哲學、上帝與美好生活的可能性－施特勞斯的政治哲學與神學

Philosophy, God and Possibility of Good Life: Leo Strauss's Political Philosophy and Theology

劉小楓(LIU Xiao Feng)

《道風：基督教文化評論》 14期 (2001/01) Pp. 13-60+314-315

並列摘要

According to Strauss, it is only the very quest for moral knowledge by Socrates and Plato and the faith in God of the prophets which provides one with a sustained path out of catastrophe and fear. For Strauss, the possibility of a beautiful life by no means lies in the prospects of any reliance on natural or scientific devices or artifacts with which to extinguish human deficiencies and ruthlessness, but in that -regardless of the existence of catastrophes and fears-firm persistance in the quest for moral knowledge of Socrates and Plato and faith in God. Although humankind is already doing multifarious evil God has not yet disposed of us. The present question is: humankind cannot dispose of itself, nor abandon the quest for knowledge of absolute values. Seeing that the predicament of humankind is to already be in this predicament of having eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge, the best and only possibility is to rely on the Socratic-Platonic spirit of the search for ethical knowledge: ＂That man is evil and suffers pain and trouble has his knowledge of good and evil as its premise, and vice versa＂. If man desires a beautiful life he has no alternative but to take knowledge of good and evil as premise.