Meier - Political philosophy and the challenge of revealed religion

The present book sets out to determine political philosophy as a philosophic concept and to test it face to face with the challenge posed by revealed religion. It is guided by the insight that philosophy must prove its right and its necessity in confrontation with the most powerful objection that can be raised against philosophy, and it asserts that this confrontation is the officium of political philosophy. As little as philosophy is understood here as an academic discipline or as a province in the realm of culture, just as little is political philosophy understood as a special department or as a field in the garden of philosophy. Instead, it is a distinctive turn, a change in the direction of view and inquiry, which for philosophy makes a difference in the whole. For philosophy can reach its full reflexivity solely in the reflection on its own presuppositions and in the encounter with its most demanding alternative. The first part of the book specifies the concept of political philosophy in its fourfold determination: according to its object, the political or human things; as a mode of philosophy or in view of the political defense of the philosophic life; in regard to the rational justification of the philosophic way of life; and finally, uniting these three determinations, as the locus of the philosophers self-knowledge. The four moments are so intertwined with one another that they constitute an articulated and internally dynamic whole that is historically diverse and nevertheless maintains its inner unity. In the second and third parts, the concept is developed further through the interpretation of two masterpieces of political philosophy.

At the center is a thorough investigation of Leo Strausss most complex and controversial book, Thoughts on Machiavelli. Strauss, who introduced the term political philosophy into philosophic discussion, links in his longest work the problem of Socrates, which designates the starting point of political philosophy, with the problem of Machiavelli, which names the beginning of modern political philosophy. Between Socrates and Machiavelli stands the theological and the political challenge of revealed religion, about which Strauss has presented with Thoughts on Machiavelli the most astonishing treatise.

The third part contains a new interpretation of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Du contrat social. By a precise explanation of the argument and the structure of the writing, it is shown that Rousseaus most famous work cannot be adequately understood as long as it is not understood as a coherent political-philosophic response to the conception of theocracy in all of its manifestations. No other book of a philosopher in modernity achieves the clarity with which Du contrat social determines the right and the limits of politics.

Why Political Philosophy? has its origin in the inaugural lecture that I gave on February 16, 2000, in the Great Hall of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt in Munich. It appeared as an independent writing in two editions in 2000 and 2001 and was translated into five languages. The German original has been out of print for quite some time. The two chapters that substantiate the programmatic outline from the year 2000 were written especially for this book. I worked out The Renewal of Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion in two seminars on Thoughts on Machiavelli that I taught at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt in Munich in summer 2010 and in the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago in spring 2011. The Right of Politics and the Knowledge of the Philosopher was prepared by a seminar on the Contrat social in Chicago in spring 2012. Parts of sections I and II I presented in public lectures at the University of Halle, the University of Zurich, and the Free University of Berlin in September, October, and December 2012. I have been preoccupied with the Contrat social since 1974. I devoted two of my Rousseau seminars in Munich to it, one in winter 2000/2001, the other in summer 2006, and long before this it was the subject of a seminar that I conducted jointly with Wilhelm Hennis at his invitation at Albert-Ludwigs-Universitt in Freiburg im Breisgau in summer 1980. Thoughts on Machiavelli has accompanied me since I first read it in October 1977. It is one of the books that challenge and reward the reader day and night.

Chicago, April 8, 2013

H. M.