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1 2 6 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2judgment” when confronted with it. 12 While the multiplicity of divergingreligious narratives gives birth to the philosophical quest, as an attempt toevaluate them rationally, the biblical religion is, for Strauss, the most rationalreligion and thus the greatest challenge to philosophy because it insists onthe falsity of all other religions. 13 Classical philosophy and biblical revelationboth reject individualistic hedonism as either unnatural behavior or sinfuldisobedience to God’s commandments, and, in the form of either wisdomor righteousness, they both regard virtue as the finality of human life. Butdespite their common affirmation of transcendence, the biblical concept of“an omnipotent and mysterious God” practically excludes the Greek notionof nature and, together with it, the capacity of philosophy to arrive at knowledgeof the whole. 14 Thus “philosophy has to grant that revelation is possible.”This means that “the philosophic life is not necessarily, not evidently, the rightlife,” 15 that it could ultimately be a life of delusion that leads to damnation.As stressed by Strauss, the ancients insisted that philosophical natureswere rare, and their aspirations were in conflict with the vulgar wishes of themajority of people. The irresolvable conflict between reason and revelationfurther complicates the tension between philosophy and the city. For, whilephilosophy is a never-ending interrogation that cannot arrive at definite conclusions,the great majority of men, as Maistre argues, “need not problemsbut beliefs” in order “to conduct [themselves] well.” 16 The order of the cityis a theologico-political order deduced from the city’s religious dogmas. Byquestioning the latter, philosophy undermines the former, threatening to“dissolve the very element of social life.” While the philosopher “suspends…judgment” when “sufficient evidence is lacking,” “it is impossible” to “suspendjudgment on matters of life and death,” all of which “can be reduced tothe question of how one ought to live.” 17 Thus, if wisdom is Socratic awarenessof one’s ignorance, political wisdom is awareness of the threat that thepublic exercise of philosophy poses not only to the city, which may be pushedtowards anomie and anarchy, but, as revealed by the tragic end of Socrates,12Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization,” in An Introductionto Political Philosophy, 296.13Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 177–78.14Ibid., 178–79.15Strauss, Natural Right and History, 75.16Joseph de Maistre, Against Rousseau, in The Collected Works of Joseph de Maistre, trans. RichardLebrun, InteLex Past Masters. Accessed June 10, 2014.17Leo Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” in Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, by HeinrichMeier, trans. Marcus Brainard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 146–47.