter presents Strauss’s lifelong pre¬
occupation with what he called the theologico-political predicament in the
context of his own intellectual biography. In it one finds Strauss’s deepest public
statement about Naziism and the thought that fostered it. It is a must. And
the last chapter, like the rest of the book, is studded with such gems as his
lucid and unforgettable analysis of the distinction between “the self” and the
soul.
This book is now a classic the more necessary for our times inasmuch as
the world has moved so much further in the directions which he analyzed
and against which he warns. In it you see the mind of a philosopher at work.
Strauss shows that the deepest seriousness, with no bow to popularity, is the
one thing most needful.
Allan Bloom
Chicago, Illinois
November, 1988
Preface
Liberalism is understood here and now in contradistinction to conserva¬

tism. This distinction is sufficient for most present practical purposes. To
admit this is tantamount to admitting that the distinction is not free from
theoretical difficulties which need not be barren of practical consequences.
Of one difficulty one can dispose easily. Most people are liberal in some
respects and conservative in others; a very moderate liberal may not be
distinguishable from a very moderate conservative. This very observation
implies, indeed, the existence at least of the liberal and the conservative
as ideal types. Yet in this case, at any rate, the ideal types are quite real.
Here and now a man who is in favor of the war on poverty and opposed
to the war in Vietnam is generally regarded as doubtlessly a liberal, and a
man who is in favor of the war in Vietnam and opposed to the war on
poverty is generally regarded as doubtlessly a conservative.
A somewhat more serious difficulty comes to sight once one considers the
fact that here and now liberalism and conservativism have a common basis;
for both are based here and now on liberal democracy, and therefore both
are antagonistic to Communism. Hence the opposition does not seem to
be fundamental. Still, they differ profoundly in their opposition to Com¬
munism. At first glance liberalism seems to agree with Communism as
regards the ultimate goal, while it radically disagrees with it as regards the
way to the goal. The goal may be said to be the universal and classless
society or, to use the correction proposed by Koj£ve, the universal and
homogeneous state of which every adult human being is a full member;
more precisely, the necessary and sufficient title to full membership is
supplied by one’s being an adult nonmoronic human being for all those
times when he is not locked up in an insane asylum or a penitentiary. The
way toward that goal, according to liberalism in contradistinction to
Communism, is preferably democratic or peaceful, surely not war, that is,
vii
viii / Preface
foreign war; for revolutions backed by the sympathy, or at least the inter¬
ests, of the majority of the people concerned are not necessarily rejected
by liberals. There remains, however, one important difference between
liberalism and Communism regarding the goal itself. Liberals regard as
sacred the right of everyone, however humble, odd, or inarticulate, to
criticize the government, including the man at the top.
Someone might say that many liberals are much too pragmatic to aim
at the universal and homogeneous state: they would be fully satisfied with
a federation of all now existing or soon emerging states, with a truly
universal and greatly strengthened United Nations organization—an orga¬
nization that would include Communist China, the Federal Republic of
Germany, and Communist East Germany, although not necessarily Na¬
tionalist China. Still, this would mean that liberals aim at the greatest
possible approximation to the universal and homogeneous state or that
they are guided by the ideal of the universal and homogeneous state.
Some of them will object to the term “ideal” on the ground that the uni¬
versal and homogeneous state (or the greatest possible approximation to
it) is a requirement of hardheaded politics: that state has been rendered
necessary by economic and technological progress, which includes the ne¬
cessity of making thermonuclear war impossible for all the future, and by
ever increasing wealth of the advanced countries which are compelled by
sheer self-interest to develop the underdeveloped countries. As regards the
still existing tension between the liberal-democratic and the Communist
countries, liberals believe that this tension will be relaxed and will eventu¬
ally disappear as a consequence of the ever increasing welfarism of the
former and the ever increasing liberalism, due to the overwhelming de¬
mand for consumer goods of all kinds, of the latter.
Conservatives regard the universal and homogeneous state as either
undesirable, though possible, or as both undesirable and impossible. They
do not deny the necessity or desirability of larger political units than what
one may call the typical nation-state. For good or ill, they can indeed no
longer be imperialists. But there is no reason whatever why they should
be opposed to a United Free Europe, for instance. Yet they are likely to
understand such units differently from the liberals. An outstanding Euro¬
pean conservative has spoken of VEurope des patries. Conservatives look
with greater sympathy than liberals on the particular or particularist and
the heterogeneous; at least they are more willing than liberals to respect
and perpetuate a more fundamental diversity than the one ordinarily re¬
spected or taken for granted by liberals and even by Communists, that is,
the diversity regarding language, folk songs, pottery, and the like. Inasmuch
as the universalism in politics is founded on the universalism proceeding
from reason, conservativism is frequently characterized by distrust of reason
or by trust in tradition which as such is necessarily this or that tradition
and hence particular. Conservativism is therefore exposed to criticism that
Preface / i\
is guided by the notion of the unity of truth. Liberals, on the other hand,
especially those who know that their aspirations have their roots in the
Western tradition, are not sufficiently concerned with the fact that that
tradition is ever more being eroded by the very changes in the direction of
One World which they demand or applaud.
We remain closer to the surface by saying that the conservatives’ dis¬
trust of the universal and homogeneous state is rooted in their distrust of
change, in what is polemically called their “stand-patism,” whereas liberals
are more inclined than conservatives to be sanguine regarding change.
Liberals are inclined to believe that on the whole change is change for the
better, or progress. As a matter of fact, liberals frequently call themselves
progressives. Progressivism is indeed a better term than liberalism for the
opposite to conservativism. For if conservativism is, as its name indicates,
aversion to change or distrust of change, its opposite should be identified
with the opposite posture toward change, and not with something substan¬
tive like liberty or liberality.
The difficulty of defining the difference between liberalism and con¬
servativism with the necessary universality is particularly great in the
United States, since this country came into being through a revolution, a
violent change or break with the past. One of the most conservative groups
here calls itself Daughters of the American Revolution. The opposition
between conservativism and liberalism had a clear meaning at the time at
which and in the places in which it arose in these terms. Then and there
the conservatives stood for “throne and altar,” and the liberals stood for
popular sovereignty and the strictly nonpublic (private) character of re¬
ligion. Yet conservativism in this sense is no longer politically important.
The conservativism of our age is identical with what originally was liberal¬
ism, more or less modified by changes in the direction of present-day lib¬
eralism. One could go further and say that much of what goes now by the
name of conservativism has in the last analysis a common root with pres¬
ent-day liberalism and even with Communism. That this is the case would
appear most clearly if one were to go back to the origin of modernity, to
the break with the premodern tradition that took place in the seventeenth
century, or to the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.
We are reminded of that quarrel immediately by the fact that the
term “liberal” is still used in its premodern sense, especially in the expres¬
sion “liberal education.” Liberal education is not the opposite of con¬
servative education, but of illiberal education. To be liberal in the original
sense means to practice the virtue of liberality. If it is true that all vir¬
tues in their perfection are inseparable from one another, the genuinely
liberal man is identical with the genuinely virtuous man. According to
the now prevailing usage, however, to be liberal means not to be con¬
servative. Hence it is no longer assumed that being liberal is the same as
being virtuous or even that being liberal has anything to do with being
x / Preface
virtuous. Being liberal in the original sense is so little incompatible with

being conservative that generally speaking it goes together with a con¬
servative posture.
Premodern political philosophy, and in particular classical political
philosophy, is liberal in the original sense of the term. It cannot be
simply conservative since it is guided by the awareness that all man
seek by nature, not the ancestral or traditional, but the good. On the
other hand, classical political philosophy opposes to the universal and
homogeneous state a substantive principle. It asserts that the society
natural to man is the city, that is, a closed society that can well be taken
in in one view or that corresponds to man’s natural (macroscopic, not
microscopic or telescopic) power of perception. Less literally and more
importantly, it asserts that every political society that ever has been
or ever will be rests on a particular fundamental opinion which can¬
not be replaced by knowledge and hence is of necessity a particular or
particularist society. This state of things imposes duties on the philoso¬
pher’s public speech or writing which would not be duties if a rational
society were actual or emerging; it thus gives rise to a specific art of
writing.
In earlier publications I have tried to lay bare the fundamental differ¬
ence between classical and modem political philosophy. In the present
volume I adumbrate that difference in the following manners. First
I discuss liberal education and then the question as to the sense in
which classical political philosophy can be called liberal. I next illustrate
the liberalism of premodern thinkers by elucidating some examples of
their art of writing. The most extensive discussion is devoted to Lu¬
cretius’ poem. In that poem, not to say in Epicureanism generally, pre-
modern thought seems to come closer to modern thought than any¬
where else. No premodern writer seems to have been as deeply moved
as Lucretius was by the thought that nothing lovable is eternal or sempi¬
ternal or deathless, or that the eternal is not lovable. Apart from this,
it may suffice here to refer to Kant’s presentation of Epicureanism as
identical with the spirit of modern natural science prior to the subjec¬
tion of that science to the critique of pure reason.
Every observer of present-day liberalism must be struck by the very
frequent “personal union” of liberalism and value-free social science.
One is thus led to wonder whether this union is merely accidental or
whether there is not a necessary connection between value-free social
science and liberalism, although liberalism is not, as goes without say¬
ing, value-free. At any rate, the critical study of present-day social sci¬
ence is no mean part of the critical study of liberalism. The essay entitled
“An Epilogue” deals with this subject.
Not much familiarity with political life is needed in order to see
that it is particularly difficult for a nonorthodox Jew to adopt a critical
Preface / xi
posture toward liberalism. Even Jews who are politically conservative can
be observed to defer to contemporary Jewish “opinion leaders” who can
in no sense be described as politically conservative. This state of things
induces one to raise questions such as these: In what sense or to what
extent is Judaism one of the roots of liberalism? Are Jews compelled by
their heritage or their self-interest to be liberals? Is liberalism necessarily
friendly to Jews and Judaism? Can the liberal state claim to have solved
the Jewish problem? Can any state claim to have solved it? To these
questions I address myself in the two statements that conclude this
volume.
Leo Strauss
Claremont, California
Contents
Foreword v
Preface vii
1 / What Is Liberal Education? 3
2 / Liberal Education and Responsibility 9
3 / The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy 26
4 / On the Minos 65
5 / Notes on Lucretius 76
6 / How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed
7 / Marsilius of Padua 185
8 / An Epilogue 203
9 / Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion 224
10 / Perspectives on the Good Society 260
Acknowledgments 273
Index of Names 275

What Is Liberal Education?
Liberal education is education in culture or toward culture. The finished

product of a liberal education is a cultured human being. “Culture”
(cultura) means primarily agriculture: the cultivation of the soil and its
products, taking care of the soil, improving the soil in accordance with its
nature. “Culture” means derivatively and today chiefly the cultivation of
the mind, the taking care and improving of the native faculties of the mind
in accordance with the nature of the mind. Just as the soil needs cultivators
of the soil, the mind needs teachers. But teachers are not as easy to come
by as farmers. The teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But
there cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be teachers who
are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who are not in turn pupils are the
great minds or, in order to avoid any ambiguity in a matter of such impor¬
tance, the greatest minds. Such men are extremely rare. We are not likely
to meet any of them in any classroom. We are not likely to meet any of
them anywhere. It is a piece of good luck if there is a single one alive in
one’s time. For all practical purposes, pupils, of whatever degree of profi¬
ciency, have access to the teachers who are not in turn pupils, to the great¬
est minds, only through the great books. Liberal education will then con¬
sist in studying with the proper care the great books which the greatest
minds have left behind—a study in which the more experienced pupils
assist the less experienced pupils, including the beginners.
This is not an easy task, as would appear if we were to consider the
formula which I have just mentioned. That formula requires a long com¬
mentary. Many lives have been spent and may still be spent in writing such
commentaries. For instance, what is meant by the remark that the great
books should be studied “with the proper care”? At present I mention only
one difficulty which is obvious to everyone among you: the greatest minds
do not all tell us the same things regarding the most important themes; the
3
4 / LIBERALISM ANCIENT AND MODERN
community of the greatest minds is rent by discord and even by various

kinds of discord. Whatever further consequences this may entail, it cer¬
tainly entails the consequence that liberal education cannot be simply
indoctrination. I mention yet another difficulty. “Liberal education is edu¬
cation in culture.” In what culture? Our answer is: culture in the sense of
the Western tradition. Yet Western culture is only one among many cul¬
tures. By limiting ourselves to Western culture, do we not condemn liberal
education to a kind of parochialism, and is not parochialism incompatible
with the liberalism, the generosity, the openmindedness, of liberal educa¬
tion? Our notion of liberal education does not seem to fit an age which is
aware of the fact that there is not the culture of the human mind, but a
variety of cultures. Obviously, culture if susceptible of being used in the
plural is not quite the same thing as culture which is a singulare tantum,
which can be used only in the singular. Culture is now no longer, as people
say, an absolute, but has become relative. It is not easy to say what culture
susceptible of being used in the plural means. As a consequence of this
obscurity people have suggested, explicitly or implicitly, that culture is any
pattern of conduct common to any human group. Hence we do not hesi¬
tate to speak of the culture of suburbia or of the cultures of juvenile gangs,
both nondelinquent and delinquent. In other words, every human being
outside of lunatic asylums is a cultured human being, for he participates in
a culture. At the frontiers of research there arises the question as to
whether there are not cultures also of inmates of lunatic asylums. If we
contrast the present-day usage of “culture” with the original meaning, it is
as if someone would say that the cultivation of a garden may consist of the
garden’s being littered with empty tin cans and whisky bottles and used
papers of various descriptions thrown around the garden at random. Hav¬
ing arrived at this point, we realize that we have lost our way somehow. Let
us then make a fresh start by raising the question: what can liberal educa¬
tion mean here and now?
Liberal education is literate education of a certain kind: some sort of
education in letters or through letters. There is no need to make a case for
literacy; every voter knows that modern democracy stands or falls by liter¬
acy. In order to understand this need we must reflect on modern democ¬
racy. What is modern democracy? It was once said that democracy is the
regime that stands or falls by virtue: a democracy is a regime in which all
or most adults are men of virtue, and since virtue seems to require wisdom,
a regime in which all or most adults are virtuous and wise, or the society in
which all or most adults have developed their reason to a high degree, or
the rational society. Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy
which has broadened into a universal aristocracy. Prior to the emergence of
modem democracy some doubts were felt whether democracy thus under¬
stood is possible. As one of the two greatest minds among the theorists of
democracy put it, “If there were a people consisting of gods, it would rule
What Is Liberal Education? / 5
itself democratically. A government of such perfection is not suitable for

human beings.” This still and small voice has by now become a high-
powered loud-speaker.
There exists a whole science—the science which I among thousands
profess to teach, political science—which so to speak has no other theme
than the contrast between the original conception of democracy, or what
one may call the ideal of democracy, and democracy as it is. According to
an extreme view, which is the predominant view in the profession, the
ideal of democracy was a sheer delusion, and the only thing which matters
is the behavior of democracies and the behavior of men in democracies.
Modern democracy, so far from being universal aristocracy, would be mass
rule were it not for the fact that the mass cannot rule, but is ruled by
elites, that is, groupings of men who for whatever reason are on top or have
a fair chance to arrive at the top; one of the most important virtues re¬
quired for the smooth working of democracy, as far as the mass is con¬
cerned, is said to be electoral apathy, viz., lack of public spirit; not indeed
the salt of the earth, but the salt of modern democracy are those citizens
who read nothing except the sports page and the comic section. Democracy
is then not indeed mass rule, but mass culture. A mass culture is a culture
which can be appropriated by the meanest capacities without any intellec¬
tual and moral effort whatsoever and at a very low monetary price. But
even a mass culture and precisely a mass culture requires a constant supply
of what are called new ideas, which are the products of what are called
creative minds: even singing commercials lose their appeal if they are not
varied from time to time. But democracy, even if it is only regarded as the
hard shell which protects the soft mass culture, requires in the long run
qualities of an entirely different kind: qualities of dedication, of concentra¬
tion, of breadth, and of depth. Thus we understand most easily what lib¬
eral education means here and now. Liberal education is the counterpoison
to mass culture, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inherent
tendency to produce nothing but “specialists without spirit or vision and
voluptuaries without heart.” Liberal education is the ladder by which we
try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Lib¬
eral education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within
democratic mass society. Liberal education reminds those members of a
mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness.
Someone might say that this notion of liberal education is merely politi¬
cal, that it dogmatically assumes the goodness of modern democracy. Can
we not turn our backs on modern society? Can we not return to nature, to
the life of preliterate tribes? Are we not crushed, nauseated, degraded by
the mass of printed material, the graveyards of so many beautiful and
majestic forests? It is not sufficient to say that this is mere romanticism,
that we today cannot return to nature: may not coming generations, after a
man-wrought cataclysm, be compelled to live in illiterate tribes? Will our
thoughts concerning thermonuclear wars not be affected by such pros¬

pects? Certain it is that the horrors of mass culture (which include guided
tours to integer nature) render intelligible the longing for a return to
nature. An illiterate society at its best is a society ruled by age-old ancestral
custom which it traces to original founders, gods, or sons of gods or pupils
of gods; since there are no letters in such a society, the late heirs cannot be
in direct contact with the original founders; they cannot know whether the
fathers or grandfathers have not deviated from what the original founders
meant, or have not defaced the divine message by merely human additions
or subtractions; hence an illiterate society cannot consistently act on its
principle that the best is the oldest. Only letters which have come down
from the founders can make it possible for the founders to speak directly
to the latest heirs. It is then self-contradictory to wish to return to illiter¬
acy. We are compelled to live with books. But life is too short to live with
any but the greatest books. In this respect as well as in some others, we do
well to take as our model that one among the greatest minds who because
of his common sense is the mediator between us and the greatest minds.
Socrates never wrote a book, but he read books. Let me quote a statement
of Socrates which says almost everything that has to be said on our subject,
with the noble simplicity and quiet greatness of the ancients. “Just as
others are pleased by a good horse or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an
even higher degree by good friends. . . . And the treasures of the wise
men of old which they left behind by writing them in books, I unfold and
go through them together with my friends, and if we see something good,
we pick it out and regard it as a great gain if we thus become useful to one
another.” The man who reports this utterance adds the remark: “When I
heard this, it seemed to me both that Socrates was blessed and that he was
leading those listening to him toward perfect gentlemanship.” This report
is defective since it does not tell us anything as to what Socrates did regard¬
ing those passages in the books of the wise men of old of which he did not
know whether they were good. From another report we learn that Eurip¬
ides once gave Socrates the writing of Heraclitus and then asked him for
his opinion about that writing. Socrates said: “What I have understood is
great and noble; I believe this is also true of what I have not understood;
but one surely needs for understanding that writing some special sort of a
diver.”
Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal educa¬
tion consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human great¬
ness. In what way, by what means does liberal education remind us of
human greatness? We cannot think highly enough of what liberal educa¬
tion is meant to be. We have heard Plato’s suggestion that education in
the highest sense is philosophy. Philosophy is quest for wisdom or quest for
knowledge regarding the most important, the highest, or the most compre¬
hensive things; such knowledge, he suggested, is virtue and is happiness.
What Is Liberal Education? / 7
But wisdom is inaccessible to man, and hence virtue and happiness will
always be imperfect. In spite of this, the philosopher, who, as such, is not
simply wise, is declared to be the only true king; he is declared to possess
all the excellences of which man’s mind is capable, to the highest degree.
From this we must draw the conclusion that we cannot be philosophers—
that we cannot acquire the highest form of education. We must not be
deceived by the fact that we meet many people who say that they are
philosophers. For those people employ a loose expression which is perhaps
necessitated by administrative convenience. Often they mean merely that
they are members of philosophy departments. And it is as absurd to expect
members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect
members of art departments to be artists. We cannot be philosophers, but
we can love philosophy; we can try to philosophize. This philosophizing
consists at any rate primarily and in a way chiefly in listening to the conver¬
sation between the great philosophers or, more generally and more cau¬
tiously, between the greatest minds, and therefore in studying the great
books. The greatest minds to whom we ought to listen are by no means
exclusively the greatest minds of the West. It is merely an unfortunate
necessity which prevents us from listening to the greatest minds of India
and of China: we do not understand their languages, and we cannot learn
all languages.
To repeat: liberal education consists in listening to the conversation
among the greatest minds. But here we are confronted with the over¬
whelming difficulty that this conversation does not take place without our
help—that in fact we must bring about that conversation. The greatest
minds utter monologues. We must transform their monologues into a dia¬
logue, their side by side” into a “together.” The greatest minds utter
monologues even when they write dialogues. When we look at the Platonic
dialogues, we observe that there is never a dialogue among minds of the
highest order: all Platonic dialogues are dialogues between a superior man
and men inferior to him. Plato apparently felt that one could not write a
dialogue between two men of the highest order. We must then do some¬
thing which the greatest minds were unable to do. Let us face this
difficulty—a difficulty so great that it seems to condemn liberal education
as an absurdity. Since the greatest minds contradict one another regarding
the most important matters, they compel us to judge of their monologues;
we cannot take on trust what any one of them says. On the other hand, we
cannot but notice that we are not competent to be judges.
I his state of things is concealed from us by a number of facile delusions.
We somehow believe that our point of view is superior, higher than those
of the greatest minds—either because our point of view is that of our time,
and our time, being later than the time of the greatest minds, can be pre¬
sumed to be superior to their times; or else because we believe that each of
the greatest minds was right from his point of view but not, as he claims,
simply right: we know that there cannot be the simply true substantive
view, but only a simply true formal view; that formal view consists in the
insight that every comprehensive view is relative to a specific perspective,
or that all comprehensive views are mutually exclusive and none can be
simply true. The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation
all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the
past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile lis¬
teners, but of impresarios or lion-tamers. Yet we must face our awesome
situation, created by the necessity that we try to be more than attentive
and docile listeners, namely, judges, and yet we are not competent to be
judges. As it seems to me, the cause of this situation is that we have lost all
simply authoritative traditions in which we could trust, the nomos which
gave us authoritative guidance, because our immediate teachers and
teachers’ teachers believed in the possibility of a simply rational society.
Each of us here is compelled to find his bearings by his own powers, how¬
ever defective they may be.
We have no comfort other than that inherent in this activity. Philoso¬
phy, we have learned, must be on its guard against the wish to be edifying
—philosophy can only be intrinsically edifying. We cannot exert our
understanding without from time to time understanding something of
importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the
awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding,
by noesis noeseos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that
Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is entirely independ¬
ent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing,
fair or ugly. It leads us to realize that all evils are in a sense necessary if
there is to be understanding. It enables us to accept all evils which befall us
and which may well break our hearts in the spirit of good citizens of the
city of God. By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize
the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the
world, whether we understand it as created or as uncreated, which is the
home of man because it is the home of the human mind.
Liberal education, which consists in the constant intercourse with the
greatest minds, is a training in the highest form of modesty, not to say of
humility. It is at the same time a training in boldness: it demands from us
the complete break with the noise, the rush, the thoughtlessness, the
cheapness of the Vanity Fair of the intellectuals as well as of their enemies.
It demands from us the boldness implied in the resolve to regard the
accepted views as mere opinions, or to regard the average opinions as ex¬
treme opinions which are at least as likely to be wrong as the most strange
or the least popular opinions. Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity.
The Greeks had a beautiful word for “vulgarity”; they called it apeirokalia,
lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with
experience in things beautiful.
2/ Liberal Education
and Responsibility
When I was approached by The Fund for Adult Education with the sug¬
gestion that I prepare an essay on liberal education and responsibility, my
first reaction was not one of delight. While I am in many ways dependent
on the administration of education and hence on the organizations serving
education, I looked at these things, if I looked at them, with that awe
which arises from both gratitude and apprehension mixed with ignorance.
I thought that it was my job, my responsibility, to do my best in the class¬
room, in conversations with students wholly regardless of whether they are
registered or not, and last but not least in my study at home. I own that
education is in a sense the subject matter of my teaching and my research.
But I am almost solely concerned with the goal or end of education at its
best or highest—of the education of the perfect prince, as it were—and
very little with its conditions and its how. The most important conditions,
it seems to me, are the qualities of the educator and of the human being
who is to be educated; in the case of the highest form of education those
conditions are very rarely fulfilled, and one cannot do anything to produce
them; the only things we can do regarding them are not to interfere with
their interplay and to prevent such interference. As for the how, one knows
it once one knows what education is meant to do to a human being or once
one knows the end of education. Certainly, there are some rules of thumb.
Almost every year I meet once with the older students of my department
in order to discuss with them how to teach political theory in college. Once
on such an occasion a student asked me whether I could not give him a
general rule regarding teaching. I replied: “Always assume that there is one
silent student in your class who is by far superior to you in head and in
heart.” I meant by this: do not have too high an opinion of your impor¬
tance, and have the highest opinion of your duty, your responsibility.
There was another reason why I was somewhat bewildered when I first
9
began to prepare this essay. That reason has to do with the word “responsi¬
bility.” For clearly, liberal education and responsibility are not identical.
They may not be separable from each other. Before one could discuss their
relation, one would have to know what each of them is. As for the word
“responsibility,” it is now in common use, and I myself have used it from
time to time, for instance a very short while ago. In the sense in which it is
now frequently used, it is a neologism. It is, I believe, the fashionable sub¬
stitute for such words as “duty,” “conscience,” or “virtue.” We frequently
say of a man that he is a responsible man, where people of former genera¬
tions would have said that he is a just man or a conscientious man or a
virtuous man. Primarily, a man is responsible if he can be held accountable
for what he does—for example, for a murder; being responsible is so far
from being the same as being virtuous that it is merely the condition for
being either virtuous or vicious. By substituting responsibility for virtue, we
prove to be much more easily satisfied than our forefathers, or, more pre¬
cisely perhaps, we assume that by being responsible one is already virtuous
or that no vicious man is responsible for his viciousness. There is a kinship
between “responsibility” thus understood and “decency” as sometimes
used by the British: if a man ruins himself in order to save a complete
stranger, the stranger, if British, is supposed to thank him by saying, “It
was rather decent of you.” We seem to loathe the grand old words and
perhaps also the things which they indicate and to prefer more subdued
expressions out of delicacy or because they are more businesslike. However
this may be, my misgivings were caused by my awareness of my ignorance
as to what the substitution of responsibility for duty and for virtue means.
I certainly felt that I was particularly ill-prepared to address professional
educators on the subject “Education and Responsibility.” But then I learnt
to my relief that I was merely expected to explain two sentences occurring
in my speech “What is Liberal Education?” The sentences run as follows:
“Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass
democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the nec¬
essary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society.”
To begin at the beginning, the word “liberal” had at the beginning, just
as it has now, a political meaning, but its original political meaning is al¬
most the opposite of its present political meaning. Originally a liberal man
was a man who behaved in a manner becoming a free man, as distin¬
guished from a slave. “Liberality” referred then to slavery and presupposed
it. A slave is a human being who lives for another human being, his master;
he has in a sense no life of his own: he has no time for himself. The mas¬
ter, on the other hand, has all his time for himself, that is, for the pursuits
becoming him: politics and philosophy. Yet there are very many free men
who are almost like slaves since they have very little time for themselves,
because they have to work for their livelihood and to rest so that they can
work the next day. Those free men without leisure are the poor, the major-
Liberal Education and Responsibility /II
ity citizens. The truly free man who can live in a manner becoming a
free man is the man of leisure, the gentleman who must possess some
wealth—but wealth of a certain kind: a kind of wealth the administration
of which, to say nothing of its acquisition, does not take up much of his
time, but can be taken care of through his supervising of properly trained
supervisors; the gentleman will be a gentleman farmer and not a merchant
or entrepreneur. Yet if he spends much of his time in the country he will
not be available sufficiently for the pursuits becoming him; he must there¬
fore live in town. His way of life will be at the mercy of those of his fellow
citizens who are not gentlemen, if he and his like do not rule: the way of
life of the gentlemen is not secure if they are not the unquestioned rulers
of their city, if the regime of their city is not aristocratic.
One becomes a gentleman by education, by liberal education. The
Greek word for education is derived from the Greek word for child: educa¬
tion in general, and therefore liberal education in particular, is, then to say
the least, primarily not adult education. The Greek word for education is
akin to the Greek word for play, and the activity of the gentlemen is
emphatically earnest; in fact, the gentlemen are “the earnest ones.” They
are earnest because they are concerned with the most weighty matters,
with the only things which deserve to be taken seriously for their own sake’
with the good order of the soul and of the city. The education of the po¬
tential gentlemen is the playful anticipation of the life of gentlemen. It
consists above all in the formation of character and of taste. The fountains
of that education are the poets. It is hardly necessary to say that the gentle¬
man is in need of skills. To say nothing of reading, writing, counting,
reckoning, wrestling, throwing of spears, and horsemanship, he must pos¬
sess the skill of administering well and nobly the affairs of his household
and the affairs of his city by deed and by speech. He acquires that skill by
his familiar intercourse with older or more experienced gentlemen, pref¬
erably with elder statesmen, by receiving instruction from paid teachers in
the art of speaking, by reading histories and books of travel, by meditating
on the works of the poets, and, of course, by taking part in political life. All
this requires leisure on the part of the youths as well as on the part of their
elders; it is the preserve of a certain kind of wealthy people.
This fact gives rise to the question of the justice of a society which in the
best case would be ruled by gentlemen ruling in their own right. Just gov¬
ernment is government which rules in the interest of the whole society,
and not merely of a part. The gentlemen are therefore under an obligation
to show to themselves and to others that their rule is best for everyone in
the city or for the city as a whole. But justice requires that equal men be
treated equally, and there is no good reason for thinking that the gentle¬
men are by nature superior to the vulgar. The gentlemen are indeed supe¬
rior to the vulgar by their breeding, but the large majority of men are by
nature capable of the same breeding if they are caught young, in their
cradles; only the accident of birth decides whether a given individual has a
chance of becoming a gentleman or will necessarily become a villain; hence
aristocracy is unjust. The gentlemen replied as follows: the city as a whole
is much too poor to enable everyone to bring up his sons so that they can
become gentlemen; if you insist that the social order should correspond
with tolerable strictness to the natural order—that is, that men who are
more or less equal by nature should also be equal socially or by convention
—you will merely bring about a state of universal drabness. But only on the
ground of a narrow conception of justice, owing its evidence to the power
of the ignoble passion of envy, must one prefer a flat building which is
everywhere equally drab to a structure which from a broad base of drabness
rises to a narrow plateau of distinction and of grace and therefore gives
some grace and some distinction to its very base. There must then be a few
who are wealthy and well born and many who are poor and of obscure
origin. Yet there seems to be no good reason why this family is elected to
gentility and that family is condemned to indistinctness; that selection
seems to be arbitrary, to say the least. It would indeed be foolish to deny
that old wealth sometimes has its forgotten origins in crime. But it is more
noble to believe, and probably also truer, that the old families are the de¬
scendants from the first settlers and from leaders in war or counsel; and it
is certainly just that one be grateful.
Gentlemen may rule without being rulers in their own right; they may
rule on the basis of popular election. This arrangement was regarded as
unsatisfactory for the following reason. It would mean that the gentlemen
are, strictly speaking, responsible to the common people—that the higher
is responsible to the lower—and this would appear to be against nature.
The gentlemen regard virtue as choiceworthy for its own sake, whereas the
others praise virtue as a means for acquiring wealth and honor. The gentle¬
men and the others disagree, then, as regards the end of man or the highest
good; they disagree regarding first principles. Hence they cannot have gen¬
uinely common deliberations.1 The gentlemen cannot possibly give a suffi¬
cient or intelligible account of their way of life to the others. While being
responsible to themselves for the well-being of the vulgar, they cannot be
responsible to the vulgar.
But even if one rests satisfied with a less exacting notion of the rule of
gentlemen, the principle indicated necessarily leads one to reject democ¬
racy. Roughly speaking, democracy is the regime in which the majority of
adult free males living in a city rules, but only a minority of them are edu¬
cated. The principle of democracy is therefore not virtue, but freedom as
the right of every citizen to live as he likes. Democracy is rejected because
it is as such the rule of the uneducated. One illustration must here suffice.
The sophist Protagoras came to the democratic city of Athens in order to
educate human beings, or to teach for pay the art of administering well the
affairs of one’s household and of the city by deed and by speech—the polit-
Liberal Education and Responsibility / 13
ical art. Since in a democracy everyone is supposed to possess the political

art somehow, yet the majority, lacking equipment, cannot have acquired
that art through education, Protagoras must assume that the citizens re¬
ceived that art through something like a divine gift, albeit a gift which be¬
comes effective only through human punishments and rewards: the true
political art, the art which enables a man not only to obey the laws but to
frame laws, is acquired by education, by the highest form of education,
which is necessarily the preserve of those who can pay for it.
To sum up, liberal education in the original sense not only fosters civic
responsibility: it is even required for the exercise of civic responsibility. By
being what they are, the gentlemen are meant to set the tone of society in
the most direct, the least ambiguous, and the most unquestionable way: by
ruling it in broad daylight.
It is necessary to take a further step away from our opinions in order to
understand our opinions. The pursuits becoming the gentleman are said to
be politics and philosophy. Philosophy can be understood loosely or
strictly. If understood loosely, it is the same as what is now called intellec¬
tual interests. If understood strictly, it means quest for the truth about the
most weighty matters or for the comprehensive truth or for the truth about
the whole or for the science of the whole. When comparing politics to phi¬
losophy strictly understood, one realizes that philosophy is of higher rank
than politics. Politics is the pursuit of certain ends; decent politics is the
decent pursuit of decent ends. The responsible and clear distinction be¬
tween ends which are decent and ends which are not is in a way presup¬
posed by politics. It surely transcends politics. For everything which comes
into being through human action and is therefore perishable or corruptible
presupposes incorruptible and unchangeable things—for instance, the nat¬
ural order of the human soul—with a view to which we can distinguish
between right and wrong actions.
In the light of philosophy, liberal education takes on a new meaning:
liberal education, especially education in the liberal arts, comes to sight as a
preparation for philosophy. This means that philosophy transcends gentle-
manship. The gentleman as gentleman accepts on trust certain most
weighty things which for the philosopher are the themes of investigation
and of questioning. Hence the gentleman’s virtue is not entirely the same
as the philosopher’s virtue. A sign of this difference is the fact that whereas
the gentleman must be wealthy in order to do his proper work, the philos¬
opher may be poor. Socrates lived in tenthousandfold poverty. Once he
saw many people following a horse and looking at it, and he heard some of
them conversing much about it. In his surprise he approached the groom
with the question whether the horse was rich. The groom looked at him as
if he were not only grossly ignorant but not even sane: “How can a horse
have any property?” At that Socrates understandably recovered, for he thus
learned that it is lawful for a horse which is a pauper to become good pro-
vided it possesses a naturally good soul: it may then be lawful for Socrates
to become a good man in spite of his poverty. Since it is not necessary for
the philosopher to be wealthy, he does not need the entirely lawful arts by
which one defends one’s property, for example, forensically; nor does he
have to develop the habit of self-assertion in this or other respects—a habit
which necessarily enters into the gentleman’s virtue. Despite these differ¬
ences, the gentleman’s virtue is a reflection of the philosopher’s virtue; one
may say it is its political reflection.
This is the ultimate justification of the rule of gentlemen. The rule of
the gentlemen is only a reflection of the rule of the philosophers, who are
understood to be the men best by nature and best by education. Given the
fact that philosophy is more evidently quest for wisdom than possession of
wisdom, the education of the philosopher never ceases as long as he lives; it
is the adult education par excellence. For, to say nothing of other things,
the highest kind of knowledge which a man may have acquired can never
be simply at his disposal as other kinds of knowledge can; it is in constant
need of being acquired again from the start. This leads to the following
consequence. In the case of the gentleman, one can make a simple distinc¬
tion between the playful education of the potential gentleman and the
earnest work of the gentleman proper. In the case of the philosopher this
simple distinction between the playful and the serious no longer holds, not
in spite of the fact that his sole concern is with the weightiest matters, but
because of it. For this reason alone, to say nothing of others, the rule of
philosophers proves to be impossible. This leads to the difficulty that the
philosophers will be ruled by the gentlemen, that is, by their inferiors.
One can solve this difficulty by assuming that the philosophers are not
as such a constituent part of the city. In other words, the only teachers
who are as such a constituent part of the city are the priests. The end of
the city is then not the same as the end of philosophy. If the gentlemen
represent the city at its best, one must say that the end of the gentleman is
not the same as the end of the philosopher. What was observed regarding
the gentleman in his relation to the vulgar applies even more to the philos¬
opher in his relation to the gentlemen and a fortiori to all other nonphilos¬
ophers: the philosopher and the nonphilosophers cannot have genuinely
common deliberations. There is a fundamental disproportion between phi¬
losophy and the city. In political things it is a sound rule to let sleeping
dogs lie or to prefer the established to the nonestablished or to recognize
the right of the first occupier. Philosophy stands or falls by its intransigent
disregard of this rule and of anything which reminds of it. Philosophy can
then live only side by side with the city. As Plato put it in the Republic,
only in a city in which the philosophers rule and in which they therefore
owe their training in philosophy to the city is it just that the philosopher
be compelled to engage in political activity; in all other cities—that is, in
all actual cities—the philosopher does not owe his highest gift of human
origin to the city and therefore is not under an obligation to do the work of
the city. In entire agreement with this, Plato suggests in his Crito, where
he avoids the very term “philosophy,” that the philosopher owes indeed
very much to the city and therefore he is obliged to obey at least passively
even the unjust laws of the city and to die at the behest of the city. Yet he
is not obliged to engage in political activity. The philosopher as philoso¬
pher is responsible to the city only to the extent that by doing his own
work, by his own well-being, he contributes to the well-being of the city:
philosophy has necessarily a humanizing or civilizing effect. The city needs
philosophy, but only mediately or indirectly, not to say in a diluted form.
Plato has presented this state of things by comparing the city to a cave
from which only a rough and steep ascent leads to the light of the sun: the
city as city is more closed to philosophy than open to it.
The classics had no delusions regarding the probability of a genuine
aristocracy’s ever becoming actual. For all practical purposes they were sat¬
isfied with a regime in which the gentlemen share power with the people
in such a way that the people elect the magistrates and the council from
among the gentlemen and demand an account of them at the end of their
term of office. A variation of this thought is the notion of the mixed re¬
gime, in which the gentlemen form the senate and the senate occupies the
key position between the popular assembly and an elected or hereditary
monarch as head of the armed forces of society. There is a direct connec¬
tion between the notion of the mixed regime and modern republicanism.
Lest this be misunderstood, one must immediately stress the important
differences between the modem doctrine and its classic original. The mod¬
ern doctrine starts from the natural equality of all men, and it leads there¬
fore to the assertion that sovereignty belongs to the people; yet it under¬
stands that sovereignty in such a way as to guarantee the natural rights of
each; it achieves this result by distinguishing between the sovereign and
the government and by demanding that the fundamental governmental
powers be separated from one another. The spring of this regime was held
to be the desire of each to improve his material conditions. Accordingly the
commercial and industrial elite, rather than the landed gentry, pre¬
dominated.
The fully developed doctrine required that one man have one vote, that
the voting be secret, and that the right to vote be not abridged on account
of poverty, religion, or race. Governmental actions, on the other hand, are
to be open to public inspection to the highest degree possible, for govern¬
ment is only the representative of the people and responsible to the people.
The responsibility of the people, of the electors, does not permit of legal
definition and is therefore the most obvious crux of modern republicanism.
In the earlier stages the solution was sought in the religious education of
the people, in the education, based on the Bible, of everyone to regard
himself as responsible for his actions and for his thoughts to a God who
would judge him, for, in the words of Locke, rational ethics proper is as
much beyond the capacities of “day laborers and tradesmen, and spinsters
and dairy maids” as is mathematics. On the other hand, the same authority
advises the gentlemen of England to set their sons upon Puffendorfs Nat¬
ural Right “wherein (they) will be instructed in the natural rights of men,
and the origin and foundation of society, and the duties resulting from
thence.” Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education is addressed to
the gentlemen, rather than to “those of the meaner sort,” for if the gentle¬
men “are by their education once set right, they will quickly bring all the
rest into order.” For, we may suppose, the gentlemen are those called upon
to act as representatives of the people, and they are to be prepared for this
calling by a liberal education which is, above all, an education in “good
breeding.” Locke takes his models from the ancient Romans and Greeks,
and the liberal education which he recommends consists to some extent in
acquiring an easy familiarity with classical literature: “Latin I look upon as
absolutely necessary to a gentleman.” 2
Not a few points which Locke meant are brought out clearly in the
Federalist Papers. These writings reveal their connection with the classics
simply enough by presenting themselves as the work of one Publius. This
eminently sober work considers chiefly that diversity and inequality in the
faculties of men which shows itself in the acquisition of property, but it is
very far from being blind to the difference between business and govern¬
ment. According to Alexander Hamilton, the mechanics and manufac¬
turers “know that the merchant is their natural patron and friend,” their
natural representative, for the merchant possesses “those acquired endow¬
ments without which, in a deliberative assembly, the greatest natural abili¬
ties are for the most part useless.” Similarly, the wealthier landlords are the
natural representatives of the landed interest. The natural arbiter between
the landed and the moneyed interests will be “the man of the learned
professions,” for “the learned professions . . . truly form no distinct in¬
terest in society” and therefore are more likely than others to think of “the
general interests of the society.” It is true that in order to become a repre¬
sentative of the people, it sometimes suffices that one practice “with suc¬
cess the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried,” but these
deplorable cases are the exception, the rule being that the representatives
will be respectable landlords, merchants, and members of the learned pro¬
fessions. If the electorate is not depraved, there is a fair chance that it will
elect as its representatives for deliberation as well as for execution those
among the three groups of men “who possess most wisdom to discern, and
most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society,” or those who are
most outstanding by ‘ merits and talents,” by “ability and virtue.” 3
Under the most favorable conditions, the men who will hold the balance
of power will then be the men of the learned professions. In the best case,
Hamilton’s republic will be ruled by the men of the learned professions.

This reminds one of the rule of the philosophers, but only reminds one of
it. Will the men of the learned professions at least be men of liberal educa¬
tion? It is probable that the men of the learned professions will chiefly be
lawyers. No one ever had a greater respect for law and hence for lawyers
than Edmund Burke: “God forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory
to that profession, which is another priesthood, administrating the rites of
sacred justice.” Yet he felt compelled to describe the preponderance of
lawyers in the national counsels as “mischievous.” “Law ... is, in my
opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences; a science which
does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other
kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very hap¬
pily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same propor¬
tion.” For to speak “legally and constitutionally” is not the same as to
speak “prudently.” “Legislators ought to do what lawyers cannot; for they
have no other rules to bind them, but the great principles of reason and
equity, and the general sense of mankind.” 4 The liberalization of the
mind obviously requires understanding of “the great principles of reason
and equity,” which for Burke are the same thing as the natural law.
But it is not necessary to dwell on this particular shortcoming from
which representative government might suffer. Two generations after
Burke, John Stuart Mill took up the question concerning the relation of
representative government and liberal education. One does not exaggerate
too much by saying that he took up these two subjects in entire separation
from each other. His Inaugural Address at St. Andrews deals with liberal
education as “the education of all who are not obliged by their circum¬
stances to discontinue their scholastic studies at a very early age,” not to
say the education of “the favorites of nature and fortune.” That speech
contains a number of observations which will require our consideration and
reconsideration. Mill traces the “superiority” of classical literature “for
purposes of education” to the fact that that literature transmits to us “the
wisdom of life”: “In cultivating . . . the ancient languages as our best lit¬
erary education, we are all the while laying an admirable foundation for
ethical and philosophical culture.” Even more admirable than “the sub¬
stance” is “the form” of treatment: “It must be remembered that they had
more time and that they wrote chiefly for a select class possessed of lei¬
sure,” whereas we “write in a hurry for people who read in a hurry.” The
classics used “the right words in the right places” or, which means the
same thing, they were not “prolix.” 6 But liberal education has very little
effect on the “miscellaneous assembly” which is the legal sovereign and
which is frequently ruled by men who have no qualification for legislation
except “a fluent tongue, and a faculty of getting elected by a constituency.”
To secure “the intellectual qualifications desirable in representatives,” Mill
thought, there is no other mode than proportional representation as de¬

vised by Hare and Fawcett, a scheme which in his opinion is of “perfect
feasibility" and possesses “transcendent advantages.”
The natural tendency of representative government, as of modem civiliza¬

tion, is toward collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all
reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the
principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest
level of instruction in the community. . . . It is an admitted fact that in the
American democracy, which is constructed on this faulty model, the highly-
cultivated members of the community, except such of them as are willing
to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment, and become the
servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, do not ever offer them¬
selves for Congress or State legislatures, so certain is it that they would have
no chance of being returned. Had a plan like Mr. Hare’s by good fortune
suggested itself to the enlightened and patriotic founders of the American
Republic, the Federal and State Assemblies would have contained many of
those distinguished men, and democracy would have been spared its great¬
est reproach and one of its most formidable evils.
Only proportional representation which guarantees or at least does not

exclude the proper representation of the best part of society in the govern¬
ment will transform “the falsely called democracies which now prevail, and
from which the current idea of democracy is exclusively derived” into “the
only true type of democracy,” into democracy as originally meant.
For reasons which are not all bad, Mill’s remedy has come to be regarded
as insufficient, not to say worthless. Perhaps it was a certain awareness of
this which induced him to look for relief in another part of the body poli¬
tic. From the fact that the representative assemblies are not necessarily “a
selection of the greatest political minds of the country,” he drew the con¬
clusion that for “the skilled legislation and administration” one must se¬
cure “under strict responsibility to the nation, the acquired knowledge and
practiced intelligence of a specially trained and experienced Few.” 8 Mill
appears to suggest that with the growth and maturity of democracy, the
institutional seat of public-spirited intelligence could and should be sought
in the high and middle echelons of the appointed officials. This hope pre¬
supposes that the bureaucracy can be transformed into a civil service prop¬
erly so called, the specific difference between the bureaucrat and the civil
servant being that the civil servant is a liberally educated man whose lib¬
eral education affects him decisively in the performance of his duties.
Permit me to summarize the preceding argument. In the light of the
original conception of modern republicanism, our present predicament
appears to be caused by the decay of religious education of the people and
by the decay of liberal education of the representatives of the people. By
the decay of religious education I mean more than the fact that a very large
part of the people no longer receive any religious education, although it is

not necessary on the present occasion to think beyond that fact. The ques¬
tion as to whether religious education can be restored to its pristine power
by the means at our disposal is beyond the scope of this year’s Arden
House Institute. Still, I cannot help stating to you these questions: Is our
present concern with liberal education of adults, our present expectation
from such liberal education, not due to the void created by the decay of
religious education? Is such liberal education meant to perform the func¬
tion formerly performed by religious education? Can liberal education per¬
form that function? It is certainly easier to discuss the other side of our
predicament—the predicament caused by the decay of liberal education of
the governors. Following Mill’s suggestion, we would have to consider
whether and to what extent the education of the future civil servants can
and should be improved, or in other words whether the present form of
their education is libera] education in a tolerably strict sense. If it is not,
one would have to raise the broader question whether the present colleges
and universities supply such a liberal education and whether they can be
reformed. It is more modest, more pertinent, and more practical to give
thought to some necessary reforms of the teaching in the Departments of
Political Science and perhaps also in the Law Schools. The changes I have
in mind are less in the subjects taught than in the emphasis and in the
approach: whatever broadens and deepens the understanding should be
more encouraged than what in the best case cannot as such produce more
than narrow and unprincipled efficiency.
No one, I trust, will misunderstand the preceding remarks so as to im¬
pute to me the ridiculous assertion that education has ceased to be a public
or political power. One must say, however, that a new type of education or
a new orientation of education has come to predominate. Just as liberal
education in its original sense was supported by classical philosophy, so the
new education derives its support, if not its being, from modern philoso¬
phy. According to classical philosophy the end of the philosophers is
radically different from the end or ends actually pursued by the nonphi¬
losophers. Modern philosophy comes into being when the end of philoso¬
phy is identified with the end which is capable of being actually pursued by
all men. More precisely, philosophy is now asserted to be essentially subser¬
vient to the end which is capable of being actually pursued by all men. We
have suggested that the ultimate justification for the distinction between
gentlemen and nongentlemen is the distinction between philosophers and
nonphilosophers. If this is true, it follows that by causing the purpose of
the philosophers, or more generally the purpose which essentially tran¬
scends society, to collapse into the purpose of the nonphilosophers, one
causes the purpose of the gentlemen to collapse into the purpose of the
nongentlemen. In this respect, the modern conception of philosophy is
fundamentally democratic. The end of philosophy is now no longer what
one may call disinterested contemplation of the eternal, but the relief of
man’s estate. Philosophy thus understood could be presented with some
plausibility as inspired by biblical charity, and accordingly philosophy in
the classic sense could be disparaged as pagan and as sustained by sinful
pride. One may doubt whether the claim to biblical inspiration was justi¬
fied and even whether it was always raised in entire sincerity. However this
may be, it is conducive to greater clarity, and at the same time in agree¬
ment with the spirit of the modern conception, to say that the moderns
opposed a “realistic,” earthly, not to say pedestrian conception to the
“idealistic,” heavenly, not to say visionary conception of the classics. Phi¬
losophy or science was no longer an end in itself, but in the service of
human power, of a power to be used for making human life longer, health¬
ier, and more abundant. The economy of scarcity, which is the tacit pre¬
supposition of all earlier social thought, was to be replaced by an economy
of plenty. The radical distinction between science and manual labor was to
be replaced by the smooth co-operation of the scientist and the engineer.
According to the original conception, the men in control of this stupen¬
dous enterprise were the philosopher-scientists. Everything was to be done
by them for the people, but, as it were, nothing by the people. For the
people were, to begin with, rather distrustful of the new gifts from the new
sort of sorcerers, for they remembered the commandment, “Thou shalt not
suffer a sorcerer to live.” In order to become the willing recipients of the
new gifts, the people had to be enlightened. This enlightenment is the core
of the new education. It is the same as the diffusion or popularization of
the new science. The addressees of the popularized science were in the first
stage countesses and duchesses, rather than spinsters and dairymaids, and
popularized science often surpassed science proper in elegance and charm
of diction. But the first step entailed all the further steps which were taken
in due order. The enlightenment was destined to become universal en¬
lightenment. It appeared that the difference of natural gifts did not have
the importance which the tradition had ascribed to it; method proved to
be the great equalizer of naturally unequal minds. While invention or dis¬
covery continued to remain the preserve of the few, the results could be
transmitted to all. The leaders in this great enterprise did not rely entirely
on the effects of formal education for weaning men away from concern
with the bliss of the next world to work for happiness in this. What study
did not do, and perhaps could not do, trade did: immensely facilitated and
encouraged by the new inventions and discoveries, trade which unites all
peoples, took precedence over religion, which divides the peoples.
But what was to be done to moral education? The identification of the
end of the gentlemen with the end of the nongentlemen meant that the
understanding of virtue as choiceworthy for its own sake gave way to an
instrumental understanding of virtue: honesty is nothing but the best
policy, the policy most conducive to commodious living or comfortable self-
preservation. Virtue took on a narrow meaning, with the final result that
the word “virtue" fell into desuetude. There was no longer a need for a
genuine conversion from the premoral if not immoral concern with worldly
goods to the concern with the goodness of the soul, but only for the calcu¬
lating transition from unenlightened to enlightened self-interest. Yet even
this was not entirely necessary. It was thought that at least the majority of
men will act sensibly and well if the alternative will be made unprofitable
by the right kind of institution, political and economic. The devising of the
right kind of institutions and their implementation came to be regarded as
more important than the formation of character by liberal education.
Yet let us not for one moment forget the other side of the picture. It is a
demand of justice that there should be a reasonable correspondence be¬
tween the social hierarchy and the natural hierarchy. The lack of such a
correspondence in the old scheme was defended by the fundamental fact
of scarcity. With the increasing abundance it became increasingly possible
to see and to admit the element of hypocrisy which had entered into the
traditional notion of aristocracy; the existing aristocracies proved to be oli¬
garchies, rather than aristocracies. In other words it became increasingly
easy to argue from the premise that natural inequality has very little to do
with social inequality, that practically or politically speaking one may safely
assume that all men are by nature equal, that all men have the same natu¬
ral rights, provided one uses this rule of thumb as the major premise for
reaching the conclusion that everyone should be given the same opportu¬
nity as everyone else: natural inequality has its rightful place in the use,
nonuse, or abuse of opportunity in the race as distinguished from at the
start. Thus it became possible to abolish many injustices or at least many
things which had become injustices. Thus was ushered in the age of toler¬
ance. Humanity, which was formerly rather the virtue appropriate in one’s
dealings with one’s inferiors—with the underdog—became the crowning
virtue. Goodness became identical with compassion.
Originally the philosopher-scientist was thought to be in control of the
progressive enterprise. Since he had no power, he had to work through
the princes. The control was then in fact in the hands of the princes, if of
enlightened princes. But with the progress of enlightenment, the tutelage
of the princes was no longer needed. Power could be entrusted to the peo¬
ple. It is true that the people did not always listen to the philosopher-
scientists. But apart from the fact that the same was true of princes, society
came to take on such a character that it was more and more compelled to
listen to the philosopher-scientists if it desired to survive. Still there re¬
mained a lag between the enlightenment coming from above and the way
in which the people exercised its freedom. One may even speak of a race:
will the people come into full possession of its freedom before it has be¬
come enlightened, and if so, what will it do with its freedom and even with
the imperfect enlightenment which it will already have received? An ap-
parent solution was found through an apparent revolt against the enlight¬
enment and through a genuine revolt against enlightened despotism. It
was said that every man has the right to political freedom, to being a
member of the sovereign, by virtue of the dignity which every man has as
man—the dignity of a moral being. The only thing which can be held to
be unqualifiedly good is not the contemplation of the eternal, not the cul¬
tivation of the mind, to say nothing of good breeding, but a good inten¬
tion, and of good intentions everyone is as capable as everyone else, wholly
independently of education. Accordingly, the uneducated could even ap¬
pear to have an advantage over the educated: the voice of nature or of the
moral law speaks in them perhaps more clearly and more decidedly than in
the sophisticated who may have sophisticated away their conscience. This
belief is not the only starting point and perhaps not the best starting point,
but it is for us now the most convenient starting point for understanding
the assertion which was made at that moment: the assertion that virtue is
the principle of democracy and only of democracy. One conclusion from
this assertion was Jacobin terror which punished not only actions and
speeches but intentions as well. Another conclusion was that one must re¬
spect every man merely because he is a man, regardless of how he uses his
will or his freedom, and this respect must be implemented by full political
rights for everyone who is not technically criminal or insane, regardless of
whether he is mature for the exercise of those rights or not. That reasoning
reminds one of a reasoning which was immortalized by Locke’s criticism
and which led to the conclusion that one may indeed behead a tyrannical
king, but only with reverence for that king. It remains then at the race be¬
tween the political freedom below and the enlightenment coming from
above.
Hitherto I have spoken of the philosopher-scientist. That is to say, I
have pretended that the original conception, the seventeenth-century con¬
ception, has retained its force. But in the meantime philosophy and science
have became divorced: a philosopher need not be a scientist, and a scien¬
tist need not be a philosopher. Only the title Ph.D. is left as a reminder of
the past. Of the two henceforth divorced faculties of the mind, science has
acquired supremacy; science is the only authority in our age of which one
can say that it enjoys universal recognition. This science has no longer any
essential connection with wisdom. It is a mere accident if a scientist, even a
great scientist, happens to be a wise man politically or privately. Instead of
the fruitful and ennobling tension between religious education and liberal
education, we now see the tension between the ethos of democracy and the
ethos of technocracy. During the last seventy years, it has become increas¬
ingly the accepted opinion that there is no possibility of scientific and
hence rational knowledge of “values,” that is, that science or reason is in¬
competent to distinguish between good and evil ends. It would be unfair
to deny that, thanks to the survival of utilitarian habits, scientists in gen-
eral and social scientists in particular still take it for granted in many cases
that health, a reasonably long life, and prosperity are good things and that
science must find means for securing or procuring them. But these ends
can no longer claim the evidence which they once possessed; they appear
now to be posited by certain desires which are not “objectively” superior to
the opposite desires. Since science is then unable to justify the ends for
which it seeks the means, it is in practice compelled to satisfy the ends
which are sought by its customers, by the society to which the individual
scientist happens to belong and hence in many cases by the mass. We must
disregard here the older traditions which fortunately still retain some of
their former power; we must disregard them because their power is
more and more corroded as time goes on. If we look then only at what is
peculiar to our age or characteristic of our age, we see hardly more than the
interplay of mass taste with high-grade but strictly speaking unprincipled
efficiency. The technicians are, if not responsible, at any rate responsive to
the demands of the mass; but a mass as mass cannot be responsible to any¬
one or to anything for anything. It is in this situation that we here, and
others in the country, raise the question concerning liberal education and
responsibility.
In this situation the insufficiently educated are bound to have an unrea¬
sonably strong influence on education—on the determination of both the
ends and the means of education. Furthermore, the very progress of sci¬
ence leads to an ever increasing specialization, with the result that a man’s
respectability becomes dependent on his being a specialist. Scientific edu¬
cation is in danger of losing its value for the broadening and the deepening
of the human being. The only universal science which is possible on this
basis—logic or methodology—becomes itself an affair of and for techni¬
cians. The remedy for specialization is therefore sought in a new kind of
universalism—a universalism which has been rendered almost inevitable by
the extension of our spatial and temporal horizons. We are trying to expel
the narrowness of specialization by the superficiality of such things as gen¬
eral civilization courses or by what has aptly been compared to the unend¬
ing cinema, as distinguished from a picture gallery, of the history of all na¬
tions in all respects: economic, scientific, artistic, religious, and political.
The gigantic spectacle thus provided is in the best case exciting and enter¬
taining; it is not instructive and educating. A hundred pages—no, ten
pages—of Herodotus introduce us immeasurably better into the mysterious
unity of oneness and variety in human things than many volumes written
in the spirit predominant in our age. Besides, human excellence or virtue
can no longer be regarded as the perfection of human nature toward which
man is by nature inclined or which is the goal of his eros. Since “values”
are regarded as in fact conventional, the place of moral education is taken
by conditioning, or more precisely by conditioning through symbols verbal
and other, or by adjustment to the society in question.
What then are the prospects for liberal education within mass democ¬
racy? What are the prospects for the liberally educated to become again a
power in democracy? We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy
precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy. While we are not
permitted to remain silent on the dangers to which democracy exposes it¬
self as well as human excellence, we cannot forget the obvious fact that by
giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for
human excellence. No one prevents us from cultivating our garden or from
setting up outposts which may come to be regarded by many citizens as
salutary to the republic and as deserving of giving to it its tone. Needless to
say, the utmost exertion is the necessary, although by no means the suffi¬
cient, condition for success. For “men can always hope and never need to
give up, in whatever fortune and in whatever travail they find themselves.”
We are indeed compelled to be specialists, but we can try to specialize in
the most weighty matters or, to speak more simply and more nobly, in the
one thing needful. As matters stand, we can expect more immediate help
from the humanities rightly understood than from the sciences, from the
spirit of perceptivity and delicacy than from the spirit of geometry. If I am
not mistaken, this is the reason why liberal education is now becoming
almost synonymous with the reading in common of the Great Books. No
better beginning could have been made.
We must not expect that liberal education can ever become universal
education. It will always remain the obligation and the privilege of a
minority. Nor can we expect that the liberally educated will become a po¬
litical power in their own right. For we cannot expect that liberal educa¬
tion will lead all who benefit from it to understand their civic responsibility
in the same way or to agree politically. Karl Marx, the father of commu¬
nism, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the stepgrandfather of fascism, were liber¬
ally educated on a level to which we cannot even hope to aspire. But per¬
haps one can say that their grandiose failures make it easier for us who
have experienced those failures to understand again the old saying that
wisdom cannot be separated from moderation and hence to understand
that wisdom requires unhesitating loyalty to a decent constitution and even
to the cause of constitutionalism. Moderation will protect us against the
twin dangers of visionary expectations from politics and unmanly contempt
for politics. Thus it may again become true that all liberally educated men
will be politically moderate men. It is in this way that the liberally edu¬
cated may again receive a hearing even in the market place.
No deliberation about remedies for our ills can be of any value if it is not
preceded by an honest diagnosis—by a diagnosis falsified neither by un¬
founded hopes nor by fear of the powers that be. We must realize that we
must hope almost against hope. I say this, abstracting entirely from the
dangers threatening us at the hands of a barbaric and cruel, narrow-minded
and cunning foreign enemy who is kept in check, if he is kept in check.
only by the justified fear that whatever would bury us would bury him too.
In thinking of remedies we may be compelled to rest satisfied with pallia¬
tives. But we must not mistake palliatives for cures. We must remember
that liberal education for adults is not merely an act of justice to those who
were in their youth deprived through their poverty of an education for
which they are fitted by nature. Liberal education of adults must now also
compensate for the defects of an education which is liberal only in name or
by courtesy. Last but not least, liberal education is concerned with the
souls of men and therefore has little or no use for machines. If it becomes
a machine or an industry, it becomes undistinguishable from the entertain¬
ment industry unless in respect to income and publicity, to tinsel and
glamour. But liberal education consists in learning to listen to still and
small voices and therefore in becoming deaf to lojid-speakers. Liberal edu¬
cation seeks light and therefore shuns the limelight.
NOTES
1. Cf. Crito 49d 2-5.

2. Ep. Ded., pp. 93-94, 164, 186.
3. Nos. 10, 35, 36, 55, 57, 62, 68.
4. The Works of Edmund Burke (Bohn Standard Library), I 407, II 7 317-318
V 295.
5. James and John Stuart Mill, On Education, ed. by F. A. Cavenagh (Cambridge:
University Press, 1931), pp. 151-157.
6. Considerations on Representative Government (London: Routledge s.d ) pp 93
95, 101-102, 133-140, 155.
/ The Liberalism of Classical
Political Philosophy
Classical political philosophy—the political philosophy originated by Soc¬

rates and elaborated by Plato and by Aristotle—is today generally rejected
as obsolete. The difference between, not to say the mutual incompatibility
of, the two grounds on which it is rejected corresponds to the difference
between the two schools of thought which predominate in our age,
namely, positivism and existentialism. Positivism rejects classical political
philosophy with a view to its mode as unscientific and with a view to its
substance as undemocratic. There is a tension between these grounds, for,
according to positivism, science is incapable of validating any value judg¬
ment, and therefore science can never reject a doctrine because it is un¬
democratic. But "the heart has its reasons which reason does not know,”
and not indeed positivism but many positivists possess a heart. Moreover
there is an affinity between present-day positivism and sympathy for a cer¬
tain kind of democracy; that affinity is due to the broad, not merely
methodological, context out of which positivism emerged or to the hidden
premises of positivism which positivism is unable to articulate because it is
constitutionally unable to conceive of itself as a problem. Positivism may be
said to be more dogmatic than any other position of which we have rec¬
ords. Positivism can achieve this triumph because it is able to present itself
as very skeptical; it is that manifestation of dogmatism based on skepticism
in which the skepticism completely conceals the dogmatism from its ad¬
herents. It is the latest form and it may very well be the last form in which
modern rationalism appears; it is that form in which the crisis of modern
rationalism becomes almost obvious to everyone. Once it becomes obvious
to a man, he has already abandoned positivism, and if he adheres to the
modern premises, he has no choice but to turn to existentialism.
Existentialism faces the situation with which positivism is confronted
but does not grasp: the fact that reason has become radically problematic.
26
The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy ( 27
According to positivism, the first premises are not evident and necessary,
but either purely factual or else conventional. According to existentialism,
they are in a sense necessary, but they are certainly not evident: all think¬
ing rests on unevident but nonarbitrary premises. Man is in the grip of
powers which he cannot master or comprehend, and these powers reveal
themselves differently in different historical epochs. Hence classical politi¬
cal philosophy is to be rejected as unhistorical or rationalistic. It was ra¬
tionalistic because it denied the fundamental dependence of reason on lan¬
guage, which is always this or that language, the language of a historical
community, of a community which has not been made, but has grown.
Classical political philosophy could not give to itself an account of its own
essential Greekness. Furthermore, by denying the dependence of man’s
thought on powers which he cannot comprehend, classical political philos¬
ophy was irreligious. It denied indeed the possibility of an areligious civil
society, but it subordinated the religious to the political. For instance, in
the Republic, Plato reduces the sacred to the useful; when Aristotle says
that the city is natural, he implies that it is not sacred, like the sacred Troy
in Homer; he reveals the precarious status of religion in his scheme by
enumerating the concern with the divine in the “fifth and first” place: only
the citizens who are too old for political activity ought to become priests.
Eric A. Havelock in his book The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics 1
approaches classical political philosophy from the positivistic point of view.
The doctrine to which he adheres is, however, a somewhat obsolete version
of positivism. Positivist study of society, as he understands it, is “descrip¬
tive” and opposed to “judgmental evaluation” (120, 368), but this does
not prevent his siding with those who understand “History as Progress.”
The social scientist cannot speak of progress unless value judgments can be
objective. The up-to-date or consistent positivist will therefore refrain from
speaking of progress, and instead speak of change. Similarly Havelock ap¬
pears to accept the distinction between primitive men or savages and civi¬
lized men (186-188), whereas the consistent positivist will speak not of
savages, but of preliterate men and assert that preliterate men have “civili¬
zations” or “cultures” neither superior nor inferior to those of literate men.
It would be wrong to believe that the up-to-date positivist is entirely con¬
sistent or that his careful avoidance of “evaluative” terms is entirely due to
his methodological puritanism; his heart tells him that once one admits the
inequality of “cultures,” one may not be able to condemn colonialism on
moral grounds. Havelock is therefore perhaps only more intelligent or more
frank than the consistent positivists when he describes his position as lib¬
eral, rather than as positivist. Yet this does not entirely dispose of the diffi¬
culty. “For the liberal man is to be taken as you find him and therefore his
present political institutions are to be taken as given also.” This means
that here and now the liberals will take American democracy as given and
will then “concentrate empirically and descriptively on this kind of politi-
cal mechanism.” This is a fair description of positivistic political science at

its best. Yet Havelock praises the same liberals for writing “in defence of
democracy” (cf. 123 and 155).
What then is a liberal? Was a German social scientist who in 1939 took
“the present political institutions as given” and subjected them to “empiri¬
cal analysis” for this reason by itself a liberal? If so, then a liberal is not a
man of strong moral or political convictions, and this does not seem to
agree with the common meaning of the word. Yet from Havelock’s Preface
it appears that the liberal regards all political and moral convictions as
“negotiable” because he is extremely tolerant. Havelock applies the im¬
plicit maxim of conduct to the relations between the United States and
Soviet Russia today. For all one can know from his book, he would have
given the same advice during the conflict between the Western democra¬
cies and the fascist regimes at the time of the Munich conference. At any
rate, he does not seem to have given thought to the question of whether
Tolerance can remain tolerant when confronted with unqualified Intoler¬
ance or whether one must not fall back in the end on “moral convictions”
which are not “negotiable.” In almost all these points Havelock is liberal in
the sense in which the word is commonly used here and now.
Originally, a liberal was a man who behaved in a manner becoming a
free man as distinguished from a slave. According to the classic analysis,
liberality is a virtue concerned with the use of wealth and therefore espe¬
cially with giving: the liberal man gives gladly of his own in the right cir¬
cumstances because it is noble to do so, and not from calculation; hence it
is not easy for him to become or to remain rich; liberality is less opposed to
prodigality than to meanness (greed as well as niggardliness). It is easy to
see how this narrow meaning of liberality emerged out of the broad mean¬
ing. In everyday life, which is life in peace, the most common opportuni¬
ties for showing whether one has the character of a free man or of a slave
are afforded by one’s dealings with one’s possessions; most men honor
wealth and show therewith that they are slaves of wealth; the man who
behaves in a manner becoming a free man comes to sight primarily as a
liberal man in the sense articulated by Aristotle. He knows that certain ac¬
tivities and hence in particular certain sciences and arts—the liberal sci¬
ences and arts—are choiceworthy for their own sake, regardless of their
utility for the satisfaction of the lower kind of needs. He prefers the goods
of the soul to the goods of the body. Liberality is then only one aspect of,
not to say one name for, human excellence or being honorable or decent.
The liberal man on the highest level esteems most highly the mind and its
excellence and is aware of the fact that man at his best is autonomous or
not subject to any authority, while in every other respect he is subject to
authority which, in order to deserve respect, or to be truly authority, must
be a reflection through a dimming medium of what is simply the highest.
The liberal man cannot be a subject to a tyrant or to a master, and for
The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy / 29
almost all practical purposes he will be a republican. Classical political

philosophy was liberal in the original sense.
It is not necessary for our present purpose to dwell on the successive
changes which the word “liberal” has undergone since the early nineteenth
century. Those changes follow the substitution of modern political phi¬
losophy—the ground as well as the consequence of modern natural
science—for classical political philosophy. Before the substitution was
completed, “liberality” sometimes meant lack of restraint, not to say pro¬
fanity. By virtue of the more recent changes, “liberal” has come to mean
almost the opposite of what it meant originally; the original meaning has
almost vanished from “common sense.” To quote Havelock, “It is of
course assumed that by any common sense definition of the word liberal as
it is applied in politics Plato is not a liberal thinker” (19). Havelock's
understanding of liberalism hardly differs in either substance or mode from
what is now the common-sense understanding. Liberalism, as he under¬
stands it, puts a greater stress on liberty than on authority; it regards au¬
thority as derivative solely from society, and society as spontaneous or
automatic rather than as established by man; it denies the existence of any
fixed norms: norms are responses to needs and change with the needs; the
change of the needs and of the responses to them has a pattern: there is a
historical process which is progressive without, however, tending toward an
end or a peak, or which is “piece meal” (123); liberalism conceives of the
historical process as a continuation of the evolutionary process; it is histori¬
cal because it regards the human characteristics as acquired and not as
given; it is optimistic and radical; it is “a genuine humanism which is not
guilt-ridden”; it is democratic and egalitarian; accordingly it traces the his¬
torical changes and hence morality less to outstanding men than to groups
and their pressures which “take concrete form in the educational activity
of the members of the group”; it is in full sympathy with technological so¬
ciety and an international commercial system; it is empirical and prag¬
matic; last but not least it is naturalist or scientific, that is, nontheological
and nonmetaphysical.
Havelock’s understanding of liberalism differs from the vulgar under¬
standing in two points. In the first place he regards it as necessary to look
for the historical roots of liberalism in Greek antiquity. According to the
common view, the sources of liberalism are found in writings like Locke’s
Second Treatise of Government and the Declaration of Independence.
Havelock, however, feels that these writings convey a teaching which is not
strictly speaking liberal since it is based on the assumption of natural right,
that is, of an absolute; that teaching is therefore still too Platonic to be
liberal (15-18). Pure liberalism exists either after the complete expulsion
of Platonism or else before its emergence. As we would put it, there is a
kinship between modern historicism and ancient conventionalism (the
view that all right is conventional or no right is natural). Havelock con-
tends that a pure liberalism existed in pre-Platonic or pre-Socratic thought;

while implying “a brooding sense of natural justice among men” (377), it
rejected natural justice. His historical opinion may be said to find its com¬
plete expression in the contention that whereas Plato and Aristotle as well
as the Old Testament are responsible for the authoritarian strand in West¬
ern thought, the New Testament as well as certain Greek sophists, materi¬
alists, agnostics, or atheists are responsible for the liberal strand in it (259,
376). One might find it strange that a view according to which moral con¬
victions are negotiable is suggested to be somehow in harmony with the
New Testament. But perhaps Havelock thought chiefly of the New
Testament prohibition or counsel against resisting evil and the failure of a
pupil of Gorgias, as distinguished from a pupil of Socrates, to resort to the
punishment of evildoers. Be this as it may, one is tempted to describe
Havelock's liberalism as a classical scholar’s Christian liberalism of a certain
kind. But one must resist this temptation since Havelock deplores the
“basic split between the moral or ideal and the expedient or selfish” which
developed under “Christian other-worldly influences” (365, 14), unless
one assumes that according to him “primitive Christianity” (18) was not
otherworldly. The issue would seem to be settled by his remark that “reli¬
gion, however humane, is always intolerant of purely secular thinking”
(161).
There was a time when we were exposed to the opinion that Plato and
Aristotle were related to the sophists as the German idealists were to the
theorists of the French Revolution. This opinion could be shared by both
friends and enemies of the principles of 1789. Havelock’s contention is an
up-to-date and therefore simplified version of that opinion. By speaking
constantly of “the Greek liberals,” he suggests that in Greek antiquity the
battle lines were drawn in the same way as in modern times: liberals were
up in arms against the orthodox and the authoritarians (18, 73). He explic¬
itly contends that there existed in ancient Greece a “liberal-historical
view”—a view which had become “a completed structure” by the time of
Aristotle—and that the thinkers who set it forth combined in a nonacci¬
dental manner a nontheological and nonmetaphysical anthropology or
philosophy of history with faith in the common man or at any rate in
democracy (11, 18, 32, 155). Everyone, we believe, grants or has granted
that there were men prior to Plato who were “materialists” and at the
same time asserted that the universe has come into being opera sine divom
in any sense of the word “god.” These men asserted therefore that man
and all other living beings have come into being out of inanimate beings
and through inanimate beings and that man’s beginnings were poor and
brutish; that, compared with its beginnings, human life as it is now pre¬
supposes a progress achieved through human exertions and human inven¬
tions; and that morality—the right and the noble—is of merely human
origin. This doctrine or set of doctrines is, however, only the necessary but
by no means the sufficient condition of liberalism. It is indeed common to

present-day liberalism and its ancient equivalent. Yet once when speaking
of a “ ‘Darwinian’ and ‘behaviorist’ ” ancient doctrine, Havelock says that
in employing these adjectives he uses “a very loose analogy” (34). The
mere mention of Darwinism might have sufficed to reveal the precarious
character of the connection between evolutionism and liberalism. Above
all, we are entitled to expect of a man who does not tire of speaking of
science that he make abundantly clear the reason why the analogy is loose,
or in other words that he make clear the fundamental difference between
modern liberalism and its ancient equivalent. Havelock disappoints this ex¬
pectation. He regards it as a thesis characteristic of liberals that “man is an
animal” or “man is merely an animal” or “man is merely a special sort of
an animal' (107-110), but, as Aristotle’s definition of man sufficiently
shows, this thesis cannot be characteristic of liberalism. Liberalism and
nonliberalism begin to differ when the nonliberals raise the question re¬
garding the significance of man’s being “a special sort of animal.” Let man
be a mixture of the elements like any other animal, yet the elements are
mixed in him from the beginning as they are in no other animal: man
alone can acquire “the factors which distinguish him presently” from the
other animals (cf. 75-76); he is the only animal which can look at the
universe or look up to it; this necessary consequence of his “speciality” can
easily lead to the nonliberal conclusion that the distinctly human life is the
life devoted to contemplation as distinguished from the life of action or of
production. Furthermore, if the universe has come into being, it will perish
again, and this coming into being and perishing has taken place and will
take place infinitely often; there were and will be infinitely many universes
succeeding one another.
Here the question arises as to whether there can be a universe without
man: is man’s being accidental to the universe, to any universe? In other
words, is the state of things prior to the emergence of man and the other
animals one state of the universe equal in rank to the state after their
emergence, or are the two states fundamentally different from each other
as chaos and kosmos? The liberals assert that man’s being is accidental to
the universe and that chaos and kosmos are only two different states of the
universe. But did their ancient predecessors—“the Greek anthropologists”
—agree with them? Besides, just as the coming into being of the universe is
succeeded by its perishing, the coming into being of civilization is suc¬
ceeded by its decay: “the historical process” is not simply progressive but
cyclical. As everyone knows, this does not affect the “flamboyant opti¬
mism” (69) of the liberals, but it may have affected their Greek predeces¬
sors; it may have led them to attach less importance to activity contribut¬
ing to that progress of social institutions which is necessarily succeeded by
their decay than to the understanding of the permanent grounds or charac¬
ter of the process or to the understanding of the whole within which the
process takes place and which limits the progress (cf. 253); this limit is not
set by man, and it surpasses everything man can bring about by his exer¬
tions and inventions; it is superhuman or divine. Moreover, one may grant
that progress is due entirely to man’s exertions and inventions and yet trace
progress primarily to rare and discontinuous acts of a few outstanding men;
"progressivism” is not necessarily identical with that "gradualism" which is
apparently essential to liberalism. Finally, liberalism is empirical or prag¬
matic; it is therefore unable to assert that the principle of causality (“noth¬
ing can come into being out of nothing and through nothing") is evidently
and necessarily true. On the other hand, it would seem that the Greek
anthropologists or rather "physiologists” did regard that principle as evi¬
dently true because they understood the relation of sense perception and
logos differently than do the liberals. It is no exaggeration to say that
Havelock never meets the issue of the possible fundamental difference be¬
tween the liberals and their Greek predecessors. For one cannot say that he
meets that issue by asserting that the Greeks who believed in progress
"may have retained this within the framework of a cosmic cycle” and that
"the issue as it affects a basic philosophy of human history and morals is
whether we at present are living in a regress or a progress” (405). It is ob¬
vious that this does not affect at all the considerations which have been
indicated. Besides, in order to prove that a given Greek thinker was a lib¬
eral, Havelock is now compelled to prove that the thinker in question
thought himself to live "in a progress.” Contrary to his inclination, he
cannot show this by showing that the thinker in question regarded his time
as superior to the barbaric beginnings, for any time prior to the final devas¬
tation is superior to the first age. Nor can he show it by showing that the
thinker in question believed himself to live at the peak of the process, for
this belief implies that there will be no further progress to speak of. All this
means that he cannot prove the existence of a single Greek liberal thinker.
Of one great obstacle to his undertaking Havelock is aware. To put it
conservatively, very little is known of the Greek liberals; at most only frag¬
ments of their writings and reports about their teachings as well as about
their deeds and sufferings survive. To overcome this difficulty, Havelock
must devise an appropriate procedure. He divides the bulk of his argument
into two parts, the first dealing with anthropology or philosophy of history
and the second with political doctrine. He subdivides the first part com¬
pletely and the second part to some extent in accordance with the require¬
ments of the subject matter. Liberalism being preceded by orthodoxy (73),
he presents first the orthodox or theological view, then the liberal or scien¬
tific view, and finally the compromise between the orthodox and the liberal
views which is in fact the metaphysical view (of Plato and Aristotle). He
thus tacitly replaces the Comtian scheme of the three stages by what would
seem to be a dialectical scheme which bodes as ill for the future of liberal¬
ism as did Comte’s. Given the great difficulty of interpreting fragments,
especially when “the surviving scraps are . . . tenuous’' (123), he wisely

begins with complete books in which the liberal doctrine is believed to be
embodied and only afterward turns to the fragments. But he does not take
the complete works as wholes; he uses them as quarries from which he re¬
moves without any ado the liberal gems which, it seems, are immediately
recognizable as such; if he is not confronted with fragments, he creates
fragments. Furthermore, four of the ten complete books used in the first
and basic part of his argument are poetic works, and poets are “not re¬
porters”; one is a history which stems from the first pre-Christian century
and which therefore is not obviously a good source of pre-Platonic thought
(64, 73); the others are dialogues of Plato, who also is “not a reporter,”
and Aristotle’s Politics. It would be petty to pay much attention to the fact
that, on occasion, Havelock does not hesitate to assert without evidence
that, in a given passage in which Plato does not claim to report, “Plato is
reporting” (181). For on the whole, Havelock is very distrustful of Plato’s
and Aristotle’s remarks about their predecessors. Hence it would seem that
he cannot reasonably follow any other procedure in reconstructing pre-
Platonic social science except to start from the complete prose works which
are indubitably pre-Platonic, viz. from Herodotus and Thucydides. Have¬
lock rejects this beginning apparently on the ground that Herodotus and
Thucydides are historians and not scientists or that their works contain
only “concrete observations” and not “generic schematizations” (405-
406). But may “concrete observations” not be based on general premises?
If a present-day historian of classical thought can know Bradley, Bentham,
Bosanquet, Darwin, Dewey, Freud, Green, Grotius, Hegel, Hobbes,
Hume, James, Kant, Leibniz, Locke, Machiavelli, Marx, Mill, Newton,
Rousseau, Spencer (see the Index of Havelock’s book), it is possible that
Herodotus and Thucydides had heard of one or the other Greek anthro¬
pologist and that a careful reading of their histories will bring to light the
“generic schematizations” which guided their “concrete observations.”
Havelock himself has occasional glimpses of this possibility (e.g. 414).
What seems to protect him against the pitfalls of his procedure is his
awareness that, at any rate as regards “the Elder Sophists,” the sources are
“imperfect and imprecise and the task of piecing them together to make a
coherent picture requires philological discipline, a good deal of finesse, and
also an exercise of over-all judgment which must be content to leave some
things unsettled” (157, 230). We shall have to consider whether his deed
corresponds to his speech, or whether he exhibits the virtues which he can¬
not help claiming to be indispensable to his enterprise.
Liberalism implies a philosophy of history. “History” does not mean in
this context a kind of inquiry or the outcome of an inquiry, but rather the
object of an inquiry or a “dimension of reality.” Since the Greek word
from which history is derived does not have the latter meaning, philologi¬
cal discipline would prevent one from ascribing to any Greek thinker a
philosophy of history, at least before one has laid the proper foundation for
such an ascription. Havelock thinks or acts differently. Since his authors do
not speak of history in the derivative sense of the term, he makes them
speak of it and thus transforms them into modern thinkers, if not directly
into liberals. For instance, he translates “becoming” or “all human things”
by “History” and he inserts “history,” with brackets or without them, into
the ancient sayings (62, 94, 108, 115).
The characteristic assertion of liberalism seems to be that man and
hence also morality is not “a fixed quantity”; that man’s nature and there¬
with morality are essentially changing; that this change constitutes History;
and that through History man has developed from most imperfect begin¬
nings into a civilized or humane being. The opponents of liberalism seem
to assert that man’s nature does not change, that morality is timeless or a
priori, and that man’s beginnings were perfect (27-29, 35, 40, 44-45).
But it is not clear, and it has not been made clear by Havelock, that there
is a necessary connection between the assertion that man’s nature does not
change and the assertion that man’s beginnings were perfect, that is, supe¬
rior to the present. The recollection, we do not say of Plato and Aristotle,
but merely of eighteenth-century progressivism would have dispelled the
confusion. Be this as it may, as is indicated by the titles of the pertinent
chapters in Havelock’s book, he is mainly concerned with the question re¬
garding the status of man in the beginning.
The preliberal or orthodox position must be understood by Havelock as
the belief that man’s beginnings were simply perfect, that man’s original
state was the garden of Eden or the golden age, a state in which men were
well provided for by God or gods and not in need of work and skills, and in
which nothing was required of them except childlike obedience: imperfec¬
tion or misery, and hence the need for work and the arts, arose through
man’s fault or guilt; but these merely human remedies are utterly insuffi¬
cient. The orthodox regard History as Regress. “The classic Greek state¬
ment of the Eden dream” occurs in Hesiod’s account of the golden age in
the Works and Days. According to Havelock, the comparison of the
golden age with the garden of Eden is not a loose analogy: “Hesiod’s nar¬
rative conveys the inevitable suggestion that Eden was lost through eating
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge” (36). Hesiod’s “famous account of
the five ages” contains “the story of three successive failures of three gen¬
erations of men” (37), of failures which culminate in the present, the
worst of all five ages. Havelock hears in Hesiod’s account “the tone of gen¬
uine social and moral critique.” Yet he cannot take him seriously: Hesiod’s
account of the fifth or present age “reads like the perennial and peevish
complaint of an ageing conservative whose hardening habits and faculties
cannot come to terms with youth or with changing conditions.” Accord¬
ingly, he apologizes for having “lingered over Plesiod” after having devoted
to him less than five pages, a considerable part of which is filled with a
mere enumeration of items mentioned by Hesiod (40).
Havelock suggests then that according to Hesiod man lost Eden through
his sin. Yet only three out of five successive races of men were “failures.”
The first and golden race was not a failure. There is no indication whatever
that it came to an end through man’s sin. The golden race lived under
Kronos; the next race, the silver race, was hidden away by Zeus; and the
three last races are explicitly said to have been “made” by Zeus. It would
seem then, as Havelock notes in a different context, that when Zeus “suc¬
ceeded to the throne of Kronos . . . human degeneration began” (53):
the destruction of the golden race was due to Zeus’s dethroning of Kronos.
Zeus apparently did not wish or was not able to make a golden race of his
own. It is, to say the least, not perfectly clear whether according to Hesiod
the failure of the silver, bronze, and iron races was not due in the last
analysis to Zeus’s whim or his defective workmanship, rather than to man’s
fault. “Hebrew analogies . . . can often mislead” (137). However, one of
the races made by Zeus, the fourth race, the race of the heroes or demi¬
gods, was by far superior to the three other races made or ruled by Zeus;
some of the men of the fourth race are so excellent that they are again
ruled by Kronos, if only after their death. Havelock does not explain why
Hesiod assigned to the demigods the place between the inferior bronze
race and the still more inferior iron race. When Plato adopted Hesiod’s
scheme in the Republic, he gave a reason why or intimated in what respect
the fourth race, or rather the fourth regime, is almost equal to the first
regime: the first regime is the rule of the philosophers, and the fourth re¬
gime is democracy, that is, the only regime apart from the first in which
philosophers can live or live freely (546 e-547 al, 557d 4, 558a8). For rea¬
sons which need not be stated, one cannot use the Platonic variation for
the understanding of the original. It is pertinent to say that according to
Hesiod the fifth or iron race is not necessarily the last race: the age suc¬
ceeding the iron age is likely to be superior to it or to the present age,
which itself is not at all deprived of every goodness (Works and Days
174-175, 179). Could Hesiod have thought that a more or less better race
is always succeeded by a more or less worse race which in its turn is always
succeeded by a more or less better race and so on until the age of Zeus (or
human life as we know it) comes to its end? On the basis of the evidence,
this suggestion is more “inevitable” than the accepted interpretation.
Under no circumstances is one entitled to say that Hesiod regarded “His¬
tory as Regress.”
How Hesiod’s account of the five races must be understood depends on
the context in which it occurs. As for its immediate context, it is the sec¬
ond of three stories; the first story is the account of Prometheus and
Pandora, and the third story is the tale of the hawk and the nightingale.
Havelock refers in a few words to the first story, in which work may be said
to be presented as a curse, but he does not say anything about the third
story, although it is very pertinent to the history of Greek liberalism. The
hawk said to the nightingale while he carried her high up in the clouds,
having gripped her fast with his talons: “He is a fool who tries to with¬
stand the stronger, for he will never vanquish him and he suffers pain be¬
sides the disgrace.” The king believes that he disposes entirely of the fate
of the singer, but the singer or the poet has a power of his own—a power
surpassing that of the king (Theogony 94-103). As for the broad context
of this story as well as of the story of the five races, it is the Works and
Days as a whole. The poem as a whole tells when and how the various
“works,” especially of farming, must be done and which “days” are propi¬
tious and which not for various purposes; the account of the works and the
days is preceded by exhortations to work as the only proper thing for just
men and as a blessing, by answers to the question as to why the gods
compel men to work, and by the praise of Zeus the king, the guardian of
justice who blesses the just and crushes the proud if he wills (W.D. 267—
273). There are, it seems, two ways of life: that of the unjust idlers and
that of the just who work, especially as farmers. Closer inspection shows
that there are at least three ways of life corresponding to the three kinds of
men: those who understand by themselves, those who listen to the former
and obey them, and those who understand neither by themselves nor by
listening to others. The man who understands by himself and therefore
can speak well and with understanding and is best of all is, in the highest
case, the singer. The singer as singer neither works nor is idle. His deeds
belong to the night, rather than to the “days.” Song transcends the pri¬
mary antithesis which must be transcended because of the ambiguity of
work: work is both a curse and a blessing. Toil is the brother of Forgetting
(Theogony 226-227), while the Muses are the daughters of Memory.
Song transcends the primary antithesis because its highest theme—Zeus—
transcends it.
Havelock is not concerned with the context of Hesiod’s stories of the
perfect beginning because he is too certain of his answers to all questions.
“An early agricultural economy” combined with “disillusionment with sex”
finds “wish fulfillment by projecting backwards”; and the “backward vi¬
sion” combines “with an a priori epistemology” (36, 40). A psychology
and a sociology derived from the observation of present-day Western man,
or rather a certain type of present-day Western men, take the place of the
authentic context and are used as the key to the character of men and soci¬
eties of the past in such a way that phenomena, which are not allowed to
exist by the “a priori epistemology” of these present-day pursuits, can never
be noticed. The circle, being a circle, is necessarily closed. But the mind is
closed too. The attempt is made to catch a profound and subtle thought in
the meshes of a thought of unsurpassed shallowness and crudity.
As our quotations have abundantly proved, Havelock takes it for granted

that the modern social scientist, but not Hesiod, understood what hap¬
pened in Hesiod or to Hesiod. As for the assertion that Hesiod had an
epistemology, it is not as preposterous as it sounds. Hesiod reflected on the
sources of his knowledge. His Works and Days derives from three different
sources: his experience, what people say, and what the Muses taught him.
For instance, what he teaches regarding farming is derived from his experi¬
ence, but since he had little experience of sailing, his teaching regarding
sailing depends very much on instruction by the Muses (W.D. 646-662,
803). Instruction by the Muses seems to be indispensable for knowledge of
the things that shall be and of the things that were in the olden times as
well as of the gods who are always; that is, for knowledge hidden from
man, who has experience only of what is now. The !Muses, however, go
abroad by night, veiled in thick mist. Or, as they said to Hesiod, they know
how to say many lies which resemble the truth, but they also know, when
they will, how to sing true things (Theogony 9-10, 27-28). As far’as we
can tell, the Muses did not always tell Hesiod which of their tales were true
and which were not. Certainly Hesiod does not tell us which of his tales
are true and which are not. The farmer, not the singer, must strip when
doing his work (W.D. 391-392). Hesiod’s teaching is ambiguous accord¬
ing to his knowledge, not to say according to his intention. One form in
which the ambiguity appears is self-contradiction. Seeing that the Muses
are the daughters of Zeus, we wonder whether they instructed the men of
the age of Kronos as they instruct a few men of the iron age and whether
the possible difference in this respect between the two ages did not affect
Hesiod’s private judgment about the golden age.
We conclude that it is not wise to open the discussion of the “regres-
sivist” position with the interpretation of Hesiod. It is wiser to begin with
the nonmusic and unambiguous discussion of the problem of progress
which we find in the second book of Aristotle’s Politics. Assuming as a fact
that the change from the old manner in the arts and the sciences to the
new manner has been beneficial, Aristotle wonders whether a correspond¬
ing change in the laws would be equally beneficial. He thus raises the ques¬
tion as to whether, as some people (“the Greek liberals”) believe, there is
a necessary harmony between intellectual progress and social progress. His
answer is not unqualifiedly in the affirmative. By understanding his reason¬
ing one will be enabled to begin to understand those Greek thinkers who
both after and before the emergence of science were distrustful of social
change and “looked backward.”
Havelock tries to supplement Hesiod’s “regressivist” statement by two
Platonic statements of the same description. In the myth of the Statesman,
Plato contrasts the present state of things, the state of things under Zeus,’
with the preceding state of things under Kronos. He modifies the old story
by presenting the process as cyclical: the present age of Zeus will be sue-
ceeded by another age of Kronos, and so on. In spite of this, "the net effect
upon the reader’s imagination is less cyclical than regressive”; Plato “works
on our values” in such a way that he “unmistakeably and ingeniously . . .
denatures the activities of a technological culture and demotes it to the
rank of a second-best” (42-43). While one must not neglect how Plato’s
"allegory” (47) affects the readers’ imagination, one must also consider
how it affects the reader’s thought. Plato makes it clear that we have
knowledge by perception only of the present age; of the age of Kronos we
know only from hearsay (272b 1-3, 269a 7-8). Myths are told to chil¬
dren, and in the Statesman, a philosopher tells the myth of the ages of
Kronos and of Zeus to a child or a youth who has barely outgrown child¬
hood (268e 4-6; Republic 377a 1-6, 378d 1). As regards the only state of
things of which we possess firsthand knowledge, the philosopher says that
there is in it no divine providence, no care of God or gods for men (271d
3-6, 273a 1, 274d 3-6). The philosopher who indicates this thought,
which is at variance with what other Platonic characters say elsewhere, is of
course not Socrates, who merely listens in silence and refrains even at the
end of the conversation from expressing his disagreement or agreement
with what the strange philosopher had said. The stranger expresses a less
disconcerting thought by saying that even if there were divine providence,
human happiness would not be assured: the question of whether men led a
blessed life under Kronos, when the gods took care of men, is left unan¬
swered on the ground that we do not know whether men then used their
freedom from care for philosophizing instead of telling one another myths;
only a life dedicated to philosophy can be called happy (272b 3-d 4).
Hesiod compelled us to raise a similar question regarding the golden age.
Here we are compelled to raise the question as to whether philosophy
would have been possible at all in the age of Kronos, in which there was no
need for the arts, and hence the arts did not exist (272a); we recall that
Socrates did not tire of talking, not indeed with shoemakers and physi¬
cians, but of shoemakers and physicians (Gorgias 491a 1-3) in order to
make clear to himself and to others what philosophy is; he thus indeed
“demoted [the arts] to the rank of a second-best,” but this is a high rank.
Above all, as Havelock recognizes, Plato admits in the myth of the States¬
man the imperfect character of man’s beginnings; that Plato has “bor¬
rowed” this view from “the scientific anthropologists” we shall believe as
soon as we have been shown; we do not sufficiently know the limitations of
Plato’s mind to be able to say that he could not possibly have arrived at
this view by his own efforts. Yet “then, illogically, but necessarily” he
ascribes to fire, the arts, seeds, and plants divine origin (43). That the
Eleatic Stranger thus contradicts himself is true, but we are not certain
whether he does not contradict his contradiction in the same breath (274d
2-6), thus restoring the original position. And even while he speaks for a
moment of divine gifts, Plato’s Eleatic Stranger does not go so far as his
Protagoras who, on a similar occasion, speaks not only of the gifts of

Prometheus but in addition of the political art as a gift from Zeus.
In the Laws, Plato’s spokesman converses with old men who possess po¬
litical experience. Again the story is told of how men lived under Kronos in
abundance and were ruled by demons who cared for them. “This account
which makes use of truth, tells even today” that not men, but a god or the
immortal mind within us, must rule over men if the city is to be happy
(713c 2-714a 2). Here men are indeed said to have led a blessed life
under Kronos, but the conclusion from this is not that one must long for
the lost age of Kronos, but that, in the decisive respect, the bliss of that
age—rule of the divine—is equally possible now. When, in the Laws, Plato
discusses man’s first age thematically or, as Havelock says, “more ambi¬
tiously,” he does not refer to the age of Kronos. Present-day life, including
the great amounts of vice and of virtue which we find in it, has come into
being out of the first men, the sparse survivors of a cataclysm (678a 7-9):
the first men were not the golden race of Hesiod. Havelock contends that
the paraphrased sentence “is really intended to suggest that the factor of
novelty in human history does not exist” (45). He would be right if, in
seeking the origin or the cause or the “out of which” of a thing, one im¬
plicitly asserts that the effect cannot differ from the cause.
Still, this time Havelock has some evidence for ascribing to Plato “a re¬
gressive concept of human history”: “an Eden of innocence, not perfect in
either virtue or vice, is later described as [possessing] three of the four car¬
dinal virtues complete” (49). He would find us pedantic if we tried to stop
him with the observation that Plato uses the comparative and not the posi¬
tive (679e 2-3) and thus denies completeness to the cardinal virtues pos¬
sessed by early men. Plato altogether denies to early man the first and
highest of the cardinal virtues, wisdom or prudence. In some respects, he
suggests, early men were superior to most present-day men, but in the deci¬
sive respect—as regards wisdom or the quest for wisdom—they were cer¬
tainly inferior to the best of later men. To begin with, Plato praises early
men highly: he praises them as highly as he praises the members of the city
of pigs in the Republic. With some exaggeration one may therefore say
that up to this point Havelock’s interpretation would be tolerable if there
were no philosophy. But Plato goes on to illustrate the political order of
early man with that of Homer’s Cyclopes. The interlocutor Megillus is
intelligent enough to see that Plato’s spokesman in fact describes early men
as savages (680d 1-4) and even as cannibals (781e 5-782c 2). While, as
we have seen, Havelock noticed that Plato’s description of early men
changes from a very qualified praise to a less qualified praise, he fails to see
that it changes again and this time to the abandonment of all praise.
Hence he judges that in Plato’s account “the whole scientific perspective
is . . . skillfully and totally corrupted by . . . wholly unscientific sugges¬
tion^]” (48); given his prejudices, he cannot help reaching this result,
except that he should not have spoken of Plato’s “skill.” From the fact
that inventions have been made, Plato infers that men lacked the invented
things at an earlier epoch; Havelock makes him “argue quite naively that
though new invention has been achieved by man ... it must come to a
stop sometime”: the notion of an “infinitely extended history’ or of
“human history as, so to speak, open at both ends is wholly alien to his
imagination” (49). Whatever may be true of the liberal imagination, the
liberal’s science tells him that invention must come to a stop sometime,
since the life of the human race will come to a stop sometime.
Following Havelock, we have completely disregarded the context of the
“archeology” of the third book of Plato’s Laws or the meaning of the work
as a whole. As we can here only assert, consideration of the whole work
would merely confirm what already appears from the passages used by
Havelock, namely, that it is wholly unwarranted to say that according to
Plato, man’s early life is “a wholly admirable and happy thing” (58).
Nevertheless Havelock is right in saying that “the net effect” of the pas¬
sages in question “upon the reader’s imagination” is the opposite. What
“necessity” drove Plato, whose “systematic mind was, to say the least, not
prone to contradiction” (100), to be “illogical”? Havelock suggests that
Plato was compelled grudgingly to make concessions to the Greek anthro¬
pologists, but that his prejudice always reasserted itself and especially when
he was old, that is, when he wrote the Laws in which “the Hesiodic nostal¬
gia is in control” (44, 47). This explanation rests on the untenable as¬
sumption that Plato believed in the age of Kronos. Havelock also suggests,
it seems, that Plato had to contradict himself because he could not contra¬
dict the Greek anthropologists “in open fight,” for in doing so he would
have been compelled to restate their doctrine and thus to contribute to the
spreading of a dangerous doctrine (87-88). This explanation rests on the
assumption, proved untenable by the tenth book of the Laws, for instance,
that Plato was afraid openly to set forth dangerous or subversive doctrines
to which he was opposed. Havelock might retort that the extreme view
openly set forth and openly attacked by Plato was less dangerous in his eyes
than the view of the Greek liberals; but until we know that there were
Greek liberals we must regard it as possible that Plato failed to set forth
the liberal view because the liberal view did not exist. We on our part sug¬
gest this explanation. Plato knew that most men read more with their
“imagination” than with open-minded care and are therefore much more
benefited by salutary myths than by the naked truth. Precisely the liberals
who hold that morality is historical or of merely human origin must go on
to say, with the sophist Protagoras as paraphrased by Havelock, that this
invaluable acquisition which for later men is a heritage “must never be
lost” or is “too precious to be gambled with” (187): the greatest enemies
of civilization in civilized countries are those who squander the heritage
because they look down on it or on the past; civilization is much less en-
dangered by narrow but loyal preservers than by the shallow and glib futur¬
ists who, being themselves rootless, try to destroy all roots and thus do
everything in their power in order to bring back the initial chaos and pro¬
miscuity. The first duty of civilized man is then to respect his past. This
respect finds its exaggerated but effective expression in the belief that the
ancestors the Founding Fathers—were simply superior to the present
generation and especially to the present youth, and mere “logic” leads
from this to the belief in perfect beginnings or in the age of Kronos.
Havelock begins his attempt to disinter Greek liberalism by commenting

on three passages each of which is taken from a play of one of the three
tragedians. He contends that these passages present a progressivist view
of history and thus show the presence of “scientific anthropology”
(52). Aeschylus’ Prometheus “offers a drastic correction of the Hesiodic
scheme.” When Zeus dethroned Kronos, he desired to destroy the human
race and to plant a new one, but thanks to Prometheus’ intervention,
which was inspired by love of man or by compassion for man, this plan was
frustrated. In Aeschylus’ presentation Zeus’s decision appears as “the whim
of a cruel and careless despot” (53). Aeschylus “underlines the philan¬
thropy” of Prometheus because in his presentation man “is somehow gain¬
ing in stature” (54). He says, as did Hesiod, that Prometheus’ crime con¬
sisted in the theft of fire for the benefit of man, but he adds with emphasis
that the stolen fire, or the stolen source of fire, became man’s teacher in
every art, that Prometheus has given man all arts, all of them great boons
to man, and, above all, that Prometheus gave man understanding. Accord¬
ing to Havelock, then, Aeschylus makes two assertions. In the first place,
so far from being created by the gods or descended from them [the
human species] emerged as we know it from a pre-human condition,” and
it emerged from its prehuman condition through technology, that is,
through human achievement” (57, 61). Second, “somehow, in the un¬
folding history of civilization, the cause of technology and the cause of
compassion are bound up together”; the threat of a “liquidation” of the
human race (by Zeus) was “a concomitant ... of the total absence of
technology” (58). Aeschylus is, then, a believer in progressive evolution.
But did he believe only in progress achieved or did he have “the vistas of
infinite time,” that is, of infinite future progress? Prometheus’ condemna¬
tion and punishment by Zeus seem to show that Aeschylus “has retained
the Hesiodic pessimism”; but since in the end there will be a reconciliation
between Prometheus and Zeus, our faith in “the historical process” is re¬
stored (61). Havelock calls Prometheus’ enumeration of the arts which he
gave to man the catalogue of human achievement,” just as he finds in the
play the view that man was not made by the gods. He does not even at¬
tempt to prove the second assertion (cf. Prometheus 235).
As for the first assertion, he admits that “on the surface of the drama”
Prometheus is a god, but he contends reasonably that if the fire which

Prometheus stole is, as Prometheus himself says, the teacher of man in
many or in all arts (Prometheus 109-110, 256), the arts are to some extent
man’s own achievement (63-65). What then is Prometheus’ achieve¬
ment? Who or what is Prometheus? “Prometheus is the embodiment of
Intelligence” (64). Yet Prometheus says that he put blind hopes in men as
a remedy for having made them stop to foresee their doom, their death
(vv. 250-252). Similarly, he regards as his greatest invention the art of
medicine by which men are enabled to ward off all diseases (w. 478-
483): does he claim that medicine can heal all mortal diseases or that he
has abolished man’s mortality? Is he a boaster? But he knows, or he has
learned through his suffering, the limitation of all art: “Art is by far weaker
than necessity” (vv. 514-518); Prometheus’ love of man cannot overcome
the power of necessity. There is then no “infinite progress.” The well-
meaning bringer of blind hopes is himself the victim of a blind hope: he
did not foresee how harshly he would be punished by Zeus. The fore¬
thinker lacked forethought in his own case. In the struggle between Zeus
and Kronos, between Guile and Strength, he sided with Zeus; he made a
choice which seemed wise at the time, but which he now regrets (w. 201—
225, 268-271; cf. 1071-1079). He does not wish to tell Io her future fate
because he knows that ignorance is sometimes better than knowledge or
that man needs blind hopes, but he is easily persuaded to act against his
better knowledge out of the kindness of his heart (w. 624 ff.). Is Aeschy¬
lus’ message so different from Hesiod’s, who taught that Zeus is wilier than
the wily Prometheus (vv. 61-62; Theogony 545-616)? Zeus, not Pro¬
metheus, teaches man to learn wisdom by suffering (w. 585-586;
Agamemnon 168-178) and not through the power of the arts. Is then the
Zeus of the Prometheus a cruel tyrant?
The play is a part and certainly not the last part of a trilogy; Prometheus’
antagonist does not appear in the play; Hermes states Zeus’s case as well as
he can; but we do not know how Zeus would have stated it. The very
greatness of Prometheus, which is so powerfully exhibited in the play, may
be meant to give us an inkling of the greatness of Zeus, of Zeus’s wisdom.
Zeus is so great that he cannot be understood, that he must appear as a
cruel tyrant, before he has manifested himself. He found men—Kronos’
men—as witless beings; the implication that Kronos’ race of men was not
golden, that the first men were witless, is part of the praise of Zeus. Zeus
wished to destroy Kronos’ men and to create new ones. Prometheus claims
that he prevented the destruction of man by stealing fire for him. Did Zeus
wish to create men worthy of him and free from blind hopes? Was it
impossible for Zeus to undo the effect of Prometheus’ deed, or did he de¬
cide to use Prometheus’ kindhearted but not foreseeing deed in a foresee¬
ing, in a royal manner? Did he decide, that is, to use Prometheus’ increase
of man’s power as a means for teaching man true wisdom by the suffering
coming from the very power of the arts? By dwelling on the ‘‘surface” of
the play, one becomes aware of the contrast between the arts and true wis¬
dom. Since the play presents the first men as most imperfect and since it
seems to suggest that the arts are less divine gifts than human inventions,
Havelock is certain that Aeschylus used a “scientific source” and as a con¬
sequence engages in speculations about the scientific anthropology which
illumined the poet (61-64). With perhaps greater right could not one
seek for the “scientific source” of the biblical account according to which
the city and the arts were originated by Cain and his race? The Bible leaves
much less doubt regarding the merely human origin of “civilization” than
does Aeschylus. Havelock does not prove and cannot prove from Aeschylus
the existence of “Greek liberalism.” Aeschylus’ changes of Hesiod’s story
are much more easily understood as the outcome of a somewhat different
meditation on things divine-human than as due to the influence of
science.
Havelock turns next to the choral song of the Antigone in which the
chorus expresses its trembling admiration for man as the being which is
supremely awful and supremely endangered: an awful crime against the
law of the city has just been discovered. In describing man’s awful or
wondrous character, the chorus enumerates man’s most outstanding inven¬
tions: “The figure of Prometheus has disappeared.” This would prove the
influence of science if it had been impossible for Greeks, or for men in
general, who were not scientists or influenced by science to be somehow
aware of the human origin of the human arts (cf. Laws 677d4). In two
pages Havelock proves, in accordance with his standards of proof, three
things. According to Havelock’s Sophocles, man taught himself “con¬
sciousness ; hence Havelock forces the reader to wonder how an uncon¬
scious being can teach itself anything and in particular consciousness. The
whole choral song in question expresses “flamboyant optimism.” “The
conclusion of the chorus carries us beyond the confines of anthropology to
the borders of a liberal theory of morals and politics” (68-70). With
equally “quick speech” he shows the influence of science as well as the
“theistic” or “pietistic” perversion of science in a passage of Euripides’
Suppliants. That passage is declared to be “a skillful rewrite” of a “scien¬
tific original” the existence of which we have by now learned to assume
since we have so frequently been told to do so. The only remark which
could possibly be stretched to be meant to be an attempt of a proof is the
assertion that Euripides becomes involved “in unconscious paradox”—in a
contradiction, since in theistically praising the kindness of heaven he
speaks nontheistically of its harshness. In fact, Euripides makes his
Theseus say that a god taught man to protect himself against a god, that is,
another god. Havelock, however, knows that Euripides speaks “in the per¬
son of Theseus” (72).
For Havelock s purpose Diodorus Siculus is much more important than
the three great tragedians. Diodorus—already an authority for Machiavelli

and Hobbes—gives a coherent account of the origin of the universe and of
man which is in fundamental agreement with “scientific naturalism, the
inspiration of “the progressive . . . view of history’ (75-76). In his sym¬
pathetic survey, Havelock mentions the fact that according to Diodorus
the universe and man have come into being, whereas for Diodorus it is
equally important that they will perish (I. 6. 3.): ‘ progressivism is not a
precise description of his “view of history.” Diodorus takes it for granted
that man is by nature well endowed since he has as his helpers hands and
reason” (I. 8. 9); according to Havelock, he thus contradicts his “earlier
naturalistic account of the origins of language” (78): as if reason, which is
one and the same, and language, of which there are necessarily many, were
the same thing; or, in other words, as if man’s leading a brutish life at the
beginning would prove that man was originally a brute. Hence Havelock is
compelled to impute to Diodorus the desire to describe, not what man
achieved by using his given hands and his given reason, but the genesis of
the human hand and the genesis of the human reason (79). Since Diodo¬
rus speaks in his “prehistory” (75) only of nations or tribes, and not yet of
the city, it follows that “the city-state could not have been for [the Greek
anthropologists] the one essential form toward which all society tends”
(80): what in fact follows is that the city is not “pre-historical.” Diodorus
repeatedly says that man progressed “little by little”; by this emphasis on
“gradualism,” Havelock contends, Diodorus opposes the myths according
to which man’s original condition was improved by gifts of the gods. Yet
after having turned from a traditional speculation about man s origin, from
“pre-history,” to the description of actions which are remembered as having
taken place in known localities of the inhabited earth (I. 8. 1 and 9. 1), Dio¬
dorus follows an Egyptian account according to which the arts are gifts of
certain gods. Havelock is inclined to regard “this Egyptian fairy tale as a
sort of parody,” and he refers to “the whole question of why in antiquity it
was so difficult for [the scientific] anthropologies to survive in their own
stark scientific honesty” (84—85). We are not aware that he even tried to
answer this question, although Diodorus is not silent about the usefulness
of myths or untrue stories of a certain kind. If Havelock had not so airily
dismissed Diodorus’ “conflated and rather confused account of the mythi¬
cal history of ancient Egypt” (83), he might have observed that Diodorus
presents as part of the Egyptian lore the “Euhemeristic” explanation of the
origin of the gods (cf. I. 13 with I. 17. 1-2 and I. 20. 5). He certainly does
not avail himself of this opportunity for reflecting on a possible fundamen¬
tal difference between ancient and modern “naturalism,” between an
approach or doctrine for which it was “difficult to survive in its own stark
scientific honesty” and one for which it is extremely easy because it is allied
with popular enlightenment. Such reflection might have led him to wonder
whether the ancient predecessors did not conceive of the relation between
science and society, and hence of the character of both science and society
in entirely different terms from those of the liberals. On the other hand ii
is gratifying to see that “gradualism” does not necessarily excIude the crj
cial importance of gifted individuals” (93) and hence that "gradualism”
may make allowance for sudden changes. g uuaiism
Havmg arrived at this point we are in a position to pass final judgment
on Haveocks procedure. When speaking of Plato, he says: ’we have
spoken of his [scientific or naturalistic] source or sources. The case for their
ran hpCe T" faCt°rS: there is firSt the cross-comparison that

can be made between the items of his historical analysis and those present
m the reports of the dramatists and of Diodorus; second, there fre the
inner contradictions discoverable in [Plato's] pages" (100; the italics are
hC p1lgfln,a )- In. recovenng teaching of the Greek anthropolo¬
gist from Plato s writings, Havelock can already use the results of his
of ‘ Wnt fi ' Sf' !?* With What right did he 3SSUme the existence
of scientific sources of the tragedians when he analyzed their plays? We
assume that in his opinion some people have justified his assumption but
cannot be certain that this is his opinion. We feel entitled to speak of
an involuntary satire on scientific method and on scientific progress.
rrri06 ^Vel°,Ck ?at PIat° made Sreater concessions to the

Greek anthropologists when he was not yet old than when he was old he
tries to reconstruct the teaching of these men from what seem to be’the
most promising sections of Plato’s relatively early writings: the myth of the
Protagoras and the second book of the Republic. The Protagoras is alto
8 >wifhe mT in?p0rtant source for Havelock, as any degree of familiarity
W!th the modem literature on the subject would have led one to expert
Read in his manner, the Protagoras supplies one with both the anthropol¬
ogy and the political theory of the Greek liberals. His whole thesis de¬
pends, as it depended in the writings of the scholars who maintained his
thesis before him, on their interpretation of that dialogue. Havelock starts
'0I"\.the Plausible assumption that Plato is not “a reporter” and therefore
that the speech which Protagoras makes in the dialogue named after him is
Plato s work Yet if this speech is to supply us with information about the
view of Protagoras himself, we must be in a position to distinguish its
Protagorean elements from its Platonic elements. Since we know which
teachings are peculiarly Platonic (or Socratic) and since the Platonic
Protagoras makes use of peculiarly Platonic teachings, the only thing
needed to discover Protagoras’ teaching is a simple operation of subtrac
bon. In his myth, the Platonic Protagoras asserts or suggests that there are
essential or qualitative differences between various species of animals and
especially between man and the brutes, as well as within man between his
in ellectual power and his social or moral sense. According to Havelock
the emphasis on these differences is Platonic (or Socratic) and wholly in-
compatible with “previous Greek science," which asserted the primacy of

“process” in general and of “the historical process” in particular as distin¬
guished from the apparently essential distinctions between the products of
the process (91). Yet we are dealing with a myth here, a popular state¬
ment, and Protagoras does not go beyond using the popular or common-
sense distinctions of various kinds or races or tribes of living beings. If the
incriminated remarks of the Platonic Protagoras prove Socratic influence,
then the first chapter of Genesis was written under Socratic influence, to
say nothing of Empedocles (B 71-76) and Democritus (B 164). When
Havelock finds in the Platonic Protagoras’ speech “the Platonic thesis
. . . that men differ fundamentally from birth in mental capacity and
aptitude,” he himself admits that “this could be regarded as a truism of
common sense” (97).
Furthermore, the Platonic Protagoras uses against Socrates what one
may call the essential differences between the species and between the
different parts of living beings in order to show the relativity or the “multi¬
colored” character of the good (333d 8-334c 6). In commenting upon
this passage Havelock does not complain that Plato has adulterated the
Protagorean teaching; he regards that passage as a reliable source, in fact as
an “excerpt” from Protagoras, and draws infinite conclusions from it. He
contends, however, that that passage contains, not “a classification of
things in themselves in their genera and species,” but a “classification
... of acts and performances of things done by men in given situations
(205). We shall not quarrel with Havelock as to whether a classification
does not presuppose the existence of classes. It suffices to say that the
Platonic Protagoras classifies the useful things on the basis of a classifica¬
tion of the beings or parts of beings to which the useful things are useful.
Moreover, Protagoras’ most famous saying (“Man is the measure of all
things”) implies that not every being is the measure of all things and
hence that there is a qualitative difference between man and the brutes.
Above all, what is the status of the “species” and their “essential proper¬
ties” according to the Platonic Protagoras? “The mortal races are primar¬
ily mixtures of earth and fire and all that is mingled with fire and earth; as
such they do not possess “natures,” for the “natures” of the various races
or kinds are the “powers” which they possess; primarily “the mortal races”
are not even distinguished by size; the powers or natures or “essential prop¬
erties” are secondary or derivative (Protagoras 320d 5, e 2-4, 321c 1). In
this crucial point the teaching of the Platonic Protagoras is then not at all
marred by “Socraticism,” but is properly “naturalistic.”
The second consideration by means of which Havelock tries to achieve
the subtraction of the Platonic element from the Platonic Protagoras
speech starts from the fact that “in matters of religion [Protagoras] was a
complete agnostic,” and yet Plato’s Protagoras ascribes to the gods the
origin of all animals and especially of man and, above all, of the arts and of
justice (92-94). Granted that Protagoras was “a complete agnostic," must

he always have talked like a complete agnostic? Does he not sufficiently
make clear where he stands by explicitly distinguishing his account of the
origins as his myth from his logos (320c 6-7, 324d 6-7, 328c 3) and by
treating the gods very differently in his myth on the one hand and in his
logos on the other? It is in accordance with this, and it is not the conse¬
quence of Plato s defective “editorial skill" which does not succeed in
reconciling a Platonic setting with a Protagorean content, that the Pla¬
tonic Protagoras contradicts himself. He states to begin with that all
animals, including man, were molded by the gods and later on that man
m contradistinction to the brutes has “kinship with the gods" (92) He
speaks of man’s “kinship with the god" (not “with the gods") after he had
shown how man had come to partake of a divine share or lot: man’s kin-
S,lp Tlth , god 1S hls participation in a divine lot. Man came to partake
° lot’ not through Zeus’s gift of right, but through Prometheus’
ett of hre and technical wisdom from Hephaestus and Athena (321d 1-
322a 4) Man owes his salvation or his being in the first place not to a
gift of the gods but to a theft from the gods, to a kind of rebellion against
the gods. This should be acceptable as a mythical expression of the “natu¬
ralistic creed. But why does the Platonic Protagoras tell a myth at all?
in order to answer this question, one must consider the context. The city
of Athens was rather liberal, but not so liberal as to tolerate every pursuit
and every teaching. It seems that that city was so much opposed to Protag¬
oras activity that it had his writings burned and himself expelled Plato’s
Protagoras was aware of the fact that he was in some danger in Athens
since he was a stranger who engaged in an unpopular activity, in the activ¬
ity of a sophist. Havelock cannot consider this, although he cannot help
noting the existence of a “prejudice" against the sophists (158) because he
is compelled by his prejudice to imagine that the “model of Periclean
• tierf 3S !he soPhistic prototype of what a complete society really
is (187) or that there was perfect harmony between the sophists and the
thenian democracy. Granting for a moment that the sophists loved the
Athenian democracy, it does not follow that the love was requited. The
Platonic Protagoras at any rate had a strong sense of danger. In order to
destroy the suspicion against the sophists, he decided to deviate from the
practice of the earlier sophists who concealed their pursuit: he is the first
man who professes to be a sophist, the first who speaks up, as his very
ni?mi.ln(^Ca*eS‘ d°eS n0^ mean ât he says always and to everyone all
that he thinks: apart from the precautionary measure of professing to be a
sophist, he has provided himself with other precautionary measures. He
does not tell what those other precautionary measures are. But the pro¬
fessed “agnostic” gives a sufficient indication of them by describing their
intended result as follows: “under God, I shall not suffer anything terrible
on account of my professing to be a sophist." The indication is indeed not
sufficient for everyone, for, as he says, “the many do not, so to speak, no¬
tice anything” (316c 5—317c 1).
The third and final clue supplied by the speech of the Platonic Protagoras
is his assertion that there is a fundamental difference between the arts and
reverence or right: the latter are “universals,” that is, all men must partake
of them, while it is neither necessary nor desirable that everyone should be
a physician, a shoemaker, and so on. Havelock finds this assertion incom¬
patible with the assumed democratic creed of Protagoras (93). But does
democracy, as distinguished from Marxism, require that every man be a
jack of all trades? How does Havelock know that Protagoras’ assumed
theory of democracy demanded that everyone be a jack of all trades? The
Platonic Protagoras’ assertion that there is a fundamental difference be¬
tween the arts and “man’s moral sense” is meant to be the basis of democ¬
racy: all men are equal as regards that knowledge by which civil society as
such stands or falls. Yet Plato’s Protagoras describes reverence and right as
gifts of Zeus, and how can “a complete agnostic” give a religious account of
the origin and the validity of morality (93-94)? He explains his mythical
account of the origin and validity of morality in what one may call the
nonmythical part of his speech. The universal practice of mankind shows
that everyone “in some way or another” partakes of justice, as distin¬
guished from flute playing for instance; that is, that everyone must claim to
be just, regardless of whether he is just or not (323a 5-c 2). Justice has in
common with the arts that it is acquired by teaching and training; but the
difference between the teaching and training by which the arts are ac¬
quired and the teaching and training by which justice is acquired appears
from the fact that the latter consists chiefly in punishment: men become
just “in some way or another” chiefly by punishment, or the threat of it,
but also by praise, as distinguished from instruction proper (323d 6-324c
5, 324e 6-326a 4, 327d 1-2). What is mythically called a gift of Zeus is
nonmythically described as “social compulsion,” which as such cannot
produce, at any rate in the case of thinking men, more than conformism or
lip service. The assertion that morality rests on “social compulsion” or on
“conditioning” (178) and not on natural inclination nor on calculation
nor on intellectual perception should satisfy every behaviorist. It certainly
satisfies Havelock after he has added a few touches of his own. When
Plato’s Protagoras says that the man who does not pretend to be just,
whether he is just or not, is insane, Havelock adds “unless, it is surely im¬
plied, in temporary repentance” (171; the italics are not in the original).
When the Platonic Protagoras is believed to have said that justice and
virtue are useful, Havelock makes him say that morality is “pleasant”
(185). Perhaps still more remarkable is his enthusiasm for what the Pla¬
tonic Protagoras says regarding the purpose of punishment, namely, “that
punishment only makes sense as a corrective or as a deterrent” (175). He
takes it for granted that this teaching is genuinely Protagorean. But how
does he know this? Because it is a liberal view? But the illiberal Plato held
the same view Besides, the same Platonic Protagoras teaches, just as Plato
himself did that there are incurable criminals who must be driven out of
the city or be killed. Why did Plato entrust the rational teaching regarding
punishment to Protagoras in particular? The context requires a praise of
f rj f PC /§heSt Prai$e °f Punishment ^ its rational justifica-

? t Pla, °mC P!°^f!aS Presents his doctrine of punishment before
he has formally concluded his myth (324d 6-7).
One cannot make a distinction between the Platonic and the Pro-
tagorean elements ,n the myth of the Platonic Protagoras because the con-
tradictions occurring ,n that myth are perfectly intelligible as deliberate
contradictions of the speaker. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the
statement on the genesis of the city in the second book of the Republic
According to Havelock Plato there uses the “naturalist-materialist Princi¬
pe8 of the Greek anthropologists and finds therefore “the driving force
behind the formation of society” and even of morality itself in “material
wt er°T, "eed” Yet Plat0 dr°Ps this aPP^ch “with some haste.”
Why then did he mention it “unless it occurred in his source and he has
cited it almost by inadvertence?” (97.) This is obviously not a proof of the
existence of a naturalist” source. Understanding of the context would
show that m a preliminary consideration one may limit oneself to the
understanding of society and morality in terms of the bodily needs of man.
After all, that section of the Republic which alone is discussed by Havelock
deals with what is called there “a city of pigs.” The city, as Aristotle says,
comes mto being for the sake of mere life but “is” for the sake of the
good life. One may well begin the analysis of the city with its beginning
with its coming into being. Taking hypotheses for facts, Havelock has no
âteVfr “ accu1sin§ Plat0 of having “adulterated” his source
(9 99) The only effort which he makes to prove his assertion starts from
the patent absurdity which consists in Plato’s attempt “to’ argue that a
developed technical and commercial society is really a rustic Utopia com¬
mitted to vegetarianism and the simple life”: Plato follows the naturalists
by tracing the development of society up to the development of technical
and commercial society, but his obsession with primitive simplicity and
innocence forces him to drop all luxuries in the same context. Similarly
Plato denies that in his original condition man waged war, “once more re¬
vealing his deeply regressive conception of history” (99-100). We disre¬
gard the fact that a society in which there is exchange of goods in the
market place and which imports say salt and exports say timber is not by
virtue of this a commercial society. While Havelock here goes so far as to
’T*6 t0,Pllt0’5 “dly °f piSS" the existen“ °f “bankers,”She says later on
with equal disregard of the truth that “Plato omitted currency” (95 97
338). It is more important to understand the meaning of the whole discus-
ion of the city of pigs as “the true city” or even as “the city” (372e 6-7,
433a). That city is not early society, but is the society according to nature
which is sufficient for satisfying men’s bodily needs without poverty, with¬
out compulsion (government), and without bloodshed of any kind; it is
not a commercial society because it is not a competitive society, a competi¬
tive society presupposing the existence of government. Plato makes this
experiment in order to show the essential limitations of society thus con¬
ceived. A society of this character may possess justice of some sort since its
members exchange goods and services; it cannot possess human excellence:
it is a city of pigs. Whereas its members sing hymns to the gods, they can¬
not sing the praises of excellent men because there cannot be excellent
men in their midst (cf. 371e 9-372b 8 and 607a 3-4).
After he has completed his attempt to prove the existence of Greek pro-
gressivist philosophers from their alleged use or adulteration by the trage¬
dians, Diodorus Siculus, and Plato, Havelock turns to the fragments of
these alleged progressivists. Three very late reports on Anaximander and
five fragments from Xenophanes are said to “hint at the presence in both
[thinkers] of a scheme of cosmology which found perhaps its climax in the
history of life and of man upon the earth. . . . The tentative conclusion
can be drawn that ... if the record of Anaximander guarantees the bio¬
logical naturalism of Greek anthropology, that of Xenophanes does the
same for its empirical pragmatic conception of the sources of human
knowledge” (106-107). The unusual restraint of Havelock perhaps re¬
flects the fact that according to a report to which he does not refer (21 A
49) Xenophanes regarded only reason itself, in contradistinction to sense
perception, as trustworthy. He admits that “against these tentative conclu¬
sions should be set what we know of Xenophanes’ ‘theology.’ ” By this he
does not mean Xenophanes’ verses on the one god, the greatest among
gods and men who does not resemble the mortals at all; he does not say a
word about Xenophanes’ Eleaticism or his denial of any coming into
being; he merely means his “critical attack on Greek polytheism.” To say
nothing of the facts that according to a fragment and a report quoted by
Havelock, Xenophanes did not limit his attack to the Greek popular no¬
tions of the gods and that he did not attack polytheism, Havelock wishes
to believe that that “critical attack” “was a part of [Xenophanes’] recon¬
struction of the history of human institutions.” Sympathizing with the
spirit of present-day anthropology, Havelock “plays down” Xenophanes’
concern with the question of the truth of what peoples believe.
As regards Anaxagoras, Havelock carefully avoids any reference to his
doctrine regarding the ordering Intelligence which rules all things, knows
all things, exists always and is unmixed, and is the cause of all things; he
does not even take the trouble to deny the relevance of that doctrine for
Anaxagoras’ anthropology (107-112). To assimilate the Greek anthro¬
pologists to the liberals, Havelock must impute to Archelaus the view that
“the historical process is ... a natural growing process” and therefore
diliite Archelaus fundamental distinction between nature and convention

(“the right and the base are not by nature but by convention” [112-
114]). Similarly, when Democritus distinguishes between the “nature” of
all animate beings, according to which they get themselves offspring “not
for the sake of any utility” and endure hardship for it, and the assumption
peculiar to men, according to which the parents derive benefit from their
offspring (just as the offspring derives benefit from the parents), Havelock
asserts that the peculiarly human “which is superimposed on physis, is not
discontinuous with it” (115, 411); he is unconcerned with the difference
with which Democritus is concerned: the difference between man and the
brutes and the difference derived therefrom between nature and law or
convention. When he is no longer under a compulsion to confront the
reader with Democritean fragments, he takes courage to assert that for
Democritus “nature and law did in fact coincide” (181). The fragment in
question (B 278) appears to belong to the context, not of anthropological
description,” but of “judgmental evaluation”: Democritus questions the
soundness of getting married and begetting children; the specifically
human calculation which is meant to make the raising of children benefi¬
cial to the parents too, is not reliable (A 166, 169, 170; B 275-278). There
is a close connection between this question and the question discussed in
Aristophanes Birds as to the inference to be drawn from the fact that the
brutes do not respect their aged parents. Since Democritus notes that man
has learned certain skills by imitating certain kinds of brutes, Havelock
feels entitled to infer that according to Democritus “the possibility of any
hero or master inventor ... as having historical importance is decisively
removed,” although he makes Democritus speak of the “few with power of
expression” who originated Greek “religious myth” (119-120; B 154 and
21). By translating “they proceeded” as “they took successive steps,” he
enables himself to ascribe to Democritus the “doctrine of historical gradu¬
alism” (116, 119).
So much about Havelock’s account of the “philosophy of history” of the
Greek anthropologists. We can be briefer in our examination of his ac¬
count of the Greek liberals’ political doctrine. He deals first with Democri¬
tus, then with those who are not “documented by their own utterances”
(255), and finally with Antiphon. For the sake of convenience, we shall
accept his assumption according to which the Democritean fragments
embodied as authentic in Diels’s edition are in fact authentic. The frag¬
ments which he uses to establish “the political doctrine of Democritus” are
all or almost all rules of conduct which derive from common experience.
While admitting that “Democritus makes a value judgment” here and
there, he believes that he can discern in the fragments in question Democ¬
ritus’ “historical method”: “the mind and method of Democritus [seek] to
understand and to solve political problems simply by describing them”
(131, 137, 138). He does not consider and does not even refer to Democri-
tus’ statement according to which “for all men good and true are the same,
but pleasant differs from one man to another” (B 69; cf. A 166) “which no
complete account of his philosophy can afford to ignore” (142); this state¬
ment would make clear that Democritus is not a historicist or a relativist,
that for him the problem indicated by the distinction between factual and
value judgments does not arise, and that one cannot intelligently solve a
political problem by describing it if one does not know what is good for all
men. As for Democritus’ or Havelock’s “historical method,” we give two
examples. Democritus’ saying, “Faction within the tribe is bad for both
sides,” proves to Havelock that whereas Plato and Aristotle uncritically
accepted “the virtual identification of nomos and polis,” “Democritus true
to his genetic method sees law generated as a solution to the problem
which was already crystallizing ... in the clan of blood kindred.” Yet
“depending on the context,” “tribe” (phyle) “might refer [also] to all
members of a polis” (135-136). Since we do not know the context in
which the saying occurred, some modesty of assertion would be particularly
proper, to say nothing of the fact that Plato and Aristotle only “virtually”
“identified nomos and polis” (cf. Laws 681a-c and Republic 565e 4-7).
In another saying Democritus shows what good—compassion, fraternity,
concord, and so on—follows or rather is already present when the powerful
take heart to help the poor and to be kind to them. According to Have¬
lock, this saying “constitutes the most remarkable single utterance of a
political theorist of Hellas. Considering its epoch, it is as remarkable as
anything in the history of political theory. Neither in content nor in
temper has it a parallel in the better-known classical thinkers” (143). Ap¬
parently Havelock did not remember Plato’s Laws 736d 4-e 2 and 936b
3-8 or Aristotle’s Politics 1320a 35—b 11 (cf. Rhetoric II, 7-8). But for¬
getfulness does not explain the extraordinary assertion and the complete
absence of a sense of proportion which it exhibits. He is driven to asser¬
tions of this kind by an inordinately strong prejudice and the ferocity
which goes with such prejudices. When Democritus says that “poverty
under democracy is as much to be preferred to the so-called prosperity
which resides with lords or princes as freedom is to slavery,” Havelock
makes him say “poverty under democracy is better than any prosperity
under oligarchy,” takes him to prefer democracy to all other regimes, and
finds it “hard to avoid the conclusion that when Thucydides penned the
Funeral Speech of Pericles he was expressing an intellectual debt to
Democritus” (146-147). He has strange notions of what is required for
making a conclusion sound. Besides, the Funeral Speech does not strike
one as a praise of “poverty under democracy.” Havelock finds it unneces¬
sary to comment on Democritus’ relative praise of poverty, nor does he
even allude to other fragments of Democritus which depreciate wealth
(B 283-286). Those sayings would not confirm his contention that the
position taken by the Greek liberals, among whom he counts Democritus,
is characterized by "a recurrent terminology of equality and good will

... of security, and leisure and wealth" (377). He does quote Democri-
tus statement according to which “ruling belongs by nature to the supe¬
rior, and he rightly contends that Democritus understood by superiority
the superiority m understanding and in striving for the noble, although he
ails to refer to the Democritean sayings which confirm this contention (B
■ £ SUPP ies fr°m his own means without any effort a reconcilia¬
tion of Democritus’ recognition of “the aristocratic principle” with his pre-
sumed belief in democracy (148-149). He does not give any thought to
the possibility that the notion of natural rulers might have led Democritus
as it led others, to the view according to which laws are “a bad after¬
thought and that “the wise man ought not to obey the laws as his rulers
U., °?ght ,t0. lve frf]y” (A 166) to a view which is easily compatible
with the admission that law has “a virtue of its own” (B 248). Havelock’s
horizon is blocked in every respect by his “a priori” certainty that Democ-
ntus was a liberal. As a matter of course he does not say a word about
Democritus remarks asserting the inferiority of women (B 110-111
273-274), for otherwise he could not so easily stigmatize the correspond¬
ing remarks of Aristotle as shockingly illiberal (326 382)
In discussing the political theory of those Greek liberals of whom we
know chiefly if not exclusively through Plato, Havelock is confronted with
the fact that the thinkers in question are described by Plato as sophists. He
rightly states that the ambiguity of the word “sophist” has some analogy to
that of the present-day term “intellectuals,” but since he has not reflected
on the problem of the intellectuals, he has no clue to what he calls Plato’s
denigration” of the sophists (157-158). He rightly suggests that for most
of their contemporaries Socrates was as much a sophist as Protagoras, but
he is too certain that those contemporaries were “the dispassionate”; it still
has to be proved that they were not the undiscerning (160). He rightly
wonders whether Plato was fair in censuring the sophists for taking pay for
their teaching. In this he can probably count on the applause of all profes¬
sors since, as he hardheadedly notes, a professor “has got to live by his
£*dc hke anybody else” (162) and would be in an awkward situation if
Plato s censure of the practice were sound. But the two cases are not alto¬
gether the same. If Havelock had not been so certain that there were
Greek liberals, or, in other words, if he had given some thought to the
peculiarities of the modern or liberal state, he would have become aware of
t e significance of academic freedom which may be said to constitute the
specific difference between the sophist and the professor: the professor re¬
ceives pay for teaching, not what his contemporaries wish to hear, but what
they ought to hear. To use the words of Havelock, it was Plato and Aris¬
totle, and not the Greek liberals, who “had the compelling genius to in¬
vent the idea of an institution of higher learning” (20). Havelock is right
in saying, and m fact agrees therein with Plato, that the theories of the
sophists had “their own specific integrity,” but he does not seem to make
much sense when he says that “the theories they taught and believed may
or may not be possible of reconstruction, but they were at least serious
theories, intellectually respectable” (160): how can one judge of the dig¬
nity of doctrines which become accessible only through reconstruction if
their reconstruction is not possible? Given Plato’s “fundamental hostility”
(162) to the political theories of the liberals, Havelock would be unable to
reconstruct them if he could not rely in his interpretation of the Platonic
passages on that “portrait” of liberalism which he has painted with the
assistance of a few fragments. But before connecting the Platonic evidence
with the non-Platonic vision, true or feigned, of Greek liberalism, one must
understand the Platonic evidence by itself. The Protagoras being the most
important source for Havelock, he is under an obligation to interpret that
dialogue. Hie Rhodus hie salta. Here is the occasion for displaying that
“philological discipline,” that “good deal of finesse,” that “critical intu¬
ition,” to say nothing of “the over-all judgment” to which he lays claim
in this very context (157, 171*).
Plato presents Protagoras as presenting his particular claim in a particu¬
lar setting: in the house of a very wealthy Athenian, in the presence of his
most formidable competitors, with a view to inducing a youth to become
his pupil. A “pragmatist” (166) like Protagoras cannot but be influenced
by this situation: we can only guess as to how he would have stated his
claim if he had been closeted with Socrates or, for that matter, with the
mathematician Theodorus. An author as much concerned with “logo-
graphic necessity” as Plato would not have prefaced the conversation be¬
tween Socrates and Protagoras with the fairly extensive conversation
between Socrates and young Hippocrates—to say nothing at all here of the
conversation between Socrates and an anonymous “comrade” with which
the dialogue opens—without a good reason. The conversation between
Socrates and Hippocrates shows in the first place how much Protagoras
appealed to a certain kind of young man and conversely how little Socrates
appealed to those people or how little they appealed to Socrates; it permits
us to size up Hippocrates. Protagoras is characterized by the fact that he is
willing to accept as his pupil a youth of whom he knows nothing except
what Socrates tells him in the youth’s presence, namely, that he comes
from a wealthy Athenian house, that as regards his nature he is thought to
be a match for those of his age, that he seems to Socrates to desire to be¬
come famous in the city, and that he believes that he will most likely get
what he wants if he joins Protagoras. “We know from Middle Comedy
that Plato’s Academy charged fees and high ones at that.” Hence “by Pla¬
tonic standards the sophists committed no offence” (162). The basis on
which Havelock establishes the Platonic standard is somewhat narrow, and
hence he misses the decisive point. For Protagoras it is sufficient to know
that his potential customer can pay for his services; Socrates is concerned
above everything else with whether his potential young friends have the
right kind of nature. ’ In other words, Protagoras is at liberty to accept
every wealthy young man as a pupil, whereas Socrates is not (cf. the
Theages and Memorabilia I 6.13). The place occupied in Socrates’ thought
by nature” is taken in Protagoras’ thought by “wealth.” Havelock is un¬
aware of this difference. According to Plato’s presentation, Protagoras was
insufficiently aware of it.
. !n h!f Havelock admits then that Plato’s presentation of Protagoras
is fair. While he believes that Plato gives a reasonably fair account of Pro¬
tagoras claim, he contends that Plato “transfers [that claim] into a non-
political context (165, 168). Let us then consider the context. In his
eagerness to acquire a new pupil of means, Protagoras was entirely uncon-
cerned with inspecting the nature of Hippocrates; in spite of the caution of
which he boasts, he did not stop to consider whether there was not a
serpent lurking behind Hippocrates’ alluring promise. Still less did he con¬
sider whether his claim did not bring him into conflict with the Athenian
democracy. Socrates tactfully draws his attention to the fact that in Athens
rich and poor” are equally supposed to possess that political skill which
rotagoras claims to teach (319c 8-el): Protagoras’ claim is incompatible
with democracy. Havelock sees here only “irony ... at the expense of
Athenian democratic practice” (168), although he observes when speaking
ot a term similar in meaning to “irony,” namely, “playfulness,” that it is “a
term convenient to critics who have not understood Plato’s mind” (100).
It would be unbecoming to comment on his claim to have “understood
Plato’s mind.” But we may say that strictly speaking every utterance of the
Platonic Socrates is ironical since Socrates is always mindful of the qualities
of his interlocutors and that for this reason Havelock is right when he
intimates that one does not explain any particular utterance of the Platonic
Socrates by describing it as ironical.
At any rate, Socrates forces Protagoras for the benefit of Protagoras (cf.
316c 5) to show that his claim is compatible with Athenian democracy. In
the mythical part of his speech he defends or justifies democracy with that
complete lack of qualification which is fitting in a mythical utterance; in
the nonmythical part he defends or justifies democracy in a more qualified
manner: he knows that some qualification of democracy is required if his
claim is to be respectable or reasonable. If Protagoras had not given the
unqualified justification of democracy, Socrates could not know and the
readers of the Protagoras could not know, whether Protagoras had under¬
stood the difficulty to which Socrates had alluded. According to Havelock,
the continuity [of the logos) with the myth is tenuous, simply because the
myth is a myth” (168). He thus unwittingly suggests that Plato presented
Protagoras as a very great blunderer; this suggestion is wrong. As for the
qualification of democracy which is required for reconciling Protagoras’
claim with democracy, Protagoras supplies it in a properly subdued manner
by referring to the fact that in a democracy there are, after all, wealthy
people who can afford to give their sons a rather expensive education and
therefore, we must add, the education in that political art which he claims
to supply. Havelock applauds the “pragmatic” wisdom “which any mem¬
ber of a liberal democracy is forced to accept: that educational opportunity
tends to be available in proportion to family means” or that “leadership
tends to fall into the hands of the privileged”; he applauds the sophists’
“acceptance of a measure of plutocracy.” But a democrat might well
wonder whether Havelock is right in suggesting that a practice which is
bound to increase the gulf between the rich and the poor “does not violate
the ethos of democracy” (182-183, 248): “if there is inequality [of legal or
social status], the function of amity is thereby inhibited” (397). All that
one can say of Havelock’s political theory is that if he is right, it is not for a
liberal to be right in this point. As for his thesis that Protagoras was a de¬
fender of democracy, and even of “a craftsman democracy” (187), it must
be restated so as to read that the Platonic Protagoras defended a mixture
of democracy and oligarchy or that he deviated from democracy pure and
simple in the direction of oligarchy. He might have defended oligarchy
pure and simple if he had not been compelled to adapt his doubtlessly
“negotiable” political convictions to a democracy. His criticism of democ¬
racy differs from Socrates’ criticism because he takes the side of the
wealthy, whereas Socrates takes the side of the gentlemen. We trust that
Havelock is aware of this difference when he does not happen to write on
“the Elder Sophists.”
One would be unfair to the Platonic Protagoras if one did not stress
more strongly than Havelock does that, according to him, the laws are, or
should be, “the inventions of good and ancient lawgivers” (326d 5-6) as
distinguished from the enactments of a chance multitude. However “radi¬
cal” he may have been regarding the gods, he knew too well that reverence
for antiquity and especially for the great “inventors” of antiquity is indis¬
pensable for society. But, as he says, “the many do not, so to speak, notice
anything.” It is due to the merit of those inventors that present-day man is
separated by a gulf from the original savages. Protagoras must have noticed
somehow that Socrates looked down on that political art which Protagoras
claims to teach and of which he claims that every man possesses it. At any
rate, he accuses Socrates of not properly appreciating that art or what one
may call the progress of civilization: Socrates seems not to know that in the
beginning human beings were worse than the worst criminals living in civi¬
lized society. “The reflection almost reads like a piece of Plato’s own self-
criticism; . . . here he lets the liberals have their say undiluted” (188).
There is undoubtedly some kinship between the modern liberal and the
ancient sophist. Both are unaware of the existence of a problem of civiliza¬
tion, although to different degrees. For Protagoras supplies his assertions
with important qualifications which do not come out in Havelock’s para-
TTze Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy / SI
phrases. It would be painful and in no way helpful if we were to follow
Havelock s analysis of the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras.
As one would expect from his claim to have understood Plato’s thought he
interprets Socrates’ questions as dictated by Plato’s “system” without'lis¬
tening patiently to what Socrates actually says in the context. Similarly he
interprets Protagoras’ answers as dictated by a pragmatist or behaviorist
epistemology or sociology. The utmost one can say about his whole discus¬
sion is that it may shed some light on present-day liberalism. Two examples
must suffice. F
The question discussed by Socrates and Protagoras is whether virtue is
one or many. Common speech assumes that virtue is one: we speak of
good men At the same time common speech assumes that there are many
virtues and that a man may possess one virtue while lacking all others. For
instance, as Protagoras says, a man may be courageous and yet unjust or he
may be just and not be wise. When Protagoras’ attention is first drawn to
the difficulty, he suggests immediately that the one virtue has many quali¬
tatively different parts. Socrates seems to be surprised that Protagoras re¬
gards courage and wisdom too as parts of the one virtue. Protagoras replies
emphatically in the affirmative and adds that wisdom is the greatest of all
parts of virtue (329e 6-330a 2). Socrates’ difficulty is not hard to under¬
stand: in his long speech Protagoras had been rather reticent regarding
wisdom and especially reticent regarding courage; his emphasis had been
on justice, moderation, and piety; for his chief subject had been “political
T£ ^22e 27â ^23a 6-7), which is a special kind of virtue (323c
. °ne wishes to understand Protagoras, one must therefore make
explicit what he implied by putting different emphases on justice, modera¬
tion, and piety on the one hand and wisdom and courage on the other. We
suspect that one cannot achieve this if one does not reflect on the Platonic
distinction between political virtue and genuine virtue. Who knows prior
to investigation whether Protagoras did not admit the soundness of this
distinction? Prior to further investigation it is clear that according to him
only political virtue is a gift of Zeus, and yet there is also a virtue which is a
gift of Prometheus (321d). Havelock carefully avoids this kind of reflec¬
tion which would certainly complicate matters and might shake his confi¬
dence that Protagoras’ thoughts about truth were thoughts about “the
parliamentary process” or “the crystallization of public opinion.”
At a certain point in the discussion Protagoras elaborates the obvious but
not unimportant truth that different things are good for different beings or
for different parts of those beings. Havelock finds therein a “pragmatic
epistemology,” a “pragmatic classification,” a “sophistic economics,” and a
pragmatic programme.” He is therefore shocked by “the Socratic context.”
Socrates virtually concludes ‘Here is mere relativism ” and “Plato
next resorts to an artifice as unfair as anything anywhere in his dialogues.
Socrates figuratively throws up his hands exclaiming: ‘I cannot deal with
long speeches/ . . . One would think that here, if anywhere, Plato’s

readers would get a little out of hand, and protest the propriety of his
hero’s attitude. But Plato is skillful—he must be, to judge by the proces¬
sion of professors who have obediently followed the lead of this prepos¬
terous propaganda” (204-206). As Havelock virtually admits, the reason
that Socrates almost breaks up the conversation is not that he is shocked by
Protagoras’ “relativism.” Socrates and Protagoras had been discussing the
admittedly delicate question of whether sobriety or prudence is compatible
with acting unjustly. Protagoras did not like this discussion; he said that he
would be ashamed to answer the question in the affirmative, and yet Soc¬
rates tries to compel him to defend the affirmative reply (333b 8-d 3).
Was this wicked of Socrates? It would have been wicked if Protagoras had
believed, as Havelock thinks he did, that justice and utility must coincide
(203). But Protagoras had asserted that a man may have one virtue while
lacking the others and that a man may be sober or sane without being just
(323b). Not Protagoras simply, but an already somewhat chastened Pro¬
tagoras, is ashamed to say in the present context that sobriety or prudence
is compatible with acting unjustly. In his eagerness to defend Protagoras’
pragmatic doctrine against Plato’s static doctrine, Havelock overlooks the
obvious fact that he is confronted with a Platonic dialogue and hence with
a moving, not static, context. Socrates’ apparently wicked action is in fact
an act of reasonable punishment as Protagoras’ liberal doctrine had defined
it. For it is not sufficient that one is ashamed to pronounce a wicked
proposition; one must learn to reject it in one’s thought too; in order to
learn this, one must make oneself, or one must be made by others, the de¬
fender of that proposition and take one’s punishment for it. But Protagoras
does not like to be punished: he mistakes punishment (improvement) for
humiliation (defeat). Therefore he tries to evade the issue which is too
hard for him to handle and to escape into an entirely different issue which
is easy for him to handle. We do not deny that it might have helped both
Havelock and simply inattentive readers if Socrates had protested, not
against long speeches in general, but against long speeches which are irrel¬
evant. But Plato had to think of all kinds of readers. Perhaps his Socrates
felt that he should put a stop to a conversation which had already fulfilled
its purpose, namely, to demonstrate to Hippocrates ad oculos that Protag¬
oras was not such an excellent teacher of good counsel as he claimed to be
and that a continuation which would stick to the issue so hard to handle
would only embarrass Protagoras and needlessly mortify him. We cannot
possibly do in a short review what Havelock has failed to do in a long book,
namely, to give an interpretation of the Protagoras and, as a preparation for
that, to explain what a Platonic dialogue is and how it is to be read. Have¬
lock regards the Platonic dialogue as a vehicle for propaganda or even
“preposterous propaganda.” After all, his book is a liberal’s book, not on
Plato, but on liberalism.
After the conversation between Protagoras and Socrates had led to a

conflict and to the threat of a breakup of the conversation and therewith
of the society constituted by the conversation, the conflict becomes the
concern of the whole society. Its outstanding members intervene either as
partisans or as would-be arbiters. Immediately before the conflict Socrates
and Protagoras had been speaking about justice. Now justice is presented
in deed. In the words of Havelock, “the impasse which the dialogue has
reached is treated as a parody of a situation in the ecclesia” (218) We pass
over his vague speculations about the sophistic contribution to “parliamen-
ary techniques and the sophists’ anticipation of “the necessity of the
party system” (243). Instead we concentrate on his remarks about the
speech of one of the would-be arbiters, Hippias. Hippias is frequently said
to have stated in this context “the doctrine of man’s common nature and
brotherhood and world citizenship.” Accepting this interpretation, Have-
Tt that Patos treatment of this doctrine “is not quite forgivable.”
If this interpretation were correct, Havelock would have presented to us
the first example of a conflict between Plato and a Greek liberal. But alas
Havelock also says that Hippias teaches the common nature and brother¬
hood and common citizenship, not of all men, but of all Greeks. Yet can
we be certain that Hippias taught even this much? He says that “all pres¬
ent are by nature, not by law” kindred and fellow citizens because like is
by nature akin to like. “All present” are like to one another because they
now the nature of the things” or because they are exceptionally wise
i*/C ,, . Cf' R°ughly speaking Hippias teaches then that by
nature all wise men are kinsmen and fellow citizens, whereas all other kin¬
ship and fellow citizenship rests on law or convention. Plato ridiculed not
this teaching but Hippias’ childish belief that “all present know the nature
of the things.” Havelock, however, finds in Hippias’ words the suggestion
of an epistemology of group communication” (225-229, 352).
Havelock’s book culminates in, although it does not end with, his
account of Antiphon. The account is based on “the mutilated record”’sup¬
plied by two papyrus fragments which are now held to stem from the
sophist Antiphon (256, 289, 416-418). Antiphon asserts that by nature all
men, regardless of whether they are Greeks or barbarians, are alike in all
respects and that the denial of this likeness is barbaric; he proves this like¬
ness by the fact that as regards the things which are by nature necessary to
all men, such as breathing through mouth and nose, there is no difference
among men. Havelock admires Antiphon’s “breathless logic” in which the
distinction between “natural barbarians” and “‘the natural free man’
(that is, Greeks)” “dissolves like smoke” (257-258). He thus implies that
Antiphon’s liberal assertion is opposed to the view of the classics. His im¬
plicit criticism proceeds from a superficial understanding of certain pas¬
sages in the first book of the Politics (351-352) and from a complete dis-
regard, for instance, of the treatment of Carthage in the second book, to

say nothing of Plato’s description of the division of the human race into
Greeks and barbarians as absurd, and of many other things. Antiphon’s
assertion, as distinguished from his proof, is not specifically liberal, but is
implied in the understanding of philosophy as leaving the Cave. The
difference between Antiphon and the classics appears from Havelock’s
overstatement: “In estimating man and his behaviour, you begin not with
the mind but the lungs” (257). As for Antiphon, we have not given up
hope that he did not stop at the lungs but proceeded to the mind. Those
Greek thinkers who seemed to share the prejudice of their fellow Greeks
against the barbarians meant by it that there were among the Greeks more
men willing to learn from other nations and to understand the thought of
other nations than there were among the other nations; barbarians are
simply self-sufficient or self-contained in the decisive respect. Antiphon
bears witness to this superiority of the Greeks: he calls it barbaric—un-
Greek—to deny the fundamental unity of the human race.
Antiphon also questioned civil society itself. He seems to have argued as
follows. Given that it is just not to wrong anyone if one has not been
wronged by him first, it is unjust to bear witness against a criminal or to act
as a judge in a law court against a criminal who has not wronged the po¬
tential witness or judge; besides, by testifying against a criminal or by con¬
demning him, one makes him his lifelong enemy and thus does damage to
oneself. The first argument would justify meeting hurt with hurt; the sec¬
ond argument seems to suggest that it is shrewd not to meet hurt with
hurt. But the passage is so corrupt and Havelock’s claim on behalf of his
interpretation of it is so modest (262) that we may drop the matter with
this observation: we fail to see that Antiphon is “tender-minded,” a
“utopist,” and an anarchist (260, 263, 265, 290). Antiphon says that one
should observe the laws of the city in the presence of witnesses and the
laws of nature when one is alone. Havelock approaches this saying in the
certainty, not supported by any evidence, that Antiphon is not “an immor-
alist.” But he does not deny that in this saying Antiphon advocates “a flex¬
ible behaviour pattern which involves a double standard” or that “he has a
large measure of sympathy [for] hypocrisy” or that according to him “one
must give lip service” to the laws of the city or that those laws may be
“flattered and evaded when they cannot be fought.” As if Plato had never
recommended “the noble lie,” he proclaims that “idealists of all schools
would violently object” to a “flexible behaviour pattern which involves a
double standard.” He then goes on to commit a non sequitur which in a
sense does honor to him: “ripe civilizations . . . tend to nourish a split
between private judgment and public observance. He is the first Greek
candid enough to see this. In a sense, then, he is not a political theorist at
all” (267-271; compare also this passage and the Preface with 376). The
Antiphontic antithesis of law and nature gives him an occasion to express
his dissatisfaction with Plato’s suggestions regarding the use of that antith¬
esis by certain individuals. He abstains from discussing the pertinent Pla¬
tonic passages, and he does not even begin to consider whether Plato’s own
questioning of law—especially in the Statesman—as well as his simile of the
Cave does not imply the same antithesis, although differently understood.
He who had praised the sophists as “communication men” and blamed
Plato for despising “discourse [as] a vehicle of group or collective opinion
and decision” has the hardihood, and in a sense the consistency, to lump
him together with the “group thinkers” for whom the polis is “the mistress
adored” (194, 270). Fiat liberalismus pereat Plato.
All these lapses, however, fade into insignificance when compared with
the great merit of an observation which, to the best of our knowledge,
Havelock is the first classical scholar to make. “Any subject of a totalitarian
state—and the city-state had its totalitarian aspects—and indeed the citi¬
zens of a democracy, in this present age of war and anxiety, know what
Antiphon meant” (271). We dismiss the reference to “democracy in this
age of war and anxiety” as out of place and even misleading. But in the
main point Havelock is right. The polis, and even the celebrated Athens of
Pericles, was not liberal or limited by a First Amendment, and Antiphon
explicitly says that the law determines “for the eyes what they ought to see
and what they may not see, and for the ears what they ought to hear and
what they may not hear, and for the tongue what it ought to say and what
it may not say.” It is perhaps a pity that Havelock did not go on to wonder
in the first place whether Antiphon’s “candor,” however praiseworthy on
other grounds, does not have the disadvantage of being inconsistent with
his insight because remarks like those quoted “fight” the law of the city in
the presence of witnesses; and to wonder in the second place whether
Antiphon’s manner of writing was not perhaps affected by his insight or
whether the obscurity of his style was not perhaps intentional—whether he
appears to us as extraordinarily candid because a lucky or unlucky accident
has saved for us a most shocking saying of his in isolation, while in the
complete work it was perhaps hidden away in the middle of an innocent
exposition or not presented by the author in his own name but entrusted
to other people—whether therefore one should not read his fragments with
a corresponding lack of innocence; and to wonder finally whether other
Greek writers did not have the same insight (which after all is not of
transcendent profundity) and hence composed their writings accordingly
and hence must be read with much greater care and much less innocence
than that with which they are usually read. A scholar who would have
given these questions ever so little serious and unbiased consideration
would have written an entirely different book—not a liberal book in the
present-day sense, but a liberal book in the original sense.
To return to Havelock, he takes Antiphon’s antithesis of law and nature
to imply that law is not “framed by the virtue of inspired lawgivers,” but
“results from a social compact reached by society’s members” (272).

Antiphon says that the law or the usages of the city stem from agreement
as distinguished from nature. This does not necessarily mean that the laws
or usages are simply the product of “group opinion”; it does not exclude
the possibility that the laws or usages are primarily the work of an out¬
standing man regarded as endowed with superhuman virtue whose propos¬
als were accepted by human beings, and these human beings constituted
themselves, by virtue of this acceptance, as members of one society. Have¬
lock unintentionally reveals the fundamental difference between the mod¬
ern liberal and the so-called Greek liberal by this question: “If law is a
compact reached historically by human beings, why is it not natural and
organic as are other items in man’s progress?” (273.) For the liberal, “nat¬
ural” is not a term of distinction: everything that is, is “natural”; for his
Greek predecessors not everything that is, is “natural.” Zeus “is,” for
otherwise one could not speak about him, distinguish him from Kronos,
Hera, and so on; but in what sense “is” he? He is by virtue of opinion or
establishment or agreement or law (cf. Laws 904a 9-b 1 with Antiphon B
44 A 2 line 27-28), whereas man, for instance, is not by virtue of law or
opinion, but by nature or in truth. If the liberal rejoins, “But at any rate
the law or opinion by virtue of which Zeus is, is not merely by law or opin¬
ion but is necessary for the people who adopted it or cling to it,” his Greek
predecessors would ask him how he knows this: is there no arbitrariness
and hence in particular no arbitrary freezing, wise or unwise, of errors
salutary or otherwise? While the ground of arbitrariness (the natural con¬
stitution of man as the rational animal) is natural, or, as was formerly said,
while the conventional finds some place within the natural, certainly the
product of the arbitrary act which establishes this or that convention is not
natural. In other words, man fashions “a state within a state”: the man¬
made “worlds” have a fundamentally different status from “the world” and
its parts. The liberal view originally emerged through the combination of
determinism with the assumption that the laws always correspond to genu¬
ine, not merely imagined, needs or that in principle all laws are sensible.
The term “historical” as used by Havelock, which is almost the modern
equivalent for “conventional,” serves no other function than to obscure a
very obscure event in the development of modern thought.
As for the specific meaning which Antiphon attaches to the antithesis of
law and nature, Havelock is hampered in his understanding of it by his be¬
lief that Antiphon advocated justice in the sense of nonaggression or that
he had “a deep feeling for the inviolability of the human organism.” He
infers the existence of this feeling from a saying of Antiphon which he
renders, “To be alive is a natural condition,” while Antiphon says, “To live
and to die is from nature” (275): “the human organism” is by nature most
violable. Similarly, Antiphon’s saying that life comes from the useful or
suitable, and dying from the damaging or unsuitable, is taken by Havelock
to bespeak “reverence for life” (280). In fact Antiphon explains what the
good by nature is as distinguished from the good by convention: the good
by nature is that which is conducive to life, and therefore the good by
nature is ultimately the pleasant. “The human organism” is violable in par¬
ticular by other “human organisms”; the laws claim to protect the inno¬
cent; Antiphon questions the truth of this claim. Havelock admits that
Antiphon’s statement on this subject could “easily” be understood to mean
that it is according to nature “to adopt the initiative in aggression” in order
not to become the helpless victim of aggression. He rejects this possibility
on the ground that according to Antiphon “nature does not seek to create
enemies” (284), although he also says that Antiphon questioned the be¬
nign character of “nature’s rule” (294). Antiphon merely says that what is
just must be universally beneficent; he does not say that justice thus under¬
stood is possible, and he certainly does not say that justice thus understood
is implied in “the laws of nature.” He also appears to have pointed out the
essential inconveniences of marriage, and he may very well have questioned
the natural character of marriage. Havelock interprets the passage in ques¬
tion, after having excised portions of it “which better reflect the tradition”
than they reflect Antiphon (293), in the same spirit in which he interprets
his questioning the laws of the city. “The twentieth-century note in his
teaching is there. It sounds almost uncanny. Was he an apostle of the new
education? Would he have approved a progressive school? Is it possible
that in his Greek we catch, across the centuries, the accents of Sigmund
Freud?” (294.) The “almost” is inspired not by reasonable restraint, but
by the liberal temper: Sigmund Freud can be relied upon a priori to show
in each case that what appears to be uncanny is not truly uncanny.
Some readers may blame us for having devoted so much time and space
to the examination of an unusually poor book. We do not believe that
their judgment of the book is fair. Books like Havelock’s are becoming ever
more typical. Scholarship, which is meant to be a bulwark of civilization
against barbarism, is ever more frequently turned into an instrument of
rebarbarization. As history suggests, scholarship is, as such, exposed to that
degradation. But this time the danger is greater than ever before. For this
time the danger stems from the inspiration of scholarship by what is called
a philosophy. Through that philosophy the humane desire for tolerance is
pushed to the extreme where tolerance becomes perverted into the aban¬
donment of all standards and hence of all discipline, including philological
discipline. But absolute tolerance is altogether impossible; the allegedly
absolute tolerance turns into ferocious hatred of those who have stated
most clearly and most forcefully that there are unchangeable standards
founded in the nature of man and the nature of things. In other words, the
humane desire for making education accessible to everyone leads to an ever
increasing neglect of the quality of education. No great harm is done, or at
least there is no new reason for alarm, if this happens in disciplines of re-
cent origin; but the situation is altogether different if the very discipline
which is responsible for the transmission of the classical heritage is
affected. True liberals today have no more pressing duty than to counteract
the perverted liberalism which contends “that just to live, securely and
happily, and protected but otherwise unregulated, is man’s simple but su¬
preme goal” (374) and which forgets quality, excellence, or virtue.
NOTE
1. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.

4/ / On the Minos
The Minos has come down to us as a Platonic work immediately preceding

the Laws. The Laws begins where the Minos ends: the Minos ends with a
praise of the laws of the Cretan king Minos, the son and pupil of Zeus,
and the Laws begins with an examination of those laws. The Minos thus
appears to be the introduction to the Laws. The Laws more than any other
Platonic dialogue needs an introduction, for it is the only Platonic dialogue
in which Socrates is not mentioned or which is set far away from Athens,
in Crete. The Minos thus also appears to be entirely preliminary. Yet it is
the only work included in the body of Platonic writings which has no other
theme than the question “What is law?” and the answer to it. It could ap¬
pear strange, and it ought to appear strange, that this grave question which
is perhaps the gravest of all questions is, within the body of the Platonic
writings, the sole theme only of a preliminary work. But we must remem¬
ber that in Xenophon’s Socratic writings Socrates never raises the question
“What is law?”; according to Xenophon, it was Socrates’ ambiguous com¬
panion Alcibiades who raised that Socratic question in a conversation with
Pericles while Socrates was absent. The strangeness is enhanced by the
fact that Plato’s Socrates raises his question concerning law, not as is his
wont, after proper preparation, but abruptly; he seems to jump at an un¬
suspecting companion with his bald question. He thus brings it about that
nothing accidental or particular—like the question of Socrates’ own law-
abidingness in the Crito—distracts our attention from the universal ques¬
tion in all its gravity. We are not even distracted by the name of the
companion; that companion remains nameless and faceless; we perceive
only what he says. Since no one else appears to be present at the conversa¬
tion, the work could not carry as its title, as most Platonic dialogues do,
the name of a participant in a Socratic conversation or of a listener to it:
65
the name which is mentioned in the title is the name of a man of the re¬
mote past who is only spoken about in the conversation.
While the question with which Socrates opens the conversation is
abrupt, it cannot be said to be unambiguous. It is not clear whether he asks
the companion, “What in our opinion is law?” or “What is the law to
which we [we Athenians (?)] are subject?” The first question might be
called universal or theoretical, and the second question might be called
practical or particular. The practical question is again ambiguous; it may
refer to a whole legal order or to any particular law. While being distinct,
the theoretical and the practical questions are inseparable from each other.
One cannot know to which law one is subject without having some knowl¬
edge, however vague and dim, of law as such; one cannot know what law as
such is without possessing at least a directive toward the law to which one
is subject. For the time being Socrates makes his initial question unambig¬
uous by limiting the conversation to the theoretical question. But the prac¬
tical question is only driven underground: the dialogue ends with the sug¬
gestion that the law deserving the highest respect is the law, not of Athens,
but of Crete.
Socrates illustrates the question “What is law?” first by the question
“What is gold?” and then by the question “What is stone?” Gold is
most valuable, and a stone may be entirely worthless. “Gold” is never used
in the plural, whereas “stone” is; one cannot say “a gold” as one can say “a
stone”: there are wholes each part of which is a whole or complete, and
there are wholes no part of which is complete. We are thus induced to
wonder whether law, properly understood, is more like gold or more like
stone. But regardless of whether any particular law or even any particular
code can be said to be a whole, Socrates’ question is concerned with a
whole—the whole comprising all laws. Just as gold does not differ from
gold in respect of being gold and stone does not differ from stone in re¬
spect of being stone, law does not differ from law in respect of being law.
Does this mean that a bad law is as much law as a good law?
The companion’s first answer to Socrates’ comprehensive question is to
the effect that the law is the whole consisting of whatever is “held” or
whatever is established by law. Socrates convinces him by suitable parallels
that just as in other cases what we may call the acts of the human soul are
not the same as the things in which these acts issue, law as an act of the
soul is not the same as that in which that act issues. Law is then so far
from being something inanimate (like gold or stone) that it is an act of
the soul: is it manifestation or science or is it finding (invention) or art? In
his answer (the second and central answer to Socrates’ comprehensive
question) the companion does not meet the issue. He says that law is the
decision of the city. He means by this that the law is not an act of the soul,
but something in which certain acts of the soul issue. Yet it is now clear to
him that law is the outcome of some act of the soul, whereas his first an-
On the Minos / 67
swer would have been compatible with the view that law is custom of
which no one knows whence it came or, as one might say, which is not
“made” but has “grown.” Socrates rephrases the second answer in such a
way as to make it an answer to the particular question which he had ad¬
dressed to the companion: the act of the soul which is law has the charac¬
ter, neither of science nor of art, but of opinion; it is the city’s opining
about the affairs of the city.
A simple consideration suffices to show that this answer is insufficient.
We assume that there is a connection between law and justice. Perhaps a
man may be law-abiding without being just, but surely a lawless man is
unjust. In a way law and justice seem to be interchangeable; hence law will
be something high. But a city’s opinions may be low. We are then con¬
fronted with a contradiction between two most audible opinions which are
so audible because they are opinions of the city: the opinion that the law is
the opinion of the city and the opinion that the law is something high.
Socrates, without any hesitation and without giving any reason, chooses the
second opinion and therewith tacitly rejects the opinion that the law is the
opinion of the city. Since the opinions of the city are self-contradicting,
even the best of citizens cannot simply bow to them. Law is indeed an
opinion, according to Socrates; but he does not yet say whose opinion it is;
for the time being he only says that it is a high opinion, hence a true opin¬
ion, and hence the finding out of what is. “Finding out,” and hence law,
appears to be between “finding” or art on the one hand and “manifesta¬
tion” or science on the other.
Only one more step is needed in order to bring us to the third and final
definition of law, the only definition proposed by Socrates: the law wishes
to be the finding out of what is. The last step is a step back. Socrates
qualifies the apparent result according to which the law is the finding out
of what is. He does not give a reason for his qualification, but the compel¬
ling reason comes to sight immediately afterward: if the law were the
finding out (the having found out) of what is, and what is (what is with¬
out any admixture of nonbeing) is always the same, law would be simply
unchangeable, and hence all or most of the things which we call laws and
which differ from time to time and from place to place would not be laws
at all. But if law only wishes, or tends, to be the finding out of what is, if
no law is necessarily the finding out of what is, there can be an infinite
variety of laws which all receive their legitimation from their end: The
Truth. The companion fails to grasp the qualification; he believes that Soc¬
rates has left it at suggesting that law is the finding out of what is. Given
the fact, he argues, that we constantly find out the same things as things
which are (sun, moon, stars, men, dogs, and so on), all men should always
use the same laws, and they manifestly do not. Socrates replies to the effect
that the variety in question is due to the defects of human beings and does
not affect the law itself. The implied distinction between the infallible law
and the fallible human beings suggests to us that law is indeed an act of
the soul, but perhaps not necessarily of the human soul. Besides, Socrates
regards it as an open question whether human beings do use different laws
at different places and in different times. He thus compels the companion
to prove the fact that laws vary. But when he has completed that proof,
Socrates seems to reject it as an irrelevant “long speech." In brief, Socrates
tries to be silent about the variety of laws—about a fact which had induced
him to say that the law wishes to be—that is, is not necessarily—the find¬
ing out of what is.
The companion proves the variety of laws by the examples of laws con¬
cerning sacrifices and burials; the examples concern sacred things. They
confirm to some extent Socrates’ definition of law; they show that at any
rate the most awe-inspiring laws are based on more or less successful at¬
tempts to find out what is in the highest sense, namely, the gods and the
soul and hence what the gods demand from men and what death means.
The examples show the great difference between present Athenian practice
and the practice of the earliest past, of the age of Kronos, as it were. They
seem to show that in the beginning men were savage, whereas in present-
day Athens they are gentle; hence present-day Athenian laws will be supe¬
rior to the oldest laws, Greek or barbarian. This finding obviously presup¬
poses that laws differ temporally and locally. Perhaps Socrates treats the
changeability of law in so gingerly a manner because it is the premise of
the finding mentioned—of a finding with which he is not satisfied.
Socrates attempts now to bring about a meeting of minds with the com¬
panion by means of short speeches, or short questions and answers. The
companion prefers to answer Socrates’ questions rather than to question
Socrates. He grants to Socrates that people everywhere and always hold
that the just things are just, the noble things are noble, the unjust things
are unjust, and the base things are base—just as all people, regardless of
whether they hold it lawful or impious to bring human sacrifices, hold that
the things that weigh more are heavier and the things that weigh less are
lighter. The final result of this reasoning confirms the unqualified defini¬
tion of law according to which law does not merely wish but is the finding
out of what is. The companion, who through his own fault is compelled to
give short and rather quick answers and cannot, as we can, read and reread
Socrates’ questions, is unable to lay bare the sophism to which Socrates
draws our attention while committing it: the universal agreement regard¬
ing the opposition of the just or noble things to the unjust or base things
does not establish universal agreement as to the content of “the just and
the noble.” Nevertheless, the companion remains entirely unconvinced, for
Socrates’ result manifestly contradicts what the companion himself ob¬
serves with his own eyes in Athens every day, namely, that “we" (that is,
we Athenians) unceasingly change the laws.
What one may call Socrates’ second proof of his definition of law is not
On the Minos / 69
a mere repetition of the first. In the second proof Socrates tactily contrasts
“the just things” and “the heavier things”; he thus draws our attention to
two questions: (1) Can justice be a matter of degree as is weight? (2) Is
disagreement regarding weight as widespread and as profound as disagree¬
ment regarding justice? Besides, the first proof was still related to the opin¬
ion that law is the opinion of the city; that opinion plays no role in the
second proof. We are thus being prepared for the suggestion that law is
the mental act, not of the city (that is, of the assembly of the citizens) or
of the citizen, but of men of a different description.
Reading on, we observe that what we have called Socrates’ second proof
of his definition of law is in fact the first section of his tripartite defense of
his definition of law; that tripartite defense forms the second or central
part of the dialogue. At the beginning of the central section of the central
part, Socrates abruptly turns to the writings of men who possess an art. We
can discern the reason for the apparent change of the subject. Socrates had
raised the question whether law is a science or an art. He assumes now that
law is an art. He seems to justify this assumption as follows. Laws are pre¬
scriptive writings; but the arts, being a kind of perfect, final, fixed knowl¬
edge which is the same for all, necessarily find their appropriate expression
in prescriptive writings; hence laws belong to the same genus as the arts.
This reasoning suffers from an obvious flaw: it is not necessary for either
arts or laws to present themselves in writings. For instance, the farmers,
that is, the experts in farming, do not necessarily compile or even read writ¬
ings on farming.
If laws belong to the same genus as the arts and are therefore prescrip¬
tive writings composed by experts of a certain kind, namely, the kings (or
statesmen), there is no reason why laws should be the work of the city or
of Greeks: neither citizens nor Greeks are, as such, experts in the kingly
art. The prescriptions ordinarily called “laws” may differ from place to
place; but regarding things of which men possess knowledge, all knowers
agree, as Socrates asserts, regardless of where they live or whether they are
Greeks or barbarians. When the companion emphatically assents to this
assertion, Socrates praises him for the first time. Furthermore, the prescrip¬
tions ordinarily called “laws” may differ from time to time; but where
there is knowledge, there is no change of thought; or vice versa, where
there is change of thought, there is no knowledge; the frequent change of
“laws” for which Athens was so notorious is then a clear proof that the
Athenian legislature is ignorant, and hence its findings or decisions do not
deserve to be called laws or to be respected as laws; in fact those “laws”
must be particularly bad. The companion does not object to this tacit re¬
sult; in other words, he has now become convinced of the truth of Soc¬
rates’ definition of law or, more precisely, of the fact that law is an art. It
looks as if Socrates has succeeded in appealing from his pro-Athenian prej¬
udice to his antidemocratic prejudice. We on our part realize that the
answer to the theoretical question “What is law?” has supplied at least a

negative answer to the practical question “What is the law to which we are
subject?” In spite of the agreement reached, there remains at least one
difference between Socrates and the companion—a difference which comes
to light in the very center of the dialogue: the companion is more certain
than Socrates that cookery is an art; Socrates' uncertainty regarding the
status of cookery is matched in the Minos only by his uncertainty regarding
the status of soothsaying, that is, of the art by which men claim to know
what goes on in the minds of the gods. The companion is also more cer¬
tain, at least to begin with, that knowers agree always and everywhere than
that experts agree always and everywhere; perhaps he knew in advance that
good legislation requires knowledge of the subject matter to be regulated
by law, but was doubtful that that knowledge must be expert knowledge:
knowledge of the pertinent facts as distinguished from their causes may be
sufficient for good legislation.
In the last section of the central part Socrates proves that law is an art by
assuming that art consists in distributing properly the parts of some whole
to the parts of another whole—of a herd, as it were. In some cases the dis¬
tributor assigns to each member of the herd the same quantity of the
whole to be distributed as to every other member. In other arts, however,
the distributor must consider the fact that the “herd” consists of qualita¬
tively different parts or that different things are good for different parts or
different individuals. What human beings call laws would then be the dis¬
tributing, say, of punishments and rewards to the members of the city or in
the best case the distributing of the proper food and toil to the souls of
human beings by the king. The king assigns to each the work best for him,
that is, most conducive to his becoming a good man: he does not treat the
human beings whom he rules as parts of a herd. But if to be a good man is
the same as to be a good citizen, a good member of the city, one can also
say that the king assigns each man to the place or the work for which he is
best fitted. In this section writings are no longer mentioned: assigning to
each soul what is good for it cannot be done well except orally, by the king
on the spot. It would be more simple to say that such assigning cannot be
done well by any law. Socrates prefers to say that it is best done by the best
laws, the laws of the king. He thus implies that laws ought to be infinitely
variable. Whereas according to the preceding argument, law as art entails
that law must be always and everywhere the same and hence that at least
almost all so-called laws do not deserve to be called laws, according to the
present argument, law as art entails that law must be as variable as the in¬
dividuals and their individual situations and hence that no so-called law
deserves to be called law. On the other hand, by now speaking of the best
laws Socrates restores the common view according to which certain deci¬
sions of ignoramuses or of assemblies of ignoramuses may also be regarded
and respected as law. Yet the best laws prove to be unwritten laws of a
On the Minos / 71
certain kind—not indeed the unwritten laws of unknown origin which say
the same things always and everywhere, but certain acts of a wise soul.
Socrates had opened the central part of the dialogue with the suggestion
that there is universal agreement regarding the just and the noble things.
This suggestion taken by itself could be thought to refer to the unwritten
laws which are always and everywhere acknowledged to be laws and which
for this reason cannot be the work of human legislators (Xenophon,
Memorabilia IV. 4. 19). But the Minos is silent about the unwritten laws
thus understood. One may say that in this dialogue Socrates turns from
unwritten laws of unknown origin first to written laws and then to unwrit¬
ten laws of known origin, viz. the distributing by the king of the proper
food and toil to each man’s soul.
The third and last part of the Minos deals with the laws of Minos. The
transition is not explained and is therefore abrupt. We are supposed to
have learned what law is and what makes a law good; we must then seek
the best laws. What we have learned may have made us doubtful whether
the best laws can be of human origin. The lesson conveyed through the last
part of the dialogue may provisionally be said to be that the best laws are
the laws of Minos because Minos received them from the highest god, his
father Zeus. What must surprise us is that the laws of Zeus do not consist
in assigning to each man’s soul the food and toil best fitted for him, and
besides that Zeus did not communicate his laws to all men: he communi¬
cated them only to a single privileged man, to Minos, whom he appointed
also as the highest judge of the dead (Gorgias 523e-524a). Perhaps Zeus
did not wish to rule directly so that man, within certain limits left to him¬
self, would be compelled or enabled to choose as long as he lives. Further¬
more, if Zeus had communicated his law to men directly, men would nec¬
essarily be able to know the thoughts of Zeus, that is, soothsaying would
necessarily be a genuine art; but there is no need for soothsaying if there is
an intermediary between Zeus and men, an intermediary like Minos who,
as participating in divinity, does not need a human art to be aware of the
thoughts of his father and as participating in humanity can communicate
his father’s thoughts to men just as human legislators communicate their
laws to men.
Socrates leads up to the laws of Zeus by speaking first not simply of the
best laws but of laws (prescriptive and distributive acts) both good and an¬
cient regarding flute playing. As we could have learned from the compan¬
ion’s long speech, the good is in no wise the same as the ancient: certain
ancient laws commanded human sacrifices to the then highest god. But an
ancient law which is now still in force approximates the unchangeability
which appeared to be a mark of goodness. Law must be not only good or
wise but also stable: could the best laws be laws which are both wise and
stable? The example of flute playing—of an art which reminds most forci¬
bly of speech and yet which cannot be practiced while one speaks—draws
our attention to the quality of the divine as distinguished from the ancient
and the good. The flute songs invented by certain ancient barbarians are
most divine because they alone move and bring to light those who are in
need of the gods; yet the divine character of those flute songs explains why
they still retain their force. Not everything ancient is divine, but perhaps
everything divine necessarily lasts for a very long time. Could the stability
of the best laws be due to the unspeakable or mysterious power of the
divine which rules chance and may rule it in favor of the good? We are
thus prepared for Socrates’ suggestion that the oldest Greek laws—the laws
which Minos gave to his fellow Cretans, rather than, for instance, the
Egyptian laws or the Lacedaemonian laws which were popularly traced to
Apollo, the victor over Marsyas and his art of flute playing—combine the
qualities of oldness, goodness, and divinity.
The companion, who has been brought to admit that law is an art and
hence that the Athenian laws are either not laws at all or in the best case
only bad laws, refuses to bow to the Cretan laws. He does not deny that
Minos was an ancient king of divine origin, but he denies that he was a
good king. Socrates tells him that he is under the spell of an Athenian
myth; he sets out to liberate him from the spell of the Athenian myth as
he has liberated him from the spell of the Athenian laws. In a speech
whose length surpasses by far the length of the companion’s long speech,
Socrates appeals from the Athenian tragic poets who had originated the
myth, according to which Minos was bad, to Homer and Hesiod, the most
ancient poets, and thus proves that Minos and hence his laws are good.’
From Homer, Socrates has learned that Minos was the only one of the
children of Zeus educated by Zeus in his art, the noble art of sophistry,
which may be identical with the legislative art and certainly is identical
with the kingly art; the education took place in a cave, if in the cave of
Zeus. Law is so far from being the opinion of the city that it is, or is based
upon, an art, the highest art, the art of the highest god. In order to judge
of Socrates’ contention, one would have to consider in their contexts the
few Homeric verses to which he appeals; one would have to see whether
they express the view of Homer or of a Homeric character; in the latter
case one would have to consider whether that character can be presumed
to possess both the knowledge and the truthfulness required in a matter of
such importance. As Socrates indicates, the decisive Homeric passage could
be thought to mean that Minos associated with his father Zeus, not in
speeches devoted to education in virtue, but in drinking and playing. He
disposes of the suggestion that Minos associated with Zeus in drinking to
the point of drunkenness by a consideration which, it must be admitted, is
not free from begging the question. He does not dispose of the suggestion
that Zeus and Minos associated for other purposes which have nothing in
common with education to virtue. It is not advisable to speculate on the
alternatives which are not mentioned. It suffices to say that, as Socrates
On the Minos / 73
makes clear at the very end, the whole conversation is based on ignorance
of the function of the good legislator: the whole praise of Minos’ laws
must be reconsidered, as it is in the Laws.
The audible proof of Minos’ goodness is balanced by an inaudible doubt
of that goodness. The difference between proof and doubt corresponds to
the difference between two Socratic exhortations. The proof is preceded by
an exhortation to piety, for Socrates challenges the Athenian myth regard¬
ing Minos in the name of piety: it is impious for a human being to speak
ill of Minos, that is, a hero who was the son of Zeus; the god may resent
this more than if one speaks ill of him. The proof is followed by an ac¬
count of how the myth of Minos’ badness arose: Minos waged a just war
against Athens, defeated Athens, and compelled the Athenians to pay
that famous ransom : to send fourteen young Athenians at regular inter¬
vals to Crete as a kind of human sacrifice; hence Minos became hateful to
“us,” the Athenians, and we take our revenge on him through the tragic
poets who present him as bad; this revenge is effective because tragedy is in
its way as pleasing to the people and as apt to lead the soul as flute playing
itself. While stating these things, Socrates addresses his second exhortation
to the companion—the exhortation to be on his guard, not against acts of
impiety, but against incurring the hatred of any patriotic poet. As is shown
by the example of Minos, one cannot comply in all cases with both exhor¬
tations, although each exhortation demands compliance in all cases. While
complying with his first exhortation Socrates was compelled to praise most
highly the most ancient enemy of Athens to whom he will owe, if indi¬
rectly, the postponement of his execution decreed by the city of Athens
(cf. Phaedo 58a-c).
The end of the dialogue renders doubtful its chief result. This ending is
not entirely unexpected, for the suggestion that Minos’ laws are the best
laws implies the view that law can be the finding out of what is and hence
can be unchangeable, whereas Socrates’ definition of law implies the view
that law can never be more than the attempt to find out what is and hence
is necessarily changeable. According to the first view, men can be experts
—can possess full knowledge—regarding the matter with which law is con¬
cerned; according to the second view, men are ignorant regarding that
matter. One can resolve this difficulty by suggesting that while men cannot
be experts regarding that matter, they necessarily are knowers of it. The
fundamental difficulty can also be stated as follows: law is always and
everywhere the same and therefore one; law must be as variable as the
needs of individuals and therefore infinitely many. If one accepts the sec¬
ond view, one reaches this conclusion: whereas in the case of man, justice,
dog, the one (man as such, justice as such, dog as such) is of higher dignity
than the many (the individual men, just things, dogs); in the case of law
the one (the universal rule) is of lower dignity than the many (the assign¬
ment of the proper food and toil to each man’s soul) and in fact spurious.
We could touch only on some of the things which the reader of the
Minos must consider much more carefully than we have been able to do
here. For instance, we did not speak of the circumstances in which Socrates
and the companion address each other by name or in other ways. The
companion addresses Socrates eight times by name and never in any other
way. Socrates never addresses the companion by name (which does not
necessarily mean that he does not know his name), but addresses him
three times by an expression which we may render “you excellent one.” In
conversations between two men one uses the name of the other especially
in two cases: when the other says something apparently absurd and one
tries to call him back to his senses, and when one is pushed to the wall by
the other and begs for mercy. Socrates addresses the companion twice as
“you excellent one” immediately after the companion has addressed him as
“O Socrates”; the first time the companion was dissatisfied with Socrates’
praise of Minos, and the second time the companion failed to understand
how the good Minos could have acquired the reputation of being bad. As
for the character of the companion, we suspect that he was no longer quite
young, that he was concerned with civic fame, that he was what one might
call free from prejudices, and that he believed that one can be just while
being savage and unaccommodating.
The Minos raises more questions than it answers. In order to see how
the thoughts suggested by the Minos are best continued, one must turn to
the other dialogues. It is of little use to look up parallels in the other dia¬
logues to this or that passage of the Minos, for the meaning of the parallels
depends on their contexts, that is, on the whole dialogues within which
they occur. One must then study the other dialogues. With every other
dialogue a new land comes to sight; the experience resembles that of one's
becoming aware of an unexpected turn of the road at what seemed to be
the end of the road. The dialogue most akin to the Minos is the Hippar¬
chus. The Minos and the Hipparchus are the only dialogues between Soc¬
rates and a single nameless companion. They are the only dialogues whose
titles consist of the name of someone who is not present at the conversa¬
tion but was dead a long time before the conversation; their titles resemble
the titles of tragedies. They are the only dialogues which open with Soc¬
rates’ raising a “what is” question. While the Minos begins with the ques¬
tion “What is law?”, the Hipparchus begins with the question “What is
the quality of gain-loving? Who are the gain-loving ones?” If the beginning
of the Minos corresponded strictly to the beginning of the Hipparchus, it
would read: “What is the quality of lawful? Who are the law-abiding
ones?” If not law itself, surely law-abidingness is generally praised, while
love of gain is generally blamed: the Minos need not vindicate law-
abidingness and law, while the Hipparchus is devoted to vindicating love
of gain. While the Minos may be said to end in the praise of the Cretan
legislator Minos, the Hipparchus may be said to culminate in the praise of
On the Minos / 75
the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus. The vindication of the love of gain is the
vindication of tyranny, if the tyrant is the most outstanding lover of gain
(cf. Aristotle, Politics 1311a 4—11). Tyranny is the opposite of law or rule
of law; the Minos and the Hipparchus together deal with the two funda¬
mental alternatives. The connection which we indicated between “love of
gain” and “Hipparchus” is not made explicit in the Hipparchus. Hippar¬
chus is mentioned there because a saying of Hipparchus throws light on
the conversational situation. Socrates charges the companion with trying to
deceive him, and the companion charges Socrates with in fact deceiving
him. (No such charge is made in the Minos.) Thereupon Socrates quotes,
after proper preparation, the saying of Hipparchus “Do not deceive a
friend. The saying does not disapprove of deceiving people who are not
friends. From the context it would appear that not deceiving friends is a
part of justice or, in other words, that justice consists in helping one’s
friends and hurting one’s enemies. Love of gain is generally despised be¬
cause it seems inseparable from deception. However this may be, Socrates
praises the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus as a good and wise man, the great
educator of the Athenians in wisdom, whose reign resembled the age of
Zeus s father Kronos. If we put the Minos and the Hipparchus together,
we become haunted by the suggestion that an Athenian tyrant rather than
the Athenian law (and even than the Cretan law) was good and wise.
Accordingly, just as in the Minos Socrates explicitly rejects the Athenian
myth regarding Minos, in the Hipparchus he takes issue with what “the
many” in Athens say about Hipparchus: Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who
were magnified as liberators by the people of Athens, murdered Hippar¬
chus for no other reason than because they were envious of his wisdom and
his effect on the young; the nonlegal murder of Hipparchus foreshadows
the legal murder of Socrates.
The Hipparchus questions the view that love of gain is simply bad, just
as the Minos may be said to question the view that law is simply good: a
law may be bad just as gain may be good. These facts recommend the view
that both law and gain by themselves are neutral just as man may be said
to be neutral: a high-class man is not more nor less a man than a low-class
man (Hipparchus 230c). But just as the Minos leads up to the view that a
bad law is not a law, the Hipparchus leads up to the view that a bad gain is
not a gain. With what right do we then say of a low-class human being
that he is nevertheless a human being?
Notes on Lucretius
I. Ascent
1. The Opening (I 1-148)
Lucretius’ work is a poetic exposition of Epicurean philosophy. The reader

who opens the book for the first time and peruses its opening does not
know through firsthand knowledge that it is devoted to the exposition of
Epicureanism. The poet leads his reader toward Epicureanism; he makes
him ascend to Epicureanism. Accordingly he begins his work by appealing
to sentiments which are not peculiar to Epicureans or by making state¬
ments which are not peculiarly Epicurean. The reader of the poem is in
the first place its addressee, Memmius, a Roman of noble descent. The
importance of his being a Roman is shown by the word which opens the
poem: Aeneadum. He is to ascend from being a Roman to being an
Epicurean.
The ascent from being a Roman to being an Epicurean requires that
there be a link between Romanism and Epicureanism. Being a Roman
must be more than being a member of one city among many or of any city
other than Rome. The Romans, the Aeneads, are the descendants of the
goddess Venus who alone guides the nature of things (21). Being a
Roman means to have a kinship, denied to other men, with the guide or
ruler of the whole. The goddess Venus is the joy not only of the Romans
but of gods and men simply; she is the only being that guides the birth or
growth not only of Romans and beings subject to Roman rule but of all
living beings simply; she brings life, calm, lucidity, beauty, smiling, and
light everywhere, although not at all times; she arouses fond sexual love
everywhere on earth; nothing glad and lovely emerges without her any¬
where (1-23). Lucretius opens his poem with a praise of Venus because
that goddess—and not, for instance, Jupiter Capitolinus—is the link be-
76
Notes on Lucretius / 77
tween Rome and all living beings; through Venus, and only through
Venus, does one ascend from Romanism to Epicureanism.
Lucretius’ praise of Venus also serves the more obvious purpose of mak¬
ing her willing to grant him two favors. Since nothing glad and lovely
emerges without her, the poet asks her to help him in writing his poem by
granting abiding charm to what he will say. He tries to induce her to grant
him this favor by telling her that his poem will deal with the nature of
things, that is, her mighty empire, and that it is to benefit Memmius, who
has always been her favorite (21-28). He further asks Venus to grant
peace everywhere, to all mortals; she alone can restore peace since Mars,
the god of war, can be subdued only by his desire for Venus; when his de¬
sire will have been fully aroused, he will not be able to refuse her request
to grant peace to the Romans; for as long as the fatherland is in the grip of
war, Lucretius will lack the equanimity needed for writing his poem as per¬
fectly as he wishes and Memmius, compelled to come to the assistance of
the common weal, will lack the leisure needed for listening to the poet’s
verses (29-43). Only Venus can give charm to Lucretius’ poem, and only
Venus can restore the peace which is required for writing and enjoying
that poem. This is the reason that Lucretius, although he speaks of Mars,
is silent about the fact that the Romans are descendants not only of Venus
but of Mars as well: Venus, not Mars, is the link between Romanism and
Epicureanism.
Lucretius concludes his invocation of Venus by supporting his prayer for
peace with a reminder of what she owes to herself not because she is Venus
but because she is a divine being: all gods enjoy deathless life in perfect
peace. By this he means in the first place that since all gods enjoy perfect
peace, they all are able and willing to grant peace to men. But he also
means something else: the gods enjoy perfect peace because they are self-
sufficient, free from all pain and all danger, in no wise in need of men and
therefore not to be swayed by men’s good or bad deeds; they are altogether
remote from the affairs of men (44-49). The six verses which conclude
the invocation of Venus must be understood as part of their pre-Epicurean
context. The poet will repeat them literally in an Epicurean context; there
he introduces them by stating explicitly that the view of the gods which
they convey contradicts the popular view (II 644-645). No such statement
accompanies the verses when they occur first. In their pre-Epicurean con¬
text they do not exclude the possibility that the gods, who do not need
men in any way and cannot be swayed by any human merits and demerits,
bestow blessings on some men from sheer kindness whenever it pleases
them, just as Venus has always willed to bestow the greatest blessings on
Memmius (26-27) and has succeeded in doing so. In asking Venus to
grant abiding charm to his verses and peace to the Romans, the poet is not
necessarily trying to arouse the goddess to action; he may merely wish to
guide her in the action which she herself spontaneously started, the action
of benefiting Memmius; he merely shows her how her entirely unsolicited

wish to benefit Memmius can be fulfilled most perfectly. After all, he never
suggested that Venus is omniscient; he never asked her to be his Muse or
to inspire him with knowledge of the Epicurean doctrine. The six verses do
cast doubt on the divinity of Mars, who does not always enjoy peace and
who cannot be free from all pain since he suffers from the everlasting
wound of sexual desire.1 Be this as it may, we remain closer to the accepted
view if we assert that the verses in question render doubtful the immedi¬
ately preceding prayer to a divine being and the poet’s singling out of
Venus as worthy of higher praise than any other deity; nay, that they
render doubtful the very being of all gods as worshiped by the Romans and
men in general. The verses thus understood would indicate that the invo¬
cation of Venus and especially the praise of Venus is a falsehood, if a
beautiful falsehood (cf. II 644-645). They would point toward the end of
a movement which begins with the turning to Venus and to Venus alone:
not all gods as worshiped by the Romans are equally remote from the true
gods; Venus, the joy of the gods as worshiped by the Romans, comes closer
to the true gods than any other gods worshiped by the Romans. Since
Venus owes her predominance in the opening of Lucretius’ poem primarily
to her being the ancestress of the Romans, the movement from Venus to
the true gods cannot but affect profoundly the status of Rome.
After the poet has addressed Venus in forty-nine verses, there remains
one more thing for him to do before he can begin to expound the Epicu¬
rean doctrine: he must address Memmius. He must make it as certain as
he can that Memmius will listen to the true account with a mind free from
all cares and not reject it with contempt before he has grasped it. He tries
to arouse Memmius’ attention by indicating to him the grandeur of the
poem’s theme. That theme will indeed not be Venus. The poet will
“begin” to speak to Memmius about “the highest ground of heaven and
the gods,” and he will reveal the origins from which nature creates the
things and makes them grow and into which she dissolves them again—
those origins which “we” call materies, genitalia corpora, and semina
rerum, but also, without any reference to life or sex, the first bodies, since
everything else that is comes from them (50-61). The nature which
creates the things out of the first bodies and dissolves the things into the
first bodies cannot be herself a first body; one must pause for a moment to
wonder whether the creative-destructive nature is not a god dwelling in
heaven; being destructive as well as creative, he could not be Venus as
celebrated in the very beginning; but the end of the passage seems to make
it certain that the gods too stem from the first bodies. The first bodies can¬
not be expected to possess the splendor and the charm of the gods; they
cannot be expected to be attractive. Why then should Memmius become
concerned with those bodies? Why indeed should he not turn his back on
Lucretius’ poem with contempt?
In order to see why knowledge of the unattractive origins of everything

including heaven and gods is most attractive, one must consider how men
lived before the quest for these origins started. Before that event human
life was abject, crushed as it was by dreadful religion. It was a Greek who
first dared to face the terror of religion and to take a stand against it. He
was not deterred by the dreadful tales about the gods nor by dreadful
sights or sounds from on high. He was encouraged to his daring deed not
only by his loathing of religion or suffering from it but also by his desire for
honor, for being the first: he wished to be the first to free himself from the
common bondage or imprisonment. Thanks to the power of his mind he
succeeded in breaking through the walls of the world and traversing in
mind the boundless whole and in bringing back to “us” knowledge of what
is possible and impossible: the gods as experienced in religion are impossi¬
ble. Hence “we” no longer grovel upon the earth, but equal the highest
(62-79). 6
Lucretius fears that Memmius might fear that, by acquiring the knowl¬
edge which is gained through rising against religion and which justifies that
rising, he would commit a crime. His reply is simple: religion has caused
crimes more frequently than irreligion. He gives a single example: Aga¬
memnon sadly but pitilessly sacrificed his utterly terrified virgin daughter
Iphigenia, his first-born child, in order to appease the virgin goddess Diana
who would not otherwise permit the sailing of the Greek fleet against Troy
(80-101). By reminding us of Diana’s savage demand the poet justifies
once more his turning toward Venus. Apart from this, his single example
would appear to be neither sufficient nor the most appropriate, for the
event with which he deals occurred in the remote past; it did not occur in
Rome; and there is no reason to believe that the abolition of human sacri¬
fice was due to philosophy. Provisionally one may reply that Lucretius
chooses the Greek example since it was a Greek who liberated man from
religion. He thus underlines the fact that Greekness is the link between
Romanism and Epicureanism, or that after having turned to Venus, the
ancestress of the Romans, the Roman must turn to Greeks, to men belong¬
ing to a foreign people now enslaved by Rome, in order to become free: it
was a Greek who won the greatest of all victories, a victory surpassing all
Roman victories.
Whatever may be true of the crimes caused by religion, its terrors seri¬
ously endanger Memmius’ happiness. Lucretius is certain that religious fear
will induce Memmius to try to turn his back on the truth even after he has
listened to it, for he will be exposed to the fear-inspiring inventions of seers
regarding everlasting punishments after death. Even “our” Ennius, the
first Roman poet who won immortal fame, speaks—not without contra¬
dicting himself—of the pale and miserable shades in Acheron and says that
the shade of Homer rose to him and “began” to shed bitter tears and to
reveal to him the nature of things. The only way to liberate oneself from
such saddening and terrifying dreams is knowledge of the nature of the

soul, of its mortality, and of how it comes that “we” seem to see and hear
the dead as if they were still alive; therefore man also needs knowledge of
all things above and below (102-135). It would seem that Memmius is
threatened less by fear of the gods than by fear of what might happen to
him after death; one is led to wonder whether the fear of what might hap¬
pen to men after death may not be independent of the fear of gods or even
precede it. By referring to Ennius, Lucretius does not supply an example of
Roman crimes caused by religion, unless one were to say that spreading ter¬
rifying tales is a crime. Besides, however much Lucretius disapproves of the
dangerous falsehoods propagated by Ennius, he admires that poet: well-
executed fables as such, even if they serve the untruth, are praiseworthy
(cf. II 644). It is more immediately important to note that the first great
Roman poet traced his knowledge of the nature of things to the first of the
Greek poets: in turning to Greek wisdom Lucretius follows a most respect¬
able Roman precedent. The opening of the poem is not the place to speak
proudly, not to say to boast, of the poet’s innovation or originality (cf. I
922-934, V 335-337).
Lucretius is to some extent an imitator of Ennius: he will transmit the
obscure findings of the Greeks to the Romans in a poem. He is aware of
the difficulty of his task—a difficulty due to the poverty of his native
tongue and the novelty of the matter. He is induced to undergo the labor
by the worth of Memmius and the prospect of friendship with him:
friendship in the true sense requires that the friends think alike about the
weightiest things. The poetic presentation serves the purpose of enlighten¬
ing Memmius so that he can grasp thoroughly what otherwise would re¬
main deeply hidden (136-145).
The findings of the Greeks are obscure only for those who have not
grasped them, who therefore live in darkness and are gripped by fear of
what might happen to them after death. That darkness and terror cannot
be dispelled by Venus or anything else resembling her or akin to her and in
particular not by poetry as such, but only by nature coming to sight and
being penetrated (146-148).
Lucretius leads Memmius from Rome via Venus to the victorious Greek.
In the remote past the Greeks defeated and destroyed Troy, protected by
Venus, through religion, that is, the sacrifice of Iphigenia; this victory led
to the founding of Rome, which defeated Greece, but did not altogether
destroy it. At their peak some Greeks won through philosophy the most
glorious victory possible.
The opening of the poem leads from Venus, the joy of gods and men, to
the promise of the true joy which comes from the understanding of nature.
The poem itself is meant to fulfill that promise. Let us turn at once to its
ending in order to see how the promise has been fulfilled.
2. The Ending (VI 1138-1286)
The last Book of the poem is the only one that begins and ends with
Athens. It almost goes without saying that no Book begins and ends
with “Rome.” The beginning of the last Book shows Athens’ greatness,
flnd the end shows Athens’ misery. Athens of outstanding fame first gave
men corn, an elevated kind of life, and laws; she first gave men sweet solace
of life when she brought forth the highly gifted man who by teaching wis¬
dom and thus liberating men from anguish showed them the way to happi¬
ness. This praise of Athens must be read in the light of the beginning of
the preceding Book. There Lucretius has spoken of the story that Ceres has
taught men how to grow com and of the fact that the god Epicurus has
taught men how to become wise. By correcting himself in the parallel pas¬
sage the poet shows that he can, if with some difficulty, resist the tempta¬
tion to deify the greatest benefactor of the human race, the most venerable
among the departed.2 He is grateful, not to any god, but in the first place
to Athens and to no other city.
The last Book ends with a description of the plague which had struck
Athens and which had been rendered immortal by Thucydides. This is not
the ending which one would have expected, the happy ending. The poet
had promised a copious speech on the gods (V 155), a speech which would
have made a happy ending. For some reason he replaced the speech on the
gods, the only beings that are perfectly happy, by the description of ex¬
treme misery.
Lucretius description of the plague differs most strikingly from its
Thucydidean model in being completely silent about the fact that the
plague occurred during a war and even owed its extremely destructive char¬
acter to that war:3 the plague was altogether a natural phenomenon, the
work of nature. As a consequence the plague as presented by Lucretius is
not less but more terrible than it is according to Thucydides. Since Lucre¬
tius does not present the plague in its context—in what we would call its
historical context—since he does not present the events preceding it and
following it, but describes it in isolation at the end of his poem, he pre¬
sents it as if it were the end of the world; he is silent on the cessation of
the plague. He presents to his readers in fact a recorded experience which
could give them a notion of the unrecordable end of the world. He is less
explicit than Thucydides about the fact that there were many who survived
the plague.4 He dwells more than Thucydides does on the fear of death
which gripped those exposed to the plague—their fear of death, not of
what might happen to them after death—and he is silent about their (not
necessarily unsuccessful) attempts, emphasized by Thucydides, to snatch
some pleasures without any regard to law before it was too late.5 He does
follow Thucydides’ description of the breakdown of fear of the gods and of
respect for the sacred laws regarding burial. Yet this description takes on a
somewhat different meaning in the Lucretian context; one cannot say of
Thucydides’ work what one can say of Lucretius’ work: that its most im¬
portant purpose is to liberate men from religion.
In order to reveal the magnitude of his enterprise, the poet returns at
the end of his poem for a moment to a still more pre-Epicurean view than
the one from which he started. He says that those who, from too great a
desire for life and fear of death, failed to take care of their sick were pun¬
ished afterward with a shameful death since they themselves were ne¬
glected and left without help when they fell sick; although he does not
speak of divine punishment, he suggests it. Yet he corrects himself imme¬
diately thereafter: those who from a sense of shame did take care of their
sick died no less miserably than the shameless.6 As a consequence of the
misery everywhere, neither the rites thought to be of divine origin nor the
gods themselves counted for much: they did not count for nothing. For
while the Athenians disregarded the customs of burial which they had
always observed, they did not desert the bodies of their dead kinsmen.7 At
any rate, the breakdown of religion is presented by Lucretius, as it is by
Thucydides, as a sign of extreme misery: there is something worse, much
worse, than religion.8 In the Lucretian context this means that the plague
which occurred in the heyday of Athenian civilization was more terrible
than the sacrifice of Iphigenia which occurred far from Athens in the ob¬
scure past: the witnesses of Iphigenia’s slaughter were sad and terrified;
they were not in a state of utter despondency; they could hope that Diana
would be appeased, and to the best of their knowledge this hope was ful¬
filled. And while the story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice may or may not be true,
the truth of the account of the plague in Athens is vouched for by one of
the most sober observers that ever was—by a man who was singularly free
from religious fear. The fact that Thucydides observed and described the
plague which struck him down could seem to show that philosophy, the
study of nature, is possible under the most unfavorable circumstances. Lu¬
cretius’ description of the plague, however, taken by itself, is far from sug¬
gesting this. It rather suggests that the mind of the philosopher stricken by
the plague would lose all its powers, become filled with anguish, pain, and
fear, and disintegrate before he died.9 The plague occurred prior to Epi¬
curus’ birth, but Lucretius does not in the slightest degree suggest that
Epicurus or an Epicurean would have withstood it better than anybody
else.
By contrasting directly the opening of the poem with its ending we gain
the impression that the poem moves from the sweetest natural phenome¬
non to the saddest and ugliest or that at the beginning the poet abstracts
entirely from the evils in order to accumulate them at the end. At the be¬
ginning he praises Venus, the giver of joy, charm, and peace, as the ruler of
nature; at the end he speaks, not even of Mars, but of the plague. Near the
beginning he speaks of the sacrifice of Iphigenia which was demanded by

Diana and appeared to appease that goddess. At the end he speaks of the
plague which could be thought to have been sent by Apollo, but the stark
terror of which is not relieved by any hope that one could appease the god
who might have sent it. The poem appears to move from beautiful or com¬
forting falsehoods to the repulsive truth. There is undoubtedly a certain
falsehood implied in the isolation of the plague: the plague is as much a
work of nature as procreation, but not more than the latter. The plague is
as much the work of nature as the golden deeds of Venus, nay, as the
understanding of nature. It is doubtful whether philosophy has any remedy
against the helplessness and the debasement which afflicts anyone struck by
such events as the plague. By revealing fully the nature of things, philoso¬
phy proves to be not simply a “sweet solace” (V 21). Nevertheless, the
movement from Venus to nature, which is destructive as it is creative, is an
ascent.
3. The Function of Lucretius’ Poetry (I 926-930 and IV 1-23)

The movement from the untruth to the truth is not simply a movement
from unrelieved darkness and terror to pure light and joy. On the contrary,
the truth appears at first to be repulsive and depressing. A special effort is
needed to counteract the first appearance of the truth. This special effort is
beyond the power of philosophy; it is the proper work of poetry. The poet
Lucretius follows the philosopher Epicurus; he imitates him; he belongs as
it were to a weaker and lower species than the teacher of the naked
truth. 0 Yet precisely for this reason the poet can do something which the
philosopher cannot do.
Lucretius’ poetry makes bright and sweet the obscure and sad findings of
the Greeks, that is, of the philosophers.11 The contrast between the sweet¬
est and most exhilarating celebrated at the beginning of his poem and the
saddest and most depressing described at its end—a contrast which we
understand as indicative of the movement the reader must undergo—is the
most striking example of the character of Lucretius’ poetry.
Lucretius speaks of the character of his poetry most clearly in twenty-five
verses which occur first immediately before his exposition of infinity and
which are repeated with very minor changes at the beginning of Book IV,
the Book devoted to what we may call the acts of the soul or the mind. His
subject, we learn, is dark, but his poem is bright. The doctrine which he
sets forth seems often to be rather sad to those not initiated into it, and
the multitude shrinks from it with horror. Therefore he sets it forth in a
sweet poem, giving the doctrine as it were a touch of the sweet honey of
the Muses. In so doing he acts like a physician who attempts to give chil¬
dren repulsive wormwood to drink and first touches the rim of the cup
with sweet honey; thus the unsuspecting children are deceived for their
benefit and do not sense the bitterness of the drink which heals them.
The potential Epicurean whom Lucretius addresses may be a man of
rare worth according to ordinary standards, and he may have an excellent
mind; in the most important respect he is, to begin with, quite immature.
Therefore the poet must deceive him by adding something to the doctrine
which he expounds, something which is alien to the doctrine and which is
meant to conceal the sad, repulsive, and horrible character of the doctrine.
The comparison of honey and wormwood on the one hand with the poetry
and the doctrine on the other does not hold in every respect: children do
not necessarily learn that it was the bitter medicine which cured them,
whereas those readers of Lucretius’ work who grasp its meaning necessarily
learn that it is the doctrine which makes them sound and happy. The
comparison surely holds in that in both cases the patient tastes the sweet
first: thanks to the poetry, what the reader tastes first is sweet. But does the
reader ever taste the repulsive? Is what is primarily repulsive, if tasted by
itself, noticed only after it is no longer repulsive? Will its taste eventually
even be sweet? The example of Venus at the beginning and of the plague
at the end would seem to show that whereas the sweet is sensed first, the
repulsive or sad is sensed even at the end, but in such a way that it is more
bearable for the sensitive reader after he has digested the doctrine than
before. Furthermore, the child may take the honeyed wormwood merely
for the sake of the honey, or he may take it because he is uncomfortable;
he surely is not so uncomfortable as to be willing to take the bitter potion
by itself. Similarly, the potential Epicurean may be attracted to the Epicu¬
rean doctrine only because of the sweetness of Lucretius’ poetry, or he may
be attracted by it because he suffers from the terrors of religion; surely
those terrors are not so great as to make him willing to swallow the naked
truth. After all, he does not live in the age in which Agamemnon sacrificed
his beloved daughter. We conclude that poetry is the link or the mediation
between religion and philosophy.
How can religion be more attractive than philosophy if religion is noth¬
ing but terrifying? To answer this question, one must reconsider what the
poet says at the beginning in the light of what he says later on how men
lived before the emergence of philosophy; one must consider the function
of religion. Originally men lived like wild beasts, depending entirely on the
spontaneous gifts of the earth, without fire and the arts as well as without
laws and language, unable to conceive of a common good. They feared
death because they clung to the sweet light of life, but apparently not be¬
cause they feared what might happen to them after death. Nor did they
fear that the sun might not rise again after it had set; the thought that sun
and earth might be destructible had not occurred to them.12 That thought
occurred to them only after they had acquired language and the arts and
established society and laws; then they began to doubt whether the sun
would always rise and set and whether the earth would last forever:
whether the world would come to an end and hence whether it did not
have a beginning. There is only one protection against the fear that the
walls of the world will someday crumble: the will of gods. Religion thus
serves as a refuge from the fear of the end or the death of the world; it has
its root in man s attachment to the world. Lucretius himself wishes, not to
say prays, that the day on which the huge machine of the world will fall
down with a dreadful sound will not come soon. The world to which man
is attached is not the boundless whole but the visible whole—heaven and
earth and what belongs to them—which is only an infinitesimal part of the
boundless whole: there are infinitely many worlds both simultaneously and
successively; everything to which a man can be attached—his life, his
friends, his fatherland, his fame, his work—implies attachment to the
world to which he belongs and which makes possible the primary objects of
his attachment.13 The recourse to the gods of religion and the fear of
them is already a remedy for a more fundamental pain: the pain stemming
from the divination that the lovable is not sempiternal or that the sempi¬
ternal is not lovable. Philosophy transforms the divination into a certainty.
One may therefore say that philosophy is productive of the deepest pain.
Man has to choose between peace of mind deriving from a pleasing delu¬
sion and peace of mind deriving from the unpleasing truth. Philosophy
which, anticipating the collapse of the walls of the world, breaks through
the walls of the world, abandons the attachment to the world; this aban¬
donment is most painful. Poetry on the other hand is, like religion, rooted
in that attachment, but unlike religion, it can be put into the service of
detachment. Because poetry is rooted in the prephilosophic attachment,
because it enhances and deepens that attachment, the philosophic poet is
the perfect mediator between the attachment to the world and the attach¬
ment to detachment from the world. The joy or pleasure which Lucretius’
poem arouses is therefore austere, reminding of the pleasure aroused by the
work of Thucydides.14
II. On the First Book
In giving an account of things “we” refer them to the first bodies (I 59).
The first bodies are not immediately known; they become known only
through an ascent (or descent). Prior to the ascent people render an
account of things, or at least of many things, by tracing them to gods.
What we have indicated regarding the first stage of the ascent can be
stated in general terms as follows. Primarily men are under the spell of
ancestral opinion; they act on the assumption that the true and the good is
the ancestral. A flexible man who by traveling has become aware of the
thought of many peoples will have become doubtful of the equation of the
true and good with the ancestral. Yet since all peoples trace at least some
things to gods, he will still believe in active gods. The second stage of the
ascent consists then in an insight which cannot be acquired by traveling,
but only while sitting or standing still; it is the realization that activity is
incompatible with the bliss of gods. For some reason Lucretius does not
use this theological insight at the beginning of his exposition of the truth.
Lucretius opens his account of nature with the assertion that nothing
ever comes into being out of nothing through gods. He thus opposes the
opinion of “all mortals” who trace to gods the numerous happenings of
which they cannot see the causes. He does not establish the principle that
nothing happens without a cause; all men take that principle for granted as
they take it for granted that there are things. The question concerns exclu¬
sively the causality of gods, or, more precisely, the question is exclusively
whether one is entitled to identify the invisible causes with the gods. To
refute the opinion primarily held by all mortals, he will show that nothing
ever comes into being out of nothing; by showing this he shows that noth¬
ing ever comes into being out of nothing through gods. He seems to dis¬
miss without argument the possibility that the gods create things from
something: is coming into being through gods the same as coming into
being through nothing? He cannot be said to presuppose the true view of
the gods according to which activity is incompatible with their bliss, for, as
we have seen, the verses in the proem (44-49) which intimate this view
do not in their context exclude the possibility that the self-sufficient gods
bestow their favors from kindness or whim, without any effort, as it were
playfully, on beings which are not self-sufficient. Lucretius says that when
we have seen that nothing can be created out of nothing, we shall under¬
stand whence each thing can be created and how all things come to be
without the labor of gods: he will prove that all things come into being
from something in such a way that there is no room for any divine activity
or interference (149-158); this proof makes unnecessary the inference
from the gods’ bliss; it makes unnecessary the assertion of the gods’ bliss.
Lucretius establishes the view that nothing can come into being out of
nothing as follows. If things could come into being out of nothing, they
could a fortiori come into being out of anything: things of every kind could
come into being out of things of every other kind; at any season, suddenly,
they could be born full-grown; their coming into being would not require
the fulfillment of any specific conditions; the various kinds of things would
not have peculiar sizes and powers; human art would not have any rhyme
or reason. As it is, however, it is manifest that things come into being from
fixed seeds and the like; hence, they cannot come into being out of noth¬
ing (159-214). Lucretius achieves the transition from “they do not” to
“they cannot” by starting from this disjunction: things come into be¬
ing either from nothing (or anything) or else from fixed seeds; but they
come into being only from fixed seeds; hence they cannot come into
being from nothing. One could say that his argument is defective because
he gives only a few examples; he would probably ask the objector to pro¬
duce a single example of coming into being out of nothing or even of
metamorphoses which are not natural processes, for such metamorphoses
would be in the decisive respect emergences out of nothing. Still, his selec¬
tion of examples is in need of an explanation.
All examples adduced by him in support of the six arguments which are
meant to prove that nothing comes into being out of nothing are taken
from animals and plants. In the fifth argument he uses as sole example the
size and power of men; he could as well have chosen the size and power of
lions, cows, or mice; he chooses man in order to prepare the transition
from natural beings15 to art. But why does he limit his choice in the
whole passage to living beings (animals and plants)? 16 Let us consider the
context or rather the immediate sequel. After having proved that nothing
comes into being out of nothing, he proves in four arguments that nothing
perishes into nothing (215-264); the examples by which he supports these
arguments are taken from animate and inanimate things (such as earth
and sea) alike. Furthermore, he now speaks of Venus as well as of Father
Ether and Mother Earth; no reference of this kind had occurred in his
speech about coming into being. Finally, the second half of the fundamen¬
tal reasoning is adorned by the sketch of a pleasing rural spectacle, a sketch
which fills one-third of the fourth argument; there is no parallel to this in
the first half. We suggest this explanation. In the first half Lucretius deals
with birth, and in the second he deals with death. Birth is more pleasing,
more beautiful, than death. One way of mitigating or concealing the repul¬
sive is by generalization: inanimate things perish, but do not die. The poet
speaks of Venus in that argument in which he speaks of what time re¬
moves through old age and what is brought back in a manner by Venus:
Venus compensates and comforts for death; it is indeed no longer possible
to speak of Venus as the sole ruler of the nature of things (21). The poet
speaks of Father Ether and Mother Earth, and he draws a pleasing picture
in the argument in which he speaks of the consequences of a certain “pass¬
ing away, namely, the passing away of rain; these consequences are alto¬
gether exhilarating: a rich vegetation which nourishes the animals and
which renders possible the generation of offspring and the healthy growth
of the young animals. Death—be it only the death of rain—loses its sting if
it is seen to lead to life or to the only possible eternity. We have not yet
learned that there will be an end of the cycle of births and deaths on our
earth. At any rate, in presenting his fundamental reasoning Lucretius fol¬
lows the rule that the sweet must precede the sad and that the sad must be
sweetened.
Lucretius fears that his addressee or reader might “begin” to distrust
what he is told since the causes to which he is led (the eternal and inde¬
structible first bodies) are invisible; his teacher reminds him therefore of
invisible bodies of which he cannot help admitting that they are. His first
example is the unseen bodies of wind; he describes their devastating power

and compares it to the devastating power that the soft nature of water ac¬
quires through abundance of rain (265-297); he speaks of the devastating
effect of rain only after having spoken of its exhilarating effect; and when
speaking of the devastating effect of storms or floods he does not mention
explicitly their destroying animals in general and men in particular. Only
one argument in this section deals exclusively and explicitly with the dis¬
appearance of invisible bodies, that is, with destruction; this argument is
supported only by examples taken from inanimate things and chiefly from
artifacts (305-321). The last argument in this section deals with both
growth and decay; the only example mentioned here is the decay of rocks
(322-328).
Lucretius next turns to proving the being of the void, that is, of the only
kind of nothing that is. The speech about the void does not seem to re¬
quire any sweetening, although, as we learn later, the void belongs to the
“steep” things (658-659). If one compares the central argument establish¬
ing the being of the void with its repetition in the last Book (I 348-355,
VI 942-955), one sees that in the first statement there is no explicit men¬
tion of the void in man, whereas in the second statement the void in man
is emphasized; the second statement is directly linked to the description of
the plague. Although the doctrine of the void does not need sweetening, it
will not be accepted by Memmius without a special effort on the part of
both the pupil and the master. The section on the void is the first in which
the poet engages in explicit polemics against “some” (371; cf. 391), and it
is the first in which he addresses Memmius by name; he also uses there the
second person singular with greater frequency than at any time since he
began to address him. In concluding his reasoning regarding the being of
the void, Lucretius indicates that he is not sure that he has convinced
Memmius. He urges him to discover additional arguments on the basis of
the poet’s slight suggestions. Yet Memmius may be ever so little slack. In
that case will he remain exposed to the terrors of religion? This is not what
the poet says: one can overcome the terrors of religion without asserting
the void. Considering the fact that the fundamental reasoning which,
without being theological, leaves no room for divine action is not spe¬
cifically Epicurean, we may say that according to Lucretius one can over¬
come the terrors of religion without being an Epicurean; it is sufficient for
this purpose to become a physiologos in general. Lucretius does not
threaten Memmius with anything should he be slack; if he is, Lucretius
promises that he will hear further arguments from the poet till the end of
their lives. Or could one call this promise a threat? It is hard to know
which alternative Memmius is likely to choose. When encouraging him to
discover additional arguments, Lucretius compares Memmius’ ability to
draw the truth from its hiding places to the ability of dogs to find the lair
of a wild beast that ranges the mountains (402-411); this comparison is
the second occurring in the poem, the first being the comparison of devas¬
tating storms to devastating floods (280-290).
There is no nature, nothing self-subsisting, apart from bodies and the
void; for whatever is by itself must either be susceptible of being sensed by
the common sense” (or, perhaps more precisely, it must touch and be
touched), and then it is body, or it cannot be touched, and then it is the
void; or, whatever is by itself is either able to act and to be acted upon, and
then it is body, or it is that within which or through which acting and
being acted upon take place, and then it is the void (418-448). What is,
but is not by itself, is either the property of a body or the void, that is,
cannot be separated from the body in question or the void without the
body in question or the void being destroyed, or it is an accident of body or
of the void. Among the examples of properties which Lucretius gives there
is none that is peculiar to man and even to living beings; but the examples
which he gives of accidents are all peculiar to men: “the human things”
are all accidents. He mentions slavery and freedom, poverty and wealth,
war and peace. He does not mention life, for it is a property of living
beings. He throws no light on the status of death. Regarding time, he
makes clear that it is not self-subsisting. Past events—his examples are
Paris desire for Helen, the rape of Helen, the Greeks’ nocturnal conquest
of Troy with the help of the wooden horse, and their destruction of
Troy were accidents of the human beings in question; they are now as
little as those human beings themselves are (449—482). The poem opens
with a presentation of Venus as the life-giving goddess who bends Mars to
her will. The present examples correct that presentation. Paris was the
favorite of Venus then, just as Memmius is her favorite now. Paris brought
about the ruin of his city or the victory of the Greeks; Memmius is to con¬
tribute to the victory of Greek wisdom in Rome. Could Lucretius’ poem
be comparable to the Trojan horse? This much is certain: the whole
dimension of things Greek and Roman qua Greek and Roman is a small
part of the sphere of accidents. We are at the opposite pole of the thought,
stated in the proem, that the Romans and only the Romans are akin to
that deity who is the only guide of the nature of things.
Lucretius proceeds to show that the first bodies whose character he has
left hitherto undetermined are atoms. They are absolutely solid, that is,
they do not include any void, and hence are eternal and indestructible,
whereas all other bodies are perishable: everything we see is more quickly
destroyed than built up, as the poet here observes in passing (556-557).
The atoms are indivisible; the fact that there is a limit to the division of
bodies is at the bottom of every finiteness and fixedness such as the specific
limitations of the growth and the life span of the various kinds of living
beings and of what each kind can and cannot do by virtue of the “cove¬
nants or laws’ of nature (551-598). Finiteness is meant to be a source
of comfort.17 In accordance with this Lucretius does not yet make clear
that the visible world as a whole is perishable; he only alludes to it (502);

he rather seems to suggest the eternity of the species (584-598) and hence
of the visible world. No atoms, no species. The poet speaks therefore in
this section of “nature creating things” or of “matter which generates”
(629, 632-633) as distinguished not only from Venus (277-278) but also
from nature as both creative and destructive (56-57). While the atoms
are indivisible, they consist of parts, but these parts cannot be separated
from one another (599-634).
The teachings regarding the void and the atoms are the first teachings
presented by Lucretius which are not accepted by all students of nature.
When speaking of the void he indicates that Memmius might be im¬
pressed by the fictions of those who deny the void (370-376, 391, 398—
399). Such indications are almost completely avoided in the verses dealing
with the atoms (624). Lucretius does not speak explicitly of possible objec¬
tions of the addressee to the doctrine of atoms because he turns to alterna¬
tives to atomism after having stated the atomistic doctrine; in the latter
context he voices the objections of the addressee in a more emphatic form
than he has voiced his previous objections, hesitations, or misgivings: he
makes Memmius voice them.18
The alternatives to atomism which Lucretius regards as worthy of con¬
sideration are these: the first bodies are (1) one or two of the four ele¬
ments, (2) the four elements (Empedocles), and (3) the homoeomeria of
Anaxagoras. The most famous upholder of the first alternative is Heracli¬
tus, who taught that fire is the matter of things. His fame is bright among
the empty or lightheaded of the Greeks—inanes a negando inane (658)—
as distinguished from the weighty or ponderous ones who seek the truth.
The reason is not that fire tends upward,19 but that Heraclitus’ language is
dark; fools admire and love particularly those things which they can see
hidden beneath words turned upside down, and they set up for true what
can prettily tickle the ears and is adorned with the help of make-up sup¬
plied by charming sounds (635-644). Lucretius does not say that Heracli¬
tus spoke obscurely in order to be admired and loved by fools; nor does he
deny that Heraclitus’ words sound well; Lucretius himself is eager to charm
the reader with his language so as to enable him to understand an obscure
teaching.20 Did then Heraclitus employ the charm of his language in order
to prevent the understanding of an obscure teaching? The Epicureans
surely were proud of their outspokenness.21 At any rate, Lucretius’ bark is
somewhat worse than his bite; he must counteract Heraclitus’ renown.
After he has concluded his attack on Heraclitus, he chants the praise of
Empedocles, whom he regards as superior to all other deniers of the atoms
and the void; Empedocles’ teaching is indeed not according to nature, but
it surely is in accordance with the nature of his native Sicily.22 Thereafter
Lucretius makes it clear that those to whom he has referred before men¬
tioning Empedocles—among them Heraclitus is the only one whom he has
mentioned by name—were great men since they found many things di¬
vinely, in a more holy manner, and by a much more certain reasoning than
Apollo s Pythia ever does (734-739). In accordance with this he does not
criticize Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras on the ground that their
doctrines support or do not destroy the terrors of religion. To wonder how
this can be reconciled with what we know through the fragments especially
of Empedocles means to wonder how Lucretius read Empedocles but one
cannot begin to study how Lucretius read Empedocles before one knows
how Lucretius wrote. We have seen earlier that according to Lucretius one
can overcome the terrors of religion without becoming an Epicurean Per¬
haps his amazing silence about Plato and Aristotle (as distinguished from
Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras) signifies that they are not help¬
ful in the fight against religion.
The central argument of Lucretius against all nonatomists is this: all
things which we perceive are changeable and hence perishable bodies;
hence the indestructible first bodies cannot be perceptible; but the four
elements (fire, earth, water, air) and the characteristics of the homo-
eomeria (bones, flesh, blood, gold, earth, fire, water, and so on) are per¬
ceptible. In other words, the first bodies must have a different nature from
that of “the things”; they must have a secret and unseen nature; only if the
nature of the first things differs from that of “the things” can the character
of the things” as changeable and perishable be preserved.23 There re¬
mains the difficulty not discussed by Lucretius that size and shape-
characters of both the atoms and the things—are as such sensible and
hence destructible. Be this as it may, Lucretius does not say that the alter¬
natives to atomism must be rejected because they favor religion and its
terrors; his objection to them is purely theoretical; but by making
Memmius defend them in direct speech,24 the poet presents him as mak
ing a last-ditch stand in defense of the ultimate dignity of “the things ”
“the world,” “the walls of the world,” after he has failed to rise in defense
of Romanism. But Memmius succumbs to Lucretius’ powerful assault.
This is the situation in which the poet, taking breath, speaks about his
art and its function by comparing himself to a physician who has to give a
bitter potion to children and deceives them for their benefit by sweetening
the repulsive drink. He speaks about what he is doing after he has been
doing it, and after the reader has been exposed to it, for a considerable
time. The critique of the nonatomistic doctrines has in fact shown that
atomism is the most bitter or sad of all doctrines; the completion of that
critique is therefore a kind of climax, surely a place for rest and reflection
The poet introduces the verses which deal with his art and its function by
proudly proclaiming the novelty of his undertaking: he is the first to write
a poem openly devoted to the liberation of the mind from the bonds of
religion, and he wishes to be the first; he is spurred by a great hope of
praise; he goes so far as to say that that great hope has made him love the
Muses (922-925). Originally (140-141) he has said that he is spurred by

his hope for Memmius’ friendship. But originally he has spoken only of the
exhilarating character of his undertaking and has been silent about its sad¬
dening character. As he discloses the true character of the true doctrine, he
discloses his true motive: if the true doctrine were simply gratifying, his
love of Memmius would be a sufficient motive for writing the poem; but
since it is not simply gratifying, it is not certain that Memmius or any
other man known to the poet will be gratified by it; he can reasonably hope
only for praise, that is, for praise by indeterminate readers.
In other words, however sad the truth may be, to be the first discoverer
of the sad truth is not sad, for to be the first to achieve a great victory, a
victory of a new kind, is worthy of praise, and praise is gratifying. The
Greek who was the first to vanquish religion also wished to be the first to
win that victory (71 ff.). However sad the truth may be, to be the first who
speaks about the sad truth in charming verses is not sad. Since the poet
makes bright the dark discoveries of the Greeks (136-145), the fame for
which he longs may even be brighter than the fame of that Greek. He
surely possesses an art which his master lacked. This art presupposes a deep
understanding of the feelings which obstruct the acceptance of the true
doctrine by most men—an understanding which the master did not neces¬
sarily possess. Hence in a respect which is not unimportant, the pupil may
be wiser than the master; he may not be the master’s pupil in every respect.
Therefore we should not expect Lucretius to follow his master or his
school in every point. Was there ever a pupil, wise or foolish, who in fact
agreed with his master in every point?
The passage under discussion is less a conclusion to what precedes it
than an introduction to what follows it (921). What follows requires a
keener listening, a higher degree of understanding, of ability to overcome
one’s attachments, of the addressee’s co-operation with the poet,23 than
what precedes. What follows is the proof that the whole is infinite; it is
infinite in extent, and there are infinitely many atoms. Finiteness is com¬
forting; infinity is terrifying. Yet without infinity there cannot be “things,”
that is, finiteness. There cannot be a world without limits, without walls;
yet the walls owe their stability which is precarious to the infinity beyond
them; in the last resort we live in “an unwalled city.” The comparison of
the true doctrine to wormwood is a fit introduction to the section on infin¬
ity. After having shown that space is infinite, Lucretius argues as follows.
In infinite space there must be infinitely many atoms or else there will be
no compulsion for the atoms to come together for the formation of finite
things, for the atoms, being mindless or blind, cannot intend to come
together; 26 nor are the atoms attracted by one another; they are brought
together and kept together only by colliding with one another, by buffeting
one another; since by themselves they are in constant motion, only a limit¬
less supply of atoms can keep the world, or the worlds, in being, partly by
inflicting blows on the worlds from outside. The examples which Lucretius
gives of the things that are created by the mindless meeting of the mind¬
less atoms and that could not last for ever so short a time if the atoms were
not replaced constantly from without are the sea, the earth, the sky, the
race of mortals, and the sacred bodies of the gods (1014-1016). The gods
are then not strictly speaking self-sufficient. The context (1019-1020,
1027-1031) suggests that the gods have come into being like all things
other than the atoms and the void. The gods being created by the atoms in
the same manner as the world (heaven and earth and what belongs to
them) or the worlds, one cannot resort to the gods for assurance that the
world is everlasting. It is perhaps more important to note that Lucretius
still fails to make clear that the human race or the world will not last for¬
ever; since he mentions the human race together not only with heaven and
earth but with the gods as well, he would have seemed to deny the imper¬
ishability of the gods by asserting the perishability of the world. This is to
say nothing of the fact that if the worlds are perishable, it is hard to see
how the intermundia—the places where the gods are asserted to live in eter¬
nal security—can be imperishable.
Lucretius does not fear that these or similar implications might induce
Memmius to rebel against the doctrine of infinity. He fears that Memmius,
whom he now addresses by name for the second time,27 might be attracted
by the view of “some” according to which the stability of the world is
brought about, not by any blows by atoms from the outside, but by the
desire of everything for the center of the world. There cannot be a center
of the world, that is, of the universe, if the universe is infinite (1052—
1082). What makes this view attractive would seem to be the horror in-
finiti or, perhaps more precisely, man’s need for regarding himself and his
world as the center of the universe. In trying to reduce that view ad ab-
surdum, Lucretius points out that, as a consequence of its implications, the
whole world would perish, that is, nothing would remain but space and the
atoms (1083-1113): he does not say here that this is the inevitable fate of
the world precisely on the basis of Epicureanism; he does not say here that
the gate of death is not shut on the world.28
III. On Book II
The First Book opens with the praise of Venus as both the ancestress of
the Romans and the sole guide of the nature of things; the Second Book
opens with a praise of that life of man as man which is in accordance with
nature. Nature calls for nothing but that the body be free from pain and
that the mind, freed from care and fear, enjoy pleasure. Bodily nature can
be gratified at little cost; it does not require luxury, wealth, noble birth, or
regal power. Nor are things of this kind needed or useful for the well-being
of the mind. What the mind needs is freedom from the terrors of religion
and from fear of death—evils which are removed, not by political and mili¬
tary power,29 but only by reason; reason alone, the study of nature, can
give man tranquillity of mind (14-61). Nature and the study of nature
are the sole sources of happiness.
In the first thirteen verses Lucretius speaks of a great boon about which
he is silent in the rest of the proem; we must not forget that gratification
while listening to his description of human happiness. It is sweet or gratify¬
ing, he says, to behold others in the grip of evils from which oneself is free.
He gives three examples: the man on land who sees another struggling in
the wind-tossed sea, the man in safety who watches armies in battle, and
the pupil of wise men who from his heights looks down on the unwise
struggling for superiority with one another. Of these spectacles the last is
the most gratifying; in fact it is second to nothing else in sweetness. Lucre¬
tius does not speak of a man in bodily health who sees others suffering from
disease. He says that it is not the distress of others which is pleasant, but
only the beholding of evils from which one is free. Yet he does not speak
of evils from which oneself has suffered before, for one cannot strictly
speaking behold those evils; hence one must admit that our pleasure or
happiness is enhanced by our seeing the pains and dangers of others. The
sad is necessary as a foil for the sweet, for sensing the sweet. Does the gods’
supreme happiness—their complete freedom from pain and danger (I
47)—require that they behold the misery of men? Is it desirable or even
possible that all men should be happy, that is, philosophers? We have seen
how much Lucretius is concerned with receiving praise for being the first,
with superiority: his happiness requires the inferiority of others. We can¬
not say whether he regards this kind of pleasure as natural, for he speaks of
nature only afterward (II 17, 20, 23). Certainly nature will not be the
source of happiness if it is not also the source of unhappiness. Man’s hap¬
piness requires that he be free from “the blind night” in which he finds
himself prior to philosophy; yet philosophy discovers the roots of all things
in empty space and the “blind” atoms (I 1110, 1115-1116).30 Nothing is
more alien to wisdom than that with which wisdom is above everything
else concerned: the atoms and the void. The first things are in no way a
model for man.
Lucretius turns at once to the questions concerning the movement by
which the atoms generate the various things and dissolve them again, con¬
cerning the force which compels them to do this, and concerning the speed
with which they move in the void. He asks for the reader’s attention in a
commanding tone. That the atoms are in motion is shown by the fact that
“we” see that “all” things decay and disappear and other things of the
same kind take their place (II 62-79). Lucretius obviously thinks, not of
the sun and the species of animals, but of individual animals and nations.
While he now mentions destruction first, he sees it only as a stage in the
cycle through which the sum of things [the present world] always renews
itself.”31 Nor does he mention death. He goes on to show how the atoms,
moving in the boundless void, never come to rest, how some of them
colliding with one another either bounce back or unite with one another,
how by uniting in different ways they produce different kinds of things. He
illustrates the process by an explicit likeness and image: the movement of
minute bodies in the sun’s rays when those rays enter a dark room; those
bodies mingle in many ways and, as it were having formed troops, engage
in everlasting battle. It goes without saying that the atoms’ clashes do not
take place in the light of the sun; the likeness sweetens the likened. The
clashes of the atoms are fights in the dark, blind fights of blind atoms,
blind blows which the blind atoms inflict on one another (80-141). The
fundamental movements resemble less the deeds of Venus than those of
Mars.32 We see once more how one-sided, how misleading is the invoca¬
tion of Venus at the beginning of the work despite or because of its neces¬
sity. We also see how appropriate it is that the central example at the be¬
ginning of Book II is a man not engaged in fighting who watches
fighting.
Lucretius underlines the importance of his general characterization of
the atomic movements by what he does immediately afterward. Both near
the beginning of the next section (142-183) and near its end he addresses
Memmius by name. He has addressed him by name twice in Book I (411,
1052). The section thus distinguished consists of two parts. The first part
is devoted to the speed with which the atoms move in the void. How great
that speed is one can gather by considering the speed with which the light
of the sun travels; since it does not travel in the void, the speed of the
atomic motions must be much, much greater than the speed of the light of
the sun. The poet stresses the contrast between the movement of the sun’s
light and that of the atoms by alluding to the birds’ celebration of sunrise.
It is reasonable to think that it is the enormous speed with which the
atoms travel that accounts for the full fury and violence of their clashes; it
is then that fury and violence which contributes to, or rather accounts for,
the emergence of the “things.” According to the diametrically opposite
view the world is the work of the greatest awakeness, circumspection, and
care. It is this view against which Lucretius turns in the second part of the
section. According to “some,” 33 we are told, only beings of superhuman
wisdom and power, only gods, can have formed the world out of matter,
atomic or nonatomic: only through the activity of gods can the world
possess that perfect harmony with the needs of man which it is seen to
possess; only in this way can it be understood that nature prevents the
death of the human race by inducing men through divine pleasure,
through the deeds of Venus, to generate offspring—this wonderful har¬
mony between the individual’s sweetest pleasure and the most common
good. Lucretius rejects this view as utterly false. The reason is not that he
is an Epicurean: even if he did not know what the origins of the things are,
that is, if he did not know that they are the atoms and the void, he would
dare to assert from the very manner of working of heaven as well as from
many other things that the nature of the world is not created for our bene¬
fit by divine power; by nature the world abounds in defects (167-182).
Not wise gods or gods of wisdom, not even Venus, are at the helm or are
the originators; at the origin there is the fury and violence of the blind
atoms’ blind fights. There is a radical disharmony between the atomic
movements and even the rationes caeli on the one hand and the rationes
humanae or the rationes vitae on the other.34 The theological view tries to
establish a harmony between the rationes caeli and the rationes humanae-,
it wishes to be comforting. Lucretius fights religion less on account of its
terrors and crimes than of the defective character of the world; he does not
fight religion primarily because he holds Epicureanism and in particular
Epicurean theology to be true. What the poet tacitly suggested at the be¬
ginning of his argument (see pages 85-86 above) he now says almost ex¬
plicitly: there is no need for recourse to the fundamental theologoumenon
in order to refute the theological account. It goes without saying that the
realization of the badness of the world does not induce Lucretius for a
moment to think of rebellion or conquest: misery is as necessary to human
life as happiness.
Lucretius continues his account of the atomic movements by showing
first that the atoms move downward and then that they swerve. The atoms
are of different weight, but in the void they all fall with equal speed; they
would never clash and thus bring about the emergence of compounds but
for the fact that they spontaneously swerve a little at times and in places
which are in no way fixed: the movement after the swerve does not in a
fixed manner arise from the movement before it. Atoms are so little attrac¬
tive that they do not even attract one another. The alternative to the
swerve would be that everything is determined by fate, and this is incom¬
patible with the freedom with which every living being on earth follows
“the will of [its] mind,” that is, where pleasure leads it, or originates
motion (216-293). When Epicurus takes issue with the physicists who
assert that everything is determined by fate or necessity, he says that the
belief in fate is worse than the belief in the tale of the gods since fate is
inexorable, whereas the gods of the tale are not.35 Lucretius does not fol¬
low his master in this point. His statement on the swerve of the atoms does
not read as if it were directed against any school of thought (cf. 225). He
does not wish to present the Epicurean teaching as pleasing or comforting,
as more pleasing and comforting than other teachings set forth by students
of nature. The doctrine of the swerve as Lucretius presents it is not meant
to bring the rationes of the atoms into harmony with the rationes
humanae. A sign of this is that the “freedom” which he tries to vindicate
by that doctrine is not peculiar to man, but is common to all animals.
The swerve of the atoms might cast doubt on the fixedness of the natu¬
ral order. To dispel that doubt Lucretius asserts that while the atoms are
always in motion, the universe is in a sense at rest. No atom comes into
being or perishes, nor do the kinds of their movements change, hence also
not the outcome of those movements, that is, the production of the things
of various kinds. Lucretius is again silent about the destruction of the kinds
of things or of the world. The fact that the whole is seen to be at rest while
all its parts are in motion is strange. To remove that strangeness, Lucretius
adduces two gratifying (“white” or “glimmering”) examples: a herd of
grazing sheep and their lambs running around on a faraway hill, and mili¬
tary units engaged in a war game—not in war proper—on a plain as seen
from high mountains (299-332).
There are infinitely many things and infinitely many atoms. Yet the
things are related to the atoms as the infinitely many words or combina¬
tions of words are to the small numbers of letters (cf. I 823-829): the infi¬
nitely many atoms fall into classes of which there are not infinitely many.
Lucretius starts from the infinitely many natural things, both animate and
inanimate, each of which differs in shape from the others of its kind He
speaks at the greatest length of animals, especially of the fact that a mother
can tell its offspring from any other young animal of its kind and the off¬
spring its mother, and still more especially of the sad spectacle of a cow
vainly seeking its calf which has been slaughtered before the altars of the
gods. He thus prepares the reader for the detailed discussion (in II 398 ff.)
of the atomic causes of the painful things on the one hand and of the pleas¬
ant on the other. He infers from the infinite variety of shapes of things
that there must be a great variety of shapes of atoms: uniformity is the
outcome of purposeful action, of human production that is guided by a
single model (because it is guided by a single end), rather than of nature
The variety of atomic shapes is shown in a more precise
manner especially by the different ways in which different things affect us
with pleasure or pain; pleasure and pain are due to the different shapes of
atoms. Lucretius is thus led to exclaim that “touch, yea touch, o holy maj¬
esties of the gods, is the sense of body” (434-435). The reference here to
the gods needs an explanation. The poet had spoken earlier (I 1015) of
the holy bodies of the gods” (cf. I 38). In the present context he men¬
tions a deity by name. He speaks of the pleasant feelings which go with the
discharge of the semen bom in the body” “through the generative acts of
Venus ; he does not yet refer to a deity when speaking in the same context
of feelings of pain (II 435-439). The reference to Venus barely reminds
us of the praise of Venus as “the joy of men and gods” at the beginning of
the poem; we are more than sufficiently prepared for any weakening of that
praise (cf. 172-173). Can we still believe that the gods enjoy the deeds of
Venus? Above all, only twenty-five verses later Lucretius speaks of the
bitter or nauseous body of Neptune, that is, of sea water—of the body of a
god which can be dissolved into its ingredients even by human means
(471-477). Certain it is that our awareness of the gods must be under¬
stood in the last analysis in terms of our sense of touch.
One cannot help wondering regarding the size and shape especially of
those atoms which compose the bodies of the gods. We learn from Lucre¬
tius that the number of atomic shapes or forms is limited, that the sizes of
the atoms keep within unchangeable and rather narrow bounds, and that
therefore there cannot be atoms of gigantic, not to say boundless, size. Sim¬
ilarly, none of the things created by the clash of atoms can surpass others
of those things infinitely in beauty and splendor.36 What this means re¬
garding the gods is obvious. On the other hand, as we hear again, there are
infinitely many atoms of each form. This is compatible with the fact that
there are many fewer individuals of some kinds of things than of others.
Even if there were a terrestrial species of which there is only one individ¬
ual, infinitely many atoms of the appropriate shapes would be needed so
that that individual could be formed and preserved, given the fact that the
atoms move in what the poet now calls that vast and faithless sea. In fact,
the movement of the atoms in the infinite void is comparable to that of
the parts of a wrecked ship in the sea: as little as those parts, which are
small in number, could ever be put together again through being tossed
hither and thither by the waves, so little could atoms of a finite number
ever be brought together and kept together to form a thing (522-568). All
the terrors of the ocean, which after all has limits, are as nothing compared
with the terrors of the void. Infinity achieves what wise gods could not
have achieved: the production of a world of very deficient goodness. In
particular, the balance between birth and death is due to the war which
the atoms carry on with one another from infinite time. This balance is
least perfect in the case of man with whom wise gods would be especially
concerned: man begins his life crying, and laments accompany him to his
grave.37
Lucretius is still silent about the death of the world—about the death of
the species as distinguished from the death of individuals. He goes on to
speak about the atomic composition of the earth without drawing the ob¬
vious conclusion that, being a compound, the earth is bound to perish
sooner or later. He starts from the facts that nothing whose nature is mani¬
festly seen consists only of one kind of atom and that the larger the
number of powers a thing possesses within itself, the larger the number of
kinds of atoms of which it will consist. The earth possesses within itself the
greatest variety of powers; it gives rise to water, fire, and vegetation and it
sustains man as well as wild beasts. Hence the earth alone has been called
the Great Mother of the gods, of the wild beasts, and of our body (581-
599).38 Lucretius draws our attention to beings whose nature is not mani¬
festly seen and which may consist of one kind of atoms only; one wonders
whether the gods are beings of that kind, although (or because) this would
imply that the gods are the least powerful beings in the universe. The
sequel surely suggests that the earth has much greater powers, or at least a
much larger number of powers, than the gods and that the gods are terres¬
trial beings. At any rate, the earth understood as a goddess seems to be the
clearest case of a terrestrial animal species of which there is only one mem¬
ber (cf. 541-543).
Of all these questions Lucretius answers immediately and explicitly only
one; he denies the divinity of the earth. He prefaces this denial with a
rather detailed description of the terror-inspiring, savage, and exotic proces¬
sion of the Great Mother. That procession had been described by the an¬
cient and learned poets of the Greeks who explained the meaning of its
various features. Lucretius mentions seven items. The central one is the
fact that the Great Mother is called the Mother of Mount Ida and that
she is given as companions Phrygian bands, because, “as they say ” corn
was first produced in that part of the earth. The Trojans, from whom the
Romans are derived, were Phrygians (I 474), but the Romans owe their
knowledge of the remarkable Phrygian cult in question to the Greeks. It is
in accordance with this that Lucretius traces the growing of corn to Athens
(VI 1-2). The second item conveys encouragement to parents regarding
the education of their children; the fifth conveys a condemnation of, and
severe threat to, people who have violated the majesty of the mother and
have been found ungrateful to their parents.39 The sixth item serves the
purpose of filling with fear the ungrateful minds and the impious hearts of
the multitude through the divine majesty of the goddess; the context leaves
it m doubt whether this goal is achieved. Lucretius himself is doubtful re¬
garding the last feature of the procession which he mentions; it may refer
to the tale told of the salvation of the infant Jupiter from the danger that
his father Saturnus might devour him, to the everlasting grief 40 of the
Great Mother, or it may intimate the goddess' proclaiming that men
should defend their fatherland (their paternal earth) and protect and
adorn their parents (600-643). Lucretius bestows high praise, if not on
the procession itself, at least on the thoughts which the Greek poets found
in some of its features. Yet he rejects those thoughts as quite wrong. His
reason is that the gods are free from all pain and danger and that they are
wholly unconcerned with men, with their merits or crimes (644-651)
We may add that if the gods are bom, they also will die.
The reason stated by Lucretius had been stated by him in the same
words near the beginning of the poem (I 44-49), but the second state¬
ment, despite its being literally identical with the first, has a different
meaning from that of the first. In the first place, the second statement is
much richer in meaning than the first by virtue of what we have learned
from Lucretius m the meantime; above all, the first statement concludes
the invocation of Venus and does not call into question the divinity of
Venus, whereas the second statement concludes the speech on the Great
Mother and is meant to justify the denial of her divinity. Yet the funda¬
mental theologoumenon is not the sole reason why Lucretius denies the
divinity of the Great Mother, or, if you wish, that theologoumenon implies
a verity which the poet has not yet made explicit. The fundamental
theologoumenon articulates the perfection, the happiness of the gods with¬
out making explicit that perfect happiness is not possible without percep¬
tion or feeling. Lucretius denies the divinity of the earth on the ground
that the earth lacks perception or feeling at all times (II 652). He thus
makes us wonder whether a being ceases to be a god if it lacks perception
or feeling from time to time as in sleep. Be this as it may, Lucretius rejects
the deification of the earth (or of the sea, of corn, and of wine) with much
less asperity than he rejects religion in general (655-660). To understand
this, one must compare the present section with its parallels.
The statement on the Great Mother is closely connected with the attack
on the theologico-teleological account of nature in II 165-182. The con¬
nection is indicated by the fact that no explicit polemic occurs between
these two polemical passages. As we have observed, the problem of the
gods is present in the whole discussion between the two passages, that is, in
the discussion of the atomic composition of all things and hence also of the
gods. Lucretius rejects the theologico-teleological account of nature as
wrong, as a theoretical error, without saying anything about its roots in
human life and its effect on it. When he speaks of the deification of the
earth, however, he indicates clearly the function of that error; he thus
throws new light on religion. The terror which the cult of the Great
Mother causes is meant to be salutary. Lucretius does not say that it is not
salutary. Religion thus appears to be a human invention which serves the
purpose of counteracting the indifference of the whole to man’s moral and
political needs, for not all men are or can be philosophers; this is to say
nothing of the question as to whether philosophy, that is, Epicurean phi¬
losophy as Lucretius understood it, enjoins patriotism and gratitude to par¬
ents. The section on the Great Mother also reminds one of the section on
Venus at the beginning of the poem; to say the least, Venus, who is not
mentioned in the section on the Great Mother, is not as obviously a god¬
dess concerned with political morality as is the Great Mother; the unquali¬
fied rejection of religion which follows the invocation of Venus (I 62 ff.) is
therefore less surprising than an unqualified rejection of religion following
the speech on the Great Mother would be. The section on the Great
Mother surely leaves us with the sting of the question as to how the un-
philosophic multitude will conduct itself if it ceases to believe in gods who
punish lack of patriotism and of filial piety. One wonders in particular
what will happen to Memmius’ patriotism or concern with the common
weal (I 41-43) if Lucretius should succeed in converting him to Epicu¬
reanism.
Despite the fact that there is only a limited, if large, number of shapes of
atoms, their number (and especially the still larger number of combina¬
tions of atoms of various shapes) is sufficient to account for the enormous
variety of the things which are produced by the atoms. Yet not every
combination which one might imagine is possible; there are no monsters
like Chimaeras, for instance. Lucretius does not speak in this section (II
661-729) of the gods, but the question of the atomic composition of the
gods is present in it since he speaks here of the composition of all species of
living beings: the variety of shapes of atoms must be such as to account for
the fact that “all things” are born of fixed seeds, preserve their kinds, and
are m need of specific food. The application to the conceit of children
stemming from the intercourse of gods and men like Aeneas is obvious.
One might think that the gods are not living beings. The force of this ob¬
jection is destroyed by Lucretius’ declaring that “these laws,” which obtain
regarding the coming into being and the preservation of living beings,
obtain mutatis mutandis regarding inanimate things as well.
Lucretius turns next to the qualities which the atoms lack. They lack
colors, sounds, tastes, smells, as well as hot and cold. All these qualities are
changeable and perishable and cannot therefore belong to the unchange¬
able and imperishable atoms (749-756, 862-864). The exposition of this
doctrine continues and deepens the critique of the nonatomistic doctrines
which was presented in Book I, but the poet no longer engages in explicit
polemics against actual or potential opponents: there is no longer any sign
of resistance on the part of Memmius. The discussion of colors is far more
extensive than that of all the other qualities in question taken together; in
the case of colors the contrast between the things and the atoms is particu-
(a795S798)ng: n° COl°rS With°Ut Hght’ and the atoms exist in blind darkness
Ibe next step requires a somewhat greater effort.41 The reader must
now be brought to admit that the atoms, which are the origins of all living
beings, lack sense or feeling—are lifeless. That animate beings emerge
under certain conditions out of inanimate ones is shown by experience:
worms emerge from stinking dung. In this context the poet remarks that
just as inanimate things (of a not noisome character) serve as food for cat¬
tle and thus change into cattle, and the cattle into human bodies, our
bodies frequently serve as food for wild beasts and birds (871-878)/It is
not clear whether he refers here to wild beasts and birds killing men or
merely, as is more likely, to their feeding on human corpses.42 The atoms
must be lifeless in order to be deathless: to be a living being and to be
mortal is the same (919). The teaching according to which the causes of
all things are lifeless is sweetened to some extent in the verses with which
the poet ends his speech about the qualities which the atoms lack. He
draws the somewhat unexpected conclusion that we all are of heavenly
origin: we all—plants, men, and wild beasts—owe our being to the rain
which is sent down from the regions of the ether and which fertilizes the
earth. Ether is our common father, and Earth is our common mother.
Lucretius shows that the earth is deservedly called mother: thanks to the
earth, the wild beasts, to say nothing of human beings, feed their bodies,
pass a sweet life, and propagate their kinds; he does not show that heaven
is deservedly called father (991-1001). When we compare these verses
with the Euripidean verses of which they remind us,43 we see that Lucre¬
tius does not, as Euripides does, call Ether the progenitor of men and gods
in contradistinction to the Earth who gives birth to the mortals: through¬
out his poem Lucretius puts a stronger emphasis on Earth than on Ether
because he does not wish to speak explicitly of the origin of the gods. As
father and mother, Ether and Earth would be living beings, hence mortal;
hence they could not be the ultimate origins of “us all”: the ultimate
origin is matter, that is, the atoms; not Ether and Earth, but the atoms are
the origins of everything, as Lucretius states again in the immediate sequel
in which he ascribes to heaven and earth no higher status than to the sea,
the rivers, the sun, the crops, the trees, and living beings (1002-1022). In
his earlier speech on Mother Earth he had made clear that the earth,
which lacks sense or feeling, is not a divine being (641-652). But the same
is true of the ether.44 If heaven and earth were gods, the things brought
forth by them would not be as defective as they are (180-181). In other
words, the world, nay, the boundless whole, grounded in nothing but the
atoms and the void, is not divine. Only some parts of the whole can possi¬
bly be divine: the gods. Whatever Lucretius’ doctrine of the gods may
mean, it surely means that the whole or the world is not divine.45
The last section of Book II deals, like the last section of Book I, with the
infinity of the whole. Accordingly, it is introduced by a statement (1023-
1047) which is comparable to the “wormwood and honey” passage in Book
I (921-950). In both introductions the poet speaks of a special effort
which the reader must make in order to understand the immediate sequel.
In all other respects the two introductions differ profoundly. In the second
introduction the poet mentions the subject which he is about to discuss,
whereas he had failed to do this in the first one. In the first introduction he
had spoken of his innovation through which the harsh doctrine will be
sweetened; he had spoken of a gratifying novelty without speaking of the
novelty of the doctrine. Now he speaks of the novelty of the doctrine to be
set forth, a repulsive novelty. Novelty as such, we are told, is disconcerting;
a doctrine may even be frightening merely because it is new and as long as
it is new. Lucretius urges the addressee not to reject the doctrine to be
expounded merely because he is frightened by its novelty; he ought to
examine it and accept it if it appears to him to be true or reject it if it is
false. He seems to be less concerned with making him an Epicurean than
with liberating him from fear of the new as new.46 He creates the impres¬
sion that the doctrine to be expounded can be repulsive only because it is
new or as long as it is new, or that it is not in itself repulsive. On the other

hand he surely does not say that it is, or will become, exhilarating.
The new doctrine follows from the doctrine of infinity as set forth in
Book I. Given the infinity of the void and of matter on the one hand and
the finiteness of our world on the other, given also that our world is the
work of nature or chance, there must be many worlds, nay, infinitely many
worlds. There are many heavens, earths, and humankinds, just as there are
within each world many individuals of the same animal species: every
heaven, every earth, every animal species, has a fixed life span just as do the
individuals of the species (1048-1089). The introductory verses made us
expect some resistance to this doctrine on the part of the addressee or some
polemics against the believers in a single world on the part of the author.47
This expectation is disappointed. The new doctrine, which was announced
so emphatically, is presented in not more than forty-two verses. One must
admit that^the new doctrine is upsetting: more than anything that went
before, it destroys our importance,” the importance of “our” human
race—and therewith of “History”—by presenting our human race as one
individual among infinitely many of the same kind. The poet has his
remedy ready and does not hesitate for a moment to use it: surely a whole
consisting of innumerably many worlds cannot be ruled by the gods, those
proud tyrants, that is, the gods of the vulgar. The infinity of the world
however unattractive in another respect, is a small price to pay for the lib¬
eration from religion. Invoking the true gods—“the holy hearts of the
gods” 48—who live in perfect tranquillity and therefore do not rule any¬
thing, he asserts that no being could possibly rule the boundless whole,
take care of the innumerable heavens and earths, to say nothing of govern¬
ing with justice the innumerable humankinds: not even our humankind is
justly governed by gods (1090-1104). To say nothing of other defects of
this reasoning, why could there not be infinitely many groups of gods, each
group ruling some part of the boundless whole? Must there not be many
groups of gods located in different parts of the universe if gods are to be
sensed by all humankinds in the infinitely many and infinitely distant
worlds?
Lucretius has not yet completed the exposition of the new teaching
which he has announced. In the rest of the section he no longer speaks of
the infinity of the worlds, but of an implication of this subject. He speaks
of the growth of “the great world”—our world—and of its decay. By limit¬
ing himself to our world, he brings his lesson home to us. He shows that
the growth and decay of the world parallels that of individual living beings.
The world has already reached its old age, as is shown by the aging of the
earth. The earth no longer brings forth, as it did in its youth, the huge
bodies of wild beasts, but barely tiny worms; it no longer produces sponta¬
neously rich harvests, but barely, despite men's toil, poor ones. No one
knows this better than the aged plowman who can compare the present
with the past and who sees the decay of the soil going hand in hand with
the decay of piety: the latifundia have ruined Italy; everything passes to
the grave (1105-1174). What every old peasant knows to some extent
cannot be frightening because of its novelty. By generalizing the observa¬
tions of old peasants about the decay of agriculture and piety into the doc¬
trine of the decay of the world, Lucretius may even be said to sweeten the
sad doctrine in accordance with the feelings of the true Roman: the decay
or end of Rome is the decay or end of the world. When he repeats the
doctrine of the future destruction of the world at much greater length later
on, in a more advanced stage of Memmius’ education, Lucretius takes away
this scaffolding: in his opinion our world is still in its youth (V 330-337).
The decay of Italian agriculture and piety does not announce the speedy
end of the world. Lucretius does not deny that piety and Italian agriculture
are no longer what they were; but surely some of the arts are still progress¬
ing; philosophy is of recent origin, and it enters Rome only now, through
Lucretius’ poem.
IV. On Book III
This Book is the only one in which the poet addresses Epicurus. He does
this in the proem (1-30) and nowhere else. It is also the only Book in which
he mentions the name of Epicurus (1042): he never addresses Epicurus by
name. One may say that throughout the work Epicurus remains the name¬
less Graius homo (I 66), or rather the nameless “glory of the Greek race”
(III 3), if not a nameless god (V 8). In the present proem Lucretius apos¬
trophizes Epicurus with the vocative inclute (I 10); in the proem to
Book I he has apostrophized Venus in the same way (40), and in the
proem to Book V he will do the same to Memmius (8); the movement
from Venus to Epicurus is an ascent, and the movement from Epicurus to
Memmius is a descent; the whole movement is an ascent followed by a de¬
scent. If one counts I 925-950 as the second proem,49 the proem to Book
III will be the central proem. The peak is in the center.
The praise of Epicurus at the beginning of Book III serves in the first
place the purpose of bringing out the difference of rank between Epicurus
and Lucretius. Lucretius is a follower, an imitator of Epicurus; he could as
little rival Epicurus as a swallow could rival swans or kids a horse; as re¬
gards both beauty and force Lucretius’ work belongs to a different species,
to a lower species than Epicurus’ work. Yet “thou art the father, the dis¬
coverer of the things.” Lucretius merely profits from the discovery; Epi¬
curus’ mind is divine, whereas Lucretius receives through the master’s
teaching “some divine pleasure and a dread or horror.” 60 Thanks to Epi-
curus’ complete discovery of the nature of things, the terrors of the mind
are dispelled and the walls of the world part asunder. Thus the majesty of
the gods comes to sight; they are seen to dwell in tranquil and beautiful
abodes, of which those of the Homeric gods on Olympus give an inkling,
beyond the walls of the worlds; nature is seen to supply the gods with
everything. Whereas Epicurus’ discovery reveals the perfect bliss of the
gods, it reveals the nonexistence of Hades. As for the nonexistence of
Hades, of a miserable life after death, Lucretius is going to prove it in Book
III. He does not say that, and where, he will prove the existence of the
gods. He surely has not proved it before; he merely has proved, or at¬
tempted to prove, that the nature of things does not leave room for divine
action on the world and its ingredients. We observe that nature is said to
supply the gods with everything: nature does not supply men with every¬
thing.
In order to drive out the fear of Hades which utterly confounds human
life and spoils all pleasures, Lucretius will lay bare the nature of the soul on
the basis of the principles set forth in the first two Books. Men frequently
say that there are things worse than hell and that they know the nature of
the soul without having engaged in studies, so that they do not need Epi¬
curean philosophy. But this is an idle boast. As soon as they have com¬
mitted a crime and as a consequence suffered the disgrace of which they
formerly said that it is worse than death, they cling to life and sacrifice to
the dead and the gods of the dead, that is, turn to religion (31-58).
Lucretius did not take issue with people who deny that they need Epicu¬
rean philosophy in order to get rid of fear of the gods: common experience
seems to show that one fate befalls the just and the unjust, or that the gods
do not rule the human race; but this does not exclude the possibility that
the fates of the just and the unjust will be greatly different after death or
that only through fear of punishment after death does the fear of the gods
reach its full power. Memmius at any rate seems to be more threatened by
fear of hell than by fear of the gods as such (page 80 above).
Lucretius speaks with special emphasis of the criminals’ religious fear.
He thus makes us wonder again whether by attempting to take away that
fear he does not weaken a salutary restraint. He answers this objection as
well as he can in the immediate sequel. He comes close to suggesting that
the primary phenomenon is not the fear of hell, but the fear of death, and
that crimes which seem to be a cause of the fear of hell are in fact a conse¬
quence of the fear of death (59-86).1B1 That is to say, by freeing men
from the fear of death, one does not emancipate crime from a powerful
restraint; one rather contributes to the abolition of crime. We are left with
the suspicion that prior to Epicurus, and in Rome even prior to Lucretius,
religion served a good purpose. Given the fact that many men, nay, almost
all men, will always refuse to listen to the Epicurean teaching, religion will
always serve a good purpose. Lucretius concludes his statement of the sub-
ject of Book III with the same seven verses with which in Books II and VI
he concludes the proems as distinguished from the statements of the sub¬
jects of those Books: just as children fear everything in the dark, “we”
sometimes fear in the light things which are no whit more dreadful than
what children tremble at in the dark and imagine that it will happen; this
terror must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun, but by nature coming
to sight and being penetrated. Book III is the Book devoted to the over¬
coming of “our” childish fear.
Lucretius tells his reader that the soul is a part of man like the hand and
therefore located in a determinate part of the body. It is not, as some
Greeks have asserted, a harmony of the whole body (94-135). It is not
Lucretius’ manner as we have hitherto had occasion to observe it to begin
his presentation of a teaching with polemics against philosophic doctrines.
The polemic against “harmonism” is firm, but free from harshness or sar¬
casm: harmonism is as good for establishing the mortality of the soul as
Epicureanism; 62 it is the first doctrine explicitly discussed which is rejected
merely because it is wrong and not at the same time with a view to its effect
on man’s feelings. If any doubt were left, the discussion of harmonism
would show that Epicureanism is not needed for liberating the mind from
the terrors of religion.
The soul is a single nature consisting of the animus and the anima. The
animus, or the mind, is located in the breast, is the ruler of the whole
body, and is at the same time that through which we suffer fear, joy, and
the like; the understanding and the passions belong together. The anima is
spread through the whole body and obeys the animus. The distinction is
meant to explain that there is what one may call a particular freedom of
man. The animus alone and by itself can understand and can feel pleasures
and pains which are not pleasures and pains of the body (136-160). Both
parts of the soul must be bodily, as is shown by the fact that they affect our
body and are affected by it, for nothing can affect a body and be affected
by it without touch, and nothing can touch or be touched except body
(161-176). Since the acts of the animus are capable of unrivaled swiftness
and nimbleness, it must consist of very round, very smooth, and very tiny
parts. This insight into the nature of the animus is of very great impor¬
tance, as the poet indicates both explicitly and by addressing the reader in
a unique way (o bone). Things which consist of such parts are more easily
dissolved than things consisting of parts of the opposite description. The
fact that the animus through which we can sense or feel is of such a fine
texture and can be contained in a very small place explains why the con¬
tours and the weight of a man immediately after his death do not differ
from his contours and weight immediately before it. The same fact proves
that the anima too consists of very tiny particles. The poet compares the
soul in this respect to the flavor of wine, or as he puts it here, of Bacchus;
this is the first time that he mentions a god or a pseudo god by name in the
Book (177-230). In no other Book are gods as rarely mentioned with or

without name as in Book III.
The soul consists of heat, air, and wind and of a fourth nature which is
nameless and which accounts for sensing and thinking (231-257). Lucre¬
tius opens his explanation of how those ingredients are mingled with one
another by apologizing again for the defects of his exposition, which are
due to the poverty of his “paternal speech.” The second reference to “the
paternal speech” (260) differs from the first (I 832) since it follows the
sole reference to “the paternal precepts” (III 9—10), namely, the precepts
given by Epicurus; Lucretius has two fathers or fatherlands, one by virtue of
language (or blood) and another by virtue of the mind; the precepts which
bind or guide him stem exclusively from the latter. Of the four ingredients
of the soul the nameless one is the soul of the soul and rules the whole
body. As for the three other ingredients, each of them predominates in
different species of animals. Here Lucretius tacitly makes clear for the first
time that his doctrine of the soul is not merely a doctrine of the human
soul;63 he is, however, silent on the specific difference of the human
soul.64 Men, like oxen, stand in the middle between the hot-hearted and
angry lions and the coldhearted and fearful deer. There are natural differ¬
ences in this respect also between the individuals of the same species, at
least of the human species. Training or education can make some men
equally refined; it cannot eradicate the fundamental, natural diversity or
inequality. But reason is strong enough to expel the traces of those natural
defects so that nothing stands in the way of a life worthy of gods (262—
322). Does Lucretius mean that every man, however dull-witted he may
be, can grasp the Epicurean doctrine and thus be enabled to lead a life
worthy of the gods? Would this throw any light on the intelligence of the
gods? Does he mean that, as a matter of principle, every human being can
live in freedom from religion? Is this true even of children who tremble at
everything and fear it when it is dark (87-88)? As a matter of fact, all
men were under the spell of the terrors of religion prior to the daring act
of a Greek who had a divine mind, and presumably all Romans are still in
that condition before they have read Lucretius’ poem. The primary address¬
ee of the poem is Memmius, who is supposed to possess a keen mind
(I 50, IV 912). Now it seems that Memmius would not have to possess a
keen mind in order to derive the greatest benefit from Lucretius’ poem.
Are we entitled to doubt Memmius’ native excellence? Such a doubt
would be compatible with the fact that Lucretius wishes his potential
friend to share in his most cherished possession. Yet he addresses, of
course, indefinitely many Romans, most of whom will be men of mean
capacities: he attempts to propagate Epicurean philosophy in Rome. The
motive of this attempt, we submit, is not merely love of praise (cf. pages
91-92 above); even a philosopher who does not care for the city is in need
of support or protection by politically active and powerful men.
The section with which Lucretius concludes his exposition of the nature
of the soul consists of three parts. He shows first that the soul cannot be
without the body and vice versa. Body and soul come into being together
and perish together. No sensation or feeling is possible without the co¬
operation of body and soul. It is true that the soul is the immediate cause
of sensing, but it is an error to hold that only the soul senses while using
the body merely as an instrument (323-369). In the central part Lucretius
takes issue with the view of Democritus regarding the local order of the
body atoms and the soul atoms. The treatment of the Democritean doc¬
trine near the end of the discussion of the nature of the soul reminds of
the treatment of harmonism at its beginning: the Democritean doctrine
would not render questionable the mortality of the soul. Lucretius indeed
treats Democritus or his doctrine with much greater respect than har¬
monism; he applies to him or to his doctrine the epithet “sacred”; Democ¬
ritus is the only human being to whom or to whose doctrine he ever ap¬
plies that epithet unqualifiedly;55 he never applies it to Epicurus. He
fails to apply it to Democritus in the central reference to him (III 1037)
where Democritus’ inferiority to Epicurus is clearly brought out. This
throws light on his calling “sacred” the gods’ bodies, their numina, and so
on. Finally, the poet restates the supremacy of the animus over the anima
and the body (396-416). While he is primarily concerned with the
mortality of the soul, he is very much concerned with its being the ruling
part in man, nay, in all living beings. Since he holds the soul to be as cor¬
poreal as the body, he is not compelled to regard the acts of the soul as
mere epiphenomena of the body; he can leave intact the “common-
sensical” distinction between soul and body.
The center of Book III (417-829) is devoted to the proof that the souls
are born and die. That proof consists of a large number of arguments
which are more or less independent of one another. In no other case does
Lucretius devote so many verses and so many arguments to the proof of a
single proposition. One could think that the coming into being and perish¬
ing of the souls is sufficiently established by the fact that they are com¬
pounds of atoms. Yet the gods are also compounds of atoms and never¬
theless supposed to be immortal. It is true that the Epicurean gods do not
live within the world or worlds, while the souls do. But could the souls not
live within the world and then, if they have lived piously here, withdraw to
the intermundia in which the gods dwell, to Islands of the Blessed, as it
were? Lucretius turns therefore to reasonings based on the specific char¬
acters of the soul which, after all, are better known to him than those of
the gods. In introducing these reasonings he reminds us that his verses are
to be worthy of Memmius’ “life” (420) without, however, mentioning
Memmius’ name; he reminds us of his esteem for Memmius. The first ar¬
gument makes clear that the soul is mortal because it is a compound of
particularly small and mobile atoms which are kept together by the body;
but the body is manifestly mortal. In what looks at first glance like an ex¬
cursus, Lucretius illustrates the mobility of the soul by the ease with which
it is moved through slender causes; it is moved not only by smoke and
clouds but even by images of smoke and clouds; for instance, when asleep
we see high altars breathing steam and sending up their smoke (425-444).
When attempting to prove the mortality of the soul, Lucretius cannot
help presenting to us vividly the sad spectacles of men’s sudden or slow
deaths, of their diseases and decay, although he never comes near to that
accumulation of horrors which he has reserved for the end of his work. He
makes no attempt to sweeten the sad; the sweetening thought is the con¬
sideration, which now indeed remains unexpressed, that death, however
slow and painful, is preferable to the terrors of Hades. This thought re¬
mains so little expressed that Lucretius now uses men’s great unwillingness
to die, their eagerness to clutch at the last tie of life, as a proof of the mor¬
tality of the soul: if our souls were immortal, we would not mind dying
(597-614). However unreasonable the fear of death may be, it seems to
be quite natural.56 We may note some slight signs of resistance on the part
of the addressee,57 but the poet does not engage in explicit polemics
against other schools of thought while proving the mortality of the soul
(425-669); he engages in such polemics while attempting to refute the be¬
lief in the pre-existence of the soul (670 ff.).58 The reason is that he does
not take seriously the belief in the immortality of the soul if it is not ac¬
companied by the belief in its pre-existence: only an eternal soul can be
immortal (cf. 670-673).
The reference to men’s revulsion from death as a proof or sign of the
mortality of the soul occurs shortly before the end of the section that deals
with the soul’s immortality as distinguished from its pre-existence. It is fol¬
lowed by three more arguments in support of mortality. The two last of
these arguments refer in very different ways to hearsay. According to Lu¬
cretius, one cannot assert the immortality of the soul without asserting the
immortality of the five senses and hence of their organs; the painters and
writers of old presented the souls in Acheron as endowed with the senses;
but the senses cannot exist without the whole body (624-633). The im¬
plication is that the painters and writers of old acted more reasonably than
the more recent philosophers who assert the immortality of the soul bereft
of the senses. Lucretius is silent here about the ancient writers’ presenting
the souls as undergoing eternal punishment in Hades (I 111). In the last
argument (634-669) he uses his knowledge through hearsay of the maim¬
ing and killing caused by scythe-bearing chariots. We do not know whether
Memmius had firsthand knowledge of battles in which such chariots were
used; Lucretius surely had not. This is not to deny that the poet may have
observed other kinds of battles from afar (II 5-6).
The antepenultimate argument in support of mortality (615-623) is
repeated and enlarged in the argument that concludes the central part of
Book III (784-829). The thought which Lucretius repeats is that every¬
thing has its place outside of which it cannot be; the mind cannot be in
the shoulders or in the heels, for instance; still less can it be outside the
whole body. He enlarges this thought by the consideration that the eternal
or immortal cannot be linked with the mortal. He then raises the question
as to what kinds of things are immortal and finds that the soul does not
belong to them. He identifies three kinds of immortal things: the atoms,
the void, and the universe. He does not mention the gods. But he compels
us to think of the gods by raising the question as to what kinds of things
are, or can be, immortal. He may allude to the gods by saying that things
may be eternal if there is no place without into which their parts may scat¬
ter or if there are no bodies which could assault them; for this condition
could be thought to be fulfilled in the intermundia in which the gods are
said to dwell. At any rate, the central part of Book III begins and ends with
allusions not so much to the gods as to the problem of the gods.
In the last part of Book III Lucretius draws the practical conclusion
from his proof of the soul’s mortality: death is nothing to us. The conclu¬
sion does not follow from the proof since we naturally recoil from death as
from a very great evil. Lucretius must therefore show in addition that our
revulsion from death is due to a delusion. It could be thought that by lib¬
erating us from this delusion he weakens our concern with preserving our
lives. Besides, the brutes too recoil from death; are they too under the spell
of a delusion? Yet Lucretius both as an atomist and as a human being
knows the power of death or the eagerness with which men cling to “the
sweet light of life” (V 989). He shows that he has considered the objec¬
tions to his thesis by the way in which he concludes the passage under dis¬
cussion; he concludes it by opposing “immortal death” to “mortal life.”
The delusion is said to consist in our believing that we are still alive and
feeling while we no longer are. We can be as little affected by what hap¬
pens after our death as we were affected by what happened before we were
born: we were not affected by the Punic Wars when the rule over all men
was at stake between the Carthaginians and the other side (830-869).
Lucretius opens the last part of Book III with a somewhat subdued reasser¬
tion of Romanism.69 In the same context he touches briefly on the possi¬
bility that the same atomic compound which is a given man was frequently
produced long before his time. He disposes of it by the consideration that
the same atomic compound was not the same man since no memory links
the earlier and the later. He does not speak of the possibility of a return
of the same compound.
Lucretius next shows us a man who pities himself by imagining the ter¬
rible or disgraceful things which will happen to him, that is, to his body,
after his death; that man imagines that he himself can stand by his corpse
and look at it; he imputes to his corpse the feelings which he, a living man,
has (870-893). Lucretius next presents to us living men addressing a man
who just died, pitying him for what he has lost. They do not add, Lucretius
observes, that the dead man no longer yearns for what he has lost; Lucre¬
tius states in their direct speech what they ought to say to the dead man,
just as he has stated in their direct speech what they do say to him. He
then makes them say to the dead man what they would say if they were to
consider that he is not aware of anything: thou hast no reason to grieve,
but we have reason for everlasting grief. He finds fault with what he makes
them, or rather one of them, say—no one has reason for everlasting grief
—but he does not address this reproach to them; he never speaks to them.
Instead he makes them state another of their untutored speeches, and he
again refutes it without addressing them. At the end of this refutation he
calls death “the chill stopping of life” (894-930). His next action is still
more extraordinary than the one which we just described: he makes the
nature of things speak to any one of us, to whom she applies the vocatives
“thou mortal” and “thou fool” (933, 939). Nature herself is made to pro¬
claim how unreasonable it is to regard death as a great evil, regardless of
whether one has lived hitherto happily or miserably. Lucretius, having
listened together with his reader to Nature’s speech, finds that the only an¬
swer which “we” can give to Nature is that she is right. He then makes
Nature address an oldish man who fears death more than it is just to do;
she naturally deals more harshly with him than with the younger men; she
applies to him the vocative “thou criminal” (955). Having listened to
Nature’s second and last speech, Lucretius finds again that Nature would
be right in making her reproaches. He then gives the reader or addressee
additional reasons why Nature’s verdict and action are sound: the old must
give way to the new; if we look at death in the light of Nature, death ceases
to be terrible. Neither Lucretius nor the addressee or reader speaks to Na¬
ture—which does not mean that Nature does not speak to the addressee.
There is a noteworthy contrast between the central section of the last
part of Book III—the section in which Nature is made to speak and Lucre¬
tius comments on her speeches (931-977)—and the next section, which is
altogether undramatic, that is, in which not even the second person is ever
used (978-1023). The poet speaks now of the terrors of hell, the denial of
which seemed to be the primary reason for denying the possibility of a life
after death; these terrors have proved to be of secondary importance.
While it is true that only through the fear of hell does the fear of the gods
acquire its full power, and hence Memmius is threatened by the fear of
hell rather than by the fear of the gods as such (see page 105 above), it
appears that not the fear of hell, but the fear of death, is the enemy of our
happiness; the fear of hell threatens, not man as man, but the unjust. This
means that Lucretius ascribes some importance to the tenors of hell: he
does not even take the trouble to deny in so many words that a blessed life
after death is reserved for the just; he wishes to remain silent about religion
as a possibly pleasant and salutary delusion. He need not give a special
proof in order to deny that there is a hell after he has proved the mortality
of the souls. He limits himself therefore to explaining the stories of hell in
terms of the evils of human life. To cite only the central example, the true
Sisyphus is the man who runs for public office, for he wishes to lay hold on
a power which always eludes him, that is, which always remains precarious.
After the interlude on the terrors of hell, which was necessary in order to
bring out the peculiarity regarding both subject matter and manner of
treatment of the surrounding sections, Lucretius turns to telling the reader
something which he should tell himself from time to time: the reader is to
play the role previously played by men in general and, above all, by Nature.
Yet what he is to tell himself reads as if Lucretius were telling it to him, as
if Lucretius were addressing him. It is then Lucretius who tells his address¬
ee, whom he apostrophizes now as “thou knave,” that much better men
than he have died and that therefore he should not make any fuss about
his dying. The language which he uses is stronger than the language previ¬
ously used by Nature. He reminds the reader of six men who have died.
The first three are political men: the Roman king Ancus, the Persian king
Xerxes, whose name and country are not mentioned, and Scipio, the terror
of Carthage. The last three men are philosophers and poets: Homer, De¬
mocritus, and Epicurus; Epicurus’ genius surpassed that of all other men.
The men of outstanding minds are all Greeks (1024-1052). The political
men are all non-Greeks: they are all barbarians. Romanism is a kind of
barbarism. It is proper that Lucretius should make some effort to entrust
this speech to somebody else.
The sequel—the end of Book III—is as undramatic or nearly so as the
interlude that deals with the terrors of hell; it tacitly takes up the theme
that hell is the life of the fools here. Men live in the way they do because
they suffer from a burden the causes of which they do not know; hence no
one knows what he wants and changes from one thing or place to another;
everyone runs away from himself, but he cannot escape from himself; he is
sick without knowing the cause of his sickness; if he knew that cause, he
would leave everything else and first attempt to know the nature of things,
for what is at stake is his condition in eternity—the “eternal death” from
which he cannot escape and from which he foolishly attempts to escape.
The flight from oneself is the flight from one’s death (1053-1094). To
study nature means to learn to accept one’s death without delusion or
rebellion and hence to live well.
The last part of Book III tells us what the right posture toward death is.
In this context Lucretius presents seven utterances of beings other than the
poet in direct speech. Direct speech of beings other than Lucretius occurs
only here and twice in Book I (803-808, 897-900), but in Book I the
speaker in question is the addressee, and he speaks in defense of philo¬
sophic doctrines, that is, within the context of Lucretius’ polemics against
philosophic doctrines; whereas in Book III the polemic is directed against
common, nay universal, opinion, and the speakers are men in general, Na¬
ture, and the addressee as a mask for Lucretius. In the speeches of Nature
and of the addressee as a mask for Lucretius there occurs an unusually large
number of vocatives; those speakers apostrophize their addressee as “thou
mortal,” “thou fool,” “thou criminal,” and “thou knave.” Lucretius him¬
self has apostrophized his addressee earlier in Book III (206) as “thou
good one.” It so happens that Lucretius apostrophizes the addressee after
Book III only in Book V, where he apostrophizes him five times “o Mem-
mius.” (He apostrophizes him “o Memmius” altogether nine times in the
poem.) The difference between the manner in which Lucretius, speaking
in his own name on the one hand and speaking through a mask on the
other, apostrophizes his addressee deserves notice, although it is not sur¬
prising.60
V. On Book IV
The proem almost literally repeats the wormwood-honey passage in Book I.

The most obvious change consists in the omission of the remark on the
poet’s desire for praise (I 922-923). The most important change is the
change of the context, for, as we have observed more than once, the con¬
text, the place where a statement occurs, may be crucial for its meaning;
identically the same statement may have a different meaning in a different
context. The same verses which were first used for introducing the discussion
of infinity now open a whole Book. While their meaning at their first oc¬
currence must be understood also in the light of their immediate sequel,
their meaning at their second and last occurrence cannot be so understood.
The proem to Book IV deals with the relation of Lucretius’ poetry to
Epicurean philosophy. So does the proem to Book III. The proem to Book
IV supplements, and therewith corrects, the proem to Book III, just as the
proem to Book II may be said to correct the proem to Book I (cf.
note 29). Lucretius or his work does not, as we were told in the proem
to Book III, unqualifiedly belong to a lower species than Epicurus or his
work. In the proem to Book III, Lucretius had compared himself to a swal¬
low and Epicurus to a swan. From now on he compares himself to a swan
(IV 181, 910). The proem to Book IV does not contain a praise of Epi¬
curus.
The subject of Book IV or of its first part, as stated by the poet, is the
proper sequel to the discussion of the soul in the preceding Book:61 the
likenesses of things; for those likenesses which fly through the air frighten
us when we are awake and also in sleep, when we behold wondrous shapes
and the likenesses of the departed. One must explain the likenesses of
things lest “we” believe that something of us remains after death in
Hades or elsewhere (26-44). This seems to mean that the many proofs
given in Book III are not quite sufficient to establish the mortality of the
souls. But how could this be? The belief in punishment after death pre¬
supposes not only the immortality of the souls but the existence of punish¬
ing gods as well. Perhaps the explanation of the likenesses throws light on
the belief in such gods or in gods in general. In the proem (6-7) Lucre¬
tius has reminded us of his purpose to liberate the mind from the bondage
of religion. The only way in which we can know, according to the Epicu¬
rean doctrine, of the gods being and their nature is through their likenesses
or images which reach us after they have passed through the flaming walls
of the world. Someone might say that Lucretius’ discussion of the like¬
nesses or images in Book IV has no relation whatever to his teaching re¬
garding, the gods since the very terms “likenesses” (simulacra) and
images (imagines) do not occur in his statement about how men have
come to know of the gods.62 This objection could at least as well be used
in support of the opposite assertion. Paintings and statues of the gods are
also called likenesses and images.” 63 The difficulty which we have in¬
dicated may explain why Lucretius gives a second justification of his pres¬
ent theme by linking the subject “the likenesses of things,” not to the doc¬
trine of the soul, but to the atomistic doctrine in general (45-53).
The likenesses or images are minute bodies on the surface of the things;
they are hurled forward by pressure from within the things; each likeness is
propelled immediately by the succeeding one; the succession never ceases;
the likenesses are carried away with incredible speed in all directions; they
are so tiny that they cannot be seen. Streaming from the surfaces of the
things, they preserve the things’ shapes and colors without alteration. If
certain conditions are fulfilled, they literally transmit to us faithful images
or copies of the shape and color of the thing in question. Yet not all like¬
nesses stream directly from things. Some likenesses are formed in the air;
they can be compared to the shapes which clouds sometimes take on like
those of giants and other fear-inspiring things. Besides, genuine likenesses
are deformed by the air on their way from the things to our eyes. Our
shadows seem to walk and to gesticulate, whereas, being lifeless, they are
incapable of walking and gesticulating (129-142, 168-175, 352-378).
A square tower seen from afar looks round; this means that the likeness
of the tower has become round on its way from the tower to our eyes; it is
as genuine as the square likeness which hits us when we are near the tower.
This is to say that not the eyes are deceived, but the mind, for it is the
reasoning of the mind, not the eyes, through which we can know the na¬
ture of the things. In a sense we see everything (462) which appears to us
as visible, regardless of whether we are awake or asleep at the time, and this
fact can easily shake our trust in the senses. Yet it is not the fault of the
senses if we do not distinguish between the things manifest—the likenesses
as such—and the things dubious—what the mind adds of its own. This
fault is indeed hard to avoid since nothing is harder than to make that dis-
tinction intelligently, especially, we may add, when the appearances are

wondrous (33-36). Lucretius indicates or imitates the difficulty by his use
of the passive forms of videre which mean here (379-468) in all cases but
one (428) “to seem” or, as the poet makes clear, “to be believed” (387—
388, 401-402), or “merely to seem” (433-434), or “to be contrary to the
truth” (444-446). The section under discussion contains the greatest
density of videri that occurs in the whole work64 while it does not con¬
tain a single mention of simulacra or imagines. Lucretius concludes his dis¬
cussion of the likenesses by restating the case for the trustworthiness of the
senses against two views; his polemic does not claim, however, to be di¬
rected against philosophic schools. If one does not trust the senses, one is
led to deny the possibility of knowledge altogether; but apart from the fact
that by denying the possibility of knowledge one asserts that one possesses
knowledge, one cannot deny the possibility of knowledge without knowing
what knowledge is, without having experienced knowing. The other alterna¬
tive to trust in the senses is trust in reason, but reason is wholly founded on
the senses; hence if the senses cannot be trusted, reason cannot be trusted;
without trust in the senses, reason, nay, life itself, collapses. Trust in the
senses is the first of all trusts (469-521).
Lucretius turns next to the question as to how each of the other senses
perceives what belongs to it. He speaks first of hearing. The principle of
explanation is the same as in the case of sight, which does not mean that
Lucretius does not pay some attention to the peculiarities of hearing (cf.
595-614). He is more concerned with voices than with sounds in general.
He is very much concerned with proving the corporeal character of voices.
Within the central part of the section on hearing he explains the echo. In
giving this explanation he addresses the reader in an unusual manner; he
says to him that if he understands the explanation well, he can give an ac¬
count of the phenomena in question to himself and to others (572-573);
he reckons with the possibility that at least a part of his teaching will be
transmitted by his reader or readers to men who are not his readers. The
explanation of the echo permits Lucretius to explain the sounds traced espe¬
cially by rustics living in lonely places to satyrs, nymphs, fauns, and in par¬
ticular to Pan; beings of this kind exist only in speech or are known only
through hearsay (580-594). It seems that people may believe in gods
without having been moved to do so by any images, however deformed.
Differently stated, no sound ever heard by us stems from gods. This does
not contradict the fact that we are supposed to know that the Epicurean
gods utter “haughty sounds” (V 1173-1174). However haughty their
sounds may be, the gods cannot be our “haughty lords” (II 1091)—if for
no other reason, then at least because their sounds cannot reach us since
they would have to travel through the flaming walls of the world.
Lucretius turns next, not, as one would expect, to smell, but to taste; he
does not discuss touch at all. As a consequence, the discussion of taste oc-
cupies the center of the section devoted to the senses other than sight. Lu¬
cretius is particularly concerned with the fact that the same food tastes
sweet or bitter to different kinds of beings, that is, to different kinds of
atomic compounds. He opens his discussion of this subject by another un¬
usual expression; his discussion serves the purpose, he says, “that we may
see how and why for different beings there is different food" (633-634);65
it looks as if the poet himself were listening to his own instruction or as if
he were still learning while teaching.66 Things taste differently to different
kinds of beings, that is, the tastes are not copies of the qualities of the
things; when one sees the things, their shapes and colors are preserved; but
one destroys the things when tasting them. As for smells, they come from
the interior of the things smelled and not, as the likenesses, from their sur¬
face; the same kinds of smells attract or repel different species of living be¬
ings. In addition, the species differ in regard to the keenness of their power
of smelling. Men are less apt to discern wholesome food by their sense of
smell than are wild beasts, while in other respects men’s senses are superior
to those of other animals.
Lucretius turns next to the question as to by what and whence the mind
(mens) is moved. This section too is opened by an unusual expression.67
We understand this section better if we look forward to the fact that “the
nature of the gods is subtle and far removed from our senses" (V 148_
149). “The subtle nature of the mind" is moved to the perception peculiar
to it by “subtle” likenesses of things which wander in the air and become
linked with one another; those combined likenesses are more subtle than
the likenesses which cause the vision of the eyes. In this way we “see” Cen¬
taurs, Scyllas, Cerberus, and the likenesses of the dead. We recall that the
explanation of such sights is the guiding purpose of the discussion of like¬
nesses in general (IV 29 ff.). The expression “we see” is justified to the ex¬
tent that the awareness of beings like the Centaurs is caused by likenesses
just as the awareness of ordinary things is. Needless to say, there are no
Centaurs and the like; the likenesses of Centaurs are produced by chance
meetings of the likenesses of horses with those of men. A single image of
this kind is sufficient to stir our mind, which is exceedingly subtle and
mobile. The mind’s “seeing" is more powerful when we are asleep than
when we are awake: it is in our dreams that “we seem to behold,” or that
“our mind believes it sees,” the dead (722-776). All this does not mean
that there are no likenesses affecting the mind which copy things that are
as they are; without such likenesses true thinking would be impossible.
Up to this point the chief subject of Book IV is the likenesses or images.
What the chief subject of the second half of the Book is, is not easy to say.
The first half may be said to consist of three parts: (1) the likenesses and
vision, (2) the three other senses discussed, (3) thought. The second half
also consists of three parts: (1) critique of the teleological view (823—
857); (2) explanation (<z) of the need for food, (b) of how we are able to
move our limbs in various ways, (c) of sleep and dreams (858-1036); and
(3) explanation and critique of love (1037-1287). Lucretius first attacks
the view that the parts of the body were brought into being for their use
(the eyes for the sake of seeing, for instance); according to him their use¬
fulness and the awareness of it are consequent upon their having come into
being; only in the case of artifacts does awareness of usefulness precede the
coming into being. This criticism does not present itself as directed against
a philosophic school. More important, it is the only criticism of teleology
occurring in the work which contains no reference whatever to the gods.
The poet desires to remain silent on the gods in the present context. But
not to mention the gods is not the same as not to think of them. We have
stated earlier that in no other Book are gods as rarely mentioned with or
without name as in Book III. We must now correct this statement with a
view to the fact that the poet speaks very frequently in the last section of
Book IV of Venus, meaning by this word not the goddess, but simply sex¬
ual love.
Let us now consider the central part of the last half of Book IV. “Food”
had already been discussed from a different point of view in the central
part of the first half of Book IV, namely, when the sense of taste was being
considered. But then “food” occupied the central place, a place taken in
the second half by “movement of the limbs.” Movement of the limbs is
the action most emphatically ascribed to the gods in the section par excel¬
lence devoted to the gods: “men ascribed sense to the gods because the
gods were seen to move their limbs” (V 1172-1173); the gods’ moving
their limbs is the ratio cognoscendi of the gods’ sensing (and perhaps
thinking), or of the gods' being living beings. There is no difficulty in rec¬
onciling this with the facts that the likenesses of the dead seem to move
their limbs when they appear to us in our dreams and that our shadows
seem to walk (IV 364-369, 756-770). The difficulty is this. Our voluntary
movements are preceded by images or likenesses of those movements; these
images are very small bodies, and yet they set in motion the whole large
bulk of our bodies. Lucretius disposes of this difficulty with ease. For all we
know, he explained the gods’ moving their bodies, which are of wondrous
bulk (V 1171), in the same manner, but he is silent as to how the gods can
move their limbs. As for food, all living beings need food in order to repair
the losses which they incur especially through their exertions. The gods are
seen in our dreams to accomplish many wondrous things without under¬
going any toil (V 1181-1182); hence they would not seem to be in need
of food; Lucretius is silent on this subject.
Dreams were first discussed in connection with thinking; in the repeti¬
tion they are discussed in connection with sleep. The discussion of sleep is
introduced with nine verses in which Lucretius speaks of how he will treat
that subject—he will treat it in sweet verses rather than in many—and
urges his reader, who is again assumed to possess a keen mind, to listen
carefully and thus to accept the true teaching. Sleep, we are told, liberates
the mind from its cares. Thus one might think that it is a most desirable
state. Lucretius does not draw this conclusion. Sleep is due to a disor¬
dering of the positions of the body atoms and the mind atoms (IV 943—
944). This disordering brings about a disturbance of the soul and hence in
particular the suspension of sensing. Lucretius speaks here in all cases but
one (944) of the anima, and not of the animus, thus permitting us to
imagine that the animus can perceive the gods (V 1170-1171) while the
anima is dormant. Surely in his first discussion of dreams (IV 722-822),
in which he has spoken of our seeing Centaurs and the like, he has spoken
only of animus and mens. In the second discussion he gives seventeen ex¬
amples of dreams or kinds of dreams; in the ninth example (1008) there
occurs the only mention of “gods” or of “divine” that occurs between
verses 591 and 1233. He now states that we mostly dream of the thing with
which we were preoccupied while we were awake or that the likenesses
which enter the mind when we are asleep are the same as those which we
previously apprehended with the senses. What we dream depends on “in¬
terest and will.” The same is true of the beasts. Dogs, for instance, dream
of hunting wild beasts, and after they have been awakened by such dreams
they still pursue “the empty likenesses of stags”; puppies behave in their
dreams “as if they beheld unknown forms and faces.” Other examples
show that what living beings dream of depends on their fears. Sometimes
the likenesses believed to be seen do not precede the emotions or the
movements of the limbs, but are called forth by them. The likenesses of
every body which appear to males ripe for the discharge of the semen seem
to announce “a glorious face and a beautiful color” and thus to facilitate
that discharge (962-1036). One is tempted to say that it is not only fear
but love too which gives rise to visions of superhuman beings, of beings of
superhuman beauty and splendor; but it is wise to resist such temptations.
Certain it is that both Lucretian discussions of dreams do not in any way
suggest that through dreams we have an access (or a superior access) to
beings that are and to which we have no access (or only an inferior access)
while we are awake.
The last part of Book IV is devoted to Venus, who, according to the
beginning of the poem, is the deity par excellence. We have learned in the
meantime that Venus, so far from being a deity, is nothing but a personifi¬
cation of sexual love (cf. II 655-657 and 437). We also have learned what
to think of favorites of Venus like Paris. We learn now that sexual love, so
far from being divine, is a great threat to our happiness, although perhaps
not as great a threat as fear of death. The attack on love in the last section
of Book IV corresponds to the attack on the fear of death in the last sec¬
tion of Book III, and the deepest reason for this correspondence might
well be the fact that both fear and love are roots of the belief in gods. The
fate of Venus in the poem indicates the fate of all gods in it; Venus is re-
lated to the true gods as the true gods are to the truth about the true gods.
Love is a wound of the mind, the beloved like a mortal enemy. Love prom¬
ises pleasure, but the pleasure which it gives is followed by chilly care. From
this we draw the conclusion that the gods cannot feel love, just as they do
not need food or sleep; Lucretius does not draw this conclusion. Love is
love of one, boy or woman; in order to enjoy the fruit of Venus without
suffering from the cares which she brings with her, one must separate sexual
pleasure from love. The ingredient of enmity in love reveals itself in the
very act of embrace. The lovers hope that by their embrace their desire
will be stilled, but this hope cannot be fulfilled, for the beauty which
arouses the love is only a delicate likeness which cannot enter the body like
food or drink; the lovers are mocked by images just as the thirsty man who
dreams of drinking (1048-1120). The sufferings of lovers are aggravated
by their self-deception; the lover ascribes to his beloved more than it is
right to ascribe to any mortal; he regards her as Venus herself or as some
other entirely flawless being which has nothing whatever to conceal. Hence
one frees oneself from the fetters of love best by thinking of the defects of
mind and body which the beloved is bound to have (1153-1191). All this
does not mean that venereal desire and pleasure is not natural; brutes have
no less a share in it than men (1192-1208). We may say that it is as natu¬
ral as the fear of death. Sterility is not due to divine action and therefore
cannot be counteracted by sacrifices to the gods (1233-1247). Nor is it
due to divine action that sometimes a woman of indifferent attractiveness
comes to be loved (1278-1287). Philosophy counteracts love as it counter¬
acts fear. There is no link between philosophy and eros.
VI. On Book V
The proem to Book V is devoted, as is the proem to Book III, to the
praise of Epicurus. But in the proem to Book V Lucretius does not address
Epicurus; he praises Epicurus while addressing Memmius by name. He
indicates’again that his work is inferior to that of Epicurus: no poem can
match “the grandeur of the things and the discoveries” of Epicurus; surely
no one formed of a mortal body can produce a poem which fits Epicurus’
deserts. It would seem that only a god could chant Epicurus’ praises ade¬
quately, for is not Epicurus himself a god? If one must speak in accordance
with what the known grandeur of the things itself demands, one must say
that Epicurus was a god, for he was the greatest benefactor of men that ever
was. In order to see that Epicurus was a god, it suffices that one compare
his discoveries with the divine discoveries of others which were made in
antiquity, with the discoveries said to have been made by Ceres and Liber.
Those discoveries are not necessary for life; there are said to be peoples
which live without bread and wine. Epicurus’ discovery, however, is neces-
sary for living well; it makes possible happiness amidst great peoples. It is
safe to assume that those great peoples include not only the Greeks but the
Romans as well. In accordance with this Lucretius indicates here that the
Romans are not barbarians and in Book V, as distinguished from the two
preceding Books, addresses Memmius by name. Lucretius then compares
Epicurus’ benefactions with the famous deeds of Heracles. By killing the
famous monsters Heracles and others have not disposed of the wild beasts
and other terrors with which the earth still abounds. Epicurus, however,
has taught men how to cleanse their hearts from desires and fears, from the
vices of all kinds. Therefore he deserves to be ranked among the gods. He
deserves this rank above all since he was wont to utter well and divinely
many sayings about the immortal gods themselves and to reveal in his say¬
ings the whole nature of things (1-54). Epicurus was then a god, if we
understand by a god not a being which is deathless, but a supreme bene¬
factor of men. He is, or was, not the only god: he deserves to be ranked
among the gods. But are those gods, the immortal gods, also benefactors of
the human race? Does the notion underlying the praise of Epicurus as a
god not render doubtful the notion underlying the Epicurean conception
of the gods? Is the praise of Epicurus as a god not tantamount to saying
that Epicurus was a god because he denied the godness of the gods? Why
does Lucretius praise here most highly, not Epicurus’ revealing the whole
nature of things, but his speeches about the immortal gods? 68
Lucretius follows Epicurus to the extent that he teaches by what law
everything has been created; he does not say here that he will reproduce
his master’s well and divinely framed sayings about the immortal gods. He
has shown before that the mind is mortal because it is inseparable from a
body which has come into being. He must show now that the world is
mortal because it has come into being; he must show how all its parts have
come into being. The human things belong to those parts; of the human
things Lucretius mentions here only speech and religion; the genesis, the
atomic composition, of reason has been not indeed discussed but intimated
before, in Book III; reason and religion are the most important human
phenomena. He will also explain how nature steers the courses of sun and
moon lest we think that those bodies move of their own will in order to
favor the crops and the living beings or that those bodies are moved by
gods. That the heavenly bodies cannnot be moved by gods follows indeed
from the fundamental theologoumenon, but if one does not know precisely
how they are moved, one is tempted time and again to relapse into the
ancient fears of harsh, omnipotent lords (55—90). Epicurus’ divine sayings
about the immortal gods are less useful for the liberation from religion
than his astronomy.
Lucretius begins to fulfill his promise that he will prove the mortality of
the world by telling Memmius, whom he again addresses by name, that
sea, earth, and heaven, those three bodies so different from each other, will
perish on a single day. That heaven and earth will perish is a novel and
hence incredible assertion; it is not supported by Memmius’ experience.
Yet perhaps he will soon be a witness of an earthquake which will shake his
confidence in the stability of the world. The doctrine of the mortality of
the world is frightening not only because it is novel but because the de¬
struction of the world is terrible in itself (91-109).69 The teaching that the
soul is mortal is gratifying because it relieves us from the fear of hell. The
teaching that the world is mortal is not gratifying because, so far from re¬
lieving us from any fear, it adds to our fears. Yet can the world be im¬
mortal if it is not the work of gods, and will these gods not be harsh lords?
Yet as preservers of the world will they not also be beneficent?
Before taking on this difficulty Lucretius makes two more promises. He
promises to prove the mortality of the world, or rather to reveal the future
destiny of mankind in a more sacred and in a much more certain manner
than the Pythia. But before he will proclaim this superior revelation, he
will supply the reader with many solaces (110-114). That is to say, he
promises to show that the mortality of the world is preferable to its immor¬
tality, just as the mortality of the soul is more desirable than its immortal¬
ity. Yet the reader needs first some comfort against his fear that by denying
the immortality and hence the divinity of the world or of its most conspic¬
uous parts he will commit a monstrous crime and be punished like the
giants of old. Lucretius, who is not averse to repeating himself, no longer
retorts that religion rather than its rejection is a crime or responsible for
crimes.70 He limits himself to proving that religion is based on untruth.
Heaven, sea, and earth, sun, moon, and stars are not divine because they
lack vital motion and sense or mind. By gods we understand beings which
possess vital motion and sense or mind, and such beings must possess ap¬
propriate bodies such as none of those parts of the world possess (114-
145). This argument would prove that the gods must have bodies resem¬
bling human bodies, if Lucretius did not ascribe mind (mens) also to
brutes.71 He goes on to assert that no part of the world can be an abode of
the gods; the world is in no sense divine. The abodes of the gods must fit
the gods' subtle nature, which is not accessible to our senses, but is barely
seen by the mind. Lucretius promises the reader to prove in a copious
speech what he has said about the nature and the abodes of the gods
(146-155); he does not promise that he will prove the existence of the
gods. Nor does he keep his promise, although he had said that the speeches
about the immortal gods are his master’s greatest achievement (52-54).
Not only is the world not divine; it is not even the work of gods. People
say that the gods have willed to fashion the glorious nature of the world for
the sake of man and hence that the world is immortal. Lucretius again
takes issue with the view that it is sinful to deny the immortality of the
world, and he again fails to counter it by referring to the crimes caused by
religion. But in discussing the divine origin of the world as distinguished
from its divinity he again addresses Memmius by name. He argues as fol¬

lows. The gods, as perfectly self-sufficient beings—as entia perfectissima
—have no reason whatever to create the world, to do anything for our sake.
Blessed beings have no reason for being kind. Nor would it have been un¬
kind of the gods not to create us, for beings which are not do not suffer
from not being. Besides, it is hard to see how the gods could have had a
pattern of things to be created, and in particular of man, or how they could
have known how to produce the world out of the atoms, if nature itself
had not supplied them with such a pattern (156-194). This argument leads
one to wonder whether the self-sufficient gods can have any knowledge of
the world and in particular of man.72
The reasoning just summarized is based to some extent on Epicurean
premises and therefore not evident to all readers. Lucretius repeats there¬
fore while enlarging it an argument which is not dependent on Epicurus’
teaching: the nature of things has not been made by divine power for our
benefit, for that nature abounds in defects (195—199).73 The largest part
of the world is unfit for human life or habitation. That part which is useful
for man would be covered by nature with thorns if man did not resist na¬
ture with his sweat and toil, and all his toil is frequently frustrated by exor¬
bitant heat, inundations, and hurricanes. Why does nature give food and
increase to the frightful race of wild beasts, the enemies of man? Why does
she make men die before their time? Why is it that man alone of all ani¬
mals is born completely helpless, like a sailor cast away by the cruel waves
(200-234)? Man alone is nature’s stepchild. This thought, which was at
most intimated in Book II, is stated without any concealment or sweet¬
ening in Book V. This progress in explicitness and emphasis agrees with the
corresponding progress in regard to the teaching as to the end of the world.
It is a progress from the sweet or less sad to the sad. Lucretius may have
succeeded in showing that the view according to which the gods have pro¬
duced the world and preserve it forever for the sake of man is not true; he
did not show, and he did not mean to show, that that view is frightening.
On the contrary, he has tacitly shown that religion is comforting, for on his
own showing religion asserts that man is the end or purpose of creation or
that man alone, at least among the earthly beings, is akin to the highest
beings. The truth which he teaches is much harsher than the teaching of
religion.
Lucretius proves the mortality of the world in four arguments. The first
and the last arguments make use of the doctrine of the four elements. This
causes no difficulty since the elements can be understood as atomic com¬
pounds, but it is not necessary that they be so understood. It seems that
Lucretius attempts to prove the mortality of the world on the broadest pos¬
sible ground. In the last argument (380-415) he conceives of the world as
constituted by the continuous unholy war among the elements; their con¬
test will be ended by the complete victory of one or another element, that
is, by the destruction of the world. According to the stories, there was once
a time when fire won out and another when water won out (the deluge).
The ancient Greek poets presented the temporary victory of fire in the
story of Phaethon, according to which the omnipotent father (Jupiter)
prevented the destruction of the world by his timely intervention. Lucre¬
tius rejects as untrue this story and its implication that the death of the
world can or will be prevented by the gods. The omnipotent father himself
would be mortal (cf. 318-323 and 258-260).
The second argument in support of the mortality of the world (324-
350) is likewise not based on specifically Epicurean premises. The world
and hence also the human race are mortal because each had a beginning,
and that the world had a beginning is shown by the fact that the past
which men remember does not go beyond the Theban and Trojan wars. In
fact, the world is young as is shown by the recent origin of some of the arts
and especially of philosophy. One cannot explain these facts by cataclysms
which left the world itself (heaven, earth, and the species of animals) in¬
tact, for if all the works of men and almost all men could be destroyed by a
weaker cause, a more grievous cause can destroy all men and the world it¬
self. The third argument (351-379) proves the mortality of the world by
showing that the world does not belong to the beings which are necessarily
immortal. Lucretius’ enumeration of the immortal beings agrees almost lit¬
erally with the one which he had given when proving the mortality of the
soul (III 806-818). The immortal beings are the atoms, the void, and the
infinite universe (as distinguished from the world or worlds). But the
world does not possess the perfect solidity of the atoms, nor is it void, nor
is it the universe; hence the gate of death is not shut on the world, but
stands open and looks toward the world with huge wide-gaping maw. This
argument would imply that the mortality of the world can be established
only on the basis of atomism and therefore that atomism, or rather Epicu¬
reanism, is the indispensable basis for denying the divine origin of the
world or divine intervention in the world, that is, for liberating the mind
from the terrors of religion.
Since the world is mortal, it must have come into being (V 373-376).
The proof of the mortality is followed by an exposition of how the world
came into being. This exposition seems to complete the proof of the Epi¬
curean doctrine; the infinitely many atoms moving in infinite time through
the infinite void explain the world as we know it, since they explain how it
came into being: the world is one of the many arrangements of atoms
which in a very long time came about through the furious clashes of the
blind atoms without the intervention of an ordering mind or a peaceful
agreement between the atoms; and once it has come about, it preserves it¬
self for a long time. Order comes out of disorder, discord, war—a war due
to the dissimilarity of the atoms and their mutual repulsion (416-448).
Owing to its specific atomic composition the earth emerged first and came
to occupy the lowest place in the center of the visible world. As a conse¬
quence of its emergence those atoms or atomic compounds which were to
form the stars and the ether were driven from the earth and began to form
those upper bodies; this change in its turn led to the emergence of the sea
and thus to the earth s taking on its final shape. Lucretius speaks in this
context of the living bodies of sun and moon, but he means by this no
more than that they are not stationary in contrast to the earth which is
stationary (449-494; cf. 125). The temporary quasi divinization of sun
and moon serves the purpose of bringing out the low estate of the earth,
allegedly the Great Mother, the place of man who is allegedly the favorite
of the creating gods: the defects of nature, which prove that it is not the
work of gods, are above all the defects of the earth.74
After having sketched the coming into being of the main parts of the
world, Lucretius turns to the heavenly bodies. He begins his discussion of
them with the words, “Now let us sing what is the cause of the motions of
the stars.” The expression “let us sing” occurs nowhere else in the poem.
On the only other occasion on which Lucretius speaks of his “singing” (VI
84), he means his exposition of other phenomena aloft.76 Since he “sings”
of the motions of the stars, he is entitled to speak of “the stars of the eter¬
nal world” and shortly thereafter even of the earth as “living” (V 509, 514,
538; cf. 476). Singing means magnifying and embellishing. Yet beyond the
two examples mentioned Lucretius cannot be said to magnify or embellish
the heavenly bodies or their motions. He does not hesitate to speak of
Matuta’s spreading rosy dawn (656-657), of the moon’s beholding the
sun setting (709), of Venus or Cupid (737), of Mother Flora (739), and
of Ceres and Bacchus (741-742), but the exercise of this poetic license is
in no way peculiar to the astronomic part of the poem. One might say that
Lucretius exclaims, Let us sing,” when he “sings” least and therefore can
indicate in an inconspicuous manner what “singing” means.
What then is peculiar to the astronomic part? Lucretius does not give
“the cause” of the motions of the stars, but a variety of incompatible
causes; he gives a variety of possible causes since it is impossible to know
which is truly the cause (526-533). Strictly speaking, he does not know
“the cause of the motions of the stars.” Yet ignorance of that cause gives
rise to religion (1185-1186) or is the chief justification of religion. Hence
it would seem that the human mind is insufficient in the decisive respect.
One is therefore tempted to say that one “sings” when one does not know.
But the insufficiency mentioned is not peculiar to our knowledge of things
aloft (VI 703-711). It would be better to say that Lucretius does not dis¬
cuss in detail the genesis of the heavenly bodies and their motions, but
speaks of them as they are after their genesis has been completed, whereas,
as regards the terrestrial beings, he presents their genesis in detail. But why
does he proceed so differently in the two cases? The heavenly bodies and
their motions are one of the chief reasons, nay, the chief reason, why men
believe that there are gods acting on the world or in the world, and to de¬
stroy that belief is one of the two primary purposes of the whole poem.76
It is therefore all the more remarkable that the astronomic part of the
poem is completely free from the attacks on religion in which the poet en¬
gages so often. Or, to speak more generally, in the astronomic part Lucre¬
tius is completely silent about the nonexistence of the vulgar gods or the
existence of the true gods. Lucretius’ “singing” means here his complete
silence about the problem of the gods. This leaves us with the question
with what right singing thus understood can still be described as mag¬
nification or embellishment.
After the completion of the astronomic part Lucretius “returns to the
youth of the world” (780) in order to give an account of how the terres¬
trial things came into being. This is the only occasion on which the poet
speaks of his “returning” to something; the uniqueness of “I return” cor¬
responds to the uniqueness of “let us sing”; he returns now to nonsinging.
The astronomic part is a digression within the context of a Book devoted
to the coming into being of the world and its parts. The coming into being
of the world and its parts, we recall, is the reverse side of the mortality of
the world. The mortality of the world seemed to be incredible because of
the belief in gods who created the world. This belief is refuted long before
the beginning of the astronomic part and independently of any peculiarly
Epicurean assumptions (195-234). The “digression” has the subordinate
function of counteracting the impression made by the visible (and com¬
pleted) heavenly bodies and their motions—an impression which leads to
the belief in the gods of religion. Precisely because the “digression” has this
subordinate function, it is all the more remarkable that it is more emphati¬
cally a “song” than any other part of the first five Books.
The earth brought forth first the plants and then the animals. Even now
the earth brings forth some small animals; it is therefore not surprising that
in the spring of the world, when the earth was of youthful fertility, that is,
when heat and moisture abounded everywhere and yet a mild climate pre¬
vailed everywhere, the earth should have brought forth all kinds of animals
(783-820). The earth is therefore deservedly called the mother of all liv¬
ing beings; in her youth she was almost literally their mother; through ag¬
ing she lost her primeval power. In her youth she gave birth to many kinds
of monsters or freaks which proved to be unable to procreate and even to
live for any length of time; those kinds perished. Only those kinds survived
which from the beginning were able to live and to propagate. Some of
those kinds survived through their own powers, others because they were
entrusted to the protection of man, who preserves them since they are use¬
ful to him. When speaking of the species which are entrusted to man’s tu¬
telage, Lucretius addresses Memmius for the fourth time in this Book by
name (821-877). In the three preceding cases, as well as in the two cases
occurring in Book II, he had addressed Memmius by name in antitheolog-
ical contexts.77 We assume therefore that the present context is likewise

antitheological. The poet uses here the language of teleology in order to
deny teleology: the domestic animals are entrusted to man, not by nature
or gods, but by man himself; man has made it his business to protect them
because they are useful to him; nothing is useful to the gods (166);78 na¬
ture produces the most absurd monsters in the same way in which she
produces man, whom one might call the whole source of purposefulness in
the universe. We must add at once that the critique of theology or rather
of teleology79 is here almost completely concealed. We also note that Lu¬
cretius is silent here on the peculiarity of man or on the peculiar “gift” of
nature which enabled the human race to survive (cf. 857-863 with III
294-306).
As we have observed, it was necessary for Lucretius to assert that in the
beginning the earth had produced various kinds of monsters. It is equally
necessary for him to deny that there ever were beings like the Centaurs,
the Scylla, or the Chimaera: even in her youth the earth could never have
brought forth beasts of different kinds mingled together. The species
emerged at the beginning with their distinctive, incommunicable, and
unchangeable characters (878-924). This applies, of course, to man as
well as to the other animals. The earthborn men and even their progeny
partook of the hardness of the earth more than the later generations; they
were stronger, healthier, and of greater power of resistance than latter-day
men. They lived miserably from what the earth spontaneously offered.
They did not know the use of fire or any arts; they had no notion of a
common good or of customs and laws; everyone lived by himself for him¬
self alone. They did not know of lasting unions of men and women. They
did not fear gods (for they took for granted the necessity of the sun’s
setting and rising), but they feared wild beasts. The only deity that acted
on them was Venus.80 They did not fear what might happen to them after
death, but they feared death unless unbearable pain made them long for
death. Yet as they lacked the advantages of life in common and of the
arts, they did not suffer from the evils which these cause (925-1010).
Five things brought it about that the human race first began to soften:
huts, skins, fire, the living together of men and women, and (the conse¬
quence of that living together) the fact that both parents knew their off¬
spring and paid attention to it. On this basis neighboring families began to
form friendship with one another by making wordless contracts to the
effect that they would not hurt one another, and men began to approve of
pity with the weak, that is, with their women and children. Thus men
came to live rather peacefully together in small societies (1011-1027).
They would have been unable to live together if they had not been able to
indicate to one another their various feelings by various sounds. This use of
the tongue was not the invention of some individual—man or god—but is
as natural in the case of men as in that of the beasts which likewise utter
different sounds when impelled by different feelings (1028-1090). Lucre¬

tius is almost completely silent on the conventional ingredient of language
which was admitted by Epicurus;81 he does not deny it, of course.
Lucretius next discusses one of the changes which led to the softening of
the human race or to prepolitical society, namely, the invention of fire. He
takes up this subject explicitly with regard to a possible silent question of
the addressee. This is the only place in which he explicitly refers to a silent
question of the addressee. It was lightning, the poet says, that first of all
brought fire to the earth for men: lightning, this fear-inspiring happening
(1125, 1127, 1219-1221), originally brought men the gift of heat; man’s
acquaintance with fire is as much the work of nature as his uttering of
sounds. Man was taught by the sun to cook food (1091-1104).
After the digressions on language and fire Lucretius returns to his
account of human life or living together. The transition from prepolitical
society to political society was effected by men of superior minds. Kings
founded cities and assigned property to each man; they did not give equal
shares to all, but considered in their distribution above all beauty and
strength and to a lesser degree intelligence. With the invention of heredi¬
tary property and of the use of gold the rich took the place of the beautiful
and strong. One might say that the qualities by nature good were replaced
by the qualities good only by convention. This change eventually led to the
destruction of kingship and to a condition in which everyone sought for
himself governmental power. The ensuing violence and discord were ended
when men listened to some who taught them to establish magistracies and
laws. This, however, was not simply a blessing. Laws entail punishments
for transgressions of the laws. Henceforth the fear of punishment mars the
prizes of life. To understand this apparently strange statement of the poet,
it is sufficient to think of the Epicurean withdrawal from political life of
which the law in principle disapproves. It is not easy for the lawbreakers to
lead a quiet life. Their crimes may not be noticed by gods or men, but the
criminals can never be certain of that; at least people say that many crim¬
inals have betrayed themselves in their sleep or when raving in disease
(1105-1160). Lucretius does not say that it is impossible for the law¬
breaker to lead a quiet life; 82 the view that it is impossible is a salutary
convention. He does not contradict himself by referring to the possibility
that crimes might be observed and punished by the gods,83 for that possi¬
bility is believed in by many criminals (cf. Ill 48-54) and that belief can
therefore sometimes act as a restraint. This means, however, that according
to Lucretius religion is of a utility which is not altogether negligible.
Just as the passage dealing with prepolitical society was followed by a
discussion of the origin of language and of the use of fire, the passage deal¬
ing with political society is followed by a discussion of the origins of reli¬
gion and the arts. Fire and the arts belong together. It is reasonable to ex¬
pect that language and religion belong together. Language as discussed by
Lucretius is, so to speak, entirely by nature; calculation, consideration of

utility, or convention is barely mentioned (1028-1029). Religion as dis¬
cussed by Lucretius is entirely by nature; he is altogether silent on its
utility, although he has drawn our attention to it immediately before begin¬
ning his discussion of religion; he is altogether silent on a possible conven¬
tional ingredient of religion.
The discussion of religion (1161-1240) is, according to Bailey,84 “the
longest and fullest treatment of the nature of the gods and the causes and
function of religion in the poem.” It comes closer than any other section to
being the copious speech proving “the tenuous nature” of the gods and of
their abodes which the poet had promised in V 148-155. It is prepared by
the remarkable silence on the problem of the gods which he had observed
since V 110-234, that is, since the passage which contains the most elabo¬
rate critique occurring in the poem of the divinity or the divine origin of
the world. The discussion of religion is the only passage in which Lucretius
tells the reader precisely what we know experientially, or more specifically
by sight, of the gods’ being and nature. In an earlier remark (III 16-18)
he had made one expect that we have direct knowledge not only of the
gods being but even of their abodes. Strictly speaking, however, the
present passage gives an account, not of the gods’ being and nature, but of
the cause which has spread among great nations the powers of the gods
and filled the cities with divine worship proceeding from shuddering awe.
The account of what precisely we know of the gods' being or nature is a
subordinate part of the account of how that knowledge came into being in
the past: the whole account is framed in the imperfect tense. The discus¬
sion of religion, in contradistinction to the astronomic part, is devoted to
coming into being.
Lucretius is prepared to state “the cause” of men’s awareness of the gods
and of their worshiping the gods. But he states two causes. We recall that
at the beginning of the astronomic part he promised to expound “the
cause of the motions of the stars and then stated more than one cause
(508-533). The present case is different. According to Bailey,85 Lucretius
assigns two reasons for [the universal belief in gods], though he does not,
as he should have done, explain that one of these reasons is true and the
other false.” As a rule it is wise to abstain from telling a superior man what
he should have done. Transgressions of this rule cannot be traced to
democracy, but stem from a frailty which is effective in all regimes. The
two reasons given by Lucretius are to explain not only “the universal belief
in gods” but divine worship as commonly practised in the cities as well;
perhaps ‘ the true reason” is not sufficient for explaining that divine wor¬
ship. Besides, “the true reason” explains how men came to believe in beau¬
tiful gods, but men do not universally believe in beautiful gods.86
Even then, Lucretius tells us, the races of mortals saw with their mind
while being awake and still more in sleep the glorious forms or faces of the
gods and the marvelous sizes of their bodies. This much and not more is
unambiguously said to have been “seen” and still to be “seen” of the gods
by men awake. The beautiful forms and the great bulk do not by them¬
selves prove that their owners are living beings; gods must be capable of
feeling or sensing. Men did not “see” that the gods sense, but they “attrib¬
uted” sense to the gods because they “saw” the gods moving their limbs.
Yet this inference is of questionable validity. Men see the gods chiefly in
sleep; in sleep they also “see” dead men moving their limbs, that is, they
seem to see this or they believe they see it (IV 757-772). Accordingly Lu¬
cretius does not unambiguously say that the gods were seen to move their
limbs; the expression which he uses (videbantur) can as well mean that
the gods seemed to move their limbs. The whole sentence reads as follows:
“They attributed sense to the gods because they seemed to move their
limbs and to utter haughty sounds befitting their resplendent form and
their ample strength.” The gods’ sensing, that is, living, is not experienced,
but a human “addition” to the experienced (cf. V 1195 and IV 462-468);
the experience in itself is in fact not more than a seeming.
What is true of the gods’ sensing is also true of their eternal life: men
“gave” them eternal life, and “they believed” that gods possessing such
great strength could “not easily” be overcome by any force; beings which
are not easily overcome by any force are not necessarily eternal. “They be¬
lieved” the gods to be outstanding in good fortune because none of the
gods was ever troubled by fear of death, and “in sleep they saw them
achieve many wondrous things without undergoing any toil” (V 1169—
1182). One is curious to know whether men saw while awake that the gods
were never troubled by fear of death, and which wondrous things the gods
were seen to do; there is no suggestion that they were seen to think or to
understand or in any other way to know the truth. There is also no sug¬
gestion that they were seen to be simply self-sufficient and hence unable to
act on the world and within it and in particular to act on men. On the
contrary, since the first cause of religion as presented by Lucretius consists
to a considerable extent of human additions to what was genuinely seen or
experienced, there is no reason why men should not have imagined also
that the beings possessing beautiful faces and enormous sizes, which ap¬
peared to them in their dreams and seemed to utter haughty sounds, were
not also their haughty lords threatening them with terrible punishments.
This may be the reason why Lucretius declares that he will set forth “the
cause,” that is, a single cause, of religion. However this may be, he is con¬
cerned with pointing to a cause which has nothing whatever to do with
men’s dreams; therefore he adduces the following cause: men were in¬
duced by their beholding the celestial phenomena, of which they do not
know the causes, to trace those phenomena to the gods. In particular,
frightening and nocturnal phenomena of this kind were held to be threats
on the part of the gods or proofs of their anger. In the light of “the longest
and fullest treatment of the nature of the gods and the causes and function
of religion in the poem” as well as of our previous observations,87 we shall
say that the fundamental theologoumenon is meant to articulate in the
most adequate manner our notion of the gods as entia perfectissima: the
most perfect beings cannot possibly act on the world or in the world; the
fundamental theologoumenon, in contradistinction to the ontological
proof, is not meant to prove the existence of gods; their existence is not
known.
This result is not contradicted by those writings of Epicurus that have
come down to us in nonfragmentary form. In the case of fragments we
cannot know how the thoughts expressed in them would appear in the
light of the whole to which they belonged. The Principal Opinions never
speaks of gods or of the divine.88 According to the first of those Opinions,
that which is blessed and indestructible suffers no trouble nor does it
cause trouble to any other; hence it is not affected by fear or favor; for
everything of this kind occurs only in what is weak.” This statement is
ordinarily taken as an assertion of the fundamental theologoumenon; but
there are “immortal goods” which wise men can enjoy.89 The Letter to
Herodotus, which is an epitome of Epicurus’ teaching on nature, never
speaks of gods or of the divine; it does say that “in the indestructible and
blessed nature there can in no way be anything which can bring about
dissolution or confusion” (78); this statement could be made by a mon¬
otheist as well as by an atheist. The Letter to Herodotus also teaches that
one must not believe that the same things are blessed and indestructible
and at the same time will or do or cause things that are incompatible with
bliss and indestructibility (81). The Letter to Pythocles, which is a sum¬
mary of Epicurus’ teaching about the things aloft, warns its reader against
having recourse to “the divine nature” in order to explain celestial
phenomena: one must leave the divine nature unmolested in its complete
bliss (97; cf. 113 and 115-116). The utmost one can say is that the Letter
to Pythocles uses the fundamental theologoumenon as a bulwark against
mythical explanations, but those explanations are known to be impossible
independently of the fundamental theologoumenon (cf. 104). The Letter
to Pythocles refers once to the intermundia (89) without even alluding to
their being the abodes of the gods. Epicurus sets forth his teaching regard-
mg the gods and especially their existence in his Letter to Menoeceus
(123-124), which is in fact devoted to ethics; he has found no place for it
in his physics, that is, his teaching regarding the whole. No one in his right
mind will say that the Epicurean gods are postulated by practical reason:
Epicurus did not “find it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make
room for faith.”
To return to Lucretius, according to what one may call his official teach¬
ing the truth is sad because the world is not divine nor of divine origin, but
the truth is attractive or comforting above all because the most lovable is
sempiternal since there are gods, blessed and immortal beings that are akin
to man rather than to any other beings. Yet if the gods are not, the most
divine being, the being most resplendent, most beneficent, and most high
in rank is the wise man with his frail happiness. The frailty of human
happiness cannot be overcome by any conquest of nature, by the subjec¬
tion of the whole to human use, for this would require among other things
the emancipation of the desires for unnecessary things and therefore the
certainty of human misery, of the fate of Sisyphus. Besides, the Epicurean
sage has as little incentive to charity—to feeding the hungry and clothing
the naked—as the Epicurean gods; like the Epicurean gods he is beneficent
by being what he is rather than by doing anything. It is in agreement with
this that Lucretius’ “political philosophy” is only an account of the coming
into being of political society; it does not deal with the question of the best
regime: no regime deserves to be called good; philosophy cannot trans¬
form, or contribute toward transforming, political society.
Religion is presented by Lucretius as belonging to political society (V
1161-1162, 1222; cf. 1174 and 1111), which does not mean that it does
not have ingredients antedating political society. It belongs to political so¬
ciety because laws, punishment, and fear of punishment belong to political
society (1136-1151). Fear of punishment and fear of the gods belong
together; fear of the gods is fear of divine punishment. Fear of the gods
leads to men’s despising themselves; Lucretius no longer says that it leads to
crimes;00 he says now that it leads to the sacrifice of beasts; he no longer
speaks, as he did at the beginning, of human sacrifices. Ignorance of the
causes of the motions of the heavenly bodies is not the sole or sufficient
cause of men’s believing in angry gods. (Hence astronomy is not suffi¬
cient for liberating men from the fear of the gods.) At least as important
in this respect is men’s bad conscience; for instance, the awareness of
haughty kings that they have done or said haughty things which deserve
punishment (1194-1240). We see again that religion may exert a salutary
restraint. It is surely greatly preferable that the restraint be exerted by
philosophy, which restrains the desires while it takes away the fear of the
gods. This implies, however, that philosophy belongs to political society no
less than religion does or that philosophy is impossible in prepolitical soci¬
ety: philosophy presupposes a high development of the arts. In prepolitical
society Venus alone held sway. In political society, just as in nature. Mars
rather than Venus holds sway.01 Prepolitical society is in one sense more
natural than political society; but it cannot be “the state of nature” since
man lives according to nature only by virtue of philosophizing. The same
man who in prepolitical society would have been a member of his tribe,
like everybody else, may in political society lead the strictly private life of
the philosopher.
At the beginning of his account of the genesis of the arts Lucretius
speaks of the discovery of copper, gold, and iron as well as of silver and
lead. The discovery of gold was an important step in the transition from
the rule of those by nature superior to the rule of the rich (1113-1114).
Through trial and error men learned to prefer copper to gold and silver
because of its greater usefulness; the now prevailing preference for gold
emerged at a later date (1241-1280). The use of iron was discovered last.
When speaking of the discovery of the nature of iron Lucretius apostro¬
phizes Memmius by name for the last time in the poem. He says: “It is
easy for you to know by yourself, Memmius, how the nature of iron was
discovered” (1281-1282). The poet had not used the second person since
verse 1091. No such rarity of the use of the second person occurs anywhere
else in the poem.92 The present use of the second person is emphasized by
the simultaneous use of the vocative of Memmius. The poet had apos¬
trophized Memmius by name after Book I only in antitheological contexts;
the present context is even less visibly antitheological than the preceding
one (cf. pages 125-126 above). But between the present use of the vocative
of Memmius and of the second person and the preceding use of the vocative
of Memmius or of the second person there occurred the statement par ex¬
cellence on the gods: Lucretius saw no need for emphasizing the impor¬
tance of that statement. Lucretius mentions Memmius for the last time
when speaking of the discovery of iron; iron is particularly useful in war;
the connection between Memmius and war was indicated near the begin¬
ning of the poem (I 40-43). How much Lucretius is concerned with
opening his account of the genesis of the arts with the theme “war” is
shown by the fact that the sequel to what he says on the discovery of the
metals deals with the various stages in which beasts were employed in war.
Lucretius uses this occasion to indicate how much the progress of the arts
takes place through error and trial; he makes us imagine for a moment that
men foolishly tried to use bulls, boars, and even lions against their enemies,
perhaps because, despairing of victory, they wished to harm their enemies
while committing suicide (1281-1349).
Lucretius turns from the progress of the art or arts of war to weaving. By
this he does not mean to turn from a man’s art to a woman’s art—the
superior sex invented even the art of weaving, which is thought to be a
preserve of the inferior sex—but from the arts of war to the arts of peace.
Still, the peaceful art exercised commonly by men and hence higher in
rank than weaving is agriculture, which is the next subject of the poet. The
first teacher of agriculture and arboriculture was indeed nature herself, but
men improved on the first lessons. Nature also taught men the rudiments
of music, and reason raised the rustic Muse to its height. Lucretius presents
the emergence of the various arts in accordance with the order of their
rank. He therefore turns from music to knowledge of the seasons, that is,
of one of the most visible signs of the sure order of nature; this knowledge
is the last discovery discussed by him in any detail. In discussing music (as
distinguished from knowledge of the seasons) he alludes to the fact that
the enjoyments of the rustic Muse, despite their rudeness, embody some of
the purest subphilosophic enjoyments of present-day men.93 While this
kind of music survives into the present in an improved form, present-day
men are not happier than the earthbom men at the beginning who could
not suffer from the lack of pleasures which they did not know. Progress
within many arts is due to the desire for novel or even greater pleasures,
that is, by the ignorance of the term of true pleasure. Hence this kind of
progress goes hand in hand with the progress of war. This is not to deny
that the progress of the arts is on the whole a progress of knowledge, a
progress which culminates in Epicurus’ work. The order of the arts as pre¬
sented at the end of Book V follows the same principle as the order of
outstanding men which occurred near the end of Book III (1024-1044).94
VII. On Book VI
The proem to this Book98 is a corrective of the proem to Book V, just as

the proem to Book IV is a corrective of the proem to Book III, and the
proem to Book II is a corrective of the proem to Book I. Lucretius now
praises Epicurus again as a man, as a mortal (cf. I 66-67); he no longer
praises him as a god. He had praised him as a god with a view to the fact
that he was the greatest benefactor of men; but one cannot be a god while
being a benefactor of men. What survives Epicurus is his “divine discov¬
eries” and his glory. Lucretius is silent about himself and his poetry. He
praises Epicurus as a guide toward the highest good, as men’s liberator
from care or fear; he does not speak here in so many words of Epicurus'
having liberated men from fear of gods or of hell. He alludes to those fears
by saying that the race of men for the most part suffers from unfounded
cares: a human life simply without care is impossible. In accordance with
this Lucretius makes it clear that Epicurus’ discoveries came at the end or
near the end of that progress of the arts which is necessary to supply men
with what they need and for making human life as safe as possible (1-42).
Lucretius next reminds us of what he has done in the preceding Book:
he has shown that the world is mortal or has come into being, and he has
expounded most of what necessarily happens in heaven. He is silent about
the second half of Book V in which he has set forth the coming into being
of the world or its parts. He promises to discuss in Book VI a certain kind
of terrestrial and celestial things (43-50). This means that he will no
longer deal with the coming into being of the world or its parts; the exposi¬
tions given in Book VI are therefore akin to those given in the astronomic
part of Book V, as distinguished from those given in the second half of
Book V; they are cosmologic, rather than cosmogonic. The cosmogonic
second half of Book V which contains the theological statement par excel¬
lence is thus surrounded by cosmologic portions. To the extent to which
this is true. Book VI makes us forget the coming into being, and therewith
the death, of the world. Lucretius has reminded us of that sad truth even
in the latter part of Book V, which is so single-mindedly devoted to com¬
ing into being as distinguished from perishing, by speaking of the ambigu¬
ity of the progress of the arts. Yet at the very end of Book V (1440-1457)
he has become silent about that ambiguity. But it suffices to compare the
last verses of Book V with the last verses of Book VI in order to see that
the poet’s use of honey is judicious; he does not permit the honey to make
us insensitive to the wormwood.
The phenomena to be dealt with in Book VI are traced by men to the
gods whom they believe to be their dreadful masters. It is undoubtedly
true that the gods lead a life free from all care and that fear of the gods is
incompatible with pure worship or perception of the gods. Yet it is also
true that the error which leads to fear of the gods is uprooted only by the
verissima ratio, that is, by the natural explanation of the phenomena which
induce ignorant men to believe in divine wrath. The expression verissima
ratio occurs nowhere else in the poem. One of the things which Lucretius
must therefore do is to “sing” of the true causes and effects of storms and
lightnings. He invokes the Muse Calliope, who is “rest to men and joy to
gods,” to be his leader (51-95). Calliope now takes the place of Venus;
Venus is not even mentioned any more in Book VI. Calliope had been the
Muse invoked by Empedocles. Empedocles was both a philosopher and a
poet. He was surpassed by Democritus and above all by Epicurus. Yet in
surpassing Empedocles, Democritus and Epicurus had separated philos¬
ophy entirely from poetry. Poetry became at best the handmaid of philos¬
ophy. Yet the poet possesses insights which Epicurus may have lacked,
above all the understanding of men’s attachment to the world and what
this implies. By restoring the union of philosophy and poetry, by pre¬
senting the true and final philosophic teaching poetically, Lucretius may be
said to surpass Epicurus; the Lucretian presentation of the truth is superior
to the Epicurean presentation. Yet if we consider the crucial importance of
the Epicurean gods in the Epicurean presentation of the truth, are we not
driven to say that in the decisive respect Epicurus too is a poet? Do the
Epicurean gods not magnify or embellish the whole?
Lucretius explains thunder (96-159) and lightning (160-218) in order
to explain the thunderbolt (219-378), for the thunderbolt, being the
strongest of all fires, is together with its concomitants the most frightening
thing coming from heaven. The explanation of the thunderbolt naturally
leads up to an attack on the Tyrrhenian kind of divination (which had
been taken over by the Romans) and, more generally, on the theological
view: thunderbolts strike the innocent as well as the guilty; nay, they strike
the likenesses and images of the gods (379-422). One need not be an
atomist in order to be impressed by arguments of this kind. Lucretius
explains thereafter at some length three phenomena akin to thunder-
storms: the waterspouts, which are a kind of abortive thunderstorm, as well

as clouds and rain which go together with thunderstorms (423-534). In
explaining these phenomena Lucretius does not emphasize that they are
frightening (430). The case of earthquakes, to which he turns next (535-
607), is different; earthquakes are directly linked with the poet’s primary
and fundamental concern; they offer the most massive proof of the possi¬
bility of the death of the world; they give as it were a foretaste of that
death.96 Lucretius does not speak here, as he did in the section on the
thunderbolt, of men’s tracing the terrifying phenomenon to the wrath of
the gods; he only alludes to men’s believing that the gods in their kindness
vouch for the sempiternity of the world (601-602); on the other hand, he
says explicitly that men “fear to believe” that the world will die a natural
death (565-567).97 It is this fear for the world, that is, for this world, for
everything that is a man’s own or his nation’s own, which gives rise to the
belief in gods and therewith also to the fear of the gods; the fear of gods is
not the fundamental fear. The fundamental fear gives rise in the first place
to fear of that very fear, to fear of the most terrible truth. The poet, having
exposed himself to the fear of the terrible truth, can calmly face that truth.
His courage is not in need of support by belief in social progress between
now and the death of the world or by other beliefs. The verses under dis¬
cussion are the central digression occurring in the body of Book VI; they
prepare the end of the poem, the description of the plague.98
Men wonder, Lucretius continues, that nature does not make the sea
bigger since all rivers from every quarter fall into the sea. There is only one
step from this wondering to fear of a deluge that destroys all life on land.
Lucretius disregards this apparent possibility (608-638). The eruptions of
Mount Etna are frightening to the tribes living nearby. Those eruptions as
well as earthquakes and similar phenomena are frightening because of their
gigantic size; but they are of very small size compared with the infinite
whole of which a whole world is an infinitesimal part. The discussion of
the eruptions of Mount Etna opens the discussion of other local phenom¬
ena or of other phenomena indicated by place names: the flood of the
Nile, the Avernian Lake, the spring near the shrine of Ammon and the one
within the sea at Aradus, and finally the magnet (cf. 906-909). Lucretius
thus prepares the description of the plague in Athens—a description rea¬
sonably preceded by an explanation of pestilences in general. The only sub¬
ject treated in the second half of Book VI which he explicitly connects
with his primary concern is the Avernian places; these places must not be
thought to be places from which the gods of the dead lead the souls to the
shores of Acheron (749-768). In giving the true reason for this phenom¬
enon (769-780), Lucretius makes it clearer than ever before that the
earth is as much the destroyer as the mother of all living beings. The last
Book is, less than any other Book, concerned with embellishment.
NOTES
1. Cf. Hesiod, Theogony 11—21: Ares is not explicitly mentioned among the gods
praised by the Muses. Cf. Works and Days 145-146.
2. Cf. the virum in VI 5 with the deus ille fuit, deus in V 8.
3. Cf. especially 1259-1263.
4. Cf. 1197-1204, 1210-1211, 1226-1229 with Thucydides II 49.8 and 51.6.
5. 1183, 1212; cf. 1208-1212 with Thucydides II 49.8; consider the fact that there
is no passage in Lucretius which corresponds to II 53.
6. Cf. 1239-1246 with Thucydides II 51.5.
7. Cf. 1278-1286 (consider especially the last words of the poem) with Thucydides
II 53.4, beginning and 52.4. Cf. Epicurus’ unconcern with his burial: Diogenes
Laertius X 118.
8. In his letter to Menoeceus (134) Epicurus says that there is something worse than
the tale of the gods: the fate or necessity of which the physikoi speak.
9. Cf. 1156-1162, 1182-1185, 1212.
10. Ill 1-30.
11. Cf. I 117-119, 121, 124, 136-137, 143-145.
12. V 925-1010, 1087-1090; cf. VI 601-602.
13. V 1211-1217, 1236-1240, 91-109, 114-121, 373-375, 1186-1187; VI 565-567,
597-607, 650-652, 677-679.
14. Cf. Thucydides I 22.4.
15. Hence the conclusion of the whole reasoning in 205-207. The fourth argument is
the only one which shows that many first bodies are common to many things as
letters ("elements”) are common to words, that is, that there is something more
common than the heterogeneous seeds of the various kinds of animals and plants.
16. Lucretius does not regard plants as living beings: I 774 (cf. 821 and II 702-703).
17. Cf. I 107-108. Cf. the emphasis on numbers, that is, on small numbers, in 419—
420, 432, 445-446, 449-450, 503.
18. I 803-808, 897-900. Cf. 770.
19. Cf. II 185-190.
20. I 28, 136-145, 933-934.
21. Cicero, De republica III 26; De finibus II 15.
22. I 716-725; cf. VI 680 ff.
23. I 675-678, 684-689, 778-781, 848-856, 915-920.
24. I 803—808 and 897-900. In I 803-808 the addressee tries to prove that without
the four elements there could not be growth of plants and animals; Lucretius
strengthens this argument by stating that without the four elements there could
not be human life. In the parallels in IV 633-672 and VI 769—780 he also speaks
of diseases and death.
25. Cf. the evolvamus and pervideamus in I 954 and 956.
26. I 1021-1022; cf. 328 and 1110.
27. I 1052.
28. Cf. I 1112 with V 373-375.
29. Only in this context does Lucretius refer to things Roman in the proem to Book
II. He no longer refers to things Roman in the proems to the following Books.
30. Cf. also the implicit contrast between the wandering or restless atoms and the
wandering mind in II 82-83. Cf. also the contrast between the fall of the atoms
and the fall of certain philosophers (I 741). The void is motionless or quiet (II
238); yet this quietness has no kinship with the quietness which the mind needs
(cf. I 639).
31. Cf. also the emphasis on generating in II 62-64. Cf. the semper in II 76 with the
nunc in V 194.
32. Cf. I 1025; II 573-576, V 380-381, 391-392.
33. In the two cases in which the poet addressed Memmius by name in Book I he also
did this while polemicizing against “some," that is, while indicating Memmius’
likely resistance to Epicureanism. The same is true of the two cases in Book I
(803-808, 897-900) in which he presents Memmius as opposing Epicureanism in
direct speech.
34. II 169, 178, I 105. Consider again the initial statement about the theme of the
whole poem in I 54-55. Cf. Spinoza, Tr. theol.-pol. XVI 10-11 (Bruder).
35. Letter to Menoeceus 134.
36. II 481—482, 496—507; cf. V 1171, and 1177 (auctos.). Consider the unusual
section-beginnings in II 478-479 and 522-523.
37. II 569-580; cf. 174-181 and V 220-234.
38. Cf. IV 761: the dead are held by “death and earth.”
39. As for the difference between the second and the fifth items, cf. Democritus (Diels)
B 278.
40. Literally, “the everlasting wound”; cf. “the everlasting wound” of Mars in I 34,
that is, shortly before the first statement of the fundamental theologoumenon.
41. Cf. II 886-888, 902-903, 931, 983.
42. Cf. Ill 879-889.
43. Cf. Bailey’s edition and commentary (Oxford: 1947), p. 956.
44. Cf. V 115-125, 144-145.
45. Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum I 52.
46. Note the contrast with I 398-417, the conclusion of the section dealing with the
void.
47. Cf. I 1052-1053 in the parallel.
48. He does not invoke the gods in order to confirm a theologoumenon; cf. the parallel
case in II 434 (pro divom numina sancta). No other reference to the hearts of the
gods occurs in the poem.
49. Cf. Bailey, op. cit., p. 761.
50. “Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to superstitious terrors; yet
when he supposes the whole mechanism of nature laid open by the master of his
philosophy, his transport on this magnificent view, which he has represented in
the colours of such bold and lively poetry, is overcast with a shade of secret dread
and horror.” Burke, The Sublime and Beautiful, II sect. 5.
51. Reconsider from this point of view I 80-83.
52. Cf. Plato, Phaedo 86c2-d4 (Simmias). Cf. the sarcasm in Lucretius’ critique of
pre-existence (the premise of Cebes’ argument) in III 776-783.
53. Just as “we all” who “stem from heavenly seed” (II 991) are not merely “all we
human beings.” Cf. also page 96 above.
54. Cf. Ill 753.
55. Ill 371, V 622. Of Empedocles he says that Sicily does not seem to have possessed
something more sacred than him (I 729-730).
56. Cf. V 177-178.
57. Expressions like fateare necessest, cur credis, quod si forte putas, quid dubitas, quod
si forte credis do not occur in the first part of Book III (31—424), but occur in the
second part.
58. Cf. 754, 760, 765-766.
59. Note the contrast between the avoidance of the first person plural in the verses
dealing with the Punic Wars (833-837) and the frequency of the first person
plural (“we,” that is, we human beings, not we Romans) in the rest of the pas¬
sage.
60. Compare the procedure of the Xenophontic Socrates who apostrophizes Xenophon
and no one else as “you wretch” and “you fool” (Memorabilia I 3.11,13). Cf.
Plato, Republic 595cl0-596al.
61. Cf. also I 130-135.
62. V 1161-1193. Cf. VI 76-77.
63. II 609; VI 419-420.
64. Passive forms of videre occur here seventeen times with the unambiguous meaning
of “to seem.” Cf. I 726 (videtur) and 727 (fertur).
65. Cf. the “we” in 37. Cf. VI 970-972.
66. Cf. IV 969-970.
67. Nunc age . . . accipe . . . percipe (722-723).
68. Cf. Ill 12-27.
69. Cf. II 1023-1047.
70. Cf. I 80 ff.
71. Ill 294-301. Cf. II 265-268 and V 1325.
72. Cf. II, 478-484.
73. Cf. II, 175-182. The promise there made to Memmius is fulfilled in the present
context.
74. Cf. especially 233-234 with 198. Cf. 495—505. This step is prepared by the transi¬
tion from 258-260 (the earth is the parent of all) to 318-323 (the sky is the
parent of all). Cf. II 598-599 with 991-998.
75. VI 84; cf. 255, 259, 376. Verbal forms of canere occur ten times; in nine cases the
word is applied to human singing or music. Cantus occurs four times and canor
twice.
76. V 1183-1193, 1205-1221, 83-87; cf. I 62-69.
77. Cf. pages 95-96, 119-120, 121-123 above.
78. This is so despite the fact that nature supplies everything to the gods (III 23).
79. Cf. pages 116-117 above.
80. Bailey, op. cit., p. 1474 note, refers to Empedocles (B 128, lines 1-3): “for those
men Ares was not god nor Kydoimos nor Zeus the king nor Kronos nor Poseidon
but only Kypris the queen.” Lucretius indicates the absence of Zeus, Ares, and
Poseidon in V 958-959 and 999-1006.
81. Letter to Herodotus 75-76.
82. Cf. Plato, Republic 365c6—dl. Cf. the plerumque in V 1153 and the ferantur in
1159.
83. Cf. Cicero, De finibus I 51.
84. Op cit., p. 1507.
85. Ibid., p. 67.
86. Cf. Xenophanes B 16.
87. See pages 99-100, 114-115, 117-118, 121-122 above. Cf. I 132-135.
88. The Gnomologium Vaticanum differs in this respect from the Principal Opinions-
cf. Nos. 24, 33, and 65.
89. Letter to Menoeceus, end; Gnomologium Vaticanum No. 78.
90. Cf. pages 121—122 above.
91. Cf. page 95 above.
92. If I am not mistaken, the second person is used in Book I (consisting of 1117
verses) 91 times; in Book II (1174), 122 times; in Book III (1094), 112 times;
in Book IV (1287), 89 times; in Book V (1457), 49 times; and in Book VI
(1286), 62 times. I disregarded the cases in which the second person is used of
Venus, Epicurus, or Calliope.
93. Cf. 1392-1411 with II 29-33.
94. Cf. also the ascent from political life to poetry in 1440-1445; cf. also 1448-1451
and 332-337.
96. Cf. V 95-109 and 1236-1240.
97. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1050b22—24; cf. On the Heaven 270M-16.
How To Begin To Study
The Guide of the Perplexed
I believe that it will not be amiss if I simply present the plan of the Guide
as it has become clear to me in the course of about twenty-five years of
frequently interrupted but never abandoned study. In the following
scheme Roman (and Arabic) numerals at the beginning of a line indicate
the sections (and subsections) of the Guide, while the numbers given in
parentheses indicate the Parts and the chapters of the book.
A. VIEWS (I l-III 24)

a'. Views regarding God and the angels (I l-III 7)
i. Biblical terms applied to God (I 1-70)
Terms suggesting the corporeality of God (and the angels) (I 1-49)
1. The two most important passages of the Torah that seem to
suggest that God is corporeal (I 1-7)
2. Terms designating place, change of place, the organs of hu¬
man locomotion, etc. (I 8-28)
3. Terms designating wrath and consuming (or taking food)
that if applied to divine things refer to idolatry on the one
hand and to human knowledge on the other (I 29-36)
4. Terms designating parts and actions of animals (I 37-49)
Terms suggesting multiplicity in God (I 50-70)
5. Given that God is absolutely one and incomparable, what is
the meaning of the terms applied to God in nonfigurative
speech? (I 50-60)
6. The names of God and the utterances of God (I 61-67)
7. The apparent multiplicity in God consequent upon His
knowledge, His causality, and His governance (I 67-70)
n. Demonstrations of the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God
(I 71-11 31)
140
How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed / 141
1. Introductory (I 71-73)
2. Refutation of the Kalam demonstrations (I 74-76)
3. The philosophic demonstrations (II 1)
4. Maimonides’ demonstration (II 2)
5. The angels (II 3-12)
6. Creation of the world, i.e., defense of the belief in creation
out of nothing against the philosophers (II 13-24)
7. Creation and the Law (II 25-31)
in. Prophecy (II 32-48)
1. Natural endowment and training the prerequisites of proph¬
ecy (II 32-34)
2. The difference between the prophecy of Moses and that of
the other prophets (II 35)
3. The essence of prophecy (II 36-38)
4. The legislative prophecy (of Moses) and the Law (II 39-40)
5. Legal study of the prophecy of the prophets other than Moses
(II 41-44)
6. The degrees of prophecy (II 45)
7. How to understand the divine actions and works and the di¬
vinely commanded actions and works as presented by the
prophets (II 46-48)
iv. The account of the Chariot (III 1-7)
a". Views regarding bodily beings that come into being and perish,
AND IN PARTICULAR REGARDING MAN (III 8-54)
v. Providence (III 8-24)
1. Statement of the problem: matter is the ground of all evils
and yet matter is created by the absolutely good God (III
8-14)
2. The nature of the impossible or the meaning of omnipotence
(III 15)
3. The philosophic arguments against omniscience (III 16)
4. The views regarding providence (III 17-18)
5. Jewish views on omniscience and Maimonides’ discourse on
this subject (III 19-21)
6. The book of Job as the authoritative treatment of providence
(III 22-23)
7. The teaching of the Torah on omniscience (III 24)
B. ACTIONS (III 25-54)

vi. The actions commanded by God and done by God (III 25-50)
1. The rationality of God’s actions in general and of His legisla¬
tion in particular (III 25-26)
2. The manifestly rational part of the commandments of the
Torah (III 27-28)
3. The rationale of the apparently irrational part of the com¬

mandments of the Torah (III 29-33)
4. The inevitable limit to the rationality of the commandments
of the Torah (III 34)
5. Division of the commandments into classes and explanation
of the usefulness of each class (III 35)
6. Explanation of all or almost all commandments (III 36-49)
7. The narratives in the Torah (III 50)
vii. Man’s perfection and God’s providence (III 51-54)
1. True knowledge of God Himself is the prerequisite of provi¬
dence (III 51-52)
2. True knowledge of what constitutes the human individual
himself is the prerequisite of knowledge of the workings of
providence (III 53-54)
The Guide consists then of seven sections or of thirty-eight subsections.

Wherever feasible, each section is divided into seven subsections; the only
section that does not permit of being divided into subsections is divided
into seven chapters.
The simple statement of the plan of the Guide suffices to show that the
book is sealed with many seals. At the end of its Introduction, Maimonides
describes the preceding passage as follows: “It is a key permitting one to
enter places the gates to which were locked. When those gates are opened
and those places are entered, the souls will find rest therein, the eyes will
be delighted, and the bodies will be eased of their toil and of their labor.”
The Guide as a whole is not merely a key to a forest but is itself a forest, an
enchanted forest, and hence also an enchanting forest: it is a delight to the
eyes. For the tree of life is a delight to the eyes.
The enchanting character of the Guide does not appear immediately. At
first glance the book appears merely to be strange and in particular to lack
order and consistency. But progress in understanding it is a progress in
becoming enchanted by it. Enchanting understanding is perhaps the high¬
est form of edification. One begins to understand the Guide once one sees
that it is not a philosophic book—a book written by a philosopher for
philosophers—but a Jewish book: a book written by a Jew for Jews. Its first
premise is the old Jewish premise that being a Jew and being a philosopher
are two incompatible things. Philosophers are men who try to give an
account of the whole by starting from what is always accessible to man as
man; Maimonides starts from the acceptance of the Torah. A Jew may
make use of philosophy, and Maimonides makes the most ample use of it;
but as a Jew he gives his assent, where as a philosopher he would suspend
his assent (cf. II 16).
Accordingly, the Guide is devoted to the Torah or more precisely to the
true science of the Torah, of the Law. Its first purpose is to explain biblical
terms, and its second purpose is to explain biblical similes. The Guide is
then devoted above all to biblical exegesis, although to biblical exegesis of a
particular kind. That kind of exegesis is required because many biblical
terms and all biblical similes have an apparent or outer and a hidden or
inner meaning; the gravest errors as well as the most tormenting perplex¬
ities arise from men’s understanding the Bible always according to its ap¬
parent or literal meaning. The Guide is then devoted to “the difficulties of
the Law’’ or to “the secrets of the Law.” The most important of those se¬
crets are the Account of the Beginning (the beginning of the Bible) and
the Account of the Chariot (Ezek. 1 and 10). The Guide is then devoted
primarily and chiefly to the explanation of the Account of the Beginning
and the Account of the Chariot.
Yet the Law whose secrets Maimonides intends to explain forbids that
they be explained in public, or to the public; they may only be explained in
private and only to such individuals as possess both theoretical and polit¬
ical wisdom as well as the capacity of both understanding and using allu¬
sive speech; for only “the chapter headings” of the secret teaching may be
transmitted even to those who belong to the natural elite. Since every
explanation given in writing, at any rate in a book, is a public explanation,
Maimonides seems to be compelled by his intention to transgress the Law.
There were other cases in which he was under such a compulsion. The Law
also forbids one to study the books of idolaters on idolatry, for the first in¬
tention of the Law as a whole is to destroy every vestige of idolatry; and yet
Maimonides, as he openly admits and even emphasizes, has studied all the
available idolatrous books of this kind with the utmost thoroughness. Nor
is this all. He goes so far as to encourage the reader of the Guide to study
those books by himself (III 29-30, 32, 37; Mishneh Torah, H. ‘Abodah
Zarah II 2 and III 2). The Law also forbids one to speculate about the
date of the coming of the Messiah; yet Maimonides presents such a specu¬
lation or at least its equivalent in order to comfort his contemporaries
(Epistle to Yemen, 62, 16 ff., and 80, 17 ff. Halkin; cf. Halkin’s Introduc¬
tion, pp. xii-xiii; M.T., H. Melakhim XII 2). Above all, the Law forbids
one to seek for the reasons of the commandments; yet Maimonides devotes
almost twenty-six chapters of the Guide to such seeking (III 26; cf. II 25).
All these irregularities have one and the same justification. Maimonides
transgresses the Law “for the sake of heaven,” that is, in order to uphold or
to fulfill the Law (I Introd. and III Introd.). Still, in the most important
case he does not, strictly speaking, transgress the Law, for his written
explanation of the secrets of the Law is not a public but a secret explana¬
tion. The secrecy is achieved in three ways. First, every word of the Guide
is chosen with exceeding care; since very few men are able or willing to
read with exceeding care, most men will fail to perceive the secret teaching.
Second, Maimonides deliberately contradicts himself, and if a man declares
both that a is b and that a is not b, he cannot be said to declare anything.
Lastly, the “chapter headings” of the secret teaching are not presented in
an orderly fashion, but are scattered throughout the book. This permits us
to understand why the plan of the Guide is so obscure. Maimonides suc¬
ceeds immediately in obscuring the plan by failing to divide the book ex¬
plicitly into sections and subsections or by dividing it explicitly only into
three Parts and each Part into chapters without supplying the Parts and
the chapters with headings indicating the subject matter of the Parts or of
the chapters.
The plan of the Guide is not entirely obscure. No one can reasonably
doubt, for instance, that II 32-48, III 1-7, and III 25-50 form sections.
The plan is most obscure at the beginning, and it becomes clearer as one
proceeds; generally speaking, it is clearer in the second half (II 13-end)
than in the first half. The Guide is then not entirely devoted to secretly
transmitting chapter headings of the secret teaching. This does not mean
that the book is not in its entirety devoted to the true science of the Law.
It means that the true science of the Law is partly public. This is not sur¬
prising, for the teaching of the Law itself is of necessity partly public. Ac¬
cording to one statement, the core of the public teaching consists of the
assertions that God is one, that He alone is to be worshiped, that He is
incorporeal, that He is incomparable to any of His creatures, and that He
suffers from no defect and no passion (I 35). From other statements it
would appear that the acceptance of the Law on every level of compre¬
hension presupposes belief in God, in angels, and in prophecy (III 45) or
that the basic beliefs are those in God’s unity and in creation (II 13). In
brief one may say that the public teaching of the Law, insofar as it refers to
beliefs or to “views,” can be reduced to the thirteen “roots” (or dogmas)
which Maimonides had put together in his Commentary on the Mishnah.
That part of the true science of the Law which is devoted to the public
teaching of the Law or which is itself public has the task of demonstrating
the roots to the extent to which this is possible or of establishing the roots
by means of speculation (III 51 and 54). Being speculative, that part of the
true science of the Law is not exegetic; it is not necessarily in need of sup¬
port by biblical or talmudic texts (cf. II 45 beginning). Accordingly, about
20 per cent of the chapters of the Guide contain no biblical quotations,
and about 9 per cent of them contain no Hebrew or Aramaic expressions
whatever. It is not very difficult to see (especially on the basis of III 7 end,
23, and 28) that the Guide as devoted to speculation on the roots of the
Law or to the public teaching consists of sections II—III and V-VI as in¬
dicated in our scheme and that the sequence of these sections is rational;
but one cannot understand in this manner why the book is divided into
three Parts, or what sections I, IV, and VII and most, not to say all, sub¬
sections mean. The teaching of the Guide is then neither entirely public or
speculative nor entirely secret or exegetic. For this reason the plan of the
Guide is neither entirely obscure nor entirely clear.
Yet the Guide is a single whole. What then is the bond uniting its
exegetic and its speculative ingredients? One might imagine that while
speculation demonstrates the roots of the Law, exegesis proves that those
roots as demonstrated by speculation are in fact taught by the Law. But in
that case the Guide would open with chapters devoted to speculation; yet
the opposite is manifestly true. In addition, if the exegesis dealt with the
same subject matter as that speculation which demonstrates the public
teaching par excellence, namely, the roots of the Law, there would be no
reason why the exegesis should be secret. Maimonides does say that the
Account of the Beginning is the same as natural science and the Account
of the Chariot is the same as divine science (that is, the science of the in¬
corporeal beings or of God and the angels). This might lead one to think
that the public teaching is identical with what the philosophers teach,
while the secret teaching makes one understand the identity of the teach¬
ing of the philosophers with the secret teaching of the Law. One can safely
say that this thought proves to be untenable on almost every level of one’s
comprehending the Guide: the nonidentity of the teaching of the philos¬
ophers as a whole and the thirteen roots of the Law as a whole are the first
word and the last word of Maimonides. What he means by identifying the
core of philosophy (natural science and divine science) with the highest
secrets of the Law (the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the
Chariot) and therewith by somehow identifying the subject matter of
speculation with the subject matter of exegesis may be said to be the secret
par excellence of the Guide.
Let us then retrace our steps. The Guide contains a public teaching and
a secret teaching. The public teaching is addressed to every Jew, including
the vulgar; the secret teaching is addressed to the elite. The secret teaching
is of no use to the vulgar, and the elite does not need the Guide for being
apprised of the public teaching. To the extent to which the Guide is a
whole, or one work, it is addressed neither to the vulgar nor to the elite. To
whom then is it addressed? How legitimate and important this question is
appears from Maimonides’ remark that the chief purpose of the Guide is
to explain as far as possible the Account of the Beginning and the Account
of the Chariot “with a view to him for whom (the book) has been com¬
posed” (III beginning). Maimonides answers our question both explicitly
and implicitly. He answers it explicitly in two ways; he says on the one
hand that the Guide is addressed to believing Jews who are perfect in their
religion and in their character, have studied the sciences of the philoso¬
phers, and are perplexed by the literal meaning of the Law; he says on the
other hand that the book is addressed to such perfect human beings as are
Law students and perplexed. He answers our question more simply by
dedicating the book to his disciple Joseph and by stating that it has been
composed for Joseph and his like. Joseph had come to him “from the ends
of the earth” and had studied under him for a while; the interruption of
the oral instruction through Joseph’s departure, which “God had decreed,”
induced Maimonides to write the Guide for Joseph and his like. In the
Epistle Dedicatory addressed to Joseph, Maimonides extols Joseph's virtues
and indicates his limitation. Joseph had a passionate desire for things spec¬
ulative and especially for mathematics. When he studied astronomy,
mathematics, and logic under Maimonides, the teacher saw that Joseph
had an excellent mind and a quick grasp; he thought him therefore fit to
have revealed to him allusively the secrets of the books of the prophets,
and he began to make such revelations. This stimulated Joseph’s interest in
things divine as well as in an appraisal of the Kalam; his desire for knowl¬
edge about these subjects became so great that Maimonides was compelled
to warn him unceasingly to proceed in an orderly manner. It appears that
Joseph was inclined to proceed impatiently or unmethodically in his study
and that this defect had not been cured when he left Maimonides. The
most important consequence of Joseph’s defect is the fact, brought out by
Maimonides’ silence, that Joseph turned to divine science without having
studied natural science under Maimonides or before, although natural
science necessarily precedes divine science in the order of study.
The impression derived from the Epistle Dedicatory is confirmed by the
book itself. Maimonides frequently addresses the reader by using expres¬
sions like “know” or “you know already.” Expressions of the latter kind
indicate what the typical addressee knows, and expressions of the former
kind indicate what he does not know. One thus learns that Joseph has
some knowledge of both the content and the character of divine science.
He knows, for example, that divine science in contradistinction to mathe¬
matics and medicine requires an extreme of rectitude and moral perfec¬
tion, and in particular of humility, but he apparently does not yet know
how ascetic Judaism is in matters of sex (I 34, III 52). He had learned from
Maimonides’ “speech” that the orthodox “views” do not last in a man if
he does not confirm them by the corresponding “actions” (II 31). It goes
without saying that while his knowledge of the Jewish sources is extensive,
it is not comparable in extent and thoroughness to Maimonides’ (II 26,
33). At the beginning of the book he does not know that both according
to the Jewish view and according to demonstration, angels have no bodies
(I 43, 49), and he certainly does not know, strictly speaking, that God has
no body (I 9). In this respect as well as in other respects his understanding
necessarily progresses while he advances in his study of the Guide (cf. I 65
beginning). As for natural science, he has studied astronomy, but is not
aware of the conflict between the astronomical principles and the prin¬
ciples of natural science (II 24), because he has not studied natural sci¬
ence. He knows a number of things that are made clear in natural science,
but this does not mean that he knows them through having studied natural
science (cf. I 17, 28; III 10). From the ninety-first chapter (II 15) it
appears that while he knows Aristotle’s Topics and Farabi’s commentary
on that work, he does not know the Physics and On the Heaven (cf. II 8).
Nor will he acquire the science of nature as he acquires the science of God
and the angels while he advances in the study of the Guide. For the Guide,
which is addressed to a reader not conversant with natural science, does
not itself transmit natural science (II 2). The following remark occurring
in the twenty-sixth chapter is particularly revealing: “It has been demon¬
strated that everything moved undoubtedly possesses a magnitude and is
divisible; and it will be demonstrated that God possesses no magnitude and
hence possesses no motion.” What “has been demonstrated” has been
demonstrated in the Physics and is simply presupposed in the Guide; what
“will be demonstrated” belongs to divine science and not to natural sci¬
ence; but that which “will be demonstrated” is built on what “has been
demonstrated.” The student of the Guide acquires knowledge of divine
science, but not of natural science. The author of the Guide in contradis¬
tinction to its addressee is thoroughly versed in natural science. Still, the
addressee needs some awareness of the whole in order to be able to ascend
from the whole to God, for there is no way to knowledge of God except
through such ascent (I 71 toward the end); he acquires that awareness
through a report of some kind (I 70) that Maimonides has inserted into
the Guide. It is characteristic of that report that it does not contain a
single mention of philosophy in general and of natural science in partic¬
ular. The serious student cannot rest satisfied with that report; he must
turn from it to natural science itself, which demonstrates what the report
merely asserts. Maimonides cannot but leave it to his reader whether he
will turn to genuine speculation or whether he will be satisfied with ac¬
cepting the report on the authority of Maimonides and with building on
that report theological conclusions. The addressee of the Guide is a man
regarding whom it is still undecided whether he will become a genuine
man of speculation or whether he will remain a follower of authority, if of
Maimonides’ authority (cf. I 72 end). He stands at the point of the road
where speculation branches off from acceptance of authority.
Why did Maimonides choose an addressee of this description? What is
the virtue of not being trained in natural science? We learn from the
seventeenth chapter that natural science had already been treated as a
secret doctrine by the pagan philosophers “upon whom the charge of cor¬
ruption would not be laid if they exposed natural science clearly”: all the
more is the community of the Law-adherents obliged to treat natural sci¬
ence as a secret science. The reason why natural science is dangerous and is
kept secret “with all kinds of artifices” is not that it undermines the
Law—only the ignorant believe that (I 33), and Maimonides’ whole life as
well as the life of his successors refutes this suspicion. Yet it is also true
that natural science has this corrupting effect on all men who are not per¬
fect (cf. I 62). For natural science surely affects the understanding of the
meaning of the Law, of the grounds on which it is to be obeyed, and of the
weight that is to be attached to its different parts. In a word, natural sci¬

ence upsets habits. By addressing a reader who is not conversant with nat¬
ural science, Maimonides is compelled to proceed in a manner that does
not upset habits or does so to the smallest possible degree. He acts as a
moderate or conservative man.
But we must not forget that the Guide is written also for atypical
addressees. In the first place, certain chapters of the Guide are explicitly
said to be useful also for those who are simply beginners. Since the whole
book is somehow accessible to the vulgar, it must have been written in
such a way as not to be harmful to the vulgar (I Introd.; Ill 29). Besides,
the book is also meant to be useful to such men of great intelligence as
have been trained fully in all philosophic sciences and as are not in the
habit of bowing to any authority—in other words, to men not inferior to
Maimonides in their critical faculty. Readers of this kind will be unable to
bow to Maimonides’ authority; they will examine all his assertions, specu¬
lative or exegetic, with all reasonable severity; and they will derive great
pleasure from all chapters of the Guide (I Introd.; I 55, 68 end, 73, tenth
premise).
How much Maimonides’ choice of his typical addressee affects the plan
of his book will be seen by the judicious reader glancing at our scheme. It
suffices to mention that no section or subsection of the Guide is devoted to
the bodies that do not come into being and perish (cf. Ill 8 beginning,
and Ill), that is, to the heavenly bodies, which according to Maimonides
possess life and knowledge, or to “the holy bodies,” to use the bold expres¬
sion used by him in his Code (M.T., H. Yesodei ha-Torah IV 12). In
other words, no section or subsection of the Guide is devoted to the Ac¬
count of the Beginning in the manner in which a section is devoted to the
Account of the Chariot. More important, Maimonides’ choice of his typi¬
cal addressee is the key to the whole plan of the Guide, to the apparent
lack of order or to the obscurity of the plan. The plan of the Guide appears
to be obscure only so long as one does not consider the kind of reader for
which the book is written or so long as one seeks for an order agreeing with
the essential order of subject matter. We recall the order of the sciences:
logic precedes mathematics, mathematics precedes natural science, and
natural science precedes divine science; and we recall that while Joseph was
sufficiently trained in logic and mathematics, he is supposed to be intro¬
duced into divine science without having been trained properly in natural
science. Maimonides must therefore seek for a substitute for natural sci¬
ence. He finds that substitute in the traditional Jewish beliefs and ulti¬
mately in the biblical texts correctly interpreted: the immediate prepara¬
tion for divine science in the Guide is exegetic rather than speculative.
Furthermore, Maimonides wishes to proceed in a manner that changes
habits to the smallest possible degree. He himself tells us which habit is in
particular need of being changed. After having reported the opinion of a
pagan philosopher on the obstacles to speculation, he adds the remark that

there exists now an obstacle that the ancient philosopher had not men¬
tioned because it did not exist in his society: the habit of relying on revered
texts,” that is, on their literal meaning (I 31). It is for this reason that he
opens his book with the explanation of biblical terms, that is, with showing
that their true meaning is not always their literal meaning. He cures the
vicious habit in question by having recourse to another habit of his ad¬
dressee. The addressee was accustomed not only to accept the literally
understood biblical texts as true but also in many cases to understand bib¬
lical texts according to traditional interpretations that differed considerably
from the literal meaning. Being accustomed to listen to authoritative inter¬
pretations of biblical texts, he is prepared to listen to Maimonides’ inter¬
pretations as authoritative interpretations. The explanation of biblical
terms that is given by Maimonides authoritatively is in the circumstances
the natural substitute for natural science.
But which biblical terms deserve primary consideration? In other words,
what is the initial theme of the Guide? The choice of the initial theme is
dictated by the right answer to the question of which theme is the most
urgent for the typical addressee and at the same time the least upsetting to
him. The first theme of the Guide is God’s incorporeality. God’s incor¬
poreality is the third of the three most fundamental truths, the preceding
ones being the existence of God and His unity. The existence of God and
His unity were admitted as unquestionable by all Jews; all Jews as Jews
know that God exists and that He is one, and they know this through the
biblical revelation or the biblical miracles. One can say that because belief
in the biblical revelation precedes speculation, and the discovery of the
true meaning of revelation is the task of exegesis, exegesis precedes specu¬
lation. But regarding God’s incorporeality there existed a certain confusion.
The biblical texts suggest that God is corporeal, and the interpretation of
these texts is not a very easy task (II 25, 31, III 28). God’s incorporeality is
indeed a demonstrable truth, but, to say nothing of others, the addressee of
the Guide does not come into the possession of the demonstration until he
has advanced into the Second Part (cf. I 1, 9, 18). The necessity to refute
“corporealism” (the belief that God is corporeal) does not merely arise
from the fact that corporealism is demonstrably untrue: corporealism is
dangerous because it endangers the belief shared by all Jews in God’s unity
(I 35). On the other hand, by teaching that God is incorporeal, one does
not do more than to give expression to what the talmudic Sages believed (I
46). However, the Jewish authority who had given the most consistent and
the most popularly effective expression to the belief in God’s incorporeality
was Onqelos the Stranger, for the primary preoccupation of his translation
of the Torah into Aramaic, which Joseph knew as a matter of course, was
precisely to dispose of the corporealistic suggestions of the original (I 21,
27, 28, 36 end). Maimonides’ innovation is then limited to his deviation
from Onqelos’ procedure: he does explicitly what Onqelos did implicitly;

whereas Onqelos tacitly substituted noncorporealistic terms for the corpo-
realistic terms occurring in the original, Maimonides explicitly discusses
each of the terms in question by itself in an order that has no corre¬
spondence to the accidental sequence of their occurrence in the Bible. As a
consequence, the discussion of corporealism in the Guide consists chiefly of
a discussion of the various biblical terms suggesting corporealism, and, vice
versa, the chief subject of what Maimonides declares to be the primary
purpose of the Guide, namely, the explanation of biblical terms, is the ex¬
planation of biblical terms suggesting corporealism. This is not surprising.
There are no biblical terms that suggest that God is not one, whereas there
are many biblical terms that suggest that God is corporeal: the apparent
difficulty created by the plural Elohim can be disposed of by a single sen¬
tence or by a single reference to Onqelos (12).
The chief reason why it is so urgent to establish the belief in God’s in¬
corporeality, however, is supplied by the fact that that belief is destructive
of idolatry. It was, of course, universally known that idolatry is a very grave
sin, nay, that the Law has, so to speak, no other purpose than to destroy
idolatry (I 35, III 29 end). But this evil can be completely eradicated only
if everyone is brought to know that God has no visible shape whatever or
that He is incorporeal. Only if God is incorporeal is it absurd to make
images of God and to worship such images. Only under this condition can
it become manifest to everyone that the only image of God is man, living
and thinking man, and that man acts as the image of God only through
worshiping the invisible or hidden God alone. Not idolatry, but the belief
in God s corporeality, is a fundamental sin. Hence the sin of idolatry is less
grave than the sin of believing that God is corporeal (I 36). This being the
case, it becomes indispensable that God’s incorporeality be believed in by
everyone, whether or not he knows by demonstration that God is incorpo¬
real. With regard to the majority of men it is sufficient and necessary that
they believe in this truth on the basis of authority or tradition, that is, on a
basis that the first subsections of the Guide are meant to supply. The
teaching of God’s incorporeality by means of authoritative exegesis, that is,
the most public teaching of God’s incorporeality, is indispensable for de¬
stroying the last relics of paganism: the immediate source of paganism is
less the ignorance of God’s unity than the ignorance of His radical incor¬
poreality (cf. I 36 with M.T., H. ‘Abodah Zarah II).
It is necessary that we understand the character of the reasoning that
Maimonides uses when he determines the initial theme of the Guide. We
limit ourselves to a consideration of the second reason demanding the
teaching of incorporeality. While the belief in unity leads immediately to
the rejection of the worship of “other gods,” but not to the rejection of the
worship of images of the one God, the belief in incorporeality leads imme¬
diately only to the rejection of the worship of images or of other bodies.
but not to the rejection of the worship of other gods: all gods may be in¬
corporeal. Only if the belief in God’s incorporeality is based on the belief
in His unity, as Maimonides’ argument indeed assumes, does the belief in
God's incorporeality appear to be the necessary and sufficient ground for
rejecting “forbidden worship” in every form, that is, the worship of other
gods as well as the worship of both natural things and artificial things. This
would mean that the prohibition against idolatry in the widest sense is as
much a dictate of reason as the belief in God’s unity and incorporeality.
Yet Maimonides indicates that only the theoretical truths pronounced in
the Decalogue (God’s existence and His unity), in contradistinction to the
rest of the Decalogue, are rational. This is in agreement with his denying
the existence of rational commandments or prohibitions as such (II 33; cf.
I 54, II 31 beginning, III 28; Eight Chapters VI). Given the fact that Aris¬
totle believed in God’s unity and incorporeality and yet was an idolater (I
71, III 29), Maimonides’ admiration for him would be incomprehensible if
the rejection of idolatry were the simple consequence of that belief. Ac¬
cording to Maimonides, the Law agrees with Aristotle in holding that the
heavenly bodies are endowed with life and intelligence and that they are
superior to man in dignity; one could say that he agrees with Aristotle in
implying that those holy bodies deserve more than man to be called images
of God. But unlike the philosophers he does not go so far as to call those
bodies “divine bodies” (II 4-6; cf. Letter to Ibn Tibbon). The true
ground of the rejection of “forbidden worship” is the belief in creation out
of nothing, which implies that creation is an absolutely free act of God or
that God alone is the complete good that is in no way increased by cre¬
ation. But creation is according to Maimonides not demonstrable, whereas
God’s unity and incorporeality are demonstrable. The reasoning underlying
the determination of the initial theme of the Guide can then be described
as follows: it conceals the difference of cognitive status between the belief
in God’s unity and incorporeality on the one hand and the belief in crea¬
tion on the other; it is in accordance with the opinion of the Kalam. In
accordance with this, Maimonides brings his disagreement with Ka¬
lam into the open only after he has concluded his thematic discussion of
God’s incorporeality; in that discussion he does not even mention the
Kalam.
It is necessary that we understand as clearly as possible the situation in
which Maimonides and his addressee find themselves at the beginning of
the book, if not throughout the book. Maimonides knows that God is in¬
corporeal; he knows this by a demonstration that is at least partly based on
natural science. The addressee does not know that God is incorporeal; nor
does he learn it yet from Maimonides: he accepts the fact that God’s in-
corporeality is demonstrated, on Maimonides’ authority. Both Maimonides
and the addressee know that the Law is a source of knowledge of God;
only the Law can establish God’s incorporeality for the addressee in a man-
ner that does not depend on Maimonides’ authority. But both know that
the literal meaning of the Law is not always its true meaning and that the
literal meaning is certainly not the true meaning when it contradicts rea¬
son, for otherwise the Law could not be “your wisdom and your under¬
standing in the sight of the nations” (Deut. 4:6). Both know, in other
words, that exegesis does not simply precede speculation. Yet only Mai¬
monides knows that the corporealistic expressions of the Law are against
reason and must therefore be taken as figurative. The addressee does not
know and cannot know that Maimonides’ figurative interpretations of
those expressions are true: Maimonides does not adduce arguments based
on grammar. The addressee accepts Maimonides’ interpretations just as he
is in the habit of accepting the Aramaic translations as correct translations
or interpretations. Maimonides enters the ranks of the traditional Jewish
authorities: he simply tells the addressee what to believe regarding the
meaning of the biblical terms. Maimonides introduces reason in the guise
of authority. He takes on the garb of authority. He tells the addressee to
believe in God’s incorporeality because, as he tells him, contrary to appear¬
ance, the Law does not teach corporeality, because, as he tells him, corpo¬
reality is a demonstrably wrong belief.
But we must not forget the most important atypical addressee, the
reader who is critical and competent. He knows the demonstration of
God’s incorporeality and the problems connected with it as well as Mai¬
monides does. 4 herefore the exegetic discussion of God’s incorporeality
which is presented in the first forty-nine chapters of the Guide, and which
is prespeculative and hence simply public as far as the typical addressee is
concerned, is postspeculative and hence secret from the point of view of
the critical and competent reader. The latter will examine Maimonides’
explanations of biblical terms in the light of the principle that one cannot
establish the meanings of a term if one does not consider the contexts in
which they occur (II 29; cf. Epistle to Yemen 46, 7 ff.) or that while gram¬
mar is not a sufficient condition, it is surely the necessary condition of
interpretation. For while the competent reader will appreciate the advan¬
tages attendant upon a coherent discussion of the biblical terms in ques¬
tion as distinguished from a translation of the Bible, he will realize that
such a discussion may make one oblivious of the contexts in which the
terms occur. He will also notice contradictions occurring in the Guide, re¬
member always that they are intentional, and ponder over them.
The readers of the Guide were told at the beginning that the first pur¬
pose of the book is the explanation of biblical terms. They will then in no
way be surprised to find that the book opens with the explanation of bib¬
lical terms in such a way that, roughly speaking, each chapter is devoted to
the explanation of one or several biblical terms. They will soon become
habituated to this procedure: they become engrossed by the subject mat¬
ter, the What, and will not observe the How. The critical reader, however.
will find many reasons for becoming amazed. To say nothing of other con¬
siderations, he will wonder why almost the only terms explained are those
suggesting corporeality. It is perhaps not a matter of surprise that one
chapter is devoted to the explanation of “place” and another to the expla¬
nation of “to dwell.” But why is there no chapter devoted to “one,” none
to “merciful,” none to “good,” none to “intelligence,” none to “eternity”?
Why is there a chapter devoted to “grief” and none to “laughter”? Why is
there a chapter devoted to “foot” and another to “wing,” but none to
“hand” nor to “arm”? Assuming that one has understood Maimonides’
selection of terms, one still has to understand the order in which he dis¬
cusses them. To what extent the explanation of terms is limited to terms
suggesting corporeality appears with particular clarity when one considers
especially those chapters that are most visibly devoted to the explanation of
terms, the lexicographic chapters. By a lexicographic chapter I understand
a chapter that opens with the Hebrew term or terms to be explained in the
chapter regardless of whether these terms precede the first sentence or
form the beginning of the first sentence and regardless of whether these
terms are supplied with the Arabic article al- or not. The lexicographic
chapter may be said to be the normal or typical chapter in the discussion of
God’s incorporeality (I 1-49); thirty out of the forty-nine chapters in
question are lexicographic, whereas in the whole rest of the book there oc¬
cur at most two such chapters (I 66 and 70). All these thirty chapters oc¬
cur in I 1-45: two-thirds of the chapters in I 1-45 are lexicographic. Thus
the question arises why nineteen chapters of the discussion of God’s incor¬
poreality—and just the nineteen chapters having both the subject matters
and the places that they do—are not lexicographic. Why do ten of these
thirty lexicographic chapters begin with Hebrew terms preceding the first
sentence and twenty of them begin with Hebrew terms forming part of the
first sentence? Thirteen of the terms in question are nouns, twelve are
verbs, and five are verbal nouns: why does Maimonides in some cases use
the verbs and in other cases the verbal nouns? Within the chapters, gener¬
ally speaking, he discusses the term that is the subject of the chapter in
question, first in regard to the various meanings it has when it is not ap¬
plied to God and then in regard to the various meanings it has when ap¬
plied to God; he proves the existence of each of these meanings in most
cases by quoting one or more biblical passages; those quotations are some¬
times explicitly incomplete (ending in “and so on”) and more frequently
not; the quotations used to illustrate a particular meaning of a particular
term do not always follow the biblical order; they are frequently introduced
by “he said,” but sometimes they are ascribed to individual biblical authors
or speakers; in most cases he does not add to the name of the biblical au¬
thor or speaker the formula “may he rest in peace,” but in some cases he
does; sometimes “the Hebrew language” or “the language” is referred to.
In a book as carefully worded as is the Guide according to Maimonides'
emphatic declaration, all these varieties, and others that we forgo men¬
tioning, deserve careful consideration. It goes without saying that there is
not necessarily only one answer to each of the questions implied in each of
these varieties; the same device—for example, the distinction between lexi¬
cographic and nonlexicographic chapters or the tracing of a biblical quota¬
tion to an individual biblical author—may fulfill different functions in
different contexts. In order to understand the Guide, one must be fully
awake and as it were take nothing for granted. In order to become enabled
to raise the proper questions, one does well to consider the possibility that
there exists the typical chapter or else to construct the typical chapter, that
is, to find out which of the varieties indicated are most in accordance with
the primary function of the chapters devoted to the explanation of biblical
terms: only the other varieties are in need of a special reason.
The first chapter of the Guide is devoted to “image and likeness." The
selection of these terms was necessitated by a single biblical passage: “And
God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. ... So God
created man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and
female created he them" (Gen. 1:26-27). The selection of these terms for
explanation in the first chapter is due to the unique significance of the pas¬
sage quoted. That passage suggests to the vulgar mind more strongly than
any other biblical passage that God is corporeal in the crudest sense: God
has the shape of a human being, has a face, lips, and hands, but is bigger
and more resplendent than man since He does not consist of flesh and
blood, and is therefore in need, not of food and drink, but of odors; His
place is in Heaven from which He descends to the earth, especially to high
mountains, in order to guide men and to find out what they do, and to
which He ascends again with incredible swiftness; He is moved, as men
are, by passions, especially by anger, jealousy, and hate, and thus makes
men frightened and sad; His essence is Will rather than Intellect. (Cf. I
10, 20, 36-37, 39, 43, 46, 47, 68.) Maimonides tells his addressee that
$elem (the Hebrew term which is rendered by “image”) does not mean, if
not exactly in any case, but certainly in the present case, a visible shape; it
means the natural form, the specific form, the essence of a being: “God
created man in his image” means that God created man as a being en¬
dowed with intellect or that the divine intellect links itself with man.
Similar considerations apply to the Hebrew term rendered by “likeness."
The Hebrew term designating form in the sense of visible shape is to’ar,
which is never applied to God. After having dispelled the confusion regard¬
ing image” Maimonides says: “We have explained to thee the difference
between selem and to’ar and we have explained the meaning of $elem.”
He thus alludes to the twofold character of his explanation here as well as
elsewhere: one explanation is given to “thee," that is, to the typical
addressee, and another is given to indeterminate readers; the latter expla¬
nation comes to sight only when one considers, among other things, the
context of all biblical passages quoted. To mention only one example, the
second of the three quotations illustrating the meaning of to’ar is “What
form is he of?” (I Sam. 28:14). The quotation is taken from the account
of King Saul’s conversation with the witch of Endor, whom the king had
asked to bring up to him the dead prophet Samuel; when the woman saw
Samuel and became frightened and the king asked her what she saw, she
said: “I saw gods (elohim) ascending out of the earth.” The account con¬
tinues as follows: “And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she
said: an old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle.” Mai-
monides himself tells us in the next chapter that elohim is an equivocal
term that may mean angels and rulers of cities as well as God; but this does
not explain why that term is also applied to the shades of the venerable
departed—beings without flesh and blood—which frighten men either be¬
cause those shades do not wish to be “disquieted,” that is, they wish to rest
in peace, or for other reasons. To say nothing of other reasons, the rational
beings inhabiting the lowest depth are in truth not men who have died,
but all living men, the Adamites, that is, the descendants of Adam, who
lack Adam’s pristine intellectuality (cf. I 2 with I 10). It looks as if Mai-
monides wished to draw our attention to the fact that the Bible contains
idolatrous, pagan, or “Sabian” relics. If this suspicion should prove to be
justified, we would have to assume that his fight against “forbidden wor¬
ship” and hence against corporealism is more radical than one would be in¬
clined to believe or that the recovery of Sabian relics in the Bible with the
help of Sabian literature is one of the tasks of his secret teaching.
However this may be, his interpretation of Genesis 1:26 seems to be
contradicted by the fact that the Torah speaks shortly afterward of the di¬
vine prohibition addressed to man against eating of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge: if man was created as an intellectual being and hence destined
for the life of the intellect, his Creator could not well have forbidden him
to strive for knowledge. In other words, the biblical account implies that
man’s intellectuality is not identical with man's being created in the image
of God, but is a consequence of his disobedience to God or of God’s pun¬
ishing him for that sin. As we are told in the second chapter, this objection
was raised, not by the addressee of the Guide, but by another acquaintance
of Maimonides, a nameless scientist of whom we do not even know
whether he was of Jewish extraction and who was apparently not very
temperate in regard to drink and to sex. (Compare the parallel in III 19.)
Maimonides tells his addressee that he replied to his objector as follows:
the knowledge that was forbidden to man was the knowledge of “good and
evil,” that is, of the noble and base, and the noble and base are objects not
of the intellect, but of opinion; strictly speaking they are not objects of
knowledge at all. To mention only the most important example, in man’s
perfect state, in which he was unaware of the noble and base, although he
was aware of the naturally good and bad, that is, of the pleasant and pain-
ful, he did not regard the uncovering of one’s nakedness as disgraceful.

After having thus disposed of the most powerful objection to his inter¬
pretation of Genesis 1:26, or after having thus taught that the intellectual
life is beyond the noble and base, Maimonides turns to the second most
important passage of the Torah that seems to suggest that God is corpo¬
real. More precisely, he turns both to the terms applied in that passage to
God and to kindred terms. The passage, which occurs in Numbers 12:8,
reads as follows: “he (Moses) beholds the figure of the Lord.” He devotes
to this subject three chapters (I 3-5); in I 3 he discusses explicitly the
three meanings of “figure,” and in I 4 he discusses explicitly the three
meanings of the three terms designating “beholding” or “seeing”; in one
of the biblical passages partly quoted, the Lord is presented as having
appeared to Abraham in the guise of three men who yet were one. Mai¬
monides tells the addressee that the Hebrew terms designating “figure” and
“beholding” (or their equivalents) mean, when they are applied to God,
intellectual truth and intellectual grasp. The relation of I 5 to I 3-4 resem¬
bles the relation of I 2 and I 1. The view that man was created for the life
of the intellect was contradicted by the apparent prohibition against ac¬
quiring knowledge. Similarly, “the prince of the philosophers” (Aristotle)
apparently contradicts his view that man exists for the life of the intellect
by apologizing for his engaging in the investigation of very obscure mat¬
ters: Aristotle apologizes to his readers for his apparent temerity; in fact,
he is prompted only by his desire to know the truth. This restatement of an
Aristotelian utterance affords an easy transition to the Jewish view accord¬
ing to which Moses was rewarded with beholding the figure of the Lord
because he had previously “hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon
God” (Exod. 3:6). The pursuit of knowledge of God must be preceded by
fear of looking upon God or, to use the expression that Aristotle had used
in the passage in question (On the Heaven 291b 21 ff.) and that does not
occur in Maimonides’ summary, by sense of shame: the intellectual per¬
fection is necessarily preceded by moral perfection—by one’s having ac¬
quired the habit of doing the noble and avoiding the base—as well as by
other preparations. Maimonides’ emphasis here on moral perfection, espe¬
cially on temperance, as a prerequisite of intellectual perfection is matched
by his silence here on natural science as such a prerequisite. The weeding
out of corporealism proceeds pari passu with the watering of asceticism.
Having arrived at this point, Maimonides does something strange: he
abruptly turns to the explanation of the terms “man and woman” (16)
and “to generate” (I 7). The strangeness, however, immediately disappears
once one observes that I 6-7 are the first lexicographic chapters after I 1
and one remembers that I 2 is merely a corollary of I 1: the explanation of
“man and woman” and of “to generate” forms part of the explanation of
Genesis 1:26-27. There it is said that “in the image of God created (God
man); male and female created he them.” Literally understood, that saying
might be thought to mean that man is the image of God because he is

bisexual or that the Godhead contains a male and a female element that
generate “children of God” and the like. Accordingly, the last word of I 7
is the same as the first word of I 1: “image.” Maimonides does not discuss
the implication which was stated, for it is one of the secrets of the Torah,
and we are only at the beginning of our training. The explanation of the
key terms (or their equivalents) occurring in Genesis 1:26-27 surrounds
then the explanation of the key terms (or their equivalents) occurring in
Numbers 12:8. The discussion of the most important passages of the
Torah regarding incorporeality forms the fitting subject of the first subsec¬
tion of the Guide. That subsection seems to be devoted to five uncon¬
nected groups of terms; closer inspection shows that it is devoted to two
biblical passages: Maimonides seems to hesitate to sever the umbilical cord
connecting his exegesis with Onqelos’.
At first glance the theme of the second subsection is much easier to
recognize than that of the first. This seems to be due to the fact that that
theme is not two or more biblical passages, but biblical terms designating
phenomena all of which belong essentially together: place as well as certain
outstanding places, occupying place, changing place, and the organs for
changing place. Nineteen of the twenty-one chapters of the second subsec¬
tion are manifestly devoted to this theme. The discussion begins with
“place” (18), turns to “throne” (I 9), a most exalted place that if ascribed
to God designates not only the temple but also and above all the heaven,
and then turns to “descending and ascending” (I 10). While this sequence
is perfectly lucid, we are amazed to find that, whereas I 8 and 9 are lexico¬
graphic chapters, I 10 is not a lexicographic chapter. This irregularity can
be provisionally explained as follows: when Maimonides treats thematically
several verbs in one lexicographic chapter, those verbs are explicitly said to
have the same or nearly the same meaning (I 16, 18); when he treats the¬
matically verbs that primarily designate opposites, but do not designate
opposites if applied to God, he treats them in separate chapters (I 11, 12,
22, 23); but “descending” and “ascending” designate opposites both in
their primary meaning and if applied to God: God’s descending means
both His revealing Himself and His punitive action, and His ascending
means the cessation of His revelation or punitive action (cf. the silence on
“returning” at the beginning of I 23). Maimonides indicates the unique
character of the subject “descent and ascent” by treating it in a nonlexi-
cographic chapter surrounded on the one side by four and on the other
side by three lexicographic chapters. On the basis of “the vulgar imagina¬
tion” God’s natural state would be sitting on His throne, and sitting is the
opposite of rising. “Sitting” and “rising” (I 11 and 12) designate oppo¬
sites, but do not designate opposites if applied to God: although God’s
“sitting” refers to His unchangeability, His “rising” refers to His keeping
His promises or threats, it being understood that His promises to Israel
may very well be threats to Israel’s enemies. A talmudic passage that con¬
firms Maimonides’ public explanation and in which “sitting” is mentioned
together, not with “rising,” but with “standing up” naturally leads to the
discussion of “standing up” (I 13), which term, according to Maimonides,
means, if applied to God, His unchangeability—an unchangeability not
contradicted, as he indicates, by God’s threats to destroy Israel.
Having arrived at this point, Maimonides interrupts his discussion of
verbs or of other terms that refer to place and turns to the explanation of
“man” (I 14). A similar interruption occurs shortly afterward when he
turns from “standing” and “rock” (I 15 and 16) to an explanation of the
prohibition against the public teaching of natural science (I 17). Although
these chapters are subtly interwoven with the chapters preceding and fol¬
lowing them, at first glance they strikingly interrupt the continuity of the
argument. By this irregularity our attention is drawn to a certain numerical
symbolism that is of assistance to the serious reader of the Guide: 14
stands for man or the human things and 17 stands for nature. The connec¬
tion between “nature” and “change of place” (or, more generally, mo¬
tion), and therewith the connection between the theme of I 17 and the
subsection to which that chapter belongs, has been indicated before. The
connection between “14” and the context cannot become clear before we
have reached a better understanding of the relation between nature and
convention; at present it must suffice to say that I 7 deals with “to gener¬
ate.” Although I 26 obviously deals with terms referring to place, it also
fulfills a numerological function: the immediate theme of that chapter is
the universal principle governing the interpretation of the Torah (“the
Torah speaks according to the language of human beings”); 26 is the
numerical equivalent of the secret name of the Lord, the God of Israel; 26
may therefore also stand for His Torah. Incidentally, it may be remarked
that 14 is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew for “hand”; I 28 is de¬
voted to “foot”: no chapter of the Guide is devoted to “hand,” the char¬
acteristically human organ, whereas Maimonides devotes a chapter, the
central chapter of the fourth subsection, to “wing,” the organ used for
swift descent and ascent. In all these matters one can derive great help
from studying Joseph Albo’s Roots. Albo was a favorite companion living
at the court of a great king.
Of the twenty-one chapters of the second subsection sixteen are lexico¬
graphic and five (I 10, 14, 17, 26, 27) are not. Of these sixteen chapters
two begin with Hebrew terms supplied with the Arabic article (I 23 and
24). Thus only seven of the twenty-one chapters may be said to vary from
the norm. In seven of the fourteen chapters beginning with a pure Hebrew
term, tnat term precedes the first sentence, and in the seven others the
Hebrew term forms part of the first sentence. Seven of these chapters be¬
gin with a verb and seven with a noun or a verbal noun. It is one thing to
observe these regularities and another thing to understand them. The dis-
tinction between the verbs and the verbal nouns is particularly striking,
since lexicographic chapters beginning with verbal nouns occur only in one
subsection. Furthermore, of the three lexicographic chapters of the first
subsection, one opens with nouns preceding the first sentence, one with
nouns forming part of the first sentence, and one with a verb preceding the
first sentence; orderliness would seem to require that there be a chapter
opening with a verb that forms part of the first sentence. One of the chap¬
ters of the second subsection (I 22) begins with a verb preceding the first
sentence, but the first sentence opens with the verbal noun (supplied with
the Arabic article) of the same verb; there occurs no other case of this kind
in the whole book. If we count this ambiguous chapter among the chapters
beginning with a verbal noun forming part of the first sentence, we reach
this conclusion: the second subsection contains four chapters beginning
with verbs or verbal nouns preceding the first sentence and eight chapters
beginning with verbs or verbal nouns forming part of the first sentence.
Furthermore, the second subsection contains six chapters beginning with
verbs and six chapters beginning with verbal nouns; of the latter six chap¬
ters three begin with pure verbal nouns and three begin with verbal nouns
supplied with the Arabic article. The second subsection surpasses the first
subsection in regularity especially if I 22 is properly subsumed. From all
this we are led to regard it as possible that I 22 somehow holds the key to
the mystery of the second subsection.
The first chapter of the second subsection (18) is devoted to “place,” a
term that in postbiblical Hebrew is used for designating God Himself. To
our great amazement Maimonides is completely silent about this meaning
of “place.” His silence is all the more eloquent since he quotes in this very
chapter postbiblical Hebrew expressions containing “place,” since he ad¬
monishes the readers in this very chapter to consult regarding his explana¬
tion of any term not only “the books of prophecy” but also other
“compilations of men of science”—Talmud and Midrash are such compila¬
tions—and since he has concluded the preceding chapter with a quotation
from the Midrash. In the only other lexicographic chapter devoted to a
term used for designating God Himself—in I 16, which is devoted to
“rock”—he does not hesitate to say that that term is also used for desig¬
nating God, for that meaning of “rock” is biblical. We see then how liter¬
ally he meant his declaration that the first intention of the Guide is to
explain terms occurring in “the books of prophecy,” that is, primarily in
the Bible: he is primarily concerned with the theology of the Bible in
contradistinction to postbiblical Jewish theology. He is alive to the ques¬
tion raised by the Karaites. As he puts it, not only does criticism of the
talmudic Sages do no harm to them—it does not even do any harm to the
critic or rather to the foundations of belief (I Introd., 5 end, 19 end, 46
end; cf. Resurrection 29, 10-30, 15 Finkel). This observation enables us to
solve the difficulty presented by I 22.
I 18-21 opened with verbs; I 22 marks the transition from chapters

opening with verbs to chapters opening with verbal nouns supplied with
the Arabic article; I 23-24 open with verbal nouns supplied with the Ara¬
bic article. I 25 opens again with a verb. That verb is “to dwell.” The tran¬
sition made in I 22 and the procedure in I 23-24 make us expect that I 25
should open with the verbal noun “the dwelling/’ the Shekhinah, the
postbiblical term particularly used for God’s indwelling on earth, but this
expectation is disappointed. Maimonides makes all these preparations in
order to let us see that he is anxious to avoid as a chapter heading the term
Shekhinah, which does not occur in the Bible in any sense, and to avoid
the Hebrew term Shekhinah in its theological sense within the most
appropriate chapter itself: when speaking there of the Shekhinah theologi¬
cally, he uses the Arabic translation of Shekhinah, but never that Hebrew
term itself. He does use the Hebrew term Shekhinah in a theological
meaning in a number of other chapters, but Shekhinah never becomes a
theme of the Guide: there are no “chapters on the Shekhinah” as there are
“chapters on providence” or “chapters on governance” (I 40 and 44). It
should also be noted that the chapter devoted to “wing” does not contain
a single reference to the Shekhinah (cf. particularly Maimonides’ and Ibn
Janah’s explanation of Isaiah 30:20 with the Targum ad loc.). In the
chapter implicitly devoted to the Shekhinah, which is the central chapter of
the part devoted to incorporeality (I 1-49), Maimonides had mentioned
the Shekhinah together with providence, but Shekhinah and providence
are certainly not identical (cf. I 10 and 23). One should pay particular at¬
tention to the treatment of the Shekhinah in the chapters obviously de¬
voted to providence strictly understood (III 17-18 and 22-23). With some
exaggeration one may say that whereas the Shekhinah follows Israel, provi¬
dence follows the intellect. In other words, it is characteristic of the Guide
that in it Shekhinah as a theological theme is replaced by “providence,”
and “providence” in its turn to some extent by “governance,” “gov¬
ernance” being as it were the translation of Merkabah (“Chariot”), as
appears from I 70. Needless to say, it is not in vain that Maimonides uses
the Arabic article at the beginning of I 23 and 24. He thus connects I 23
and 24 and the context of these chapters with the only other group of
chapters all of which begin with a Hebrew term supplied with the Arabic
article: III 36-49. That group of chapters deals with the individual biblical
commandments, that is, with their literal meaning, rather than their extra-
biblical interpretation, as is indicated in the chapter (III 41) that stands
out from the rest of the group for more than one reason and that is de¬
voted to the penal law. One reason why that chapter stands out is that it is
the only chapter whose summary, in III 35, is adorned with a biblical
quotation, III 35 being the chapter that serves as the immediate intro¬
duction to III 36-49. To repeat, the second subsection of the Guide draws
our attention to the difference between the biblical and the postbiblical
Jewish teaching or to the question raised by the Karaites. Maimonides, it

need hardly be said, answered that question in favor of the Rabbamtes,
although not necessarily in their spirit. It suffices to remember that not
only Shekhinah but also “providence” and “governance” are not biblical
terms.
Like the first subsection, the second subsection is based on two biblical
passages, although not as visibly and as clearly as the first. The passages are
Exodus 33:20-23 and Isaiah 6. In the former passage the Lord says to
Moses: “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and
live: . . . thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.”
Accordingly, Moses sees only the Lord’s “glory pass by.” In the latter pas¬
sage Isaiah says: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted
up. . . . Mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Isaiah does not
speak, as Moses did, of “the figure of the Lord” or of “the image of God.”
Nor is it said of Isaiah, as it is said of Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel: “they saw the God of Israel: and there was
under his feet etc. . . . And the nobles of the children of Israel . . . saw
God, and did eat and drink” and thus suggested that the vision was imper¬
fect (cf. I 5 with Albo’s Roots III 17). We are thus induced to believe
that Isaiah reached a higher stage in the knowledge of God than Moses or
that Isaiah’s vision marks a progress beyond Moses. At first hearing, this
belief is justly rejected as preposterous, not to say blasphemous: the denial
of the supremacy of Moses’ prophecy seems to lead to the denial of the
ultimacy of Moses’ Law, and therefore Maimonides does not tire of assert¬
ing the supremacy of Moses’ prophecy. But the belief in the ultimacy of
Moses’ Law and even in the supremacy of Moses’ prophecy in no way con¬
tradicts the belief in a certain superiority of Isaiah’s speeches to Moses’
speeches—to say nothing of the fact that Maimonides never denied that he
deliberately contradicts himself. The following example may prove to be
helpful. In his Treatise on Resurrection, Maimonides teaches that resur¬
rection, one of the thirteen roots of the Law, is clearly taught within the
Bible only in the book of Daniel, but certainly not in the Torah. He ex¬
plains this apparently strange fact as follows: at the time when the Torah
was given, all men, and hence also our ancestors, were Sabians, believing in
the eternity of the world, for they believed that God is the spirit of the
sphere, and denying the possibility of revelation and of miracles; hence a
very long period of education and habituation was needed until our ances¬
tors could be brought even to consider believing in that greatest of all mir¬
acles, the resurrection of the dead (26, 18-27, 15 and 31, 1-33, 14 Finkel).
This does not necessarily mean that Moses himself did not know this root
of the Law, but he certainly did not teach it. At least in this respect the
book of Daniel, of a late prophet of very low rank (II 45), marks a great
progress beyond the Torah of Moses. All the easier is it to understand that
Isaiah should have made some progress beyond Moses.
The reason why progress beyond the teaching of the Torah is possible or
even necessary is twofold. In the first place, the Torah is the law par excel¬
lence. The supremacy of Moses' prophecy—the superiority of Moses’
knowledge even to that of the Patriarchs—is connected with its being the
only legislative prophecy (I 63, II 13, 39). But precisely because his
prophecy culminates in the Law, it reflects the limitations of law. Law is
more concerned with actions than with thoughts (III 27-28; I Introd.).
Mosaic theology reflects this orientation. According to the opinion of many
of our contemporaries, Maimonides’ theological doctrine proper is his doc¬
trine of the divine attributes (I 50-60). In that subsection he quotes pas¬
sages from the Torah only in that single chapter (I 54) in which he dis¬
cusses the thirteen divine attributes revealed to Moses (Exod. 34:5-7);
those attributes—all of them moral qualities—constitute the Mosaic theol¬
ogy; they express positively what in negative expression is called in the
same context “God’s back parts.” Although God’s goodness had been re¬
vealed to Moses in its entirety, the thirteen attributes articulate only that
part of God’s goodness which is relevant for the ruler of a city who is a
prophet. Such a ruler must imitate the divine attributes of wrath and
mercy, not as passions—for the incorporeal God is above all passion—but
because actions of mercy or wrath are appropriate in the circumstances,
and he must imitate God’s mercy and wrath in due proportion. The ruler
of a city, on the other hand, must be more merciful than full of anger, for
extreme punitiveness is required only because of the necessity, based on
“human opinion,” to exterminate the idolaters by fire and sword (I 54).
Following another suggestion of Maimonides (I 61-63) one could say
that the adequate statement of Mosaic theology is contained in the divine
name YHVH—a name by which God revealed Himself for the first time
to Moses as distinguished from the Patriarchs: “I appeared unto Abraham,
unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my
name YHVH was I not known to them” (Exod. 6:3). Maimonides recog¬
nizes that this verse asserts or establishes the superiority of Moses’
prophecy to that of the Patriarchs (II 35), but he does not explain that
verse: he does not explain, at least not clearly, which theological verities
other than the thirteen attributes were revealed to Moses, but were un¬
known to the Patriarchs. Only this much may be said to emerge: Abraham
was a man of speculation who instructed his subjects or followers, rather
than a prophet who convinced by miracles and ruled by means of promises
and threats, and this is somehow connected with the fact that he called
“on the name of YHVH, the God of the world” (Gen. 21:33) (I 63, II
13), that is, the God of the transmoral whole rather than the law-giving
God. It is this Abrahamitic expression that opens each Part of the Guide as
well as other writings of Maimonides. Considering all these things, one will
find it wise to limit oneself to saying that the Mosaic theology par excel¬
lence is the doctrine of the thirteen moral attributes.
Second, the Mosaic legislation was contemporary with the yet unbroken
and universal rule of Sabianism. Therefore the situation in the time of
Moses was not different from the situation in the time of Abraham, who
disagreed with all men, all men having the same Sabian religion or belong¬
ing to the same religious community. The innovation was naturally re¬
sisted, even with violence, although it was not a principle of Sabianism to
exterminate unbelievers. Yet the Torah has only one purpose: to destroy
Sabianism or idolatry. But the resistance by the Sabians proper was less
important than the inner Sabianism of the early adherents of the Torah. It
was primarily for this reason that Sabianism could be overcome only grad¬
ually: human nature does not permit the direct transition from one
opposite to the other. To mention only the most obvious example, our an¬
cestors had been habituated to sacrifice to natural or artificial creatures.
The sacrificial laws of the Torah are a concession to that habit. Since the
simple prohibition or cessation of sacrifices would have been as unintel¬
ligible or distasteful to our ancestors as the prohibition or cessation of
prayer would be now, God provided that henceforth all sacrifices be trans¬
ferred to Him and no longer be brought to any false gods or idols. The
sacrificial laws constitute a step in the gradual transition, in the progress
from Sabianism to pure worship, that is, pure knowledge, of God (cf. I 54,
64); the sacrificial laws were necessary only “at that time.” The Sabians
believed that success in agriculture depends on worship of the heavenly
bodies. In order to eradicate that belief, God teaches in the Torah that
worship of the heavenly bodies leads to disaster in agriculture, whereas
worship of God leads to prosperity. For the reason given, the open depre¬
cation of sacrifices as such occurs not yet in the Torah, but in the prophets
and in the Psalms. Conversely, the Torah is less explicit than the later doc¬
uments regarding the duty of prayer (III 29, 30, 32, 35-37).
No less important an adaptation to Sabian habits is the corporealism of
the Bible. For Sabianism is a form of corporealism; according to the Sabi¬
ans, the gods are the heavenly bodies or the heavenly bodies are the body
of which God is the spirit (III 29). As for the Bible, Maimonides’ teaching
on this subject is not free from ambiguity. The first impression we receive
from his teaching is that according to it the corporealistic understanding of
the Bible is a mere misunderstanding. For instance, selem simply does not
mean visible shape, but only natural form, and even if it should sometimes
mean visible shape, the term must be considered to be homonymous, and
it certainly does not mean visible shape, but natural form, in Genesis
1:26-27 (I 1; cf. I 49). In other cases, perhaps in most cases, the primary
meaning of the term—say, “sitting”—is corporealistic, but when it is ap¬
plied to God, it is used in a derivative or metaphoric sense; in those cases
the meaning of the text, the literal meaning, is metaphoric. Generally
stated, the literal meaning of the Bible is not corporealistic. But there are
also cases in which the literal meaning is corporealistic, for instance, in the
many cases in which the Bible speaks of God’s anger (cf. I 29). One must
go beyond this and say that generally speaking the literal meaning of the
Bible is corporealistic because “the Torah speaks in accordance with the
language of the children of Man,” that is, in accordance with “the imag¬
ination of the vulgar,” and the vulgar mind does not admit, at least to
being with, the existence of any being that is not bodily; the Torah there¬
fore describes God in corporealistic terms in order to indicate that He is (I
26, 47, 51 end). The Bible contains indeed innumerable passages directed
against idolatry (I 36), but, as we have seen, idolatry is one thing and cor-
porealism is another. The corporealistic meaning is not the only meaning,
it is not the deepest meaning, it is not the true meaning, but it is as much
intended as the true meaning; it is intended because of the need to educate
and to guide the vulgar and, we may add, a vulgar that originally was alto¬
gether under the spell of Sabianism. What is true of the biblical similes is
true also of the metaphoric biblical terms. According to the talmudic
Sages, the outer of the similes is nothing, while the inner is a pearl; ac¬
cording to King Solomon, who was “wiser than all men” (I Kings 5:11),
the outer is like silver, that is, it is useful for the ordering of human society,
and the inner is like gold: it conveys true beliefs (I Introd.). Hence it is
not without danger to the vulgar that one explains the similes or indicates
the metaphoric character of expressions (I 33). For such biblical teachings
as the assertions that God is angry, compassionate, or in other ways
changeable, while not true, yet serve a political purpose or are necessary
beliefs (III 28).
A third possibility emerges through Maimonides’ thematic discussion of
providence. There he makes a distinction between the view of the Law re¬
garding providence and the true view (III 17, 23). He could well have said
that the true view is the secret teaching of the Law. Instead he says that
the true view is conveyed through the book of Job, thus implying that the
book of Job, a nonprophetic book whose characters are not Jews and that is
composed by an unknown author (II 45; Epistle to Yemen 50, 19-52, 1
Halkin), marks a progress beyond the Torah and even beyond the
prophets (cf. Ill 19). We recall that the simple co-ordination, taught by
the Torah, of the worship of the Lord with agricultural and other pros¬
perity was merely a restatement of the corresponding Sabian doctrine. As
Maimonides indicates when explaining the account of the revelation on
Mount Sinai, the beautiful consideration of the texts is the consideration
of their outer meaning (II 36 end, 37). This remark occurs within the sec¬
tion on prophecy in which he makes for the first time an explicit distinc¬
tion between the legal (or exegetic) and the speculative discussion of the
same subject (cf. II 45 beginning). Accordingly, he speaks in his explana¬
tion of the Account of the Chariot, at any rate apparently, only of the lit¬
eral meaning of this most secret text (III Introd.). Or to state the matter
as succinctly as Maimonides does in the last chapter, the science of the
Law is something essentially different, not only from the postbiblical or at

any rate extrabiblical legal interpretation of the Law, but from wisdom,
that is, the demonstration of the views transmitted by the Law, as well.
Undoubtedly Maimonides contradicts himself regarding Moses’ proph¬
ecy. He declares that he will not speak in the Guide explicitly or allusively
about the characteristics of Moses’ prophecy because or although he has
spoken most explicitly about the differences between the prophecy of
Moses and that of the other prophets in his more popular writings. And
yet he teaches explicitly in the Guide that Moses’ prophecy, in contra¬
distinction to that of the other prophets, was entirely independent of the
imagination or was purely intellectual (II 35, 36. 45 end). His refusal to
speak of Moses’ prophecy has indeed a partial justification. At least one
whole subsection of the section on prophecy (II 41-44) is devoted to the
prophecy of the prophets other than Moses, as is indicated by the frequent
quotation in that subsection of this passage: “If there be a prophet among
you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will
speak unto him in a dream”; for the Bible continues as follows: “My serv¬
ant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house” (Num. 12:6-7).
Still the assertion that Moses’ prophecy was entirely independent of the
imagination leads to a great difficulty if one considers the fact, pointed out
by Maimonides in the same context (II 36; cf. II 47 beginning), that it is
the imagination that brings forth similes and, we may add, metaphors, as
well as the fact that the Torah abounds, if not with similes, at any rate
with metaphors. To mention only one example, Moses’ saying that Eve
was taken from one of Adam’s ribs or that woman was taken out of man
(Gen. 2:21-23) or derived from man reflects the fact that the word ishah
(woman) is derived from the word ish (man), and such substitutions of
the relation of words for the relation of things are the work of the imagina¬
tion (cf. II 30 and 43; I 28; and M.T., H. Yesodei ha-torah I).
In order to understand the contradiction regarding Moses’ prophecy, we
must return once more to the beginning. Maimonides starts from ac¬
cepting the Law as seen through the traditional Jewish interpretation. The
Law thus understood is essentially different from “demonstration” (II 3),
that is, the views of the Law are not as such based on demonstration. Nor
do they become evident through “religious experience” or through faith.
For, according to Maimonides, there is no religious experience, that is, spe¬
cifically religious cognition; all cognition or true belief stems from the
human intellect, sense perception, opinion, or tradition; the cognitive
status even of the Ten Commandments was not affected by or during the
revelation on Mount Sinai: some of these utterances are and always re¬
mained matters of “human speculation,” while the others are and always
remained matters of opinion or matters of tradition (I 51 beginning and II
33; Letter on Astrology $$ 4-5 Marx; and Logic chap. 8). As for faith, it
is, according to Maimonides, only one of the moral virtues, which as such
do not belong to man’s ultimate perfection, the perfection of his intellect

(III 53-54). The views of the Law are based on a kind of “speculative
perception” that human speculation is unable to understand and that
grasps the truth without the use of speculative premises or without reason¬
ing; through this kind of perception, peculiar to prophets, the prophet sees
and hears nothing except God and angels (II 38, 36, 34). Some of the
things perceived by prophets can be known with certainty also through
demonstration. While for instruction in these things nonprophetic men
are not absolutely in need of prophets, they depend entirely on prophets
regarding those divine things that are not accessible to human speculation
or demonstration. Yet the nonrational element in the prophetic speeches is
to some extent imaginary, that is, infrarational. It is therefore a question
how nonprophetic men can be certain of the suprarational teaching of the
prophets, that is, of its truth. The general answer is that the suprarational
character of the prophetic speeches is confirmed by the supranatural testi¬
mony of the miracles (II 25, III 29). In this way the authority of the Law
as wholly independent of speculation is established wholly independently
of speculation. Accordingly the understanding or exegesis of the Law can
be wholly independent of speculation and in particular of natural science;
and considering the higher dignity of revelation, exegesis will be of higher
rank than natural science in particular; the explanations given by God Him¬
self are infinitely superior to merely human explanations or traditions. This
view easily leads to the strictest biblicism. “The difficulty of the Law” may
be said to arise from the fact that the miracles do not merely confirm the
truth of the belief in revelation but also presuppose the truth of that
belief; only if one holds in advance the indemonstrable belief that the vis¬
ible universe is not eternal can one believe that a given extraordinary event
is a miracle (II 25). It is this difficulty that Maimonides provisionally
solves by suggesting that Moses’ prophecy is unique because it is wholly
independent of the imagination, for if this suggestion is accepted, the diffi¬
culty caused by the presence of an infrarational element in prophetic
speeches does not arise. Yet if Moses’ prophecy alone is wholly independ¬
ent of the imagination, the Torah alone will be simply true, that is, liter¬
ally true, and this necessarily leads to extreme corporealism. Since corpore-
alism is demonstrably wrong, we are compelled to admit that the Torah is
not always literally true and hence, as matters stand, that the teaching of
the other prophets may be superior in some points to that of Moses.
The fundamental difficulty of how one can distinguish the suprarational,
which must be believed, from the infrarational, which ought not to be be¬
lieved, cannot be solved by recourse to the fact that we hear through the
Bible, and in particular through the Torah, “God’s book” par excellence
(III 12), not human beings but God Himself. It is indeed true in a sense
that God’s speech gives the greatest certainty of His existence, and His de¬
claring His attributes sets these attributes beyond doubt (cf. I 9 and 11, II
11); but God Himself cannot explain clearly the deepest secrets of the
Torah to flesh and blood (I Introd., 31 beginning); He “speaks in ac¬
cordance with the language of the children of man” (I 26); things that
might have been made clear in the Torah are not made clear in it (I 29);
God makes use of ruses and of silence, for only “a fool will reveal all his
purpose and his will” (I 40; cf. Ill 32, 45 and 54); and, last but not least,
as Maimonides explains in the Guide, God does not use speech in any
sense (I 23), and this fact entails infinite consequences. One is therefore
tempted to say that the infrarational in the Bible is distinguished from the
suprarational by the fact that the former is impossible, whereas the latter is
possible: biblical utterances that contradict what has been demonstrated
by natural science or by reason in any other form cannot be literally true,
but must have an inner meaning; on the other hand, one must not reject
views the contrary of which has not been demonstrated, that is, which are
possible—for instance, creation out of nothing—lest one become thor¬
oughly indecent (I 32, II 25).
Yet this solution does not satisfy Maimonides. Whereas he had orig¬
inally declared that the human faculty that distinguishes between the pos¬
sible and the impossible is the intellect, and not the imagination, he is
compelled, especially in his chapters on providence, to question this verdict
and to leave it open whether it is not rather the imagination that ought to
have the last word (I 49, 73, III 15). He is therefore induced to say that
the certainty of belief is one’s awareness of the impossibility of the alterna¬
tive or that the very existence of God is doubtful if it is not demonstrated
or that man’s intellect can understand what any intelligent being under¬
stands (I 50 and 51 beginning, 71, III 17). This is acceptable if the
Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot are indeed
identical with natural science and divine science and if these sciences are
demonstrative. But this enigmatic equation leaves obscure the place or the
status of the fact of God’s free creation of the world out of nothing: does
this fact belong to the Account of the Beginning or to the Account of the
Chariot or to both or to neither? (Cf. Commentary on the Mishnah,
Hagigah II 1.) According to the Guide, the Account of the Chariot deals
with God’s governance of the world, in contradistinction not only to His
providence (cf. I 44 on the one hand, and on the other I 40, where Mai¬
monides refers to III 2 and not, as most commentators believe, to the
chapters on providence, just as in III 2 he refers to I 40) but also to His
creation. By considering the relation of the Account of the Beginning and
the Account of the Chariot, one is enabled also to answer completely the
question that has led us to the present difficulty: the question concerning
the order of rank between the Mosaic theophany and the Isaian the-
ophany. The Account of the Beginning occurs in the Torah of Moses, but
the Account of the Chariot, which is identical with the divine science or
the apprehension of God (I 34), occurs in the book of Ezekiel and in its
highest form precisely in the sixth chapter of Isaiah (III 6; cf. also the
quotations from the Torah on the one hand and from other biblical books
on the other in III 54).
Once one has granted that there is an intrabiblical process beyond the
teaching of Moses, one will not be compelled to deny the possibility of a
postbiblical progress of this description. The fact of such a progress can be
proved only if there are characteristic differences between the Bible and
the postbiblical authoritative books. We could not help referring, for in¬
stance, to Maimonides’ tacit confrontation of the talmudic view according
to which the outer of the similes is “nothing” and of Solomon’s view ac¬
cording to which it is “silver,” that is, politically useful; taken by itself this
confrontation suggests that Solomon appreciated the political to a higher
degree than did the talmudic Sages. The differences in question are to
some extent concealed, since the postbiblical view ordinarily appears in the
guise of an explanation of a biblical text. Maimonides discusses this diffi¬
culty in regard to homiletic, rather than legal, explanations; he rejects both
the opinion that these explanations are genuine explanations of biblical
texts and the opinion that since they are not genuine explanations, they
ought not to be taken seriously; in fact the talmudic Sages used a poetic or
a charming device, playing as it were with the text of the Bible, in order to
introduce moral lessons not found in the Bible (III 43). He indicates that
he will not stress his critique of the talmudic Sages (III 14 end). Since the
emphasis on serious differences between the Bible and the Talmud could
appear in the eyes of the vulgar as a criticism of the talmudic Sages, he has
spoken on this subject with considerable, although not extraordinary, re¬
straint. Whenever he presents a view as a view of the Law, one must con¬
sider whether he supports his thesis at all by biblical passages and, if he
does so, whether the support is sufficient according to his standards as dis¬
tinguished from traditional Jewish standards. In other words, in studying a
given chapter or group of chapters one must observe whether he uses
therein any postbiblical Jewish quotations at all and what is the proportion
in both number and weight of postbiblical to biblical quotations.
In the first chapter explicitly dealing with providence (III 17), he speaks
of an addition” to the text of the Torah that occurs “in the discourse of
the Sages”; as one would expect, he disapproves of this particular “addi¬
tion. This statement is prepared by an immediately preceding cluster of
talmudic quotations that are in manifest agreement with the teaching of
the Torah and that strike us with particular force because of the almost
complete absence of talmudic quotations after the end of III 10. In this
twofold way he prepares his silence on the future life in his presentation of
the Torah view on providence: the solution of the problem of providence
by recourse to the future life is more characteristic of the postbiblical
teaching than of the Bible. According to the talmudic Sages, “in the future
life there is no eating, nor drinking” and this means that the future life is
incorporeal (M.T., H. Teshubah VII 3). It follows that the Talmud is

freer from corporealism than the Bible (I 46, 47, 49, 70, II 3). Accordingly
certain talmudic thoughts resemble Platonic thoughts and are expressed
with the help of terms of Greek origin (II 6). Similarly it was Onqelos the
Stranger who more than anyone else made corporealism inexcusable within
Judaism and may well have thought that it would be improper to speak in
Syriac (that is, Aramaic), as distinguished from Hebrew, of God’s per¬
ceiving an irrational animal (I 21, 27, 28, 36, 48; cf. II 33). The progress of
incorporealism is accompanied by a progress of asceticism. To mention
only one example, the Talmud is, to say the least, much clearer than the
Bible about the fact that Abraham had never looked at his beautiful wife
until sheer self-preservation compelled him to do so (III 8, 47, 49). There
is a corresponding progress in gentleness (I 30 and 54). Finally, the Tal¬
mud is more explicit than the Bible regarding the value of the intellectual
life and of learning for men in general and for prophets in particular (II
32, 33, 41, III 14, 25, 37, 54).
But even the Talmud and Onqelos do not contain the last word regard¬
ing the fundamentals, as Maimonides indicates by a number of remarks (I
21, 41, II 8-9, 26, 47, III 4-5, 14, 23). One example for each case must
suffice. The talmudic Sages follow at least partly the opinion according to
which the Law has no other ground than mere Will, whereas “we,” says
Maimonides, follow the opposite opinion (III 48). “We” is an ambiguous
term. As Maimonides has indicated by as it were opening only two chap¬
ters (I 62 and 63) with “we,” the most important meanings are “we Jews”
and “Maimonides.” As for Onqelos, he removes through his translation
the corporealistic suggestions of the original, but he does not make clear
what incorporeal things the prophets perceived or what the meaning of a
given simile is; this is in accordance with the fact that he translated for the
vulgar; but Maimonides explains the similes, and he is enabled to do so
because of his knowledge of natural science (I 28). Progress beyond
Onqelos and the Talmud became possible chiefly for two reasons. In the
first place, the ever more deepened effect of the Torah on the Jewish peo¬
ple as well as the rise and political victory of Christianity and Islam have
brought it about that the Sabian disease has completely disappeared (III
49, 29). Second, the fundamental verities regarding God are genuinely be¬
lieved in by nonprophetic men only when they are believed in on the basis
of demonstration, but this requires for its perfection that one possess the
art of demonstration, and the art of demonstration was discovered by the
wise men of Greece or the philosophers, or more precisely by Aristotle (II
15). Even Kalam, that is, what one may call theology or more precisely
the science of demonstrating or defending the roots of the Law, which is
directly of Christian origin, owes its origin indirectly to the effect of philos¬
ophy on the Law. In spite of its defects, the Kalam is very far from being
entirely worthless; and properly understood, as prior to Maimonides it was
not, it is even indispensable for the defense of the Law. Kalam entered
Judaism long after the talmudic period, in the Gaonic period (I 71, 73).
All the more must the introduction of philosophy into Judaism be re¬
garded as a great progress, if it is introduced in due subordination to the
Law or in the proper manner (that is, as Maimonides introduced it to
begin with in his legal works). One must also consider the considerable
scientific progress that was made by both Greeks and Muslims after Aris¬
totle’s time (II 4, 19). All this does not mean, however, that Maimonides
regarded his age as the peak of wisdom. He never forgot the power of what
one may call the inverted Sabianism that perpetuates corporealism through
unqualified submission to the literal meaning of the Bible and thus even
outdoes Sabianism proper (I 31); nor did he forget the disastrous effect of
the exile (I 71, II 11): “If the belief in the existence of God were not as
generally accepted as it is now in the religions [that is, Judaism, Christian¬
ity, and Islam], the darkness of our times would even be greater than the
darkness of the times of the sages of Babylon” (III 29). This is to say
nothing of the fact that Sabianism proper was not completely eradicated
and could be expected to have a future (cf. I 36). It goes without saying
that Maimonides also never forgot the Messianic future, a future that may
or may not be followed by the end of the world (cf. I 61 with II 27). In
spite of this, one is entitled to say that Maimonides regarded the step that
he took in the Guide as the ultimate step in the decisive respect, namely,
in the overcoming of Sabianism. As he modestly put it, no Jew had written
an extant book on the secrets of the Law “in these times of the exile” (I
Introd.). At the beginning, the power of Sabianism was broken only in a
limited part of the world through bloody wars and through concessions to
Sabian habits; those concessions were retracted almost completely by the
post-Mosaic prophets, by the Aramaic translators, and by the Talmud, to
say nothing of the cessation through violence of the sacrificial service and
the conversion of many pagans, which was assisted by military victories, to
Christianity or Islam. Now the time has come when even the vulgar must
be taught most explicitly that God is incorporeal. Since the Bible suggests
corporealism, the vulgar will thus become perplexed. The remedy for this
perplexity is the allegoric explanation of the corporealistic utterances or
terms that restores the faith in the truth of the Bible (I 35), that is, pre¬
cisely what Maimonides is doing in the Guide. But the progress in over¬
coming Sabianism was accompanied by an ever increasing oblivion of
Sabianism and thus by an ever increasing inability to remove the last, as it
were, fossilized concessions to Sabianism or relics of Sabianism. Maimon¬
ides marks a progress even beyond the post-Mosaic prophets insofar as he
combines the open depreciation of the sacrifices with a justification of the
sacrificial laws of the Torah, for his depreciation of the sacrifices does not
as such mean a denial of the obligatory character of the sacrificial laws. He
is the man who finally eradicates Sabianism, that is, corporealism as the
hidden premise of idolatry, through the knowledge of Sabianism recovered

by him. He recovered that knowledge also through his study of Aristotle,
who after all belonged to a Sabian society (II 23).
If the Torah for the Perplexed thus marks a progress beyond the Torah
for the Unperplexed, Maimonides was compelled to draw the reader’s
attention at an early stage to the difference between the biblical and the
postbiblical teaching. In that stage that difference alone was important.
Hence to begin with he treats the Bible on the one hand and the postbib¬
lical writings on the other as unities. Generally speaking, he introduces
biblical passages by “he says” (or “his saying is”) and talmudic passages by
“they say” (or “their saying is”). He thus suggests that in the Bible we
hear only a single speaker, while in the Talmud we hear indeed many
speakers who, however, all agree, at least in the important respects. Yet in
the first chapter of the Guide “he” who speaks is in fact first God, then
the narrator, then God, and then “the poor one”; in the second chapter
“he” who speaks is the narrator, the serpent, God, and so on; God “says”
something, and the narrator “makes clear and says.” But the Guide as a
whole constitutes an ascent from the common view, or an imitation of the
common view, to a discerning view. Accordingly, Maimonides gradually
brings out the differences concealed by the stereotyped, not to say ritual,
expressions. For instance, in I 32 he introduces each of four biblical quota¬
tions by the expression “he indicated by his speech”; only in the last case
does he give the name of the speaker, namely, David; the saying of David
is somewhat more akin in spirit than the preceding three sayings (of Solo¬
mon) to a saying of the talmudic Sages quoted immediately afterward; the
talmudic Sages had noted that Solomon contradicted his father David (I
Introd. toward the end). In I 34 he introduces by the expression they
say” the saying of a talmudic Sage who tells what I have seen. The un¬
named “he” who, according to I 44, spoke as Jeremiah’s providence was
Nebuchadnezzar. In I 49 he quotes five biblical passages; in two cases he
gives the names of the biblical authors, in one of the two cases adding
“may he rest in peace” to the name. In I 70 he introduces a talmudic pas¬
sage with the expression “They said,” while he says at the end of the
quotation, “This is literally what he said.” Names of biblical teachers occur
with unusual frequency in some chapters, the first of which is II 19 and the
last of which is III 32. Near the beginning of II 29 Maimonides notes that
every prophet had a diction peculiar to him and that this peculiarity was
preserved in what God said to the individual prophet or through him. The
prophet singled out for extensive discussion from this point of view is
Isaiah; thereafter six of the other prophets are briefly discussed in a se¬
quence that agrees with the sequence of their writings in the canon; only in
the case of the prophet who occupies the central place (Joel) is the name
of the prophet’s father added to the name of the prophet. One must also
not neglect the references to the difference between the Torah proper and
the Mishneh Torah, that is, Deuteronomy (cf. II 34-35 and III 24).
Maimonides link with the Torah is, to begin with, an iron bond; it gradu¬
ally becomes a fine thread. But however far what one may call his intellec-
tualization may go, it always remains the intellectualization of the Torah.
Our desire to give the readers some hints for the better understanding of
the second subsection compelled us to look beyond the immediate context.
Returning to that context, we observe that after Maimonides has con¬
cluded the second subsection, he again does something perplexing. The last
chapter of the second subsection dealt with “foot”; that passage of the
Torah on which the second subsection is based speaks emphatically of
God s face and His “back”; nothing would have been simpler for
Maimonides than to devote the third subsection to terms designating parts
of the animate body or of the animal. Instead he devotes the fourth sub¬
section to this subject; the first two chapters of the fourth subsection are
devoted precisely to “face” and to “back” (I 37 and 38). The third subsec¬
tion, which deals with an altogether different subject, thus seems to be out
of place or to be a disconcerting insertion. Furthermore, the third subsec¬
tion is the least exegetic or the most speculative among the subsections de¬
voted to incorporeality; six of its eight chapters are not lexicographic; five
of them are in no obvious sense devoted to the explanation of biblical
terms and do not contain a single quotation from the Torah; one of these
chapters (I 31) is the first chapter of the Guide that does not contain a
single Jewish (Hebrew or Aramaic) expression, and another (I 35) does
not contain a single quotation of Jewish (biblical or talmudic) passages.
One is tempted to believe that it would have been more in accordance
with the spirit of the book if the most speculative among the subsections
devoted to incorporeality had formed the end of the part devoted to that
subject.
In order to understand these apparent irregularities, it is best to start
from the consideration that, for the general reason indicated, Maimonides
desired to divide each of the seven sections of the Guide into seven subsec¬
tions and that for a more particular reason he decided to treat unity in
three subsections; hence incorporeality had to be treated in four subsec¬
tions. Furthermore, it was necessary to place almost all lexicographic chap¬
ters within the part treating incorporeality, or conversely it was necessary
that the majority of chapters dealing with incorporeality should be lexico¬
graphic. For the reasons given where they had to be given, it proved conve¬
nient that the majority of chapters of the first subsection should be non-
lexicographic and the majority of chapters of the second subsection should
be lexicographic. It is this proportion of the first two subsections that
Maimonides decided to imitate in the last two subsections devoted to
incorporeality: the majority of chapters of the third subsection became
nonlexicographic, and the majority of chapters of the fourth subsection
became lexicographic, but—for a reason to be indicated presently—in such
a way that the third subsection is more predominantly nonlexicographic

than the first, and the fourth subsection is more predominantly lexico¬
graphic than the second. It is reasonable to expect that the distribution of
lexicographic and nonlexicographic chapters among the four subsections
has some correspondence to the subject matter of those subsections. If one
defines their subject matter by reference to the subject matter of their lexi¬
cographic chapters, one arrives at this result: the first subsection deals with
the specific form, the sexual difference, and generating, while the third
subsection deals with sorrow and eating; the second subsection deals chiefly
with acts of local motion or rest, while the fourth subsection deals chiefly
with the parts of the animate body and sense perception. To understand
this arrangement it suffices both to observe that the first quotation regard¬
ing sorrow is “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (Gen. 3:16) and
to read Maimonides’ explanation (in I 46) of the relation that links the
parts of the animal and its acts to the ends of preservation. Furthermore, it
would be a great mistake to believe that the emphasis on sorrow and eating
is weakened because these two themes are the only lexicographic themes of
the subsection in which they are discussed. Finally, Maimonides used in
the most appropriate manner the lexicographic chapters devoted to sorrow
and to eating as an introduction to the first series of speculative chapters
occurring in the Guide and thus brought it about that the third subsection
(in contradistinction to the first and the second) ends with nonlexico¬
graphic chapters (I 31-36); he thus prepared a similar ending of the
fourth subsection (I 46-49); this enabled him to indicate by the position
of the next lexicographic chapter (I 70), which is the last lexicographic
chapter, as clearly as possible the end of the first section or the fact that I
1-70 form the first section.
The term ‘asab, which wre thought convenient in our context to render
by “sorrow,” as well as the term “eating,” may refer to God’s wrath with
those who rebel against Him or to His enmity to them. Since His wrath is
directed exclusively against idolatry and since His enemies are exclusively
the idolaters (I 36), the two terms refer indirectly to idolatry. But “eating”
is used also for the acquisition of knowledge. With a view to this second
metaphoric meaning of “eating,” Maimonides devotes to the subject of
human knowledge the five speculative chapters immediately following the
explanation of “eating” (I 30). In the last chapter of the subsection (I 36)
he reconsiders the prohibition against idolatry on the basis of what has
emerged in the five speculative chapters. The third subsection deals then
with both idolatry and knowledge in such a way that the discussion of idol¬
atry surrounds the discussion of knowledge. This arrangement affects the
discussion of knowledge: Maimonides discusses knowledge with a view to
its limitations, to the harm that may come from it, and to the dangers
attending it. One can say that the first series of speculative chapters occur¬
ring in the Guide deals with forbidden knowledge (cf. particularly I
32)—forbidden to all or to most men—within the context of forbidden

worship.
The third subsection throws light on the relation between the Bible and
the Talmud. Since we have treated this subject before, we limit ourselves
to the following remark. In the chapter dealing with “eating,” Maimonides
explicitly refuses to give an example of the use of the word in its primary
meaning: the derivative meaning according to which the word designates
the taking of noncorporeal food has become so widespread as to become as
it were the primary meaning (cf. the quotation from Isa. 1:20 with Isa.
1:19). Regarding the meaning of “eating” as consuming or destroying,
which he illustrates by four quotations from the Torah and two quotations
from the prophets, he says that it occurs frequently, namely, in the Bible;
regarding the meaning of “eating” as acquiring knowledge, which he illus¬
trated by two quotations from Isaiah and two from the Proverbs, he says
that it occurs frequently also in the discourse of the talmudic Sages, and he
proves this by two quotations. No talmudic quotation has illustrated the
meanings of ‘asab. The talmudic Sages compared the acquisition of
knowledge of the divine things to the eating of honey and applied to that
knowledge the saying of Solomon: “Hast thou found honey? Eat so much
as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.” They
thus taught that in seeking knowledge one must not go beyond certain
limits: one must not reflect on what is above, what is below, what was be¬
fore, and what will be hereafter—which Maimonides takes to refer to
“vain imaginings” (I 32): Maimonides, who explains what is meant by the
fact that man has a natural desire for knowledge (I 34), warns, not against
the desire for comprehensive knowledge, but against seeming knowledge.
With regard to the fourth subsection, we must limit ourselves to the ob¬
servation that it is the first subsection that lacks any reference to philoso¬
phy or philosophers. On the other hand the expression “in my opinion”
(‘indi), which indicates the difference between Maimonides’ opinion and
traditional opinions, occurs about twice as frequently in the fourth subsec¬
tion as in the first three subsections taken together. Another substi¬
tute is the references to grammarians in I 41 and 43—references that ought
to be contrasted with the parallels in I 8 and 10—as well as the rather fre¬
quent references to the Arabic language. One grammarian is mentioned by
name: Ibn Janah, that is, the Son of Wing who with the help of Arabic
correctly interpreted the Hebrew term for “wing” as sometimes meaning
“veil” and who may therefore be said to have uncovered “Wing.” Another
substitute is the reference ( in I 42) to an Andalusian interpreter who, in
agreement with Greek medicine, had explained as a natural event the
apparent resurrection of the son of a widow by the prophet Elijah.
Through his quotations from the Bible in the same chapter Maimonides
refers among other things to a severe illness caused by the circumcision of
adults as well as to the biblical treatment of leprosy. The chapter in ques-
tion deals with the Hebrew term for “living”; that term is the only one
occurring in the lexicographic chapters of this subsection that is not said to
be homonymous; this silence is pregnant with grave implications regarding
“the living God” (cf. I 30 and 41).
The last chapter of the fourth subsection is the only chapter of the
Guide that opens with the expression “The angels.” This chapter sets forth
the assertion that the angels are incorporeal, that is, it deals with the incor¬
poreality of something of which there is a plurality. Maimonides thus
makes clear that incorporeality, and not unity, is still the theme as it had
been from the beginning. The next chapter opens the discussion of unity.
Incorporeality has presented itself as a consequence of unity; unity has
been the presupposition, an unquestioned presupposition. Unity now
becomes the theme. We are told at the beginning that Unity must be
understood clearly, not, as it is understood by the Christians, to be compat¬
ible with God's trinity, or, more generally stated, with a multiplicity in
God (I 50). In the fifth subsection Maimonides effects the transformation
of the common, not to say traditional, understanding of unity, which
allowed a multiplicity of positive attributes describing God Himself, into
such an understanding as is in accordance with the requirements of specu¬
lation. The fifth subsection is the first subsection of the Guide that may be
said to be entirely speculative. Hence the discussion of unity, in contradis¬
tinction to the discussion of incorporeality, is characterized by a clear, if
implicit, distinction between the speculative and the exegetic discussion of
the subject. In the first four subsections there occurred only one chapter
without any Jewish expression; in the fifth subsection five such chapters
occur. In the first forty-nine chapters there occurred only nine chapters
without any quotation from the Torah; in the eleven chapters of the fifth
subsection ten such chapters occur. In spite of its speculative character the
fifth subsection does not demonstrate that God is one; it continues the
practice of the preceding subsections by presupposing that God is one (I
53, 58, 68). Yet from this presupposition it draws all conclusions and not
merely the conclusion that God is incorporeal: if God is one, one in every
possible respect, absolutely simple, there cannot be any positive attribute
of God except attributes describing His actions.
Maimonides knows by demonstration that God is one. The addressee,
being insufficiently trained in natural science (cf. I 55 with I 52), does not
know unity by demonstration, but through the Jewish tradition and ulti¬
mately through the Bible. The most important biblical text is “Hear, O
Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4; cf. M.T., H.
Yesodei ha-Torah I 7). To our very great amazement, Maimonides does
not quote this verse a single time in any of the chapters devoted to unity.
He quotes it a single time in the Guide, imitating the Torah, which, as he
says, mentions the principle of unity, namely, this verse, only once (Resur-
rection 20, 1-2). He quotes the verse in III 45, that is, the 169th chapter.
thus perhaps alluding to the thirteen divine attributes (“merciful, gra¬

cious . . .”) proclaimed by God to Moses. Whatever else that silence may
mean, it certainly indicates the gravity of the change effected by Maimoni-
des in the understanding of unity. The demonstrated teaching that positive
attributes of God are impossible stems from the philosophers (I 59, III
20); it clearly contradicts the teaching of the Law insofar as the Law does
not limit itself to teaching that the only true praise of God is silence, but it
also prescribes that we call God “great, mighty, and terrible” in our
prayers. Hence the full doctrine of attributes may not be revealed to the
vulgar (I 59) or is a secret teaching. But since that doctrine (which in¬
cludes the provision that certain points that are made fully clear in the
Guide are not to be divulged) is set forth with utmost explicitness and
orderliness in that book, it is also an exoteric teaching (I 35), if a philo¬
sophic exoteric teaching.
As Maimonides indicates, the meaning of “the Lord is one” is primarily
that there is no one or nothing similar or equal to Him and only deriva¬
tively that He is absolutely simple (cf. I 57 end with I 58). He develops
the notion of God’s incomparability, of there being no likeness whatso¬
ever between Him and any other being, on the basis of quotations from
Isaiah and Jeremiah as distinguished from the Torah (cf. I 55 with I 54).
He is silent here on Deuteronomy 4:35 (“the Lord he is God; there is
none else beside him”), on a verse that he quotes in a kindred context in
his Code (H. Yesodei ha-Torah 14) and in different contexts in the Guide
(II 33, III 32 and 51). Yet absolute dissimilarity or incomparability to
everything else is characteristic of nothing as well as of God. What is
meant by God’s absolute dissimilarity or incomparability is His perfection;
it is because He is of incomparable perfection that He is incomparable; it is
because He is of unspeakable perfection that nothing positive can be said
of Him in strict speech and that everything positive said of Him is in fact
(if it does not indicate His actions rather than Himself) only the denial of
some imperfection. The meaning of the doctrine of attributes is that God
is the absolute perfect being, the complete and perfectly self-sufficient
good, the being of absolute beauty or nobility (I 35, 53, 58, 59, 60 end, II
22). If this were not so, Maimonides’ doctrine of attributes would be en¬
tirely negative and even subversive. For that doctrine culminates in the
assertion that we grasp of God only that He is and not what He is in such
a manner that every positive predication made of Him, including that He
is, has only the name in common with what we mean when we apply
such predications to any being (I 56, 58, 59, 60). If we did not know that
God is absolutely perfect, we would ascribe we know not what to what we
do not know, in ascribing to Him “being,” or we would ascribe nothing to
nothing, we certainly would not know what we were talking about. What
is true of being is true of “one,” that is, of the immediate presupposition
of the whole argument of the first section of the Guide. Let no one say
that Maimonides admits attributes of action as distinguished from the

negative attributes; for, not to enter into the question whether this distinc¬
tion is ultimately tenable (cf. I 59), through the attributes of action God is
understood as the cause of certain effects, and it is difficult to see how
“cause,” if applied to God, can have more than the name in common with
“cause” as an intelligible expression. But since we understand by God the
absolutely perfect being, we mean the goodness of His creation or govern¬
ance when we say that He is the “cause” of something (cf. I 46). By his
doctrine of attributes Maimonides not only overcomes all possible anthropo¬
morphisms but also answers the question whether the different perfec¬
tions that God is said to possess in the highest degree are compatible with
one another or whether certain perfections known to us as human
perfections—for instance, justice—can be understood to constitute in their
absolute form divine perfection: God’s perfection is an unfathomable
abyss. Thus we understand why the doctrine in question, in spite of its
philosophic origin, can be regarded as the indeed unbiblical but neverthe¬
less appropriate expression of the biblical principle, namely, of the biblical
teaching regarding the hidden God who created the world out of nothing,
not in order to increase the good—for since He is the complete good, the
good cannot be increased by His actions—but without any ground, in abso¬
lute freedom, and whose essence is therefore indicated by “Will,” rather
than by “Wisdom” (III 13).
From the speculative discussion of the divine attributes, which as posi¬
tive predications about God Himself proved to be mere names, Maimoni¬
des turns in the second of the three subsections dealing with unity to the
purely exegetic discussion of the divine names; the exegetic discussion still
deals with “the denial of attributes” (I 62 and 65 beginning). It seems
that the audible holy names have taken the place of the visible holy
images, and it is certain that “name” is connected with “honor” and every¬
thing related to honor. The difficulty is caused less by the multiplicity of
divine names—for, as the prophet says, in the day of the Lord “the Lord
shall be one and his name shall be one” (Zech. 14:9)—than by the fact
that this most sacred name, the only divine name antedating creation (I
61), is communicated to men by God (Exod. 6:2-3) and not coined or
created by human beings. Since God does not speak, Maimonides must
therefore open the whole question of God’s speaking, writing, and ceasing
to speak or to act (I 65-67). Furthermore, the most sacred name, which is
the only name indicating God’s essence and which thus might be thought
to lead us beyond the confines of human speculation, is certainly no longer
intelligible, since we know very little of Hebrew today (I 61-62). There¬
fore in the last subsection devoted to unity (I 68-70), which is the last
subsection of the first section, Maimonides returns to speculation. It would
be more accurate to say that he now turns to philosophy. In the three
chapters in question he refers to philosophy, I believe, more frequently
than in the whole discussion of incorporeality (I M9) and certainly more

frequently than in the speculative discussion of the attributes (I 50-60);
in the exegetic discussion of the divine names (I 61-67), if I am not mis¬
taken, he does not refer to philosophy at all. He now with the support of
the philosophers takes up the subject that we cannot help calling the
divine attribute of intellect as distinguished from the divine attribute of
speech in particular (cf. I 65 beginning). We learn that in God the triad
intellect, intellecting, and the intellected” are one and the same thing in
which there is no multiplicity, just as they are one in us when we actually
think (I 68). Maimonides does not even allude here to the possibility that
intellect when applied to God has only the name in common with “in¬
tellect when applied to us. It may be true that God thinks only Himself
so that His intellection is only self-intellection and is therefore one and
simple in a way in which our intellection cannot be one and simple, but
this does not contradict the univocity of “intellect” in its application to
God and to us. Self-intellection is what we mean when we speak of God as
living (cf. I 53). It follows that even “life” is not merely homonymous
when applied to God and to us. It likewise follows that what is true of the
intellect is not true of the will: the act of willing and the thing willed as
willed are not the same as the act of thinking and the thing thought as
thought are the same. The reader of the next chapter (I 69) may find this
observation useful for understanding Maimonides’ acceptance of the philo¬
sophic view according to which God is not only the efficient or moving and
the final cause of the world but also the form of the world or, in the ex¬
pression of the Jewish tradition, “the life of the worlds,” which he says
means “the life of the world.”
This must suffice toward making clear the perplexing and upsetting
character of Maimonides’ teaching regarding unity. The true state of
things is somewhat obscured, to say nothing of other matters, by a certain
kind of learning that some readers of the Guide can at all times be pre¬
sumed to possess: the doctrine of attributes restates the Neoplatonic teach¬
ing, and Neoplatonism had affected Jewish thinkers long before Maimoni¬
des; those thinkers had already succeeded somehow in reconciling Neopla¬
tonism with Judaism. But when different men do the same thing, it is not
necessarily the same thing, and Maimonides surely did not do exactly the
same thing as the pagan, Islamic, or Jewish Neoplatonists who preceded
him. Every open-minded and discerning reader must be struck by the
difference between the hidden God of Maimonides’ doctrine of attributes
and the hidden God who spoke to the Patriarchs and to Moses or, to em¬
ploy Maimonides’ manner of expression, by the difference between the
true understanding of God as it was possessed by the Patriarchs and by
Moses and the understanding of God on the part of the uninitiated
Jews. The result of his doctrine of the divine attributes is that the notion
of God that gives life and light to the ordinary believers not only is inade-
quate or misleading but is the notion of something that simply does not
exist—of a merely imaginary being, the theme of deceived and deceiving
men (I 60). What is true of the ordinary believer is true at least to some
extent of the addressee of the Guide. The destruction of the old founda¬
tion forces him to seek for a new foundation: he is now compelled to be
passionately concerned with demonstration, with the demonstration not
only of God’s unity but of His very being in a sense of “being” that cannot
be entirely homonymous. For now he knows that the being of God is
doubtful as long as it is not established by demonstration (I 71). Now he
has been brought to the point where he must make up his mind whether
or not he will turn altogether to the way of demonstration. Maimonides
shows him three ways of demonstrating God’s being, unity, and incorpo¬
reality: the way of the Kalam, the way of the philosophers, and Maimoni¬
des’ own way (I 71 end, 76 end, II 1 end). While Maimonides cannot
simply accept the philosophers’ way, he prefers it to that of the Kalam for
the following reason. The Kalam begins, not from the world as we know it
through our senses or from the fact that things have determinate natures,
but from asserting that what the philosophers call the nature, say, of air is
only custom and hence of no inherent necessity: everything could be en¬
tirely different from what it is. The Kalam cannot live without reference
to what we know through our senses, for in contradistinction to simple be¬
lief whose first premise is the absolute will of God, it attempts to demon¬
strate that God is, and hence it must start from the given and at the same
time it must deny the authoritative character of the given. The philoso¬
phers on the other hand start from what is given or manifest to the senses
(171,73).
Maimonides turns first to the analysis and critique of the Kalam
demonstrations. He presents the premises of the Kalam (I 73) and then
the Kalam demonstrations that are based on those premises (I 74-76).
Maimonides’ critique does not limit itself to the technical Kalam reason¬
ing. For instance, the first proof of the createdness of the world and there¬
with of the being of the Creator assumes that the bodies that we see
around us have come into being through an artificer and infers from this
that the world as a whole is the work of an artificer. This proof, which does
not make any use of the premises peculiar to the Kalam, is based on in¬
ability, or at any rate failure, to distinguish between the artificial and the
natural. The second proof is based on the premise that no infinite what¬
ever is possible; it therefore first traces men to a first man, Adam, who
came out of dust, which in turn came out of water, and then traces water
itself to unqualified nothing out of which water could not have been
brought into being except by the act of the Creator (I 74; cf. Logic chaps.
7, 8, 11). It is not difficult to recognize in this proof elements of biblical
origin. Since the Kalam premises as stated by Maimonides are necessary
for the Kalam proofs (I 73 beginning and toward the end) and the
Kalam proofs do not in all cases follow from those premises, those prem¬
ises while necessary are not sufficient. After all, the Kalam selected its
premises with a view to proving the roots of the Law: the premise of its
premises is those roots. While the First Part ends with the critique of the
Kalam, the Second Part opens with “The premises required for establish¬
ing the being of God and for demonstrating that He is not a body nor a
force in a body and that He is one,” that is, with the premises established
by the philosophers. Maimonides thus indicates that the seventy-six chap¬
ters of the First Part, which lead up to philosophy through a critique of the
popular notions of God as well as of theology, are negative and prephilo-
sophic, whereas the one hundred and two chapters of the Second and
Third Parts are positive or edifying. In other words, the First Part is chiefly
devoted to biblical exegesis and to the Kalam, that is, to the two translogi-
cal and transmathematical subjects mentioned even in the very Epistle
Dedicatory.
The Kalam proves that God as the Creator is, is one, and is incorporeal
by proving first that the world has been created; but it proves that premise
only by dialectical or sophistical arguments. The philosophers prove that
God is, is one, and is incorporeal by assuming that the world is eternal, but
they cannot demonstrate that assumption. Hence both ways are defective.
Maimonides way consists in a combination of these two defective ways.
For, he argues, “the world is eternal—the world is created” is a complete
disjunction; since God’s being, unity, and incorporeality necessarily follow
from either of the only two possible assumptions, the basic verities have
been demonstrated by this very fact (I 71, II 2). Yet the results from
opposed premises cannot be simply identical. For instance, someone might
have said prior to World War II that Germany would be prosperous re¬
gardless of whether she won or lost the war; if she won, her prosperity
would follow immediately; if she lost, her prosperity would be assured by
the United States of America who would need her as an ally against Soviet
Russia; but the predictor would have abstracted from the difference be¬
tween Germany as the greatest power which ruled tyrannically and was
ruled tyrannically, and Germany as a second-rank power ruled democrati¬
cally. The God whose being is proved on the assumption of eternity is the
unmoved mover, thought that thinks only itself and that as such is the
form or the life of the world. The God whose being is proved on the
assumption of creation is the biblical God who is characterized by Will
and whose knowledge has only the name in common with our knowledge.
If we consider the situation as outlined by Maimonides, we see that what is
demonstrated by his way is only what is common to the two different no¬
tions of God or what is neutral to the difference between God as pure In¬
tellect and God as Will or what is beyond that difference or what has only
the name in common with either Intellect or Will. But God thus under¬
stood is precisely God as presented in the doctrine of attributes: Maimoni-
des’ demonstration of God’s being illumines retroactively his merely as-

sertoric doctrine of attributes. God thus understood can be said to be more
extramundane not only than the philosophers’ God but even than the bib¬
lical God; this understanding of God lays the foundation for the most
radical asceticism both theoretical and practical (III 51). In other words,
both opposite assumptions lead indeed to God as the most perfect being;
yet even the Sabians regard their god, that is, the sphere and its stars, as
the most perfect being (III 45); generally stated, everyone understands by
God the most perfect being in the sense of the most perfect possible being;
the doctrine of attributes understood in the light of its subsequent demon¬
stration leads to God as the most perfect being whose perfection is charac¬
terized by the fact that in Him Intelligence and Will are indistinguishable
because they are both identical with His essence (cf. I 69). Yet, since the
world is of necessity either created or eternal, it becomes necessary to re¬
store the distinction between Intellect and Will. Generally speaking, the
Guide moves between the view that Intellect and Will are indistinguish¬
able and the view that they must be distinguished (and hence that one
must understand God as Intelligence rather than as Will) in accordance
with the requirements of the different subjects under discussion (cf. II 25
and III 25). For instance, in his discussion of Omniscience—in the same
context in which he reopens the question regarding the relative rank of
imagination and intellect—Maimonides solves the difficulty caused by the
apparent incompatibility of Omniscience and human freedom (III 17) by
appealing to the identity of Intellect and Will, whereas in his discussion of
the reasons for the biblical commandments he prefers the view that the
commandments stem from God’s intellect to the view that they stem from
His will.
The reader of the Guide must consider with the proper care not only the
outline of Maimonides’ way but also all its windings. In doing this he must
never forget that the demonstration of the basic verities and the discussion
of that demonstration are immediately preceded by the discussion of unity
or that the discussion of unity constitutes the transition from exegesis to
speculation. If the world, or more precisely the sphere, is created, it is
indeed self-evident that it was created by some agent, but it does not nec¬
essarily follow that the creator is one, let alone absolutely simple, and that
he is incorporeal. On the other hand, if the sphere is eternal, it follows, as
Aristotle has shown, that God is and is incorporeal; but on this assumption
the angels or separate intelligences, each of which is the mover of one of
the many spheres, are as eternal as God (cf. I 71, II 2 and 6). It is there¬
fore a question whether monotheism strictly understood is demonstrable.
Maimonides does say that unity and also incorporeality follow from certain
philosophic proofs that do not presuppose either the eternity of the world
or its creation, but it is, to say the least, not quite clear whether the proofs
in question do not in fact presuppose the eternity of the world (cf. II 2
with II 1). Besides, if there were such proofs, one is tempted to say that
there is no need whatever for provisionally granting the eternity of the
world in order to demonstrate God’s being, unity, and incorporeality; yet
Maimonides asserts most emphatically that there is such a need. None of
these or similar difficulties is, however, by any means the most serious
difficulty. For while the belief in God’s unity, being, and incorporeality is
required by the Law, that belief, being compatible with the belief in the
eternity of the world, is compatible with the unqualified rejection of the
Law: the Law stands or falls by the belief in the creation of the world. It is
therefore incumbent on Maimonides to show that Aristotle or Aristotelian-
ism is wrong in holding that the eternity of the world has been demon¬
strated: the eternity of the world which was the basis of the demonstration
of God s being, unity, and incorporeality is a dubious assumption. Yet it is
not sufficient to refute the claims of Aristotelianism in order to establish
the possibility of creation as the Law understands creation, for if the world
is not necessarily eternal it may still have been created out of eternal mat¬
ter. Maimonides is then compelled to abandon or at any rate to refine the
disjunction on which his original argument was based. The original dis¬
junction (the world is either eternal or created) is incomplete at least to
the extent that it blurs the difference between creation out of matter and
creation out of nothing. It brings out the opposition between Aristotle and
the Law, but it conceals the intermediate possibility presented in Plato’s
Timaeus. Plato s version of the doctrine of eternity is not inimical to the
Law, for while Aristotle’s version excludes the possibility of any miracle,
the Platonic version does not exclude all miracles as necessarily impossible.
Maimonides does not say which miracles are excluded by the Platonic
teaching. Two possible answers suggest themselves immediately. It is
according to nature that what has come into being will perish; but according
to the Law both Israel and the souls of the virtuous have come into being
and will not perish; hence their eternity a parte post is a miracle—a miracle
that is more in accordance with creation out of nothing than with creation
out of eternal matter. Second, God’s special providence for Israel, according
to which Israel prospers if it obeys and is miserable if it disobeys, is a
miracle not likely to be admitted by Plato, whose teaching on providence
seems to have been identical with that presented in the Book of Job: prov¬
idence follows naturally the intelligence of the individual human being. In
accordance with his judgment on the relation between the Aristotelian
doctrine and the doctrine of the Law, Maimonides proves by an extensive
argument that the Aristotelian doctrine is not demonstrated and is in addi¬
tion not probable. As for the Platonic doctrine, he explicitly refuses to pay
any attention to it on the additional ground that it has not been demon¬
strated (II 13, 25-27, 29, III 18; Yemen 24, 7-10; Resurrection 33, 16-36,
17; Letter on Astrology jj§ 19 ff. Marx). That ground is somewhat strange
because according to Maimonides the Aristotelian and the biblical alterna-
fives have not been demonstrated either. In his critique of the Aristotelian
doctrine he makes use of the Kalam argument based on a premise that so
defines the possible that it might be either the imaginable or the nonself¬
contradictory or that regarding which we cannot make any definite asser¬
tions because of our lack of knowledge; the premise in question excludes
the view according to which the possible is what is capable of being or
what is in accordance with the nature of the thing in question or with
what possesses an available specific substratum (cf. I 75, II 14, III 15).
The reader must find out what the premises of the preferred premise are,
how Maimonides judges of those premises, and whether the argument
based on the premise in question renders improbable not only the eternity
of the visible universe but the eternity of matter as well.
At any rate, being compelled to question the Aristotelian doctrine,
Maimonides is compelled to question the adequacy of Aristotle's account
of heaven. That questioning culminates in the assertions that Aristotle had
indeed perfect knowledge of the sublunar things, but hardly any knowl¬
edge of the things of heaven, and ultimately that man as man has no such
knowledge: man has knowledge only of the earth and the earthly things,
that is, of beings that are bodies or in bodies. In the words of the Psalmist
(115:16): "The heavens, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth
hath he given to the children of Man.” Accordingly, Maimonides suggests
that the truth regarding providence, that is, that theological truth which is
of vital importance to human life, comes to sight by the observation of the
sublunar phenomena alone. Even the proof of the First Mover of heaven,
that is, the philosophic proof of God’s being, unity, and incorporeality, to
say nothing of the being of the other separate intelligences, becomes a
subject of perplexity (II 22, 24; cf. II 3, 19, III 23). And yet it was knowl¬
edge of heaven that was said to supply the best proof, not to say the only
proof, of the being of God (II 18). Maimonides has said earlier that very
little demonstration is possible regarding divine matters and much of it re¬
garding natural matters (I 31). Now he seems to suggest that the only
genuine science of beings is natural science or a part of it. It is obvious that
one cannot leave it at this apparent suggestion. The least that one would
have to add is that the strange remarks referred to occur within the context
in which Maimonides questions Aristotle’s account of heaven in the name
of astronomy or, more precisely, in which he sets forth the conflict between
philosophic cosmology and mathematical astronomy—that conflict which
he calls “the true perplexity”: the hypotheses on which astronomy rests
cannot be true, and yet they alone enable one to give an account of the
heavenly phenomena in terms of circular and uniform motions. Astronomy
shows the necessity of recurring for the purpose of calculation and predic¬
tion to what is possible in a philosophically inadmissible sense (II 24).
We have been compelled to put a greater emphasis on Maimonides’
perplexities than on his certainties, and in particular on his vigorous and
skillful defense of the Law, because the latter are more easily accessible
than the former. Besides, what at first glance seems to be merely negative is
negative only in the sense in which every liberation, being a liberation not
only to something but also from something, contains a negative ingredient.
So we may conclude with the words of Maimonides with which we began:
The Guide is "a key permitting one to enter places the gates to which were
locked. When those gates are opened and those places are entered, the
souls will find rest therein, the bodies will be eased of their toil, and the
eyes will be delighted.”
Marsilius of Padua
Marsilius, whose chief work is entitled Defender of the Peace (1324), was
a Christian Aristotelian. But both his Christianity and his Aristotelianism
differ profoundly from the beliefs of the most celebrated Christian Aristote¬
lian, Thomas Aquinas. Marsilius lives as it were in another world than
Thomas. In the whole Defender he refers to Thomas only once, but even
then, when he claims to quote Thomas, he in fact quotes only the state¬
ment of another authoritative Christian writer which Thomas had inserted
(with that writer’s name ) 1 in a compilation he had made. Thomas had
accepted the traditional ecclesiastical polity of the Roman Church. Marsil¬
ius admits that the Christian priesthood is divinely established as distinct
from the Christian laity, both being part of the Christian order; but he
denies that the ecclesiastical hierarchy is divinely established. According to
him all Christian priests are essentially equal in all respects as far as divine
right is concerned. He also denies that any priest, even if he be bishop or
pope, has by divine right any of the following powers: the power to com¬
mand or to coerce; the power to decide whether and how coercion is to be
exercised against apostates and heretics, be they subjects or princes; and the
power to determine in a legally binding way what is orthodox and what is
heretical. But we cannot go into Marsilius’ doctrine of the Church, al¬
though it was of the greatest political importance, especially during the
Reformation, for that doctrine belongs to political theology rather than to
political philosophy. By following this distinction, we do not distort Marsil¬
ius’ teaching, for he himself distinguishes throughout his work the political
teaching which is “demonstrated” by “human demonstration” from the
political teaching which is revealed by God immediately or mediately and
is therefore accepted by simple faith as distinguished from reason.2 This
is not to deny that the principle of his doctrine regarding the Christian
priesthood supplies the key to almost all the difficulties in which his work
185
abounds, for that principle explains his only explicit deviation from the
teaching of Aristotle.
As regards the principles of political philosophy, Marsilius presents him¬
self as a strict follower of Aristotle, “the divine philosopher” or “the pagan
sage.” 3 He explicitly agrees with Aristotle regarding the purpose of the
commonwealth: the commonwealth exists for the sake of the good life,
and the good life consists in being engaged in the activity becoming a free
man, that is, in the exercise of the virtues of the practical as well as of the
speculative soul. While practical or civic felicity “seems to be” the end of
human acts, in fact the activity of the metaphysician is more perfect than
the activity of the prince who is the active or political man par excellence.4
Marsilius explicitly agrees with Aristotle in regarding the purpose of the
commonwealth as the ground for the other kinds of causes (material,
formal, and moving) of the commonwealth and of its parts. He explicitly
agrees with him in very many other points. He has only one reservation
against Aristotle: Aristotle did not know one very grave disease of civil
society, an “evil thing, the common enemy of the human race” which must
be eradicated. This ignorance does not derogate from Aristotle’s supreme
wisdom. Aristotle did not know the “pestilence” in question because he
could not know it, for it was the accidental consequence of a miracle, and
it could have been even less foreseen by the wisest man than the miracle
itself. The miracle was the Christian revelation, and the grave disease arose
from the claims, in no way supported by Scripture, of the Christian
hierarchy—claims which culminate in the notion of papal plenitude of
power. Marsilius declares that this is the only political disease with which
he will deal, since the others have been properly dealt with by Aristotle.8
One ought therefore not even to expect to find a complete presentation of
political philosophy in the Defender. The work comes to sight as a kind of
appendix to that part of Aristotle’s Politics which may be said to deal with
the diseases of civil society.
Yet Aristotle’s unawareness of a single, if unusually grave, disease of civil
society is only the reverse side of his fundamental error: he was a pagan.
That error affects his political philosophy immediately only in one point,
however: in the teaching regarding the priesthood. He did not know the
true Christian priesthood, but only the false pagan priesthoods. This does
not mean that his teaching regarding the priesthood is entirely wrong. On
the contrary, within political philosophy that teaching is in the main cor¬
rect. He saw clearly that the priesthood forms a necessary part of the com¬
monwealth, even a noble part, but cannot be the ruling part: priests
cannot have the power to rule or to judge. He also saw clearly that it
cannot be left entirely to the individuals whether they become priests or
not; the number as well as the qualifications of the priests, and in particu¬
lar the admission of foreigners to priesthood in the commonwealth, is sub¬
ject to the decision of the government of the commonwealth. The Chris-
Marsilius of Padua / 187
tian revelation does not contradict this demonstrated teaching,6 since

revelation is indeed above reason, but not against reason. Nor is this all.
Aristotle did not indeed know the true ground of the priesthood, which
can only be divine revelation. But if not Aristotle, at any rate other philos¬
ophers (who, as philosophers, did not believe in another life) devised or
accepted allegedly divine laws accompanied with sanctions in another life,
because they held that such sanctions would induce the nonphilosophers to
avoid the vices and to cultivate the virtues in this life. Christianity is a truly
divine law, and the Christian faith in punishments and rewards after death
is the true faith; on the basis of the Christian faith one may then indeed
say that the commonwealth is directed toward both this-worldly felicity and
otherworldly bliss. But since the otherworldly end cannot be known or
demonstrated, political philosophy must conceive of that end as a postu¬
lated means for promoting the this-worldly end. Besides, while Christianity
is exclusively or chiefly concerned with the other life, it too makes men’s
fate in the other world dependent on how they lived in this world, and it
too contends that the belief in punishments and rewards after death is also
politically salutary.7 The reasoning of the pagan philosophers is then true
and therefore may be said to form a part of the demonstrated political
teaching. At any rate, that reasoning leads to the philosophic concept,
accepted by Marsilius, of the “sect” as a society constituted by belief in a
peculiar divine law or by a peculiar religion; that concept embraces equally
all allegedly and all truly divine laws, for the truth of the true religion
escapes philosophy as philosophy. This religiously neutral concept of the
sect is an essential part of Marsilian political science, just as it had been of
al-Farabi’s political science.8 It leads to the rational concept of the priest¬
hood according to which the priests are essentially teachers and not rulers
or judges: the essential function of the priests in any divine law is to teach
a salutary doctrine concerning the afterlife or, more generally, to teach the
divine law in which their society happens to believe. The priests are the
only teachers who as teachers form a part of the commonwealth.9 Accord¬
ing to Aristotle’s Politics, the priests form indeed one of the six parts of the
commonwealth, but their function does not consist in teaching. Marsilius’
deviation from Aristotle in this point is, however, not based on a mis¬
understanding; he deviates from the letter rather than from the spirit of his
master. By asserting that the priesthood is the only part of the common¬
wealth which is essentially dedicated to teaching, Marsilius draws our
attention to the most important fact that, according to Aristotle, the phi¬
losophers, so far from being the ruling part of the best commonwealth, as
they are according to Plato, are not even as such a part of any common¬
wealth, for the end of the commonwealth as commonwealth is not specula¬
tive perfection: cities and nations do not philosophize.
The fact that the pagan philosophers in general and Aristotle in particu¬
lar elaborated the rational teaching regarding the priesthood does not
mean that Aristotle’s whole teaching on this subject is true. According to

Aristotle, the action of the priest is less noble or perfect than the action of
the ruler, but in “the law of the Christians,” and only in that law, the
action of the priest is the most perfect of all. According to Aristotle, only
old men of the upper class ought to be priests, another point which is
denied by Christianity. Finally, according to Aristotle, the priests are
simply citizens, but, since the Christian priests ought to imitate Christ and
hence to live in evangelical poverty and humility, it would appear that they
must not have anything to do with the things that are Caesar’s.10
The diseases of the commonwealth which Aristotle had discussed endan¬
ger this or that kind of government or render good government impossible.
But in Marsilius’ opinion the disease with which the Defender is con¬
cerned renders any government impossible, for it destroys the unity of the
government and of the legal order, or it brings about permanent anarchy
since it consists in the belief that the Christian is subject in this world to
two governments (the spiritual and the temporal) which are bound to
conflict. That disease endangers not only the good life or the fruits of
peace, for the sake of which the commonwealth exists, but mere life or
mere peace which is merely the condition—although the necessary condi¬
tion—for the realization of the true end of the commonwealth. From this
we see how appropriate the title of Marsilius’ work is: the work is a de¬
fender, not of faith, but of peace, and of nothing but peace—not, to re¬
peat, because peace is the highest good or the only political good, but
because, being a tract for the time, the work is chiefly concerned with the
disease of the time. This is the reason why Marsilius apparently lowers his
sights. Thus he abstracts from the question concerning the best regime
without in any way denying its importance: any regime is better than
anarchy. Thus he is more concerned with mere law, with law as law, than
with good laws or the best laws, and with mere government than with the
best government. Thus he is satisfied with mere consent as the criterion of
legitimacy as distinguished from the level of consent. Aristotle had as it
were provided against Marsilius’ predicament. When Marsilius in effect
says that the law as law need not be good or just whereas the perfect law
must be just, he is in entire agreement with Aristotle’s remark that a ruler
is no less a ruler because he rules unjustly, or with the usage of Aristotle
and indeed of common sense which entitles us to speak of bad or unjust
laws; to say nothing of the fact that when Aristotle opposes slavery by
nature to slavery by law, he certainly does not mean by law a just law.
When Marsilius frequently or mostly abstracts from the fact that the
commonwealth is ordered toward virtue, he acts in entire agreement with
Aristotle’s observation that almost all cities are not concerned with
virtue—an observation which does not prevent Aristotle from calling those
bad cities “cities.” 11
Marsilius’ sole reservation against Aristotle was the immediate conse-
quence of the fact that Aristotle was a pagan. It concerned political philos¬
ophy or the rational political teaching only accidentally. Still, according to
Aristotle, the best polity is the rule of gentlemen who rule their city, a
fairly small society, and are enabled to do so because they are men of
wealth. How can such men be thought to be rulers in a Christian society
where they would have to rule Christian priests and hence the Church?
For in a Christian society the activity of the priest is more noble than that
of the ruler. Furthermore, the Church is universal. Finally, the best men in
Christendom, that is, the best Christians, must live in evangelical poverty.
This was the problem which Marsilius believed he had to solve and that he
had solved.
The problem of how to reconcile the Aristotelian principle (the men
dedicated to the most noble practical activity ought to rule in their own
right) with the Christian principle (the activity of the priest is more noble
than that of the gentleman) could seem to have been solved in the clearest
and simplest manner by the doctrine of papal plenitude of power. Mar¬
silius avoids that conclusion within the confines of political philosophy by
teaching that in every commonwealth the fundamental political authority
is not the government or the ruling part, but the human legislator, and
that the human legislator is the people, the whole body of the citizens. To
express this in the language of Rousseau, Marsilius asserts that the only
legitimate sovereign is the people, but that the sovereign is to be distin¬
guished from the government. He thus succeeds in subordinating the
Christian priests to the Christian laity, the Christian aristocracy to the
Christian populus or demos. But in taking these steps he seems to deviate
flagrantly from the teaching of his revered master, who may be said to have
identified the sovereign with the government and, above all, to have pre¬
ferred the sovereignty or government of the gentlemen (aristocracy) to the
sovereignty or government of the people (democracy).
Marsilius does not dispose of the difficulty by accepting Aristotle’s asser¬
tions according to which democracy or the rule of the vulgar is a bad
regime and the farmers, artisans, and money-makers, who constitute the
vulgar, are not in the strictest sense parts of the commonwealth. He rather
increases the difficulty by ascribing to Aristotle himself the following teach¬
ing: the legislative power must be entirely in the hands of the whole citi¬
zen body; the government ought to be elected by the whole citizen body
and ought to be responsible to it; the government must rule in strict
adherence to the laws, and if it transgresses a law it is liable to punishment
by the whole citizen body. This teaching ascribed to Aristotle is much
more democratic than Aristotle's authentic teaching: in the whole body of
the citizens, as Marsilius understands it, the vulgar must play a very great,
not to say a decisive, role. The reasoning in favor of the vulgar by which
Marsilius supports his teaching is indeed almost identical with the argu¬
ment in favor of democracy which Aristotle had reported and considered in
the course of his ascent from the defective regimes to aristocracy (or king-
ship). And Marsilius does not tire of explicitly quoting Aristotle in this
context, although not without strange misinterpretations. Still stranger is
his complete silence in this context about Aristotle’s antidemocratic argu¬
ment. He reports the antidemocratic argument, but omits any reference to
Aristotle. He quotes only one authority for the antipopulist position: the
saying of the wise king Solomon according to which “the number of the
fools is infinite.” Marsilius has not quoted any biblical passage in his popu¬
list reasoning; he thus perplexes us for a moment by making us think that
the Bible, or at any rate Solomon, might favor aristocracy. Yet he disposes
of this possibility by suggesting that the sage meant perhaps by the fools
the infidels who, however wise in the worldly sciences, are nevertheless
absolutely foolish, since, according to Paul, the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with God. For from this it follows that the faithful man, and
hence all the more the faithful multitude, is truly wise and hence perfectly
competent to make laws and to elect kings or magistrates.
There is at least one other remark of Marsilius which shows that his
belief in the competence of the people at large originated in his concern,
not with authority as such, but with authority in Christendom. He says in
effect that the necessity of giving the multitude power to legislate and to
elect officials is less evident than the necessity of entrusting the multitude
with the power to elect priests and remove them from their priestly offices;
for error in the election of a priest can lead to eternal death and to very
great harm in this life. That harm consists in the seduction of women dur¬
ing the secret conversations in the course of which they confess their sins
to a priest. It is obvious that the simplest citizen, and surely therefore the
faithful multitude, is as able to judge the trustworthiness of any individual
priest in such matters as the most learned men could be; and the simple
multitude might even be better informed in such respects than the
learned. Marsilius also suggests that the whole body of all the faithful
which is guided in its deliberations by the Holy Spirit, as distinguished
from the whole body of citizens as mere citizens, is infallible.12 By far the
most important argument for popular government, however, is supplied by
the example of the Church in its purest form, in which there were not yet
Christian princes, and the Church consisted exclusively of priests and a
multitude of such laymen as were subjects. Precisely in that epoch
“Church” meant only the whole body of the faithful, and thus all Chris¬
tians were ecclesiastics. Hence the traditional distinction between the
people and the clergy must be radically revised in favor of the people. In
accordance with the practice of the early Church, the election to all
priestly offices belongs to the whole multitude of the faithful. This reason¬
ing is not weakened but strengthened by the fact that in the very early
Church the multitude was uncivilized and inexperienced: if even then the
bishops were frequently elected by the multitude, this procedure is all the
more appropriate after the faith has taken root in both subjects and
princes.13
Let us return to the confines of political philosophy and consider
Marsilius doctrine of the human legislator somewhat more closely. He
devotes two whole chapters out of fifty-two to the statement, the proofs,
and the defense of that doctrine. He advances three proofs to which he
adds a fourth, but that fourth proof is, as he says, hardly more than a
summary of the first three. (1) The legislative power ought to belong to
those from whom alone the best laws can emerge, but this is the whole
citizen body; one reason is that no one harms himself knowingly and
hence, we may add, when each thinks of his interest, no one’s interest will
be neglected or the interest of all will be duly provided for. (2) The legis¬
lative power ought to belong only to those who can best guaranteee that
the laws made will be observed, but this is the whole citizen body, for each
citizen observes better a law, even if it is not good, “which he seems to
have imposed on himself”; the reason for this is that every citizen not only
is a free man, that is, not subject to a master, but desires to be a free man.
We may note that this argument causes a difficulty which Marsilius never
discusses regarding the God-given and hence not even apparently self-
imposed law. (3) What can benefit and harm each, and hence all, ought
to be known and heard by all so that all and each can attain the benefit
and repel the harm. The defense of the doctrine is stated in three argu¬
ments which are in the main taken from the populist reasoning reported by
Aristotle. In the second of the latter group of arguments, Marsilius illus¬
trates the danger of entrusting legislative power to a few or to one by re¬
ferring to the oligarchic or tyrannical character of the canon law.14 Marsil¬
ius’ populist thesis thus appears to be derived from his anticlericalism.
Marsilius ascribes the fundamental political power, the power of the
human legislator, not simply to the whole citizen body but to “the whole
citizen body or its stronger or superior part.” By the stronger or superior
part he certainly does not mean the unqualified majority. The stronger or
superior part, which as it were replaces the whole citizen body, must be
understood in terms of both number and quality, so that the vulgar may
not be entirely at the mercy of the better people nor the latter entirely at
the mercy of the former. The arrangement sketched by Marsilius might be
called a “polity”—a mean between oligarchy and democracy—were it not
for the fact that “polity” is a form of government, while Marsilius speaks
of the sovereign as distinguished from the government. Furthermore,
whereas in a democracy, in Aristotle’s sense, the common people partici¬
pate fully in deliberation and jurisdiction, Marsilius reserves these func¬
tions for the government or the ruling part as distinguished from the whole
citizen body or its stronger superior part.18 Above all, as Marsilius al¬
ready discloses in the chapters explicitly devoted to the definition of the
human legislator, the human legislator may delegate his legislative power
to one or to several men. Marsilius thus allows the sovereignty of the peo¬
ple to remain entirely dormant. In the same breath in which he proclaims
the transcendent virtue of everyone’s actually participating in legislation,
he dismisses that participation as irrelevant. One must go further and say
that he retracts the very principle of popular sovereignty. He compares the
position of the ruling part in the body politic to that of the heart in the
human body: it is that part which molds the other parts of the body poli¬
tic. But if this is so, the ruling part is not derivative from a pre-existing
sovereign, the human legislator, or the people, that is, the whole which
consists of all parts of the body politic in their proper proportion, but is
rather the cause of the alleged sovereign. In accordance with this Marsilius
compares the position of the ruling part in the commonwealth to that of
the prime mover in the universe, that is, of the Aristotelian God who
surely is not subject to laws made by the other parts of the universe. In a
word, Marsilius returns to the Aristotelian view according to which the
human legislator (the sovereign) is identical with the ruling part (the gov¬
ernment) or according to which the stronger or superior part is identical
with the ruling part; for in every stable political order, the ruling part,
whether it consists of one man or a few or the many, is as a matter of
course the stronger or superior part. Marsilius even explicitly identifies the
ruler with the legislator; for example, by calling the Roman emperors legis¬
lators. He does not leave it at saying that the human legislator can give the
ruler "plenitude of power.” He goes so far as to say that the ruler owes his
position to “the human legislator or any other human will”: the ruler may
owe his position to his own will.16
If the ruling part is the legislator it cannot be simply subject to the law.
Even in a republic, where no individual is the legislator and hence some¬
how above the law, it is sometimes necessary for an individual magistrate
to act illegally in order to save the republic, as Cicero did when quenching
the Catilinian conspiracy. When Marsilius suggests that the ruler is subject
only to the divine law, we must not forget that according to him the divine
law is not as such knowable to human reason nor does it as such have
coercive power in this world. Furthermore, if the ruling part (the govern¬
ment) is the legislator (the sovereign), the government is not subject to
punishment in case of misconduct for the same reason for which the sover¬
eign people in the populist hypothesis is not subject to punishment.17 To
sum up, in spite of its dogmatic tone, Marsilius’ populist teaching proves to
be, if in a different way, as provisional or as tentative as the democratic
argument in Aristotle’s Politics.
The characteristic of the Defender of the Peace viewed as a treatise of

political philosophy is that it very emphatically sets forth and literally at
the same time retracts the doctrine of popular sovereignty. What is the
meaning of this striking contradiction concerning the very foundation of
political society? What is the meaning of Marsilius’ vacillation between

populism and what one may call monarchic absolutism? One could say that
he takes the side of the people when the people is understood in contradis¬
tinction to the clergy and to nothing else, and that he takes the side of the
Roman emperors, ancient or medieval, against the popes. In other words,
the contradiction disappears once one assumes, as some scholars have done,
that the Defender is inspired by nothing but anticlericalism. He needed for
his anticlerical argument a populist basis because he had to appeal from
the accepted opinions regarding the Church to the New Testament. The
New Testament, while giving strong support to the demand for submission
to absolute monarchs or to despots, does not give support to Marsilius’
suggestion that the secular Christian rulers alone as distinguished from the
priests ought to rule the Church in everything affecting men’s fate in this
world (punishment of heretics and apostates, excommunication, property,
and so on); but the New Testament apparently gives some support to the
view that decisions in such matters rest with the whole body of the faithful
as distinguished from the priests alone. Marsilius’ “whole body of the citi¬
zens” is merely the philosophic or rational counterpart of “the whole body
of the faithful,” and he needs such a counterpart in order to provide his
anticlericalism with the broadest possible basis: both reason and revelation
speak against the rule of priests. This explanation implies that the funda¬
mental self-contradiction which is characteristic of the Defender is the
conscious outcome of a conscious strategy. Both the explanation and its im¬
plication are defensible; yet they do not account for certain features of
Marsilius’ populist teaching or for the essential character of strategies like
the one justly ascribed to Marsilius. They fail to account for the latter be¬
cause it is not sufficient to conceive of Marsilius as a perhaps skillful but
rather unscrupulous politician or advocate.
To find a way out of the difficulty, let us consider a Marsilian doctrine
which is not affected by either political theology or antitheological preoc¬
cupations: his doctrine of monarchy or kingship. He says that kingship is
“perhaps” the best form of government, but he makes it his business to
discuss the question as to whether hereditary or elective monarchy is pref¬
erable. He devotes to this subject only one chapter, but that chapter is
longer than the two chapters taken together which are apparently meant to
establish popular sovereignty. He decides in favor of elective monarchy
strictly understood, that is, of a monarchy in which each monarch, and not
a monarch and his descendants, is elected. This decision might have rec¬
ommended him to the pope, but with greater likelihood to the German
emperor, who was at that time engaged in a bitter fight with the pope and
who soon became Marsilius’ protector; it would not have recommended
him to the French king, for instance.18 Yet it was necessary for the success
of his venture—the venture aiming at the eradication of papal plenitude of
power and everything reminding of it—to obtain the good will of all secu-
lar princes. It can therefore be assumed that his preference for elective
monarchy over hereditary monarchy belongs to his final or serious political
teaching. He certainly never contradicts this preference as he contradicts
the doctrine of popular sovereignty. His argument in favor of elective king-
ship can be reduced to a single consideration. The most important quality
of the ruler is prudence, for the infinite variety of human affairs does not
permit an adequate regulation by laws, and prudence does not come by
inheritance. Prudence, that is, practical wisdom in contradistinction to
mere cleverness, is not separable from moral virtue and vice versa. Pru¬
dence is also and especially required for the making of good and just laws.
While prudence is then of the utmost importance, it is rare; nature gen¬
erated only a part of the human race apt for prudence, and still fewer men
actualize that potentiality. The foregoing consideration does not imply that
hereditary kingship is illegitimate; it merely means that hereditary kingship
is as such inferior to elective kingship. Hereditary kingship may even be
preferable to elective kingship in most countries at all times and in all
countries at the beginning of their political life, when all men are still un¬
civilized. For in most countries at all times and in all countries at the be¬
ginning or in their decay, prudence is as it were at best the preserve of a
single family, and there are therefore no prudent electors. Elective kingship
is superior to hereditary kingship because the former is suitable to a perfect
and civilized commonwealth, whereas the latter is suitable to a still imper¬
fect or irremediably uncivilized society.10
Now, this very consideration leads to the conclusion that to a perfect or
civilized commonwealth the rule of a number of prudent men, that is, aris¬
tocracy, is still more suitable than even elective monarchy, for there is no
reason why, if there exists in a commonwealth a number of prudent men,
as will be the case in a perfect commonwealth, all except one should always
be deprived of the highest honor; those unjustly deprived of their fair share
in government would justly engage in sedition. Marsilius devotes a whole
chapter to the proof that the indispensable unity of government is in no
way impaired if the government consists of a number of men instead of
one man. Not only hereditary kingship but kingship as such is proper only
at times and in places where there is an extreme paucity of men who are fit
to rule a commonwealth as, for instance, perhaps in Rome at the end of
the republic. Monarchy is the proper kind of government in the household
rather than in the perfect civil society. That aristocracy as distinguished
from kingship is possible only under the most favorable conditions, and
hence very rarely, in no way contradicts the fact that it is the most natural
regime. If the priests were as they ought to be, Marsilius argues, the gen¬
eral council of the Church could consist only of priests, for the most
important requirement for participation in such an assembly is thorough
knowledge of the divine law, which is the highest form of wisdom; but the
priests are not as they ought to be. This amounts to saying that in principle
aristocracy or the rule of the wise is preferable; only because the Church is
no longer an aristocracy, but, as Marsilius never tires of repeating, is now
an oligarchy, is it in need of correction by the best part of the laity; and the
laity is, in the Church, the popular element. Within his populist argument
Marsilius indicates that the devising and examining of the laws is the
proper business of the prudent men; the other members of society are of
little use in this matter and would only be disturbed in the performance of
their necessary work if they were called upon to do more than to act as
“formal” ratifiers. Such popular ratification of the laws would indeed seem
to be desirable, since it is likely to make the populace more willing to obey
the laws.20
Marsilius’ very vacillation between populism and absolute monarchy
may be said to point to aristocracy as the right mean between these two
faulty extremes. What speaks in favor of the legislative power of absolute
kings redounds also to the benefit of a sovereign government which con¬
sists of the prudent men of a city each of whom owes his position to co¬
optation by his peers rather than to popular election; and what speaks in
favor of the legislative power of “the stronger or superior part of the whole
citizen body” redounds to the benefit of what is in truth the stronger or
superior part in every city which is not either too young or small or else too
old or large for political excellence, namely, the most prudent and virtuous
citizens. Marsilius abstains from arguing in favor of kingship while he
argues emphatically in favor of popular sovereignty: the regime which he
favors is somewhat closer, not indeed to democracy, but to the “polity”
than to kingship. At the same time his populist argument points, through
its glaring defects, for instance, from the “polity” to an aristocracy which is
acceptable to the populace not only because of the inherent qualities of a
genuine aristocracy as the rule of the most prudent and virtuous citizens
but also because it respects the susceptibilities of the populace. Marsilius
presented the argument for aristocracy in the most subdued form because
that argument did not provide a sufficiently broad basis for the anticlerical
policy which he regarded as by far the most urgent task for his age. In
addition, the argument in favor of aristocracy would have redounded in the
opinion of the majority of his contemporaries to the benefit of the clergy,
for if political power is shown to belong by right to the wisest, it would
seem to follow that it belongs less to those wise in human wisdom than to
those wise in divine wisdom.
The strategy which Marsilius employed can then be explained by the
political impossibility which amounted to a physical impossibility of airing
the fundamental political issue. He could have an easy conscience in pro¬
ceeding as he did because he was satisfied that a government of priests was
impossible or undesirable. For according to him the New Testament not
only does not authorize government by priests, especially in secular mat¬
ters, but positively forbids it. In the Christian law, and only in the Chris-
tian law, the action of the priest as priest is the most perfect of all. But this
action requires a spirit and a way of life which are incompatible with ruler-
ship, for it requires contempt for the world and the utmost humility.
Christ excluded himself and the apostles from worldly rule in every form.
Paul forbade every priest to become entangled in any secular matter what¬
ever, since no one can serve two masters. The New Testament recognizes in
the strongest terms the duty of obedience to the human government
“which beareth not the sword in vain,” not so much for the defense of the
fatherland as for executing wrath upon the evildoers, and the New Testa¬
ment traces to sinful pride the view that bad rulers or masters may be dis¬
obeyed. Christian slaves are not permitted to demand that they be set free
after six years’ servitude as the Hebrew slaves are, for the Old Testament
law in question acquires in Christianity a purely mystical meaning.
Humility and contempt for the world can then go together perfectly with
sincere obedience to worldly masters.
Still, within the confines of political philosophy, Marsilius must put the
accents somewhat differently than the highest Christian authorities had
done. He almost goes so far as to defend the pagan rulers against the saying
of Christ that they “lord it over” their subjects. According to Paul, only
those that are “contemptible” in the Church, that is, those who possess
wisdom in things which are not spiritual, ought to be judges in worldly
matters. The demands of the Sermon on the Mount cannot be reconciled
with the status and the duties of governors and their lay subjects.21 The
perfect Christian community was the community of Christ and the apos¬
tles in which there was community of goods; but that community was
imperfect in other respects since it was meant to become universal, and yet
no provision was made for its unity in the future when it would have be¬
come a large society; it could become perfect only through the acts of
Christian princes. One is tempted to express Marsilius’ thought by saying
that it was nature which perfected grace rather than grace which perfected
nature. He even goes so far as to indicate that there is an opposition
between human government and divine providence, the former rewarding
in this world the just and the doers of good deeds and the latter inflicting
suffering on them in this world.22 Marsilius indicates the peculiarity of the
Christian law by saying that belief in God’s future judgment—a belief
which Christianity shares with all other religions—would induce the Chris¬
tian priests not to defraud the poor, while belief in the Christian religion
would induce the Christian priests to live in poverty. Evangelical poverty is
indeed according to him the inevitable concomitant of radical contempt
for this world or of radical humility. Within the confines of human reason,
however, wealth, just as honor, comes to sight as something good since it is
required for the exercise of moral virtue. But according to the Christian
teaching, voluntary poverty is so much required for perfection that those
who do' not live in voluntary poverty are bad Christians. In spite of this.
Marsilius can complain that the popes did not show proper gratitude for
having been raised by the Roman emperors from extreme poverty to
abundance of temporal goods. He appears to assume that Christian moral¬
ity and the worldly morality of the gentleman contradict each other or that
revelation is not simply above reason but against reason. This may be one
reason why he regarded the New Testament law as especially difficult to
fulfill.23
Marsilius has sometimes been celebrated as a defender of religious free¬
dom. Yet he does not go beyond raising the question as to whether it is
permitted to coerce heretics or infidels, while stating in the same context
that he does not wish to say that such coercion is inappropriate. He does
deny that such coercion can be exercised in this world on the basis of di¬
vine law. For according to Marsilius, no divine law has as such any coercive
power in this world unless by virtue of a human law which makes it a
crime to transgress the divine law in question. In addition, according to
the Christian divine law, which, of course, condemns heresy and infi¬
delity and buttresses that condemnation by the threat of punishment in
the other life, a man who is coerced into belief is not truly a believer; be¬
sides, Christian priests have not been given by Christ any coercive power.
In spite of this, the Christian human legislator, not as Christian but as
human legislator, may use coercion against heretics and infidels in this
world. This right can be illustrated by the following parallel. The Christian
divine law forbids drunkenness, but does not as such require that coercion
be used in this world against drunkards; yet it does not forbid the human
legislator to prohibit drunkenness under penalties in this world. Similarly,
the human legislator may enforce religious sobriety, that is, orthodoxy.
Whether or not he does so will depend on his judgment on heresy, for
instance. He may be guided by the biblical comparison of heresy to fornica¬
tion and hence permit heresy as he permits fornication, although for¬
nication, too, is forbidden by the Christian divine law. Or he may be
guided by the biblical comparison of heresy to leprosy and hence take
coercive action against heretics in compliance with the advice of experts
(the priests), just as he takes coercive action against lepers in compliance
with the advice of experts (the physicians). He may also be guided by the
facts that the New Testament surely permits excommunication and that
excommunication is bound to affect the excommunicated in this life.24
But apart from any theological consideration, that is, from any consider¬
ation peculiar to the Christian divine law, it is clear that if belief in divine
judgment in the other world is conducive to virtuous conduct in this world,
as even pagan philosophers admitted, it is not inappropriate for the human
legislator to protect that belief and its corollaries by forbidding speech
which may subvert that belief. This conclusion is not contradicted by Mar¬
silius’ teaching that human government is concerned only with “transe-
unt” as distinguished from “immanent” acts. According to that distinc-
tion (which may have been suggested to Marsilius by a passage in Isaac

Israeli’s Book of Definitions), those acts of our cognitive and appetitive
powers are immanent which, like thoughts and desires, remain within the
agent and are not performed by means of any of the locally moved mem¬
bers of the body, while the other acts of those powers are transeunt. In
other words, human government is concerned only with acts the commis¬
sion of which can be proved even if he who committed the act in question
denies having committed it. From this it follows that speeches are transe¬
unt acts. Since subversive speeches of the kind indicated may do harm to
others and to the community as a whole, their prohibition clearly falls,
according to Marsilius, within the jurisdiction of the human legislator.25
Marsilius surely did not preach freedom from religion.
Any divine law would lose much of its value if everyone subject to it
were free to understand its promises and threats as he pleases. The Chris¬
tian divine law in particular, with its emphasis on faith as the necessary
condition for eternal salvation, would have been given in vain, it would
have been given for men’s eternal perdition, if Christ had not provided
that the one true meaning of His divine law is accessible to all Christians.
The indispensable unity of faith is provided in a legally binding manner by
the universal or catholic Church, that is, by the whole body of the faithful,
insofar as it is the faithful human legislator who authorizes the general
councils and gives their decisions coercive power. This provision causes no
difficulty when there is a single human legislator of Christian faith whose
jurisdiction extends over the whole world. Such a legislator was, according
to an opinion adopted by Marsilius, the Roman people or derivatively the
Roman emperor. Marsilius tries to preserve this dignity for the Roman
emperors of his age. But he cannot conceal from himself or from his
readers the fact that there existed in his time a number of faithful human
legislators who did not recognize a superior or who were independent of
one another. There was then no longer a guarantee of the unity of faith
except within the borders of individual independent realms or common¬
wealths. Hence Marsilius regards it as advisable that the various Christian
sovereigns should agree in recognizing the bishop of Rome as “the univer¬
sal pastor,” but in his opinion they are not obliged to do so.26
Yet, as he points out, a universal pastor or universal bishop is less neces¬
sary than a universal prince, for a universal prince is obviously more
capable of keeping the faithful in the unity of faith than a universal bishop
could be. As a Christian, Marsilius seems then to be compelled, given his
premises, to demand that political society be universal strictly speaking—
and not only in pretense, or by courtesy, as the Roman empire was even at
the peak of its power—so that it can discharge its duties to the Christian
faith. He seems to be compelled, that is, to abandon the very last trace of
his doctrine of popular sovereignty or of the Aristotelian preference for
aristocracy which that doctrine partly represents; for neither democracy nor
aristocracy as understood by Marsilius and Aristotle is feasible in any but

fairly small societies. Yet in spite or because of all this, Marsilius denies
that a universal prince is necessary. For Scripture does not demand a
universal secular empire. Still less does reason demand it: peace among
men is sufficiently guaranteed—we may understand this to mean that
peace is guaranteed in the only possible way—if there exists unity of
government within the particular commonwealths or kingdoms. In his only
thematic discussion of the question concerning the desirability of a “world
state,” Marsilius refuses to decide it. He alludes to the difficulties obstruct¬
ing world government which are caused by distance and by the lack of
communication between the various parts of the world, as well as by the
differences of languages and the extreme differences of customs. He refers
to the view according to which all these things which separate men might
be due to a heavenly cause, that is, to nature which incites men, by means
of these divisive things, to wars in order to prevent overpopulation. Mar¬
silius makes it clear that, were it not for wars and epidemics, overpopula¬
tion would be inevitable if the human kind had no beginning and will have
no end, that is, if there is “eternal generation” or if the visible universe is
eternal.27 The Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the visible universe is
irreconcilable with the biblical doctrine of the creation of the world. The
Aristotelian doctrine of eternal generation is irreconcilable with the biblical
doctrine that there was “a ffrst man,” with the doctrine which is the prem¬
ise of the biblical doctrines that our first parents fell and that therefore
man is in need of redemption. Marsilius does not declare that the Aristote¬
lian doctrine is true. Still less does he declare that it is untrue because it
contradicts the most fundamental and the most manifest doctrines of the
Bible. The reader can therefore only guess whether Marsilius was a believer
or an unbeliever until he considers Marsilius’ discussion, presented in the
thirty-eighth chapter of the Defender (II 19), of the question concerning
the ground of the belief in the truth of the Bible.
Within the confines of political philosophy, Marsilius’ tacit opposition
to Thomas Aquinas shows itself most obviously in his teaching regarding
natural law or natural right. Marsilius denies that there is a natural law
properly so called. He presupposes that reason knows no other legislator
than man and hence that all laws properly so called are human laws:
reason is indeed capable of discerning what is honorable, what is just, and
what is of advantage to society. But such insights are not as such laws. Be¬
sides, they are not accessible to all men and hence not admitted by all
nations; for this reason they cannot be called natural. There are indeed cer¬
tain rules regarding what is honorable or just which are admitted in all
regions and are in addition enforced almost everywhere; these rules can
therefore metaphorically be called natural rights. In spite of their being
universally or generally admitted, they are not strictly speaking natural, for
they are not dictated by right reason. What is universally admitted is not
rational, and what is rational is not universally admitted. Among the rules
which can metaphorically be called “natural rights” Marsilius mentions the
rule that human offspring must be reared by the parents up to a certain
time; he may have regarded this rule as not unqualifiedly rational since
Aristotle had held that no deformed child should be reared. More gener¬
ally, if wars are by nature necessary in order to prevent overpopulation, the
distinction between just and unjust wars loses much of its force, and this
grave qualification of the rules of justice cannot but impair the rationality
of those rules of justice which are universally or generally admitted to ob¬
tain within the commonwealth. In other words, the universally admitted
rules of right are not rational since there exists a natural necessity to trans¬
gress them or since man does not possess freedom of will to the extent to
which both common opinion and the teaching of revelation assert it.28
One can understand Marsilius’ denial of natural law best if one starts
from the fact that he implicitly denies the existence of first principles of
practical reason. The cognitive status of the first principles of action in
Aristotle’s Ethics is obscure. One way of removing this obscurity—the way
preferred by Averroes and Dante—is to conceive of the first principles of
action and therefore also of politics as supplied by theoretical reason or
natural science: it is natural science which makes clear what the end of
man is. Let the end of man be the perfection of his mind, that is, the
actual thought of the metaphysician as metaphysician. The individual
human being who is capable of pursuing this end will then deliberate as to
how, given his circumstances, he can reach this end. This deliberation—an
act of practical reason—will in many points differ from individual to indi¬
vidual, but there are certain universal rules of conduct with which all men
must comply who wish to become perfect as men of speculation. Those
rules are, however, not universal strictly speaking since only a minority of
men is by nature capable of the contemplative life. But there is also an end
which all men are able to pursue; this is the perfection of their bodies. This
lower or first perfection requires among other things security in and
through political society. Here a profound ambiguity enters: political soci¬
ety is required, although in different ways, for the sake of both man’s first
and his ultimate (theoretical) perfection. However this may be, political
society in its turn requires a variety of “parts” (farmers, artisans, moneyed
men, soldiers, priests, governors, or judges) and a certain order of these
parts. It requires for its well-being that the legislators and the governors or
judges possess prudence and if not all at any rate some of the moral virtues,
especially justice. In agreement with Aristotle’s procedure in the Politics,
Marsilius deduces the necessity of those virtues from the purpose of civil
society, and the necessity of that purpose from the end or ends of man.
That is to say, deviating from the procedure which Aristotle had fol¬
lowed in his Ethics for educative or practical reasons, Marsilius does not
take those virtues as ultimates, as choiceworthy for their own sake. It is be-
cause Marsilius treats prudence and the moral virtues less as choiceworthy
for their own sake than as subservient to the two natural ends indicated
that his political science is more obviously and more emphatically “demon¬
strative” than Aristotle’s political science.29
Marsilius says much less than Aristotle even in his Politics about the
highest end which is natural to man. For the reasons indicated above he
lowered his sights. His doctrine of the commonwealth is reminiscent of the
suggestion in Plato’s Republic according to which the city of pigs is the
true city. His doctrine of the human law is reminiscent of Maimonides'
suggestion according to which the human law serves no higher goal than
the perfection of man s body, whereas the divine law brings about
the perfection of both the body and the mind.30 But Maimonides held
that the divine law is essentially rational and not, as it is according to
Thomas, suprarational. One may say that Marsilius combines Maimonides’
view of the human law with Thomas’ view of the divine law and thus ar¬
rives, within the confines of political philosophy, at the conclusion that the
only law properly so called is the human law which is directed toward the
well-being of the body. Marsilius was driven to take this view to some ex¬
tent by his anticlericalism. When antitheological passion induced a thinker
to take the extreme step of questioning the supremacy of contemplation,
political philosophy broke with the classical tradition, and especially with
Aristotle, and took on an entirely new character. The thinker in question
was Machiavelli.
NOTES
1. Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace, trans. with an introduction by

Alan Gewirth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), II 13.24 (= 169th
paragraph of Dictio II).
2. Ibid., I 9.2.
3. Ibid., I 11.2 beginning and 16.15 end.
4. Ibid., I 4.1; 1.7; II 30.4 end (cf. I 6.9 first par.).
5. Ibid., I 1.3-5, 7; 19.3 and 8-13.
6. Ibid., I 5.1; 15.10; 19.12 end. II 1.4; 8.9 toward the end; 30.5 (par 2)
7. Ibid., I 4.3-4; 5.11; 10.3. ’
8. Ibid., I 5.2, 3, 13; 10.3. II 8.4 end. (But cf. the derogatory meaning of "sect” in
9. Ibid., I 5.12; 19.4 (102, 22, ed. Previt6-Orton) and 5 beginning. II 6.10 end; 10.6-
20.13. Note that Marsilius does not quote Deut. 33:10.
10. Ibid., I 5.1, 13. II 13—14; 24.1 end; 30.4 (par. 1 end).
11. Ibid., I 1.1; 8.4; 10.4-5; 15.1; 17. II 4.5; 8.9; 28 end. Politics 1255b 13-15- 1276*
1-3; 1282b 7-13; 1324b 7-9; 1333b 5 ff. EN 1180* 24-35
12. Defender, I 5.1, 13; 8.3; 11 (esp. 11.6); 12.3, 4; 13.1, 3, 4. II 17.10-12; 21.3
and 9 end. Politics 1281* 40 ff. (esp. 1281b 23-25).
13. Defender, II 2.3; 15.8; 16.1 and 9 beginning; 17.5, 7-8, 10; 28.3, 17.
14. Ibid., I 12-13. II 23.9, 13 beginning; 24.11; 26.19; 28.29.
15. Ibid., I 5.1, 7; 8.1; 12.4. II 2.8; 4.8; 8.7.
16. Ibid., I 4.4 (13, 20); 8.5; 10.2; 12.3; 13 end; 14 heading and end; 15.5-6; 16.21;
17.9. II 5.4 (149 bottom); 8.6; 21.2; 30.4 (485, 19-21—one of the two central
parts of the chapter). Ill 2.13. Defensor Minor, chap. 3 beginning. Politics 1296b
14-16.
17. Defender, I 14.3; 15.4; 26.13. Cf. II 3.15 and 30.6.
18. Ibid., I 9.5-7; 15.3 end; 16. II 24.2.
19. Ibid., I 7.1; 9.4-7, 10; 11.3 (42, 14-15); 14.2-7, 10; 15.1; 16. 11-24 (esp.
16.17).
20. Ibid., I 2.2; 3.4; 9.10; 11.5 end; 12.2; 13.8; 14.9; 16.19, 21, 23; 17. II 20.2 end
and 13-14; cf. II 3.15 with 30.6. Alan Gewirth, Marsilius of Padua, trans. with
an introduction (New York: 1956), I 254. The use of regnum suggested in I 2
makes one expect a more monarchistic tendency than Marsilius actually has.
21. Ibid., I 10.3; 12.2. II 4.13; 5.1-2, 4-5, 8 (par. 1); 9.10, 12; 11.2, 7; 28.24
(462, 9); 30.4 par. 1 end.
22. Ibid., II 4.6; 13.28; 17.7-8; 22.1 beginning, 15-16; 24.4; 27.2 (426 par. 2).
Gewirth, op. cit., I 81.
23. Ibid., I 6.3, 6; 15.21; 16. II 11.4; 13.16, 23 end-24; 26.12 beginning.
24. Ibid., I 10.3-7. II 5.6, 7 (154, 23-26 and 157, 28); 6.11-13; 8.8; 9.2-5; 10.3,
7, 9; 13.2 end.
25. Ibid., I 5.4, 7. II 2.4 (3); 8.5; 9.11; 10.4, 9; 17.8 toward the end. Gewirth, op.
cit., I 284.
26. I 19.10. II 13.28; 17.2; 18.8 (pars. 1-2 and end); 19.1-3; 20.1-2; 21.11, 13;
22.6, 8, 10; 24.9, 12; 25.4-6, 9, 15-18; 28.27; 30.8. Defensor Minor, chaps. 7
and 12.
27. Defender, I 17.10. II 28.15.
28. Ibid., I 10.3-7; 12.2-3; 14.4; 15.6 end; 19.13. II 8.3; 12.7-8.
29. Ibid., I 6-9; 11.3; 14.2, 6-7. Dante, De Monarchia, I 14.
30. Republic, 372' 6-7; Guide of the Perplexed, II 40 and III 27.
An Epilogue
What one may call the new science of politics emerged shortly before
World War I; it became preponderant and at the same time reached its
mature or final form before, during, and after World War II. It need not
be a product or a symptom of the crisis of the modern Western world—of
a world which could boast of being distinguished by ever broadening free¬
dom and humanitarianism; it is surely contemporary with that crisis.
The new political science shares with the most familiar ingredients of
our world in its crisis the quality of being a mass phenomenon. That it is a
mass phenomenon is compatible with the fact that it possesses its heights
and its depths, the handful of opinion leaders, the men responsible for the
breakthroughs on the top, and the many who drive on the highways pro¬
jected by the former at the bottom. It wields very great authority in the
West, above all in this country. It controls whole departments of political
science in great and in large universities. It is supported by foundations of
immense wealth with unbounded faith and unbelievably large grants. In
spite of this one runs little risk in taking issue with it. For its devotees are
fettered by something like a Hippocratic oath to subordinate all consider¬
ations of safety, income, and deference to concern with the truth. The
difficulty lies elsewhere. It is not easy to free one’s mind from the impact of
any apparently beneficent authority, for such freeing requires that one st,ep
outside of the circle warmed and charmed by the authority to be
questioned.
Yet it is necessary to make the effort. The new political science itself
must demand it. One might say that precisely because it is an authority
operating within a democracy it owes an account of itself to those who are
subjected, or are to be subjected, to it. However sound it may be, it is a
novelty. That it emerged so late is probably no accident: deep-seated resist¬
ances had to be overcome step by step in a process of long duration.
203
Precisely if the new political science constitutes the mature approach to

political things, it presupposes the experience of the failure of earlier ap¬
proaches. We ourselves no longer have that experience: “George” has had
it for us. Yet to leave it at that is unbecoming for men of science; men of
science cannot leave it at hearsay or at vague remembrances. To this one
might reply that the resistances to the new political science have not en¬
tirely vanished: the old Adam is still alive. But precisely because this is so,
the new political science, being a rational enterprise, must be able to lead
the old Adam by a perfectly lucid, coherent, and sound argument from his
desert which he mistakes for a paradise to its own green pastures. It must
cease to demand from us, in the posture of a noncommissioned officer, a
clean and unmediated break with our previous habits, that is, with com¬
mon sense; it must supply us with a ladder by which we can ascend, in full
clarity as to what we are doing, from common sense to science. It must
begin to learn to look with sympathy at the obstacles to it if it wishes to
win the sympathy of the best men of the coming generation—those youths
who possess the intellectual and the moral qualities which prevent men
from simply following authorities, to say nothing of fashions.
The fairly recent change within political science has its parallels in the
other social sciences. Yet the change within political science appears to be
both more pronounced and more limited. The reason is that political sci¬
ence is the oldest of the social sciences and therefore willy-nilly a carrier of
old traditions which resist innovation. Political science as we find it now
consists of more heterogeneous parts than any other social science. “Public
law” and “international law” were established themes centuries before
“politics and parties” and “international relations,” nay, sociology,
emerged. If we look around us, we may observe that the political science
profession contains a strong minority of the right, consisting of the strict
adherents of the new political science or the “behavioralists,” a small
minority of the left, consisting of those who reject the new political science
root and branch, and a center consisting of the old-fashioned political sci¬
entists, men who are concerned with understanding political things with¬
out being much concerned with “methodological” questions but many of
whom seem to have given custody of their “methodological” conscience to
the strict adherents of the new political science and who thus continue
their old-fashioned practice with a somewhat uneasy conscience. It may
seem strange that I called the strict adherents of the new political science
the right wing and their intransigent opponents the left wing, seeing that
the former are liberals almost to a man and the latter are in the odor of
conservatism. Yet since I have heard the intransigent opponents of the
new political science described as unorthodox I inferred that the new polit¬
ical science is the orthodoxy in the profession, and the natural place of an
orthodoxy is on the right.
A rigorous adherent of the new political science will dismiss the preced-
An Epilogue / 205
ing remarks as quasi-statistical or sociological irrelevancies which have no

bearing whatever on the only important issue, that issue being the sound¬
ness of the new political science. To state that issue means to bring out the
fundamental difference between the new political science and the old. To
avoid ambiguities, irrelevancies, and beatings around the bush, it is best to
contrast the new political science directly with the “original” of the old,
that is, with Aristotelian political science.
For Aristotle, political science is identical with political philosophy be¬
cause science is identical with philosophy. Science or philosophy consists of
two kinds, theoretical and practical or political; theoretical science is sub¬
divided into mathematics, physics (natural science), and metaphysics;
practical science is subdivided into ethics, economics (management of the
household), and political science in the narrower sense; logic does not
belong to philosophy or science proper, but is as it were the prelude to
philosophy or science. The distinction between philosophy and science or
the separation of science from philosophy was a consequence of the revolu¬
tion which occurred in the seventeenth century. This revolution was pri¬
marily not the victory of science over metaphysics, but what one may call
the victory of the new philosophy or science over Aristotelian philosophy
or science. Yet the new philosophy or science was not equally successful in
all its parts. Its most successful part was physics (and mathematics). Prior
to the victory of the new physics, there was not the science of physics
simply: there were Aristotelian physics, Platonic physics. Epicurean phys¬
ics, Stoic physics; to speak colloquially, there was no metaphysically neutral
physics. The victory of the new physics led to the emergence of a physics
which seemed to be as metaphysically neutral as, say, mathematics, medi¬
cine, or the art of shoemaking. The emergence of a metaphysically neutral
physics made it possible for “science” to become independent of “philoso¬
phy” and in fact an authority for the latter. It paved the way for an eco¬
nomic science which is independent of ethics, for sociology as the study of
nonpolitical associations as not inferior in dignity to the political associa¬
tion, and, last but not least, for the separation of political science from
political philosophy as well as the separation of economics and sociology
from political science.
Second, the Aristotelian distinction between theoretical and practical
sciences implies that human action has principles of its own which are
known independently of theoretical science (physics and metaphysics) and
therefore that the practical sciences do not depend on the theoretical sci¬
ences or are not derivative from them. The principles of action are the
natural ends toward which man is by nature inclined and of which he has
by nature some awareness. This awareness is the necessary condition for his
seeking and finding appropriate means for his ends, or for his becoming
practically wise or prudent. Practical science in contradistinction to practi¬
cal wisdom itself sets forth coherently the principles of action and the
general rules of prudence (“proverbial wisdom”). Practical science raises

questions which within practical or political experience, or at any rate on
the basis of such experience, reveal themselves to be the most important
questions and which are not stated, let alone answered, with sufficient
clarity by practical wisdom itself. The sphere governed by prudence is
then in principle self-sufficient or closed. Yet prudence is always endan¬
gered by false doctrines about the whole of which man is a part, by false
theoretical opinions; prudence is therefore always in need of defense
against such opinions, and that defense is necessarily theoretical. The
theory defending prudence is, however, misunderstood if it is taken to be
the basis of prudence. This complication—the fact that the sphere of
prudence is as it were only de jure but not de facto wholly independent of
theoretical science—makes understandable, although it does not by itself
justify, the view underlying the new political science according to which no
awareness inherent in practice, and in general no natural awareness is genu¬
ine knowledge, or, in other words, only “scientific” knowledge is genuine
knowledge. This view implies that there cannot be practical sciences proper
or that the distinction between practical and theoretical sciences must be
replaced by the distinction between theoretical and applied sciences,
applied sciences being sciences which are based on theoretical sciences that
precede the applied sciences in time and in order. It implies above all that
the sciences dealing with human affairs are essentially dependent on the
theoretical sciences—especially on psychology which in the Aristotelian
scheme is the highest theme of physics, not to say that it constitutes the
transition from physics to metaphysics—or become themselves theoretical
sciences to be supplemented by such applied sciences as the policy sciences
or the sciences of social engineering. The new political science is then no
longer based on political experience, but on what is called scientific
psychology.
Third, according to the Aristotelian view, the awareness of the principles
of action shows itself primarily to a higher degree in public or authoritative
speech, particularly in law and legislation, rather than in merely private
speech. Hence Aristotelian political science views political things in the
perspective of the citizen. Since there is of necessity a variety of citizen
perspectives, the political scientist or political philosopher must become
the umpire, the impartial judge; his perspective encompasses the partisan
perspectives because he possesses a more comprehensive and a clearer grasp
of man’s natural ends and their natural order than do the partisans. The
new political science on the other hand looks at political things from with¬
out, in the perspective of the neutral observer, in the same perspective in
which one would look at triangles or fish, although or because it may wish
to become manipulative”; it views human beings as an engineer would
view materials for building bridges. It follows that the language of Aristote¬
lian political science is identical with the language of political man; it
An Epilogue / 207
hardly uses a term which did not originate in the market place and is not
in common use there; but the new political science cannot begin to speak
without having elaborated an extensive technical vocabulary.
Fourth, Aristotelian political science necessarily evaluates political
things; the knowledge in which it culminates has the character of categoric
advice and of exhortation. The new political science on the other hand
conceives of the principles of action as “values” which are merely “subjec¬
tive”; the knowledge which it conveys has the character of prediction and
only secondarily that of hypothetical advice.
Fifth, according to the Aristotelian view, man is a being sui generis, with
a dignity of its own: man is the rational and political animal. Man is the
only being which can be concerned with self-respect; man can respect him¬
self because he can despise himself; he is “the beast with red cheeks,” the
only being possessing a sense of shame. His dignity is then based on his
awareness of what he ought to be or how he should live. Since there is a
necessary connection between morality (how man should live) and law,
there is a necessary connection between the dignity of man and the dignity
of the public order: the political is sui generis and cannot be understood as
derivative from the subpolitical. The presupposition of all this is that man
is radically distinguished from nonman, from brutes as well as from gods,
and this presupposition is ratified by common sense, by the citizen’s under¬
standing of things; when the citizen demands or rejects, say, “freedom
from want for all,” he does not mean freedom from want for tigers, rats, or
lice. This presupposition points to a more fundamental presupposition
according to which the whole consists of essentially different parts. The
new political science on the other hand is based on the fundamental prem¬
ise that there are no essential or irreducible differences: there are only
differences of degree; in particular there is only a difference of degree be¬
tween men and brutes or between men and robots. In other words, accord¬
ing to the new political science, or the universal science of which the new
political science is a part, to understand a thing means to understand it in
terms of its genesis or its conditions and hence, humanly speaking, to
understand the higher in terms of the lower: the human in terms of the
subhuman, the rational in terms of the subrational, the political in terms
of the subpolitical. In particular the new political science cannot admit
that the common good is something that is.
Prior to the emergence of the new political science, political science had
already moved very far from Aristotelian political science in the general
direction of the new political science. Nevertheless it was accused of paying
too great attention to the law or to the Ought and of paying too little at¬
tention to the Is or to the actual behavior of men. For instance, it seemed
to be exclusively concerned with the legal arrangements regarding universal
suffrage and its justification and not to consider at all how the universal
right to vote is exercised; yet democracy, as it is, is characterized by the
manner in which that right is exercised. We may grant that not so long ago
there was a political science which was narrowly legalistic—which, for
example, took the written constitution of the U.S.S.R. very seriously—but
we must add immediately that that error had been corrected, as it were in
advance, by an older political science, the political science of Montesquieu,
of Machiavelli, or of Aristotle himself. Besides, the new political science, in
its justified protest against a merely legalistic political science, is in danger
of disregarding the important things known to those legalists: “voting be¬
havior as it is now studied would be impossible if there were not in the
first place the universal right to vote, and this right, even if not exercised
by a large minority for very long periods, must be taken into consideration
in any long-range prediction since it may be exercised by all in future elec¬
tions taking place in unprecedented and therefore particularly interesting
circumstances. That right is an essential ingredient of democratic “behav¬
ior,” for it partly explains “behavior” in democracies (for instance, the
prevention by force or fraud of certain people from voting). The new
political science does not simply deny these things, but it literally relegates
them to the background, to “the habit background”; in so doing it puts the
cart before the horse. Similar considerations apply, for instance, to the
alleged discovery by the new political science of the importance of “propa¬
ganda”; that discovery is in fact only a partial rediscovery of the need for
vulgar rhetoric, a need that had become somewhat obscured from a few
generations which were comforted by faith in universal enlightenment as
the inevitable by-product of the diffusion of science, which in its turn was
thought to be the inevitable by-product of science. Generally speaking, one
may wonder whether the new political science has brought to light any¬
thing of political importance which intelligent political practitioners with a
deep knowledge of history, nay, intelligent and educated journalists, to say
nothing of the old political science at its best, did not know at least as well
beforehand.
The main substantive reason, however, for the revolt against the old
political science would seem to be the consideration that our political situ¬
ation is entirely unprecedented and that it is unreasonable to expect earlier
political thought to be of any help in coping with our situation; the un¬
precedented political situation calls for an unprecedented political science,
perhaps for a judicious mating of dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis
to be consummated on a bed supplied by logical positivism. Just as classical
physics had to be superseded by nuclear physics so that the atomic age
could come in via the atomic bomb, the old political science has to be
superseded by a sort of nuclear political science so that we may be enabled
to cope with the extreme dangers threatening atomic man; the equivalent
in political science of the nuclei is probably the most minute events in the
smallest groups of humans if not in the life of infants; the small groups in
question are certainly not of the kind exemplified by the small group which
An Epilogue / 209
Lenin gathered around himself in Switzerland during World War I. In

making this comparison we are not oblivious of the fact that the nuclear
physicists show a greater respect for classical physics than the nuclear polit¬
ical scientists show for classical politics. Nor do we forget that, while the
nuclei proper are simply prior to macrophysical phenomena, the “political’'
nuclei which are meant to supply explanations for the political things
proper are already molded, nay, constituted, by the political order or the
regime within which they occur: an American small group is not a Russian
small group.
We may grant that our political situation has nothing in common with
any earlier political situation except that it is a political situation. The
human race is still divided into a number of the kind of societies which we
have come to call states and which are separated from one another by un¬
mistakable and sometimes formidable frontiers. Those states still differ
from one another not only in all conceivable other respects but above all in
their regimes and hence in the things to which the preponderant part of
those societies is dedicated or in the spirit which more or less effectively
pervades those societies. They have very different images of the future so
that for all of them to live together, in contradistinction to uneasily coexist¬
ing, is altogether impossible. Each of them, receiving its character from its
regime, is still in need of specific measures for preserving itself and its
regime and hence is uncertain of its future. Acting willy-nilly through their
governments (which may be governments in exile), those societies still
move as if on an uncharted sea and surely without the benefit of tracks
toward a future which is veiled from everyone and which is pregnant with
surprises. Their governments still try to determine the future of their soci¬
eties with the help partly of knowledge, partly of guesses, the recourse to
guesses still being partly necessitated by the secrecy in which their most
important opponents shroud their most important plans or projects. The
new political science which is so eager to predict is, as it admits, as unable
to predict the outcome of the unprecedented conflict peculiar to our age as
the crudest soothsayer of the most benighted tribe. In former times people
thought that the outcome of serious conflicts is unpredictable because one
cannot know how long this or that outstanding leader in war or counsel
will live, or how the opposed armies will act in the test of battle, or similar
things. We have been brought to believe that chance can be controlled or
does not seriously affect the fate of societies. Yet the science which is said
to have rendered possible the control of chance has itself become the ref¬
uge of chance: man’s fate depends now more than ever on science or tech¬
nology, hence on discoveries or inventions, hence on events whose precise
occurrence is by their very nature not predictable. A simply unprecedented
political situation would be a situation of no political interest, that is, not a
political situation. Now, if the essential character of all political situations
was grasped by the old political science, there seems to be no reason why it
must be superseded by a new political science. In case the new political

science should tend to understand political things in nonpolitical terms,
the old political science, wise to many ages, would even be superior to the
new political science in helping us to find our bearings in our unprece¬
dented situation in spite or rather because of the fact that only the new
political science can boast of being the child of the atomic age.
But one will never understand the new political science if one does not
start from that reason advanced on its behalf which has nothing whatever
to do with any true or alleged blindness of the old political science to any
political things as such. That reason is a general notion of science. Accord¬
ing to that notion, only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge. From
this it follows immediately that all awareness of political things which is
not scientific is cognitively worthless. Serious criticism of the old political
science is a waste of time; for we know in advance that it could only have
been a pseudo science, although perhaps including a few remarkably
shrewd hunches. This is not to deny that the adherents of the new political
science sometimes engage in apparent criticism of the old, but that criti¬
cism is characterized by a constitutional inability to understand the criti¬
cized doctrines on their own terms. What science is, is supposed to be
known from the practice of the other sciences, of sciences which are ad¬
mittedly in existence, and not mere desiderata, and the clearest examples
of such sciences are the natural sciences. What science is, is supposed to be
known, above all, from the science of science, that is, logic.
The basis of the new political science is then logic—a particular kind of
logic; the logic in question is not, for instance, Aristotelian or Kantian or
Hegelian logic. This means, however, that the new political science rests on
what for the political scientists as such is a mere assumption which he is
not competent to judge on its own terms—namely, as a logical theory—for
that theory is controversial among the people who must be supposed to be
competent in such matters, the professors of philosophy. He is, however,
competent to judge it by its fruits; he is competent to judge whether his
understanding of political things as political things is helped or hindered
by the new political science which derives from the logic in question. He is
perfectly justified in regarding as an imposition the demand that he comply
with “logical positivism” or else plead guilty to being a “metaphysician.”
He is perfectly justified in regarding this epithet as not “objective,” be¬
cause it is terrifying and unintelligible, like the war cries of savages.
What strikes a sympathetic chord in every political scientist is less the
demand that he proceed “scientifically”—for mathematics also proceeds
scientifically, and political science surely is not a mathematical discipline
—than the demand that he proceed “empirically.” This is a demand of
common sense. No one in his senses ever dreamt that he could know any¬
thing, say, of American government as such or of the present political situ¬
ation as such except by looking at American government or at the present
An Epilogue / 211
political situation. The incarnation of the empirical spirit is the man from
Missouri, who has to be shown. For he knows that he, as well as everyone
else who is of sound mind and whose sight is not defective, can see things
and people as they are with his eyes and that he is capable of knowing how
his neighbors feel; he takes it for granted that he lives with other human
beings of all descriptions in the same world and that because they are all
human beings, they all understand one another somehow; he knows that if
this were not so, political life would be altogether impossible. If someone
would offer him speculations based on extrasensory perception, he would
turn his back on him more or less politely. The old political science would
not quarrel in these respects with the man from Missouri. It did not claim
to know better or differently than he such things as that the Democratic
and Republican parties are now, and have been for some time, the prepon¬
derant parties in this country and that there are presidential elections every
fourth year. By admitting that facts of this kind are known independently
of political science, it admitted that empirical knowledge is not necessarily
scientific knowledge or that a statement can be true and known to be true
without being scientific, and, above all, that political science stands or falls
by the truth of the prescientific awareness of political things.
Yet one may raise the question as to how one can be certain of the truth
of empirical statements which are prescientific. If we call an elaborate
answer to this question an epistemology, we may say that an empiricist, in
contradistinction to an empirical, statement is based on the explicit
assumption of a specific epistemology. Yet every epistemology presupposes
the truth of empirical statements. Our perceiving things and people is
more manifest and more reliable than any “theory of knowledge”—any
explanation of how our perceiving things and people is possible—can be;
the truth of any “theory of knowledge” depends on its ability to give an
adequate account of this fundamental reliance. If a logical positivist tries to
give an account of “a thing” or a formula for “a thing” in terms of mere
sense data and their composition, he is looking, and bids us to look, at the
previously grasped “thing”; the previously grasped “thing” is the standard
by which we judge of his formula. If an epistemology—for example,
solipsism—manifestly fails to give an account of how empirical statements
as meant can be true, it fails to carry conviction. To be aware of the neces¬
sity of the fundamental reliance which underlies or pervades all empirical
statements means to recognize the fundamental riddle, not to have solved
it. But no man needs to be ashamed to admit that he does not possess a
solution to the fundamental riddle. Surely no man ought to let himself be
bullied into the acceptance of an alleged solution—for the denial of the
existence of a riddle is a kind of solution of the riddle—by the threat that
if he fails to do so he is a “metaphysician.” To sustain our weaker brethren
against that threat one might tell them that the belief accepted by the
empiricists, according to which science is in principle susceptible of infinite
progress, is itself tantamount to the belief that being is irretrievably

mysterious.
Let us try to restate the issue by returning first to our man from Mis¬
souri. A simple observation seems to be sufficient to show that the man
from Missouri is naive : he does not see things with his eyes; what he
sees with his eyes is only colors, shapes, and the like; he would perceive
things, in contradistinction to “sense data,” only if he possessed “extra¬
sensory perception ; his claim—the claim of common sense—implies that
there is “extrasensory perception.” What is true of “things” is true of “pat¬
terns,” at any rate of those patterns which students of politics from time to
time claim to perceive.” We must leave the man from Missouri scratch¬
ing his head; by being silent, he remains in his way a philosopher. But
others do not leave it at scratching their heads. Transforming themselves
from devotees of empeiria into empiricists, they contend that what is per¬
ceived or given is only sense data; the “thing” emerges by virtue of un¬
conscious or conscious construction”: the “things” which to common
sense present themselves as given” are in truth constructs. Common-sense
understanding is understanding by means of unconscious construction; sci¬
entific understanding is understanding by means of conscious construction.
Somewhat more precisely, common-sense understanding is understanding
in terms of things possessing qualities”; scientific understanding is under¬
standing in terms of “functional relations between different series of
events. Unconscious constructs are ill made, for their making is affected
by all sorts of purely subjective” influences; only conscious constructs can
be well made, perfectly lucid, in every respect the same for everyone, or
objective. Still, one says with greater right that we perceive things than
that we perceive human beings as human beings, for at least some of the
properties which we ascribe to things are sensually perceived, whereas the
soul’s actions, passions, or states can never become sense data.
Now, that understanding of things and human beings which is rejected
by empiricism is the understanding by which political life, political under¬
standing, political experience, stands or falls. Hence, the new political sci¬
ence, based as it is on empiricism, must reject the results of political under¬
standing and political experience as such, and since the political things are
given to us in political understanding and political experience, the new
political science cannot be helpful for the deeper understanding of political
things: it must reduce the political things to nonpolitical data. The new
political science comes into being through an attempted break with com¬
mon sense. But that break cannot be consistently carried out, as can be
seen in a general way from the following consideration. Empiricism cannot
be established empiricistically: it is not known through sense data that the
only possible objects of perception are sense data. If one tries therefore to
establish empiricism empirically, one must make use of that understanding
of things which empiricism renders doubtful: the relation of eyes to colors
An Epilogue / 213
or shapes is established through the same kind of perception through

which we perceive things as things rather than sense data or constructs. In
other words, sense data as sense data become known only through an act of
abstraction or disregard which presupposes the legitimacy of our primary
awareness of things as things and of people as people. Hence the only way
of overcoming the naivety of the man from Missouri is in the first place to
admit that that naivete cannot be avoided in any way or that there is no
possible human thought which is not in the last analysis dependent on the
legitimacy of that naivete and the awareness or the knowledge going with
it.
We must not disregard the most massive or the crudest reason to which
empiricism owes much of its attractiveness. Some adherents of the new
political science would argue as follows: One can indeed not reasonably
deny that prescientific thought about political things contains genuine
knowledge; but the trouble is that within prescientific political thought,
genuine knowledge of political things is inseparable from prejudices or
superstitions; hence one cannot get rid of the spurious elements in presci¬
entific political thought except by breaking altogether with prescientific
thought or by acting on the assumption that prescientific thought does not
have the character of knowledge at all. Common sense contains indeed
genuine knowledge of broomsticks; but the trouble is that this knowledge
has in common sense the same status as the alleged knowledge concerning
witches; by trusting common sense one is in danger of bringing back the
whole kingdom of darkness with Thomas Aquinas at its head. The old
political science was not unaware of the imperfections of political opinion,
but it did not believe that the remedy lies in the total rejection of common-
sense understanding as such. It was critical in the original sense, that is,
discerning, regarding political opinion. It was aware that the errors regard¬
ing witches were found out without the benefit of empiricism. It was aware
that judgments or maxims which were justified by the uncontested experi¬
ence of decades, and even of centuries or millenniums, may have to be re¬
vised because of unforeseen changes; it knew in the words of Burke “that
the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind hand in their poli¬
tics.” Accordingly, the old political science was concerned with political
improvement by political means as distinguished from social engineering; it
knew that those political means include revolutions and wars since there
may be foreign regimes (Hitler Germany is the orthodox example) which
are dangerous to the survival in freedom of this country and of which it
would be criminally foolish to assume that they will transform themselves
gradually into good neighbors.
Acceptance of the distinctive premises of the new political science leads
to the consequences which have been sufficiently illustrated in the four
preceding essays. In the first place, the new political science is constantly
compelled to borrow from common-sense knowledge, thus unwittingly tes-
tifying to the truth that there is genuine prescientific knowledge of politi¬

cal things which is the basis of all scientific knowledge of them. Second,
the logic on which the new political science is based may provide sufficient
criteria of exactness; it does not provide objective criteria of relevance.
Criteria of relevance are inherent in the prescientific understanding of po¬
litical things; intelligent and informed citizens distinguish soundly between
important and unimportant political matters. Political men are concerned
with what is to be done politically here and now in accordance with prin¬
ciples of preference of which they are aware, although not necessarily in an
adequate manner; it is those principles of preference which supply the cri¬
teria of relevance in regard to political things. Ordinarily a political man
must at least pretend to look up ’ to something to which at least the
preponderant part of his society looks up. That to which at least everyone
who counts politically is supposed to look up, that which is politically the
highest, gives a society its character; it constitutes and justifies the regime
of the society in question. The ‘‘highest” is that through which a society is
“a whole,” a distinct whole with a character of its own, just as for common
sense “the world” is a whole by being overarched by heaven of which one
cannot be aware except by “looking up.” There is obviously, and for cause,
a variety of regimes and hence of what is regarded as the politically highest,'
that is, of the purposes to which the various regimes are dedicated.
The qualitatively different regimes, or kinds of regimes, and the qualita¬
tively different purposes constituting and legitimating them by revealing
themselves as the most important political things, supply the key to the
understanding of all political things and the basis for the reasoned distinc¬
tion between important and unimportant political things. The regimes and
their principles pervade the societies throughout, in the sense that there
are no recesses of privacy which are simply impervious to that pervasion, as
is indicated by such expressions, coined by the new political science,’ as
“the democratic personality.” Nevertheless, there are political things which
are not affected by the difference of regimes. In a society which cannot
survive without an irrigation system, every regime will have to preserve that
system intact. Every regime must try to preserve itself against subversion by
means of force. There are both technical things and politically neutral
things (things which are common to all regimes) which necessarily are the
concern of political deliberation without ever being as such politically con¬
troversial. The preceding remarks are a very rough sketch of the view of
political things that was characteristic of the old political science. Accord¬
ing to that view, what is most important for political science is identical
with what is most important politically. To illustrate this by the present-
day example, for the old-fashioned political scientists today, the most im¬
portant concern is the Cold War, or the qualitative difference which
amounts to a conflict, between liberal democracy and Communism.
The break with the common-sense understanding of political things
An Epilogue / 215
compels the new political science to abandon the criteria of relevance

which are inherent in political understanding. Hence, the new political
science lacks orientation regarding political things; it has no protection
whatever except by surreptitious recourse to common sense against losing
itself in the study of irrelevancies. It is confronted by a chaotic mass of
data into which it must bring an order alien to those data and originating
in the demands of political science as a science anxious to comply with the
demands of logical positivism. The universals in the light of which the old
political science viewed the political phenomena (the various regimes and
their purposes) must be replaced by a different kind of universals. The first
step toward the finding of the new kind of universals may be said to take
this form: what is equally present in all regimes (the politically neutral)
must be the key to the different regimes (the political proper, the essen¬
tially controversial); what is equally present in all regimes is, say, coercion
and freedom; the scientific analysis of a given regime will then indicate
exactly—in terms of percentages—the amount of coercion and the amount
of freedom peculiar to it. That is to say, as political scientists we must
express the political phenomena par excellence, the essential differences or
the heterogeneity of regimes, in terms of the homogeneous elements which
pervade all regimes. What is important for us as political scientists is not
the politically important. Yet we cannot forever remain blind to the fact
that what claims to be a purely scientific or theoretical enterprise has grave
political consequences—consequences which are so little accidental that
they appeal for their own sake to the new political scientists: everyone
knows what follows from the demonstration, which presupposes the beg¬
ging of all important questions, that there is only a difference of degree
between liberal democracy and Communism in regard to coercion and
freedom. The Is necessarily leads to an Ought, all sincere protestations to
the contrary notwithstanding.
The second step toward the finding of the new kind of universals con¬
sists in the following reasoning: all political societies, whatever their re¬
gimes, surely are groups of some kind; hence, the key to the understanding
of political things must be a theory of groups in general. Groups must have
some cohesion, and groups change; we are then in need of a universal
theory which tells us why or how groups cohere and why or how they
change. Seeking for those why’s or how’s we shall discover n factors and m
modes of their interaction. The result of this reduction of the political to
the sociological—of a reduction for which it is claimed that it will make
our understanding of political things more “realistic”—is in fact a formal¬
ism unrivaled in any scholasticism of the past. All peculiarities of political
societies, and still more of the political societies with which we are con¬
cerned as citizens, become unrecognizable if restated in terms of the vague
generalities which hold of every conceivable group; at the end of the dreary
and boring process we understand what we are interested in not more but
less than we understood it at the beginning. What in political language is

called the rulers and the ruled (to say nothing of oppressors and op¬
pressed) becomes through this process nothing but different parts of a so¬
cial system, of a mechanism, each part acting on the other and being acted
upon by it; there may be a stronger part, but there cannot be a ruling part;
the relation of parts of a mechanism supersedes the political relation.
We need not dwell on the next, but not necessarily last, step of the rea¬
soning which we are trying to sketch, namely, the requirement that the
researches regarding groups must be underpinned, nay, guided, by “a gen¬
eral theory of personality” or the like: we know nothing of the political
wisdom or the folly of a statesman’s actions until we know everything
about the degree of affection which he received from each of his parents, if
anY- The last step might be thought to be the use by the new political sci¬
ence of observations regarding rats: can we not observe human beings as
we observe rats, are decisions which rats make not much simpler than the
decisions which humans frequently make, and is not the simpler always the
key to the more complex? We do not doubt that we can observe, if we try
hard enough, the overt behavior of humans as we observe the overt behav¬
ior of rats. But we ought not to forget that in the case of rats we are lim¬
ited to observing overt behavior because they do not talk, and they do not
talk because they have nothing to say or because they have no inwardness.
Yet to return from these depths to the surface, an important example of
the formalism in question is supplied by the well-known theory regarding
the principles of legitimacy which substitutes formal characteristics (tradi¬
tional, rational, charismatic) for the substantive principles which are pre¬
cisely the purposes to which the various regimes are dedicated and by
which they are legitimated. The universals for which the new political sci¬
ence seeks are laws of human behavior”; those laws are to be discovered
by means of empirical” research. There is an amazing disproportion be¬
tween the apparent breadth of the goal (say, a general theory of social
change) and the true pettiness of the researches undertaken in order to
achieve that goal (say, a change in a hospital when one head nurse is re¬
placed by another). This is no accident. Since we lack objective criteria of
relevance, we have no reason to be more interested in a world-shaking revo¬
lution which affects directly or indirectly all men than in the most trifling
social changes. Moreover, if the laws sought are to be “laws of human
behavior they cannot be restricted to human behavior as it is affected by
this or that regime. But human behavior as studied by “empirical” research
always occurs within a peculiar regime. More precisely, the most cherished
techniques of “empirical” research in the social sciences can be applied
only to human beings living now in countries in which the government
tolerates research of this kind. The new political science is therefore con¬
stantly tempted (and as a rule it does not resist the temptation) to abso¬
lutize the relative or peculiar, that is, to be parochial. We have read state-
An Epilogue / 217
merits about “the revolutionary” or “the conservative” which did not even
claim to have any basis other than observations made in the United States
at the present moment; if those statements had any relations to facts at all,
they might have some degree of truth regarding revolutionaries or conser¬
vatives in certain parts of the United States today, but they reveal them¬
selves immediately as patently wrong if taken as they were meant—namely,
as descriptions of the revolutionary or the conservative as such; the error in
question was due to the parochialism inevitably fostered by the new politi¬
cal science.
At the risk of some repetition we must say a few words about the lan¬
guage of the new political science. The break with the political understand¬
ing of political things necessitates the making of a language different from
the language used by political men. The new political science rejects the
latter language as ambiguous and imprecise and claims that its own lan¬
guage is unambiguous and precise. Yet this claim is not warranted. The
language of the new political science is not less vague, but more vague,
than the language used in political life. Political life would be altogether
impossible if its language were unqualifiedly vague; that language is capable
of the utmost unambiguity and precision as in a declaration of war or in an
order given to a firing squad. If available distinctions like that between
war, peace, and armistice prove to be insufficient, political life finds,
without the benefit of political science, the right new expression (Cold
War as distinguished from Hot or Shooting War) which designates the
new phenomenon with unfailing precision. The alleged vagueness of polit¬
ical language is primarily due to the fact that it corresponds to the com¬
plexity of political life or that it is nourished by long experience with polit¬
ical things in a great variety of circumstances. By simply condemning pre-
scientific language, instead of deviating from usage in particular cases be¬
cause of the proved inadequacy of usage in the cases in question, one
simply condemns oneself to irredeemable vagueness. No thoughtful citizen
would dream of equating politics with something as vague and empty as
“power” or “power relations.” The thinking men who are regarded as the
classic interpreters of power—Thucydides and Machiavelli—did not need
these expressions; these expressions as now used originate, not in political
life, but in the academic reaction to the understanding of political life in
terms of law alone: these expressions signify nothing but that academic
reaction.
Political language does not claim to be perfectly clear and distinct; it
does not claim that it is based on a full understanding of the things which
it designates unambiguously enough; it is suggestive: it leaves those things
in the penumbra in which they come to sight. The purge effected by “sci¬
entific” definitions of those things has the character of sterilization. The
language of the new political science claims to be perfectly clear and dis¬
tinct and at the same time entirely provisional; its terms are meant to
imply hypotheses about political life. But this claim to undogmatic open¬
ness is a mere ceremonial gesture. When one speaks of “conscience” one
does not claim that one has fathomed the phenomenon indicated by that
term. But when the new political scientist speaks of the “Super-Ego,” he is
certain that anything meant by “conscience” which is not covered by the
Super-Ego ’ is a superstition. As a consequence he cannot distinguish be¬
tween a bad conscience, which may induce a man to devote the rest of his
life to compensating another man to the best of his powers for an irrepara¬
ble damage, and “guilt feelings” which one ought to get rid of as fast and
as cheaply as possible. Similarly he is certain to have understood the trust
which induces people to vote for a candidate for high office by speaking of
the father image”; he does not have to inquire whether and to what ex¬
tent the candidate in question deserves that trust—a trust different from
the trust which children have in their father. The allegedly provisional or
hypothetical terms are never questioned in the process of research, for their
implications channel the research in such directions that the “data” which
might reveal the inadequacy of the hypotheses never turn up. We con¬
clude that to the extent to which the new political science is not formalis¬
tic, it is vulgarian. This vulgarianism shows itself particularly in the “value-
free manner in which it uses and thus debases terms that originally were
meant only for indicating things of a noble character—terms like “cul-
ture, personality,” “values,” “charismatic,” and “civilization.”
The most important example of the dogmatism to which we have
alluded is supplied by the treatment of religion in the new political or so¬
cial science. The new science uses sociological or psychological theories re¬
garding religion which exclude, without considering it, the possibility that
religion rests ultimately on God’s revealing Himself to man; hence those
theories are mere hypotheses which can never be confirmed. Those theories
are in fact the hidden basis of the new science. The new science rests on a
dogmatic atheism which presents itself as merely methodological or hypo¬
thetical. For a few years, logical positivism tried with much noise and little
thought to dispose of religion by asserting that religious assertions are
meaningless statements.” This trick seems to have been abandoned with¬
out noise. Some adherents of the new political science might rejoin with
some liveliness that their posture toward religion is imposed on them by
intellectual honesty: not being able to believe, they cannot accept belief as
the basis of their science. We gladly grant that, other things being equal, a
frank atheist is a better man than an alleged theist who conceives of God
as a symbol. But we must add that intellectual honesty is not enough. In¬
tellectual honesty is not love of truth. Intellectual honesty, a kind of self-
denial, has taken the place of love of truth because truth has come to be
believed to be repulsive, and one cannot love the repulsive. Yet just as our
opponents refuse respect to unreasoned belief, we on our part, with at least
An Epilogue / 219
equal right, must refuse respect to unreasoned unbelief; honesty with one¬
self regarding one’s unbelief is in itself not more than unreasoned unbelief,
probably accompanied by a vague confidence that the issue of unbelief ver¬
sus belief has long since been settled once and for all. It is hardly necessary
to add that the dogmatic exclusion of religious awareness proper renders
questionable all long-range predictions concerning the future of societies.
The reduction of the political to the subpolitical is the reduction of pri¬
marily given wholes to elements which are relatively simple, that is, suffi¬
ciently simple for the research purpose at hand, yet necessarily susceptible
of being analyzed into still simpler elements in infinitum. It implies that
there cannot be genuine wholes. Hence it implies that there cannot be a
common good. According to the old political science, there is necessarily a
common good, and the common good in its fullness is the good society and
what is required for the good society. The consistent denial of the common
good is as impossible as every other consistent manifestation of the break
with common sense. The empiricists who reject the notion of wholes are
compelled to speak sooner or later of such things as “the open society,”
which is their definition of the good society. The alternative (if it is an
alternative) is to deny the possibility of a substantive public interest, but
to admit the possibility of substantive group interests; yet it is not difficult
to see that what is granted to the goose “group” cannot be consistently
denied to the gander “country.” In accordance with this, the new political
science surreptitiously reintroduces the common good in the form of “the
rules of the game” with which all conflicting groups are supposed to com¬
ply because those rules reasonably fair to every group can reasonably be
admitted by every group. The “group politics” approach is a relic of Marx¬
ism, which more reasonably denied that there can be a common good in a
society consisting of classes that are locked in a life-and-death struggle,
overt or hidden, and therefore found the common good in a classless and
hence stateless society comprising the whole human race or the surviving
part of it. The consistent denial of the common good requires a radical
“individualism.” In fact, the new political science appears to teach that
there cannot be a substantive public interest because there is not, and
cannot be, a single objective which is approved by all members of society:
murderers show by their action that not even the prohibition against
murder is strictly speaking to the public interest. We are not so sure
whether the murderer wishes that murder cease to be a punishable action
and not rather that he himself get away with murder. Be this as it may, this
denial of the common good is based on the premise that even if an objec¬
tive is to the interest of the overwhelming majority, it is not to the interest
of all: no minority, however small, no individual, however perverse, must
be left out. More precisely, even if an objective is to the interest of all, but
not believed by all to be to the interest of all, it is not to the public inter-
est: everyone is by nature the sole judge of what is to his interest; his judg¬
ment regarding his interest is not subject to anybody else’s examination on
the issue whether his judgment is sound.
This premise is not the discovery or invention of the new political sci¬
ence; it was stated with the greatest vigor by Hobbes, who opposed it to
the opposite premise which had been the basis of the old political science
proper. But Hobbes still saw that his premise entails the war of everybody
against everybody and hence drew the conclusion that everyone must cease
to be the sole judge of what is to his interest if there is to be human life;
the individual's reason must give way to the public reason. The new politi¬
cal science denies in a way that there is a public reason: government may
be a broker, if a broker possessing “the monopoly of violence,” but it surely
is not the public reason. The true public reason is the new political science
which judges in a universally valid, or objective, manner of what is to the
interest of each, for it shows to everyone what means he must choose in
order to attain his attainable ends, whatever those ends may be. It has been
shown earlier in this volume what becomes of the new political science, or
of the only kind of rationality which the new political science still admits,
if its Hobbesian premise is not conveniently forgotten: the new form of
public reason goes the way of the old.
The denial of the common good presents itself today as a direct conse¬
quence of the distinction between facts and values according to which only
factual judgments, not value judgments, can be true or objective. The new
political science leaves the justification of values or of preferences to “polit¬
ical philosophy” or more precisely to ideology on the ground that any jus¬
tification of preferences would have to derive values from facts, and such
derivation is not legitimately possible. Preferences are not strictly speaking
opinions and hence cannot be true or false, whereas ideologies are opinions
and, for the reason given, false opinions. Whereas acting man has neces¬
sarily chosen values, the new political scientist as pure spectator is not
committed to any value; in particular, he is neutral in the conflict between
liberal democracy and its enemies. The traditional value systems antedate
the awareness of the difference between facts and values; they claimed to
be derived from facts—from Divine Revelation or from similar sources—in
general from superior or perfect beings which as such unite in themselves
fact and value; the discovery of the difference between facts and values
amounts therefore to a refutation of the traditional value systems as origi¬
nally meant. It is at least doubtful whether those value systems can be
divorced from what present themselves as their factual bases. At any rate, it
follows from the difference between facts and values that men can live
without ideology: they can adopt, posit, or proclaim values without making
the illegitimate attempt to derive their values from facts or without relying
on false or at least unevident assertions regarding what is. One thus arrives
at the notion of the rational society or of the nonideological regime: a soci-
An Epilogue / 221
ety which is based on the understanding of the character of values. Since

this understanding implies that before the tribunal of reason all values are
equal, the rational society will be egalitarian or democratic and permissive
or liberal: the rational doctrine regarding the difference between facts and
values rationally justifies the preference for liberal democracy—contrary to
what is intended by that distinction itself. In other words, whereas the new
political science ought to deny the proposition that there can be no society
without an ideology, it asserts that proposition.
One is thus led to wonder whether the distinction between facts and
values, or the assertion that no Ought can be derived from an Is, is well
founded. Let us assume that a man’s “values” (that is, what he values) are
fully determined by his heredity and environment (that is, by his Is), or
that there is a one-to-one relation between value a and Is A. In this case
the Ought would be determined by the Is or derivative from it. But the
very issue as commonly understood presupposes that this assumption is
wrong: man possesses a certain latitude; he can choose not only from
among various ways of overt behavior (like jumping or not jumping into a
river in order to escape death at the hands of a stronger enemy who may or
may not be able to swim) but from among various values; this latitude,
this possibility, has the character of a fact. A man lacking this latitude—for
example, a man for whom every stimulus is a value or who cannot help
giving in to every desire—is a defective man, a man with whom something
is wrong. The fact that someone desires something does not yet make that
something his value; he may successfully fight his desire, or if his desire
overpowers him, he may blame himself for this as for a failure on his part;
only choice, in contradistinction to mere desire, makes something a man’s
value. The distinction between desire and choice is a distinction among
facts. Choice does not mean here the choice of means to pregiven ends;
choice here means the choice of ends, the positing of ends, or rather of
values.
Man is then understood as a being which differs from all other known
beings because it posits values; this positing is taken to be a fact. In accord¬
ance with this, the new political science denies that man has natural
ends—ends toward which he is by nature inclined; it denies more specifi¬
cally the premise of modern natural right according to which self-preserva¬
tion is the most important natural end: man can choose death in prefer¬
ence to life, not in a given situation, out of despair, but simply: he can
posit death as his value. The view that the pertinent Is is our positing of
values in contradistinction to the yielding to mere desires necessarily leads
to Oughts of a radically different character from the so-called Oughts cor¬
responding to mere desires. We conclude that the “relativism” accepted by
the new political science according to which values are nothing but objects
of desire is based on an insufficient analysis of the Is, that is, of the perti¬
nent Is, and furthermore that one’s opinion regarding the character of the
Is settles one’s opinion regarding the character of the Ought. We must

leave it open here whether a more adequate analysis of the pertinent Is,
that is, of the nature of man, does not lead to a more adequate determina¬
tion of the Ought or beyond a merely formal characterization of the
Ought. At any rate, if a man is of the opinion that as a matter of fact all
desires are of equal dignity, since we know of no factual consideration
which would entitle us to assign different dignities to different desires, he
cannot but be of the opinion, unless he is prepared to become guilty of
gross arbitrariness, that all desires ought to be treated as equal within the
limits of the possible, and this opinion is what is meant by permissive
egalitarianism.
There is then more than a mysterious pre-established harmony between
the new political science and a certain version of liberal democracy. The
alleged value-free analysis of political phenomena is controlled by an un¬
avowed commitment built into the new political science to that version of
liberal democracy. That version of liberal democracy is not discussed
openly and impartially, with full consideration of all relevant pros and
cons. We call this characteristic of the new political science its democ¬
ratism. The new political science looks for laws of human behavior to be
discovered by means of data supplied through certain techniques of re¬
search which are believed to guarantee the maximum of objectivity; it
therefore puts a premium on the study of things which occur frequently
now in democratic societies: neither those in their graves nor those behind
the Curtains can respond to questionnaires or interviews. Democracy is
then the tacit presupposition of the data; it does not have to become a
theme; it can easily be forgotten: the wood is forgotten for the trees; the
laws of human behavior are in fact laws of the behavior of human beings
more or less molded by democracy; man is tacitly identified with demo¬
cratic man. The new political science puts a premium on observations
which can be made with the utmost frequency, and therefore by people of
the meanest capacities. It therefore frequently culminates in observations
made by people who are not intelligent about people who are not intelli¬
gent. While the new political science becomes ever less able to see democ¬
racy or to hold a mirror to democracy, it ever more reflects the most dan¬
gerous proclivities of democracy. It even strengthens those proclivities. By
teaching in effect the equality of literally all desires, it teaches in effect that
there is nothing of which a man ought to be ashamed; by destroying the
possibility of self-contempt, it destroys with the best of intentions the pos¬
sibility of self-respect. By teaching the equality of all values, by denying
that there are things which are intrinsically high and others which are
intrinsically low as well as by denying that there is an essential difference
between men and brutes, it unwittingly contributes to the victory of the
gutter.
Yet the same new political science came into being through the revolt
An Epilogue / 223
against what one may call the democratic orthodoxy of the immediate past.
It had learned certain lessons which were hard for that orthodoxy to
swallow regarding the irrationality of the masses and the necessity of elites;
if it had been wise, it would have learned those lessons from the galaxy of
antidemocratic thinkers of the remote past. It believed, in other words, it
had learned that contrary to the belief of the orthodox democrats, no com¬
pelling case can be made for liberalism (for example, for the unqualified
freedom of such speech as does not constitute a clear and present danger)
nor for democracy (free elections based on universal suffrage). But it suc¬
ceeded in reconciling those doubts with the unfaltering commitment to
liberal democracy by the simple device of declaring that no value judg¬
ments, including those supporting liberal democracy, are rational and
hence that an ironclad argument in favor of liberal democracy ought in
reason not even to be expected. The very complex pros and cons regarding
liberal democracy have thus become entirely obliterated by the poorest
formalism. The crisis of liberal democracy has become concealed by a ritual
which calls itself methodology or logic. This almost willful blindness to the
crisis of liberal democracy is part of that crisis. No wonder then that the
new political science has nothing to say against those who unhesitatingly
prefer surrender, that is, the abandonment of liberal democracy, to war.
Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no
attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for
Machiavelli’s teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it
Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns.
It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not
know that Rome burns.
9/ Preface to Spinoza’s
Critique of Religion
The study on Spinoza s Theologico-political Treatise to which this was a

preface was written during the years 1925-1928 in Germany. The author
was a young Jew born and raised in Germany who found himself in the
grips of the theologico-political predicament.
At that time Germany was a liberal democracy. The regime was known
as the Weimar Republic. In the light of the most authoritative political
document of recent Germany, Bismarck’s Thoughts and Recollections, the
option for Weimar reveals itself as an option against Bismarck. In the eyes
of Bismarck, Weimar stood for leanings to the West, if not for the inner
dependence of the Germans on the French and above all on the English,
and a corresponding aversion to everything Russian. But Weimar was,
above all, the residence of Goethe, that contemporary of the collapse of
the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation and of the victory of the
h rench Revolution and Napoleon, whose sympathetic understanding was
open to both antagonists and who identified himself in this thought with
neither. By linking itself to Weimar the German liberal democracy pro¬
claimed its moderate, nonradical character: its resolve to keep a balance
between the dedication to the principles of 1789 and the dedication to the
highest German tradition.
The Weimar Republic was weak. It had a single moment of strength, if
not of greatness: its strong reaction to the murder of the Jewish Minister
of Foreign Affairs Rathenau in 1922. On the whole it presented the sorry
spectacle of justice without a sword or of justice unable to use the sword.
The election of Field Marshal von Hindenburg to the presidency of the
German Reich in 1925 showed everyone who had eyes to see that the
Weimar Republic had only a short time to live: the old Germany was
stronger stronger in will—than the new Germany. Wbat was still lacking
then for the destruction of the Weimar Republic was the opportune
224
Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion / 225
moment; that moment was to come within a few years. The weakness of
the Weimar Republic made certain its speedy destruction. It did not make
certain the victory of National Socialism. The victory of National Socialism
became necessary in Germany for the same reason for which the victory of
Communism had become necessary in Russia: the man who had by far the
strongest will or single-mindedness, the greatest ruthlessness, daring, and
power over his following, and the best judgment about the strength of the
various forces in the immediately relevant political field was the leader of
the revolution.1
Half-Marxists trace the weakness of the Weimar Republic to the power
of monopoly capitalism and the economic crisis of 1929, but there were
other liberal democracies which were and remained strong although they
had to contend with the same difficulties. It is more reasonable to refer to
the fact that the Weimar Republic had come into being through the de¬
feat of Germany in World War I, although this answer merely leads to the
further question as to why Germany had not succeeded in becoming a lib¬
eral democracy under more auspicious circumstances (for instance, in
1848), that is, why liberal democracy had always been weak in Germany. It
is true that the Bismarckian regime as managed by William II had become
discredited already prior to World War I and still more through that war
and its outcome, and correspondingly liberal democracy had become ever
more attractive; but at the crucial moment the victorious liberal democra¬
cies discredited liberal democracy in the eyes of Germany by the betrayal
of their principles through the Treaty of Versailles.
It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the
high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the
high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the
freedom to reveal itself fully as what it is. By its name the Weimar Repub¬
lic refers one to the greatest epoch of German thought and letters, to the
epoch extending from the last third of the eighteenth century to the first
third of the nineteenth century. No one can say that classical Germany
spoke clearly and distinctly in favor of liberal democracy. This is true de¬
spite the fact that classical Germany had been initiated by Rousseau. In
the first place Rousseau was the first modem critic of the fundamental
modern project (man’s conquest of nature for the sake of the relief of
man’s estate) who therewith laid the foundation for the distinction, so
fateful for German thought, between civilization and culture. Above all,
the radicalization and deepening of Rousseau’s thought by classical Ger¬
man philosophy culminated in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the legitima¬
tion of that kind of constitutional monarchy which is based on the recogni¬
tion of the rights of man and in which government is in the hands of
highly educated civil servants appointed by a hereditary king. It has been
said, not without reason, that Hegel’s rule over Germany came to an end
only on the day that Hitler came to power. But Rousseau prepared not
only the French Revolution and classical German philosophy but also that
extreme reaction to the French Revolution which is German romanticism.
To speak politically and crudely, “the romantic school in Germany . . .
was nothing other than the resurrection of medieval poetry as it had
manifested itself ... in art and in life.” 2 The longing for the Middle
Ages began in Germany in the same moment in which the actual
Middle Ages—the Holy Roman Empire ruled by a German—ended,
in what was then thought to be the moment of Germany’s deepest
humiliation. In Germany, and only there, did the end of the Middle Ages
coincide with the beginning of the longing for the Middle Ages. Compared
with the medieval Reich, which had lasted for almost a millennium until
1806, Bismarck’s Reich (to say nothing of Hegel’s Prussia) revealed itself
as a little Germany not only in size. All profound German longings—for
those for the Middle Ages were not the only ones nor even the most pro¬
found ones—all these longings for the origins or, negatively expressed, all
German dissatisfactions with modernity pointed toward a third Reich, for
Germany was to be the core even of Nietzsche’s Europe ruling the planet.8
The weakness of liberal democracy in Germany explains why the situa¬
tion of the indigenous Jews was more precarious in Germany than in any
other Western country. Liberal democracy had originally defined itself in
theologico-political treatises as the opposite, less of the more or less en¬
lightened despotism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than of
“the kingdom of darkness,” that is, of medieval society. According to lib¬
eral democracy, the bond of society is universal human morality, whereas
religion (positive religion) is a private affair; in the Middle Ages religion,
that is, Catholic Christianity, was the bond of society. The action most
characteristic of the Middle Ages is the Crusades; it may be said to have
culminated not accidentally in the murder of whole Jewish communities.
The German Jews owed their emancipation to the French Revolution or
its effects. They were given full political rights for the first time by the
Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was succeeded by the only
German regime—by the only regime that ever was anywhere—which had
no other clear principle except murderous hatred of the Jews, for “Aryan”
had no clear meaning other than “non-Jewish.” One must keep in mind
the fact that Hitler did not come from Prussia, nor even from Bismarck’s
Reich.
While the German Jews were politically in a more precarious situation
than the Jews in any other Western country, they originated “the science
of Judaism,” the historical-critical study by Jews of the Jewish heritage.
The emancipation of the Jews in Germany coincided with the greatest
epoch of German thought and poetry, with the epoch in which Germany
was the foremost country in thought and poetry. One cannot help compar¬
ing the period of German Jewry with the period of Spanish Jewry. The
greatest achievements of Jews during the Spanish period were partly ren-
dered possible by the fact that Jews became open to the influx of Greek
thought which was understood to be Greek only accidentally. During the
German period, however, the Jews became open to the influx of
German thought, of the thought of the particular nation in the midst of
which they lived—of a thought which was understood to be German
essentially: the political dependence was also spiritual dependence. This
was the core of the predicament of German Jewry.
Three quotations may serve to illustrate the precarious situation of the
Jews in Germany. Goethe, the greatest among the cosmopolitan Germans,
a “decided non-Christian,” summarizes the results of a conversation about
a new society to be founded, between his Wilhelm Meister and “the gay
Friedrich,” without providing his summary with quotation marks, as
follows:
To this religion [the Christian religion] we hold on, but in a particular man¬
ner; we instruct our children from their youth on in the great advantages
which [that religion] has brought to us; but of its author, of its course we
speak to them only at the end. Then only does the author become dear and
cherished, and all reports regarding him become sacred. Drawing a conclu¬
sion which one may perhaps call pedantic, but of which one must at any
rate admit that it follows from the premise, we do not tolerate any Jew
among us; for how could we grant him a share in the highest culture, the
origin and tradition of which he denies? 4
Two generations later Nietzsche could say: “I have not yet met a German
who was favorably disposed toward the Jews.” 5 One might try to trace
Nietzsche’s judgment to the narrowness of his circle of acquaintances: no
one would expect to find people favorably disposed toward Jews among the
German Lutheran pastors among whom Nietzsche grew up, to say nothing
of Jakob Burckhardt in Basel. Nietzsche has chosen his words carefully; he
surely excluded himself when making the judgment quoted, as appears, in
addition, from the context. But he does not say something trivial. While his
circle of acquaintances was limited—perhaps unusually limited—he was of
unusual perspicacity. Besides, being favorably disposed toward this or that
man or woman of Jewish origin does not mean being favorably disposed
toward Jews. Two generations later, in 1953, Heidegger could speak of “the
inner truth and greatness of National Socialism.” 6
In the course of the nineteenth century many Western men had come
to conceive of many, if not all, sufferings as problems which as such were
held to be soluble as a matter of course. Thus they had come to speak also
of the Jewish problem. The German-Jewish problem was never solved. It
was annihilated by the annihilation of the German Jews. Prior to Hitler’s
rise to power most German Jews believed that their problem had been
solved in principle by liberalism: the German Jews were Germans of the
Jewish faith, that is, they were no less German than the Germans of the
Christian faith or of no faith. They assumed that the German state (to say
nothing of German society or culture) was or ought to be neutral to the
difference between Christians and Jews or betw'een non-Jews and Jews.
This assumption was not accepted by the strongest part of Germany and
hence by Germany. In the words of Herzl: “Who belongs and who does
not belong, is decided by the majority; it is a question of power.” At any
rate it could seem that in the absence of a superior recognized equally by
both parties the natural judge on the Germanness of the German Jews was
the non-Jewish Germans. As a consequence a small minority of the
German Jews, but a considerable minority of the German-Jewish youth
studying at the universities, had turned to Zionism. Zionism was almost
never wholly divorced from the traditional Jewish hopes. On the, other
hand, Zionism never intended to bring about a restoration like the one
achieved in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah: the return to the land of
Israel was not thought to culminate in the building of the third temple
and in the restoration of the sacrificial service.
The peculiarity of Zionism as a modern movement comes out most
clearly in the strictly political Zionism as presented in the first place by
Leon Pinsker in his Autoemancipation and then by Theodor Herzl in The
Jews’ State. Pinsker and Herzl started from the failure of the liberal solu¬
tion but continued to see the problem to be solved as it had begun to be
seen by liberalism, that is, as a merely human problem. They radicalized
this purely human understanding. The terrible fate of the Jews was in no
sense to be understood any longer as connected with divine punishment
for the sins of our fathers or with the providential mission of the chosen
people and hence to be borne with the meek fortitude of martyrs. It was to
be understood in merely human terms: as constituting a purely political
problem which as such cannot be solved by appealing to the justice or
generosity of other nations, to say nothing of a league of all nations.
Accordingly, political Zionism was concerned primarily with nothing but
the cleansing of the Jews from millennial degradation or with the recovery
of Jewish dignity, honor, or pride. The failure of the liberal solution meant
that the Jews could not regain their honor by assimilating themselves as
individuals to the nations among which they lived or by becoming citizens
like all other citizens of the liberal states: the liberal solution brought at
best legal equality, but not social equality; as a demand of reason it had no
effect on the feelings of the non-Jews. To quote Herzl again: “We are a
nation—the enemy makes us a nation whether we like it or not.” In the
last analysis this is nothing to be deplored, for “the enemy is necessary for
the highest effort of the personality.” Only through securing the honor of
the Jewish nation could the individual Jew’s honor be secured. The true
solution of the Jewish problem requires that the Jews become “like all the
nations” (I Sam. 8), that the Jewish nation assimilate itself to the nations
of the world or that it establish a modern, liberal, secular (but not neces-
sarily democratic) state. Political Zionism strictly understood was then the
movement of an elite on behalf of a community constituted by common
descent and common degradation for the restoration of their honor
through the acquisition of statehood and therefore of a country—of any
country: the land which the strictly political Zionism promised to the Jews
was not necessarily the land of Israel.
This project implied a profound modification of the traditional Jewish
hopes—a modification arrived at through a break with these hopes. For the
motto of his pamphlet Pinsker chose these words of Hillel: “If I am not
for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when?’' He omitted the
sentence which forms the center of Hillel’s statement: “And if I am only
for myself, what am I?” He saw the Jewish people as a herd without a
shepherd who protects and gathers it; he did not long for a shepherd, but
for the transformation of the herd into a nation which can take care of
itself. He regarded the Jewish situation as a natural sickness which can be
cured only by natural means. What the change effected by strictly political
Zionism means, one sees most clearly when, returning to the origin, one
ponders over this sentence of Spinoza: “If the foundations of their religion
did not effeminate the minds of the Jews, I would absolutely believe that
they will at some time, given the occasion (for human things are mutable),
establish their state again.”
Strictly political Zionism became effective only through becoming an
ingredient, not to say the backbone, of Zionism at large, that is, by making
its peace with traditional Jewish thought. Through this alliance or fusion it
brought about the establishment of the state of Israel and therewith that
cleansing which it had primarily intended; it thus procured a blessing for
all Jews everywhere regardless of whether they admit it or not.7 It did not,
however, solve the Jewish problem. It could not solve the Jewish problem
because of the narrowness of its original conception, however noble. This
narrowness was pointed out most effectively by cultural Zionism: strictly
political Zionism, concerned only with the present emergency and resolve,
lacks historical perspective; the community of descent, of the blood, must
also be a community of the mind, of the national mind; the Jewish state
will be an empty shell without a Jewish culture which has its roots in the
Jewish heritage. One could not have taken this step unless one had previ¬
ously interpreted the Jewish heritage itself as a culture, that is, as a product
of the national mind, of the national genius.8 Yet the foundation, the
authoritative layer, of the Jewish heritage presents itself, not as a product
of the human mind, but as a divine gift, as divine revelation. Did one not
completely distort the meaning of the heritage to which one claimed to be
loyal by interpreting it as a culture like any other high culture? Cultural
Zionism believed to have found a safe middle ground between politics
(power politics) and divine revelation, between the subcultural and the
supracultural, but it lacked the sternness of the two extremes. When cul-
tural Zionism understands itself, it turns into religious Zionism. But when
religious Zionism understands itself, it is in the first place Jewish faith and
only secondarily Zionism. It must regard as blasphemous the notion of a
human solution to the Jewish problem. It may go so far as to regard the
establishment of the state of Israel as the most important event in Jewish
history since the completion of the Talmud, but it cannot regard it as the
arrival of the Messianic age, of the redemption of Israel and all men. The
establishment of the state of Israel is the most profound modification of
the Galuth which has occurred, but it is not the end of the Galuth: in the
religious sense, and perhaps not only in the religious sense, the state of
Israel is a part of the Galuth. Finite, relative problems can be solved;
infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human
beings will never create a society which is free from contradictions. From
every point of view it looks as if the Jewish people were the chosen people,
at least in the sense that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol
of the human problem insofar as it is a social or political problem.
To realize that the Jewish problem is insoluble means never to forget the
truth proclaimed by Zionism regarding the limitations of liberalism. Lib¬
eralism stands and falls by the distinction between state and society or by
the recognition of a private sphere, protected by the law but impervious to
the law, with the understanding that, above all, religion as particular reli¬
gion belongs to the private sphere. As certainly as the liberal state will not
“discriminate” against its Jewish citizens, as certainly is it constitutionally
unable and even unwilling to prevent “discrimination” against Jews on the
part of individuals or groups. To recognize a private sphere in the sense
indicated means to permit private “discrimination,” to protect it, and thus
in fact to foster it. The liberal state cannot provide a solution to the Jewish
problem, for such a solution would require the legal prohibition against
every kind of “discrimination,” that is, the abolition of the private sphere,
the denial of the difference between state and society, the destruction of
the liberal state. Such a destruction would not by any means solve the Jew¬
ish problem, as is shown in our days by the anti-Jewish policy of the
U.S.S.R. It is foolish to say that that policy contradicts the principles of
Communism, for it contradicts the principles of Communism to separate
the principles of Communism from the Communist movement. The
U.S.S.R. owes its survival to Stalin’s decision not to wait for the revolution
of the Western proletariat, that is, for what others would do for the
U.S.S.R., but to build up socialism in a single country where his word was
the law, by the use of any means, however bestial, and these means could
include, as a matter of course, means successfully used before, not to say
invented, by Hitler: the large-scale murder of party members and anti-
Jewish measures. This is not to deny that Communism has not become
what National Socialism always was, the prisoner of an anti-Jewish ideol¬
ogy, but makes use of anti-Jewish measures in an unprincipled manner.
when and where they seem to be expedient. It is merely to confirm our

contention that the uneasy “solution of the Jewish problem” offered by the
liberal state is superior to the Communist “solution.”
There is a Jewish problem which is humanly soluble: 9 the problem of
the Western Jewish individual who or whose parents severed his connec¬
tion with the Jewish community in the expectation that he would thus be¬
come a normal member of a purely liberal or of a universal human society
and who is naturally perplexed when he finds no such society. The solution
to his problem is return to the Jewish community, the community estab¬
lished by the Jewish faith and the Jewish way of life—teshubah (ordinarily
rendered by “repentance”) in the most comprehensive sense. Some of our
contemporaries believe that such a return is altogether impossible because
they believe that the Jewish faith has been overthrown once and for all,
not by blind rebellion, but by evident refutation. While admitting that
their deepest problem would be solved by that return, they assert that in¬
tellectual probity forbids them to bring the sacrifice of the intellect for the
sake of satisfying even the most vital need. Yet they can hardly deny that a
vital need legitimately induces a man to probe whether what seems to be
an impossibility is in fact only a very great difficulty.
The founder of cultural Zionism could still deny that the Jewish people
have a providential mission on the ground that Darwin had destroyed the
most solid basis of teleology.10 At the time and in the country in which
the present study was written, it was granted by everyone except backward
people that the Jewish faith had not been refuted by science or by history.
The storms stirred up by Darwin and to a lesser degree by Wellhausen had
been weathered; one could grant to science and history everything they
seem to teach regarding the age of the world, the origin of man, the impos¬
sibility of miracles, the impossibility of the immortality of the soul and of
the resurrection of the body, the Jahvist, the Elohist, the third Isaiah, and
so on, without abandoning one iota of the substance of the Jewish faith.
Some haggling regarding particular items which issued sometimes in grudg¬
ing concessions was still going on in outlying districts, but the battle for
the capital had been decided by the wholesale surrender to science and his¬
tory of the whole sphere in which science and history claim to be or to
become competent and by the simultaneous depreciation of that whole
sphere as religiously irrelevant. It had become religiously relevant, it was
affirmed, only through a self-misunderstanding of religion, if of a self¬
misunderstanding which was inevitable in earlier times and which on the
whole was even harmless in earlier times. That self-misunderstanding con¬
sisted in understanding revelation as a body of teachings and rules which
includes such teachings and rules as could never become known to the un¬
assisted human mind as true and binding, such as the human mind would
reject as subrational were they not proved to be suprarational by the cer¬
tainty that they are the word of God; men who were not earwitnesses of
God’s declaring these teachings and rules could have that certainty only
through a reliable tradition which also vouches for the reliable transmission
of the very words of God, and through miracles. The self-misunderstanding
is removed when the content of revelation is seen to be rational, which
does not necessarily mean that everything hitherto thought to be revealed
is rational. The need for external credentials of revelation (tradition and
miracles) disappears as its internal credentials come to abound. The truth
of traditional Judaism is the religion of reason, or the religion of reason is
secularized Judaism. But the same claim could be made for Christianity,
and however close secularized Judaism and secularized Christianity might
come to each other, they are not identical, and as purely rational they
ought to be identical. Above all, if the truth of Judaism is the religion of
reason, then what was formerly believed to be revelation by the transcend¬
ent God must now be understood as the work of the human imagination
in which human reason was effective to some extent; what has now become
a clear and distant idea was originally a confused idea.11 What, except
demonstrations of the existence of God by theoretical reason or postu¬
lations of His existence by practical reason which were becoming ever
more incredible, could prevent one from taking the last step, that is, to
assert that God Himself is a product of the human mind, at best “an
idea of reason”?
These and similar denials or interpretations suddenly lost all their force
by the simple observation that they contradict not merely inherited opin¬
ions but present experience. At first hearing one may be reminded of what
Leibniz had said when overcoming Bayle’s doubt regarding revelation:
“Toutes ces difficultes invincibles, ces combats pr^tendus de la raison
contre la foi s’evanouissent.
Hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta

Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.12
God’s revealing Himself to man, His addressing man, is not merely known
through traditions going back to the remote past and is therefore now
“merely believed” but is genuinely known through present experience
which every human being can have if he does not refuse himself to it. This
experience is not a kind of self-experience, of the actualization of a human
potentiality, of the human mind coming into its own, into what it desires
or is naturally inclined to, but of something undesired, coming from the
outside, going against man’s grain; it is the only awareness of something
absolute which cannot be relativized in any way as everything else, rational
or nonrational, can; it is the experience of God as the Thou, the father and
king of all men; it is the experience of an unequivocal command addressed
to me here and now as distinguished from general laws or ideas which are
always disputable and permitting of exceptions; only by surrendering to
God’s experienced call which calls for one’s loving Him with all one’s
heart, with all one’s soul, and with all one’s might can one come to see the
other human being as his brother and love him as himself. The absolute
experience will not lead back to Judaism—for instance, to the details of
what the Christians call the ceremonial law—if it does not recognize itself
in the Bible and clarify itself through the Bible and if it is not linked up
with considerations of how traditional Judaism understands itself and with
meditations about the mysterious fate of the Jewish people. The return to
Judaism also requires today the overcoming of what one may call the per¬
ennial obstacle to the Jewish faith: of traditional philosophy, which is of
Greek, pagan origin. For the respectable, impressive, or specious alterna¬
tives to the acceptance of revelation, to the surrender to God’s will, have
always presented themselves and still present themselves as based on what
man knows by himself, by his reason. Reason has reached its perfection in
Hegel’s system; the essential limitations of Hegel’s system show the essen¬
tial limitations of reason and therewith the radical inadequacy of all ra¬
tional objections to revelation. With the final collapse of rationalism the
perennial battle between reason and revelation, between unbelief and belief,
has been decided in principle, even on the plane of human thought, in
favor of revelation. Reason knows only of subjects and objects, but surely
the living and loving God is infinitely more than a subject and can never
be an object, something at which one can look in detachment or indiffer¬
ence. Philosophy as hitherto known, the old thinking, so far from starting
from the experience of God, abstracted from such experience or excluded
it; hence, if it was theistic, it was compelled to have recourse to demonstra¬
tions of the existence of God as a thinking or a thinking and willing being.
The new thinking as unqualified empiricism speaks of God, man, and the
world as actually experienced, as realities irreducible to one another,
whereas all traditional philosophy was reductionist. For if it did not assert
that the world and man are eternal, that is, deny the creator-God, it sought
for the reality preceding world and man as it precedes world and man and
as it succeeds world and man, that is, for what cannot be experienced by
man, by the whole man, but only be inferred or thought by him. Un¬
qualified empiricism does not recognize any such Without or Beyond as a
reality, but only as unreal forms, essences, or concepts which can never be
more than objects, that is, objects of mere thought.13
The new thinking had been originated, above all, by Franz Rosenzweig,
who is thought to be the greatest Jewish thinker whom German Jewry has
brought forth. It was counteracted by another form of the new thinking,
the form originated by Heidegger.14 It was obvious that Heidegger’s new
thinking led far away from any charity as well as from any humanity. On
the other hand, it could not be denied that he had a deeper understanding
than Rosenzweig of what was implied in the insight or demand that the
traditional philosophy which rested on Greek foundations must be super¬
seded by a new thinking. He would never have said as Rosenzweig did that
“we know in the most precise manner, we know it with the intuitional
knowledge of experience, what God taken by Himself, what man taken by
himself, what the world taken by itself ‘is/ ” Nor did he assume, as
Rosenzweig assumed, that we possess without further ado an adequate
understanding of Greek philosophy, of the basic stratum of that old think¬
ing which has to be overcome: with the questioning of traditional philoso¬
phy the traditional understanding of the tradition becomes questionable.
For this reason alone he could not have said as Rosenzweig did that most
Platonic dialogues are “boring.” 15 This difference between Rosenzweig
and Heidegger, about which much more could be said, was not uncon¬
nected with their difference regarding revelation. At that time Heidegger
expressed his thought about revelation by silence or deed rather than by
speech. Rosenzweig’s friend Martin Buber quotes a much later utterance
of Heidegger which gives one, I believe, an inkling of Heidegger’s
argument—especially if it is taken in conjunction with well-known utter¬
ances of Nietzsche whom Heidegger evidently follows in this matter.
“The ‘prophets’ of these religions [sc. Judaism and Christianity],” says
Heidegger according to Buber, “do not begin by foretelling the word of the
Holy. They announce immediately the God upon whom the certainty of
salvation is a supernatural blessedness reckons.” 16 Buber comments on
this statement as follows:
Incidentally, I have never in our time encountered on a high philosophical

plane such a far-reaching misunderstanding of the prophets of Israel. The
prophets of Israel have never announced a God upon whom their hearers’
striving for security reckoned. They have always aimed to shatter all security
and to proclaim in the opened abyss of the final insecurity the unwished for
God who demands that His human creatures become real, they become
human, and confounds all who imagine that they can take refuge in the
certainty that the temple of God is in their midst.
Heidegger does not speak of the prophets’ “hearers,” but he clearly means
that the prophets themselves were concerned with security.17 This asser¬
tion is not refuted by the well-known facts which Buber points out—by the
fact, in a word, that for the prophets there is no refuge and fortress except
God: the security afforded by the temple of God is nothing, but the secu¬
rity afforded by God is everything. As Buber says seventeen pages earlier in
the same publication, “He who loves God only as a moral ideal, can easily
arrive at despairing of the guidance of a world the appearance of which
contradicts, hour after hour, all principles of his moral ideality.” 18 Surely
the Bible teaches that in spite of all appearances to the contrary the world
is guided by God or, to use the traditional term, that there is particular
providence, that man is protected by God if he does not put his trust in
flesh and blood but in God alone, that he is not completely exposed or for¬
saken, that he is not alone, that he has been created by a being which is, to
Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion / 235
use Buber’s expression, a Thou. Buber’s protest would be justified if the

biblical prophets were only, as Wellhausen may seem to have hoped,
prophets of insecurity, not to say of an evil end,19 and not also predictors
of the Messianic future, of the ultimate victory of truth and justice, of the
final salvation and security, although not necessarily of the final salvation
and security of all men. In other words, the biblical experience is not
simply undesired or against man s grain: grace perfects nature; it does not
destroy nature. Not every man but every noble man is concerned with jus¬
tice or righteousness and therefore with any possible extrahuman, supra-
human support of justice or with the security of justice. The insecurity of
man and everything human is not an absolutely terrifying abyss if the
highest of which a man knows is absolutely secure. Plato’s Athenian
Stranger does not indeed experience that support, that refuge and fortress
as the biblical prophets experienced it, but he does the second best: he
tries to demonstrate its existence. But for Heidegger there is no security, no
happy ending, no divine shepherd; hope is replaced by thinking; the long¬
ing for eternity, belief in anything eternal is understood as stemming from
“the spirit of revenge,” from the desire to escape from all passing away into
something which never passes away.20
The controversy can easily degenerate into a race in which he wins who
offers the smallest security and the greatest terror and regarding which it
would not be difficult to guess who will be the winner. But just as an asser¬
tion does not become true because it is shown to be comforting, it does not
become true because it is shown to be terrifying. The serious question con¬
cerns man s certainty or knowledge of the divine promises or covenants.
They are known through what God Himself says in the Scriptures. Accord¬
ing to Buber, whose belief in revelation is admittedly “not mixed up with
any ‘orthodoxy,’ ” what we read in the Bible is in all cases, even when God
is said to have said something (as for example and above all in the case of
the Ten Commandments), what the biblical authors say, and what the
biblical authors say is never more than a human expression of God’s
speechless call or a human response to that call or a man-made “image,” a
human interpretation—an experienced human interpretation, to be sure
—of what God “said.” Such “images” constitute not only Judaism and
Christianity but all religions. All such “images” are “distorting and yet cor¬
rect, perishable like an image in a dream and yet verified in eternity.” 21
The experience of God is surely not specifically Jewish. Besides, can one
say that one experiences God as the creator of heaven and earth, that is,
that one knows from the experience taken by itself of God that He is
the creator of heaven and earth, or that men who are not prophets ex¬
perience God as a thinking, willing, and speaking being? Is the absolute
experience necessarily the experience of a Thou? 22 Every assertion about
the absolute experience which says more than that what is experienced
is the Presence or the Call, is not the experiencer, is not flesh and
blood, is the wholly other, is death or nothingness, is an “image” or inter¬

pretation; that any one interpretation is the simply true interpretation is
not known, but “merely believed.” One cannot establish that any particu¬
lar interpretation of the absolute experience is the most adequate interpre¬
tation on the ground that it alone agrees with all other experiences, for
instance, with the experienced mystery of the Jewish fate, for the Jewish
fate is a mystery only on the basis of a particular interpretation of the abso¬
lute experience, or rather the Jewish fate is the outcome of one particular
interpretation of the absolute experience. The very emphasis on the abso¬
lute experience as experience compels one to demand that it be made as
clear as possible what the experience by itself conveys, that it not be
tampered with, that it be carefully distinguished from every interpretation
of the experience, for the interpretations may be suspected of being
attempts to render bearable and harmless the experienced which admit¬
tedly comes from without down upon man and is undesired, or to cover
over man’s radical unprotectedness, loneliness, and exposedness.23
Yet—Buber could well have retorted—does not precisely this objection
mean that the atheistic suspicion is as much a possibility, an interpretation,
and hence as much “merely believed” as the theistic one? And is not being
based on belief, which is the pride of religion, a calamity for philosophy?
Can the new thinking consistently reject or (what is the same thing) pass
by revelation? Through judging others, Nietzsche himself had established
the criterion by which his doctrine is to be judged. In attacking the “opti¬
mistic” as well as the “pessimistic” atheism of his age, he had made clear
that the denial of the biblical God demands the denial of biblical morality,
however secularized, which, so far from being self-evident or rational, has
no other support than the biblical God; mercy, compassion, egalitarianism,
brotherly love, or altruism must give way to cruelty and its kin.24 But
Nietzsche did not leave things at “the blond beast.” He proclaimed “the
overman,” and the overman transcends man as hitherto known at his
highest. What distinguishes Nietzsche in his view from all earlier philoso¬
phers is the fact that he possesses “the historical sense,” 25 that is, the
awareness that the human soul has no unchangeable essence or limits, but
is essentially historical. The most profound change which the human soul
has hitherto undergone, the most important enlargement and deepening
which it has hitherto experienced, is due, according to Nietzsche, to the
Bible. “These Greeks have much on their conscience—falsification was
their particular craft, the whole European psychology suffers from the
Greek superficialities; and without that little bit of Judaism etc. etc.”
Hence the overman is “the Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul.” 26 Not
only was biblical morality as veracity or intellectual probity at work in
the destruction of biblical theology and biblical morality; not only is it
at work in the questioning of that very probity, of “our virtue, which
alone has remained to us”; 27 biblical morality will remain at work in the
morality of the overman. The overman is inseparable from “the philosophy

of the future. The philosophy of the future is distinguished from tradi¬
tional philosophy, which pretended to be purely theoretical, by the fact
that it is consciously the outcome of a will: the fundamental awareness is
not purely theoretical, but theoretical and practical, inseparable from an
act of the will or a decision. The fundamental awareness characteristic of
the new thinking is a secularized version of the biblical faith as interpreted
by Christian theology.28 What is true of Nietzsche is no less true of the
author of Sein und Zeit. Heidegger wishes to expel from philosophy the
last relics of Christian theology like the notions of “eternal truths” and
the idealized absolute subject.” But the understanding of man which he
opposes to the Greek understanding of man as the rational animal is, as he
emphasizes, primarily the biblical understanding of man as created in the
image of God. Accordingly, he interprets human life in the light of “being
towards death,” “anguish,” “conscience,” and “guilt”; in this most impor¬
tant respect he is much more Christian than Nietzsche.29 The efforts of
the new thinking to escape from the evidence of the biblical understanding
of man, that is, from biblical morality, have failed. And, as we have learned
from Nietzsche, biblical morality demands the biblical God.
Considerations of this kind seemed to decide the issue in favor of
Rosenzweig’s understanding of the new thinking or in favor of the un¬
qualified return to biblical revelation. In fact, Rosenzweig’s return was not
unqualified. The Judaism to which he returned was not identical with the
Judaism of the age prior to Moses Mendelssohn. The old thinking had
brought about since the days of Mendelssohn, to say nothing of the Mid¬
dle Ages, some more or less important modifications of native Jewish
thought. While opposing the old thinking, the new thinking was neverthe¬
less its heir. Whereas the classic work of what is called Jewish medieval
philosophy, the Guide of the Perplexed, is primarily not a philosophic
book, but a Jewish book, Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption is primarily not
a Jewish book, but “a system of philosophy.” The new thinking is “experi¬
encing philosophy.” As such it is passionately concerned with the difference
between what is experienced, or at least capable of being experienced, by
the present-day believer and what is merely known by tradition; that differ¬
ence was of no concern to traditional Judaism. As experiencing philosophy
it starts in each case from the experienced, and not from the nonexperi-
enced presuppositions” of experience. For instance, we experience things
“here” or “there,” in given “places”; we do not experience the homoge¬
neous infinite “space” which may be the condition of the possibility of
places. I experience a tree; in doing so, I am not necessarily aware
of my Ego which is the condition of possibility of my experiencing
anything.
Accordingly, when speaking of the Jewish experience, one must start
from what is primary or authoritative for the Jewish consciousness, and not
from what is the primary condition of possibility of the Jewish experience:

one must start from God's Law, the Torah, and not from the Jewish na¬
tion. But in this decisive case Rosenzweig proceeds in the opposite manner;
he proceeds, as he puts it, “sociologically.” He notes that the Jewish dog-
maticists of the Middle Ages, especially Maimonides, proceeded in the first
manner: traditional Jewish dogmatics understood the Jewish nation in the
light of the Torah; it was silent about the “presupposition” of the Law, viz.
the Jewish nation and its chosenness. One begins to wonder whether our
medieval philosophy, and the old thinking of Aristotle of which it made
use, was not more “empirical,” more in harmony with the “given,” than an
unqualified empiricism which came into being through opposition to mod¬
ern constructionist philosophy as well as to modern scientific empiricism: if
the Jewish nation did not originate the Torah, but is manifestly consti¬
tuted by the Torah, it is necessarily preceded by the Torah, which was
created prior to the world and for the sake of which the world was created.
The dogma of Israel’s chosenness becomes for Rosenzweig “the truly cen¬
tral thought of Judaism” because, as he makes clear, he approaches
Judaism from the point of view of Christianity, because he looks for a Jew¬
ish analogon to the Christian doctrine of the Christ.30 It is not necessary
to emphasize that the same change would have been effected if the starting
point had been mere secularist nationalism.
Rosenzweig never believed that his return to the biblical faith could be a
return to the form in which that faith had expressed or understood itself in
the past. What the author of a biblical saying or a biblical story or the
compilers of the canon meant is one thing; how the text affects the present-
day believer, and hence what the latter truly understands, that is, appropri¬
ates and believes, is another. The former is the concern of history as history
which, if it regards itself as self-sufficient, is one of the decayed forms of the
old thinking; the latter, if it is practiced with full consciousness, calls for
the new thinking. Since the new thinking is the right kind of thinking, it
would seem that the understanding of the Bible of which it is capable is in
principle superior to all other forms. At any rate, Rosenzweig agrees with
religious liberalism as to the necessity of making a selection from among
the traditional beliefs and rules. Yet his principle of selection differs radi¬
cally from the liberal principle.
The liberals made a distinction between the essential and the unessen¬
tial, that is, they made a distinction which claimed to be objective.
Rosenzweig’s principle is not a principle strictly speaking, but “a force”:
the whole “reality of Jewish life,” even those parts of it which never
acquired formal authority (like “mere” stories and “mere” customs), must
be approached as the “matter” out of which only a part can be trans¬
formed into “force”; only experience can tell which part will be so
transformed; the selection cannot but be “wholly individual.”31 The
sacred law, as it were the public temple, which was a reality thus becomes a
potential, a quarry, or a storehouse out of which each individual takes the

materials for building up his private shelter. The community of the holy
people is henceforth guaranteed by the common descent of its members
and the common origin of the materials which they transform by selecting
them. This conscious and radical historicization of the Torah—the neces¬
sary consequence of the assumed primacy of the Jewish people under the
conditions of modern “individualism”32—is in Rosenzweig’s view per¬
fectly compatible with the fact that the Jewish people is the ahistorical
people.
Rosenzweig could not believe everything which his orthodox Jewish con¬
temporaries in Germany believed. His system of philosophy supplies the
reasons why he thought that in spite of their piety they were mistaken. He
has discussed by themselves two points regarding which he disagreed with
them and which are of utmost importance. He opposed to their inclination
to understand the Law in terms of prohibition, denial, refusal, and rejec¬
tion, rather than in terms of command, liberation, granting, and transfor¬
mation, the opposite inclination. It is not immediately clear, however,
whether the orthodox austerity or sternness does not rest on a deeper under¬
standing of the power of evil in man than Rosenzweig’s at first glance more
attractive view which resembles one of “the favorite topics” of Mittler in
Goethe’s Elective Affinities.33 Second, Rosenzweig was unable simply to
believe all biblical miracles. All biblical miracles were indeed susceptible of
becoming credible to him. For instance, when the story of Balaam’s speak¬
ing she-ass was read from the Torah, it was not a fairy tale for him, whereas
on all other occasions he might doubt this miracle.34 The orthodox Jew
would reproach himself for his doubts as for failings on his part, for he
would not determine what he is obliged to believe by his individual and
temporary capacity or incapacity to believe; he would argue with Maimoni-
des’ Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead that if God has created the
world out of nothing and hence is omnipotent, there is no reason whatever
for denying at any time any miracle vouched for by the word of God.
Considerations like those sketched in the preceding paragraphs made
one wonder whether an unqualified return to Jewish orthodoxy was not
both possible and necessary—was not at the same time the solution to the
problem of the Jew lost in the non-Jewish modern world and the only
course compatible with sheer consistency or intellectual probity. Vague
difficulties remained like small faraway clouds on a beautiful summer sky.
They soon took the shape of Spinoza—the greatest man of Jewish origin
who had openly denied the truth of Judaism and had ceased to belong to
the Jewish people without becoming a Christian. It was not the “God-
intoxicated” philosopher, but the hardheaded, not to say hardhearted,
pupil of Machiavelli and philologic-historical critic of the Bible. Orthodoxy
could be returned to only if Spinoza was wrong in every respect.
That Spinoza was wrong in the decisive respect had been asserted about
a decade earlier by the most authoritative German Jew who symbolized

more than anyone else the union of Jewish faith and German culture:
Hermann Cohen, the founder of the Neo-Kantian school of Marburg.
Cohen was a Jew of rare dedication, the faithful guide, defender, and
warner of the German Jewry, and at the same time, to say the least, the
one who by far surpassed in spiritual power all the other German profess¬
ors of philosophy of his generation. It became necessary to examine
Cohen’s attack on Spinoza. That attack had been occasioned by a particu¬
larly striking act of celebration of Spinoza on the part of German Jews.
There were two reasons why contemporary Jews were inclined to cele¬
brate Spinoza. The first is Spinoza’s assumed merit about mankind and
only secondarily about the Jews; the second is his assumed merit about the
Jewish people and only secondarily about mankind. Both reasons had in¬
duced contemporary Jews, not only informally to rescind the excommunica¬
tion which the Jewish community in Amsterdam had pronounced against
Spinoza, but even, as Cohen put it, to canonize him.
The great revolt against traditional thought or the emergence of modem
philosophy or natural science was completed prior to Spinoza. One may go
further and say that, so far from being a revolutionary thinker, Spinoza
is only the heir of the modern revolt and the medieval tradition as well. At
first glance he might well appear to be much more medieval than Des¬
cartes, to say nothing of Bacon and Hobbes. The modern project as under¬
stood by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes demands that man should become
the master and owner of nature or that philosophy or science should cease
to be essentially theoretical. Spinoza, however, attempts to restore the
traditional conception of contemplation: one cannot think of conquering
nature if nature is the same as God. Yet Spinoza restored the dignity of
speculation on the basis of modem philosophy or science, of a new under¬
standing of “nature.” He thus was the first great thinker who attempted a
synthesis of premodern (classical-medieval) and of modern philosophy.
His speculation resembles Neoplatonism; he understands all things as pro¬
ceeding from, not made or created by, a single being or origin; the One is
the sole ground of the Many. Yet he no longer regards this process as a
descent or decay, but as an ascent or unfolding: the end is higher than the
origin. According to his last word on the subject, the highest form of
knowledge, which he calls intuitive knowledge, is knowledge, not of the
one substance or God, but of individual things or events: God is fully God,
not qua substance or even in His eternal attributes, but in His noneternal
modes understood sub specie aeternitatis. The knowledge of God as pre¬
sented in the First Part of the Ethics is only universal or abstract; only the
knowledge of individual things or rather events qua caused by God is
concrete.35
Spinoza thus appears to originate the kind of philosophic system which
views the fundamental processus as a progress: God in Himself is not the
ens perfectissimum. In this most important respect he prepares German

idealism. Furthermore, just as he returns to the classical conception of
theoria, he returns in his political philosophy to classical republicanism.
The title of the crowning chapter of the Theologico-political Treatise is
taken as literally as possible from Tacitus. But just as his theoretical philos¬
ophy is more than a restatement of classical doctrines and in fact a synthesis
of classical and modern speculation, his political philosophy is more than a
restatement of classical republicanism. The republic which he favors is a
liberal democracy. He was the first philosopher who was both a democrat
and a liberal. He was the philosopher who founded liberal democracy, a
specifically modern regime. Directly and through his influence on Rous¬
seau, who gave the decisive impulse to Kant, Spinoza became responsible
for that version of modern republicanism which takes its bearings by the
dignity of every man rather than by the interest narrowly conceived of
every man. Spinoza’s political teaching starts from a natural right of every
human being as the source of all possible duties. Hence it is free from that
sternness and austerity which classical political philosophy shares with an¬
cient law—a sternness which Aristotle expressed classically by saying that
what the law does not command it forbids. Hence Spinoza is free from the
classical aversion to commercialism; he rejects the traditional demand for
sumptuary laws. Generally speaking his polity gives the passions much
greater freedom and correspondingly counts much less on the power of
reason than the polity of the classics. For whereas for the classics the life of
passion is a life against nature, for Spinoza everything that is, is natural.
For Spinoza there are no natural ends, and hence in particular there is no
end natural to man. He is therefore compelled to give a novel account of
man’s end (the life devoted to contemplation): man’s end is not natural,
but rational, the result of man’s figuring it out, of man’s “forming an idea
of man, as of a model of human nature.” He thus decisively prepares the
modern notion of the “ideal” as a work of the human mind or as a human
project, as distinguished from an end imposed on man by nature.
The formal reception of Spinoza took place in 1785 when F. H. Jacobi
published his book On the Doctrine of Spinoza, in Letters to Herr Moses
Mendelssohn. Jacobi made public the fact that in Lessing’s view there was
no philosophy but the philosophy of Spinoza. The philosophy of Kant’s
great successors was consciously a synthesis of Spinoza’s and Kant’s philos¬
ophies. Spinoza’s characteristic contribution to this synthesis was a
novel conception of God. He thus showed the way toward a new
religion or religiousness which was to inspire a wholly new kind of
society, a new kind of Church. He became the sole father of that
new Church which was to be universal in fact, and not merely in claim as
other churches, because its foundation was no longer any positive revela¬
tion—a Church whose rulers were not priests or pastors, but philosophers
and artists and whose flock were the circles of culture and property. It was
of the utmost importance to that Church that its father was not a Chris¬
tian, but a Jew who had informally embraced a Christianity without
dogmas and sacraments. The millennial antagonism between Judaism and
Christianity was about to disappear. The new Church would transform
Jews and Christians into human beings—into human beings of a certain
kind: cultured human beings, human beings who, because they possessed
science and art, did not need religion in addition. The new society, consti¬
tuted by the aspiration common to all its members toward the True, the
Good, and the Beautiful, emancipated the Jews in Germany. Spinoza be¬
came the symbol of that emancipation which was to be not only emancipa¬
tion but secular redemption. In Spinoza, a thinker and a saint who was
both a Jew and a Christian and hence neither, all cultured families of the
earth, it was hoped, would be blessed. In a word, the non-Jewish world,
having been molded to a considerable extent by Spinoza, had become re¬
ceptive to Jews who were willing to assimilate themselves to it.
The celebration of Spinoza had become equally necessary on purely
Jewish grounds. As we have seen, the emphasis had shifted from the Torah
to the Jewish nation, and the Jewish nation could not be considered the
source of the Torah if it was not understood as an organism with a soul of
its own; that soul had expressed itself originally and classically in the Bible,
although not in all parts of the Bible equally. From the days of the Bible
on, there was always the conflict between prophet and priest, between the
inspired and the uninspired, between profound subterraneous Judaism and
official Judaism. Official Judaism was legalistic and hence rationalistic. Its
rationalism had received most powerful support from the philosophic ra¬
tionalism of alien origin which had found its perfect expression in the
Platonic conception of God as an artificer who makes the universe by look¬
ing up to the unchangeable, lifeless ideas. In accordance with this, official
Judaism asserted that God has created the world and governs it sub ratione
boni. Precisely because he believed in the profoundly understood divinity
of the Bible, Spinoza revolted against this official assertion in the name of
the absolutely free or sovereign God of the Bible—of the God who will be
what He will be, who will be gracious to whom He will be gracious and
will show mercy to whom He will show mercy. Moved by the same spirit,
he embraced with enthusiasm Paul’s doctrine of predestination. The bibli¬
cal God has created man in His image: male and female did He create
them. The male and the female, form and matter, cogitation and exten¬
sion, are then equally attributes of God; Spinoza rejects both Greek ideal¬
ism and Christian spiritualism. The biblical God forms light and creates
darkness, makes peace and creates evil; Spinoza’s God is simply beyond
good and evil. God’s might is His right, and therefore the power of every
being is as such its right; Spinoza lifts Machiavellianism to theological
heights. Good and evil differ only from a merely human point of view;
theologically the distinction is meaningless. The evil passions are evil only
with a view to human utility; in themselves they show forth the might and
the right of God no less than other things which we admire and by the
contemplation of which we are delighted. In the state of nature, that is,
independently of human convention, there is nothing just and unjust, no
duty and no guilt, and the state of nature does not simply vanish when
civil society is established: pangs of conscience are nothing but feelings of
displeasure which arise when a plan has gone wrong. Hence there are no
vestiges of divine justice to be found except where just men reign. All
human acts are modes of the one God who possesses infinitely many at¬
tributes each of which is infinite and only two of which are known to us,
who is therefore a mysterious God, whose mysterious love reveals itself in
eternally and necessarily bringing forth love and hatred, nobility and
baseness, saintliness and depravity, and who is infinitely lovable not in
spite but because of His infinite power beyond good and evil.
Compared with the fantastic flights of the Spinoza enthusiasts in the
two camps, of the moralists and the immoralists, Cohen’s understanding of
Spinoza is sobriety itself. All the more impressive is his severe indictment
of Spinoza.36 He shows first that in his Theologico-political Treatise Spi¬
noza speaks from a Christian point of view and accordingly accepts the
entire Christian critique of Judaism, but goes much even beyond that
Christian critique in his own critique. He accepts against his better knowl¬
edge the assertion of Jesus that Judaism commands the hatred of the
enemy. He opposes spiritual and universalistic Christianity to carnal and
particularistic Judaism: the core of Judaism is the Mosaic law as a particu¬
laristic, not to say tribal, law which serves no other end than the earthly or
political felicity of the Jewish nation; the Torah does not teach morality,
that is, universal morality; the Mosaic religion is merely national; Moses’
God is a tribal and in addition a corporeal God. By denying that the God
of Israel is the God of all mankind Spinoza has blasphemed the God of
Israel. He reduces Jewish religion to a doctrine of the Jewish state. For
him, the Torah is of merely human origin.
Cohen shows next that the Christianity in the light of which Spinoza
condemns Judaism is not historical or actual Christianity, but an idealized
Christianity and hence that while he idealizes Christianity, he denigrates
Judaism. He shows then that Spinoza admits the universalistic character of
the Old Testament prophecy, thus contradicting himself grossly. This con¬
tradiction clearly proves his lack of good faith.37 Nor is this all. While tak¬
ing the side of spiritual and transpolitical Christianity against carnal and
political Judaism, Spinoza contradicts this whole argument by taking the
side of the state not only against all churches but against all religion as
well. “He put religion altogether,” that is, not merely Judaism, “outside
the sphere of truth.” Starting like all other sophists from the equation of
right and might, he conceives of the state entirely in terms of power poli¬
tics, that is, as divorced from religion and morality, and he puts the state
thus conceived above religion. This does not mean that he deifies the state.
On the contrary, he is concerned above everything else with what he calls
philosophy, which he assumes to be wholly inaccessible directly or indi¬
rectly to the large majority of men. He has no compunction whatever
about affirming the radical and unmodifiable inequality of men without
ever wondering “how can nature, how can God answer for this difference
among men?” Hence his sympathy for democracy is suspect. He is com¬
pelled to erect an eternal barrier between popular education and science or
philosophy and therewith between the state and reason. There is no place
in his thought for the enlightenment of the people. He has no heart for
the people, no compassion. He cannot admit a Messianic future of man¬
kind when all men will be united in genuine knowledge of God. This is the
reason why he is altogether blind to biblical prophecy and hence to the
core of Judaism.38
On the basis of all these facts Cohen reached the conclusion that so far
from deserving celebration, Spinoza fully deserved the excommunication.
So far from rescinding the excommunication, Cohen confirmed it, acting
as a judge in the highest court of appeal. The grounds of his verdict were
not the same as the grounds of the lower court. He was not concerned with
Spinoza’s transgression of the ceremonial law and his denial of the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch. He condemned Spinoza because of his infi¬
delity in the simple human sense, of his complete lack of loyalty to his own
people, of his acting like an enemy of the Jews and thus giving aid and
comfort to the many enemies of the Jews, of his behaving like a base
traitor. Spinoza remains up to the present day the accuser par excellence of
Judaism before an anti-Jewish world; the disposition of his mind and heart
toward Jews and Judaism was “unnatural,” he committed a “humanly
incomprehensible act of treason,” he was possessed by “an evil demon.” 30
Our case against Spinoza is in some respects even stronger than Cohen
thought. One may doubt whether Spinoza’s action is humanly incompre¬
hensible or demoniac, but one must grant that it is amazingly unscrupu¬
lous. Cohen is justly perplexed by the fact that “the center of the whole
[theologico-political] treatise” is the disparagement of Moses and the ideal¬
ization of Jesus, although the purpose of the work is to secure the freedom
of philosophizing. He explains this anomaly by Spinoza’s belief that the
suppression of philosophy goes back to the Mosaic law. Cohen does not
assert that Moses championed the freedom of philosophy, but he raises the
pertinent question whether Jesus championed it.40 Why then does Spi¬
noza treat Judaism and Christianity differently? Why does he take the side
of Christianity in the conflict between Judaism and Christianity, in a con¬
flict of no concern to him as a philosopher? Cohen believes that Spinoza
had a genuine reverence for Jesus’ teachings. According to Spinoza’s own
statements he preferred spiritual Christianity to carnal Judaism.41 But is
Spinoza a spiritualist? Cohen says that spirit or mind, if applied to God, is
no less a metaphor than hand, voice, or mouth. He thus merely repeats

what Spinoza himself asserts; Spinoza may be said to have denied that God
has a spirit or mind. The question returns: why does Spinoza treat Chris¬
tianity differently from Judaism? Cohen comes closest to the truth in say¬
ing that Spinoza’s motive was fear,42 surely a “humanly comprehensible”
motive. Or, to start again from the beginning, Spinoza, attempting to
achieve the liberation of philosophy in a book addressed to Christians,
cannot but appeal to the Christian prejudices which include anti-Jewish
prejudices; he fights Christian prejudices by appealing to Christian preju¬
dices; appealing to the Christian prejudice against Judaism, he exhorts the
Christians to free essentially spiritual Christianity from all carnal Jewish
relics (for example, the belief in the resurrection of the body). Generally
speaking, he makes the Old Testament against his better knowledge the
scapegoat for everything he finds objectionable in actual Christianity. In
spite of all this he asserts that the prophets were as universalistic as Jesus
and the apostles or, more precisely, that both Testaments teach with equal
clarity everywhere the universal divine law or the universal religion of jus¬
tice and charity. Why this strange reversal, this flagrant contradiction?
At this point Cohen fails to follow Spinoza’s thought. The purpose of
the Treatise is to show the way toward a liberal society which is based on
the recognition of the authority of the Bible, that is, of the Old Testament
taken by itself and of the two Testaments taken together. The argument
culminates in the fourteenth chapter in which he enumerates seven
dogmas which are the indispensable fundamentals of faith, of biblical
faith—the seven “roots,” as the Jewish medieval thinkers would say. They
are essential to “the catholic or universal faith,” to the religion which will
be the established religion in the well-ordered republic; belief in these
seven dogmas is the only belief necessary and sufficient for salvation. They
derive equally from the Old Testament taken by itself and from the New
Testament taken by itself.43 They do not contain anything specifically
Christian nor anything specifically Jewish. They are equally acceptable to
Jews and to Christians. The liberal society with a view to which Spinoza
has composed the Treatise is then a society of which Jews and Christians
can be equally members, of which Jews and Christians can be equal
members. For such a society he wished to provide. The establishment of
such a society required in his opinion the abrogation of the Mosaic law
insofar as it is a particularistic and political law and especially of the cere¬
monial laws: since Moses’ religion is a political law, to adhere to his reli¬
gion as he proclaimed it is incompatible with being the citizen of any other
state, whereas Jesus was not a legislator, but only a teacher.44 It is for this
reason that he is so anxious to prove that Moses’ law lost its obligatory
power, and that the Jews ceased to be the chosen people, with the loss of
the Jewish state: the Jews cannot be at the same time the members of two
nations and subject to two comprehensive legal codes. Spinoza stresses the
abrogation of the ceremonial law, however, not only because that abroga¬
tion is in his opinion a necessary condition of civic equality of the Jews but
also as desirable for its own sake: the ceremonial law is infinitely burden¬
some, nay, a curse.45
In providing for the liberal state, Spinoza provides for a Judaism which
is liberal in the extreme. The “assimilationist” “solution to the Jewish
problem” which Spinoza may be said to have suggested was more impor¬
tant from his point of view than the “Zionist” one which he likewise sug¬
gested. The latter as he understood it could seem to require the preserva¬
tion of the ceremonial law although the abandonment of the spirit which
has animated it hitherto.46 The former suggestion and the general purpose
of the Theologico-political Treatise are obviously connected: freedom of
philosophy requires, or seems to require, a liberal state, and a liberal state is
a state which is not as such either Christian or Jewish. Even Cohen sensed
for a moment that Spinoza was not entirely free from sympathy with his
people.47 Spinoza may have hated Judaism; he did not hate the Jewish
people. However bad a Jew he may have been in all other respects, he
thought of the liberation of the Jews in the only way in which he could
think of it, given his philosophy. But precisely if this is so, we must stress
all the more the fact that the manner in which he sets forth his pro¬
posal—to say nothing of the proposal itself—is Machiavellian: the humani¬
tarian end seems to justify every means; he plays a most dangerous
game;48 his procedure is as much beyond good and evil as his God.
All this does not mean, however, that Cohen’s critique of Spinoza’s
Theologico-political Treatise is altogether convincing. His political thought
claims to be inspired by biblical prophecy and hence is Messianic. In oppo¬
sition to Spinoza, it starts from the radical difference between nature and
morality, the Is and the Ought, egoism and pure will. The state is essen¬
tially moral, and morality cannot be actual except in and through the state.
The difficulty presented by the fact that morality is universal and the state
is always particular is overcome by the consideration that the state is part
of a universal moral order, as is shown by the existence of international
law and by the intrinsic possibility, which is at the same time a moral ne¬
cessity, of a universal league of states. The radical difference between
nature and morality does not amount to a contradiction between nature
and morality: nature does not render impossible the fulfillment of the
moral demands. The morally demanded infinite progress of morality, and
in particular the “eternal progress” toward “eternal peace,” nay, every
single step of morality, requires for its “ultimate security” the infinite dura¬
tion a parte post of the human race and hence of nature; this infinite
duration or eternity is secured by the idea of God “who signifies the har¬
mony of the knowledge of nature and of moral knowledge,” who is not a
person, nor living, nor existing, nor a spirit or mind, but an idea, “our”
idea, that is, our hypothesis in what Cohen regards as the Platonic meaning
of the term. This is the Cohenian equivalent of Creation and Providence.

Without “the idea of God” as Cohen understands it morality as he under¬
stands it becomes baseless. That idea is the basis of his trust in infinite
progress or of his belief in history, of his “optimism,” of his certainty of
the ultimate victory of the good: “there is no evil.”
But eternal progress also requires eternal tension between the actual
state and the state as it ought to be:49 immorality is coeval with morality.
Here Cohen seems to join Spinoza, whose political thought is based on the
truth, allegedly proved by experience, that there will be vices as long as
there will be human beings and who takes it therefore for granted that the
state is necessarily repressive or coercive. Cohen too cannot well deny that
the state must use coercion, but, opposing the Kantian distinction between
morality and legality, he denies that coercion is the principle of law: coer¬
cion means nothing other than law and needs therefore not to be men¬
tioned. He is as uneasy about coercion as he is about power: the state is
law, for the state is essentially rational, and coercion begins where reason
ends. All this follows from the premise that morality is self-legislation and
that it can be actual only in and through the state. A further consequence is
that Cohen must understand punishment, not in terms of the protection
of society or other considerations which may be thought to regard the
criminal not as “an end in himself” and only as a means, but in terms of
the self-betterment of the criminal alone.50 Cohen obscures the fact that
while the self-betterment is necessarily a free act of the criminal, his forc¬
ible seclusion for the purpose of that self-betterment, in which he may or
may not engage, is not. In other words, all men are under a moral obliga¬
tion to better themselves, but the specific difference of the condemned
criminal is that he is put behind bars. For it goes without saying that
Cohen denies the justice of capital punishment. However justly Spinoza
may deserve condemnation for his Machiavelli-inspired hardheartedness, it
is to be feared that Cohen has not remained innocent of the opposite ex¬
treme. Since he attacks Spinoza in the name of Judaism, it may suffice here
to quote a Jewish saying: “But for the fear of the government, men would
swallow each other alive.” 51
One may doubt whether Cohen's political teaching is unqualifiedly
superior to Spinoza’s from the moral point of view. Cohen “rejects war.”
On the other hand he does not reject revolution, although, as he empha¬
sizes, Kant had “coordinated wars to revolutions.” Revolutions are political
but not legal acts, and hence the state is not simply law; revolutions
“suspend” positive law, but are justified by natural law. They do not neces¬
sarily occur without the killing of human beings; Cohen, the sworn enemy
of capital punishment, reflects only on the death of “the revolutionary
martyrs” who voluntarily sacrifice their lives, but not on the death of their
victims. Kant had questioned the legitimacy of revolution on the ground
that its maxim does not stand the test of publicity, which in his view every
honest maxim stands: the preparation of every revolution is necessarily

conspiratorial or secret. To counter this argument Cohen observes that the
moral basis of revolutions is the original contract which, “being only an
idea, is always only an interior, hence secret presupposition.” The same
reasoning would lead to the further conclusion that the original contract,
nay, Cohen’s theology, must never be publicly mentioned, let alone be
taught. It is altogether fitting that Cohen, who was no friend of the “irra¬
tional” or of “mysticism,” should be driven in his defense of the revolu¬
tionary principle to become friendly to the “irrational” and to “mysti¬
cism.” 52 To say nothing of other things, he would never have been driven
to this surrender of reason if he had taken seriously the law of reason or the
natural law which may be said to indicate the right mean between hard¬
heartedness and softheartedness.
While admitting “the deep injustice” of Cohen’s judgment on Spinoza,
Rosenzweig asserts that Cohen has honestly complied in his critique of the
Theologico-political Treatise with the duty of scholarly objectivity.53 This
assertion must be qualified. Since Cohen accuses Spinoza of having been
unfair in his treatment of the universalism of the prophets, one must con¬
sider in fairness to Spinoza whether the Jewish tradition with which Spi¬
noza was directly confronted had preserved intact that universalism. Cohen
failed to make this investigation. Once one makes it, one observes that
Spinoza recognized the universalism of the prophets in some respects more
clearly than some of the greatest traditional Jewish authorities. In his cri¬
tique of Spinoza, Cohen is silent about the fact, which he mentions else¬
where, that prophetic universalism had become obscured in later times for
easily understandable reasons.54 Cohen is particularly indignant about
Spinoza’s using a remark of Maimonides in order to prove that according
to Judaism non-Jews cannot be saved unless they believe in the Mosaic
revelation,55 that is, unless, as one is tempted to say, they are Christians or
Muslims. More precisely, Spinoza quotes a passage from Maimonides’
Code in which it is said that a Gentile is pious and has a share in the world
to come if he performs the seven commandments given to Noah qua com¬
manded by God in the Torah, but that if he performs them because of a
decision of reason, he does not belong to the pious Gentiles nor to the wise
ones. Cohen accuses Spinoza of having used a false reading of a single pas¬
sage of the Code—of a passage which expresses only Maimonides’ private
opinion and which in addition is contradicted by two other passages of the
Code—in order to deny the universalism of postbiblical Judaism. He (or
the authority to which he defers) notes that according to the most authori¬
tative commentator on the Code, Joseph Caro, the qualification stated by
Maimonides (viz. that piety requires recognition of the Mosaic revelation)
is his private opinion, but he fails to add that Caro adds that the opinion is
correct. Caro would not have said this if Maimonides’ opinion contra¬
dicted the consensus of Judaism,
Cohen (or his authority) also notes that according to the most authentic
text of the Code, the Gentile who performs the seven Noahidic command¬
ments because of a decision of reason does not indeed belong to the pious
Gentiles, but to the wise ones.56 But he does not show that Spinoza knew
that reading to be the most authentic reading. The reading used by Spi¬
noza is still the common reading, which it would not be if it were in shock¬
ing contrast to the consensus of Judaism as Cohen asserts and hence would
have shocked every Jewish reader.57 In addition, the allegedly best reading
does not necessarily improve the fate of the wise Gentiles unless one proves
first that the fate of the wise Gentiles is as good as that of the pious Gen¬
tiles. Cohen finally asserts that the passage in question contradicts two
other passages of the Code which in his opinion do not demand that the
pious Gentile believe in the revealed character of the Torah. It suffices to
say that the two passages are silent on what precisely constitutes the piety
of the Gentiles and are therefore irrelevant to the issue58 Cohen also
refers to a different treatment of the subject in Maimonides’ commentary
on the Mishna; but this merely leads to the further question whether that
commentary, composed much earlier than the Code, is equal in authority
to the Code.
But, to return to the main issue, that is, to the question whether the
ordinary reading, used by Spinoza, of the passage under consideration
makes sense as a Maimonidean utterance: can Maimonides have taught, as
Spinoza asserts he did, that Gentiles who perform the seven Noahidic
commandments because reason decides so are not wise men? The answer is
simple: Maimonides must have taught it because he denied that there are
any rational commandments. Cohen might have objected to this argument
on the ground that if Maimonides’ denial of the rationality of any com¬
mandments or laws were his last word, he could not well have attempted
to show that all or almost all commandments of the Torah have “rea¬
sons.” 59 The reply is obvious: according to Maimonides all or almost all
commandments of the Torah serve the purpose of eradicating idolatry, an
irrational practice, and are in this sense “rational”; they are rational in the
sense in which, not a healthy body, but a medicine, is “healthy.” 00 One
could say that Maimonides’ denial of the rationality of any law is implied
in the incriminated passage itself regardless of which of the two readings
one prefers; for the term which Cohen renders by “reason” [da1 at) does
not necessarily mean reason in particular, but may mean thought or opin¬
ion in general: 61 it makes sense both to assert and to deny that opinion
justifies the seven Noahidic commandments.
These and similar considerations do not affect the main issue, namely,
the fact that Cohen may well be right in asserting that Spinoza acted
ignobly in basing his denial of the universalism of traditional, postpro-
phetic Judaism on a single Maimonidean utterance. In the words of
Rosenzweig, beneath the deep injustice of Cohen’s judgment lies its still
much deeper justification. What Rosenzweig meant may be stated as

follows. Cohen was a more profound thinker than Spinoza because unlike
Spinoza he did not take for granted the philosophic detachment or free¬
dom from the tradition of his own people; that detachment is “unnatural,”
not primary, but the outcome of a liberation from the primary attachment,
of an alienation, a break, a betrayal; the primary is fidelity, and the sym¬
pathy and love which go with fidelity. Genuine fidelity to a tradition is not
the same as literalist traditionalism and is in fact incompatible with it. It
consists in preserving not simply the tradition but the continuity of the
tradition. As fidelity to a living and hence changing tradition, it requires
that one distinguish between the living and the dead, the flame and the
ashes, the gold and the dross: the loveless Spinoza sees only the ashes, not
the flame; only the letter, not the spirit. He is not excusable on the ground
that Jewish thought may have declined in the centuries preceding him
from its greatest height; for he “on whose extraction, whose gifts, whose
learning the Jews had put the greatest hope” was under an obligation to
understand contemporary Judaism, and still more Maimonides, to say
nothing of Scripture itself, in the light of the highest or, if necessary, better
than they understood themselves. Within a living tradition, the new is not
the opposite of the old, but its deepening: one does not understand the old
in its depth unless one understands it in the light of such deepening; the
new does not emerge through the rejection or annihilation of the old, but
through its metamorphosis of reshaping. “And it is a question whether
such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation.” 62 This is indeed the
question: whether the loyal and loving reshaping or reinterpretation of the
inherited or the pitiless burning of the hitherto worshiped is the best form
of annihilation of the antiquated, that is, of the untrue or bad. On the
answer to this question the ultimate judgment on Spinoza as well as on
Cohen will depend: is the right interpretation “idealizing” interpreta¬
tion—the interpretation of a teaching in the light of its highest possibility
regardless of whether or not that highest possibility was known to the
originator—or is it historical interpretation proper which understands a
teaching as meant by its originator? Is the conservatism which is generally
speaking the wise maxim of practice the sacred law of theory?
It would not be reasonable to demand from Cohen that he should give
the benefit of idealizing interpretation to Spinoza, who had become an in¬
gredient of the modern tradition on which Cohen’s philosophy as a philos¬
ophy of culture is based. For the kind of interpretation which Spinoza calls
for is not idealizing since his own doctrine is not idealistic. As was shown
before, Cohen’s political philosophy did not pay sufficient attention to the
harsh political verities which Spinoza has stated so forcefully. Accordingly,
he does not pay sufficient attention to the harsh necessity to which Spinoza
bowed by writing in the manner in which he wrote. He did not understand
Spinoza’s style, which was indeed entirely different from his own. Cohen
sometimes writes like a commentator on a commentary on an already

highly technical text and hence like a man whose thought is derivative and
traditional in the extreme; and yet he surprises time and again with strik¬
ingly expressed original and weighty thoughts. Be this as it may, he goes so
far as to deny that in Spinoza’s time the freest minds were compelled to
withhold and to deny the truth; “Think only of Jean Bodin who in his
Heptaplomeres not only directed the strongest attacks against Christianity
but also celebrated Judaism most highly. It must appear strange that this
writing, which was known to Leibniz and Thomasius, which was at that
time widely distributed, should have remained unknown to Spinoza.” He
forgets here to say what he says elsewhere: “Leibniz had seen the manu¬
script of the Heptaplomeres and had advised against its being printed”;63
it was not printed before the nineteenth century. Once one takes into con¬
sideration the consequences of persecution, Spinoza’s conduct in the
Theologico-political Treatise ceases to be that “psychological riddle” which
Cohen saw in it. He wondered whether that conduct could not be traced
to the fact that the Spanish Jews’ feelings of anxiety caused by the terrors
of the Inquisition had eventually turned into hatred for that for the sake of
which they had been so cruelly persecuted. A different explanation was
suggested by Nietzsche in his verses addressed to Spinoza. After having
paid homage to Spinoza’s amor dei and to his being “blissful through intel¬
ligence,” he goes on to say that beneath the love of the “One in all” there
was eating a secret desire for revenge: am Judengott frass Judenhass. Nie¬
tzsche understood Spinoza in his own image. He traced his own revolt
against the Christian God to his Christian conscience. The premise of this
explanation is Hegelian dialectics: every form of the mind perishes through
its antithesis which it necessarily produces. Spinoza’s break with the Torah
is the consequence of the Sithrei Torah in the double sense of the expres¬
sion: the secrets of the Torah and the contradictions of the Torah. Spinoza
was not swayed by Hegelian dialectics, but by the Aristotelian principle of
contradiction.
Cohen read Spinoza on the one hand not literally enough and on the
other hand much too literally; he understood him too literally because he
did not read him literally enough. Hence he did not find his way among
the contradictions in which the Theologico-political Treatise abounds. As
he exclaims on one occasion, “No reason of reasonable men can under¬
stand, let alone overcome, these difficulties.” A single example must here
suffice. He wonders whether Spinoza does not contradict himself by admit¬
ting that the Mosaic law is a divine law although he understands by a di¬
vine law a law which aims only at the highest good, viz. true knowledge of
God and love of God, or intellectual love of God, and he denies that the
Mosaic law aims at that highest good. The contradiction disappears once
one considers the fact, which Cohen observes, that according to Spinoza a
law may also be called divine with a view to its origin: the Mosaic law is
human as regards its end, since it aims only at political felicity, but it is
divine qua divinely revealed. Cohen quotes Spinoza’s explanation: the
Mosaic law “may be called the law of God or divine law since we believe
that it is sanctioned by the prophetic light.” He remarks: “But why do we
believe this? This question is not answered by the anonymous author.” But
does not the community consisting of the anonymous author who speaks as
a Christian and his Christian readers believe it as a matter of course, so
that the question as to why “we believe it” does not have to arise? Spinoza
had originally said that the divine law aims only at the highest good;
immediately before saying that the Mosaic law can be called divine with a
view to its origin as distinguished from its aim, he says according to Cohen
that the divine law “consists chiefly in the highest good”: hence, Cohen
infers, Spinoza admits now a secondary content of the divine law without
stating immediately what that secondary content is, namely, the sensual
means which sensual men need. But Spinoza did not say that the divine
law consists in the highest good; he says that it consists in the prescriptions
regarding the means required for achieving the highest good: the divine
law consists chiefly of the prescriptions regarding the proximate means and
secondarily of the prescriptions regarding the remote means; since “sensual
man” is incapable of intellectual love of God, his needs fall wholly outside
of the divine law as here considered by Spinoza. It must be added that
according to Spinoza even the divine law in the strictest sense is of human
origin; every law is prescribed by human beings to themselves or to other
human beings. Cohen throws some light on Spinoza’s teaching regarding
the divine law by making this remark on Spinoza’s assertion that “the
highest reward of the divine law is the law itself”: “here he has literally
taken over a sentence of the Mishna from the well-known Sayings of the
Fathers, only adding the word ‘highest.’ ” Cohen underestimates the im¬
portance of Spinoza’s addition: Spinoza’s egoistic morality demands for the
fulfillment of the commandments rewards other than the commandments
or perhaps additional commandments; it does not leave room for mar¬
tyrdom.84
Rosenzweig finds Cohen guilty of injustice to Spinoza, not because of
defective objectivity, but rather because of defective “subjectivity,” that is,
of “insufficient reflection about the conditions and foundations of his own
person. He ought to have made his attack with a clearer consciousness of
the fact that, not indeed he himself, but the times which had borne and
raised him, Cohen himself, would not have been possible without Spi¬
noza.” The distinction between Cohen himself and his time, which is due
to idealizing or apologetic interpretation, is immaterial here, for if Cohen’s
thought had nothing to do with the thought of his time, he would not
have met Spinoza by reflecting about the presuppositions of “his own per¬
son.” Cohen accuses Spinoza of blindness to biblical prophetism, but this
phenomenon as Cohen understood it was brought to light by what he calls
"the historical understanding of the Bible,” and this understanding is not

possible without higher criticism of the Bible, that is, without a public
effort which was originated with the necessary comprehensiveness by Spi¬
noza. Cohen blames Spinoza for disregarding the difference between
mythical and historical elements of the Bible, a distinction which, as
Cohen states, was alien to our traditional exegesis; and as regards the doc¬
trinal elements of the Bible, he blames him for not distinguishing between
the less and the more mature biblical statements; he blames him for the
immaturity or incompetence of his biblical criticism, not at all for his bibli¬
cal criticism itself: for Cohen, biblical criticism is a matter of course.
Similarly, he states that Spinoza opposed rabbinical Judaism, especially
its great concern with the ceremonial law, and that his sharp opposition
had a certain salutary effect on the liberation of opinion; he notes without
any disapproval that “modern Judaism” has freed itself from part of the
ceremonial law; he fails to admit that modern Judaism is a synthesis be¬
tween rabbinical Judaism and Spinoza. As for Spinoza’s denial of the possi¬
bility of miracles, Cohen gives an extremely brief summary of the chapter
which Spinoza devotes to the subject of miracles without saying a word in
defense of miracles.65 In brief, Cohen does not discuss at all the issue be¬
tween Spinoza and Jewish orthodoxy, that is, the only issue with which
Spinoza could have been concerned, since there was no modern or liberal
Judaism in his time. One may say that in his critique of Spinoza, Cohen
commits the typical mistake of the conservative, which consists in conceal¬
ing the fact that the continuous and changing tradition which he cherishes
so greatly would never have come into being through conservativism or
without discontinuities, revolutions, and sacrileges committed at the begin¬
ning of the cherished tradition and at least silently repeated in its course.
This much is certain: Cohen’s critique of Spinoza does not come to grips
with the fact that Spinoza’s critique is directed against the whole body of
authoritative teachings and rules known in Spinoza’s time as Judaism and
still maintained in Cohen’s time by Jewish orthodoxy. Cohen took it for
granted that Spinoza had refuted orthodoxy as such. Owing to the collapse
of “the old thinking” it became then necessary to examine the Theologico-
political Treatise with a view to the question of whether Spinoza had in
fact refuted orthodoxy. Cohen’s critique remained helpful for this purpose
almost only insofar as it had destroyed the prejudice in favor of Spinoza, or
the canonization of Spinoza by German or Jewish romanticism, to say
nothing of the canonization by liberalism. Cohen’s critique had the addi¬
tional merit that it was directed chiefly against the Theologico-political
Treatise. The seeming neglect of the Ethics proved to be sound, and thus
to be obligatory for the re-examination of Spinoza’s critique of orthodoxy,
for the following reason. The Ethics starts from explicit premises by the
granting of which one has already implicitly granted the absurdity of
orthodoxy and even of Judaism as understood by Cohen or Rosenzweig; at
first glance these premises seem to be arbitrary and hence to beg the whole
question. They are not evident in themselves, but they are thought to be¬
come evident through their alleged result: they and only they are held to
make possible the clear and distinct account of everything; in the light of
the clear and distinct account, the biblical account appears to be confused.
The Ethics thus begs the decisive question—the question as to whether
the clear and distinct account is as such true and not merely a plausible
hypothesis. In the Theologico-political Treatise, however, Spinoza starts
from premises which are granted to him by the believers in revelation; he
attempts to refute them on the bases of Scripture, of theologoumena
formulated by traditional authorities, and of what one may call common
sense. For in the Treatise Spinoza addresses men who are still believers and
whom he intends to liberate from their “prejudices” so that they can begin
to philosophize; the Treatise is Spinoza’s introduction to philosophy.
The results of this examination of Spinoza’s critique may be summarized
as follows. If orthodoxy claims to know that the Bible is divinely revealed,
that every word of the Bible is divinely inspired, that Moses was the writer
of the Pentateuch, that the miracles recorded in the Bible have happened
and similar things, Spinoza has refuted orthodoxy. But the case is entirely
different if orthodoxy limits itself to asserting that it believes the aforemen¬
tioned things, that is, that they cannot claim to possess the binding power pe¬
culiar to the known. For all assertions of orthodoxy rest on the irrefutable
premise that the omnipotent God, whose will is unfathomable, whose ways
are not our ways, who has decided to dwell in the thick darkness, may exist.
Given this premise, miracles and revelations in general, and hence all bibli¬
cal miracles and revelations in particular, are possible. Spinoza has not suc¬
ceeded in showing that this premise is contradicted by anything we know.
For what we are said to know, for example, regarding the age of the solar
system, has been established on the basis of the assumption that the solar
system has come into being naturally; miraculously it could have come into
being in the way described by the Bible. It is only naturally or humanly
impossible that the “first” Isaiah should have known the name of the
founder of the Persian empire; it was not impossible for the omnipotent
God to reveal to him that name. The orthodox premise cannot be refuted
by experience nor by recourse to the principle of contradiction. An indirect
proof of this is the fact that Spinoza and his like owed such success as they
had in their fight against orthodoxy to laughter and mockery. By means of
mockery they attempted to laugh orthodoxy out of its position from which
it could not be dislodged by any proofs supplied by Scripture or by reason.
One is tempted to say that mockery does not succeed the refutation of the
orthodox tenets, but is itself the refutation. The genuine refutation of
orthodoxy would require the proof that the world and human life are per¬
fectly intelligible without the assumption of a mysterious God; it would
require at least the success of the philosophic system: man has to show
himself theoretically and practically as the master of the world and the
master of his life; the merely given world must be replaced by the world
created by man theoretically and practically. Spinoza’s Ethics attempts to
be the system, but it does not succeed; the clear and distinct account of
everything which it presents remains fundamentally hypothetical. As a
consequence, its cognitive status is not different from that of the orthodox
account. Certain it is that Spinoza cannot legitimately deny the possibility
of revelation. But to grant that revelation is possible means to grant that
the philosophic account and the philosophic way of life are not necessarily,
not evidently, the true account and the right way of life: philosophy, the
quest for evident and necessary knowledge, rests itself on an unevident de¬
cision, on an act of the will, just as faith. Hence the antagonism between
Spinoza and Judaism, between unbelief and belief, is ultimately not theo¬
retical, but moral.
For the understanding of that moral antagonism the Jewish designation
of the unbeliever as Epicurean seemed to be helpful, especially since from
every point of view Epicureanism may be said to be the classic form of the
critique of religion and the basic stratum of the tradition of the critique of
religion. Epicureanism is hedonism, and traditional Judaism always sus¬
pects that all theoretical and practical revolts against the Torah are in¬
spired by the desire to throw off the yoke of the stern and exacting duties
so that one can indulge in a life of pleasure. Epicureanism can lead only to
a mercenary morality, whereas traditional Jewish morality is not merce¬
nary: “the reward for [the fulfillment of] the commandment is the com¬
mandment.” Epicureanism is so radically mercenary that it conceives of
its theoretical doctrines as the means for liberating the mind from the
terrors of religious fear, of the fear of death, and of natural necessity.
Characteristically modern unbelief is indeed no longer Epicurean. It is no
longer cautious or retiring, not to say cowardly, but bold and active.
Whereas Epicureanism fights the religious “delusion” because of its terri¬
ble character, modern unbelief fights it because it is a delusion: regardless
of whether religion is terrible or comforting, qua delusion it makes men
oblivious of the real goods, of the enjoyment of the real goods, and thus
seduces them into being cheated of the real, “this-worldly” goods by their
spiritual or temporal rulers who “live” from that delusion. Liberated from
the religious delusion, awakened to sober awareness of his real situation,
taught by bad experiences that he is threatened by a stingy, hostile nature,
man recognizes as his sole salvation and duty not so much “to cultivate his
garden” as in the first place to plant a garden by making himself the master
and owner of nature. But this whole enterprise requires, above all, political
action, revolution, a life-and-death struggle: the Epicurean who wishes to
live securely and retiredly must transform himself into an “idealist” who
has learned to fight and to die for honor and truth. But in proportion as
the systematic effort to liberate man completely from all nonhuman bonds
seems to succeed, the doubt increases of whether the goal is not fantas¬
tic—whether man has not become smaller and more miserable in propor¬
tion as the systematic civilization progresses.
Eventually the belief that by pushing ever farther back the “natural
limits” man will advance to ever greater freedom, that he can subjugate
nature and prescribe to it his laws, begins to wither away. In this stage the
religious “delusion” is rejected, not because it is terrible, but because it is
comforting: religion is not a tool which man has forged for dark reasons in
order to torment himself, to make life unnecessarily difficult, but a way out
chosen for obvious reasons in order to escape from the terror, the exposed¬
ness, and the hopelessness of life which cannot be eradicated by any prog¬
ress of civilization. A new kind of fortitude which forbids itself every flight
from the horror of life into comforting delusion, which accepts the elo¬
quent descriptions of “the misery of man without God” as an additional
proof of the goodness of its cause, reveals itself eventually as the ultimate
and purest ground for the rebellion against revelation. This new fortitude,
being the willingness to look man’s forsakenness in its face, being the cour¬
age to welcome the most terrible truth, is “probity,” “intellectual probity.”
This final atheism with a good conscience, or with a bad conscience, is dis¬
tinguished from the atheism at which the past shuddered by its conscien¬
tiousness. Compared not only with Epicureanism but with the unbelief of
the age of Spinoza, it reveals itself as a descendant of biblical morality.
This atheism, the heir and the judge of the belief in revelation, of the secu¬
lar struggle between belief and unbelief, and finally of the short-lived but
by no means therefore inconsequential romantic longing for the lost belief,
confronting orthodoxy in complex sophistication formed out of gratitude,
rebellion, longing, and indifference, and in simple probity, is according to
its claim as capable of an original understanding of the human roots of the
belief in God as no earlier, no less complex-simple philosophy ever was.
The last word and the ultimate justification of Spinoza’s critique is the
atheism from intellectual probity which overcomes orthodoxy radically by
understanding it radically, that is, without the polemical bitterness of the
Enlightenment and the equivocal reverence of romanticism. Yet this
claim, however eloquently raised, cannot deceive one about the fact that its
basis is an act of will, of belief, and that being based on belief is fatal to
any philosophy.
The victory of orthodoxy through the self-destruction of rational philos¬
ophy was not an unmitigated blessing, for it was a victory, not of Jewish
orthodoxy, but of any orthodoxy, and Jewish orthodoxy based its claim to
superiority to other religions from the beginning on its superior rationality
(Deut. 4:6). Apart from this, the hierarchy of moralities and wills to
which the final atheism referred could not but be claimed to be intrin¬
sically true, theoretically true: “the will to power” of the strong or of the
weak may be the ground of every other doctrine; it is not the ground of the
doctrine of the will to power: the will to power was said to be a fact. Other
observations and experiences confirmed the suspicion that it would be
unwise to say farewell to reason. I began therefore to wonder whether the
self-destruction of reason was not the inevitable outcome of modem ra¬
tionalism as distinguished from premodem rationalism, especially Jewish-
medieval rationalism and its classical (Aristotelian and Platonic) founda¬
tion. The present study was based on the premise, sanctioned by powerful
prejudice, that a return to premodern philosophy is impossible. The
change of orientation which found its first expression, not entirely by acci¬
dent, in the article published at the end of this volume 66 compelled me to
engage in a number of studies in the course of which I became ever more
attentive to the manner in which heterodox thinkers of earlier ages wrote
their books. As a consequence of this, I now read the Theologico-political
Treatise differently than I read it when I was young. I understood Spinoza
too literally because I did not read him literally enough.
NOTES
1. Consider Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, translated by Max
Eastman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), I 329-331, III 154-155.
2. Heinrich Heine, “Die romantische Schule,” in Sdmtliche Werke (Elster), V 217.
Cf. the discussion of romanticism in Hegel’s Aesthetik.
3. Consider Jenseits von Gut und Bose, chap. 8.
4. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, 3. Buch, 11. Kapitel.
5. Jenseits von Gut und Bose, No. 251; cf. Morgenrote, No. 205.
6. Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik (Tubingen: 1953), p. 152. This book consists of
a course of lectures given in 1935, but as stated in the Preface, "Errors have been
removed.” Cf. also the allusion on p. 36 to a recent “cleansing” of the German
universities.
7. Cf. Gerhard Scholem, “Politik der Mystik. Zu Isaac Breuer’s ‘Neuem Kusari,’ ”
Juedische Rundschau, No. 57 (1934).
8. Cf. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, translated and abridged by Moshe
Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 2, 233-234.
9. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, H. teshubah VI 3.
10. Achad ha-Am in his essay “External Freedom and Internal Servitude.”
11. Cf. Spinoza, Theologicopolitical Treatise, praef. (sect. 7 Bruder).
12. Thtodicee, Discours de la Conformity de la foi avec la raison, sect. 3, and Vergil,
Georgica, IV 86-87. The poet speaks of the battle between two rival queens for
the rule of a single beehive. The philosopher seems to think of the question
whether philosophy or revelation ought to be the queen.
13. Cf. Franz Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937), pp. 354-398.
14. On the relation between Rosenzweig’s and Heidegger’s thought, see Karl Lowith,
Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Stuttgart: 1960), pp. 68-92.
15. Rosenzweig, op. cit., pp. 380, 387.
16. Eclipse of God (New York: 1952), p. 97; cf. the German original, Gottesfinstemis
(Ziirich: 1953), pp. 87-88. I did not attempt to bring the translation somewhat
closer to Heidegger’s German statement which, incidentally, is not quite literally
quoted by Buber. Cf. Heidegger, Nietzsche, II 320.
17. Hermann Cohen, Ethik des reinen ’Widens, 4th ed., p. 422: “Der Prophet hat
gut reden: Himmel und Erde mogen vergehen; er denkt sie in seinem Felsen,
den ihm Gott bildet, wohlgegriindet.”
18. Eclipse of God, p. 81; Gottesfinstemis, p. 71. I believe that the translator made
a mistake in rendering “Fiihrung einer Welt” by “Conduct of the world,” and
I changed his translation accordingly, but I do not know whether I am right;
it does not appear from the Preface that Buber has approved the translation.
19. Cf. the reasoning with which Wellhausen justifies his athetesis of Amos 9:13-15:
“Roses and lavender instead of blood and iron.” Skizzen und Vorarbeiten (Berlin:
1893), V 94.
20. Der Satz vom Grund, p. 142; Was heisst Denken? pp. 32 ff.
21. Gottesfinstemis, pp. 143, 159-161; Eclipse of God, pp. 154, 173-175. Cf. Rosen-
zweig, op. cit., pp. 192, 530. Cf. above all the thorough discussion of this theme by
Gershom Scholem, Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik (Zurich: 1960), chaps. 1, 2.
22. Cf. Gottesfinstemis, p. 34 with pp. 96-97 and 117 or Eclipse of God, pp. 39—40
with pp. 106 and 127.
23. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, sect. 57. Consider C. F. Meyer’s Die Versuchung des
Pescara.
24. Cf. Frohliche Wissenschaft, No. 343.
25. Jenseits, Nos. 45, 224; Gotzen-Dammemng, "Die ‘Vemunft’ in der Philosophic,”
Nos. 1-2.
26. Letter to Overbeck of February 23, 1887. Cf. Jenseits, No. 60; Genealogie der
Moral, I No. 7, III Nos. 23, 28 beginning; Nietzsche, Werke (Schlechta), III 422.
27. Frohliche Wissenschaft, No. 344; Jenseits, No. 227; Genealogie der Moral III
No. 27.
28. Jenseits I; Frohliche Wissenschaft, Nos. 347, 377. Thomas Aquinas S.th. 1 q. 1.
a. 4. and 2 2 q. I. a. 1.
29. Sein und Zeit, pp. 48-49, 190 n. 1, 229-230, 249 n. 1.
30. Kleinere Schriften, pp. 31-32, 111, 281-282, 374, 379, 382, 391, 392.
31. Op. cit., pp. 108-109, 114, 116-117, 119, 155-156.
32. Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Of Thousand Goals and One.”
33. Cf. also Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen (Kehrbach), p. 43.
34. Kleinere Schriften, p. 154; Briefe (Berlin: Schocken, 1935), p. 520.
35. Ethics, V prop. 25 and prop. 36 schol.; cf. Tr. theol.-pol. VI sect. 23. Cf. Goethe’s
letter to F. H. Jacobi of May 5, 1786.
36. “Spinoza iiber Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum,” in Hermann
Cohens Jiidische Schriften (Bruno Strauss), III 290-372; “Ein ungedruckter
Vortrag Hermann Cohens iiber Spinozas Verhaltnis zum Judentum,” eingeleitet
von Franz Rosenzweig, Festgabe zum zehnjdhrigen Bestehen der Akademie fur die
Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1919-1929, pp. 42-68. Cf. Ernst Simon, “Zu Her¬
mann Cohens Spinoza-Auffassung,” Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissen¬
schaft des Judentums (1935), pp. 181-194.
37. Jiidische Schriften, pp. 293, 320, 325-326, 329-331, 343, 358, 360; Festgabe,
pp. 47-50, 57, 61-64.
38. Jiidische Schriften, pp. 299, 306-309, 329, 360-362.
39. Ibid., pp. 333, 361, 363-364, 368, 371; Festgabe, p. 59.
40. Ibid., pp. 46, 47, 49-50; Jiidische Schriften, p. 344.
41. I bid., pp. 317-321, 323, 337-338.
42. Ibid., p. 367; Festgabe, p. 56. Cf. Tr. theol.-pol. I sect. 35 and 37 with the titles
of Ethics I and II (cf. Cogitata Metaphysica II 12) and V 36 cor.
43. Tr. XII 19, 24, 37; XIII 23; XIV 6, 22-29, 34-36; XX 22, 40; Tr. pol. VIII
46. Cf. especially Tr. XII 3 where Spinoza takes the side of the Pharisees against
the Sadducees. The contrast of Tr. XFV with Hobbes’s Leviathan, chap. 43, is
most revealing.
44. Tr. V 7-9.
45. Ibid., V 13, 15, 30-31; XVII 95-102; XIX 13-17.
46. Cohen, Jiidische Schriften, III 333.
47. Ibid.
48. Cohen, Kants Begriindung der Ethik, 2d ed., p. 490, speaks of the “gewagte Spiel”
of Kant in his Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vemunft, a work
according to Cohen rich in “ambiguities and inner contradictions.”
49. Ethik, pp. 61, 64, 94, 439-458, 468-470, 606. Cf. Kants Begrilndung der Ethik,
2d ed, pp. 356-357.
50. Spinoza, Tr. pol. I 2. Cohen, Ethik, pp. 64, 269, 272, 285-286, 378, 384-386;
Kants Begrilndung der Ethik, pp. 394-406, 454. Cf, however, Hegel, Rechts-
philosophie, sect. 94 ff.
51. Pirke Abot, III 2.
52. Kants Begrilndung der Ethik, pp. 309, 430, 431, 439, 446, 452, 511, 544-545,
554.
53. Festgabe, p. 44 (Kleinere Schriften, p. 355).
54. Jiidische Schriften, II 265-267. Cf. Tr. Ill 25, 33, 34, for example, with Rashi
on Isaiah 19:25, Jeremiah 1:5, and Malachi 1:10-11 and Kimhi on Isaiah 48:17.
55. Festgabe, pp. 64-67; Jiidische Schriften, III 345-351. Cf. Tr. V 47-48.
56. Misreading his authority or Caro, Cohen erroneously asserts that Caro declares
the reading “but to the wise ones” to be the correct reading.
57. Cf. also Manasse ben Israel, Conciliator (Frankfort: 1633), ad Deut. q. 2. (p.
221).
58. In one of the passages (Edut XI 10) Maimonides says that the pious idolators
have a share in the world to come; but how do we know that he does not mean
by a pious idolator an idolator who has forsworn idolatry (cf. Issure Biah XIV 7)
on the ground that idolatry is forbidden to all men by divine revelation? In the
other passage (Teshubah III 5) he merely says that the pious Gentiles have a
share in the world to come; the sequel (III 6 ff, see especially 14) could seem
to show that the pious Gentile is supposed to believe in the revealed character
of the Torah.
59. Jiidische Schriften, III 240.
60. Guide, III 29 end; Aristotle, Metaphysics, I003a33 ff.
61. Cf. M. T. H. Yesodei ha-Torah I 1.
62. Cohen, Die Religion der Vemunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, p. 205.
63. Festgabe, p. 53; Jiidische Schriften, III 365; cf. II 257.
64. Ibid., pp. 335-336; Tr. IV 17 (cf. 9-16) and 21.
65. Jiidische Schriften, III 351; Festgabe 50-54.
66. Comments on Der Begriff des Politischen by Carl Schmitt.
/ Perspectives on
the Good Society
At the request of Professor Rylaarsdam I attended a Jewish-Protestant

Colloquium sponsored by the Divinity School of the University of Chicago
and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B'rith. I attended the Collo¬
quium as an observer with the understanding that I would write a report
about it. I am a Jew, but I was not meant to write the report as a Jew, but
as an observer, an impartial and friendly observer, or as a social scientist,
for the social scientist is supposed to be particularly concerned with every
effort directed toward the good society. This concern was the common
ground of the participants and the observer, for the Colloquium was based
on the premise that in spite of their profound disagreements Jews and
Protestants can be united in their concern for the good society and in their
effort to bring it about or to secure it.
The Colloquium consisted of two parts: of three discussion sessions and
two meal sessions. The discussion sessions dealt with (1) “Common
Ground and Difference,” (2) “Faith and Action,” (3) “Needs and Jus¬
tice”; they descended from the question regarding the highest principles
to the question regarding the most important social action here and now;
at each of these sessions a Protestant and a Jew spoke. The speaker at the
luncheon session was a Protestant, and the speaker at the dinner session
was a Jew; the meal sessions may be said to have been devoted to the situa¬
tion which has rendered possible a Jewish-Protestant Colloquium about
the perspectives on the good society. Since not indeed the highest princi¬
ples by themselves, but the manner in which they are approached or come
to light, depends decisively on the given situation, it will be best to speak
first of the meal sessions.
At the luncheon session Professor Nathan A. Scott, Jr. (Professor of
Theology in Literature, Divinity School, University of Chicago), spoke of
“Society and the Self in Recent American Literature.” He concentrated on
260
Perspectives on the Good Society / 261
the American novel of the time following World War II since the novel
enjoys a particularly high prestige in present-day America. Above all, the
contemporary American novel—especially if contrasted with the contem¬
porary British novel—shows how much Judaism and Christianity are
embattled in present-day America. According to Mr. Scott, this kind of
literature preaches up the radical divorce of the self from contemporary
society or the existence without roots. By confining itself “to the narrow
enclave of the self,” recent American fiction has compelled itself to
produce—apart from very few exceptions—nothing but “pale and blood¬
less ghosts.” Since it does not see human beings in the light of the biblical
faith in creation, it does not see them with humility and charity: the
individual without history and hence authenticity creates beings with¬
out history and hence authenticity. Of this literature it has been claimed
that it corresponds to the “post-Christian” character of our world. Mr.
Scott rejected this claim with contempt. If I understood him correctly, in
his view it is not the non-Christian character of our world, but the non-
Christian or non-Jewish character of the writers concerned, which is re¬
sponsible for their sterility. I cannot comment on the literature in question
since I do not know it. Yet living in this country at this time in constant
contact with young Americans who are compelled to face and to resist that
literature, I cannot help having some familiarity with the moral phenome¬
non of which the contemporary American novel as characterized by Mr.
Scott seems to be an expression if not a cause.
Not a few people who have come to despair of the possibility of a decent
secularist society, without having been induced by their despair to question
secularism as such, escape into the self and into art. The “self” is obviously
a descendant of the soul; that is, it is not the soul. The soul may be respon¬
sible for its being good or bad, but it is not responsible for its being a soul;
of the self, on the other hand, it is not certain whether it is not a self by
virtue of its own effort. The soul is a part of an order which does not origi¬
nate in the soul; of the self it is not certain whether it is a part of an order
which does not originate in the self. Surely the self as understood by the
people in question is sovereign or does not defer to anything higher than
itself; yet it is no longer exhilarated by the sense of its sovereignty, but
rather oppressed by it, not to say in a state of despair. One may say that the
self putting its trust in itself and therefore in man is cursed (Jer. 17:5-8).
It is an unwilling witness to the biblical faith. Mr. Scott was right in reject¬
ing the view that our world is “irredeemably post-Christian” on the ground
that “the Holy Spirit bloweth where it listeth,” but I believe that one
should admit the fact that the unbelief in question is in no sense pagan,
but shows at every point that it is the unbelief of men who or whose par¬
ents were Christians or Jews. They are haunted men. Deferring to nothing
higher than their selves, they lack guidance. They lack thought and disci¬
pline. Instead they have what they call sincerity. Whether sincerity as they
understand it is necessary must be left open until one knows whether sin¬
cerity is inseparable from shamelessness; sincerity is surely not sufficient; it
fulfills itself completely in shrill and ugly screams, and such screams are not
works of art. “Life is a tale told by an idiot” is a part of a work of art, for
life is such a tale only for him who has violated the law of life, the law to
which life is subject. It is true that the message of the writers in question is
not that of Macbeth. They scream that life is gutter. But one cannot sense
that life is gutter if one has not sensed purity in the first place, and of this
which is by nature sensed first, they say nothing, they convey nothing. The
self which is not deferential is an absurdity. Their screams are accusations
hurled against “society”; they are not appeals to human beings uttered in a
spirit of fraternal correction; these accusers believe themselves to be be¬
yond the reach of accusation; their selves constitute themselves by the
accusation; the self as they understand it is nothing but the accusation or
the scream. Every accusation presupposes a law; accusations of the kind
voiced by them would require a holy law; but of this they appear to be
wholly unconscious. Their screams remind one of the utterances of the
damned in hell; they themselves belong to hell. But hell is for them not
society as such, but “life in the United States in 1963.” Their despair is due
to their having believed in the first place that life in the United States in
1963 is heaven or could be heaven or ought to be heaven. They condemn
contemporary American society; their selves constitute themselves by this
condemnation; they are nothing but this condemnation or rejection—a
condemnation not based on any law; they belong to this society as com¬
pletely as their twin, the organization man; their only difference from the
latter is, or seems to be, that they are miserable and obsessed.
The speaker at the dinner session, Mr. Dore Schary (Anti-Defamation
League of B’nai B’rith), agreed with Mr. Scott in implicitly suggesting that
contemporary America is fundamentally healthy, that is, possesses within
itself the remedies for the ills from which it suffers, and that this funda¬
mental health is connected with its being not purely secularist and its not
meaning to be it. The society attacked by the literary avant-gardists is held
together, or is what it is, by the dedication to freedom in the sense that the
freedom and dignity of anyone is supposed to require the freedom and
dignity of everyone. According to Mr. Schary, democracy is not primarily
the rule of the majority, but recognition of the dignity of the individual,
that is, of every individual in his individuality. Only a society in which
everyone can be what he is or can develop his unique potentialities is truly
free and truly great or excellent. What is true of the individual is true also
of the groups of which society consists and in particular of the religious
groups; the freedom and excellence of this country require, above all, that
its citizenry belong to a variety of faiths. Why this is so appears from a
consideration of the ills from which American society suffers. Those ills can
be reduced to one head: the tendency toward homogeneity or conformism,
that is, toward the suppression by nonpolitical means of individuality and

diversity; all Americans are to be remolded in the likeness of “the typical
American.” American society is in danger of becoming ever more a mass
society which is “informed” in the common and in the metaphysical mean¬
ing of the term by mass communication, by the mass communication
industry, the most visible and audible part of which is the advertising
industry. Everyone can see that the youngest girl and the oldest great¬
grandmother tend ever more to look alike; the natural differences of age
and beauty are overlaid by the conventional identity of the ideal, formed
not without the support of the cosmetics industry. It is not merely
amusing to observe that whereas there is a single model of womanhood
—say, the attractive young woman of twenty-one—there is a dual model
of manhood which one may describe as that of the good-looking and
successful junior executive on the one hand and that of the good-looking
and successful senior executive on the other; in this sphere cosmetics
cannot help respecting the most important natural difference: “the
body is at its peak from thirty to thirty-five years of age, the soul at
about forty-nine” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, II 14). On the whole, however,
mass society succeeds amazingly well in rendering irrelevant all natural
differences and therefore in particular also the racial differences: one can
easily visualize a society consisting of racially different men and women
each of whom dresses, has “fun,” mourns, talks, feels, thinks, and is buried
exactly like everyone else. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Mr. Schary
found religious diversity most annoying to the lovers of homogeneity. The
difference in religious faith—in dedication to what simply transcends
humanity—is the obstacle par excellence to conformism.
One may well find it paradoxical that a society dedicated to the free
development of each individual in his individuality should be threatened
by a particularly petty kind of conformism, but the paradox disappears on
reflection. It is merely a shallow hope to expect that the uninhibited
“growth” of each individual to its greatest height will not lead to serious
and bloody conflict. The growth must be kept within certain limits: every¬
one may grow to any height and in any direction provided his growth does
not prevent the growth of anybody else to any height and in any direction.
The limits, the right limits, are to be set by the law. But in order to fulfill
this function, the lawmakers and ultimately the sovereign must possess
both knowledge and good will. The sovereign must be enlightened, free
from prejudice; such freedom can be expected to come from exposure to
science (both natural and social) and its consequences (technology, facility
of traveling, and so on). “People and ideas all over the world are increas¬
ingly accessible, and the sense of what is ‘alien’ grows dimmer ; the more
remarkable differences [among the races of men] tend to dissipate.” Mr.
Schary was, to say the least, not quite certain whether this is a pure gain.
One must be grateful to science and its concomitants for the liberation
from prejudice which it achieves; but, as was indicated, the same power
also endangers diversity or fosters homogeneity. As for good will, democ¬
racy was originally said to be the form of government the principle of
which is virtue. But it is obviously impossible to restrict the suffrage to
virtuous men, men of good will, conscientious men, responsible men, or
whichever expression one prefers. While in a democracy the government is
made responsible to the governed in the highest degree possible—ideally
the government will not have any secrets from the governed—the governed
cannot be held responsible in a comparable manner: the place par excel¬
lence of sacred secrecy or privacy is not the home, which may be entered
with a search warrant, but the voting booth. In the voting booth the prej¬
udices can assert themselves without any hindrance whatever. Voting is
meant to determine the character of the legal majority. The legal majority
is not simply the majority, but it is not irrelevant to the legal majority how
the simple majority feels. There may be a stable or permanent majority; in
the United States the stable majority is “white Protestant.” As a conse¬
quence there is a social hierarchy at the bottom of which are the Negroes
(or colored people in general), and barely above them are the Jews. There
is then a prejudice which is both constitutional and unconstitutional
against Negroes and Jews. If I understood Mr. Schary correctly, the con¬
formism against which he directed his attack has the unavowed intention
either to transform all Americans into white Protestants or else to deny
those Americans who are not white Protestants full equality of opportu¬
nity. Yet would not one have to say that this pressure toward conformism
is not the same as that which is exerted by the communications and cos¬
metics industries?
Recognition of religious diversity, as Mr. Schary understood it, is not
merely toleration of religions other than one’s own but respect for them.
The question arises as to how far that respect can be extended. “We who
are religiously oriented state that there is God; clearer identification than
that is denied us.” Who are the “we”? If the “we” are Jews or Christians,
Mr. Schary admits too little; if they are religious human beings as such, he
admits too much. The singular “God” would seem to exclude the possibil¬
ity of respect for Greek polytheism and still more of the polytheism of the
Egyptians who had “a bizarre pantheon of their own . . . they invented
monsters to worship.” Can one respect a religion which worships monsters
or, to use the biblical expression, abominations? Mr. Schary concluded the
paragraph from which these quotations are taken with the remark that “all
men of decency, self-respect and good will are joined in a common
brotherhood.” I take it that he does not deny that men who are not “reli¬
giously oriented” may be “men of decency, self-respect and good will” and
that men who lack decency, self-respect, and good will and therefore refuse
to join the common brotherhood do not for this reason cease to be our
brothers. But under no circumstances can we be obliged to respect abomi¬

nations, although it may be necessary to tolerate them.
Mr. Schary, I thought, in contradistinction to Mr. Scott, was less con¬
cerned with the truth common to Judaism and Christianity than with the
virtues of diversity. But this very concern made him a defender of the reli¬
gious point of view since religion rather than science is the bulwark of
genuine diversity. As is shown in our age especially by the U.S.S.R., the
secularist state is inclined to enforce irreligious conformism, just as in the
past the religious state was inclined to enforce religious conformism. It
seems that only a qualifiedly secularist, that is, a qualifiedly religious, state
which respects equally religious and nonreligious people can be counted
upon to contain within itself the remedy against the ill of conformism.
However this may be, it is the danger caused by radical secularism in its
Communist or non-Communist form which provides the incentive for
such undertakings as a Protestant-Jewish Colloquium.
This is perfectly compatible with the fact that the condition of the
Colloquium is the secular state. This fact was pointed out by the chair¬
man of the session devoted to “Common Ground and Difference,”
Professor J. T. Petuchowski (Hebrew Union College), in his comment on
the papers read by Professor J. Coert Rylaarsdam (Professor of Old Testa¬
ment, Divinity School, University of Chicago) and Mr. Arthur A. Cohen
(Director of Religious Publishing for Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.).
The secular state may be said to derive from the view that the basis of the
civil order must be reason alone, and not revelation, for if revelation, that
is, a particular revelation, were made that basis, one would use compulsion
open or disguised in the service of faith to the detriment of the purity of
faith. In other words, a Protestant-Jewish Colloquium as an arnica collatio
presupposes friendship, and friendship presupposes equality, at least civic
equality of Jews and Christians; without civic equality not even the neces¬
sary civility is likely to be forthcoming. On the other hand, as Mr. Petu¬
chowski indicated, if the secular state were self-sufficient, there would be
no secure place within it for transsecular Judaism and Christianity: Juda¬
ism and Christianity must have something to say to the secular state which
secularism is unable to say, and in order to be effective, the message of
Judaism and the message of Christianity must be to some extent identical.
It was taken for granted by all participants in the Colloquium that that
message could not be the natural religion or the religion of reason which
was in the past sometimes regarded as the basis of the secular state, for the
religion of reason (assuming that it is possible) would tempt one to believe
in the self-sufficiency of reason or to regard the specifically Jewish or Chris¬
tian message as an unnecessary and peace-disturbing addition to the one
thing needful, and it tends to lead toward the euthanasia of religious belief
or toward “ethical culture.” The common ground on which Jews and
Christians can make a friendly collatio to the secular state cannot be the
belief in the God of the philosophers, but only the belief in the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God who revealed the Ten Command¬
ments or at any rate such commandments as are valid under all circum¬
stances regardless of the circumstances. That common ground was indeed
not articulated in the meeting devoted to the common ground. The reason
was not that that ground is trivial—in an age in which both Judaism and
Christianity have been affected by existentialist ethics, it is surely not
trivial—but because, as is shown by the whole history of Christian-Jewish
relations, recognition of that common ground is not in any way sufficient
for mutual recognition of the two faiths.
What can such recognition mean? This much: that Church and Syna¬
gogue recognize each the noble features of its antagonist. Such recognition
was possible even during the Christian Middle Ages: while the Synagogue
was presented as lowering its head in shame, its features were presented as
noble. However far the mutual recognition may go in our age, it cannot
but be accompanied by the certainty on the part of each of the two antag¬
onists that in the end the other will lower its head. Recognition of the
other must remain subordinate to recognition of the truth. Even the pagan
philosophers Plato and Aristotle remained friends, although each held the
truth to be his greatest friend, or rather because each held the truth to be
his greatest friend. The Jew may recognize that the Christian error is a
blessing, a divine blessing, and the Christian may recognize that the Jewish
error is a blessing, a divine blessing. Beyond this they cannot go without
ceasing to be Jew or Christian.
To say the least, it was always easier for Christians to recognize the di¬
vine origin of Judaism than for Jews to recognize the divine origin of
Christianity. On the other hand, it was easier for Jews to recognize that
Christians may have a “share in the world to come” than it was for Chris¬
tians to recognize that Jews may be “saved.” This is due to the Jewish
union of the “carnal” and the “spiritual,” of the “secular” and the
“eternal,” of the “tribal” and the “universal”: the Torah which contains
the promise of the eventual redemption of all children of Adam (cf.
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah H. Melakhim XI-XII) was given to, or
accepted by, Israel alone. As a consequence, it was easier for Jews to admit
the divine mission of Christianity (cf. Yehuda Halevi, Cuzari IV 23) than
it was for Christians to admit the abiding divine mission of Judaism. It is
therefore not surprising that, as Mr. Rylaarsdam pointed out, the first
genuine meeting of Jews and Christians should have been initiated by a
Jew, Franz Rosenzweig, and that a comparable Christian response to this
Jewish call should not yet have been forthcoming. Such a response, includ¬
ing above all the recognition of the abiding mission of Judaism, is urgently
demanded in the opinion of Mr. Rylaarsdam because of what happened to
the Jewish people in our lifetime: the butchery of six million Jews by
Hitler-led Germany and the establishment of the state of Israel; Jewish

agony and Jewish rebirth are not adequately understandable on the basis of
the traditional Christian view of Judaism. In addition, the traditional
Christian judgment on the Jew is at least partly responsible for the perse¬
cution of the Jews in the Christian world and therefore, if indirectly, for
Hitler Germany’s action. The Christian must begin to ask himself whether
he can “acknowledge that the mission of Israel did not end when his own
mission began.” One cannot leave matters at asserting the undeniable fact
that the Jew denies and the Christian maintains that the Messiah, that Re¬
demption, has come. Judaism says that “there is no redemption yet God
has redeemed his people”; Christianity says that there is no redemption
yet God has redeemed mankind in the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Judaism, in contradistinction to Christianity, “is concerned with
the redemption of history,” with redemption on this side of death, with
redemption on earth: according to Judaism, the Elect One is Israel which
never dies; according to Christianity, the Elect One is Jesus the Christ who
died on the cross. Yet “the Christian must agree with the Jew that the
world [this world] is unredeemed” and that “this world matters to God.”
The agony of the Jew and the agony of the Cross belong together; “they
are aspects of the same agony.” Judaism and Christianity need each other.
One may say that Mr. Rylaarsdam stated what Christianity has to learn
from Judaism; he did not presume to tell the Jews what they have to learn
from Christianity; he left the performance of that task to his Jewish part¬
ner. But Mr. Cohen did not perform this task. I do not think that he can
be blamed for this. He did not, of course, mistake learning from Christian¬
ity for assimilation to Christianity. For instance, to move the day of rest
from the seventh day of the week to the first day is an act of assimilation to
Christianity which does not involve learning from Christianity. Nor did he
deny, he even asserted, that Judaism and Christianity need each other; in
fact, in this respect he agreed entirely with Mr. Rylaarsdam. But in the
main he limited himself to reasserting vigorously the traditional Jewish
position toward Christianity: there is an irreconcilable disagreement be¬
tween Judaism and Christianity; Christianity depends on Judaism, and not
vice versa; Christianity has to leam from Judaism; there is no Judaeo-
Christian tradition; at least from Paul on, Christianity has never under¬
stood Judaism. And yet he stressed the fact that the contemporary Jew and
Christian are not, and can never become again, the Jew and the Christian
of old: they confront each other “no longer as dogmatic enemies, but as
common seekers of the truth.” He admitted, in other words, that the mis¬
understanding has been mutual. But he did not explain what the Jewish
misunderstanding of Christianity was. He did not go beyond alluding to
certain defects of Jewish Messianism at the time of Jesus and to the de¬
plorable if excusable alliance of Judaism with secularist, anti-Christian
movements. Why did he fail to make clear what Judaism may have to
learn from Christianity? Are Jews still in greater danger to abandon Juda¬
ism in favor of Christianity than Christians are to abandon Christianity in
favor of Judaism? Is there still a greater worldly premium on being a Chris¬
tian than on being a Jew? Or is it obvious to everyone what the Jews have
learned from Christianity since it is obvious what the Jews have learned
from modernity and it is obvious that modernity is secularized Christian¬
ity? But is modernity in fact secularized Christianity? Mr. Cohen seemed
to doubt this. However this may be, he surely referred to the Jew’s “pain of
his historical encounter with Christendom.”
Which Jew can indeed forget that pain? But confronted by the fact that
the most noble Christians of our age have shown sincere repentance and
sincerely offer us peace, we Jews must not regard Christendom as if it were
Amalek; we must even cease to regard it as Edom. Above all, noblesse
oblige. Mr. Cohen rightly rejected the common Christian notion of Jewish
“pharisaism”: no Jew who ever took the Torah seriously could be self-
righteous, or believe that he could redeem himself from sin by the fulfill¬
ment of the Law, or underestimate the power of sin over him. The true
“Pharisee” in the Christian sense is not the Pharisee proper, but Aristotle’s
perfect gentleman who is not ashamed of anything or does not regret or
repent anything he has done because he always does what is right or
proper. Mr. Cohen went beyond this. He demanded that the Christian
view of the power and the depth of sin be mitigated in the light of “a real¬
istic humanism,” and he asserted that that humanism is found in the Jew¬
ish Bible. Isaiah’s words in 6:5-7 and David’s prayer in Psalm 51:12 sound
“realistic” enough; they are, however, hardly “humanistic.” Similar consid¬
erations apply to Mr. Cohen’s remark about Pauline theology as “a
theology for disappointment.” I had thought that the days of historicist
“debunking” had gone. Yet I cannot but agree with his concluding sen¬
tence: “What more has Israel to offer the world than eternal patience?”
This sentence calls indeed for a long commentary. One sentence must here
suffice: what is called here “eternal patience” is that fortitude in suffering,
now despised as “ghetto mentality” by shallow people who have surren¬
dered wholeheartedly to the modern world or who lack the intelligence to
consider that a secession from this world might again become necessary for
Jews and even for Christians.
If I understood him correctly, Mr. John Wild (Professor of Phi¬
losophy, Northwestern University) introduced the meeting devoted to
“Faith and Action” with the observation that while Judaism and Christian¬
ity agree in believing that faith must issue in action, Christianity has some¬
times succumbed to the Greek, intellectualist understanding of faith and
accordingly severed or almost severed the connection between faith and
action. M. Paul Ricoeur (Professor of Philosophy, Sorbonne), presenting “a
Christian view” of faith and action, started from the facts that the opposi¬
tion between the contemplative life and the active life stems from Greek
philosophy and is wholly alien to Judaism and that in this respect Chris¬
tianity is simply the heir to Judaism. One may agree with M. Ricoeur while
admitting that there is some evidence supporting the view that Greek
philosophy did not as such assert that opposition. It suffices to mention the
name of the citizen-philosopher Socrates. But perhaps one will be com¬
pelled eventually to say that his being a citizen culminated in his tran¬
scending the city, not only the city of Athens but even the best city, in
speech, as well as that the only comprehensive and effective reply to the
claim of contemplation to supremacy is supplied by the Bible. Be this as it
may, M. Ricoeur was chiefly concerned with the question as to whether the
doctrines distinguishing Christianity from Judaism do not lead again to the
depreciation of action. His answer was in the negative. He conveyed to me
the impression that the doctrine of original sin, for instance, is “the specu¬
lative expression” alien to Judaism of an experience which is not alien to
Judaism. Differently stated, the Christian doctrine of justification by faith
was perhaps “present from the beginning in the Bible”; the Jewish saying
that everything is in the hands of God except fear of God would contradict
the doctrine of justification by faith only if it were meant, as it surely is not
meant, to arouse or confirm “any desire to draw glory” over against God
from one’s fearing God. M. Ricoeur asserted that Christianity sometimes
succumbed to “Hellenistic” ways of understanding the relation of faith and
action by divorcing faith from action, especially from social action, or by
denying that there is any connection between the salvation of the individ¬
ual and “historical redemption,” or by being unconcerned with the evil
embodied in “impersonal institutions” (the state, property, and culture) as
distinguished from sin proper; yet in his view this is simply a “reactionary
conception,” incompatible with original Christianity. At any rate, there is
no serious difference in this respect between Christianity and Judaism: “it
is always its Jewish memory that guards (Christianity) against its own
deviations.”
Mr. Nahum N. Glatzer (Professor of Jewish History, Brandeis Univer¬
sity) presented “a Jewish view of faith and action.” He gave a comprehen¬
sive survey of Jewish thought on this subject from the days of the Bible
down to the present. According to what one may call the classic Jewish
view, “knowledge of God,” study, faith, learning, or wisdom both presup¬
poses and issues in righteous action or active piety or “fear of heaven,” but
in such a way that what counts is action. The basis of this view appeared to
be the talmudic theologoumenon that by his right or pious action man
becomes “a participant with God in the work of creation”: whereas regard¬
ing revelation and redemption, man is merely a recipient; regarding cre¬
ation, or rather regarding the continuity of creation, “man is an active
partner” of God. The Jewish view of faith and action was obscured in
different ways and for different reasons in the Middle Ages on the one
hand and in modern times on the other. Owing to their subjugation many
medieval Jews came to believe that “the world matters little; the rectifica¬
tion of its ills and, finally, its redemption, would come in God’s good
time.” As a consequence of the emancipation of the Jews in the nineteenth
century, an important part of Jewish opinion came to identify social and
other progress with the process of redemption; that which transcends prog¬
ress and action, that with which faith is concerned, tended to be forgotten.
Modern secularism believed that it would put an end to the Jewish-
Christian antagonism by depriving Judaism and Christianity of their
raisons d’etre; its manifest failure which affects equally Jews, Christians,
and nonbelievers calls for a community of seeking and acting of both Jews
and Christians—a community which has originally been rendered possible
by secularism. The failure of secularism shows itself, for instance, in the
ever increasing cleavage between science and humanism. In Mr. Glatzer’s
view that gulf cannot be bridged by a “synthesis” of science and hu¬
manism because science is “neutralist” and humanism is “traditionalist”:
the required “redefinition of the image of man” is beyond the com¬
petence of either or both, not in spite but because of the fact that it
must be a redefinition of man as created in the image of God. “The
hybris of scientism” cannot be overcome with the help of a humanism
which is inspired by the belief in man as a creator. Over against sci¬
entism and humanism Judaism and Christianity are at one.
The greatest divisive power in the past was revealed religion. Even today,
as we have been led to see by reflecting on one of the papers read at the
Colloquium, religious diversity is the obstacle par excellence to conformism
in this country. The differences at any rate between Judaism and Christian¬
ity do not preclude the availability of a common ground. What divides the
human race today in the most effective manner is, however, the antago¬
nism between the liberal West and the Communist East. Even in this case
there exists, as Mr. Gibson Winter (Divinity School, University of Chi-
cago) pointed out in his paper on “National Identity and National Pur¬
pose,” a “common ground”: “their common ground is the limit set upon
their opposition by [their] nuclear power.” Thermonuclear war being
manifestly an act of madness, the common ground must become the basis
of a dialogue—a dialogue to be conducted, not in ideological terms, but
with a view to the duties of this country faced by the world-wide “struggle
against hunger and the aspiration for human dignity”; this country must
cease to “endorse a status quo position in a hungry world.” The dialogue
required is then in the first place a dialogue, not with Soviet Russia, but
with the “have-nots” within the U.S.A. and without. As for the dialogue
with the U.S.S.R., it requires that the “purpose and interest” of “our ene¬
mies” be respected and, above all, that the “apocalyptic framework” for
the dialogue be recognized: in the spirit of Deuteronomy 30:19, we must
choose life—“a future in justice and community”—in the certainty that
the alternative choice leads to thermonuclear annihilation as God’s judg-
ment. What will enable us to continue the dialogue with the U.S.S.R. in
spite of all its hazards is faith, not, of course, in the good will of the Soviet
rulers, but in God. It goes without saying that no such faith can be ex¬
pected from the Soviet rulers: unilateral disarmament is out of the ques¬
tion. Faith equally forbids preventive war. On the other hand one cannot
simply assert that this country must not under any circumstances initiate
the use of nuclear weapons. “The most difficult problem in the use of
nuclear power,” however, concerns retaliation. “Retaliation after a destruc¬
tive attack becomes simply vengeance” and seems therefore to be incom¬
patible with Christian ethics: “to choose the life of others over our own—
this is the message of the Cross.” Yet “the possibility of retaliation is the
power which restrains aggression.”
Two comments on this proposal seem to be appropriate. The possibility
of retaliation would lose much of its restraining power if the enemy knew
that a second strike force which survived his successful attack would never
be used against him; hence a decision allegedly demanded by faith must
remain the most closely guarded secret; in other words, the tongue must
pronounce the opposite of what the heart thinks. Second, by saving the
lives of the Soviet people in the contingency under consideration, one
would surrender all the have-not nations to Soviet rule and thus deprive
them for all the foreseeable future of the possibility to be nonatheistic na¬
tions or, more generally stated, to have a future of their own, neither Rus¬
sian nor American; in other words, Mr. Winter’s proposal is based on a
tacit claim to know what God alone can know. Considerations like these
may explain the fact deplored by him that “the institutional weight of our
religious traditions [viz. Christian and Jewish] falls ... on the conserva¬
tive side in the struggle which separates the world.” At any rate there seems
to be a tension between his plea for universal prosperity and freedom and
his remark that “the grave danger for Judaism at this moment is the pros¬
perity which distracts her from [her] vocation. . . . External oppression
can fortify the [chosen] people.”
The Jewish partner of Mr. Winter, Mr. Nathan Glazer (Housing and
Financing Agency, Washington, D.C.), spoke on “The Shape of the Good
Society.” He did not speak from a distinctly Jewish point of view. He dealt
with the most successful revolution of our age, “the organizational revolu¬
tion, or the scientific revolution,” and its implications. Through this revo¬
lution the gap between “the intellectuals,” “the radical and liberal critics,”
on the one hand and the organizations “representing the status quo” has
been closed or at least very much narrowed. The reason was that the intel¬
lectuals proved to possess “new techniques for making organizations more
efficient.” One might say that in proportion as the scientists drew all con¬
clusions from their basic premise, which is the assertion that science is lim¬
ited to “factual” assertions as distinguished from “value” assertions, they
lost the right to be radical critics of institutions and became willing serv-
ants of any institutions. Yet, strangely, the co-operation of scientists and

men of affairs has affected the "values” of the latter: could there be a pre-
established harmony between the allegedly value-free science and the lib¬
eral values? Be this as it may, the question which troubled Mr. Glazer was
whether the society rendered possible by the co-operation of the scientists
and the managers—the society guaranteeing to everyone "simple justice
and simple freedom”—can be regarded as the good society: “both conserv¬
atives or reactionaries, on the one hand, and intellectuals and radicals and
anarchists on the other, often come together in opposition to what we
might call establishment Liberalism.” Both the reactionary and the intel¬
lectual question the claim of the welfare state—“the whole organization,
the machine for doing good”—to be the good society. Mr. Glazer sees only
one way out: "to improve the organizations” by setting up “the great orga¬
nization” or “the big organization” or “the determining center of alloca¬
tion” which is enabled to direct all other organizations because it “will
have far more information and will make much better diagnoses” than
anyone else can. Hence it will be “the good big society.” Alongside it, Mr.
Glazer predicted “there will be developing . . . good small societies,”
composed “of reactionaries and anarchists and radical intellectuals.” But
he was not sure whether “the organization will be tolerant enough to let
them be” nor whether “they will be clever enough to evade it.” Faced with
the grim prospect of universal philistinism, we are forced to wonder
whether, according to Mr. Glazer, Judaism and Christianity belong on the
side of the big organization or on that of the anarchists. I believe that Jews
and Christians would have to choose anarchism or secession—a kind of
secession radically different from that castigated by Mr. Scott. The reason
why I believe this is Exodus 13:17: “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh
had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land
of the Philistines, although that was near.” The land of the Philistines is
perhaps nearer today than it ever was. The meaning which we ascribe to
the scriptural verse may not be its literal meaning; it may nevertheless be
its true meaning. For, as Jews and Christians agree, the literal meaning iso¬
lated from everything else “killeth.” Pharisaic rabbinical Judaism always
held that the written Torah must be understood in the light of the oral or
unwritten Torah, and the most profound reason for this is that the most
profound truth cannot be written and not even said: what Israel heard at
Sinai from God Himself “was nothing but that [inaudible] Aleph with
which in the Hebrew text of the Bible the First Commandment begins”
(Gershom Scholem, Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik [Zurich: 1960], 47).
Acknowledgments
"What Is Liberal Education?” was an address delivered at the tenth annual graduation
exercises of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University College,
the University of Chicago, on June 6, 1959; it was printed by the University of Chicago
Press and reprinted in C. Scott Fletcher, ed., Education for Social Responsibility (New
York: Norton, 1961), pp. 43-51.
“Liberal Education and Responsibility” is reprinted from C. Scott Fletcher, ed., Edu¬
cation: The Challenge Ahead (New York: Norton, 1962), pp. 49-70. Copyright 1962
by the American Foundation for Continuing Education.
"The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy” is reprinted from Review of Meta¬
physics, XII, No. 3 (March 1959), 390-439.
“How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed” is reprinted from the intro¬
ductory essay to Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. xi-lvr.
“Marsilius of Padua” is reprinted from Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History
of Political Philosophy (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), pp. 227-246.
“An Epilogue” is reprinted from Herbert J. Storing, ed., Essays on the Scientific Study
of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), pp. 305-327. Copyright
© 1962 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rine¬
hart and Winston, Inc.
“Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion” is reprinted from Leo Strauss, Spinoza's
Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965). Copyright 1965 by Schocken
Books, Inc.
“Perspectives on the Good Society” is reprinted from Criterion: A Publication of the
Divinity School of the University of Chicago, II, No. 3 (Summer 1963), 2-9.
273
Index of Names
Achad ha-Am, 257 Descartes, Ren6, 240

Aeschylus, 41-43 Diodorus Siculus, 43-44, 50
Albo, Joseph, 158, 161 Diogenes Laertius, 136
Anaxagoras, 50, 90-91
Anaximander, 50 Empedocles, 46, 90-91, 135, 137-138
Antiphon, 51, 59-63 Epicurus, viii, 76—139, 205, 255-256
Archelaus, 50-51 Euripides, 6, 43, 102
Aristophanes, 51
Aristotle, 8, 26-28, 30-34, 37, 52, Farabi, 146, 187
53, 75, 91, 139, 146, 151, 156,
169-171, 181-183, 185-192, 198-201,
Gewirth, Alan, 201-202
205-208, 210, 238, 241, 251, 257,
Goethe, Johann von, 224, 227, 239, 258
259, 263, 266, 268
Gorgias, 30
Averroes, 200
Bacon, Francis, 240 Halevi, Yehuda, 266

Bailey, Cyril, 128, 137, 138 Hamilton, Alexander, 16-17
Bayle, Pierre, 232 Havelock, Eric A., 26-64
Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 224-226 Hegel, Georg, 210, 225-226, 233, 251,
Buber, Martin, 234-236, 258 259
Burckhardt, Jacob, 227 Heidegger, Martin, 227, 233-235, 237,
Burke, Edmund, 17, 137, 213 257
Heine, Heinrich, 257
Caro, Joseph, 248 Heraclitus, 6, 90-91
Cicero, 136-138 Herodotus, 23, 33
Cohen, Hermann, 240, 243-253, 258— Herzl, Theodor, 228
259 Hesiod, 34-39,41-43, 72, 136
Comte, Auguste, 32 Hobbes, Thomas, 44, 220, 240, 259
Homer, 27, 39, 72, 105, 112
Dante, Alighieri, 200, 202
Darwin, Charles, 231 Ibn Janah, Abul (Rabbi Jonah), 160,
Democritus, 46, 51-53, 108, 112, 134, 174
137 Israeli, Isaac, 198
275
276 / INDEX OF NAMES
Jacobi, F. H., 241 Pinsker, Leon, 228-229

Plato, 6, 7, 14-15, 26-27, 30, 32-35, 37-
Kant, Emmanuel, viii, 210, 240-241, 247, 40, 45-50, 52-61, 65, 91, 137-138,
258 169, 178, 182, 187, 201, 205, 234-235,
Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 257 240, 242, 246, 257, 266
Koj&ve, Alexandre, v Protagoras, 12-13, 40, 45-49
Puffendorf, Samuel, Freiherr von, 16
Leibniz, Gottfried, 232
Lenin, V. I., 209
Rosenzweig, Franz, 233-234, 237-239,
Lessing, Gotthold, 241
248-250, 252-253, 257-258, 266
Locke, John, 16, 22, 29
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 189, 225, 241
Lucretius, viii, 76-139
Machiavelli, 44, 201, 208, 217, 223, 239, Scholem, Gerhard, 257, 258, 272
242, 246-247 Simon, Ernst, 258
Maimonides, 140-184, 201, 238-239, Sophocles, 43
248-250, 257, 259, 266 Spinoza, 137, 224-259
Manasse ben Israel, 259
Marsilius of Padua, 185-202 Tacitus, 241
Marx, Karl, 24, 48, 219, 225 Thomas Aquinas, 185, 199, 213, 258
Mendelssohn, Moses, 237 Trotsky, Leon, 257
Meyer, C.F., 258 Thucydides, 33, 81-82, 85, 136, 217
Mill, J. St., 17-18, 20
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron Virgil, 257
de, 208
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 24, 226-227, 234, Wellhausen, Julius, 231, 235, 258
236-237, 251, 258
Xenophanes, 50, 138
Onqelos the Stranger, 149-150, 157, 169 Xenophon, 71, 138
PHILOSOPHY/POLITICAL SCIENCE
evered and reviled, Leo Strauss has left a rich legacy of work that
continues to spark discussion and controversy. This volume of essays
ranges over critical themes that define Strauss’s thought: the tension between
reason and revelation in the Western tradition, the philosophical roots of
liberal democracy, and especially the conflicting yet complementary relation¬
ship between ancient and modern liberalism. For those seeking to become
acquainted with this provocative thinker, one need look no further.
“Takes its place beside What Is Political Philosophy? as the most appropriate intro¬
duction to Strauss’s thought.” —Hiram Caton, National Review
“A person seeking to comprehend the deeper significance of our political experience

in Western culture could take himself to no school more challenging, to no teacher
more enlightening. The present book ... is an excellent place to begin.”
—Frederick K. Sanders, Sewanee Review
Strauss s discussion of liberal education in the first two chapters speaks powerfully
to our renewed debate.... And the last chapter, like the rest of the book, is studded
with such gems as his lucid and unforgettable analysis of the distinction between
‘the self’ and the soul.” —Allan Bloom
“In a time when the very meaning of ‘liberal education’ has become a matter of
doubt and controversy, Strauss’s theoretical regrounding of liberalism in classical
political philosophy should be of the greatest significance for thoughtful liberals
everywhere.” —Thomas L. Pangle, University of Toronto
LEO STRAUSS (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished

Service Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His contri¬
butions to political philosophy include Natural Right and History, The Political Philosophy
oj Hobbes, The City and the Man, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Persecution and the Art of
Writing, What Is Political Philosophy?, The History of Political Philosophy, and The Rebirth
of Classical Rationalism, all available from the University of Chicago Press.
The University of Chicago Press

www.press.uchicago.edu
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77689-7
ISBN-10: 0-226-77689-1
9 0 0 0 0
Cover design: Joan Sommers Design 9 780226 776897

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SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC I IRRARY

The University of Chicago Press

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77689-7 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Leo Strauss is sometimes reviled as an enemy of liberal democracy by defensive

knows we cannot return to traditional aristocracies, whose hypocrisy tried to

Liberalism is understood here and now in contradistinction to conserva¬

virtuous. Being liberal in the original sense is so little incompatible with

1 / What Is Liberal Education? 3

2 / Liberal Education and Responsibility 9

3 / The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy 26

6 / How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed

7 / Marsilius of Padua 185

9 / Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion 224

10 / Perspectives on the Good Society 260

Index of Names 275

Liberal education is education in culture or toward culture. The finished

community of the greatest minds is rent by discord and even by various

itself democratically. A government of such perfection is not suitable for

thoughts concerning thermonuclear wars not be affected by such pros¬

ical art. Since in a democracy everyone is supposed to possess the political

Hamilton’s republic will be ruled by the men of the learned professions.

thought, there is no other mode than proportional representation as de¬

The natural tendency of representative government, as of modem civiliza¬

Only proportional representation which guarantees or at least does not

part of the people no longer receive any religious education, although it is

1. Cf. Crito 49d 2-5.

Classical political philosophy—the political philosophy originated by Soc¬

cal mechanism.” This is a fair description of positivistic political science at

almost all practical purposes he will be a republican. Classical political

tends that a pure liberalism existed in pre-Platonic or pre-Socratic thought;

by no means the sufficient condition of liberalism. It is indeed common to

especially when “the surviving scraps are . . . tenuous’' (123), he wisely

As our quotations have abundantly proved, Havelock takes it for granted

Protagoras who, on a similar occasion, speaks not only of the gifts of

Havelock begins his attempt to disinter Greek liberalism by commenting

Prometheus is a god, but he contends reasonably that if the fire which

the three great tragedians. Diodorus—already an authority for Machiavelli

ran hpCe T" faCt°rS: there is firSt the cross-comparison that

rrri06 ^Vel°,Ck ?at PIat° made Sreater concessions to the

compatible with “previous Greek science," which asserted the primacy of

justice (92-94). Granted that Protagoras was “a complete agnostic," must

f rj f PC /§heSt Prai$e °f Punishment ^ its rational justifica-

diliite Archelaus fundamental distinction between nature and convention

is characterized by "a recurrent terminology of equality and good will

long speeches/ . . . One would think that here, if anywhere, Plato’s

After the conversation between Protagoras and Socrates had led to a

regard, for instance, of the treatment of Carthage in the second book, to

“results from a social compact reached by society’s members” (272).

1. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.

The Minos has come down to us as a Platonic work immediately preceding

answer to the theoretical question “What is law?” has supplied at least a

1. The Opening (I 1-148)

Lucretius’ work is a poetic exposition of Epicurean philosophy. The reader

of benefiting Memmius; he merely shows her how her entirely unsolicited

In order to see why knowledge of the unattractive origins of everything