A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.
Leo StraussRead
The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how the Jewish people's experiences serve as a profound commentary on the concept of redemption.
In this quote, Leo Strauss suggests that the Jewish people symbolize a unique existential reality where their historical suffering and trials illustrate a deeper philosophical truth regarding redemption. Instead of being a promise of salvation, their collective experience reveals the complexities and often harsh realities of life, leading to the contemplation of what it means to be 'chosen' not for privilege but as a testament to life's challenges.
Themes
JudaismRedemptionSufferingExistentialismChosenPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on existential philosophy, I referenced this quote to illustrate the complexities of suffering.
More from Leo Strauss
All quotes →No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint.
Leo StraussRead
If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.
Leo StraussRead
The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.
Leo StraussRead
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Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains.
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The difference between a man who is led by opinion or emotion and one who is led by reason. The former, whether he will or not, performs things of which he is entirely ignorant; the latter is subordinate to no one, and only does those things which he knows to be of primary importance in his life, and which on that account he desires the most; and therefore I call the former a slave, but the latter free.
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The arguments about parents being too permissive and kids growing up without superegos are not based on fact. Our research tells us that the family is not the only purveyor of morality.
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I say the same of humility and of all the virtues; the wiles of the devil are terrible, he will run a thousand times round hell if by so doing he can make us believe that we have a single virtue which we have not. And he is right, for such ideas are very harmful, and such imaginary virtues, when they come from this source, are never unaccompanied by vainglory; just as those which God gives are free both from this and from pride.
Teresa Of AvilaRead