 Much of Philosophy and Law is an attack on Guttmann’s assumption that the central problem for medieval Jewish philosophy was epistemological in nature. According to Guttmann, the fundamental question in studying medieval Jewish philosophy was how medieval Jewish philosophers, and Maimonides in particular, understood the relation between reason and revelation as sources of knowledge. Strauss argued, in contrast, that Maimonides’ basic concern was not epistemological but instead political. Before any questions about the basis of knowledge can be asked, the question of what it means to philosophize in the framework of the authority of the law must be answered. Strauss argued that philosophy can clarify the meaning of the law, but philosophy cannot derive the law itself. Instead, the law is the pre-philosophical context of and framework for philosophy. It was also within the context of Philosophy and Law that Strauss began to consider something he had up until then thought impossible: a return to pre-modern philosophy.