Franz Rosenzweig
Encyclopedia
Franz Rosenzweig was an influential Jewish theologian
and philosopher
.
, Germany
to a middle-class, minimally observant Jewish family. His education was primarily secular, studying history and philosophy at the universities of Göttingen
, Munich, and Freiburg.
Rosenzweig, under the influence of his close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
, as well as his cousins, considered converting to Christianity
. Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to first live as an observant Jew before becoming Christian. Famously, after attending Yom Kippur
services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, Germany, he underwent a mystical experience. As a result, he became a baal teshuva
. Although he never put pen to paper to explain what transpired, he never again entertained converting to Christianity, deciding instead to remain a Jew. In 1913, he turned to Jewish philosophy
. His letters to his friend, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whom he had nearly followed into Christianity, have been published as Judaism Despite Christianity.
While researching his doctoral dissertation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
, Hegel and the State, Rosenzweig reacted against Hegel's idealism
and favoured a philosophy which did not begin with an abstract notion of the human. This philosophy has come to be known by several different names, including speech-thinking and existentialism
.
Rosenzweig was a student of Hermann Cohen
, and the two became close.
, humanity and world as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption
. In this work he is critical of all Western philosophy
that seeks to efface the fear of death and replace actual human existence with an ideal. Hegel's Idealist philosophy is a primary target of such attacks. Rosenzweig was originally an idealist but his experiences on the front of World War I
changed him to become a proto-existentialist.
In Rosenzweig's scheme, Creation lies between God and the World. Between God and the Self is Revelation, and between the Self and the World is Redemption. If one makes a diagram with God at the top, the World and Self below (on equal plane) with the appropriate intersections, one will see a "map" which is a Star of David
.
He is very concerned with dialogue, the relationship between the self and the other. "New thinking" is "Speech thinking" and at a deep level it is revelatory. This world of revelation is in the here and now (not on the metaphysical plane) and comes to each individual. They are called to love God, to do so is to return to the world to take care of it--and that is redemption.
A translation into English was prepared by Professor William Wolfgang Hallo.
early work, became close friends with him upon their meeting. This friendship lasted despite their differences of political opinion: Buber was a Zionist, while Rosenzweig was a strong defender of the German-Jewish heritage and felt that a return to Israel would embroil the Jews into a worldly history they should eschew. Further, Rosenzweig criticized Buber’s dialogical philosophy, because it is based not only on the I-Thou relation, but also on I-It, a notion that Rosenzweig rejected as idealistic. He thought the counterpart to I-Thou should be He-It, namely “as He said and it became”: building the "it" around the human "I" — the human mind — is an idealistic mistake. Famously, Rosenzweig and Buber worked together on a rather literal translation of the Torah
from Hebrew
to German
. The translation, while contested, has led to several other translations (in other languages) using the same methodology and principles. Their publications concerning the nature and philosophy of translation are still widely read.
(also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) and towards the end of his life had to write with the help of his wife Edith, who would recite letters of the alphabet until he indicated for her to stop, continuing until she could guess the word or phrase he intended (or, at other times, Rosenzweig would point to the letter on the plate of his typewriter). They also developed a system based on him blinking his eyes.
Rosenzweig's final attempt to communicate his thought, via the laborious typewriter-alphabet method, consisted in the partial sentence: "And now it comes, the point of all points, which the Lord has truly revealed to me in my sleep, the point of all points for which there—". The writing was interrupted by his doctor, with whom he had a short discussion using the same method. When the doctor left, Rosenzweig did not wish to continue with the writing, and he died in the night of December 10, 1929, in Frankfurt
, the sentence left unfinished.
Rosenzweig was buried on December 12, 1929. There was no oration; however, Buber read Psalm 73.
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
.
Early life
Franz Rosenzweig was born in KasselKassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to a middle-class, minimally observant Jewish family. His education was primarily secular, studying history and philosophy at the universities of Göttingen
Georg-August University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen , known informally as Georgia Augusta, is a university in the city of Göttingen, Germany.Founded in 1734 by King George II of Great Britain and the Elector of Hanover, it opened for classes in 1737. The University of Göttingen soon grew in size and popularity...
, Munich, and Freiburg.
Rosenzweig, under the influence of his close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was a historian and social philosopher, whose work spanned the disciplines of history, theology, sociology, linguistics and beyond...
, as well as his cousins, considered converting to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to first live as an observant Jew before becoming Christian. Famously, after attending Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur , also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue...
services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, Germany, he underwent a mystical experience. As a result, he became a baal teshuva
Baal teshuva
Baal teshuva or ba'al teshuvah , sometimes abbreviated to BT, is a term referring to a Jew who turns to embrace Orthodox Judaism. Baal teshuva literally means, "repentant", i.e., one who has repented or "returned" to God...
. Although he never put pen to paper to explain what transpired, he never again entertained converting to Christianity, deciding instead to remain a Jew. In 1913, he turned to Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy , includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or, in relation to the religion of Judaism. Jewish philosophy, until modern Enlightenment and Emancipation, was pre-occupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism; thus organizing...
. His letters to his friend, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whom he had nearly followed into Christianity, have been published as Judaism Despite Christianity.
While researching his doctoral dissertation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, Hegel and the State, Rosenzweig reacted against Hegel's idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
and favoured a philosophy which did not begin with an abstract notion of the human. This philosophy has come to be known by several different names, including speech-thinking and existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
.
Rosenzweig was a student of Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century".-Life:...
, and the two became close.
The Star of Redemption
Rosenzweig's major work is The Star of Redemption, in which he expounds his new philosophy, a description of the relationships between GodGod
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, humanity and world as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption
Redemption (theology)
Redemption is a concept common to several theologies. It is generally associated with the efforts of people within a faith to overcome their shortcomings and achieve the moral positions exemplified in their faith.- In Buddhism :...
. In this work he is critical of all Western philosophy
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
that seeks to efface the fear of death and replace actual human existence with an ideal. Hegel's Idealist philosophy is a primary target of such attacks. Rosenzweig was originally an idealist but his experiences on the front of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
changed him to become a proto-existentialist.
In Rosenzweig's scheme, Creation lies between God and the World. Between God and the Self is Revelation, and between the Self and the World is Redemption. If one makes a diagram with God at the top, the World and Self below (on equal plane) with the appropriate intersections, one will see a "map" which is a Star of David
Star of David
The Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Shield of David or Magen David is a generally recognized symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism.Its shape is that of a hexagram, the compound of two equilateral triangles...
.
He is very concerned with dialogue, the relationship between the self and the other. "New thinking" is "Speech thinking" and at a deep level it is revelatory. This world of revelation is in the here and now (not on the metaphysical plane) and comes to each individual. They are called to love God, to do so is to return to the world to take care of it--and that is redemption.
A translation into English was prepared by Professor William Wolfgang Hallo.
Collaboration with Buber
Rosenzweig, while critical of Jewish scholar Martin Buber'sMartin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
early work, became close friends with him upon their meeting. This friendship lasted despite their differences of political opinion: Buber was a Zionist, while Rosenzweig was a strong defender of the German-Jewish heritage and felt that a return to Israel would embroil the Jews into a worldly history they should eschew. Further, Rosenzweig criticized Buber’s dialogical philosophy, because it is based not only on the I-Thou relation, but also on I-It, a notion that Rosenzweig rejected as idealistic. He thought the counterpart to I-Thou should be He-It, namely “as He said and it became”: building the "it" around the human "I" — the human mind — is an idealistic mistake. Famously, Rosenzweig and Buber worked together on a rather literal translation of the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
from Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
to German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. The translation, while contested, has led to several other translations (in other languages) using the same methodology and principles. Their publications concerning the nature and philosophy of translation are still widely read.
Educational activities
Rosenzweig, unimpressed with the impersonal learning of the academy, founded the Independent House of Jewish Learning, a place for adult education that sought to promote Jewish literacy and involvement. His goal in turning aside more respectable University positions was to engage in dialogue with human beings rather than merely accumulate knowledge. The Lehrhaus, as it was known in Germany, was an innovative Jewish Free University, which produced many prominent Jewish intellectuals. In October 1922 Rudolf Hallo took over the leadership of the Lehrhaus. It stayed open until 1930, and was reopened by Martin Buber in 1933.Illness and death
Rosenzweig suffered from the muscular degenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral SclerosisAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a form of motor neuron disease caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons, located in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their efferent input...
(also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) and towards the end of his life had to write with the help of his wife Edith, who would recite letters of the alphabet until he indicated for her to stop, continuing until she could guess the word or phrase he intended (or, at other times, Rosenzweig would point to the letter on the plate of his typewriter). They also developed a system based on him blinking his eyes.
Rosenzweig's final attempt to communicate his thought, via the laborious typewriter-alphabet method, consisted in the partial sentence: "And now it comes, the point of all points, which the Lord has truly revealed to me in my sleep, the point of all points for which there—". The writing was interrupted by his doctor, with whom he had a short discussion using the same method. When the doctor left, Rosenzweig did not wish to continue with the writing, and he died in the night of December 10, 1929, in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, the sentence left unfinished.
Rosenzweig was buried on December 12, 1929. There was no oration; however, Buber read Psalm 73.
See also
- Interfaith dialogue
- JudaismJudaismJudaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
- ChristianityChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
- Martin BuberMartin BuberMartin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
- André NeherAndré NeherAndré Neher was a Jewish scholar and philosopher, born 12, rue du Marche, in Obernai, Bas-Rhin. He was a student at the College Freppel in Obernai, then at the Lycee Fustel de Coulange in Strasbourg. He became professor at the College Erckmann-Chatrian in Sarrebourg, then at the Lycee Kleber in...
Further reading
- Anckaert, Luc & Casper, Bernhard Moses Casper, Franz Rosenzweig - a primary and secondary bibliography (Leuven, 1990)
- Bienenstock, Myriam Cohen face à Rosenzweig. Débat sur la pensée allemande (Paris, Vrin, 2009)
- Bienenstock, Myriam (ed.). Héritages de Franz Rosenzweig. "Nous et les autres" (Paris, éditions de l'éclat, 2011)
- Gibbs, Robert, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (1994)
- Glatzer, Nahum Norbert Essays in Jewish thought (1978)
- Glatzer, Nahum Norbert, Franz Rosenzweig - his life and thought (New York, 1953)
- Guttmann, Isaak Julius. Philosophies of Judaism : the history of Jewish philosophy from biblical times to Franz Rosenzweig (New York, 1964)
- Maybaum, Ignaz Trialogue between Jew, Christian and Muslim (London, 1973)
- Mendes-Flohr, Paul R., German Jews - a dual identity (New Haven, CT, 1999)
- Miller, Ronald Henry Dialogue and disagreement - Franz Rosenzweig's relevance to contemporary Jewish-Christian understanding (Lanham, 1989)
- Putnam, Hilary Jewish philosophy as a guide to life - Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (Bloomington, IN, 2008)
- Rahel-Freund, Else Die Existenz philosophie Franz Rosenzweigs (Breslau 1933, Hamburg 1959)
- Rahel-Freund, Else Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy of existence - an analysis of The star of redemption (The Hague, 1979)
- Santner, Eric L. The Psychotheology of Everyday Life - Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig (Chicago, IL, 2001)
- Schwartz, Michal. "Metapher und Offenbarung. Zur Sprache von Franz Rosenzweigs Stern der Erloesung" (Berlin, 2003)
External links
- Arnold Betz's essay on Rosenzweig and Star of Redemption at the Vanderbilt University
- Franz Rosenzweig's Der Stern der Erlösung online (in German)
- Review of The Star of Redemption by Spengler at Asia Times
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry of Franz Rosenzweig