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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How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I've come to believe.
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Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
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Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts. -"The Blood-Stained Pavement
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Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
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Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
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One cannot inquire into the foundations and nature of mathematics without delving into the question of the operations by which the mathematical activity of the mind is conducted. If one failed to take that into account, then one would be left studying only the language in which mathematics is represented rather than the essence of mathematics.
L. E. J. BrouwerRead