The Star of Redemption

by Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Rosenzweig

“Franz Rosenzweig’s The Start of Redemption is one of the few lasting books of our century, a work whose originality transcends the disciplinary limits of philosophy and religion and which must be read by anyone whose concern with the meaning of daily life is urgent and abiding.” —Maurice Natanson, Yale University

The Star of Redemption is widely recognized as a key document of modern existential thought and a significant contribution to Jewish theology in the twentieth century. An affirmation of what Rosenzweig called “the new thinking,” the work ensconces common sense in the place of abstract, conceptual philosophizing and posits the validity of the concrete, individual human being over that of “humanity” in general. Fusing philosophy and theology, it assigns both Judaism and Christianity distinct but equally important roles in the spiritual structure of the world and finds in both biblical religions approaches toward a comprehension of reality.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Judaism, Theology, Nonfiction, Jewish, Judaica

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Franz Rosenzweig's story, like Gershom Scholem and Franz Kafka, was that of a return to the very core of Jewish life from the assimilated periphery. Rosenzweig was born into a wealthy, acculturated family in Kassel, Germany. After studying medicine, his scholastic interest shifted toward philosophy and his dissertation later became a two-volume study entitled Hegel und der Staat [Hegel and the State] (1920), which is displayed in the Bezalel Bookcase. It was at this stage in his life where he was ready to abandon Judaism and convert to Christianity, but only on one condition. Like the earliest Christians, he would enter as a Jew, not a pagan. In 1913, as a last resort, he attended Kol Nidre services. In that orthodox synagogue, he had a religious epiphany that sent him squarely back to Judaism.

As a solider in the trenches during World War I, Rosenzweig composed his seminal work, Der Stern der Erloesung [The Star of Redemption] (1921). Afterwards he moved to Frankfurt, where he created a "particular Jewish sphere" and remained the rest of his life. Beyond the influence of his published scholarly works, his legacy is undoubtedly intertwined with his founding of the Freies Judisches Lehrhaus, an adult academy dedicated to Jewish studies of the highest intellectual standing.

Franz Rosenzweig personified the conflict of many young intelligent Jews, that between the pull of modernity and the practice of traditional Jewish ideals. More than any other German Jew, Rosenzweig helped to build a distinct, modern Jewish culture, while remaining deeply rooted in his German surrounding.

-Gelman Library, http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/spec/kiev/t...

Reviews

[Hagar]

Mostly read for his treatment of miracles bc of work. This is Jewish existentialism, but it is quite different from that of Buber, even though Franz and him were quite close and translated the Tanakh together. Much of post-Rabbinic Jewish theology I don't gel with, so I didn't get much out of this.

An interesting point in Rosenzweig's life is when he considered converting to Christianity. "Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to live as an observant Jew first before becoming Christian [LOL]. After attending Yom Kippur services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, he underwent a mystical experience [👀]. As a result, he became a baal teshuva. Although he never recorded what transpired [👀], he never again entertained converting to Christianity."

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

feel kind of dumb giving a book like this a star rating (and i’m only not giving it 5 because the style for the first ~150 pages reminded me a bit too much of Heidegger). But this book rocks. Made plenty of notes in the margins that just said like “Derrida” or “Kristeva” because it’s so clear where more contemporary thinkers were pulling from. Also towards the end of the book you get a pretty thorough philosophical rundown on why Rosenzweig was opposed to Buber’s Zionism.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reviewing the Barbara Galli (U. Wisconsin Pr. 2005) rather than the mid-20c "original" version by Rosenzweig and Martin Buber's student in Weimar-era Berlin, William Hallo, which may be the translation that previous GR commentators have ranked. For, like Amazon, this site clumps together editions. Which while convenient for the casual browser, may confound the discerning seeker. It's important, as similar to the next related read that Star reminded me finally to take up, Buber's I and Thou, from the same seminal era, there's a version (Smith) closer to the author's own collaborative period in Germany than a "scholarly" reworking (Kaufman) addressing an academic rather than general audience.

This preface frames the challenge of both works. While over a century later, both Star and its creator have fallen into marginal awareness contrasted with the admittedly more faint echoes nowadays, long after the postwar existentialist heyday of Buber and company, of these deep thinkers trying to account for man's inhumanity to man, it's crucial to frame Star with the collapse of modernism. For as he composed this on postcards in the Macedonian trenches during WWI (hard as it is to fathom; consider Bruce Duffy's novel The World As I Found It, another must re-read, note to self and you too, dramatizing Wittgenstein on that same Eastern Front doing similarly ambitious intellectual excavation), young Franz attempted to build upon his Hegel thesis with this reconciliation: uneasy, sprawling, baffling, sometimes incoherent in its master plan?

A reformulation of how his mentor Hermann Cohen's mathematical conceptions; a rejection of the previous Enlightenment boasts of the triumph of reason; an unsettling tag-team or grudge-match refereed where Jewish "blood" innate bonding resists the diaspora, post-pagan Christian "being made into but not born as a member of that tribe by recruitment rather than by inheritance" (see how my own paraphrase nears Teutonic lumbering paraphrasing), and hints of Kabbalah, mysticism, and truly astounding flights into poetic transport which energize despite the tedious scholastic monologues.

This heap doesn't mesh neatly. Despite the elegance of the star-shaped titular archetype. It remains a magpie's heap of glittering fragments of profundity, poetic raptures, convoluted detours, and dogged self-ratiocination. This word-hoard instead piles up in shards and suggestions (again, Wittgenstein as analogous) of how to revive thought which under the weight of Kant and his colleagues, had failed in liberating the rational mind from religious, moral, and social stagnation, leaving hubris, solipsism.

I chose this as I understood that Rosenzweig numbers among a handful of our last century's critics who influenced dual-covenant theology such as Reinhold Niebuhr and James Parkes, a concept which may have come from Maimonides (that figure by the by, often assumed by Rosenzweig in Star as if you're familiar with him, but as Samuelson helpfully and frequently reminds the likes of me, not explicitly credited). While it took until around 3.2.1. before the bridge-train-river (not a Trolley Problem, although Norbert Samuelson in a witty if mordant aside in an endnote to his supplemental student's companion to Hallo's once-standard presentation includes a clever riposte to "co-exist" psychobabble) analogy of separate paths for the Jewish and Christian followers of the divine floated into view. Although the theory didn't gain the elucidation I anticipated, despite Samuelson's tour guide spiel--he never mentioned the d-c teaching--I allude to it if you have with an interest in this alternative to supersessionism and replacement of Jewish by Messianic thought which we increasingly hear preached and peddled, during our unfortunate revival of antisemitism and related aspersions.

Star's quite a formidable work. I've bought (rare as I rarely invest anymore in adding to my crowded shelves on a diminished budget) in both the Hallo and Galli adaptations, so when revisiting this bewildering, buoyant, and/or blathering behemoth, I can compare the English renderings. I consulted Norbert Samuelson's User's Guide (Routledge; see my review) compiled with his students over two decades, which comments on the original, with plenty of parenthetical German nouns to reveal the thinking embedded not only in Rosenzweig's first language, enriched with nods to the Hebrew, in which Franz and Martin collaborated on their groundbreaking Tanakh voicing into their vernacular of the raw, paratactic, insistent, awkward, repetitive phrases of Torah.

The Wisconsin version, by the way, carries an appealing style as Galli interprets Rosenzweig for our century. But her notes tally far too spare. She may give the gist of one Latin tag or Greek aside, but leaves out at least as many more. For instance, the text raises the ancient tragedy of Phaedra. But then the passage brings in one Julia. That's a Roman name. So what's up? Seems that Galli, while offering us that staged character, fails to clarify that it's Shakespeare's Juliet meant. I only picked this up in Samuelson. If left only to Galli's scant devices, my albeit feeble grasp of Rosenzweig would have been much weaker than I confess it remains. Still, the moments of illumination enlightening what in long passages, for myself untutored in the forebears and the proclaimers of continental philosophy, stubbornly kept aloof or beyond my non-algebraic acumen, proved that a determined stamina could manage to push me through deep thickets into passing encounters of revelation.

So, this alongside The Essential Schopenhauer may have been one of the most difficult volumes I've ever stumbled through. They share a mingling of erudition and Eastern-infused Mitteleuropean engagement with arcana, a homegrown effort by mavericks at odds with their nation's stolid professoriat, and a rather unhinged project to upend convention. And they're both books that for all their impenetrable dicta, nevertheless invite I aver fruitful revisits for the ilk of amateur me who tries to ingest strong food for deep thought. Which now few purveyors offer us.

[Micah Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is much to make of this work.
It is an ethical treatise, a document, a manual for the tenets of three religions that can not see eye to eye.
Rosenzweig attempts to reconcile the common traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with the base foundation of ethical analysis.
The syntax is puzzling and geared for academics, but the purpose is crystal clear.
It is a gem among volumes of works that gloss over or completely ignore the glaring truth- that the basis of our belief begins with a very simple philosophical question.

[Br. Simeon Jaeger]

I'm not smart enough for this.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Star of Redemption is divided into three parts, each of which has three books. The first part presents “the elements,” philosophical constructions from which the system will take shape. These elements are God, the world, and the self (or “man”). The second part introduces “the course” in which God, world, and self relate to one another and advance toward unity in the All. God and the world relate in creation, God and the self relate in revelation, and the self and the world relate in redemption. The third part of the book examines the star of redemption, composed of both the elements and the course, more closely. It describes the vision of the face of God in the form of the star, then relates this vision to everyday life.

In the introduction to the first part of the Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig identifies the fear of death as the source of our awareness of the chasm that separates the self and the world. The relationship between self and world is central to the Star—the chasm between them is only overcome in redemption. Rosenzweig also claims that philosophy, in the form of German Idealism, seeks to temper this primordial fear of death. That is, German Idealism, and Absolute Idealism in particular, presupposes an undifferentiated unity, “the All,” out of which differentiated reality unfolds dialectically. This comforts the self in its fear of death, since the self, insofar as it, too, proceeds from the All, is not particular, and only the particular can really die. Rosenzweig rejects this presupposition at the heart of German Idealism, which he claims only leads to deception, particularly in that it fails to account for the irreducible fact of difference inscribed at the heart of the cosmos. His system, rather than start from undifferentiated unity, starts from the particular nothing associated with what he claims are the three fundamental and independent beings: God, world, and self. And, rather than derive each being from one another in the manner of dialectic, Rosenzweig derives each being from its own particular nothing.

The method Rosenzweig uses to derive each being from its particular nothing is the same. For each nothing, there are two paths that stem from the nothing and ultimately reunite to constitute the being at issue. The first path starts with the affirmation of the not-nothing, the “Yes.” The second path starts with the negation of the nothing, the “No.” These two paths unite in what Rosenzweig calls the “And.” For each being derived in this manner, the affirmation of the not-nothing always corresponds to a quality of “substantiality” or “being” attributed to the element in question, while the negation of the nothing always corresponds to an “active” quality attributed to the element. By this method, Rosenzweig identifies the three elements of God, world, and self. However, in the actuality we experience, we do not encounter each of the elements on its own, separate from the others. Consequently, the constructions of the elemental God, world, and self remain “hypothetical”; they can only become “certain” once it is shown that they are the necessary conditions for the actuality we experience, and what we experience manifests in the relations between God, world, and self. The task of the second part, then, is to show how the elemental beings advance toward their systematic unification in the All in their reciprocal relations with one another.

Whereas the first part of the Star set forth the philosophical constructions of God, world, and self, the second part presents the theological concepts by which the fundamental beings relate. God relates to the world in creation; God relates to the self in revelation; and the self relates to the world in redemption. Rosenzweig derives each of the relations from what he calls a “transformation” of each of the elements, which amounts to a process of “conversion.” This conversion demands a reversal of the “Yes” and the “No” associated with each element: the “Yes” pole (i.e. that of substantiality) must reverse into a “No” (i.e. an activity) and, conversely, the “No” pole must turn into a “Yes.” Each relation arises from the unification of the newly converted “Yes” and “No” with one another. Rosenzweig stresses that the transformation of the elements from which each relation is constituted is different from the Hegelian dialectic, principally because the “No” (both in the construction of the elements and their transformation) is not the antithesis of the “Yes,” but confronts the nothing with the “same immediacy” of the “Yes.” Hence, while Rosenzweig is clearly influenced by Hegel in terms of his speculative method, he nevertheless seeks to distance himself from the logic of dialectic. In yet another point of contrast with German Idealism, Rosenzweig demonstrates that the “course” of the relations—creation, revelation, and redemption—culminates in the unity of the All. Thus, whereas German Idealism presupposes the All as the basis of its system, Rosenzweig claims to arrive at the All at the conclusion of his system, particularly in redemption.

In the third and final part of the Star, Rosenzweig describes how life within Judaism and Christianity anticipates the redemptive unity of the All. He calls specific attention to the relationship between prayer, liturgy, and redemption: in Jewish and Christian liturgical practices, participants pray for the advent of the Kingdom of God, or redemption, and their prayer compels the redemptive advent of the eternal into time. As constitutive of this compulsion, which God freely accepts and cooperates in, Jewish and Christian liturgical practices envision within time the future unity of the All toward which the elements of God, self, and world strive. Hence Rosenzweig closely examines the liturgical calendars of Judaism and Christianity, respectively; each tradition anticipates and participates in redemption in different ways. Whereas Jews participate in eternity within time, Christians “must master time” and are hence on the “eternal way,” a fact which both traditions' liturgical practices reflect.

In the final, “Gate” section of the Star, Rosenzweig describes the Star of Redemption—constructed from God, self, and world as these relate via creation, revelation, and redemption in the course that leads to the All—as the vision of the redemptive unity of the All. He then compares this vision of redemptive unity to the vision of the face of God. Only in the realization that the Star of Redemption is the face of God, he insists, is the Star itself and its constituent components really understood. Rosenzweig implies that the vision of the face of God in the Star of Redemption directs those who perceive it back into the realm of human faces in which the redemptive unity of the All is achieved via neighbor-love. In other words, as Rosenzweig succinctly puts it, the vision of the face of God in the Star of Redemption leads one “into life,” in which one is to participate in the redemptive task of the unification of the All.

While Franz Rosenzweig is not often cited as a hermeneutical thinker, there are several hermeneutical aspects to the Star of Redemption that, in my view, render it a work in hermeneutics. For Hans-Georg Gadamer, one of the foremost twentieth-century hermeneutical philosophers, tradition is a necessary condition for understanding, which is itself an inextricable element of human being-in-the-world. Whereas early hermeneutical thinkers viewed one’s embeddedness within a historically conditioned tradition as an obstacle to correct understanding, Gadamer demonstrates that understanding would be impossible without the fore-structures of understanding that tradition provides. For Rosenzweig, tradition is no less important, particularly insofar as the Jewish and Christian traditions furnish humans with embodied liturgical practices that not only allow participants to envision the redemptive unity of the All within time, but more profoundly, to compel the redemptive advent of the Kingdom of God into time. In this sense, the Jewish and Christian traditions are for Rosenzweig conditions for the possibility of the apprehension of the face of God in the Star of Redemption, without which one cannot truly understand the Star or its constitutive elements. Hence for Rosenzweig, not entirely unlike Gadamer, one need not—indeed, one cannot—achieve a correct understanding (in Rosenzweig’s case, of the Star of Redemption, and hence of the cosmos itself) outside of (the Jewish and Christian) traditions.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely going to need a reread, but definitely looking forward to a reread!

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Franz Rosenzweig ist neben Buber der andere große deutsch-jüdische Denker des frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Geschrieben in den Schützengräben des ersten Weltkrieges, ist "Der Stern der Erlösung" sein Hauptwerk. Systematisch ansprechend legt er hier seine Sicht der Dinge über Gott, Mensch und Gott und Mensch dar. Menschen, das sind dabei Juden, Christen, Moslems und Heiden, denen Rosenzweig, meint man, direkt in ihr Wesen schauen konnte. Dass er diesen Duktus und vermutlich auch diese Denkweise pflegt, ist wohl nicht seine Schuld gewesen, will sagen, man merkt dem Buch seine guten hundert Jahre und die großen geistigen Umwälzungen, die wir erlebt haben, an. Auch ist es offensichtlich von einem deutschen jüdischen Intellektuellen geschrieben worden, der ganz den Ansprüchen des aufgeklärten 19 Jahrhunderts gerecht werden wollte. All dies sei nicht vollkommen zum Nachteil des Buches gesagt, denn gerade dies produziert doch einige schöne Einsichten. Doch scheinen sie oft etwas hüftsteif vorgetragen und mit dem Makel selbst befundener von Gottes wegen gültiger und vielleicht nicht absoluter, doch tiefster Einsicht behaftet. Zwischen ihm und uns ist viel Zeit verflossen und das ist der Grund warum er mir nach Buber nur der Zweite bleibt.

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nuggets of brilliance scattered throughout, but by the second book Rosensweig is so high on his own supply that if you’re not totally onboard with his recondite, deliquescent musings then you’ll find yourself perpetually grasping in the dark for a sense of direction and momentum.

Rosenzweig’s mode of articulation seems to me more a product of a romantic and vaguely mystical aesthetic taste than the necessary expression of his ideas in motion. I obviously have no issue with creative imagery and allusive language (it’s practically the key to my heart…)—and perhaps this is a translation issue—but I found Rosensweig’s pretentions of crystalline splendour to fall just short of really having the intended effect.

I know this book deserves more intensive study (especially apropos the work on miracles, the foundations of Benjamin’s messianic time, and its being almost entirely responsible for Levinas as we know him), but I’ve already dedicated more than enough of my life to it for now. Another time, down the line, I’m sure it will speak me with more conviction.

[Omer · Rating 5 out of 5]

הכל מתחיל באות א

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ambitious attempt to complete Schelling's project of existential narrative philosophy that builds on Cohen's late turn towards Judaism as a religion of reason. The book contains reflections on a variety of topics, including an analysis of the existential significance of calculus, a theory of dialogue that insists on the role of the erotic in discourse and an investigation into the liturgical construction of social time. The role of mysticism in this work is complex and ambivalent, encompassing both an impassioned criticism of anthropomorphism and a kernel of Lurianic tikkun. The celebrated steps Rosenzweig takes towards accepting the truth of both Judaism and Christianity are indeed epochal, but the frankly racist and xenophobic descriptions of Islam present a major stumbling block to his reception. This is unfortunate, as Rosenzweig is best understood not as a typical reactionary but rather as a romantic anti-capitalist who saw the October revolution as bound up with redemption. Rosenzweig still has much to offer to contemporary thought, and the recent move to read him alongside Freud (as exposing the 'psychotheologies' of everyday life) is right to position his thought as an anti-philosophical cure for thought which cannot confront finitude. Ultimately, the best critique of his project comes from Gillian Rose, who argues that Rosenzweig's conception of freedom cannot go beyond bereavement, and as such remains impotent when faced with the movement of world history which it views as essentially violent.

***

Take two. Fuck it, this text is kind of mid but I'm giving it another star. There are three things about it that matter.

1: it has a non-trivial account of mathematics. Rosenzweig doesn't get further than differential calculus, but that's good enough to ground a dynamic account of the genesis of formal structure. The metaphor Rosenzweig uses for this is pregnancy. It's helpful. We can forgive Rosenzweig's obnoxious bioessentialism.

2: it understands the Song of Songs. Rosenzweig really commits to the whole complete obedience bit. It's kind of terrifying. It's also overwhelmingly beautiful.

3: it knows what the concept of acceleration is. Rosenzweig says at one point that prayer doesn't matter at all if it doesn't hasten the coming of the messiah. Jewish Accelerationism. J/Acc.

Anyway, it's nice and mostly good. It's funny that Levinas never cites it but confesses that everything he writes is determined by it. Fess up dude.

[Eric Chevlen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Several times over the last 45 years I have tried to read this book. I've never gotten more than a third of the way through it. I tried again this week, hoping that my greater experience and maturity would now grant me success. It was not to be. I now conclude that the problem is not me; it's the book. Much of it sounds like a parody of academic philosophical gobbledygook.

Consider a few passages plucked at random from this "classic" book:

"Yea is the beginning. Nay cannot be the beginning for it could only be a Nay of the Nought. This, however, would presuppose a negatable Nought, a Nay, therefore, that had already decided on a Yea."

"Initially this return route thus leads from 'B=B' to 'B=A,' for this, not 'A=B,' is the world-formula rationally attainable from B=B. Since 'B=B' mean the self, B=A means that the particular defines itself more narrowly by means of an overlapping universal."

"We found the three points to be individual, mutually unconnected, and could bring them together only arbitrarily, only subject to change, only under the sign of the Perhaps. This very manner of finding them already determined the impossibility of formulating the trajectory which we are looking for here."

Ars longa, vita brevis. This game isn't worth the candle. Read a different book.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PROFOUND CONSIDERATION OF THE JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN WAYS

Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) was a German Jewish theologian and philosopher; he founded the House of Jewish Learning in Frankfurt in 1920, which was later run under Rudolf Hallo and Martin Buber. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 445-page hardcover edition.]

The Foreword to this 1921 book written by Nahum Glatzer [author of 'Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought'] states of Rosenzweig, “The year 1913… marked a crucial turning point in his life… he realized the ambiguity of the scientific method and the hubris of philosophical Idealism … [which] broke down before the individual asking the existential question: Who or what am I?... it is essential to realize that this turning point was determined not by objective, theoretical speculation but by a personal need.” (Pg. x)

He continues, “The trying period came to an end after Rosenzweig… attended a Day of Atonement service in the traditional synagogue in Berlin… What he experienced in this day-long service can be conjectured… Prior to that memorable 1913 Day of Atonement, Rosenzweig had not thought it possible that the spiritual perception of the ‘reality of God,’ of ‘being alone with God,’ of the ‘closeness to God’ could be experienced by a person within the Judaism of his day. He thought that a true experience of faith calls for the mediator, Jesus… It was only several days later… that he was able to write to his mother: ‘I seem to have found the way back about which I had tortured myself in vain and pondered for almost three months’… Thus, in Rosenzweig’s view… the Jew must live his own role in God’s world. ‘Shall I become converted, I who was born “chosen”? Does the alternative of conversion even exist for me?’ he writes in 1916, looking back at the events of 1913.” (Pg. xii)

Rosenzweig observes, “A God there may be, but as long as he remains outside and does not become a part of this world itself… Man there may be, but as long as he can only be a measure laid against this world from outside, and not a moving force within it…. And truly, it is entitled to remain blind and deaf as long as God does not strive and man does not speak. As yet the world may be satisfied to bear within itself its logos, its entire and adequate basis.” (Pg. 61)

He summarizes, “Thus we have established the significant difference… This difference is that … the history of the birth of God, signified a past time to antiquity, while… the history of the birth of the soul signified a present life, and … the history of the birth of the world, a future… God has been from the first, man became, the world becomes… these three creations… we have already been able to recognize here. For what we have so far recognized of the All… was nothing other than the secret of its everlasting birth… We are standing at the transition---the transition from the mystery into the miracle.” (Pg. 90)

He suggests, “The ways of God are different from the ways of man, but the word of God and the word of man are the same. What man hears in his heart as his own human speech is the very word which comes out of God’s mouth… that word of creation which reverberates within us and speaks from within us---all this is also the word which God has spoken and which we find inscribed in the Book of the Beginning, in Genesis.” (Pg. 151) Later, he adds, “Precisely for the sake of its revelational character, the first revelation in creation thus demands the emergence of a ‘second’ revelation, a revelation which is nothing more than revelation… in the narrower… sense.” (Pg. 161)

He states, “To the I there responds in God’s interior a Thou. It is the dual sound of I and Thou in the monologue of God at the creation of man. But the Thou is no authentic Thou, for it still remains in God’s interior. And the I is just as far from already being an authentic I, for no Thou has yet confronted it. Only when the I acknowledges the Thou as something external to itself… when it makes the transition from monologue to authentic dialogue, only then does it become that I which we have just claimed for the primeval Nay become audible.” (Pg. 174) He continues, “And thus the soul which God summons with the command to love is ashamed to acknowledge to him its love, for it can only acknowledge its love by acknowledging its weakness at the same time, and by responding to God’s ‘Thou shalt love’ with an ‘I have sinned.’” (Pg. 179)

He observes, “Experienced belief only comes to rest in this certainty of having been long ago summoned, by name, to belief… Now it can calmly open its eyes and look around itself at the world of things. There is no thing that could part it from God, for in the world of things it recognizes the substantive ground of its belief in the immovable factuality of a historical event. The soul can roam the world with eyes open and without dreaming. Now and forevermore it will remain in God’s proximity. The ‘Thou are mine’ … draws a protective circle about its steps… Now it can say: ‘my God, my God.’ Now it can pray.” (Pg. 184)

He points out, “the love for man, in being commanded by God, is directly derived from the love for God. The love for God is to express itself in love for one’s neighbor. It is for this reason that love of neighbor can and must be commanded. Love of neighbor… is distinguished from all ethical acts by the presupposition of being loved by God, a presupposition which becomes visible behind this origin only through the form of the commandment… God’s ‘ordaining what he will’ must… be preceded by God’s ‘already having done’ what he ordains. Only the soul beloved of God can receive the commandment to love its neighbor and fulfill it. Ere man can turn himself over to God’s will, God must first have turned to man.” (Pg. 214-215)

He says, “The kingdom of God is actually nothing other than the reciprocal union of the soul with all the world. This union of the soul with all the world occurs in thanksgiving and the kingdom of God comes in this union and every conceivable prayer is fulfilled. Thanks for the fulfillment of each and every prayer precedes all prayer that is not an individual lament from out of the dual solitude of the nearness of the soul to God. The community-wide acknowledgement of the paternal goodness of God is the basis on which all communal prayer builds.” (Pg. 233)

He argues, “God’s truth conceals itself from those who reach for it with one hand only, regardless of whether the reaching hand is that of the objectivity of philosophers which preserves itself free of preconceptions… or that of the blindness of the theologians, proud of its experience and secluding itself from the world. God’s truth wants to be entreated with both hands. It will not deny itself to him who calls upon it with the double prayer of the believer and the disbeliever. God gives of his wisdom to the one as to the other, to belief as well as to disbelief, but he gives to both only if their prayer comes before him united.” (Pg. 296-297)

He notes, “And man, who is created in the image of God. Jewish man as he faces his God, is a veritable repository of contradictions. As… Israel, he knows that God has elected him and may well forget that he is not alone with God… that to Egypt and Assyria too, God says: ‘my people.’ … In his blissful togetherness-alone with God, he may… look up in surprise when the world tries to remind him that not every man harbors the same certainty of being God’s child as he himself. Yet no one knows better than he that being dear to God is only a beginning, and that man remains unredeemed so long as nothing but this beginning has been realized summarizes…” (Pg. 307)

He asserts, “Time does not bounce off Christianity as it does off the Jewish people, but fugitive time has been arrested and henceforth serves as a captive servant. Past, present, and future … are now become figures at rest, paintings on the walls and vaults of the chapel. Henceforth all that preceded the birth of Christ… is past history, arrested once and for all. And the future… is the Last Judgment… It ceases to believe that it is older than Christianity and counts its years from the birthday of Christianity. It suffers all that preceded this to appear as negated time, an unreal time so to speak…. And Christianity treads this path… certain of its own eternal presence.” (Pg. 340)

He observes, “Redemption itself still has no place in the Church year thereby. To redemption there ought to correspond a third kind of festival… much as the Days of Awe are added to the Sabbath and Pilgrim Festivals with us. Up to this point there were Christian festivals to correspond to those of the Jewish calendar. What then is the type of festival which would correspond to the Days of Awe? None. The Church year… lacks anything to correspond to these festivals in our calendar.” (Pg. 366)

He points out, “The patriarch Abraham heard the call of God and answered it… Henceforth the individual is born a Jew. He no longer needs to become one in some decisive moment of his life…. It is just the contrary with the Christian. In his personal life there occurs to him at a given point the miracle of rebirth, and it occurs to him as an individual… this he carries with him, but otherwise nothing. He never ‘is’ a Christian… Christianity exists without him. The individual Jew generally lacks that personal vitality which only comes to a man in the second birth… For … the individual [Jew] has it not at all. Rather, he is from this first birth on whatever he is as a Jew… Correspondingly, the Christian loses everything ‘natural,’ everything innate, in his Christianity.” (Pg. 396)

He concludes, “In Judaism, man is always somehow a remnant. He is always somehow a survivor, an inner something… Once more the paganism which was embraced by the divergent and finally reconverging ways of Christianity lies outside in the darkness. Jewish man is wholly by himself. The future… has here fallen silent… The revelation which was his, the redemption for which he has been summoned, both have completely merged in the constricted space between him and his people.” (Pg. 405) He adds, “Thus the Truly… jointly recited, by those redeemed for eternal life and on the eternal way, in a chorus in sight of the Star of Redemption, is still the sign of creatureliness, and the realm of nature has not yet ended… And with revelation, redemption too now merges back into creation. The ultimate truth is itself only---created truth. God is truly the Lord… And thou wast from eternity what thou shalt be unto eternity: Truth.” (Pg. 417)

This book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying contemporary theology---whether Jewish, or Christian.

[Richard Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense; I struggled.

[Giacomo Mantani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parte finale e conclusione da 5 stelle. O meglio, da stella della redenzione.

[Ádám Suba-Lang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iden olvastam Eltunt ido 7-et, Tortenelem es osztalytudatot meg az Elveszett illuziokat is, es a Megvaltas csillaga talan meg ezeknel is jobb!

[Blas T · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow

[zogarvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike any system I've encountered before. The ending where one is told to effectively touch grass was surprising, yet welcome.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

als je buiten beschouwing zou kunnen laten (quod non) onder welke ongelooflijke omstandigheden Rosenzweig dit boek tijdens WO I geschreven heeft, dan zou het mijn toets van methodisch-filosofische kritiek nooit doorstaan. Want voor iemand die wijsgerig getraind is in het neokantianisme en in Hegels dialektiek (zie zijn proefschrift over de staat bij Hegel) is de argumentatiestructuur puur ponerend, zelfs pedant, ook als je bereid bent zijn evocatieve schrijfstijl te accepteren. Als je niet gewend bent aan een hoge abstractiegraad, zou ik je afraden hier ubrhaupt aan te beginnen. Maar.... biografisch, religiehistorisch, politiek en cultuurhistorisch gezien is dit boek echter wel weer een must! Lees dus beter eerst een inleiding met wat uitleg over de maatschappelijke context: de volstrekt frustrerende situatie voor (gedwongen) 'geassimileerde' joodse intellectuelen en hun kinderen in Duitsland en heel Europa rond eind 19e eeuw (of eerder, zie bv Simon Schama over Mozes Mendelssohn, of lees een culturele typering van deze (Benjaminiaans gezegd:) Jetzt-Zeit vol 'messiaanse ongedurigheid' van Jan van Heemst in Krisis 50/1993, p.159-163). Want dan kan je niet anders dan enorme bewondering en achting krijgen voor deze tragische persoon, unieke denker, en niet tevergeten: deze fantastische Hebreeuws-Duitse bijbelvertaler samen met Buber (ondanks fysieke aftakeling, heroisch ondersteund door zijn vrouw). Lees voor je dit boek opent ter wijsgerige inleiding (bv in de bundel van Heering, titel in my books) nog over de zespuntige Ster der Verlossing die de kern vormt van Rosenzweig's denk-'systeem'. Theologisch maakt hij wel een duidelijk punt (dat hem onderscheidt zowel van orthodox-joodse theologie als van anti- en non-semitische christenlijke theologie), namelijk dat christendom en jodendom corresponderende gevaren kennen (van resp. teveel quietisme en teveel activisme) en ook om die reden naast elkaar moeten blijven bestaan. Met deze denktrant staat Rosenzweig mijns inziens aan de wieg van alle hedendaagse debatten over de politiek-theologische betekenis van het universeel gerichte messianisme in Paulus brieven (bij Taubes, Badiou, Zizek, Agamben).
Maar systematisch-wijsgerig gezien blijft dit betoog voor mij toch echt onvoldoende om er op korte termijn een tweede, energie-vretende bestudering aan te wagen. De duiding (oa van Heering) dat Rosenzweig DE wegbereider van het existentialisme zou zijn, vond ik overtrokken. Mijn kernbezwaar is dat het begrip van de drie 'correlaties' (staand voor openbaring, schepping en verlossing, die zouden correleren tussen respectievelijk mens, God en wereld) nergens goed wordt geintroduceerd, laat staan uitgewerkt.
Ik denk te begrijpen waarom Rosenzweig in zijn autobiografisch-'existentiele' zoektocht naar post-joodse identiteit (voor hemzelf en een hele generatie) het vocabulaire van zijn logocentristische scholing ("van Ionie tot Jena") radicaal terzijde schoof, maar toch: vanuit de luxe veiligheid van vandaag geredeneerd ben ik van mening dat een dialektisch (of desnoods kantiaans-kritisch) denkkader zijn betoog een stuk helderder en misschien zelfs overtuigender had kunnen maken. Want als filosoof had m.i. Rosenzweig (die nu nog voornamelijk door theologen genoemd wordt) zoveel meer willen en kunnen melden dan enkel 'Joden moed in te spreken om jood te zijn' (Levinas).

[Leonardo]

Rosenzweig es el que mejor comprendió la tragedia de la inevitable conexión entre nación y ética en el pensamiento de Hegel.

Imperio Pág. 83


En los años posteriores a la explosión de la Primera Guerra Mundial, aquellos que habían participado de la gran masacre intentaron desesperadamente de entender y controlar la crisis. Considérese los testimonios de Franz Rosenzweig y Walter Benjamín. Para ambos, el mecanismo por el cual se había liberado la crisis debía ser algún tipo de escatología secular.

Imperio Pág. 279

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book but a bit beyond my level. The first 80 pages goes something like: "We can't see God, so he must not exist, but we feel something is there. Something is not nothing, so there is something and that something is God, but we can't be sure. So how can be sure? How can we know something that we can't be sure of? Because something is there, but even if it's not there, something has to be there because we thought of it, so how can we say there's nothing there?"

[Dr. Steven Aguzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most likely the first book to pioneer the dialogue of Continental Philosophy with both Judaism and Christianity. Written from the trenches during WWI, this is a fascinating philosophical/theological text, sidestepping the Hegelian rhetoric of its time-borrowing instead from the poetic style of Goethe.