"If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom"
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Strauss draws a sharp line through the hierarchy of human excellences. Theoretical wisdom, the contemplative knowledge of the highest causes and ends, is crowned as supreme by Plato and Aristotle only if the highest things are in principle accessible to reason. If the gods, the whole, the Good, or first causes lie beyond our ken, then contemplation loses its claim to primacy. What cannot be known cannot be the proper object of the mind at its peak.
That pivot exposes an entire genealogy of moral and political thought. Aristotle exalts sophia because he assumes the cosmos is intelligible; the best life imitates the divine by understanding it. But if one embraces the Kantian boundary that renders noumena unknowable, or the positivist ban on metaphysics, then theoretical wisdom no longer points upward to ultimate reality. The priority shifts. Either practical reason becomes highest, governing action under moral law, or the highest virtue becomes obedience, faith, or commitment to revelation. Modern projects that replace contemplation with control of nature repeat the same move: they dethrone knowing-why in favor of knowing-how.
Strauss uses this conditional to illuminate the stakes of the quarrel between philosophy and theology, and between classical rationalism and modern skepticism. Philosophy as a way of life rests on a confidence that logos can grasp what is highest, however imperfectly. Deny that, and the best human capacity is no longer theoria but prudence, piety, or technological mastery. The human peak then lies in right action or right devotion, not in understanding.
The sentence functions as a diagnostic and a challenge. It makes visible the hidden premise behind any claim about the best life. One must choose: either keep open the possibility that the highest things are knowable and thereby vindicate contemplation, or accept their unknowability and reconfigure the summit of virtue around practice, will, or faith.
That pivot exposes an entire genealogy of moral and political thought. Aristotle exalts sophia because he assumes the cosmos is intelligible; the best life imitates the divine by understanding it. But if one embraces the Kantian boundary that renders noumena unknowable, or the positivist ban on metaphysics, then theoretical wisdom no longer points upward to ultimate reality. The priority shifts. Either practical reason becomes highest, governing action under moral law, or the highest virtue becomes obedience, faith, or commitment to revelation. Modern projects that replace contemplation with control of nature repeat the same move: they dethrone knowing-why in favor of knowing-how.
Strauss uses this conditional to illuminate the stakes of the quarrel between philosophy and theology, and between classical rationalism and modern skepticism. Philosophy as a way of life rests on a confidence that logos can grasp what is highest, however imperfectly. Deny that, and the best human capacity is no longer theoria but prudence, piety, or technological mastery. The human peak then lies in right action or right devotion, not in understanding.
The sentence functions as a diagnostic and a challenge. It makes visible the hidden premise behind any claim about the best life. One must choose: either keep open the possibility that the highest things are knowable and thereby vindicate contemplation, or accept their unknowability and reconfigure the summit of virtue around practice, will, or faith.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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