Borges and Leo Strauss on Virtue is Knowledge

If instead we begin with the presupposition that Meno is irremediably stupid and wicked, and then go looking for support in the text, we will find it. There are always many things in a Platonic dialogue which depend on our stage directions. This method may involve some danger to our own souls, however. Meno doesn’t do too well in the face of Socrates. But which one of us would? To exaggerate Meno’s arrogance, laziness, smugness, snobbishness, rudeness, failure to pay attention, slavish tendency to follow teachers or common opinions, and so forth, might well be to underestimate our own.--Abraham Stone.

Through the years a man peoples a space with images of provinces, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.--Borges (quoted from this piece by Nada Elia)

In writing about Borges's (1949) Averroës's Search (yesterday), I was reminded of Leo Strauss's (1941) essay, Persecution and the Art of Writing. I hinted at this at the start of my post by calling attention to Borges's awareness of the significance of strategic silences when dealing with theological questions. The practice of esotericism is also alluded to with a nod to the doctrine of "Quran's two faces." (This is merely attributed to "people" not to any of the speakers nor any of the poets and scholars mentioned.)* To what degree Borges's quotations (and misquotations ) of Averroes are also a labyrinth into his own theological views, I leave for another day.** This being Borges, esoterism's comedic twin mirror -- the learned not grasping what is fully present -- is also, perhaps even more fully, present in the story; most readers note that Averroes (who is struggling to understand what Aristotle means by tragedy and comedy) is incapable of recognizing  the performances of comedy and tragedy he is exposed to.

As an aside, and speaking of lacunae: as of yet the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lacks an entry on Averroës!

The main reason to be reminded of Strauss (1941) essay is because Borges's Averroës's Search starts and ends with nods/citations to/of Renan's (1852) Averroès et l'Averroïsme: essai historique. This book is now obscure, but as it happens its author is Strauss's only named target in the text. In particular, Renan is held to be responsible for changing opinion about Averroës, from somebody who is perceived to be hostile to "all religion," to somebody who is a "loyal, even believing, Moslem." (494) One need not be a logician to see that these two options do not exhaust all real possibilities even among "scholars." (Renan's interest in racial hierarchy goes unmentioned.) Averroës later returns in Strauss's essay as one of several thinkers who suffered "a kind of persecution that was more tangible than social ostracism." (499-500; in context Strauss is careful to distinguish between religuous persecution and persecution of free inquiry (500), while also insisting that such ostracisim is the "mildest" species of persecution.)

Now, Strauss lists "axioms" that can naturalize the seeming "miracle" of writing for a minority of one's readers in a publication. The first axiom is that thoughtless readers are careless, and only the thoughtful are careful readers.  (There is also a second axiom which pertains only to twarthing legal persecution.) Strauss recognizes that there is an objection: that there are clever and careful readers who are not trustworthy. His response to this objection is that the literature he is discussing accepts the "Socratic dictum" that "virtue is knowledge." (492) For convienence's sake I call esotericism that accepts this dictum, 'Socratic esotericism.'

Strauss's response to the objection to Socratic esotericism is manifestly unsatisfying as the mere mention of Heidegger -- a very careful reader, after all, -- reminds us. It is an open question to what degree Strauss's learned American readers in 1941 would have been familiar with Heidegger, but Strauss would not have thought it prudent to call attention to his own particular familiarity with Heidegger.*** That is to say, Strauss esoterically introduces another form of -- let's call it 'post-Socratic' -- esotericism: one for authors and readers that do not accept the unity of the virtues and that all knowledge is virtue. While Strauss offers elaborate details on how to pay attention to the signs of Socratic esotericism, he is, shall we say, less explicit on the post Socratic kind.

You may think, 'what does any of this have to do with Borges?' Averroës's Search is preceded by Deutsches Requiem. The story is a lightly edited soliloquy by a self-knowing, and highly literate Nazi with a self-proclaimed passion for "music and metaphysics" who manages to destroy his own compassion. That is to say, if Borges practices esotericism then it will be of a post-Socratic kind. 

 

*In context, it is suggested that the doctrine amounts to the same thing as a doctrine by al-Jāḥiẓ of Basra.

** It is tempting to quote, “He is an atheist, but he knows the orthodox interpretation of the Koran’s most difficult passages, because every cultivated man is a theologian, and faith is not a requisite.” J. L. Borges, “The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald.” But the more important lines in this piece are the official embrace of the "more probable" conjecture of "benevolent destiny" after presenting the (thus) less probable option of pantheism (attributed to Omar Khayyam).

***He does do so in a later work.

 

Comments

[Daniel Nagase]

Not much to add, except that I really liked those posts on Borges, who is one of my favorite writers. If I may ask, is there anything specific that prompted them?

[Eric Schliesser]

I am reading Averroës's Search together with a friend.