And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of Keynes College London and the LMU in Munich, online at

www. History of Philosophy.net. history of philosophy. net.

Today's episode,

He moves in mysterious ways.

My monities on eternity.

I don't mean to complain but figuring out the history of philosophy can sometimes be pretty difficult.

Figures in the history of philosophy both great and small wrote in all these inconvenient other languages until they finally learned English,

were careless about making sure their works were preserved in reliable manuscripts, and generally

gave very little thought to the plight of future podcasters.

At least you can say though that philosophers have usually tried to tell us what they think about

philosophy. This you might suppose is the whole point, but not always.

At some places in times there have been philosophers who deliberately concealed their true opinions

on philosophical topics.

In some cases they left clues or warnings for their readers to help those in the know

see through the veil of confusion to the true doctrines underneath.

How widespread a phenomenon is this? Well, that is itself a difficult question to answer.

Certainly if we fast forward to the modern era, we can think of philosophers who were pretty clearly

atheists, or atheists by the standards of their day who nonetheless professed faithful obedience to religious doctrine.

Concerning the pre-modern era though, even the suggestion of so-called dissimulation, that is concealing one's true doctrines, is apt to get historians fighting amongst themselves.

One of the main instigators of these interpretive controversies has been Leo Strauss.

In his 1952 book, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss suggested that my monities, among

other figures, can only be read rightly if dissimulation

...