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Abstract The contrast "Athens vs. Jerusalem" played a major part in the late work of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). His scholarly career, from the outset, can be described as a motion from Jerusalem (Spinoza, Maimonides) to Athens (Plato, Xenophon) Nevertheless, a third city, Mecca, and what it stands for, unspokenly synthesizes the first two. For instance, Strauss's interpretation of Plato is grounded on Farabi's view of philosophical style. His rediscovery of esotericism-that is, of the possibility of a silent oral teaching-depends on an Islamic conception of Revelation, which opposes the Christian one: Athens and Jerusalem meet in Mecca, but they are at loggerheads in Rome.
The Athens and Jerusalem Theme
The second-century church father Tertullian may have been the first to declare, What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?, but it was not until the Russian philosopher Leo Shestov used the two city names as the title of a book (1951, posthumous) that they became a kind of catchword for the opposiSome words on the labyrinthine history of the present text: A first version was prepared in English and sent to a symposium that, for reasons of health, I could not attend. Its proceedings were due to be published but finally were not. My article was later translated into French (Brague lg8ga). The present version takes advantage of remarks by the late David R. Lachterman (Lachterman 1991: 238-45). tion between Hellenism and Hebraism. Among the people who took up Shestov's yoked pair, Leo Strauss must probably be given pride of place.
Leo Strauss (1899-1973) began his career in Germany as a student of Jewish and Muslim philosophy. In the 193os, he fled to France, Britain, and finally settled in the United States, where he taught first in New York, then in Chicago. He is famous for his attempt at reviving the idea of Natural Right, to which he devoted one of his most well-known books, as well as for his rediscovery of the classical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, which he contended to be still relevant for our time and age, if we read them as they wanted to be read. Strauss put the theme of "Athens and Jerusalem" at the very core of his later thought, from the late 1940s, hence, before he could...